19 réponses à ce sujet

[Czacki]

1 rule - no "same characters". Some people say 6x Kensai/Mage is best, but I think it's boring, so I'm not going to do that.

1. Kensai/Mage Ok, I know. Byt this makes a perfect protagonist and is powerful as hell. Dualed at level nine. Final weapons: Axe of Unyielding +5/ Belm+2
2. Kensai/Thief. I need a thief, assassination+good thac0+many attacks per turn = rape and UAI = armored kensai. Sweet and powerful. Final weapons: Angurvadal+5/Scarlet Ninja-to
3. Inquisitor - This guy completely rapes all mages with instant, superpowerul dispel magic. Final weapons: Carsomyr+6 against mages, Ravager+6 against non-casters.
4. Ranger/Cleric - THE cleric build that has power, all those great spells that druids have (ironskin, insect plague, nature beauty). Final weapons: Flail of Ages+5/Crom Faeyr.
5. Sorcerer - Just for fun. Final weapon: Staff of Magi.

A balanced party featuring (imho) the most powerul characters, also diverse = no recurring profession like 6xsorcerer. This is because (imho) the real power of mage comes from robe of vecna and 0 cast time; And obviously you can have only one of those, so you may as well have only one "true" mage and involve more classes for more "rpg-ish" feeling.


Sixth slot: either open (so I can finish NPC quests) or ... well, give me a suggestion! I've been thinking Archer with a Firetooth+5 in hands..  Monk came to mind, but he cannot be hasted and will lag behind, and that's annoying. i don't mind Firetooth's slower attacks per round, since I'm going to use greater whirlwind a lot  And I have baldurdash/G3 fix pack installed, so yes, I have true mastery tweak enabled.

[Thrar]

Seems to be a fairly straightforward melee party with some magic available. I'd get bored with this quickly due to lack of NPCs, but if you don't feel that way, I guess it's fine. It's balanced well I think.

You may find the lack of a thief in the beginning a little annoying, but it's not critical. If you feel bothered, you could always just pick up someone temporarily.



In my games, I often find that I only really utilize one or two characters to somewhere near their full potential. For me, it would be better to have just one or at most two such optimized characters so I'll have time to play with them; with five, I will inevitably neglect many of their possibilities.

[Cowboy_christo]

You forgot a Blade for the ultimate tank. Guess you could use that as your 6th slot

[Czacki]

@Thrar: Forgot to mention - In BGT part one (BG1), I use a thief character as 6th companion. I dismiss him as soon as my Kensai reaches thievery! As for NPCs, I have a separate run (modded with extra banter) for Role playing, so this one is "gaming only" one



@Cowboy_christo: Could you please elaborate on how good a Blade is and how to use one? I really suck at bards. I like the idea though! Epic bard song is also something pretty sweet, seeing that I have many strong melee users.

[oyzar]

The ideal party leader is a character with high wis, cha(so you don't have to use the ring) and int, for maximum options on conversations. A kensai mage really need both ring slots due to being unable to wear enchantet armor or bracers. Pre-stoneskin it is also the most vunurable character which is not what you want for your protagonist, though how long that is depends on when you dual of course. Though ofc you could be planning to use wish with your protagonist and as such actually fullfill the needed requirements, but at that point the pointtotal needed is abhorrent.



As for the last slot, with such a powerful party already, anything will do, though i suppose if you have insanely a lot of difficulty increasing mods you could go with something powerful like a berserker/mage or something more simple like barbarian/monk/blade/skald or something dualed after getting hlas, though i suppose kensai/thief could dual after hlas anyways. Another option is some version of cleric/mage if you want more spells...

[Carinna]

I'm curious why you want to build a custom Inquisitor since there is an Inquisitor NPC available early in the game (Keldorn). The advantage to using him over a custom build is as Thrar said, to avoid boredom since at least with one NPC you will have a bit of dialogue from him. If it's just that you don't like how Keldorn was built prior to your meeting, you can use the level 1 NPCs mod to set him up to your satisfaction.

