40 réponses à ce sujet

[Seagloom]

You stole some of my wind by already denying sorcerer, swashbuckler, and archers as choices. I'm fond of all those classes. One interesting class that can go devastatingly powerful is the pure Kensai. It becomes a veritable buzzsaw if you dual wield with Belm or Kundane in the off hand. What made Kensai interesting to me if they have crap armor class that never improves. You can boost it with a Shield Amulet or bring along a mage to cast Spirit Armor on your character, but not being able to equip armor still means missing out on a few points of AC and any immunities.



This weakness becomes less relevant in Throne of Bhaal; except by then your Kensai will be a living blender. It may seem a bit bland if plain warriors aren't your thing. I enjoyed it though. Thief/Mage is also a fun class. They can handle all your utility needs and also have *lots* to play with. Spells, backstab, and various weapons. It's a fun all around class IMO; although easily exploitable with Mislead cheese.

[HoonDing]

I've never played a pure mage class in BG2 since Edwin makes them all look like schmucks, even sorcerers.



I usually play a pure fighter class or fighter/mage/thief.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

If you're looking for something new, try the blade.

[Seagloom]

@Virumor - I partly agree. In the case of mages and specialists this is true, but the spontaneous casting sorcerers get is pretty huge advantage unless you have the entire game memorized and know exactly what spells you need. Even then, having extras to cast if a target makes their save is nice. I also think Wild Mage has a powerful advantage in Nahal's Reckless Dweomer. By the time you get to Throne of Bhaal it's like effectively having double the 9th level slots of any other non-sorcerer. It also gives you a bit of spontaneous casting's versatility. There is also the possibility not every party will have Edwin in it. (Namely good aligned parties who don't want to micromanage their reputation by doing OOC stuff to keep it under 18.)

@Anzurok - Blade is a fine choice too. The bard playhouse has to be one of the best strongholds in the game. It's very involved compared to most others and has some funny moments.

My experience with druids, and I hate to say it as I love them as a concept: is they are boring. They're not necessarily weak, despite not comparing to mages or clerics. They just don't get many spells and their forums are worthless unless you take a kit. I played an Avenger once and found it great fun. Spider form in particular was vicious thanks to its poison. Avengers also get a nice amount of mage spells to bulk up their list. That said, the class stopped being fun at 14th level. What kills single-classed druids for me is they spend a looooong time there due to 2e D&D's wonky experience table for them. It made sense in P&P but is frustrating in BG2. You hit 14th level before chapter 2 ends and stay there until near the last quarter of Shadows of Amn. If that doesn't deter you, then it's a pretty interesting class.

Cleric/Mage is interesting too, albeit insanely powerful later on. Better than sorcerer even IMO. Imagine playing a mage with even more spell options at their disposal. It's fun, if too easy. I never brought an Assassin into Throne of Bhaal. I read they're less viable there due to ubiquitous backstab immune enemies. They shine in SoA though. If you're comfortable with hit and fade tactics it's a very satisfying class. Rush in, stab someone, run behind a corner and hide again--rinse and repeat. Later on when you get x7 backstab it's possible to one shot some very annoying enemies. It may be easier to play a fighter/thief though. You can stand toe to toe in combat after a backstab and the specialization bonus and extra attacks are a good trade for a x5 backstab cap.

Modifié par Seagloom, 02 septembre 2010 - 01:17 .

[Humanoid_Taifun]

It's not the 2e. D&D table that stops druids, it's BioWare's modification of it because they didn't want to design High Druids...

At least that's what I heard...

Modifié par Humanoid_Taifun, 02 septembre 2010 - 01:24 .

[Seagloom]

Now that you mention it, you're right. I do remember something about them not being able to reproduce Hierophant effects. It makes me wonder why they merrily advanced druids in ToB though. I guess they decided heck with it, let's do what we want.

Modifié par Seagloom, 02 septembre 2010 - 01:49 .

[Humanoid_Taifun]

What else should they have done? Cut them from the game? Or leave them at level 14?

