Balanced Party

Remove all ads!

The general consensus of BG/IWD games is to go with a balanced party of 2-Fighters, 1-Priest, 1-Mage, 1-Thief and 1-Other.

Does this hold true in BG2 still? What with the necessity and power of mage spells, does this balance change?

Early in the game you need more fighters, but as you progress you can summon a lot more cannon-fodder and can probably get away with less fighters and more mages.

Perhaps 1-Fighter, 2-Priests, 2-Mages, 1-Thief. Plus use more multi-classes to bring more magic into the game.

 

Not really, there is nothing really worth summoning.

 

What about skeleton warriors - Don't these make a great defensive wall? plus, wouldn't any monster/animal summons keep the enemy at bay while you pummel them with magic and missiles.

 

Two priests?

The optimal is one cleric and have him cast Chaotic Commands and Death Ward on everyone (with the help of a few Wondrous Recall). Follow up with Protection from Evil 10' radius, Remove Fear and then Aid on your fighter type characters.
Unless you have a sorcerer the cleric will also cast a number of Animate Dead once he has reached level 15.

There is no good reason to have two clerics since they IMHO shine before battles - as per the description above - and not during them.

I'd say a nice party configuration is something like this:
2.5 fighter
2 mage
1 cleric
0.5 thief

 

Doesn't a druid become extremely useful for the anti-mage spells? Have one of the clerics/druids a multi-class give you an extra fighter during the battles.

 

I always found mages to have better anti-mage spells. What's the point of Insect Swarm when Breach plus two sword hits will kill any mage in the game ?

 

Because Insect swarm does spread damage, disrupts the mages while your fighters can worry about deadlier melee characters, and it has a chance of making the targets run around in fear (almost guaranteed against most SoA enemies if Malisoned). IMHO opinion seeing as the Druid can also summon and heal, IS is better than a simple Breach.

 

I like having:

1.5 priest
.5 thief
1.5 mage
fill the rest with tanks

 

IMO
1 sorcerer
1 mage\thief
1 cleric
1 fighter (I prefer Berserker)
1 ranger (I prefer Archer)

A sorcerer can't have all spells,so having a 2. caster is useful. Also the Berserker-Archer combination is pretty cool.

 

1 Tank
1 Sorcerer
1 Cleric
1 Thief

This way, you have one of everything, so things are very balanced...also, with four characters, the game is do-able enough (BG2 is easy enough for 6 man parties to be overkill) and there is plenty of XP to go around.

 

3-4 fighter/barbarian/ranger/paladin

0.5-1 cleric/druids

1 mage/sorcerer

0.5 - 1 thief

My most recent party is 4 fighter types, 1 sorcerer, and a PC cleric/thief.

 

Balanced parties are okay, but so are imbalanced ones. There's no perfect mix -- everything works.

 

@bombur: Yes, but surely a party of all fighters would have a really hard time of it. In BG1 it was far more important to have a fighter heavy party, but BG2 you can't do without the magic support of mages.

 

If you equip them wisely a party of all fighters can work very well, make sure you got a heavy armoured one, and magic resistant one and a high damaging one and you should be able to see off most things

[ June 22, 2004, 15:00: Message edited by: Dow ]

 

@Bard: Yes, but as Dow said, it's doable. Some people like the added challenge of an imbalanced party.

 

True, it is doable. I just think it will be more of a struggle. You do need armour to protect your mages and this should be the most important function of the fighters. Then let the mages wreak havoc. Clerics/Druid are also important for their protection/attacking spells.

BG1 was definitely fighter heavy and IWD was basically a hack-and-slash dungeon crawl. But, BG2 allows far more flexibility and I feel is desgined to use mages and clerics far more than before.

Saying all this, although an all-fighter party is doable, a party of all mages would get their butts royally kicked.

 

@Bard: Not true IMHO. Yes...they probably would have a hard time when they were starting out, but then...if you can solo a mage through the game, the starting bits should be much easier when you have six of them!

Also...once they hit the lvl 5-6 bracket (spell wise I mean), they get really powerful. When you have six mages, having them specialise, as summoners, buffers, evokers aka heavy artillery and general purpose magic users, can give some really cool results.

A typical battle in ToB with said high level party of mages, would probably involve the summoner dude summoning Skeleton Warriors and Mordenkainen's Swords at the enemies, while the Heavy Artillery Guy casts Fireballs at the enemies like no tomorrow.

In summation, once they get the summons to keep the bad guys at a respectable distance...its not even funny how fast the party of mages would dispatch any and all enemies in the game with ease...IF used right of course.

 

If used right is the magic word. I actually think that a party of mages is sometimes harder to manage than a single mage, as you need to be aware of how each is doing. You also need to be careful that you don't get rushed by the enemy - this is where fighters come in.

What you've said about them being powerful is exactly right and is why I reckon you can get away with less fighters in BG2 and use more mages/clerics, with summons as fodder.

 

Personally, I find thieves to be generally worthless within a party. A mage can fill the roll of lockpicker with Knock, and traps are mostly not deadly enough to even bother disabling them even if I have a thief. There's not enough good stuff to warrent using a character slot for stealing as opposed to the superior stuff that you find just lying around. Thieves are better suited for a solo game IMO.

The only thief I would like in a party is an assassin, because of the insane backstab multiplier.

I like this for balance:
Cleric
Paladin
another fighter type like ranger/fighter/monk (I prefer monk for style) or a thief if you must
Cleric/Mage multi-class
Mage
Fighter/Druid dual-class

I guess that would be 4 melee, 3-4 healers (depending on the paladin kit chosen), and 2 mages.

[ June 22, 2004, 18:42: Message edited by: RangerFox ]

 

@RangerFox: I feel thieves are actually pretty essential. Yes, a mage can use the Knock spell and clerics can use the Find Traps spell, but what a waste of a spell slot.

You don't need a single-class thief and could easily fill the ranks with a support thief. F/T or M/T or C/T.