Favorite class and noobish questions

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Oh my god, it works! Thanks a lot!

...but I do have a slight problem. The dialogue is a little glitched. When I first got Imoen in my party I didn't get any dialogue from her, just some choices of words about the iron shortage and such.

 

Wrong dialogue lines usually means a corrupt install, as it's called. There's a file called Dialogue.tlk which gets adjusted by installed mod, and if something went wrong during installation, things can happen like characters you interact with saying nothing or completely out-of-context phrases. Another symptom is inapropriate weapon discreptions for items introduced by mods, like pieces of dialogue in an item discreption.

Only remedy is a clean install. Were your original BG1 and BG2 installs unmodded? If they were somehow modified (even with just the widescreen mod for instance), you can't use them as a resource base for a Tutu install.

*sorry for the spelling errors, I'm just out of bed and usually don't function that well the first hours of the day

Another question: what mods did you install? They need to go in a proper order, or things will get messed up. This is the link to the Tutu Mod Compatibility and Order of Install topic, though it's offline now, you may get to it later when Gibberlings 3 is back.

For now, could you post the contents of your Weidu.log file (open with Notepad, then copy) and maybe I can see what went wrong before you try a new install.

tip: once you did manage to make a clean install of Tutu, before you start modding it, you can make a copy of the whole folder to another location, like a backup drive for instance, to make a backup of the entire installation, so you can just delete your install and put the backup back to it's original location if things go wrong.

another tip: after you've got a clean install, and after every mod, you can start up a brief game with an 'import' character for quickness, and test it out before continueing.

 

Wait, I fixed it. Slight error on my part, I had accidentally but the Tutu folder into Program Files. Thanks a lot though, you really helped me out!

 

You're welcome. Have fun!

 

Okay, so BG1 was a lot of fun, especially with the NPC dialogue mod making things more interesting. Finally finished SOA, and Irenicus was much easier than I thought he would be. But freaking TOB!! I can't walk two steps without being cut down. Those fire giants almost never miss and that undead fight with the shade of Gorion was crazy, though it gave me a little more appreciation for clerics. What class would you recommend taking through TOB? I played a pure-class druid through SOA and I felt like a watered-down Jaheira.

 

And therein is a major source of your problem. Put simply, by the end of SoA, a single classed druid is probably the most underpowered class in the game. (A multi-classed F/D like Jaheira is not so bad though.) What is the rest of the composition of your party? Obviously, going toe-to-toe with a fire giant wearing studded leather armor isn't a recipe for success, or at the very least you had best memorize a bunch of iron skins. Single classed druids are definitely support characters and spell casters at this point in the game.

 

My starting TOB party was me, Sarevok, Minsc, Keldorn, Imoen, and Viconia. I'm totally reloading it with a different class though. Fire elementals and Iron Skins is nice, but I hate having my main character be pathetically weak in melee.

 

I think you're going to like a gnomish Fighter/Illusionist.
Very good in melee and extremely potent overall.

 

I would recommend playing through ToB with whatever character you played through BG1 & 2 with. As Aldeth mentions, druids are strictly support characters. You'll want fighters with lots of hitpoints on the frontlines, and have your support characters behind them, flinging spells or arrows or bullets or the kitchen sink at your opponents.

Basically, the way to play the game changes over the course of BG, BG2 and ToB.

In BG, ranged weapons rule supreme, low AC allows you to avoid being completely in many cases and THAC0 progression is quite significant. You'll want to stay away as much as possible and pelt your enemies from a distance while running away.

In BG2, ranged weapons have become mostly useless - at least as far as damage dealing is concerned - low AC is still nice to have, but you won't be able to avoid being hit no matter what your AC is. THAC0 can still make some difference. Melee combat is unavoidable, nor should you want to avoid it. You still want to lure out the enemies one by one.

In ToB, AC is useless because everyone and their grandmother will be able to hit you anyway, even if your AC is -20. THAC0 is nice, but most melee based classes will have some negative number anyway and there isn't much that you can't hit without much problems. Fighting basically boils down to doing as much damage as possible before your enemies can do too much damage on you. Luring out your enemies one by one may succeed here and there, buty mostly you're out of luck.

If you're a fighter, use Greater Whirlwind to kill everything as fast as possible. If you're a mage, Abi Dhalzim's Horrid Wilting all the way, occasionally mixed with a few high level summons like Mordekainen's or Planetars. If you're a druid, greater elemental summoning all the way, this has a good chance of summoning an elemental prince, and they rock.

