18 réponses à ce sujet

[Abraham_uk]

My party Involves (ordered exactly as I have arranged my team from top to bottom)

Khalid: A half elf fighter
Minsc: A human ranger with a hamster called Boo. (I love this guy)
Branwen: A human Cleric.
Imoen: A human thief (who can't steal or pick locks)
Nora Jenkins: A half human Fighter/mage/cleric
Jahira: A human cleric


Okay which formation works best?

Rectangle
A Formation
T Formation
Triangle
Pentagon (with a guy in the middle)

Also have I chosen good classes?
My only true mage is Nora Jenkins and she is a hybrid. I wanted her to be a jack of all trades since when a party member leaves/dies I'm never getting them back.

This is a very unforgiving game isn't it.

Modifié par Abraham_uk, 20 juillet 2012 - 09:12 .

[Abraham_uk]

I'm currently going with the rectangle formation.

Khalid and Minsc at the front.
Branwen and Imoen making the middle row.
And my two squishiest characters Nora Jenkins and Jahira at the back.
Nora Jenkins is the character I created.

[Abraham_uk]

I don't want to lose anyone in my party.

Imoen is my loyal companion from childhood.
Khalid and Jahira are trusted friends of Gorim.
I don't want ot lose any healers. So Jahira and Branwen must stay alive.
Minsc will make sure that squeeky wheel gets the kick
Nora Jenkins: If she dies it's game over.

Dead means dead. I lost two party members already. A halfling necromancer and a fighter thief. Both had very few hit points. I have no intention of history repeating itself.

[Gate70]

I'd stick your squishies in the middle with Jaheira and Branwen at the back. There are a number of situations where that works best. I always use the default formation and can't remember when I last tried another layout.

[Abraham_uk]

Thanks Gate 70.

I'm really happy with my group.
Sure I only have one mage and three healers, but it works.
The great thing about healers is that I don't have to rest as much.

Last time I would literally rest after every fight because Jahira was my only healer.

Do you know the difference between the following healers?

Druid
Paladin
Cleric

They all seem similiar.

What can you tell me about specialist mages (such as conjurors, envokers, enchanters, necromancers etc)?

[ussnorway]

I use the skinny formations for stairs and walkways... great for range fighting because it makes a bottleneck but if they all fight in melee then it does not matter.

The character with the highest Charisma is placed in the top slot before any shopping so that you get his discount... that’s probably Immy for you so have her learn/ cast 'Friends' if you make her a mage like she wants to be.

In bg1 there is not a lot to pick from;
Druids have offensive spells like 'Doom' & 'Insect Plague' for fighting at range especially against mages. They level quickly and the kit classes solo well however they can party heal just fine in bg1 but they are not popular group healers in bg2 because can’t resurrect fallen comrades... Jaheira is a special exception.

Paladins are divine fighters with a special single heal... lay on hands is fast casting for use in combat as opposed to normal heals which are supposed to be used after the fighting is finished but resting is not always an option.

Clerics are the healer that most people go for (my favourite class) & they have the ability to stealth with ‘Sanctuary’ for keeping alive in tough environments... a single class Cleric (group) or a solo multi-class can turn un-dead to good effect.

Specialist mages get an extra spell per day but can’t cast all the spells that a general mage can eg. Your level 1 Illusionist can cast two 'Sleep' spells before needing a rest but can never cast any necromancy spells... if you pick a general mage then you could only cast 1 'Sleep' but can cast/ learn any type of spell he wants to.

[Grond0]

If you're not allowing resurrections then you probably need to turn off party AI irrespective of what formation you use. That's because otherwise you are bound to get situations where your squishy characters suddenly charge forward (usually when one enemy has been killed) and become the focus of attacks.

[Francoprima]

Abraham_uk wrote...

Okay which formation works best?

Rectangle
A Formation
T Formation
Triangle
Pentagon (with a guy in the middle)

My formation depends on where the party is moving; in the woods or in small corridors.

front-row :   Fighter / Ranger
sec. row :    Druid (for mag-miss) / Fighter-Mage (for healing)
rear-row :    Thief (Imoen) / Thief (selfmade char)

Moving this party-combination towards the Fog Of War, I dont want/get enemies to pinpoint on my weaker second and rear-row. Only my fighters use [large swords], 2nd row uses [sling+1], the rear uses [bows]

[Abraham_uk]

Is it possible to revive fallen party members?
Or is dead, well dead?

This is a question for both Baldur's Gate 1 and 2.

Modifié par Abraham_uk, 21 juillet 2012 - 07:14 .

