After soloing as many chars as I felt like, I decided to play with a self-created party (check the Perfect Party#1 @ Gamebanshee). I find this to be much harder then solo'ing.

I can't keep control of 6 goons running around doing their thing. The scripts do not work 100%. Leveling up is SOOOO slow, it's unbelievable. I did nearly every quest in chapter 2 and I'm still stuck with level 12-15.

I made a berserker/mage and a kensai/mage to dual at level 13. I dont think they'll get their first class back before the end of SoA.

The Kensai runs around beating up people with -2AC and thats fine. But the ranger/cleric has -7AC and dies halfway through the fight. What up?!?

Using 1 char is THAT much easier man.

I agree that playing a party can seem a lot harder after you've played solo for a while. I had never really played with a party in BG2 until a few weeks ago, and the amount of added micromanagement needed came as a shock to me initially. I've advanced a fair bit in ToB and there are still fights that I think would be easier if I could concentrate all of my efforts and resources into one character. Especially monsters that have the ability to affect the entire party at once, like Mind flayers, Mages, and Balors.

But then again, my, now at approx 4.8 million exp each, party in most situations far more powerful than any of my solo creations. With a Haste and Mass Invisibility spell my team of PC Archer, Minsc, Jaheira, Keldorn, Valygar and Imoen is a juggernaut of destruction. When all five of my fighters activate Whirlwind/Imp haste, I can potentially hit any enemy with over 50 attacks per round [img]smile.gif[/img]

I have a complete party, but most of the time, only my kensei fight and I let the other characters stand there. I keep them for the extra dialogs they have. But sometimes in big fight, they are very usefull. Nothing can beat 3 mages using timestop, improved alacrity and then dragonbreath...

Also the reason why I never play with a party greater than 4... Else levelling up doesn't go fast enough and it's very hard to keep track of every single character; especially the weaker party members tend to die a lot more often than with smaller parties.

Made a new party:

human paladin inquisitor
berserker -> cleric
wizard-slayer -> thief
kensai -> mage

all dual at lvl 15 (I hope)

My former party had a berserker-mage and a kensai-mage while there is only 1 robe of vecna. Im enjoying this party a lot right now and Im completing the sidequests just as fast with 4 then 6 chars + im already lvl 9/10/10/10 with only 4 big sidequests done.

[ADD] I just keep forgetting to ask my questions :(
Besides Knock, Thieving, 25 STR, are there any other ways to open locked doors/chests? Right now this is THE major drawback of my party. I have to keep picking Yoshi for the lockpicking which I dont like and Im runningg out of frost giant potions (which do not open all doors).

[ 12-24-2002, 05:11 AM: Message edited by: Zuvio ]

Nalia, Imoen, and Jan all have thieving skills. You could take one of them.

<font color="gold">No, you've listed all the ways to open locks... Bash, Picking and Knock. Seems like you've gotta use bashing, then. ;) </font>