But then you could use the level 1 NPCs mod to create virtually any single- or multi-class character out of the existing NPCs and still retain their dialogue. The only place the level 1 NPCs mod fails is with a dual-class, which it can't do pre-made (you'd be free to dual later of course). You could easily kit Jaheira as a Ranger-Cleric and either Edwin or Nalia (or even Imoen) as a Sorcerer (probably Nalia since your Inquisitor would likely have issues with an evil alignment in the party). And Imoen might work as your Kensai-Thief (along with Yoshimo if you want one early on).

[Humanoid_Taifun]

1) Archer only makes sense if you give him the sling of Seeking or IR (Item Revisions).

2) You won't have many clerical spells for much of the game, if that's alright with you...

3) Never install Baldurdash and the G3 Fixpack at the same time. Even if you do, you won't get True Grandmastery (because neither mod offers it). The G3 Fixpack supersedes Baldurdash (unless you are using another mod that is incompatible with the fixpack). The G3 Tweakpack has True Grandmastery.

4) Why would you need this party if you have another (weaker) party running around beside it? You didn't mention any difficulty enhancing mods either, so you'll have a normal game, and a relatively easy game. Take a look at the lvl1NPC mod. Maybe it'll relieve you from the necessity of having to play through the game two times at once.

[Czacki]

Carinna wrote...

I'm curious why you want to build a
custom Inquisitor since there is an Inquisitor NPC available early in
the game (Keldorn). The advantage to using him over a custom build is
as Thrar said, to avoid boredom since at least with one NPC you will
have a bit of dialogue from him. If it's just that you don't like how
Keldorn was built prior to your meeting, you can use the level 1 NPCs
mod to set him up to your satisfaction.

Keldorn has horrible stat distribution and early in the game player doesn't swim in Strength belts. yeah, for some reason it bothers me Besides I'm using many custom portraits and Keldorn in addition would just stand out.

But
then you could use the level 1 NPCs mod to create virtually any single-
or multi-class character out of the existing NPCs and still retain
their dialogue. The only place the level 1 NPCs mod fails is with a
dual-class, which it can't do pre-made (you'd be free to dual later of
course). You could easily kit Jaheira as a Ranger-Cleric and either
Edwin or Nalia (or even Imoen) as a Sorcerer (probably Nalia since your
Inquisitor would likely have issues with an evil alignment in the
party). And Imoen might work as your Kensai-Thief (along with Yoshimo
if you want one early on).

Too much fuss. And I like custom portraits, I drew them myself. I took our childhood gang and placed it in the game. Fun! As for dialogue, I know it already. No need to read it again.

Humanoid_Taifun wrote...

1) Archer only makes sense if you give him the sling of Seeking or IR (Item Revisions).

Could you please tell me why?  I thought a Firetooth+5 archer with GWW is a rather fierce damage dealer and I have no ranged attackers as for now. Not that it really matters in this game, but feels a bit, you know... when roleplaying, I'd really want an archer in team I know the sling of seeking uses STR for damage calculation which means (if 25 str) +14 extra damage, but afaik an Archer can't have grandmastery in slings... and they have 1 APR, so... Someone done the calculations before, and for archer, Tuigan and Firetooth are best options. I prefer crossbows, so Firetooth, I guess...

But, do you think archers are underpowered with no IR mod? (I don't want to change the ingame balance of spells and items - aside from making enemies stronger, maybe). I want a max power party, yes. This would technically mean I want only the most suitable candidate for 6th slot what would you suggest?

2) You won't have many clerical spells for much of the game, if that's alright with you...

Perfectly fine. I'm not a big fan of D&D 2.5 clerics. One is more than enough imho

3) Never install Baldurdash and the G3 Fixpack at the same time. Even if you do, you won't get True Grandmastery (because neither mod offers it). The G3 Fixpack supersedes Baldurdash (unless you are using another mod that is incompatible with the fixpack). The G3 Tweakpack has True Grandmastery.

I might confused the names. I use Baldurdash, not the Fixpack, then. And I use some of tweakpack features like no helmet animations and true grandmastery.

