RPing Charname, what class to choose?

Remove all ads!

Wow, nice pick-up, Caradhras. After going through the game a few times, I don't read the scrolls like I used to!

 

This comes straight from the intro and supports the idea of a Bard. Bard is not only about jolly songs. Bards collect and tell stories, often through song, and their ultimate goal is to write their own big story, that will be told by other bards, preferably a song that has to do with adventures the Bard had himself or at least witnessed first hand.

Also, the biography of a Bard, which is the same as for a multi-class, talks about how you developed your acting skills, having to play all chars of the grand adventures you enacted yourself, seeing there were few other kids your age.

Being a roguish char, a Bard makes sense from the point of view of having grown up together with Imoen.

The fact you became a bard instead of a thief is the fact she was more around Winthrop and you more around Gorion, which is clearly stated in Imoen's bio.

You also did all kinds of little tasks for people around candlekeep, and you seem well acquainted with the guards, which explains well the wide variety of weapons a bard is acquainted with.

 

Damn, Meat, you make a really strong argument for a bard there. And it's general enough that any kit fits(in BGII)!

 

@Meatdog: -just for the sake of argument- listening to tales doesn't make one a great storyteller.

I still believe that Druids (unless you dual later) do not fit in the picture, the argument about the "retired ranger" (nice one Chevalier) was quite convincing still I believe it is slightly awkward for Charname to be a fulltime ranger (favorite enemy: rats??? -this one is for Felinoid).

 

I'm sure you could reasonably choose spiders as a favored enemy.

 

@Klorox: where do you find spiders? (they can only be found in the catacombs)... you could always learn about any monster in books, Elminster's ecology? Nay, a bookish ranger! arf!

 

Oh, I wasn't talking about the giant kind, I'm talking about little tiny ones that make cobwebs around books that don't get read often.

 

Arachnophobia has got to be as common as people with brown eyes. I think spiders as the racial enemy is the most justifiable of all the choices. As I am sure the PC has heard many a yarn of giant spiders that terrorize the Cloakwood forest just to the north of Candlekeep.

 

I think Ogre would be a reasonable choice. After all, the first time you meet any, they kill your mentor/father. I'd say that's enough for a burning hatred to begin festering.

I think Caradhas' idea of learning about monsters in books is a really good one. The PC could be browsing through some sort of bestiary or monstrous manual *snicker* and find a monster that he/she found so repugnant and offensive to his/her sensibilities that he/she would instantly hate them.

P.S. Rats are too stringy. I prefer birds for the challenge.

 

It's too bad you can't choose "human." You'd definitely get the most use out of that one.

 

@Klorox: lmao I'd pick Halfling and go berserk at Gullykin!

 

Actually, I made a little mistake in my post, although it doesn't really influence my points. The biography of the Bard is not the same as that of a multi-class. Apparently, you were inspired by the storytelling of Gorion, but not the stories, more the way he told. Your singing you learned from a cook in Candlekeep, though Gorion ushered you to find another teacher before ruining your voice.

Now, this makes perfect sense, you got inspired, and then perfected your knowledge from the books, and I'm sure Imoen would have been glad to be your audience for your performance, as would be the guards, since everybody knows they like some amusement.

Now, the biography tries to give an explanation for the druid. It says you were especially drawn to tales of the wild, that you found dried, exotic flowers in the tomes you read, and that you longed to leave the keep to praise the Earthmother in her natural environment. This, however, to me, does not give a satisfactory explanation. A Druid would need to pass alot of trials and ceremonies to be initiated. On top of that, there is no way you could have learned the secrets of the druids you need to be a druid and which they keep very secret, like their language. Now, there is something to say for learning the druidic ways from Jaheira, but the language is the main point. She is not high enough to decide on her own to just teach you druidic, as teaching it to an outsider is a capital penalty and I'm pretty sure you can't become a druid without spending alot of initiation in a grove, something not possible from the game point of view.

Ranger on the other hand is possible, imo. You spend alot of time in the towers of the keep with the animals, as well as helping in the stables. If you take rats as your racial enemy (dunno if this is possible) it even makes sense, as the rat hunting task you get in the prologue, if you read the journal, then it's clear this wasn't the first time you went rat chasing in the keep.

