Dispelling the Viconia Myth

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I don't understand why most people will accept as true the statement: Viconia is the best cleric in the game. Unless, of course, you mean that she is the best single classed cleric in the game. Although - if you haven't already figured this out for yourself - she is the ONLY single classed cleric in the game unless you are playing a single classed cleric as your PC.

When considering divine casters as a whole, I would rank Viconia as worst, or possibly next to worse, with only Cernd possibly ranking lower.

As I see it, there are three things Viconia has that are unique to her as an NPC selection:

1. She has an 18 in wisdom
2. She is a drow, and thus has a high magic resistance.
3. She is an elf, and thus has limited immunity to certain spells like hold, charm, and sleep.

None of which, IMO, are enough to overcome the fact that she is a single classed character, and all of your other choices (except Cernd) are either dual or multi-class characters, making them far more versatile.

Let's review the points in a little greater detail:

1. The 18 in wisdom sited as a reason she is better is probably the biggest red herring of the three. When you look at your other options, you are basically seeing a difference of 16 versus 18 (assuming you take the good path with Anomen). What difference does that make in terms of game play? Two measly extra spells, and none higher than 3rd level. In BG2, your characters are already of high enough level that the extra spells aren't particularly useful. In BG1, this is a huge advantage, because you have so few spell slots that the high wisdom allows for a lot more spells than a similarly low level character with a lower widsom. But by the time you get to BG2, you already HAVE a lot of low level spell slots so an extra couple per level doesn't make a huge difference. Thus, even if you compare Viconia to Anomen prior to his test when his wisdom is 12, she still isn't a significantly better caster than Anomen.

2. I will admit that having a high starting magic resistance is useful, although not essential. There are many items in BG2 that raise magic resistance or give resistance to certain types of magic (such as helm of charm protection) so this aspect only frees up equipment for other members of your party. That aside, we're talking about clerics! Characters that specialize in granting immunity to themselves and other party members against specific types of magic and effects, or improving saving throws so that magic is less likely to take effect! And any of your other choices can do that as well as Viconia.

3. This is a race specific trait as well, and Aerie and Jaheira get these bonuses as well. Plus these definiciencies can also be mitigated by some of the equipment I mentioned earlier.

Now, I will admit that while these advantages are small, they ARE advantages, so if everything else were equal, this would weigh in Viconia's favor. Some advantages, however small, would still be superior to no advantages. Unfortunately for Viconia, all things are NOT equal. There's two major things clerics need to do - cast divine spells and assist in combat. I've already detailed that the advantages in spell casting are minor. But it is really in combat that Viconia looks none too good.

Compared to the other clerics, Viconia is next to worthless when considering combat ability. For starters, she is very equipment impaired without obtaining a strength enhancing item. Without it, she is unable to equip heavy armor, anything bigger than a small shield, or weild some of the heavier weapons, like flails.

The easiest way to raise her strength at the beginning of the game is probably purchasing Mauler's Arm, which takes her strength to 18. Mauler's Arm costs a fraction of what the girdle of Hill Giant strength does, and the other strength enhancing items aren't available early in the game. So her strength is actually of minor significance, as it can be mitigated at the cost of only a couple thousand gold. But she still comes up short. As a single classed cleric, she only gets one proficiency slot per category, so she doesn't get any bonuses for specialization or beyond. Jaheira can specialize, and Anomen can even attain grand mastery in a weapon making them much more effective in combat. In late game, Jaheira can even select fighter HLAs making her arguably the best selection for combat among divine casters. Even lowly Aerie - while her hit rolls won't be any better than Viconia - will exceed Viconia in combat, due to mage spells like stoneskin and the like that will prevent her from taking damage in combat. Plus, she gets mage HLAs - nuff said right there. Cernd, with his shapechang ability is obviiously effective in combat.

So in summary, when we look at the divine casters in the game, we have - in addition to Viconia - Anomen, Aerie, Jaheira and Cernd. I would argue that regardless of your party either Anomen, Aerie or Jaheira bring more to the table than Viconia and make better selections, and depending on the party, even Cernd may be a better pick. Aerie and Jaheira, being multi-classed characters speak for themselves. Abilities from two classes instead of one throughout the game, and two sets of HLAs in late game. Anomen, due to his starting off as a fighter is also far more versatile than Viconia. Cernd, can transform into a werewolf, and later a greater werewolf, which should speak for itself in terms of combat worthiness.

