Evil party questions

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I'm thinking about trying an evil party with the usual suspects; Viconia, Korgan and Edwin. Never tried it, so I was wondering about a few things...

I'll of course include "Binky" when he comes along. I'd also like to have Immy around to see how she reacts to him. Can she handle an evil party?

What sort of Reputation am I looking at if I consistently do the evil thing (which may not always be the smart thing)? I don't want the constant bother of the guard attacking me. At what point do they attack?

Is there anything in particular I have to look out for when playing an evil party?

 

You mean he becomes Evil but not Fallen? I had my sights set on this, until I read that a Fallen Ranger loses all of his spells and that choosing any of the Evil options in Hell would result in a Fallen Ranger. Is it specific to that test?

Doesn't a Ranger become Fallen when Reputation goes below 4 or so?

Still, as much as I love a tank with Iron Skins and the Flail of Ages... been there, done that. I think I'll roll up a Thief this time.

 

Say... what is good equipment for these people?

Korgan is an axe dwarf, right? Axe of the Unyielding and K'logarath are awesome but they can only be found towards the end of the game, and Azuredge can only be used by Good guys. The Rifthome Axe won't be available since I plan to side with the Shadow Thieves. What's a Korgan to do? I suppose Tarnor the Hatchetman (of the sewer party) has a throwing axe +2...

Viconia has no Weapon Specialization and rather mediocre Hit Points, so I guess she'll be relegated to sling duty and maybe occasionally whacking people with Crom Faeyr.

Sarevok is also a tough choice. Soul Reaver and Gram, the Sword of Grief are at the top of their line but still only so-so, and crossbows are slow.

 

In trademeet you can buy the dwarven thrower (throwing hammer) -- awesome weapon for Korgan.

Duel wield Korgan with Crom Faeyr in the off hand. Use the best axe you have in the main hand. Don't waste Crom Faeyr on a non-combatant like Viconia.

Do not play an evil thief. You cannot side with Bodhi (which is the main lure of an evil character). Take Jan (he's all the thief you'll need) and play an evil monk or barbarian. If you play the monk make sure you side with the fish king. Take Sarevok in ToB.

 

Ah, the famous Dwarven Thrower! I wonder if the FixPack made it do Blunt damage as per the Baldurdash tweaks.

Makes sense. It'll likely be slings and the Defender of Easthaven in case something gets too close, then.

I have already started a Thief (well... a Kensai that just dualled to Thief). I always sided with Bodhi in the past and I wish to try the other side now.

I do not consider the Shadow Thieves to be "good guys" at all. Or even the lesser evil. Just a different evil, perhaps the devil you know. They're thieves and murderers.

 

You can give Viconia the Mauler's Arm (raises wielder's strength to 18), which you can buy from Bernard in the Copper Coronet. Even in good gear I wouldn't call her a meatshield, but as long as you have some other tough NPC in the frontline (like Korgan) her good dex and high AC makes her great at taking some of pressure off Korgan. She can also hit pretty hard once her level is high enough and you can devote some of her spell slots to cleric self-buffs.

Once of the best early game axes you can give Korgan is the Frostreaver, from De 'Arnise Keep. It does extra poison/cold damage, effective against trolls and mages with Stoneskin on.

Lots of good early-mid/late game two-handed swords around. The Sword of Chaos, Lilarcor, the Vorpal Blade/Silver Sword, Soul Reaver, etc. Gram, the Sword of Grief is easily one of the most damaging weapons in the game.

 

To go back to one of your earlier questions about being attacked by the guard, I think that only happens if your reputation falls below 4. So you have a lot of room to work with. None of the NPCs you listed, including Imoen, will leave at that reputation. Truth be told, even when you play as an evil character, you'll have to take an active hand at keeping your reputation low, unless you simply chose not to do a whole bunch of quests.

While it is certainly the more evil option to side with Bodhi, you suffer no reputation hit for doing so. In fact, there are exactly two quests in the whole game that I'm aware of where there is an evil option that results in a loss of reputation. In Trademeet you can chose to poison the grove instead of facing Faldorn in a pit battle. (This also costs you the fueding families quest, but you can still do the Skin Dancer quest, provided you exposed Reijik back in the Bridge District.)

