Best NPC Mage in BG:EE

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I'm trying to decide if I pick one up or dual Immy early. Playing a Barbarian Half-Orc by the way.

 

You could try out Neera, the new Wild Mage NPC. There's actually also a new Drow Sorcerer NPC, but you can only get him at level 5+.

 

I'm looking for something early, Xsar has potential but the level up process seems too impratical.

 

Neera can actually be found in Beregost in the northern side of the map, just southeast of where you first enter the area. If you don't mind taking a quick detour (you'll be going there to finish the spider infestation quest from the guy on the second floor of Friendly Arms Inn anyway) then she's the third earliest arcane caster who can join your party, after Xzar and Garrick.

Hope you like gambling.

 

I had Dyntheir and Minsc in my party. Neera is good for a wild mage. If you don't like Minsc I would go for Neera her alignment probably fits your party better anyhow.

 

If you don't plan on having Minsc and Dynaheir in your party, Edwin is still the best mage in the game.
The +1 spell slot each level from his amulet is huge. Coupled with the ring of wizardry that you cna grab on the FAI map, he has a huge supply of lvl 1 spells as well.

 

Neera, Baeloth, or Edwin? Imoen is fine as a mage, but she just kicks too much arse as a thief for me to ever dual her, especially in BG:EE. Xan and Xzar are garbage. Dynaheir is painfully average. Quayle is available far too late and he's not particularly good either.

 

Balancing your rep isn't that hard to do though - I just find a random peasant in a house to kill whenever my rep is getting too high to take it back down.
There's also the Tweaks Anthology for BG:EE that contains an option to turn off PC's leaving over too high/low reputation.

 

Evil people have just as many reasons to keep a good reputation as good people do. It's sad that you have to resort killing peasants and orphans.

 

Yeah, i've always thought it was weird for the game to assume you'll be actively and openly evil if you have an evil alignment - it just makes much more sense to keep up a facade of being good to the general public while performing your evil deeds in private.

 

You can lower the reputation without resorting to killing innocents. In my current game the party spoke to the man in front of Highhedge who revealed that he was a thief who intended to rob Thalantyr and only left because the risk was too high and would steal somewhere else - so I thought it was o.k. to attack him when he left despite him still having the friendly circle around his feet.
I think I lost 8 points of reputation for that.

 

Well, I've already summed up all the different ways of getting and losing reputation in the other thread. Only other way is senseless murder and that only works for CE characters. Triggering watched containers to spawn Flaming Fists (i.e. burgling) can also reduce your reputation pretty fast, but petty theft is often out of character for evil characters as well.

BG series has always had a horrible way of dealing with evil alignments (as is generally the case with most CRPGs, assuming they even allow it). I've been wanting to make a mod with my partner in crime to address the issue for a very long time, but we simply have too many other projects open to start another one. Some day...

 

You can also try to bribe the Flaming Fist soldiers that appear after you're caught stealing (I usually go after watched containers so peasants don't go hostile) for another -1 rep IIRC. I then flee the home/leave the map so they despawn. Almost all the characters I play are non-lawful, so this is my go-to method for reducing reputation.

I rarely play exclusively neutral/good-aligned/neutral/evil-aligned parties in BG1. There just aren't enough banters, so if most of the RP is just happening inside my head things might as well be more interesting.

 

You lose reputation when they initiate dialogue regardless of what option you choose.