Build your own party AND have banter.

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First off, I suppose I should say hello to the boards. I’ve actually been surfing this site off and on for many years, and used to have an account and post from time to time a few years back--but I’ve since forgotten the credentials and don’t have the email address that account was tied to. At any rate, I’m not sure why I’ve avoided creating a new account for so long, but now that I’ve gotten out of the way I plan to post when the whim hits (or more to the point, when my busy life allows me a few moments reprieve for such things).

That out of the way, on to my post....

I’ve long toyed with the idea of creating my own party from existing BGII NPCs, but have only recently gone forward with the idea. The reason for doing this is to allow me to try out new party combos without having to sacrifice the entertaining banters/side quests the Bio PCs (or fan made NPCs, for that matter) add to the journey. Shadow Keeper is quite the handy tool for accomplishing this!

So here’s my current party. I would love to hear the thoughts of the BG aficionados on these boards about the choices I made:

-Aarion Chantille (PC) – Human Fighter 9/Swashbuckler – I so commonly hear stigma about thieves, that they are not necessary to the game, and so challenged myself to create a thief that could rival other fighters on the team, but was something other than a multi-class thief type. I think this character (who is currently ftr9/swash14) is turning out quite nicely. While he can’t backstab, he is an exceptional thief in all other respects, and is a true master with his blades (katanas and longswords, in particular).

-Minsc – Human Beserker 9/Cleric – First off, although the idea was to use BIO NPCs and assign classes per my desires, I found myself unable to diverge too far from the spirit of the NPCs I modified. A ranger is a sort of priest who knows well how to use weapons in defense of nature. My Minsc is basically that as well. He is also still true to the Berserker Rage concept by way of the Berserker kit, and now he’s just much heavier on the priest aspect, while somewhat less skilled with weapons. I had to raise his wisdom to get into the dual class, but I afterwards lowered it to 12 (I figure if Anomen can do this....) and dropped his int by 1 (to 7) to further reinforce the idea that Minsc is not "all there." He primarily wields maces, and has learned the value of carrying a sturdy shield into battle.

-Jaheria – Half Elven Ranger/Cleric – Jaheria has always been a warrior priestess of nature, and my version of her still maintains this concept, but in a new way. I’m not a big fan of druids in this game, and I almost never use the shapechange ability, so I wanted to go a different route. I role play that she’s a priestess of Silvanus, and I really am liking this variant of Jaheria. She is dual wielding a hammer and flail. Eventually she’ll have Crom and FoA.

-Aerie – Avariel Archer – Okay, so this is a pretty dramatic diversion from the spell casting princess that Aerie is known to be, but the archer concept still seems to fit nicely with her Elven heritage. She is still very much a backline party member, but instead of flinging off endless spells per day, she is dropping arrows where they hurt. Spear is her close quarters weapon, which she only uses when she must. Oh, and she is also the love interest in for Aarion.

-Jan – Gnomish Fighter/Illusionist – Still a practitioner of illusionary magics and a tinkerer, but his early days protecting his family and chopping down trees to aid in his inventions have made him rather handy with the axe. He generally uses a shield when in a combat situation. This build on Jan has turned out to be an incredibly valuable addition to the party... and he has served nicely as the sole arcane caster pre-Imoen.

-Imoen – Just using plain, ole Immy, no changes to classes or kits. She will either wield a staff or a throwing dagger/buckler, depending on the situation. For the first time ever since playing BG II, I rushed to Spellhold to get her--this really seems the most appropriate way to play from an RP perspective, but I generally wait until I've done a good number of side quests. Time to try something new.

