I decided after fulfilling my recent Diablo 3 fix to return to Baldur’s Gate 2 as I never finished my last round. I wanted to mix it up a little bit and try a few things to see how my latest party would feel. This time, I’m starting with an human Undead Hunter.
The party combination will mostly be a good party where the primary group will be Minsc as a Half-Elf Ranger/Cleric focused on dual wielding (as per my usual), Imoen as an elf Kensai/Mage/Thief, Jaheira the Half-Elf Berserker/Druid and Viconia as a Drow Berserker/Cleric/Mage. Eventually, I plan to employ Nalia as an elven Wizard Slayer/Mage/Thief to take Imoen’s place and start off with Yoshimo up until I can grab Nalia. Also, I’m grabbing Aerie as a Berserker/Cleric/Mage until I can pick up Viconia.
The idea here is to avoid the mess of trying to hire Keldorn so that I can still use the Holy Avenger while possibly doing the Viconia romance. I can kick Aerie out once I start doing the NPC quests except for Keldorn’s. Since that quest ends up being pretty minuscule for experience anyway, I figured there’s no point in trying.
Also, by not having Keldorn and Aerie, I might be able to pick up evil NPC quests such as Korgan and Edwin instead, which I never do. This opens up a little more possibilities as Aerie’s only real quest is a breadcrumb to the Haerdalis mage tower quest while as I mentioned Keldorn’s really isn’t worth much.
In addition, the idea of giving a wizard slayer a chance by combining that into a multi-class with a mage/thief might be a challenge in itself. The idea here is to aim for Use Any Item at higher levels to negate the penalties from the wizard slayer class. Also, I plan on making Nalia a bow wielder, which ought to wreck havoc on spellcasters.
Normally, I go with the Kensai/Mage/Thief but I’m thinking that with a wizard slayer, I can still use armor and be a ranged attacker. Once I get elven chain mail, then I can fully utilize the two triple class characters.
In addition, I want to keep Imoen in the distance as I slowly accumulate equipment in preparation for her return. Usually, when you’re ready to bring Imoen back into the fold, you’ll be around level 9-10 as a multi-class at the very least. Use Any Item occurs roughly around level 14-15 as a thief from my memory so it’s not as a harsh by that point.
Another benefit is being able to use more two handers earlier on by making my main an undead hunter. There’s a few really solid 2 Handed Swords throughout the game outside of the Holy Avenger that have nice utilities such as being immune to charm and psionics. Normally, Keldorn has immunity to most crowd controlling effects from his Inquisitor kit. So an Undead Hunter lacks any of that, making it necessary for a non-Holy Avenger weapon in certain circumstances.
But the nice thing is that I’ll have one less person to worry about when it comes to level draining especially early on. Then I can distribute the amulet that provides level drain immunity to someone else like Nalia or Viconia until I can obtain weapons that provide similar defense.
Now, one thing that I possibly can do on this run is get Sarevok. Getting Sarevok is mostly for the role playing/dialog aspect. I would have to find someone to replace from this party while making him more interesting. As a pure fighter, Sarevok is kinda meh compared to how I’ve been mod’ing my characters. If anything, I might just shift Nalia around and convert Sarevok into an elf with her classes in place. Besides, by Throne of Bhaal, Nalia won’t have much of a role playing position.
I’m still in the very first dungeon so it’ll be a while before I can get to Throne of Bhaal. But I’m somewhat excited of the possibilities this time around.