[Grond0]

The main way to get characters raised in BG1 is by speaking to the priest at any temple.

You can also do this in BG2, but if you have a cleric in the party they can use spells to raise dead. There are also a couple of rods of resurrection in the game.

[Abraham_uk]

Grond0 wrote...

The main way to get characters raised in BG1 is by speaking to the priest at any temple.

You can also do this in BG2, but if you have a cleric in the party they can use spells to raise dead. There are also a couple of rods of resurrection in the game.

Thanks man. I really didn't know that.
I thought dead meant, dead.

Imagine how tough Mass Effect series would be if when a squad member fell in combat, that was it dead. No revival ability. Just dead.

[Mr Spidey]

Okay which formation works best?

Rectangle
A Formation
T Formation
Triangle
Pentagon (with a guy in the middle)

This is open to opinions, but personally I prefer the rather narrow rectangles over the alternatives. It keeps everyone bunched together, which means warriors don't have to move as far if someone spawns at the rear of the party, and it makes it more likely that all your party members will be in range to take action whenever something happens.

Depending on the party members, I might go with a wide front (two rows of three) but mostly I prefer the deep rectangle (three rows of two). But in a full party with three solid warriors, I just might pick the wide setup, just to get the tanks in range faster.

Also have I chosen good classes?

I'm a bit confused about Jahira, the human cleric. Her name sounds a lot like Jaheira, a half-even fighter/druid, which is an entirely different kind of fish. Not quite as good a healer but much better in combat-intensive situations. Give her a club or a scimitar, a good suit of armor, and a shield, and she'll be an okay tank that can self-heal a bit. :-)

Regardless of the above, your party should be okay. What I'd do, and I want to stress that this is simply my preference, is tank with Jaheira, give Minsc and Khalid bows and have them shoot holes in anything that moves. Give Branwen a sling, so she doesn't suddenly get involved in fighting something that eats her alive. Imoen is an excellent thief who can wield shortbows as well as anyone. Just be aware that Minsc is eventually going to ask you to find his witch, Dynaheir. And if you reject her, he leaves as well.

Why tank with Jaheira? Because her best missile weapon is a sling and bows are much better than slings. One could argue that Jaheira isn't the best tank in your party, but whatever shortcomings she may have are surely less than her shortcomings as a marksman, using a sling.

A bigger issue is that your protagonist is a tripple-class multi in a full party. Your levels will come rather slowly and you will always lag behind. Your ability to hit will never be quite as good as that of a regular warrior, your arcane spellcasting will never rival that of a dedicated mage, and as a priest you'll also never have quite the same amount of spells.

You can use this to your advantage, but if you try to fill out the role of a specialist then you will get problems. This isn't a huge issue in BG1 where the experience gap is at most a few levels, but if you're planning to export to BG2 then you might want to at least build your BG2 party around the fact that you're a triple-class.

We're talking BG1 though, and therefore it shouldn't be a major problem. What I'd do, and that's still just an indication of my personal preferences, is to kick out Branwen and replace her with Dynaheir, at which point you have 1.33 mage (Dyna + protagonist), 0.88 priest (Jaheira + protagonist), a fair few warriors, and a thief (Imoen). The way I see it, clerics help you recover after having suffered damage. Mages help you avoid taking damage in the first place.

Alternatively, say goodbye to Minsc and find another warrior to replace him. Names such as Kivan or Coran should be paid some attention to, as both are fairly good with bows. Yes, I talk a lot about bows, don't I? Bows are awesome in BG1. They keep your damage dealers out of enemy range, they have a base of two attacks per round, and enemies don't have enough health that they can shrug off a storm of arrows.

Is it possible to revive fallen party members?
Or is dead, well dead?

It is mostly possible, depending on the game difficulty slider. If the party member is dead but the portrait remains in your party list then resurrection is possible. Generally speaking, if the character goes below -10 hitpoints (I think), the corpse explodes into little bits of goo. That's often referred to as chunking.

That same thing can in fact happen to party members, in which case there's no going back. At core difficulty and beyond. On the easier settings, party members cannot be permanently killed, not even by spells such as disintegrate, which supposedly turns the victim to dust.

If the party member is petrified then the portrait will disappear and the member has left the party. You can get such party members back with a scroll of stone to flesh.

If the party member is the victim of an imprisonment spell, the portrait disappears and you'll need a scroll of Freedom. That's a level 9 spell that, IIRC, works on the entire map where it is cast. BG2 romances tend to not like when the protagonist kicks out the romance partner, so the imprisonment spell has a rather bad effect on those.