That is why of the options listed, I take Viconia less frequently than all the others, save Cernd (if you haven't guess by this point, I'm not all that high or Cernd's abilities either). I now await Viconia defenders to show up.

EDIT: Changed one reference of 18 intelligence to 18 wisdom. Hopefully, since I correctly referenced it at other times, people knew what I meant.

[ February 17, 2006, 16:13: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

But dude...she's hot. And slutty.

/end smartass.

Actually, I completely agree with you, as I think single-class clerics are a waste of time. Ergo, Viconia is probably my least-often picked character, despite how cool she is as an npc as is. If I ever take her into my party (which I often do) I use SK to change her into either a fighter/cleric or a sorceress. In my next run-through, I think I'll try making her an Assassin.

Which actually gives me an idea for a new thread (your input is requested, Aldeth)...

 

While I can respect this sentiment, I was talking about her abilities in your party and not other ...erm... benefits she may bring to you in particular.

 

Well I took her as a F/C and she rocks, despite she is the only one who can not cast Stoneskin on herself in my party, her lowest AC and Hardiness HLA makes up for it.

I think she is too weak for a cleric, with abysmal STR and CON, definitely not suitable for front-lines, but she makes an excellent caster.

 

Hey, I simply like her! In opposite to fanatics trying to burn so pretty woman :/.

Also, she can do unbleievable things with spell-50 mod so is powerfull caster trought the whole game. I've just got Energy Blades, which seem to rock totally.

Her magic resistance IS essential in heavy-modded game, as well as ability to cast Resurrection before the game ends and to turn Vampires and, sometimes, Liches.
Mass - healing the party 5+ times is also worth effort. My angry mages simply NEED second divine caster.

 

Like I said, she may be weak for ocmbat, BUT add the fact that she can have tons of GRestorations which fully heals all the party, she can buff/summon/heal, and with EBlades striking true, she can lend a punch easily as well.

Her MR is invaluable, she needs MR to survive enemy spells, and heal/cure the victims.

Turning undead is very neat, and powerful EVEN in ToB!

 

and

and finally...

Then why not take Anomen? He do everything you listed there, plus is better in combat.

 

^I've never pick Anomen and don't even know what he can do . But Viconia doesn't let me down in melee. Often I use her as total-resistant tant to take opponent's spells or kill Golems before reaching high levels.

 

As much as I like Jaheira, I find she's a subpar character. Fighter/druids are not a very good multiclass to begin with, and Jaheira's proficiency allocation is just bad. She needs a strength girdle to offset her mediocre STR. Druids generally get shafted in BG; they trade in countless excellent spells for maybe four good ones (insect x, ironskin, fire elemental and nature's beauty), and they get nowhere near enough memorisation slots because of their messed up level progression. Their first decent spells are fifth level, and there's *two* there, and you have to put up with only having one memorisation slot for each one until Jaheira hits 3 million experience. One ironskin... fantastic. Meanwhile a fighter/mage of the same level has four stoneskins.

I wouldn't even bother comparing a druid with a cleric because of the chasmic difference in their spell loadout. They just aren't interchangeable. For that reason I'll also ignore Cernd. Jaheira is better once she begins to get fighter HLAs, but until then trying to make her into a viable character is like pushing crap uphill.

Aerie is a very powerful, versatile offensive caster with TOB. Cleric/mages are almost in a league of their own, it's like comparing a fighter with a fighter/mage. Unfortunately, I hate her. I find it physically discomforting listing to her squeaky soundset and reading her pathetic, simpering dialog. I find it very difficult to believe that there are people who can actually sit through her entire romance without punching their monitor into a pile of glass.

Anomen I like. Well, not really, since he's an irritating buffoon and almost as difficult to bear as Aerie, but he's a good character and very easy to use. He has one whole extra attack per round over Viconia thanks to his weapon specialisation and fighter levels, which makes him a far better offensive frontline fighter than her, and no, his casting isn't much worse than Viconia's either.

In terms of fighting, Viconia is better than Aerie but significantly worse than Anomen. For offensive casting, she's slightly better than Anomen and plain left in the dust by Aerie later on in the game. So I guess the only reason I use her is because having either Aerie or Anomen in my party makes me irate and miserable. She's a capable offensive cleric. I don't need a party of superheros to win the game, just NPCs that I don't feel the urge to disintegrate every ten minutes.

