Afternoon!

I've recentyl downloaded BG 1 and 2 and also modded with BGT. I'm thinking of playing right through with a team of 5 (leaving 1 slot free for NPC quest stuff) which I'm making myself.

Can anyone suggest a team that I can take from level 1 in candlekeep through to the end of TOB and that will remain playable throughout? This includes kits, dual and multiclass characters. It appears a cleric/ranger will be good and so will a beserker mage and also a paladin in the same team?

Any other thoughts?

Cheers!

How about

Paladin (Inquisitor)
Kensai or Archer
Mage
Cleric/ranger (multiclass)
mage/thief or fighter/mage/thief (multiclass)

It's much easier to play with multiclass, and they end up more powerful anyway because of the abilities in ToB.

You got your thief, your mage, your cleric (and druid) and 3 characters with plenty of hit points.

I recommend

paladin (pure or kit, I'd choose undead hunter)
ranger/cleric multiclass
fighter/thief (I'd take half-orc for 19 str, maybe even a fighter/mage/thief)
sorcerer (or wild mage or conjurer, you have 4 others who can fight so make a real caster)
pure class berserker or berserker7-9/mage or barbarian or skald or whatever you like

I remember playing BG long ago with a make-it-myself party that included a triple class fighter/mage/thief. Early in the game, a triple class character feels painfully weak, basically each of their levels is going to be 2 behind most of the rest of the party.

I don't think I tried a triple class character for BG II. But for mage spells, it's pretty slow for those high level mage spells to finally arrive when you need them; triple class will delay that even more.

When you hit 3,000,000 xp for your characters, enough for a single-class mage to be 18th level and have 9th level spells, your fighter/mage/thief will be fighter 12 / mage 12 / thief 14 and have no better than 6th level spells. (A mage/thief would be mage 14 / thief 16, with 7th level spells.)

Thus I'm not a fan of triple-classing. And neither would I rely entirely on multi-class mages for all of my mage spells- at least one mage should be be dedicated to getting those 9th level spells as fast as possible.

Since you need the extra mage and high level spells more in BGII than BGI, you can get by fine with just a mutli-class mage in BGI, then adding a dual class mage in BGII. A pure mage will be level 18 at 3,000,00 xp; a mage who dual classed after fighter level 9, for example, will be fighter 9 / mage 17 at 3,000,000 xp. As long as you are dualling to mage at the start of BGII, you are only sacrificing 1 mage level.

Thanks guys!

So it looks like paladin is a popular choice as is ranger/cleric and a multi or dual class...

here's my thoughts:
Protagonist - Beserker throughout BG1 (up till lvl 9) then dualled to a mage
Paladin inquisor for all those mages
Ranger cleric (for the carsomyr)
Rogue (poss swashbuckler?) to be duelled to a mage at around lvl 6(?) (mainly a summoner)
sorceror (for offensive spell casting)

Does the ranger/cleric bug work after installling the fix pack and unfinished business does anyone know?

You need more levels of rogue than 6 imo.
Some traps are very deadly, and there are plenty of hard locks in BG 2, so you need about 100 in both disable traps and open locks (including items). Some points in other skills might be nice too.

Since mages aren't that powerful in BG 1, but much more useful in BG 2, I'd keep the character a rogue for BG 1 and dual him to mage as soon as you exit Irenicus' Dungeon.
That way, you'll even earn extra xp for learning spells from scrolls too.
Sure, that character will be useless for a while, but given the absurdly huge amounts of xp granted in BG 2, he'll catch up quickly.


I wouldn't recommend a sorceror over a wizard either. Sure, they get more spells per day, but unless you hate resting, you shouldn't need to use that many spells anyway.
The main problem is that they're very limited in the number of spells they know, and that the BG 2 spell list includes quite a few potentially useful spells at each level, more than a sorc can learn.


As for ranger clerics, the reason people recommend them over plain clerics is that they get access to both druid and cleric spells, and they're better in melee as well. Neither of which is a bug.
They can't equip Carsomyr AFAIK, only paladins and rogues/bards with the UMD HLA can.

Got my weapons mixed up!

I mena the wahammer, not the 2 handed sword, is it the crom fayr? D'oh!

