Recommend an evil dual-class; more questions

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Thanks for all the suggestions, I'll take them all in consideration.

As for dual-wielding vs sword and shield style. As I understand it, dual-wielding is, at best, an extra attack per round with a penalty of 2 to THAC0 on it, with the weapon of your choice. (Ok so that's pretty sweet .)

However, Sword and Shield style is, at best, a -4 AC bonus vs missile weapons + the AC bonuses for the shield (up to -5), + whatever magical effects the shield has, some of which are very good like "Immune to charm, confusion, domination, and hold person" (Shield of Harmony +2) or "+10% resistance to fire, cold, acid, and poison" (Darksteel Shield +4).

My favorite would be Two-Handed Style due to the sheer damage output (improved critical range, great base damage output on 2h-swords + low speed factor) but there are no worthy two-handed weapons available to Fighter/Clerics, Mage/Thieves, etc.

So it pretty much boils down to Two-Handed fighting vs Sword and Shield style. From what I've read around the net, people seem to assume the former is way better. This doesn't seem all that obvious to me. Which one would you take and why?

 

Concerning the weapon style choice there has been much discussion already.

The overall consensus seems to be (from the powerplay view), that dualwielding is the optimum in most cases.
It can be rivaled or even surpassed by 2-handed style when putting into account feats like greater whirlwind (a ToB HLA) or improved haste.
But even then, dual wielding has the benefit that the second weapon can deliver useful stats on top of your first weapon.

Spoiler

E.g., there are three 1H weapons out there that grant you one extra attack
(so when dualwielding one of them that woud be an amazing two extra attacks).
Now a cleric can't use any of them but a combination like Crom Faeyr in offhand for an amazing 25 strength, and
Flail of Ages is already very powerful. FoA +3 is available very early in SoA.

Sword and shield is not bad at all, but overall there are more weapons with nice abilities than there are shields.

But in the end it is all about personal play style.
Btw if going for Sword and Shield I wouldn't even consider putting points into this style, because the benefit isn't that good, I'd rather put points into another weapon category.

 

My main character type other than mage is paladin so I general go towards the good characters-and generally act the part.

One can be interested in getting good stuff and taking care of yourself/making sure you don't go broke without going into the evil realm especially to the point where the point of your character is questionable anyway (just one bad guy winning over another).





Dual-classing does eat up a lot of time in terms of getting your 1st class up and running while you do your first class.

But as someone familiar with the game, unless you are playing tutu there is some satisfaction in getting a fighter or cleric (first class)/specialist mage (2nd class) because you can do it in BG1 and the game lets you but tutu and SoA do not.


A decent dual-class is a ranger (first class)/cleric. There are decent enough blunt weapons that it works dual-weapon wise.

This means you may have reconsider the evil bit, but I don't understand the pull towards that anyway.

 

"Face It, You're Actually 'Neutral Evil'" - How To Be An Adventurer, book found in the Black Raven Monastery (Icewind Dale 2).

It's a real eye-opener, along with such gems as:

Nah I just want to make something different. I played BG1 twice as good and BG2 three times as good. Am currently LPing IWD2 with a good-aligned party. Also I don't think the center point of the plot in BG is "defeat the bad guy", but rather "you're a Child of Bhaal, what do you make of that?" Whether good or evil is (supposedly) up to you. Yeah the game is heavily skewed towards good characters, but that's where the "Neutral" bit comes in; I might actually do a lot of good actions (to finish quests that have no evil path - most quests), but in the end it's just for my own advancement.

 

I don't have the game you mentioned so I don't know what the book says.

If you're curious I can get that.

You're correct on the neutral part-how to finish a quest that results in a "neutral" ending?

I once had a thief/cleric neutral evil gnome for ToB (finished it with other characters but not this one.... at least at this point) but as part of the background story I decided to say the gnome disliked Cyric and was/is a follower of Kelemvor (who was still grandfathering in older clerics).

Even in those games where the where I joined the Talos temple it turned out badly for them (usually I cheated to join and then did the reverse of the last mission they want you to do in SoA).... so even when my character wasn't exactly Lawful Good it didn't pay for Talos folks (practically any of them) to be anywhere in the vicinity.

 

Actually I worded that wrong, I don't mean "Neutral" as in "between good and evil". I mean a "neutral" evil character (as opposed to a chaotic or lawful one) is one that doesn't care about doing evil things per say, he's motivated solely by greed; pure, unaltered greed.

So he might, for example, help the local Church of Lathander, for the experience and monetary reward, only to slay its leader right after because he was wearing a nice helmet.

The "How to be an Adventurer" book doesn't actually contain any of the listed chapters, it's just a list of funny chapter titles. But I couldn't help but agree with "Face it, you're actually neutral evil".

 

If is a funny title. But I don't think its right, hence the missing substance.

 

I like neutral evil... its purely being insane, imo; whimsical and fickle. Sort of like possessing the intelligence of an adult, but the emotions of a child.

This reminded me of the dark assassin half-orc mentioned earlier. Personally, I think the son of the lord of murder (who was originally an assassin) seems more befitted to a shadowy assassin/warrior than a goodey-two-shoes paladin. Not that there's anything wrong with being a paladin, but there's nothing wrong with being evil either.

 

That is very awesome. How much time does he spend dressing up in the morning?

 

Thief/Mage.

All the cruelty and cunning of an assassin, with a great amount of magical power. Perfect for the PC.

 

Jester is cool -the laughing offspring of the God of Murder. Killing and singing at the same time, causing madness with songs and tunes. Pretty evil if you ask me.