Modifié par Mr Spidey, 22 juillet 2012 - 12:17 .

[BelgarathMTH]

Heh, I was thinking of asking you why you didn't want to raise your dead party members.

The procedure might not be obvious to you. When a party member is "dead" but able to be raised, their portrait turns black and white. You need to head directly to the closest temple. There are temples in Beregost, Friendly Arms Inn, Nashkel, and Baldur's Gate. 

The unfortunate dead will have dropped all their equipment on the spot where they "died". If at all possible, have other party members pick it up and carry it into town with you so you can give it back to them after they're raised.

Inside the temple, talk to the head cleric and click on his temple services. You will see a button that says "Raise Dead". The button will not activate until you click on the black and white portrait of the party member you want to raise, highlighting it. The "Raise Dead" button will then activate and tell you how much gold it costs, usually 100 gold pieces per level of the "dead" character.

The npc will be raised to life with ONE hit point and no equipment. You're not ready to leave yet. You need to heal them back up to full health with your own healing spells or buy healing spells from the temple head priest. It's too dangerous to walk around outside with one hit point - they're likely to just get killed again. Also, you have to re-equip them. Hopefully, you have been able to carry all their good stuff with you into the temple. You will have to pass it back to them and put it back on them.

I hope this info is helpful. Those of us who have been playing for years do all these procedures without thinking, and it's as easy as breathing. We forget how counter-intuitive and complicated the interface controls can be.

Modifié par BelgarathMTH, 22 juillet 2012 - 04:29 .

[Abraham_uk]

At Spiderman (Mr Spidey)


Thanks for the advice. . I didn't want to let go of any of my healers. Especially know you've told me that my character is going to level up really slowly. Simple reason being that my party members take a lot of punishment in battle. The way I see it, there is no such thing as too many healers, as long as they can be good fighters too. Branwen stays. Also Jaheria must stay too. Which means, so must Kahleed. Not a fan of this character, but I want Jaheria in my party.

I don't want to get rid of Minsc. He's just cool. I can't get rid of a guy who says "Go for the eyes Boo, go for the eyes, rusk!" and "Sqeeky wheel gets the kick". Oh there is another one "

I got Dynaheir. I'm not really bothered about her. But hey, another mage is great right? Also if I get rid of her now, my favourite character goes.

You see since my two favourite characters, Minsc and Jaheria are in pairs, I was forced to choose between Branwen and Imoen. I like Imoen. But, I wanted Minsc really badly. He fills the archer role quite well in my opinion. I'd say he does a better job than Imoen. And he can switch to two handed weapons. So I didn't just hold on to Minsc because he says "Magic is fine, but Minsc leads! Swrods for everyone!"


Here is what I am going to do. You know what you said about Jaheria being a tank. I'm going to give that a try. Sure wearing armour means she can't cast spells, but hey, all I have to do is remove her armour after battles to heal.


Oh one more think. Thank you Spiderman!!!

Modifié par Abraham_uk, 22 juillet 2012 - 05:02 .

[Tiglath-Pileser]

Abraham_uk wrote...

Here is what I am going to do. You know what you said about Jaheria being a tank. I'm going to give that a try. Sure wearing armour means she can't cast spells, but hey, all I have to do is remove her armour after battles to heal.

Jaheira CAN wear armor and cast spells. Druids, clerics and paladins are divine casters and can cast in armor, only arcane casters (mages) can only use robes. With full plate, good weapon and some strenght buffs (potions, items, spells) she is a force to be reckoned with. She can also fight in the second line using staves or spears (not many good spears in BG1 unfortunately, but some really good staves, particularly if you have Tales of the Swordcoast expansion installed.)

There is a trick that lets you separate normally inseparable npc pairs, so you can get rid of Khalid and keep Jaheira. Just send Khalid alone into a house you are not going to visit ever again, go to reform party menu and kick him out. He won't be able to initiate goodbye dialogue with main character and won't take Jaheira with him. It's an exploit, of course, and might be considered a cheat, so that's your choice.

As for Minsc, I would advise you to keep him in the front. He has a very high strenght and that's a great bonus for a frontliner. Personally, I've made Khalid an archer in the past and he is actually very good in that role, just keep investing his proficiencies into long bow.

[Francoprima]

... might be considered a cheat ....