On the Paladin, I have to disagree with Chev. Being visited/touched by a deity is not enough to make you a paladin. It gives you the calling, but the calling without the formation does not make you a paladin. Here too, there are oaths to be sworn, formations to be had, to truly call oneself a paladin, instead of a LG fighter/cleric.

I'm not feeling into doing a full analysis atm of all classes. But maybe in a next post I'll cover some other classes, although to my feeling, Bard makes the most sense. I even started a game of BG now as a Human Bard cause of this thread, which came right on time, as I couldn't chose what class to play.

I actually had a first idea, which was less based on how you start out, as well as what happens in totsc. It was to start out as a druid (can always take the approach you felt called and Jaheira completed your formation somehow) and on importing into bg2, you'd chose the Shifter kit. This'd make sense, if you assume you got infected on the werewolf island. It'd make you a rather unusual Shifter, as you didn't become infected on purpose but by accident, which is kinda against the description of the class, but not against the idea.

 

I only read the first few posts for now because I just installed the game again and want to go play rather soon, but here's my two cents after having read that much.

I feel absolutely any class could be feasably chosen for Charname because they kept it so open even in the backstory that you could do things that would make you a Druid, a Mage...whatever. You could go explore whenever you came up with a good enough reason to leave the walls of Candlekeep so you could run across anything out there. Of course if it were written in a book just what Charname encountered back then, of course Gorion would show up just in the nick of time to save you, but... regardless of all of this the only thing I'm not understanding how it would come about is any type of Chaotic alignment... i know that's not class but still, I'm not going to rule it out as a possibility, but considering the environment, the people... Charname must've been hanging out with the guy on the east of Candlekeep who has the rat problem in the beginning to get a Chaotic alignment.

 

Druid isn't as unfeasible as you make it out to be, Meatdog.

First of all, 2nd edition AD&D didn't consider you a "real" druid until 9th level or so; you were a druid class, but not an official Druid, so far as other druids were concerned... you were still in your training period.

Secondly, remember that Druid in 2nd edition AD&D is a specialty priest of a deity. Most of their abilities are granted powers, not accumulated knowledge. Now, obviously, in Candlekeep you'd have a fair amount of book knowledge, and a connection to a deity (the Earthmother, apparently, who is probably the weirdest choice they could've made; it's an aspect of Chauntea who is only worshipped in a group of islands off the coast), but it's feasible that your beginning powers come from simple devotion to the wild.

And I don't find Paladin a problem at all... assuming you do have that connection to a deity, pretty much any rationale for a fighter or cleric will work for a paladin... they're just more charismatic, and strictly tied to law and good.

 

Bingo.

Keep in mind that the Paladin's special abilities are innate as a result of their goodness, not taught. They have to wait until 9th level to get any actual spells, and by that time they would surely have been accepted into an order. (Any paladin who did not attempt to become part of an order would not be LG, and thus would not be a paladin.)

 

@Meatdog: "rats" was a joke, there are no giant rats in BG
Your idea about a Shapeshifter is really good what could be done by tampering a bit with the game: create a Fighter, dual him to Druid under Jaheira's influence and then pick up the Shapeshifter kit in BG2 (using SK of course).
I'd definitely like the idea of a Berserker/Shapeshifter!

 

I disagree that all paladins would attempt to become part of an order, Felinoid; they may, but it may be that their personal crusade isn't in line with the goals of an order, so rather than disrupt the order of the order, he stays with himself, following his God's dictates (and maybe working with the order as their paths cross).

 

Only if there was no order for his specific God, or his God ordered him not to. Because if there is an order, and he refuses to join, he's being CG. If the order is no longer true to his God, so he refuses to join with the unrighteous, that still makes him NG. To be LG in that situation, he would either attempt to bring the order back to the true path, or he would form an order of his own, converting people to the faith.

 

I disagree; he would join the Order if ordered to, but I don't think that joining an order is necessarily part of being a paladin. It isn't a chaotic act to not join an order if you have no pressing reason to belong to one, and you can still support an order without being part of it.

 

Unless he's the messiah or something like that, the Order would be the closest link he has to his deity. I can't imagine any true paladin not joining if he had a choice.
Not to mention that paladins are required to tithe 10% of their earnings to their church (by 2e rules). That alone would require him to choose an Order. Refusing the tithe results in becoming a fallen paladin.