[Seagloom]

They could have changed the tables to give them a cleric-like progression and fudged their abilities to accommodate the game. It's odd the designers had no problem altering spells or nerfing fighter grand mastery, but drew the line at druids. The Icewind Dale team went the XP altering route with druids despite otherwise being more picky about rules conversion. I thought it worked well too, since druids are awesome in that game.

Edit: To clarify, my point in the earlier post was that it felt contradictory. At first they didn't want to advance druids past 14 without doing them justice. Then they did exactly that with ToB. I expect the designers had to at that point or druids would be a patheticly weak class. I just wish they changed the experience tables while they were at it.

Modifié par Seagloom, 02 septembre 2010 - 03:03 .

[Morbidest]

Anzurok wrote...

Hm... I have played as a pure mage, a swashbuckler, a monk, a sorcerer, andddd... an archer, I think. I've been thinking of playing this game again, and was wondering what is the most fun class you've ever played in this game?

My favorite is Swashbuckler, so nothing new there. If you like the role playing part of the game, how about a dwarven fighter to go with the Nalia romance, or a half-orc fighter to hang around with Viconia? The main drawback to these two is that they're fairly easy using a full party. If you want  a bit more challenge, try a ranger/cleric MULTI (non-human) so that leveling up is slower and you have to struggle longer.

[The Potty 1]

I really think you're missing out on thieves. Try a Kensai>Thief, or fighter/thief with the multiclass grand mastery tweak if you want to powergame.



Regarding fun, I had a complete blast playing a blade PC, Haer'dalis, Jan & Keto as bards, Korgan as a Skald, and I used Kido as a Jester but completely don't recommend him unless you want to play evil. You need Rogue rebalancing to make their songs work correctly, and the level 1 NPC mod to change NPC classes. Perhaps Jan as jester and Mazzy, Nalia, or Imoen as vanilla bard?

[jaxsbudgie]

I suggest to look at kit mods like Song and Silence and Sword and Shield.

Rogue Rebalancing makes Assassins far more useful, it also tweaks a lot of things to do with Thieves and Bards.



I recommend the Cleric/Mage, insanely good. Kit them via ShadowKeeper aswell to a specialist mage for that extra spell per level. I like the idea of playing an evil Cleric/Necromancer .. Xzar anyone?



Druids are more of an acquired taste, I normally tweak their level and spell progression to emulate that of the Cleric's so they're suddenly a lot more useful. Avengers are fun, having mage spells is exciting as a druid.



Bards are fun too, I recently played a Dirgesinger from the Song and Silence mod, a bard who's bard song lowers enemy AC and THAC0, fun build.

[Chebby]

There's a BG2 Tweakpack that fixes the druid level progression to use the cleric tables. I never got why they nerfed druids; I'd have to be told and have it all explained. I didn't really them as overpowered. If it were just the druid-only spells, could they have not weakened them? Did it really make them unbalanced compared to the cleric, who possesses some of the more important buffs? Compare the vanilla spellbooks between the two classes. Is it nature's beauty? Conjuring fire elementals? I truly don't believe the nerfing of an appealing class was necessary when it could be altered, instead. The argument 'X' class has 'X' ability often comes about to me when thinking of just how weak and pointless druids seemed, which is a shame, because I love druids.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

They didn't want to make the druids weaker, Chebby. As alluded to above, high level druids are very interesting characters with a number of unique spells, for example some sort of plane-shifting.

BioWare didn't want to create High Druids that were too different from their PnP counterparts, so they pushed of level 15 (at which a druid becomes a high druid - of which there can even be only one at a time in the whole world if I understand things correctly) to a point where they wouldn't have to worry with it for the time being. But then ToB came around, and not as an independent game, but as an add-on, and Seagloom complains correctly about the fact that at this point the developers just dropped the issue, instead of trying to fix it.

[Chebby]

There's no reason they couldn't bend the PnP rules more than they already did. My argument is that druids do seem largely uninteresting because of it.

[Seagloom]

HT nailed it. I could go into specifics but it would result in -very- long post of AD&D geekery.