One thing you ought to credit Viconia with, though, is her magic resistance. She has 65% base, which is very high. Wizard slayers don't ever get that much MR. Give her Kaligun's amulet and a Ring of Gaxx and that's 85%. When everyone else is running around confused and frightened, or standing there stunned and drooling, she can at least pop off a dispel magic.

 

Why don't I get Anomen?

1-He does not have natural MR.
2-He does not have 19DEX which helps a cleric greatly to avoid blows!
3-He does not have infravision.
4-He has a penis.
5-He is the most hated NPC out there.

 

Are you sure ? I think the game developers just "forgot" to implement this like they did with the wisdom saving throw modifiers.
Just writing it in the manual instead of implementing it is cheaper.


EDIT: I guess most players choose Viconia over Anomen because

1.) They see Anomen as rival and get jealous.
2.) They like Viconias: You have so big muscles, I want to sleep with you.

For me Viconia is just a common drow (how boring !). I prefer Aerie because she's somethig special.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Viconia is pure rubbish - I'm just saying she clearly isn't the best choice for a cleric in most parties. If you play a melee heavy party, and you already have three or four frontliners, then the only thing you really need your cleric to do is cast spells, heal, and throw sling stones. Viconia will be more than adequate if used this way. In fact, for such a playing style, she's great, because her high dexterity will allow her excellent hit rolls if you arm her with a sling. Plus, then you don't have to give her great armor either. The black dragon scales will more than do.

Edit: other posters while I was posting!

@Silverstar - except for #2, you're arguing cosmetic points. And with the gauntlets of dexterity, his AC is just as good as Viconias (18 vs. 19 makes no difference in terms of AC).

@ kmonster - Regarding the immunities that elves get, you may be right. I have no idea. I assumed that if they say you got it, you got it. If you don't, disregard my third point on things Viconia has that others don't.

 

Truly saying, Viconia is just alike a girl who I know very well. I COULDN'T leave her.

 

For such a playing style she's far inferior. With slings she gets +3 thac0 for 19 dex. Anomen gets with ** (*****) in slings:

- extra +1(+2) thac0 for specialisation
- extra +2(+4) damage for specialisation
- twice (!!!) as many attacks/round
- extra +3 damage for strength (don't know if it works for all slings)

Viconia's strength isn't a big problem. She can wear any armor if you use the strength spell. I used her as frontliner.

 

I guess I might have touched a nerve with all that Aerie-bashing.

Don't worry dude, I'm sure Aerie thinks you're special too.

 

Something I'm surprised noone's mentioned yet:
She's evil. An evil cleric can turn undead to your side, making them part of your offensive force, or at the very least making them that much easier to destroy since they won't attack you until you've attacked them. However, it's still a matter of preference, since some people love seeing the undead spontaneously explode over using them against others.

The downside of her evilness is the conflicts with most parties. Not only does she leave if your rep gets too high, but noone else likes her; Keldorn will even attack her. Of course she doesn't fit in most parties; she's not supposed to!

Regarding her weakness, it's never been a problem for me. I give her GoOP and she can tank with the best of them. With her high MR, all she needs to worry about is getting hit by weapons, and that's easily covered with good armor and a shield. Sure, she's not the "best" option out there, but personally I don't think any NPC qualifies for that, especially not the annoyance squad.

 

Fun trick with an evil cleric and a mage with limited wish: summon the djinni and have someone with a low WIS talk to it, then choose the "protected from undead right now" option. It summons a bunch of vampires, which you can then turn and use as a small army.

 

(I'm not considering Cernd in most of this. I'll explain why at the bottom.)

Jaheira and Aerie share a drawback. Being multiclass some things about them are just a lot lower level. They both suffer from it but they suffer from it in different ways.

Jaheira's is obvious and that's because she's part druid and they have a problem with leveling up at certain stages. She doubles it and thus hurts herself by that because her druid level gets to be so low compared to others it can be hard to rely on her druid side. She's almost pushed into combat and yet she's more limited than even a cleric on what she can use. I give her props in that the druid thing does back up her fighter thing well though in it's support role to make a pretty damned good one.