4) Why would you need this party if you have another (weaker) party running around beside it?

For fun. It's like a team full of custom made protagonists. The power it has is crazy

You didn't mention any difficulty enhancing mods either, so you'll have a normal game, and a relatively easy game. Take a look at the lvl1NPC mod. Maybe it'll relieve you from the necessity of having to play through the game two times at once.

As I mentioned before, too much fuss. And I'm going to use (probably) some difficulty boosters because the game is extremely easy, I agree. Since I finished it with a solo monk that just raped everything from beginning of BGT (yeah! a level 1 monk owning in BG1 :Pfear the sling!) till the end,

[Carinna]

Czacki wrote...
I like custom portraits, I drew them myself. I took our childhood gang and placed it in the game. Fun! ...As for dialogue, I know it already.  No need to read it again.

You do know that you can replace the NPCs portraits with custom ones?  I'm guessing you will say "too much fuss" but wanted you to know the option was available as you sounded as if you thought you were railroaded into the ones that came with the game.

Also, the dialogue changes depending on party makeup.   Are you sure you've read every bit?

[Czacki]

I know, I replaced Imoen's portrait with a custom one when playing Imoen Romance.



still, it's way to much fuss to replace portraits, shadowkeep their horrible stats and install/set up lvl1npcs mod if I can just make custom chars without dialogue. No big deal.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

Czacki wrote...
Keldorn has horrible stat distribution and early in the game player doesn't swim in Strength belts. yeah, for some reason it bothers me Besides I'm using many custom portraits and Keldorn in addition would just stand out.

The new version of Lvl1NPCs allows you to change the NPCs stats too.

Could you please tell me why?  I thought a Firetooth+5 archer with GWW is a rather fierce damage dealer and I have no ranged attackers as for now. Not that it really matters in this game, but feels a bit, you know... when roleplaying, I'd really want an archer in team I know the sling of seeking uses STR for damage calculation which means (if 25 str) +14 extra damage, but afaik an Archer can't have grandmastery in slings... and they have 1 APR, so... Someone done the calculations before, and for archer, Tuigan and Firetooth are best options. I prefer crossbows, so Firetooth, I guess...

Correct, I did the math. Sling is better.
Want me to do the math again for you?

But, do you think archers are underpowered with no IR mod?

They deal less damage than other characters, that's for sure. If you want a high-damage ranged character, use a kensei with grandmastery in axes (and throwing axes).

[Czacki]

If that doesn't bother you, sure - I'm a geek of sorts, I like gaming math I'd gladly check it out. Maybe I even try a Kensai/Cleric axe-thrower, lol.



What do you think about the blade, by the way? And what would you suggest as the "final" component for my team?

[oyzar]

Clerics can not throw axes, have to throw hammers in that case... Then you can switch to crom fayer or runehammer when going melee...

You do not have anyone using Kudane, that should probably be considered when chosing the last slot.

Modifié par oyzar, 30 novembre 2010 - 06:09 .

[Demivrgvs]

Humanoid_Taifun wrote...

Correct, I did the math. Sling is better.
Want me to do the math again for you?

I suppose you assume Sling of Seeking and uber high STR to claim something like that, in that case yes, it's not easy for a vanilla bow to balance-off something like +10/14 to dmg.

Anyway, I'd like to remind that when it comes to compare bows vs other ranged weapons more often than not their apr bonus is really understimated, as I tried for example to explain here.

But, do you think archers are underpowered with no IR mod?

As Taifun says vanilla's archers lacked in terms of raw damage output because enchantment level had no impact on bow and ammo damage. With IR using a bow +2 and arrow +2 you get +4 damage (compared to vanilla 0 is quite a big difference).

Czacki wrote...

What do you think about the blade, by the way? And what would you suggest as the "final" component for my team?