/edit

Try playing with a sorcerer through ToB (get the robe of Vecna in SoA, though) and then come back and tell me you still hate being weak in melee. Nothing is quite as satisfying as confronting one of the five and nuking them back into the stone age in a single Time Stop.

 

I was considering doing a mage type character, simply because in my experience they seem to be nigh-invulnerable with the right spells, not to mention they're able to stop half my party in their tracks with various disabling spells. Can't other mages like Imoen and Nalia cover the spell-casting just as well as a mage type pc though? I always thought the advantage of taking a fighter type is that you can be more efficient than any other tank types you can get (since you can have 18 in strength, dex, and con which noone else has).

 

Neither Imoen nor Nalia have great mental stats either, though this is of no real influence on their spell casting ability with the use of a few potions every now and then. But most of all, there's no NPC sorcerer. An effective sorcerer is difficult to make if you have no experience with arcane magic in BG, but once you have enough experience which spells are good picks for a sorcerer, they are very powerful, get more high level spell castings than normal mages and are much more flexible.

Especially useful for project image use. Your sorcerer can cast project image for as many times as he has spell slots for, and each projected image can cast mordekainen's sword for as many times as he has spell slots left. Or you could summon a group of skeleton warriors with one projected image, then have the next use lower resistance for a more direct approach.

 

Woah, so I can have 5 mordenkainen's swords at once? That smells like pure cheese, but I like it

 

The real cheesy part is that projected images are not subject to summoned creatures limit. So while the PC and NPCs can only summon a maximum of 5 creatures at any one time, your projected image can summon 5 (or more, depending on HLAs and gear) mordy's, 6 skeleton warriors and 6 planetars (more likely a few less planetars so you could cast improved alacrity to summon them faster).

And then it's also possible to cast multiple projected images by putting them in a chain contingency set to go off on helpless. Then cast project image (which holds your char in place, counting as helpless) and up to three more project images will be cast. I only did this once, to swamp the end boss with about 20 planetars and several mordy's. Didn't get the chance to cast many more, because she'd died by then already ;D

 

I hardly ever play a mage because as you rightly point out there's nothing a PC mage can do that these NPCs can't do. It is true that both Nalia and Imoen are somewhat limited in the number of spells they can scribe into their spellbooks, but it's nothing that some potion of genius can't fix. In fact, there's nothing wrong with taking BOTH Imoen and Nalia if you want to have a load of high level spells to throw around.

That is absolutely true. Especially if you've played through BG1 and found the tomes. You can have 19 str, dex, and con (or a dwarven fighter would have 19, 18, 20). However, the advantage you get with making your own fighter in ToB is really just the additional hps you'll have from a high constitution score.

As you've seen in ToB, there are a LOT of strength enhancing items. There are a lot of weapons in ToB that raise your strength beyond 19, and there are two or three belts that do the same. Pretty much everyone - at least all the melee characters - are going to be using one of these items. Having that high strength score is invaluable in BG1 and TotSC - the only way you're getting to 19 in the first version is to start with an 18 and reading the tome. It's still pretty useful in SoA. But by the time you're in ToB, there's enough strength enhancing items that all your melee characters should be at a minimum of 19.

With dexterity, it's much the same. High dexterity lowers your armor class, and improves your THAC0 with missile weapons. But as henkie rightly points out, an extra few points in armor class aren't going to do you a whole lot in ToB. Even with the item upgrade mod that allows me to craft uber items, and get some characters with ACs hovering around the -12 to -15 range, they still got hit with alarming regularity. Same thing with improving your THAC0 with missile weapons - your THAC0 is already so good that the help isn't necessary.

So that leaves us with constitution, and this is a fixed advantage that you'll have throughout the entire series. A 19 constitution will give +5 hps per level (through level 9) for fighters, rangers, and paladins, and there's no item that will give you that score on a permanent basis. That's up to an additional 45 hps that a fighter without an exceptional constitution would not have.

One more point on enemy THAC0 and AC - most of the boss level enemies you fight have a THAC0 well into negative numbers - that's why it doesn't really matter what your armor class is. Even at -15 you'll still get hit on about half of all attacks. You would have to get your AC south of -20 (and I doubt that's possible) to avoid most attacks. And there is absolutely no difference at all if you have an armor class somewhere between -5 and 10. The only time the boss will miss is on a critical miss - in other words a 95% chance of being hit.