The other is a small quest - Buried Alive. Instead of releasing the victim, you can ransom her off yourself. Other than that, there's nothing quest related in whole of SoA that you can do that will cost you reputation, other than senseless slaughter of innocents. So you sort of have to take matters into your own hands. Starting in Chapter 4, when you can turn into the Slayer, do so. Each time you do it, your reputation drops. Secondly, while it doesn't make much RP sense to engage in the senseless slaughter of innocents, there's nothing wrong with selective slaughter. For example, no one could really fault you for killing Lady DeArnise (Nalia's Aunt). Mace to the face for her.

Some other comments - to me there is absolutely no point in taking along a single classed thief, and the only point in taking along a dual classed thief is if you want to get a kit from some other class. (So in this case, I don't mind the choice of Kensai-Thief. At what level did you switch?)

To me thieves are the best multi classed option in the game, simply because you get so many skill points you soon have everything that you need covered - even if you don't count additional skill improvements from various items you find - and you still get the special trap options as HLAs. You also definitely want to pick up assassination as an HLA. For a straight thief, assassination is a crap HLA because you'll never have more than two melee attacks per round, but in the hands of a multi or dual classed thief, it's the bomb.

One other point about playing a thief - even if you COULD side with Bodhi, you probably wouldn't want to as you'd lose your stronghold. (Granted, for the purposes of this character that won't matter as you get the stronghold of your original class, but just pointing out that if you did play a straight thief or a mutli-classed thief this wouldn't be the way to go anyway.)

 

I suppose it'll have to do for the short term.

Ooh, good tip! Thanks!

I consider all of them rather mediocre by the time you find them, mostly because they use up two hands. You essentially trade in -5AC for a few points of damage (though not being able to switch to bows while holding a shield is a total bother).

Hilarious, isn't it? I installed a mod that has Neutral characters make "happy" comments when Reputation is in the "average" region, and Jaheira and Jan would suddenly compliment me after backstabbing an innocent passerby.

I wish the game would track Fame and Infamy instead of Reputation. If I were Korgan I wouldn't mind being famous (free booze and women), and if I were a storekeep I'd definitely offer discounts to infamous bastards (I'd rather piss off paladins...)

I initially dualled at 8 even before I had met Yoshimo, but then I decided to restart for a variety of reasons (including having second thoughts about letting Jaheira rot in her cage - would still like to do her quest) and now I plan to dual at 9.

 

Using +6 weapons is, IMO, vastly superior to using a shield. A +6 weapon blows through absolute immunity. The Silver Sword (only +3 but it's the best weapon in the game when you get it -- even better than Carsomyr +5) and Ravager are in particular extremely beneficial in that both will behead their opponents a significant amount of the time. Carsomyr dispels magic on a hit and Staff of the Ram does incredible damage. By the time you get these weapons the bad guys are hitting you every attack even with a shield. But early on a shield can be very effective for one character -- as long as that character is the first seen by the enemy.

 

I couldn't agree with this more.

In SoA, once you start getting very good AC on some characters, you can effectively make them very difficult to hit. It would require an AC of better than -10, and ideally more like -14 or -15, but possible.

In ToB, even run of the mill enemies that you encounter have THAC0s in the negative teens. Meaning it really doesn't matter if you have an AC of -15, 0 or 10. You'll be hit with almost every attack.

In fact, upon reaching ToB, I tend to make just that switch with most of my characters. Jaheira switches from Blackblood to some type of staff - sometimes Staff of the Woodlands or Staff of the Ram, or I'll stick Belm in her offhand to give her an additional attack with her main hand. Similarly, it's a good time to make Korgan into a dual wielder as well. (It just so happens that at about the same time you pick up Crom Faeyr, you'll have 3 proficiency points in two weapon style, and multiple points in war hammers.)

 

This is why I love Fighter/Mages so much. They can take so much more punishment.

