Help me with a new playthrough

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My last game is still going but I'm already planning on my next one with Mazzy, Viconia, Valygar, Haer'Dalis and Imoen (perhaps Yoshimo earlier) (that's include mostly character that I've been rather impressed with in my last game but had to dump to the experience gap being to big or replacemenets for the dissapointmens (Annoymen anyone?)
What kind of PC would go well with that group? Paladin seems good, but also kind lame from a roleplaying perspective (perhaps because I also wanted to include Keldorn but find out I have no place).
My second question would be about weapon proficiencies for this group. I've found a lot of really cool but unusal weapons I coudn't really use due to the profficiencies being already wested on obvious staff like swords, etc.

 

Actually, I like to play paladins. They're a great role playing choice for BG2.

Weapons....

You'll have a slight problem with HD and Mazzy -- they both use short swords. You can shift HD easier than Mazzy.

Valygar -- ** Katana, *** two weapon fighting, ** Hammer, other good weapons are scimitar, axes and long swords. I believe he also has long bow.
Viconia -- (slight spoiler: save often with Valygar in the group) Sling, Flail, Mace, one-handed weapon, and weapon and shield.
HD -- He should have two weapon style and short swords. Give him other one handed weapons -- don't worry about overlapping with Valygar and Viconia, club may be a good choice as well. You can combine a certain scimitar with a specific short sword and really get a lot of attacks (at only +2).
Mazzy -- make her a two-handed weapon goddess (if your PC is not going to be one). Halberds are great. Two handed sword. Spear is an interesting choice as well (but Valygar may have that). Two-handed weapon style. She can always shift to short sword and shield if she needs extra AC boost for a battle. You already have two dual wielders, you don't need another. Plus she is really most affective as an archer -- Tuigan is awesome in her hands.
Imoen -- staves. You won't have many choices, just pick whatever (it really won't matter); you'll have dagger and dart by the end.

[Charname] -- do something different, go Monk. You have two arcane casters, one thief, three good tanks, a healer ... you may as well play something interesting. Just make sure you don't take the portal out of spellhold and do side with the King in the underwater city. Sorcerer might be fun. Also shapeshifter ....

 

The first thing that comes to mind for me is that you're severly lacking Arcane casters in the beginning (only Haer'Dalis and he's "only" a bard from a casting perspective). Melee should be very well covered with Mazzy and Valygar, who also excells with a bow. For that party, I would go with a Sorcerer probably, alot of fun, very powerful.

That beeing said, you don't "need" more casters, it's just my way of playing SoA

Also, if you decide to add Keldorn... *Spoiler*

Spoiler

Don't bring Viconia.

 

Yes dear friend, you are indeed light on arcane magic, which plays a very important role, especially later in the game.

To be perfectly honest, the party seems a bit light on tanks too. Mazzy can tank, and Haer-Dalis can be a decent damage-dealer and his defensive spin is all right in short bursts, but I'm unsure that anyone else in that group would be solid enough to frontline in the longer term.

Have you thought about making CHARNAME a multi-class fighter-MU, such as an elf F/MU, or gnome F/IL? Once you get stoneskin, you should be good-to-go on the tanking front (plus mirror image and haste, of course). Dak'kon's Zerth katana (from the Promenade bonus merchant) was just made for F/MUs!

 

To be honest, I've found out that a good group of tanks does just good enough with minimal level of arcane support. Thought I would probably need some arcane spellcaster before getting Immy and Hear'Dalis. Perhaps I will take Aerie for a while?
I'm also more and more inclined to enchange Mazzy for Keldorn.
Not to thrilled about getting a F/M CHAR, as it's to much like my bards characters (I've played a lot of bardic chars you see, I'm trying to defeat addiction ), expect with much slower level-ups if multi.
What about Berserker? Would fit role-playing wise and enchanced my tanking abilities.

 

There's nothing wrong (and everything right!) with having solid tanks in your party, dear friend. You just have to add them in there, first.

Just about any melee class will be fine as CHARNAME. Berserkers are quite powerful and their immunities are very useful for fighting liches and beholders and such. Barbarians' rage is also good for this (but not quite as good as berserkers); however, a half-orc barbarian with 19s in STR and CON can, with innate Draw Upon Holy Might and barbarian raging, temporarily hit 25s in both(!). Both are good tanking choices, and so are paladins and vanilla rangers.

But you might want to toss in a wizard somewhere too, as you mention.

Aerie is a CL/MU so she can potentially fill 2 roles as both a divine and arcane caster (and do neat tricks like put chromatic orb and doom into a high-level trigger to insta-kill enemies that fail to make their saves), though her stats are a bit weaker than others (I believe she has 16s in both WIS and INT...? I don't recall...) and not everyone likes her personality. But fortunately, you can get her to join you fresh out of the Irenicus dungeon.

 

Aerie does have at least for 16 for Wisdom and Intelligence so she is a capable caster.

Also there are a few (rare) times when you can raise a character's intelligence or wisdom (which tends to make her even more competent), but these are few and far between (like the machine in the tower).

It is possible to get Viccy and Keldorn through an area in the same party but you need to keep saving a game you can go back to in case they start to threaten to get into a fight.

Also I found that if you pick up Viccy later in SoA rather than sooner this gives you a chance to get her to change alignments prior to getting a symbol at the right lvl. This means she keeps a symbol and the ability to use it after becoming non-evil. The price for this is that I picked her up late so that she wouldn't have that many levels prior to ToB (giving me the time to get her to alignment change before she received the symbol).

 

isn't it easier to use the part of bg2tweaks which allows conflicting party members without them resorting to fights?

 

Actually I never uploaded that. I usually play mod-free anyway.

Besides sometimes I don't mind if a fight happens if it is between party members where I would prefer it (Viccy just isn't usually one of them).