Of course the reverse is also true - your THAC0 is also well into negative numbers too, so running into a boss with an AC of -8 just makes you shrug. You also would only need to be concerned if you ran into something that had a -20 AC, and there is no such enemy in the game.

It is 100% pure cheddar. Bad henkie! And I don't even have a problem with there being 5 mordy's swords out there - you can easily do that with two mages in the party. But what henkie is advocating would give you somewhere upwards of 20 such summons.

 

Starting at 20 constitution a character regenerates. Just another reason for high con.

 

What can I say, I love cheese. And that includes the in-game kind

I think the lowest AC you can get with a Blade with his defensive spin, which adds -10 to AC, if I remember correctly. Even a monk, with an AC of -15, then equiping the armor you get from the pantaloons would only get -18. It should be able to go a bit lower than that with the right items, but I don't think it will make that much difference. And anyway, you'll still get quite regularly.

Well, with a regeneration rate of 1 hp per turn, you're only going to really notice it in BG1. I love regeneration, though (no healing spells necessary, generally), so I will usually boost my CON as high as it will go for fighters, especially for dwarves and half-orcs.

 

And then question becomes how low can you get the blade's AC before defensive spin? Maybe -10?

Yeah, you only really notice it when you're traveling between areas. An 8-hour trip pretty much will fully heal you. Obviously, no amount of regeneration is going to save your ass if you're getting pounded on, but I always consider any means of getting regeneration to be high-priority. You'd be surprised how much of the game doesn't involve combat.

 

I've read that -24 was possible, though I've never tried it myself. Never really saw the point of Bards. Other classes can do what it does better in my opinion.

 

Are there any redeeming qualities to Bards? I thought they might be fun to experiment with.

 

There are a couple of things that a bard can do quite well beyond identifying things and picking pockets. Unless you happen to have Keldorn, or play an Inquisitor, a bard will have the best Dispel Magic ability of anyone, all other things being equal.

The way dispel magic works is that it compares the level of the caster of dispel magic to the level of the opposing caster that he's trying to dispel. Base chance of success is 50%, but there is a 5% bonus (or penalty) for every level of difference. It maxes out at 100% (or 0%) once the level difference is 10 or greater.

That's why Keldorn's success with his dispel magic works pretty much 100% of the time. As an Inquisitor, his dispel magic works at twice his level, so he's almost always 10 levels higher than the person he's attempting to dispel protections from.

The advantage a bard has should now be obvious. Assuming a similar amount of experience, a bard is going to have a higher character level than a mage, and that will make a difference in the efficacy of his dispel magic. Will he be better than Keldorn? Hell no. But if you don't have Keldorn, a bard is typically your next best choice. When I take Haer Dalis' a good chunk (sometimes all) of his 3rd level spells are dedicated to Dispel Magic.

@damedog - I don't think bards are an incredibly great choice for a PC, but they are useful in parties. They fill a role of a second arcane caster, that still has decent combat capabilities. They can use a wide array of weapons, and so they can basically pick up and use any good weapon you find that none of your other characters can currently use. Even though Haer' Dalis is skilled in two handed fighting style, I have found some success equipping him with a longbow, as well as with the Impaler (after I give him a proficiency point first of course). If you want some more mage firepower, but you don't want to handicap yourself too much by limiting your offense when you aren't casting spells, a bard is not a bad choice.

I'd much rather have a bard than a pure druid for example. The one caveat I would place on that is I wouldn't go with a Jester. I didn't use the bard song much anyway, and there's really nothing else a Jester brings to the table. I like Haer Dalis' and he's a Blade, and I tried a Skald once because I wasn't planning on having him dual wield, and it worked OK, although it didn't make we want to take more bards as PCs. I like my PCs to be "the man". And bards just aren't. They are great as utility characters and are very versatile - I don't think you'd ever regret having one in your party - it just lacks the oomph I like in my PC.

It's the exact same argument that you made with making a PC mage - why do it when you can get an NPC that's pretty much equivalent? You can make better fighters, paladins, rangers, clerics, druids, and thieves (and especially multi-classes thereof) than you can find on the NPC market, so I tend to use those options as PCs. Bards, mages, and sorcerers I can't, so I'm cool with them being NPCs.