Original BG1 Character Stats SPREADSHEET
cloakanddagger
Member Posts: 111
So, just to fuel my OCD love for Baldur's Gate, I typed up this spreadsheet to compare character stats from the OG Baldur's Gate. You'd be surprised about some of the characters and what the numbers say. Enjoy and if you have any questions let me know.
JUST MY OPINION: Looking at the spreadsheet I have sort of come to realize that Ajantis, Xzar, Imoen, Dynaheir, Kivan, Montaron, and Kagain seem to have the best stats to support their class. Also notice that 3 of the canon players have some of the highest total stats. Also can anyone give me some insight on Quayle and Tiax??? Are they really as bad as their stats say they are??? I have never used either of them.
ENJOY
JUST MY OPINION: Looking at the spreadsheet I have sort of come to realize that Ajantis, Xzar, Imoen, Dynaheir, Kivan, Montaron, and Kagain seem to have the best stats to support their class. Also notice that 3 of the canon players have some of the highest total stats. Also can anyone give me some insight on Quayle and Tiax??? Are they really as bad as their stats say they are??? I have never used either of them.
ENJOY
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Comments
Imoen, for example, has a very useful stat distribution for her class (considering her as a thief/mage dualclass, as she was canonized in BG2 - Skie has probably the better very slightly better stats for a pure thief, due to not getting a STR penalty on melee attacks)
Safana, on the other hand, has a ridicolously high CHA for a thief, which gives her a great number as of total stats, but her true use is rather low, as she has only 10 CON.
As another example, Minsc has an incredibly low total in stats, but his use is still far above most other paladins, rangers and fighters due to the fact that he got the highest STR of all npcs available.
Tiax doesn't need good stats because Tiax rules everyone anyway...
Example: Ajantis. He's got 13 dexterity and 12 int. If both of those were reduced down to 7, he'd functionally be no different than he currently is. Plus, he's a paladin. Paladins naturally have a bigger roll total than other classes because their base strength, wisdom and charisma are so high despite wisdom and charisma adding nothing at all to your combat ability. (He's still pretty awesome because 17 strength and 16 consitutition is great.)
- Tiax is another example of where his stats are actually quite good. You can't backstab with any cleric weapons except clubs and quarterstaves and he's got the strength to wield those. 16 dexterity and constitution is quite good for BG1. He still manages to get 1 bonus 1st level spell even at just 13 Wisdom. Intelligence and Charisma do nothing for his class combination so if they were both 3, functionally he'd be no different than he currently is. (Plus, he's a cleric/thief which is inherently one of the more broken classes in BG1. You can abuse sanctuary to steal things in plain sight.)
I mean, look at Garrick. A roll of 81 total points, and yet his only stat in the black is dexterity. His strength garners no bonuses. His 14 wisdom doesn't even give him a lore bonus so it's no different than it'd be if it was at 10. His intelligence is pitiful and gives him only a 55% chance to scribe scrolls so he's a pretty terrible spell-caster. His charisma is the min value for bards, even.
Look at Edwin. Despite being tied for second worst total stats in the game, he's the best mage. His constitution is as high as you'd need it to go for a mage, and 18 vs. 17 intelligence is a pretty big difference when it comes to success rate scribing scrolls. You also have to factor in unique character abilities, too, which means Edwin's amulet giving him more spells than any other mage can ever have. Functionally there is no difference between his 10 dexterity and Dynaheir's 13. Dynaheir's 11 strength vs. his 9 is only 20 lbs. carry weight difference. Her high wisdom only comes into play if you decide you want to dump a bunch of the wisdom tomes on her to dual-class to Cleric, which is kind of a silly thing to do.
- You asked about Quayle, so let me tell you about him: He gets more total spells per day than any other NPC, purely because he's an illusionist/cleric. His 17 intelligence ties him with every other mage except Edwin (Imoen, Xan, Xzar, Dynaheir all tie at 17) so he is only "worse" than they are because he'll cap a single level lower in wizard. Even though he gains no bonuses to divine spells, he still gets access to them and is somewhat capable from his cleric side just from levels by the end of the game. There are literally no differences between 8 and 9 strength and the only difference between strength as low as 8 and as high as 15 is carry capacity. It'd be convenient if his strength were at 10 but in battle it's no different than SIXTEEN of the game's TWENTY FOUR other npc's.
Plus he's got at least +1 to ranged thac0/-1 AC from dexterity which is nice, and he has +3 bonus to saves vs. spells and wands due to gnome constitution. He gains no bonuses to HP, but it's still worth mentioning.
You also don't gain a bonus to damage til 16 strength, and a bonus to thac0 til 17 strength. Outside of carry capacity and gear usage, there are no combat related differences between 8 and 15 strength.
@Jaxbudgie: Lowest actual number, yes.
However, he's functionally tied with Ajantis, Yeslick, Kagain, Eldoth, Dynaheir, and Jaheira. None of them gain any bonuses to AC or ranged Thac0 from dexterity.
Here's a link to a table explaining dexterity's bonuses. As you can see the only difference between 7 and 14 dexterity is penalties on thieving abilities, of which paladins have none.
You gain no bonuses to AC from dexterity til 15.
Also, Charisma doesn't affect much. People tell me it affects morale failure rates in BG1 but I haven't had anyone actually link me to proof of this or a table explaining how that works. Other than that, it only helps get you a discount at shops, and even then you only need a single person in the party with high CHA to do that. Imoen + Friends (level 2 spell) = more than the highest charisma you'd need to get the max discount from shops. He's nice until them, but that is literally all it does for you.
@sandmanCCl I'm thinking YOU should make your own spreadsheet!
