Thinking of playing a "Basic D&D" party through the whole series

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Did those guys in the old basic books have names?

I'm thinking:

Dwarf Male Fighter (Berserker, why not?)
Elf Female Fighter/Mage
Halfling Male Fighter/Thief (I know they were just Fighters, but I need a Thief)
Human Female Cleric (I guess I'd give her the Lathander kit, there's no reason not to)

This is a very simple, and decently powerful group, while "bringing back" a very old-school D&D feel, don't you think?

I'd definitely consider going through BG1 first, and probably even use the "3e standard stats" to nerf the power (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8, put 'em where you want then apply racial mods). I think too many people place too much into rolling stats, and don't realize it's still a very do-able game without perfect stats. With so many items to boost stats, it's even less important for a great starting roll than you might think!

 

Cool idea and definitely do-able.

Well said.

 

Wouldn't such a party be more suitable to play IWD1? (since in that game you don't have a storyline centred on charname)

In BG2 not having the NPCs around if only for the banter could be a drag.

I do agree wholeheartedly that the game is clearly doable with less than perfect stats, even more so when you've completed it before.

 

Aye, I concur, playing this party in IWD will be better!

Umm, which guys you are talking about when you say 'back in basic books'? The ones in rule books?

 

What is the deal with this party only being good for IWD? It's got the essential classes and with only 4, they will level quicker. Banter can be done in your imagination. Personally, I find the NPCs boring after X number of games and the mods out now are falling into formulaic standards. BG2 players, who've played this game through to the Throne 10 times a year, want something to give them a challenge. It can be as simple as making your own characters.

I don't remember the stock book characters having names.

 

While I agree that it's something of a let down not having any banter in BG... it's not any more of a letdown than not having it in IWD.

Another possible way to go about this Klorox is to take existing Bioware NPCs and modify thieir classes/stats to fit what you want to do here. But otherwise, sounds like a fun idea (there are very few party ideas that I wouldn't say that about, to be totally honest :0)

 

Sorry to be a pain, but doesn't this party end up looking a lot like Charname, Kagain, Montaron and Branwen?

 

Why not have fighter, thief, mage, cleric vanilla classes? That'd be as basic as it gets...

 

No, he's talking about first edition kind of basic, where races weren't separate from classes.

 

Basic D&D and AD&D were two separate games for quite some time.

When WotC bought the rights, 3rd edition was renamed "D&D" because the "Advanced" label might have scared away some new players.

 

If you're going for true old-school flavor, then you shouldn't take any of those newfangled kits, most of which were created by BIO, not TSR or WOTC. No enrage, no Blessing of Lathander. Back in my day, we casted Magic Missile once a day and we liked it.

 

I tend to agree with Killjoy on that point and I maintain that IWD1 feels more like D&D (Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's D&D) but that's just my opinion...
BG2 tends to get over the top with high levels and spells (not to mention HLAs) and is quite clearly closer to AD&D.

 

All this sounds interesting... If only I started playing before 3.0.