This is turning out to be a really fun party, and I’m finding that this approach is adding a lot of fresh elements to the game. I’m currently in the Underdark with most party members between level 12 – 14. The group seems pretty well balanced. I will have access to all spells (arcane, cleric, druid). Minsc and Jaheria make great front liners, with my PC being pretty good at it too (and as a Swashbuckler, he’ll only get better). Jan is good at dishing out damage (melee and spell), but prefers to use his illusions to keep himself from being targeted by his foes. In a pinch his stoneskins, mirror images, blurs, etc allow him to go toe to toe without too much fear. My PC is an excellent thief, and his pick pocketing abilities, in particular, have enabled the party to quickly raise funds to finance their cause (they’ll make plenty of temple donations to pay back what they’ve taken, if they live to see the light of day again, that is).

Oh, and for what it’s worth, I’m running the following mods (I’ve only recently started playing with mods):
• Banter Pack
• Flirt Pack
• Unfinished Business
• Quest Pack
• G3 Tweak Pack

So there it is. Curious what folks think, what they might have done differently, etc.

 

Well, I would have put Minsc to just a Berserker, with no cleric at all. "Magic is impressive, but now Minsc leads! Swords for everyone!" But aside from that, it's not too bad.

Except for having Aerie as a love interest. Ugh.

 

My approach certainly requires a certain amount of overlooking inconsistencies. Aerie telling the flirty Elf in the Copper Coronet that he's cruisin for a magic missile doesn't work too well at this point, and there are several other comments/banters that require a certain degree of "suspending disbelief." I'd still rather have this than a bunch of party members who never say a damn word.

 

Aye, 'tis indeed preferable. Though on occasion you may find yourself wishing they'd just shut up, you'd likely find a non-talking group a little eerie more often.

 

This is a great idea. My fourth or fifth time through the game I tried tweaking the NPCs' stats and classes to spice up the game a bit.

The party I used was:

Arawn (PC) - F/M/T
Jaheira - Ranger/Cleric (love interest)
Minsc - Barbarian
Aerie - Sorcerer
Cernd - Monk
Imoen - Thief/Wild Mage

I justified Jaheira as a member of the druid order but not actually a druid, as a member or affiliate of the larger group, without actually having the base class. This is similar to how the Harpers are idealized by the bard, yet have members of all classes. Perhaps her inherent class was determined before she was taken in by the druids at a young age. She was born as a ranger/cleric of some nature deity (Silvanus).

The same logic applies to Cernd. I'd wanted to play a monk, but not as the PC. I had difficulty playing Cernd because of his lame personality, but as a monk I had extra incentive, and eventually came to like him. Quivering Palm: "Nature Strikes!"

Imoen is a Bhaalspawn, and Wild Magic is a product of the time of troubles. In BG1 she was a vanilla mage when I dualled her, but her time spent in Jonny's care brought out the unstable energy.

Aerie is just more fun (and powerful) as a Sorc, and I visualized Minsc as a Barbarian who was used to living off the land.

Most of the dialogs worked well with my justifications firmly in mind, and I enjoyed that run through almost as much as the first time through vanilla BG2. Now every time I play through BG2, I tweak at least one or two NPCs.

Thank you SK!

Peace

 

I use SK or the Alternate NPC mod all the time to change NPC classes. One of my favorites was an all-rogue party with Tactics and Rogue Rebalancing installed (amongst others):

Me - Swashbuckler
Korgan - Assassin
Immy/Yoshi - Bounty Hunter
Haer'D - Blade (no change)
Jan - Jester (I imagined him putting his stupid stories to music and driving enemies crazy with them)
Mazzy - Skald (she has a morale-boosting personality)

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with your party. Welcome to the Boards, and have fun.

 

I have been class changing the NPC's for a month now. My faves...

Viconia - Cleric/Mage - with her innate MR and demeaner she is just the perfect 'Dark Queen of Magic'. Truly this is a joy to play, especially as a love interest.

Minsc - Makes a superb Archer.

Imoen - Wild Mage - I had the EXACT same idea as you for EXACTLY the same reasons. Even if I am mad, I am glad that the madness is shared!

Mazzy - Paladin - She IS a Paladin in all but name. Frankly I find the idea that she is BARRED due to race quite distasteful. So I had her as a Paladin. It fits her voiceset etc perfectly and standing toe-to-toe with Keldorn she has been quite a sight to see.

