Does anybody ever take the "not till much later" NPCs?

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I tend to run the "vanilla party", being myself, Minsc, Dynaheir, Khalid, Jaheira and Imoen. Three pairs of duo's, who have a background with their partners, which I find interesting.

Only deviation from this setup is that I sometimes switch Khalid with Kivan, but from a roleplaying standpoint, entering a house, kicking Khalid from the group, and leaving the house before Khalid reaches you to take Jaheira away with him, is a bad thing to do. That kinda goes for killing him as well.......

 

I find it difficult not to go with the "core" party of Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc and Dynaheir because you can't properly abandon one of the latter four without their partner also leaving. That said, I do have a soft spot for Yeslick, and have parked Minsc and Dynaheir at the Friendly Arm Inn in some games to make room for him and, for example, Ajantis or Coran... The loss of Dynaheir is also made easier in later chapters by the fact that I always dual-class Imoen to Mage when she reaches level 7.

 

I often use Coran and Yeslick but few of the other late npcs since they do not add much to my party combat wise (and in a non modded game the amount of personality from most party members is low).

Character name, jaheira (she later dies and I pick up yeslick), khalid, imoen, coran (or kivan), and garrick (or Xan) is a common set up for me.

 

I do often grab Branwen early on, but only because I feel that in the early going you NEED two divine casters, if you want to avoid having to rest to recover your cure light wounds spells constantly. Like Beren though, I find Yeslick to be the much better companion.

On Eldoth and Skie, I don't typically take them along. However, Eldoth is a better bard option than Garrick, and as has been stated, Skie is probably the best thief after Imoen, although unlike Skie, Alora does come with relatively high levels of picks locks and find traps.

Faldorn is a pretty good choice because of the odd leveling of druids in the early going. She can get the ability to cast 5th level spells by the end of BG1.

Truth be told, one of the things I always like more with BG1 as compared to BG2 is the large number of possible companions you could take with you. It gave the game a lot of replay ability. Before you started getting mods in BG2, all evil parties had to consist of Korgan, Edwin, and Viconia without alteration. In BG1, you had a choice of two evil fighters early on (Shar-Teel and Kaigan), and two evil mages early on (Edwin and Xzar). I think that's part of the reason I'm enjoying my recent replay of BG2 using the BG1 NPCs. Even with so many kits available in BG2, they gave you about half as many NPCs.

The other thing you quickly realized in playing BG1 was that multi-classed characters tended to develop into much better characters over the course of the game. That's what made picking up characters like Quayle and Tiax appealing. In SoA, multi-classed characters tend to fall behind the power curve for a while, but in BG1, your multi-classed character is generally just one level behind a single classed character, and that only made a difference in the very early going in the game.

I would like to bring up one more point though - perhaps Bioware gave you a lot of companions throughout the game because of attrition? That they thought a lot of players would have party members die during the course of the adventure, so they'd just pick other ones up later.

 

I've played with the later NPCs, can be fairly interesting, I believe in my latest install I have the BG1NPC mod installed with the alternative locations included just so next time I have the time for a nice little playthrough I don't have too much running around to get the party I want.

 

I am a big fan of the Gnomes in BG1. Both are excellent support characters for various parties. Especially Quayle. Tiax's Summon ghast ability is pretty nasty. Faldorn is interesting as well. Alora and Skie I did not use as much, probably because Immy and Safana are just as good and easier to add to the party. Eldoth is pretty decent Bard. Coran is awesome. As is Yeslick, who is my favorite NPC in BG1.

 

Yeah, the only downside with Yeslick in BG1 was he started with a substandard strength and dexterity, and since you only had access to guantlets of ogre strength and gauntlets of dexterity to raise those stats, you necessarily couldn't fix both. Who got what usually depended on who else was in the party. If I had Khalid, Yeslick got the gauntlets of dexterity, if it was Ajantis, Yeslick got the gauntlets of ogre strength.

Of course, the BG2 version of Yeslick corrects both of those issues.

 

I gave the Gauntlets of Dex to Yeslick and would just cast Strength on him. Gauntlets of Ogre Power usually went to a Khalid or Ajantis type.

 

Indeed, that's what Draw Upon Holy Might, Strength of One, and Champion's Strength was intended for.

 

Coran has 20 dexterity and he's fighter-thief. With bows being as strong they are I find it hard not to take him in. Even with the evil party I use in my LP I made a space for him, there's just no replacement for such an insane sniper that also fills the role of thief.