Blade is a tremendously powerful character if used by a relatively skilled player. You should consider it just like your ordinary fighter/mage but with a bunch of serious advantages, most of them coming from his uber fast lvl ups (e.g. when a fighter/mage reaches caster level 13 a blade with same xp already has caster lvl 20!). This offers a lot of different advantages like:
* all Blade's buffs are much tougher to dispel
* Blade's Dispel Magic is second only to Inquisitor's one
* Blade's buffs get stronger (both in power and duration) much more quickly
Then there are many other things depending on your install, but another outstanding feature surely is Use Any Item.

[oyzar]

If you import a blade from BG you can apparently also put two * in weapon proficiencies. Not sure how exactly this works but you can not do the same from creating in SOA.

[Czacki]

I'm playing BGT so there is obviously no import thing as three games are combined into one.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

Czacki wrote...

If that doesn't bother you, sure - I'm a geek of sorts, I like gaming math I'd gladly check it out. Maybe I even try a Kensai/Cleric axe-thrower, lol.

As has already been said, the Kensai/Cleric Axe-User requires some additional modding of the game (level 1 NPCs for example could help you here as well )
But alright, let's go.
Actually I was a bit dishonest before. In the beginning your character has very few APR, so the extra APR from Tuigan will make it the best ranged weapon available.
A little copypasta from myself:

Posted 04/06/10 08:57 (GMT) by Humanoid_Taifun
lvl 09, grandmastery, Tuigan: ~42 damage per round

lvl 09, 2 pts., Sling of Seeking, Str 19, bullets +1: 37

lvl 18, grandmastery, Tuigan, Called Shot: ~60,75; (121,5 with Improved Haste, Critical Strike instead of Called Shot: 225)

lvl 18, 2 pts., Sling of Seeking, Str 21, bullets +2: 61,25 (245 with Greater Whirlwind)

lvl 33, grandmastery, Tuigan, Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, Improved Haste: 185 (225 with Called Shot / 370 with Critical Strike)

lvl 33, 2 pts., Sling of Seeking, Str 24, bullets +4, Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, Greater Whirlwind: 325 (Improved Haste + Critical Strike: 390)

4 things have to be mentioned about these numbers:
1: At level 18 you get your first HLA. So you will not be able to use Greater Whirlwind just yet.

2: The arrows used are without damage bonus. The only arrows with damage bonus are elemental ones, none of which are considered of better than +1 enchantment. Still, if the enemy is vulnerable to that, you can use the Arrow of Acid +1, for some nice additional damage.

3: Critical attacks work on almost no bosses.

4: You are using the True Grandmastery Tweak.
lvl 09, grandmastery, Tuigan: ~57,5 damage per round
lvl 18, grandmastery, Tuigan, Called Shot: ~72,5; (145 with Improved Haste, Critical Strike instead of Called Shot: 270)
lvl 33, grandmastery, Tuigan, Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, Improved Haste: 195 (235 with Called Shot / 390 with Critical Strike)


How did these numbers come up?
(Archer damage bonus + proficiency bonus + weapon enchantment bonus (+ missile enchantment bonus + strength bonus) ) times APR
An arrow simply does next to no damage when compared to a bullet. Even if you fire more often, that still doesn't change the fact you're not doing any real damage.

Tuigan is good for Arrows of Dispelling though.

How would Firetooth +5 fare against the sling?
At level 33, you would have damage bonuses of +4 (proficiency), +9 (archer level), +2 (Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization) and, if you are exploiting the engine, + 1D8 for the missile. Also of course the damage from the weapon itself, namely 1D8+7. You'd also have 4 APR (level, proficiency, Gauntlets)
Greater Whirlwind:
10 x (4 + 9 + 2 + 11,5) = 265 or, cheating: 10 x (4 + 9 + 2 + 11,5 + 4,5) = 310
Critical Strike:
16 x (4 + 9 + 2 + 9,5) + 8 x 2 = 408 or, cheating: 16 x (4 + 9 + 2 + 9,5 + 4,5) + 8 x 2 = 480

So, for those enemies vulnerable to criticals, the crossbow combined with True Grandmastery tops everything else (except kensei axes  ).
(if you are wondering about lower levels, the difference to the sling is likely to be smaller, considering that the sling has less APR)

Demivrgvs is right of course, with his Item Revisions everything looks different.