Thanks for this advice !
I find it rather irritating that those 2 always stick together. Both have their abilities, but throough the game I sometimes think of including a heavier mage than Jaheira is a fighter-mage ...
I find it no cheat at all, more a good and handy way to overrule this feature !

greetz FP

[Mr Spidey]

@ Abraham

That's fair reasoning and I can certainly see why you'd like to hang on to healers. At the very start of the game, they're quite strong and increase your mileage quite a lot. I'm probably also somewhat colored by playing too much BG2, truth be told. The main issue I have with single class clerics in BG1 (and BG2, for that matter) is that they have the ranged weapon skill of mages without the offensive spells to support them. Consequently clerics often end up using slings from the backline, and slings aren't too powerful, or they'll get themselves into trouble in melee combat.

Characters that can use bows have a tremendous advantage since bows attack twice per round vs slings that only have one attack per round. Furthermore, bows have a damage roll of 1d6 rather than the 1d4 for slings.

In other words, bows hit for 1-6 damage twice per round before modifiers, while slings hit for 1-4 once per round. Imoen with a shortbow can thus do 2-12 damage per round with normal arrows while a cleric such as Branwen can do 1-4. And thieves level up really fast which makes their otherwise fairly poor ability to hit less of a problem.

What all of this adds up to is that while slings are fine early on in the game, you may eventually get to a point where more bows and fewer slings becomes a boon. If it seems like your tank has to do all the work and things aren't dying fast enough, just keep this in mind. Maybe another bow instead of a sling is what the doctor ordered. Bows really are immense in BG1.

Anyways, since you wanted to keep Minsc, Jaheira, and Branwen, taking your party size to 4, one of Khalid, Imoen and Dynaheir had to go. You chose Imoen but that now leaves you without a thief to find and disable traps and opening locks. You can get a thief that will do those things and be a better archer than Imoen, but not during what I'd consider the early game.

You'll most likely bump into a guy named Coran a bit later on. If you want a thief that can contribute as an archer, Coran is your man. Or half-elf, I suppose. Beyond that, the only other thieves available before you get to Baldur's Gate are Montaron (the hafling that has already died) and Safana (a weaker Imoen available from near a lighthouse).

Walking around in the forests and general outdoor areas isn't usually much of a problem without a thief, but I recall some of the dungeon crawling to be much more fun with a thief to handle traps, and occasionally you may come across locked chests too.

Regardless of the above, as long as you're having fun, you're probably doing it right. :-)

Final thing, I think there's a tendency to refer to a "lone tanker" as just that, a tank. This is technically not entirely accurate in BG1, since a tank survives on being tough while most of the typical "tank and archer" strategies rely on the "tank" being really hard to hit. Ultimately, since all party members have rather few hitpoints, it may be more appropriate to refer to the tank as a decoy, since that's really the most important task. To focus attention away from the archers and other ranged weapon characters, who are pelting the crap out of anything hostile.

As a consequence, it isn't uncommon to scout with the decoy and keep the rest of the party a short distance behind. When you run into something unpleasant, only the decoy is within range, the AI throws all the hostiles after the decoy, and then the party can fire away rather safely.

Against enemies that can reliably hit your decoy, the common method is to simply take advantage of the game mechanics and move out of melee range and let the enemy chase the decoy around. It's hard to do against some enemies and easier against others, but if it's a single tough enemy that is giving your trouble then it's usually worth trying.

[Francoprima]

... Final thing, I think there's a tendency to refer to a "lone tanker" as just that, a tank. This is technically not entirely accurate in BG1, since a tank survives on being tough while most of the typical "tank and archer" strategies rely on the "tank" being really hard to hit. Ultimately, since all party members have rather few hitpoints, it may be more appropriate to refer to the tank as a decoy, since that's really the most important task. To focus attention away from the archers and other ranged weapon characters, who are pelting the crap out of anything hostile. ...

I wish to remind you that my 'decoy-tank' does 15-20-damage when he hits. It stands there to beat the chips out of the mofu and has ranged weaponed-rearguards. Ever tried to use fighters with a low AC and NO weapons ?  

A tank needs 2 aspects:
* defending : to be able to take many hits through an amount of hitpoints + low AC,
* offending : to be able to do (a lot of) damage. 

I would say that summoned creatures come more close towards the definition of decoys.

Modifié par Francoprima, 23 juillet 2012 - 12:34 .

[Abraham_uk]

I'm using Kaleed as an archer now.
I find that Minsc is also a really good archer. His class is ranger, so perhaps that figures.

Also I took the advice given by actually armouring up Jaheria. I've found out that she can cast spells whilst wearing armour! Yes!

She trully feels "Bi-Winning" to me.