Which recruitable NPCs are recruited least often?
Grinkles
Member Posts: 10
I am thinking of replaying the game for the umpteenth time and thought it would be fun to build an unconventional party roster that one would not expect to see together, providing alignment conflicts don’t get in the way. With that goal in mind, which recruitable NPCs in Baldur’s Gate (including Enhanced Edition characters) are perceived to be the least popular or least frequently used among players?
For example, I suspect Xan might be near the bottom of the list in terms of recruitment rate. He seems to be snubbed by some players because the role he’d fill will have already been taken up by either Xzar, Dynaheir, or Edwin. Being an Enchanter, he also loses out on the flashy evocation spells that many consider to be cornerstones of the Mage class, such as Magic Missile and Fireball. His defeatist remarks probably don’t help his public image either! For these reasons, I'd guess that he'd be among the least often used NPCs. (Don't get me wrong, I always personally liked the poor guy myself!)
For example, I suspect Xan might be near the bottom of the list in terms of recruitment rate. He seems to be snubbed by some players because the role he’d fill will have already been taken up by either Xzar, Dynaheir, or Edwin. Being an Enchanter, he also loses out on the flashy evocation spells that many consider to be cornerstones of the Mage class, such as Magic Missile and Fireball. His defeatist remarks probably don’t help his public image either! For these reasons, I'd guess that he'd be among the least often used NPCs. (Don't get me wrong, I always personally liked the poor guy myself!)
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Comments
There was a discussion, not long ago, where people were answering your question. Based on it I've decided to run a campaign using only the NPCs I always reject. Tiax is really surprising me.
I don't think I have ever used Kivan, Eldoth, Skie, or Yeslick.
Dynaheir: Enchantment spells win entire engagements, even late BG. Chaos and Emotion wreck entire groups just as hard as Cloudkill can, if not harder, Sleep dominates the early game in a way Magic Missile never could, and Wands of Fire will do a better job at nuking than spells will throughout.
Xzar: No mirror images? No improved invisibility? Xan can drop both and stoneskins to be vastly more survivable than Xzar could ever be.
Same thing with Xzar. I don't use Mirror Image or Improved Invisibility all that much on my mages because encounters tend to be so short as to not be worth using the spells. I mean they're great if you're building a character concept around them and you're trying to preserve the impending game over that is CHARNAME, but getting poked with sticks is almost never a problem for my mages. And if it is, its an ambush or something popped up next to them and ate them whole immediately anyway.
The only mage that is THAT much better than everyone else is Edwin, and that' only because he gets so many spell slots that you can basically forget about thinking "should I save this for later" because he's probably got 2 more memorized anyway.
In my current run I was using Quayle and Tiax. Quayle started to bully Tiax so I get rid of that pompous bastard in favor of Viconia (but I'll probably trade her for Faldorn later).
And I'm very impressed with Tiax's performance. He is a hell of a thief, despite his "low" Dex and multiclass, and can help buffing the party as a cleric.
I'm surprised I haven't seen Safana mentioned. Maybe she was just "unpopular" in my mind because I personally never knew about her when I used to play the original game as a kid. Guess I never gave the lighthouse area a thorough enough search until I came across her name in online guides! Funny the way the mind forms assumptions in that way. For all I know, recruiting Safana may be one of the first goals on many players' lists as soon as they leave Candlekeep, especially now that the games secrets are all laid out in FAQs, wikis, etc.
Yeslick, OTOH, is one one of my staple characters. He is the perfect bearer of many stat-boosting items found throughout the game, especially with EE. Alora is the character I miss the most - she just occurs too late to be useful unless I make a specific point of charging through the game to recruit her. I am sure she would be much more popular if you could recruit her earlier. Tiax rules, 'nuff said! Quayle, as a cleric/illusionist, is one of the better spell-casters in the game, despite no Wisdom bonus. He also gets a mild Dex boost in EE, which may be enough to persuade doubters to give him another try.
I can't speak to Eldoth and Skie as I so rarely play evil, they have never had the chance to party for me.
Quayle is one who can be fairly useful, but he's held back because you don't get access to him soon enough to build up his spellbook, and like a number of the other late game NPCs you can get he's crummy in melee combat. His stats also aren't ideal, but he's one of the few multiclass spellcasters you get access to NPC wise and the only multiclass mage (unless dualing Imoen to mage).
But as always the usually prohibiting factor is already having built your party and tailored it the way you want, so having 5 other already developed party members to suit your needs leaves little room later in the game to suddenly change things up and not getting to develop the late game NPCs the way you want, and their HP rolls the game gives them as they scale to your level aren't all that good so they're a bit squishy to add at that point too. If you could get access to some of them in the wilderness areas instead of being locked out of getting them until a certain chapter then they may be more useful, but some have a reason story wise for why they're in that location so it wouldn't work for all of them.