Aerie's problem is that Clerics really do have one of the few truely level dependant powers that is really useful whether good or evil. Turn/Control Undead. It takes a lot of extra work to get her to a range where she can do some of the truely impressive feats with this. I Know this isn't the biggest deal but this is part of what I rely on Clerics for myself. She has one other problem as a cleric in my opinion that She is pretty much relegated to spell casting. She's totally wrapped around it though she does have the spell selection to pull it off at least.

Anomen is the one that really holds up to Viconia's caster level. Now that I've tried Ascension I'm tempted to take one of them just to see if it's possible to Turn Bodhi in the final battle stuff. These two are also the only two that really get good selection and use out of their high level spells and they can do it for more of the game (Cernd not included). Which is where I think a cleric shines myself. Clerics do have something like 18 or 20 7th level spells. It kind of sucks when you have to pick like 2 or 3.

Anomen does have Viconia beat in the Combat department however. He needs less buffs and equipment to make himself fight ready and damaging. I do feel like his Wisdom does hurt him if you don't turn him Good however. He's already a natural tank with his fighter levels so it's easy to tend to see him that way. That limits some of his casting to healing if he's in the thick of combat. I've found that even well timed low level healing spells with their quickness can be of benefit at times.

I would agree that the bonuses of 18 Wisdom do get rather unraveled the farther you progress through the game. Those extra spells are nice when your still relying on low level spells but don't mean as much when your into the high level spells regularly. Specially once ToB enters the picture.

Between my own idea of how they stack up and Aldeth's I have to agree with him that perhaps she's not the best. Though I will admit a small part of this is based on the fact that I like to Chunkify things. I don't think she is the worst However. I think her easy to achieve well roundedness puts her up in the position of being one of the best since she's not stuck in one role. The Natural Magic Resistance also helps her and even with just 50% it can be a coveted Bonus that we try to achieve with Equipment. She does better than that number.

The abundance of items in the game that fill the things that she needs make it so that her worst flaws are overcome. The Equipment that others are using for resistances add to her resistances which doesn't deminish the boon her resistances give her. She's strong at the Protective thing even if she can't match the fighters. But then isn't Anomen's only real bonus there the fact that he has experience as a real fighter?

I put Jaheira at the bottom because it's almost like if she were a fighter with a couple of special powers for Stone Skin and insect plague then she'd pretty well be almost the same. I really do tend to think of her as an oddly kitted fighter more than anything when I'm trying to pick a party.


Cernd I have trouble Classifying. He does some things extremely well. He's lost a couple of valuable and usable spells and powers just by being a Druid. But depending on what your doing with him and how. He's got drastic drawbacks but they aren't consistant. As A Spellcaster he is pretty damned good. Get over that level hurdle and he's got a lot of high level spells that can be quite destructive or disruptive to the enemy. Problem is that he can't wear armor and he's weak as all get out. Both in dealing out and recieving hits. Stone skin would be an outright requirement and it still wouldn't totally fix the problem. He would need so much equipment on him that it would never be worth it in a million years.

However. you shape shift him to his GW form that he gets pretty quick. All his big problems go away for a Cleric. Number of hits a turn. Extremely physically impressive without any equipment what so ever. His AC is rather impressive before any bolstering equipment. He's even the only character that naturally heals. It's a really nice bonus. HOwever this one has a drawback just as drastic. He's basically become a non-spell caster. At high level thanks to being a druid he's got a lot of benefits that make him really strong and stack with his form.

Cernd is really all or nothing either way you do it. Which is something that really should be put in big red letters all over him. He's a great fighter for being a cleric. He's a great caster. Can't chunkify undead but I can be forgiving. But he takes coming up with unique tactics all his own or since he can't be both at once you relegate him to being part of himself primarily. I tend to use him as a big furry tank myself.

 

Just to definitively answer the speculation above, elven sleep and charm resistances are not implemented in BG2. This is one of the bugs we address in the upcoming Fixpack.

 

Viconia's all about the lovin'. Unless, of course, your character can't romance her. I tried to play a human female berserker/cleric (dual-class to cleric at level 9) which turned out ok, except that no church in Athkatla would accept her--despite her having switched to a cleric long before acquiring any stronghold was an option. That kind of ruined it for me, and I quit playing her. She was quite deadly with the Flail of the Ages, which was nice.