BALDURS GATE 1


Finally getting around to playing BG1 and I was wondering what are your favorite companions to take along based not on a power gaming standpoint, but a interesting standpoint (quests,story,banter).

Parties I think I am going to go with

------Good Party------
1) Druid (me) - Male
2) Imoen (Thief/Mage)
3) Dynaheir (Invoker)
4) Coran (Fighter/thief)
5) Minsc (Ranjaaa)
6) Branwen (Cleric)

Possible alternative to Branwen? Is she even interesting? Seems like she may be a dull character but I like cleric buffs. Coran is another alternative as I can keep Imoen a thief but I think he sounds like an interesting NPC.

------Evil Party------
1) Fighter (me) - Male
2) Viconia (Cleric)
3) Edwin (Conj)
4) Safana (Thief)
5) Kagain (Fighter)
6) Montaron?

Would be open to booting Safana and doing Montaron and Xzar as well.

I like to have more spell casters in my parties because I feel it adds to tactical game-play so I have preference for those types of characters. If you have any suggestions for characters that you find particularly interesting that would fit in well with these or swap a couple out let me know!

Without mods there is virtually no banter, and the only notable companion story/quests (not counting Imoen, as she's a special case) are Minsc/Dynaheir, and the late comers Eldoth/Skie. The rest are just drag-alongs, whose quests you can do without them.

I'm slowly running parallel games, one good and one evil. My version is BGT?, basically whatever the GoJays mod spotlight had in the list.

Good:

Minsc
Ajantis
PC (Halfing Cleric)
Kivan (might be swapped for Coran)
Imoen (to be dualed to mage)
Dynaheir

Evil (actually running moderate to low rep 6 <> 10):
Kagain
Shar-Teel
Viconia
Safana
Edwin
PC (Human Wild Mage)

So far I have just cleared the Nashkell Mines. In general I am finding the Evil party to be much more difficult. I'm guessing that party has poorer stats & too many slingers. I also found Safana's quest to be brutally difficult at level 4 or so. I'm also a little worried that Edwin will bail since his quest is still active in my journal even though I completed it. Finally I haven't seen much of a benefit to using a wild mage; accidently summoning a demon in Beregost was a little fun until I couldn't figure out how to undo the damage (or make it go away) without reloading.

I usually go with mixed aligment parties as that tends to keep things a bit more interesting, therefore I don't really have a preferred party line-up. The last time I played BG1 my party consisted of:

CN Halfling Barbarian PC
Shar-Teel
Coran
Faldorn
Yeslick
Quayle

I had the BG1 NPC mod installed (sans romances and pc-initiated dialgoues) which actually provided some fun banter for this party - and here I have to note again that with a few exceptions, this mod blends into the game very nicely - but even without it their default one-liners would have been amusing enough.
From an RP point of view this party probably doesn't make any sense, but then again the npcs in BG1 are more like caricatures than fleshed-out characters (that's how I see them anyway) so I really don't take them seriously.

Well, if you plan to bring your game into BG2, then from a story perspective it would make sense to play with the 'canon party' if you're playing good. Not at all necessary, but the game assumes that's who you played with and dialogues are structured accordingly, so you may get slightly more out of it if you pick Imoen, Minsc, Dynaheir, Khalid and Jahiera.

The NPCs in BG1 are...what you make of them, really. The game won't generally have conversations between the characters scripted out, but you can imagine and roleplay conversations between them as you wish. From that perspective, picking whichever characters you like the personalities of might be a good idea. Branwen...has a reasonably in depth backstory which does actually tie in with some early elements of the plot, so you mightl ike to keep her around for long enough to at least get back at the person who cast flesh to stone on her. You can certainly delay picking up Dynaheir until a bit after that, too, so you'll have a good idea as to whether or not you like her character by that point.

Coran I'm not familiar with. I know you said you didn't want power gaming advice, but I will say that if you dual class Imoen at level 7 or so, she can easily bring two of her four thief skills up enough to not have to worry about another thief doing it for the rest of the game (and BG2). Since pickpocket is useless, and both open locks and stealth have spells which perform the same jobs if you only plan to use them occasionally, you don't need a second thief. You will, however, want a thief while you're dual classing her, as she'll lose her abilities for a while. Since that's also when you enter the part of the game where thief abilities are more important, it's a real pain not to have one. Again, you can pick up Coran during that time if you decide to take someone else for the rest of the time, and decide if you want to continue adventuring with him. Just be careful: I have a feeling that if you choose the wrong options regarding doing his quest when you meet him, he may leave forever, so check first. You may also want to use a save editor to give him xp on a par with the rest of the party, to reduce frustration. If you do take Coran, just bear in mind that you'll only have one character who's really designed to be a tank: Minsc. Branwen, Coran and, to a lesser extent, you can do in a pinch, but aren't ideal. Also, you should probably know at this point that Black Isle rather weakened the druid class in BG2, partly by making the jump in xp needed to go from 14th to 15th level extremely high. It's still playable, but just be warned that you'll be rather weak in the late game. (Just so you know, that isn't the case in Icewind Dale, where it's a pretty strong class throughout the game. IWD2 and PS:T use different rules regarding classes, so the question is largely irrelevent for different reasons).

Either way, though, it's really up to you who you choose to adventure with, so pick characters you like. That said, if you want to take Montaron and not Xzar then you'll have to cause Xzar to die from massive damage (that is, raise dead won't work and his portrait disappears), or use one of a few exploits in the game to make Montaron 'forget' about Xzar.

Playing through with an evil party now. I rarely do this anymore since there is such an extreme lack of RPCs to pick up in general and especially so if playing evil. I am using BG2 +Tutu. You really don't have many options if you are trying to play a truly evil party (as opposed to shoving in a few 'neutrals' which I cannot do in good conscience).

My Evil party:

Me - Half Orc female Blackguard
Kagain - Dwarf fighter
Viconia - Drow cleric
Montaron - Halfling fighter/thief
Edwin - Human Conjurer
Mur Neth - (can't remember race or kit but he is an ooze-y shapeshifter)

I sent Xar unarmed into a crowd of kobolds to be rid of him.

The only real alternates to any of the above are Shar Teel (human fighter), Tiax (Gnome cleric/illusionist) and Eldoth (though you will have to juggle party members long enough to get Skye killed and be rid of the neutral girl) and I do not use any of them because a) I hate humans and prefer as few of them as possible and b) None of the alternates above are archers so I cannot boot Montaron for any of them and he is really the only one expendable enough to replace. Mur Neth has proven to be too useful to get rid of. If I really wanted to I could replace Viconia and Edwin with Tiax and Eldtoh but the problems with that are that Tiax, who does have a useful special ability (summon ghast) is simply not nearly as good a cleric as Vicky or as good a caster as Edwin.

NPC mods are a must for playing BG through Tutu (that is where Mur Neth comes from). For good parties I always have Finch (gnome cleric who can ID items 3x per day and carries a book bag for storing books and scrolls).

Me
Kiven - Archer OR Coran - Fighter/thief
Dynaheir - Mage
Imoen - (starts as thief but duals to mage)
Finch - Cleric
Minsc - Ranger

Of course I start with Jaheira and Khalid, Montaron and Xar but each of these are replaced as I find the above members (Finch replaces Jaheira, Khalid is quickly sent to his death, Montaron is replaced by Kiven and Xar is killed). Pickpocket has some important uses in game (Algernon's cloak for one) but you can get by without ever doing it.

Also, you will want a real thief for detecting and disarming traps because AD&D's wonky magic system only allows for a few castings of 'Find Traps' and 'Knock' (and who wants to waste spell slots on those?!).