I like the idea of Minsc as a Barbarian...may try that later.

 

Anybody else misled by the title of this thread?

I thought there was going to be some new NPC banter sets made for use on any NPC you'd create.


BTW, can anybody offer a little tutorial on how to change a NPC's class with shadowkeeper? I'd like to get the HP and Saves correct too!

 

Basically, you set everything to 0 before you change the class.

Level goes to 0, thieving points go to 0, delete all proficiencies, all affects except COLORCHANGE (gives the NPC their own flavor to have off-standard colors), innate spells, etc. HP set to 1 since 0 won't work, but saves and THAC0 you don't have to worry about (though it wouldn't hurt to set them to 20 just in case). And of course you change the class.

When you get back into the game, they'll PING and you just level them up. Saves, spell slots, and THAC0 are taken from tables. One more trip into SK to remove that one extra hit point and maybe add spells to the spellbook that you think they should have started with if they're a wizardly class, and you're done.

 

There's also a mod here (third one down) that let's you chage NPC's to certain classes without using SK.

 

It doesn't sound so much like you were mis-led. You saw the title and came up with your own idea (assumption) about how something might be accomplished. To an extent, sounds like it was a bit of wishful thinking on your part, as what you suggest would be a cool addition to the gaming options. It just so happens that your assumption was incorrect in this case, but the title is still appropriate to the thread. Why? Because what I did was I used Shadow Keeper to "build my own party" (as many will resort to MP games to do), but this time, I have the benefit of "banter" as well since I'm using pre-generated NPCs. Thus, "build your own party AND have banter" became the thread title.

 

I'm sorry, but Minsc, he's not a barbarian. He's a rangers who just happens to go berserk when his witch dies. My other comment is, Aerie as an archer? Sounds cool. Think I might give that one a wirl.

 

The only "rangery" thing about Minsc is his animal companion.

IMHO, he fits a Barbarian, Fighter, or Berserker much better. BTW, Rasheman is an area filled with barbaric tribes.

 

I agree with Klorox here. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the ranger class is "wrong" for Minsc, it works fine, I suppose. But there is very little about his personality that shouts out "this guy's a ranger!"

He works just as well as a fighter or barbarian in my opinion. Anything that involves a big sword seems to work for him.

Just because a guy is way too overattched to his hamster, doesn't mean he's a ranger.

 

I've read about people changing Viccy into a Cleric/Thief, and think that fits her pretty well.

If I can ever bring myself to use her, I'll make that change, definitely.

 

According to the FR source book, Minsc would be a barbarian, since he was the gaurdian of a Wychalarn. He also doesn't have the stats necessary to be a Ranger and I would argue that he never did (or his stats would raise the first time you cast a restoration spell on him). Barbarians, however, weren't implemented in BG1. I think that's the reason that they made Minsc a Ranger, instead.

 

Yeah, but you'd think they would have made him a fighter instead (no stealth). Which would have made it that much easier to transfer him to Barbarian in BG2. Though maybe they went with ranger because Kivan was the only other ranger...

 

!boot Felinoid
* Mystra kicks Felinoid with her enchanted Boot of Idiot Removal +5!

With that out of the way, be sure you change their aperence to something you like better. I just changed Immy to 'Cleric Female Human Low' due to the fact that when I give her Elven Chain armor, her paper doll/sprite made the armor look like leather, she now looks bad-ass wearing the Aslyferund Elven Chain +5...

 

In AD&D 2e, Rangers eventually get animal companions. Minsc's is a hamster.

No other classes get them.

 

But in roleplaying terms, Minsc's hamster could just as easily be a roleplaying "prop," added to give a character additional interest/flavor, as he could be an "animal companion."

Any character can have a pet. I'm not sure what benefits a ranger gets from an animal companion in AD&D 2E, but as far as I can tell, there really is no benefit Minsc gains from Boo (outside of the entertainment value, which is significant).