Tiax, Quayle; never played more than 5 minutes with them; they're annoying, they suck and they're insignificant.

Yeslick: looks like the best good-aligned cleric, but in my last 2 playthroughs I was evil, and before that I used to take Branwen or Jaheira out of ignorance so I don't have experience using him.

Skie, Eldoth: the quest and associated dialogue is good, so I tend to take them in just for that particular quest. Otherwise Eldoth is pretentious and bad, and Skie annoys me - "I broke a nail..." - "I messed my hair..." - gah!

That said, there are enough NPCs in the game that a viable self-imposed rule would be to never reload when NPCs die, either resurrect them at a temple or do without them. So, I like the fact that there are several NPCs you encounter later in the game, it makes it so that if you've lost companions before you can replace them when you advance in the story.

 

That would never work for me, certain NPCs like Skie drives me nuts. BG1 NPCs are more realistic in the sense that there are quite a few of them you'd probably never grow to like. In BG2 there was only Anomen. And Cernd, but to a far less extent.

My own self-imposed rule involves intentionally complicating how I metagame. The end result is something like "accidentally" finding my level 3-4 characters face to face with the Doomsayer. I like puzzles. If I fail to find a proper solution, I lose interest and make a new character (the parallel would be an ironman game game over, I guess).

 

Without that "early NPC" mod, which I didn't find until several years after I started playing, I never used the late game NPCs. As such, I missed out on how hilarious Tiax was to have in the party.

The only ones I tried were Alora, Eldoth and Skie, and I too found Skie annoying. The only reason I picked up Alora was because I wanted to try dualing Imoen and needed a thief.

I've tried them

 

I get rid of the 'not until later' for the most part, by using the changed starting locations and the earlier unlocking of the Cloakwood offered by NPC1-project as well as the 'move NPC's to more convenient locations' by Sword Coast Stratagems. I like planning my parties ahead and hate having to wait half the game for having my intended party together. It should take no longer than chapter 3 for me to have patience.

Thus I often take Quayle from the Carnival, Alora from Gullykin and Coran from the earlier unlocked Cloakwood. All three are favourites of mine.

A necessarily still late-game favourite of mine is Yeslick and once I had a lot of fun with Faldorn as an Avenger (great class! chromatic orb and web complements druid spellcasting nicely). I never tried out Skie and Tiax tough. By the time I get to Skie, I've gotten too attached emotionaly to the thief/thieves already in my party. And Tiax is THE most annoying BG character of both games in my opinion.

Yeslick often unintentionally complements a party that started of as a four- or five character party (four or five= easier handling and less micromanagement as well as quicker levelling).

 

I like to SK Tiax to Cleric only. And Quayle to Illusionist only as another option to Dynaheir in my mostly good-aligned parties.

 

another option for changing kits is the level 1 npc's mod. Saves you the hassle of checking if all skills etc. are changed accordingly (or do you make them level 1, then change class?)

 

I make them Level one, but give them XP equalling the party average. So when you load your edited save, you get the Level up Icon.

 

I liked Tiax, Coran and Alora very much, I've used Yeslick once, and never bothered about Quayle, Eldoth, Faldorn or Skie.

Maybe next time?

 

Both Tiax and Faldorn have special abilities that allow them to summon creatures. That is a very powerful power in BG1. Tiax can summon a Ghast. They can be quite nasty. "Haste the Ghast" and see it cause havoc. Skie is only useful if you want Eldoth in your party, which is not a favorable trade off unless you are in it for the rping.

 

I agree - any thief can be an acceptable thief if you get them early enough to set up their skills adequately. Unfortunately, you can't do that with Skie, as she'll gain maybe two more levels the rest of the game when you get her.

 

The one time I tried Eldoth and Skie, I rushed to BG ASAP. I didn't think Skie was any better or worse than Safana in spite of the extra DEX and CON, however I found Safana to be far more likable. Skie's whining "I mussed my hair!" "I broke a nail" drove me nuts, while I found Safana amusing.
There isn't much advantage to taking Alora either. All three are pretty equal. Safana's Charm Person would be extremely useful if you didn't get Algernon's Cloak so early using pick pocket and PowerWord:Reload. The Nymph Cloak lets you use Safana's ability at will instead of 1/day, and Algernon's is even better.

Compare, taken from the NPC FAQ on GameFAQs when I first got the game: