Solo Blade

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After getting bored of a Beserker-Cleric and a Fighter Illusionist solo attempts, I have soloed a Chaotic Neutral Bard through BG1 and am planning on soloing my now blade through BG2 also.

I have just begun chapter two and have got the Playhouse , I am proficient in longswords and katanas (+3 points in dual-weilding). It will prove a hefty challenge, most noteably the mind flayers, and I was wondering what advice anyone had in terms of items, tactics, spells, if any one has soloed a bard before etc - cheers.

 

http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/Scythesongs_Guide_to_Blades.zip

Also use the search engine to look in the Throne of Bhaal forum for it, it's not just for decorations.

And btw the Blade is probably one of the easiest classes to solo, it would certainly qulify in the top five of cheese at the very least.

 

It depends on weather you're powergaming or roleplaying to the max.

Of course, the Bladesinger Chain/Elven Chain would be a suitable armor. I'm currently playing a Blade in a 5 ppl party, dual-wielding Celestial Fury and Dakkon's Zerth Blade (bonus merchant iirc).
The Ring of Wizardry is nice for casters, though I'm not 100% that Bards can use it. You gotta have Jaheira in temporarly too.

Otherwise, just go for the boots of speed, ring of gaxx, some strength-belt since, imo, a Blade should have quite low Str and let the spell Strength boost it until a strength girdle is found.

Oh yea, illusion-spells, mainly mislead and shadow door are always useful when soloing

 

spetznaz, roleplaying a Bard to the max roughly means powergaming it to the max.
This means using a weapon as cheesy as the reload button itself - foreknowledge, and using a Bard to his best potential, ie powergaming.
His very high lore value has other uses besides instant item identification.

 

What else does it do??

 

Interesting point, if I understand correctly - a powergaming excuse

 

Scythesong Immortal
How do you mean roleplaying a blade means is roughly powerplaying it at the same time?

As i see it these two things are very much different. Powerplaying means you are using metagaming knowledge - you know there are many items in the game that increase your strenght, so you wont give your blade a high strenght. Same goes for weapon proficencies. You know what weapons are the best and you choose the right category. Roleplaying just isnt done like that.

I'd really like to hear what you meant with the sentence above.

 

I agree with the powerplaying comment. Strictly speaking, if you're NOT powerplaying (and I'm sure there must be a couple of us out there that have tried this strange concept) then you don't reroll your stats at the start of the game to reflect items you know will boost the lower stats. I generally don't give two hoots for whatever Charisma my PC has because I know my first stop after leaving Irenicus' Dungeon will be the circus tent where I'll pick up a ring that gives me Charisma 18. I also don't bother that much with Strength because I know I'll pick up more than enough items later on (whether belts or hammers) that give me an amazing Strength score. I generally go for the Constitution and Dexterity stats.

 

I dont have throne of Bhaal, nor do i have any item uprgades, addons etc. I'm trying to roleplay a bit - i have maxed out strength (plus tome from BG1) and am dualling longswords - which IMHO is the most blade like weapon.

My familiars (a Cat) stealth ability is extremely handy, as is his magic resistance and bonus hitpoints - I dont know why they are disliked so much.

 

Er, hate to ask this again but what does Lore do except identify items???

 

Lore is knowledge of the world of Faerun I think...it's what allows you to identify magic items since you know their distinguishing marks etc. High lore = you know an absolute shedload about magic artifacts, their history, and where they're likely to be found. Thus Scythe says 'My blade would know where to find all these awesome items, so I'll just go grab them immediately'.

 

Bard is in a way meant for power. Some features from this class, some from that and from yet another one... for a jack of all trades that it is when put together.

However, I'm not aware of any uses of Lore in BG2 other than item identification

 

I'm fairly sure that Scythesong was using the Lore attribute of a Bard to give an excuse for powergaming. (ie: High lore = knowledge = knows enough about the world perhaps to make "non-roleplaying" choices )

 

What Jhonka and Lynx Lupo said.
(I thought I made that clear, but I mixed up the sentences.)
It's one of the reasons why the class is so newbie unfriendly, and why only people with a working knowledge of BG2 could truly appreciate it. That, and the fact that the "ins and outs" of the class aren't that apparent especially very early in the game, as casey suggested.
This is not to discourage newbies, however, since discovering the game for the first few times will always be more fun that doing it for the nth time.

Sorry for the late response everybody, but the last two times I tried to post in this thread I got hacked off the internet.
Was there a downtime in SP yesterday?

Anyway,Sparhawk got the idea right. The Bard may not be sure exactly where an item or artifact can be found, but he should know it would be somewhere in Amn.
But the concept of lore doesn't stop with just items and artifacts - by the time a solo Bard escapes Irenicus' Dungeon you could easily justify killing Kangaax with a Protection from Undead and a Summon Fire Elemental scroll.

[ February 15, 2004, 05:32: Message edited by: Scythesong Immortal ]