I can't believe that not ONE NPC scored an 18 Wisdom, I suppose none of these NPCs are very insightful or wise, considering that most of the ones on the list find themselves in very bad or odd conditions. Looking at this chart ALSO makes me a tad bit confused as to why more people don't use Skie, and actually absolutely dislike and hate her... perhaps it's just because she's found so late in the game? For a thief it seems like her stats compliment her quite well...
Lastly, the only other thing I can think of that bothers me is the changeover between BG1 and 2 with stats for certain NPCs. I'm not totally certain WHY it changed the way it did, but did Beamdog ever say what it was they were going to do about the stat descrepencies?
It's interesting to see also, that some of the characters obviously rolled the wrong class. Safana, for example, would be an excellent bard with her stats (high INT, DEX, CON and CHA), whereas viconia could be a much better cleric/mage than Quayle in my oppinion.
...that RULES ALL!
There are like 3 situations in the game where having 18 charisma gets you a small bonus reward to finishing a quest. That's it. Other than that, it has little impact on gameplay.
I was pulling up his dexterity as a misleading stat to people who don't understand AD&D stats. That's all.
Note, I still think Ajantis is great. I just think Khalid is better.
This is how I interpret it, I feel like the developers kinda balanced every character (more or less) quite successfully:
- No priest has a wisdom score of higher than 16 because going above that offers more bonus level spells, which might help tip the balance for the party.
- Quayle is nerfed on his stats because he has one of the best class combo's, especially his wisdom, imagine if he had bonus divine spells as well as being able to cast arcane spells, not to mention he's a specialist mage in one of the best schools! He also has shorty saves.
- Tiax is the same, one of the best class combo's (in BG at least) and also has a stellar special ability, and just like Quayle, shorty saves.
- Alora has a nice special item, is a Halfling so gets the most bonus thieving points and has a dexterity of 19, but to balance this out, she's placed late game.
- The same goes for Skie, the (arguably) second best thief in the game, but is only obtainable very late and comes with Eldoth who is so-so. Quayle and Tiax also suffer from this issue of being late comers but are both really good class combo's so can fit well into any party with one space free.
- Edwin is balanced because of his high constitution, blatantly best specialist school and amulet by his measly dexterity and mission to potentially kill two canon party members.
- Viconia has the lowest wisdom of the pure class priests, has terrible constitution and strength and causes you to lose reputation when she joins, but she has crazy high dexterity and 50% magic resistance (which actually kinda works against you in BG1).
- Eldoth has a decent special ability which is very useful against mages, decent constitution and strength but pitiful dexterity and intelligence, although the braces of dexterity an remedy that.
- Faldorn is the only full druid and the last of the pure class priests you come across, her dexterity is OK but her constitution and strength are terrible, but she's a full druid who can reach level 5 spells and has a nice special ability.
- Safana has nice dexterity but bad constitution and to some degree strength, she is the third best full class thief, but makes up for it with a nice personal story, a nice voice set, being neutral and also a nice special ability.
- Apart from dexterity, Coran has totally useless stats and is also only obtainable fairly late in the game, but his dexterity balances him out enough in the form of bow and thief skills (which work well in conjunction with him being an Elf too).
- Dynaheir has average intelligence as a single class mage, a not so decent specialist mage class but has the best possible constitution stat, what balances her out is her school of magic is probably quite 'noob' friendly, she also comes with fireball scribed (I think!), has high wisdom so probably has a decent natural lore, a very useful special ability and also comes paired with Minsc.
I can't really think of any others for now
The writers decided that no-one with a wisdom score of above 16 would ever willingly follow around a child of the god of murder.
6 guys with melee modifiers to Strength, only 13 with positive Constitution modifiers. INT only matters for the arcane spellcasters, wisdom only matters for the clerics. Charisma arguably doesn't matter on anyone.
Also included their special abilities because Faldorn, Tiax and Yeslick especially have awesome ones.
Ajantis rules what?
Purple helmets?
However, I think a few gameplay flaws gimp the end-game NPCs, and keep me from using them:
1. The NPCs' level at pick-up only scales to the Protagonist for the first 5-6 levels. If the party is of a higher level, the new NPCs will hardly ever catch up to the party xp before the end of the game - fx. both Skie and Alora will at the most join as level 6 with 20,000 xp! Higher level versions of the NPCs are needed.
2. It is very risky and inflexible to kick out existing partymembers (sometimes fully equipped), who will at times wander off and be unavailable for later. That makes it hard to experiment and pick up new NPCs. A BG2-style "join me later at the Friendly Arms Inn"-dialogue would be great when dismissing partymembers.
To that, there are more power-gamey gripes:
3. The end-game NPCs have few hit points on pick-up compared to the maximum possible (goes for most NPCs, really), making it my priority to collect a party early and groom them instead of bringing in new NPCs. Fx. 6th level Alora would only have 19 hp, compared to the 36 max hp limit.
4. Bad thief skill allocation on both Tiax and Skie, who are mediocre in all four categories, and require quite a few level-ups to be efficient at anything. I hope in the BG2 engine Tiax will be edited to focus partly on detect illusion, making him stand apart from the other thieves.
Except your take on charisma sir. Sure, store bonuses aren't a HUGE deal, but they are nice. On top of that, if you make someone with high charisma leader the chances of a fighter and morale failure are less. I know you are saying, "I want to see the stats for this," and truth be told I don't have it. The only thing I can give you is my word that personally I *have* actually noticed the difference. When I would put someone with high charisma in the front, no fighting amongst NPCs would ever happen. Bickering yes, fights never. Alora's HP is f**king awful, biggest turn-off about her for me.