What do you think about the blade, by the way? And what would you suggest as the "final" component for my team?

I really like the blade. It's a fun class, both versatile and able and I recommend that everybody should play one at least once, but I don't think it's a powergamer's choice. Yes, they can do 10 APR for max damage and be invulnerable for the duration of any fight, but a FM has a lot more freedom in regards to weapons without sacrificing valuable APR. The FM usually does more damage in melee and has access to higher level spells as well.

Modifié par Humanoid_Taifun, 30 novembre 2010 - 08:48 .

[oyzar]

If you are not interested in another cleric type the most powerful adition seems something like a mage or a fighter as what you need to cover of druids is already covered by the ranger/cleric(and none of the HLAs are worth giving up a stronger fighter for). If you are not interested in berserker/mage(not all that different from kensai/mage except being able to use gauntlets and mails), you could go with a barbarian (could either use the last +6 weapon with GWW or kudane + something + critical strike and improved haste, hardiness + defender of easthaven is also really high physical resistance, but you got that option for your ranger/cleric as well(with armor of faith) and unless you have difficulty enchanting mods it would be better to just deal more damage anyway), a cavalier (purifier + kudane?), a thief dualed to mage(would solve your problems of thief in BGT as well... could also use kudane though missing a good second weapon and would have some problems hitting. Still get the ability to cast invisiblity and backstab, not really doable to wait for HLA's before dualing when dualing away from thief though, could dual away from a mage, gain the specialist mage bonus and better taco, but then you don't have an early game thief). Given the hitting power of your party already a skald might be better than a blade(at least early game, lategame a blade is close to strictly superior to a skald).

Modifié par oyzar, 30 novembre 2010 - 10:14 .

[polytope]

@Humanoid Taifun



The archer setup you mention requires giving the Archer gauntlets ext. specialization and strength belts, wouldn't it be better to leave those on the melee fighters if playing with a party? Likewise the sling of seeking seems more like a weapon for the ranger/cleric, who can get his str to 25 anytime, without potions.



Personally I'd leave the last slot open so you can do NPC quests. I don't use more than two arcane anyway, as you run out of stuff to give them (in my last game found only 1 spell trigger scroll in SoA - and that from a mod added encounter).

[Humanoid_Taifun]

polytope wrote...
@Humanoid Taifun
The archer setup you mention requires giving the Archer gauntlets ext. specialization and strength belts, wouldn't it be better to leave those on the melee fighters if playing with a party?

Interesting question.
The effect of a strength belt is a certain THAC0 and damage bonus per hit. The one who would benefit the most from it would be the person with the most APR.
The sling-using archer would usually get the first attack (because he is a ranged character), after which at low levels he will proceed to attack slower than his dualwielding companions. That may be a good reason not to give him a belt and have him use Tuigan instead (the nice thing about a pure archer is that they have enough points to have 5 pips in short bows and 2 points in slings) - especially since at low levels Tuigan is more effective anyway.
At high levels though the sling using archer is almost certain to use GWW. 10 APR is the maximum rate of attacks, so there is no waste in giving him the belt.
The gauntlets are best given to a character with as few APR as possible below 5 APR (9/2 APR being the perfect amount). I added them to show what an archer can do in a best-case scenario (yes yes yes, no bard, no cleric buffs, only IH from mages... That's hardly best case). So it's completely understandable if you want to give it to the Kensai/Thief. With the Gauntlets out of the equation, the Sling will have an even bigger advantage over Tuigan (the sling's APR won't change, and a fixed damage reduction affects the higher number less than the smaller one). Likewise, the differences between the crossbow and the sling will increase.

Likewise the sling of seeking seems more like a weapon for the ranger/cleric, who can get his str to 25 anytime, without potions.

Yes, the RC would be able to make good use of the sling. But in my opinion somebody with access to so many defensive buffs and so many HP should be in close combat (and a caster should not have to cloud his aura with GWW every single round).