For a No-Reloads game, I would suggest forgetting about Mages for the first half of the game, and concentrating on a Fighter / Thief oriented party. You won't have to spend that much gold on Healing Potions because your band of Warriors will just steamroll their way through the early game with no problems at all (well, except for Tarnesh). Later on, once your average party EXP is around 40,000 EXP, go and recruit your mage-type person: If this is their first time joining your party, their EXP will automatically be bumped up to your level, meaning that you can get a Level 6 Wizard without having to go through all the trouble of dragging his/her lazy, pebble-slinging butt all over the Sword Coast.

Well, since everyone has yet to mention it, here's my advice. Don't die.

Well, don't die, nice advice ;) . I've had Imoen die at least 10 times so far, and she is a waste of money since I keep paying temples to raise her. I just finished going through all of cloakwood mines with her dead from the fight just before entering the mines.

Um, I think I kinda screwed up my party according to the advice you all gave. I took my party back to edwin and uh, I 'accidentally' had Dynaheir kill Edwin at the bridge for a little bit of revenge. So I can't get Edwin into my party now. Unless....do you think it would be too much to clua edwin in? I didn't want to cheat on this load. In other loads, I admit I have CLUAed in healing potions, but I was planning on taking this party all the way with out cheating.

This is how I had my part up till the cloakwood mines:

PC: fighter
Minsc: tank
Imoen: thief
Dynaheir: Spell caster
Jaheira: cleric
Khalid: an extra fighter.

at yeslick in the mines, I had my PC attack Khalid till he was dead, and then removed him from my party. I had Yeslick join, so he is the newest addition to my party.

And btw, if you would not consider it too much cheating to clua edwin in, what's his clua code? I don't have Gate keeper (or whatever it's called) to find out.

Edit: oh, nevermind. I suppose that I will go with out edwin. I figured, I killed him, so he stays dead...unlike Drizzt if you've played BG2 :D . Besides, Dynaheir is actually could be quite powerful if i raise her HP.

[ 08-26-2003, 03:10 AM: Message edited by: Lord ]

eh question............. Why the hell did u kill Edwin for revenge if u wanted him in ur party?

I didn't want him in my party then, I did this BEFORE reading the boards, so I just had Dynaheir go kick his butt

non-reload or not, mage is simply not that useful in BG1, regardless of how high a level a mage is at. Most of the tougher monsters in the game have extremely low saving throws, and thus most of the time, the spells wouldn't work anyway. handle the less tough monstrers, a good mage might serve well for the party, yet, you don't really need mage to defeat less tough monsters anyway.

based on ability, Edwin is defintely a better choice than Dynaheir since her spellbook is so POOR! yet, as the game goes, Dynaheir is good enough.

actually, Lord, I just finished BG + TOTSC yesterday (now into SoA) with the identical party as yours, the only difference is that my PC is a multi-class Fighter/Mage. I didn't play it as non-reload game, but I think your current party is capable of doing that as long as you're familiar with the game.

There are two excellent reasons to take a high level mage: Wands of Animal/Monster Summoning, and Cloudkill. [img]smile.gif[/img]

well, Dynaheir can manage both.
Monster Summoning is GREAT and saved my life quite a few times, but in my latest run, I only have Dynaheir cast cloudkill...mmm...once (or two the most).

also...if using wands, I thought the level of a mage doesn't matter? you mean a higher level mage can summon higher level monsters using the same wand?

<font color="orange">No, it doesn't affect the power. Trust me, in a no-reloads game, Cloudkill is simply stupendous. Try it on a solo fighter/mage, for example, and see what I mean. Of course, using cheese and summons to keep the folks in place is important, but whatever. [img]tongue.gif[/img] My actual point was not saying Dynaheir sucked, just that high level mages are quite valuable (first paragraph of your last post) ;) </font>

[ 08-26-2003, 07:17 PM: Message edited by: True_Moose ]

well what I said is simply based on my own BG experience = never soloing, I always play with a party...yet, even playing a party game, the mage can always get to the highest level allowed anyway (suppose we don't do the cap removing and high levels modification thing).

btw, are you saying that summoning monsters holding enemies back is cheesy? then what about cloudkill killing them from a distance?