So...

I've been getting my Evil on. So far, it has been... rather inconvenient. I missed out on lots of easy XP, and shopkeepers charge an arm and a leg. I'm even considering donating to temples just to get my Rep out of the hole. I could have saved 8k gold already if I had done this earlier (and that's including the cost of the donations themselves!) I guess I am (to quote Dr. Evil) the diet coke of evil; just one calorie, not evil enough. I can't turn down a good thing. This has already happened a few times:

NPC: "I need someone to slay a bunch of treasure-laden critters for me. Oh, and I have this mountain of gold burning a hole in my pocket."
Me: "I guess we'll do it."
NPC: "Did I mention it's for a good cause, oh noble heroes?"
Edwin, Korgan & Viconia: "WTFBBQ noes!!1!"

 

Evil doesn't have to be about psychotic tendencies and always doing the "wrong" thing. The former implies deep psychological issues and the latter simply implies a rebellious spirit, an unwillingness to conform. I fail to see how an evil person would not be doing good things, as long as it ultimately benefits him/her. Evil is an extreme form of selfishness imo, and sacrificing personal gain for the sake of acting "evil" goes against that. Unless you're in theater.

An evil person can be a saint 80% of the time and then willingly kill an innocent or destroy a town, without pity and remorse, when he/she feels that he/she has more to gain by doing so. Besides, betrayal is easily one of the worst evil acts.

 

That is what High Charisma and the "Friends" Spell is for. And the Blade of Roses(+2 Cha). Just equip it before talking to merchants. You can easily get cheap stuff with an evil party without upsetting your RPing ways of evil.

 

D&D always had very ambiguous definitions of Evil and Neutrality. Consider the following scenario:

You find an unconscious man alongside the road. Looks like he he was roughed up a little, but it's not life-threatening. What do you do?

1. Wake him up, give him your last healing potion and all the money you needed to rent a room for the night.
2. Wake him up and tell him to go home.
3. Keep walking. Not your problem.
4. Rob him. You could use the money.
5. Kick him for spoiling your afternoon walk.
6. Kill him. Just because you can.
7. Torture him for days.

Depending on which section of which book you read, 4 can be considered Neutral but 3 can be considered Evil.

As for this game in particular, I'm trying to play a selfish character with a mean streak. The problem is... usually, the selfish answer is the "nice" answer.

Uhm, no. Rep 5 + Friends + Blade of Roses = 115%. See this chart.

 

Wow, you almost have to be trying to get your rep that low. And there's no reason to keep it that low. The evil NPCs start to complain once you reach 13, and I do find that annoying, so I usually try and keep my reputation at 12 or lower. With an evil party, I tend to shoot for right around 10, so at least I don't get a penalty when shopping. High charisma and decent rep mean affordable stuff generally.

Once you hit ToB, your reputation is pretty much meaningless. Sure, you'll have to deal with merchants to sell stuff, but you won't actually be purchasing much of anything from merchants. Pretty much all the new gear you acquire in ToB will be from bodies of enemies or crafted by Cespenar, and he doesn't charge more if you have a low reputation.

I agree that you don't have to play as a psychotic killer to RP an evil character. For example, even Korgan is disgusted by the slavers you discover in the Slums. "Even I would nay sell children!" I suppose selfish is as good a definition as any. Basically, they look out for their own self-interest first in most matters, be it safety, profit, whatever. From this perspective, you could even argue that an evil character would see benefit of being regarded positively - or at least not negatively - he would feel he's gaming the system.

 

Of course with Rep 5. But I think you mistake my intent. If your Rep is 5 then Rep 5 is your own fault. It is not necessary with an evil party to have a low Rep. Of course, if you are playing a slaughter the innocents with no regard for consequences type of party(much fun!) then yes, obviously you will struggle with Rep and pricing. But most evil parties I ahve tried did not suffer from very low Rep. As Aldeth has pointed out, there is really only 2 choices in SoA that will lower your Rep beyond slaughtering random NPCs around the City. So why have Rep 5 to begin with?