The short version is druidic advancement can't be easily represented in a game in terms of role-playing or mechanics. It should be like this...

Level 1-11: Initiates
Level 12: Druids
Level 13: Archdruid
Level 14: Great Druid
Level 15: Grand Druid
Level 16+: Hierophant

Each level of advancement from druid to Grand Druid requires challenging for office much in the same way Charname can in BG2. The challenges can take on different forms than duels though--such as shapeshifting into animals and racing each other. As well, each level's responsibilities and authority differs somewhat. Grand Druids are the leader of all circles in the world, but in practice are like politicians. They also gain access to a few special spells and get a bunch of bonus slots. Hierophants are very different. They exist outside the circles and pursue their own agendas. They are inscrutable and ridiculously powerful. Great Druids and Grand Druids tend to fear them since Hierophants represent a force outside their control with motives beyond their ken.

Hierophants can travel to any of the elemental planes at will and survive in them indefinitely despite their inhospitable conditions. In game terms, this means they could pop away from battle, buff or heal and pop back in ready for more. It also means they essentially have an at will teleport and go anywhere they want, whenever they want. They age very slowly, making them seem immortal. Hierophants concern themselves with natural balance on a global scale, and habitually set into motion plans that affect whole nations, royal dynasties, or populations. Sometimes they will start a plan and go into hibernation for centuries, then wake up and see what came of it afterward.

Believe it or not, this *was* a short version. O.o There is a whole 2e book devoted to druids. Explaining it all would take pages upon pages. That mouthful aside, I agree it would have been nice if BioWare's devs of that time fudged their own rules in to make druids more interesting. As I noted before, this is what Black Isle did, and the result is Icewind Dale druids feel unique and are a very useful alternative to clerics.

Modifié par Seagloom, 02 septembre 2010 - 07:38 .

[HoonDing]

From your description, Hierophants sound more like Chosen of Silvanus/Chauntea/other nature god than a normal class.

Modifié par virumor, 02 septembre 2010 - 07:58 .

[Seagloom]

The three highest ranking members of the Emerald Enclave are actually all chosen of Silvanus, Mielikki, and Eldath. The reason I bring this up is two of those three chosen are Hierophants; one of which holds the highest title in that organization. So yeah, it's an apt comparison you make. There is one non-chosen Hierophant in the Forgotten Realms too, and he's pretty powerful. In my original post I was going to liken Hierophants to demigods or maybe liches. 3e took away a lot of this flavor sadly.

Modifié par Seagloom, 02 septembre 2010 - 08:11 .

[Chebby]

And happily for videogaming fans, a lot more balance.

I'm sure the druids are in favour of this balance.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

Real RPGs don't need to be balanced. (otherwise the power-gamers won't get their fun)

[Chebby]

I disagree in terms of classes. I believe such things should all have their own forté. Any other choices than classes is where the real drama should lie, the sawing in half of the chosen assistant, as it were. I'm all for powergaming, but all druids do is make most, if not all other classes seem superior. I suppose a F/D is a nice little something which gives more than enough to the player, but since that's outclassed in many ways by R/C, it's pointless.

And druids require balance. That's what they stand for.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

Sure, in BG2 druids kind of got the short end of the stick. But with real RPGs it's just like with true scotsmen, if you know what I mean.

Is Anzurok even reading this topic anymore? Hasn't said anything after the opening post.

[Seagloom]

I think druids could have been better off in comparison to mages and clerics if the latter two didn't make off like bandits. They both get too many unique spells compared to druids and that hurts. Take the sequencer and trigger spells for example: I love these spells. Any mage player probably does.



The thing is 99.9% of mages shouldn't have them since they were invented by the Simbul. It's unlikely she would share them with anyone except maybe a few of her sisters or Elminster. Metamagic spells like sequencers were super rare and greedily kept secret. Yet, any standard BG2 mage can easily find scrolls a reclusive, somewhat crazy epic wizard invented. XD I suppose bending the lore a bit there was seen as justifiable. Ah well, spilled milk.