I see, I thought sorc as artillery, but having the other 2 classes (thief and beserker) dual to a mage as soon as I exit the dungeon in BG2. What;s a good level to dual from a thief to a mage would you say?

or would I be better with a multi class mage/thief?

It depends in part on what thief skills you actually intend to use.

If all you want is the ability handle traps and locks, you can probably top off both skills at 100 at around 7th level.

If you want to add in trap setting, which is very useful, you probably need at least 3 more levels. Dual-classing after thief 10 isn't too bad- in fact, level 10 is exactly where you'll be when you hit the xp cap in BGI and you can dual to mage right at the beginning of BGII.

Detect Illusion is an awesome ability- it's essentially a free Oracle spell you can use as much as you want. Pick Pocket takes a while to develop, but once you get it built up, the five-finger discount leads to a well-equipped party. (And those scrolls for high level mage spells are expensive without the five-finger discount.) The ability to scout is nice, but you can't use Stealth and Detect Traps at the same time; so Invisibility much better for scouting.

If you feel like you need more than 10 (maybe 11) levels of thief to make use of these other skills, then I'd suggest going with mage/thief multiclass instead of a dual class.

On second thought, you get your third trap to set at 11th level, it might be worth holding out to level 11 thief before dualling to mage. Or if you really like the traps, go Bounty Hunter instead of thief, 11 levels hopefully can top you off on the skills you want even with the point penalty for Bounty Hunters.

If you want a backstabber, I wouldn't suggest any combination with mage- instead, for a backstabber, do either a dual or multi-class combination with a fighter type class. Better THAC0, better damage potential, more hit points to survive any counter-attack.

Yeah, there are many thief skills to choose from. Multi-class is the safest choice, it'll give you more freedom (and arguably more efficient use of the team). In ToB, you also get some awesome thief HLA's.

From personal experience, dual-classing a thief is not great. It's kind of frustrating to not have the skills you are used to, even if it's temporarily. So your options are to temporarily add another thief to the team (since you have 5 members), or just try to live without one. Neither option is good.

By the way, Crom Faeyr can be used by your ranger/cleric no problem. Also if you are in need of a scout, your cleric/ranger can handle that too, if it wears leather armor or less.

Rogue dualed to mage isn't a good idea for your 5th character. The extra arcane casting power isn't needed besides sorcerer and berserker9>mage and you miss most thief options and the powerful thief HLAs.
If you really think you need a 3rd arcane caster take a thief/illusionist multiclass, this way you get both a perfect thief and lots of spells per day because of the specialization bonus, if you want to do physical damage choose a fighter/mage/thief instead so you can do far more physical damage thanks to the extra attacks per round and other combat bonuses you get from the fighter side.

It doesn't make sense that you accept a multiclass cleric as only divine caster but don't accept this for your secondary secondary arcane caster.
You'll have far more divine power if you replace the multiclass with a ranger2-3/cleric and loose less physical fighting power than you loose by not multiclassing your thief with fighter.

Cool, multi thief and mage it is!
So how does that party sound then? With a thief mage multi class?

Thief/illusionist multi would be far better than thief/mage multi, but the game is even soloable with any class, you have the freedom to choose what you like.

Just a note here, but several of the NPCs in BG1 come in pairs, and even if you only want to do their base quests and then leave them behind, you'll have to boot out one of your own people for that. I actually honestly think that a team of 4 works better than a team of 5, but I generally prefer smaller parties anyway. My personal preference would be:

Fighter, Paladin or Ranger
Fighter/Thief multi
Cleric or cleric multi/dual variant; fighter -> cleric dual is particularly powerful (this is why Anomen is a beast, even if he's whiny)
Mage or sorcerer.

On a semi-related note, is there any place in BG1 where I can store gear I think I might want to pass on to some new characters when I begin BG2? There's a crate in Beregost I've been using to store miscellaneous gear. It would be nice to keep some of it for BG2.

Or do I lose everything when I start BG2? It's been years since I've played it. Thanks, fellas.

Matt

Inheriting end game BG1 items into BG2, makes the initial(starting) playthrough of BG2 extremely easy. Its not recommended to have BG1 items in BG2...

And if one were to get items from BG1 expansion into BG2, its makes BG2 extremely easy upto a level that its almost like cheating.

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During transition you lose all the items, except a rare item(s) which moves further into BG2 expansion.