I've been thinking about this game, specifically the things I have NOT done in the game, and I have realized some things in the way I play the game. I have always played "warrior heavy" parties. My mages pretty much just summon stuff and breach down defenses (with a few area effect spells to help out) supporting the warriors; my mages will have like 3% kills while my tanks will have like 85%+ among them. In fact, other than party buffs, I have not really used any of the mage buffs beyond MI or Stoneskin. I've never used PfMW, Tenser's Transformation, or Mislead, for example. Also, I tend to "hoard" my spells, using the bare minimum necessary to help the tanks (I've regularly rested with 60%+ of my spells uncast). In addition, my thief is little more than a substandard archer with the ability to open locks and disarm traps (I play a lot of good only parties, so usually Imoen is my only thief). Unless my priest can hold his/her own up front (Anomen, Jaheira), then they are relegated to slinger duty unless they need to buff the party.

I realize that there is nothing wrong with playing the game this way, especially if that is the way I do things usually. However, I feel like I've missed out on a lot of the things the "non-warrior" classes can do by playing this way. Thus, I am thinking about doing something very drastic about it.

I am thinking of doing my first solo, a mage/thief multiclass. No mods (except maybe rebalanced rogue; thank you Six for mentioning that one, it is a good one), and Core difficulty. I'm not doing it for the challenge of the encounters; I'm doing for the challenge of playing something that will require me to use skills and abilities that I am not used to using. The reason for soloing: I know me. I'll cheat. As soon as a warrior type enters the party, I'll revert back to my old way of doing things. It's also why I do not want to make my guy a F/M/T; I'll be tempted to hang in combat longer than I should. No, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and do a solo mage/thief.

However, the debate comes in when I think of how to do this. Should I start in BG1 and play the entire saga? If so, should I play using the standard BG1 engine, or BGTutu mod (which I currently have installed, but would otherwise remove for this run) to use the new engine? Or should I start in SoA?

Also, any tips on playing this solo? I've seen plenty of advice along the way about soloing, but considering I'm venturing into new territory I wouldn't mind hearing it fresh.

Well, the problem is, you only need ONE tank and you'll play the game this way anyway. That's just a major disadvantage of this game. The fighters are so much stronger vs. the weak AI etc. I think it's because of the fighter monopoly on melee combat. The fighters are the only ones who can get a decent number of attacks per round (try getting just 2 without haste with any other class, dualwielding has major thac0 disadvantage with these classes).

Nerull, you should definitely try a single-class thief or maybe a fighter-dualled to thief. I did this one time for the same reasons you've mentioned (relying on a warrior heavy style and ignoring the benefits of a thief) and found that my thief actually got many of the kills and could basically deal with some encounters entirely on his own.

Example: set up traps outside of the enemy's sightlines. Down a potion of quickness, enter shadows, and position yourself behind the most dangerous yet vulnerable enemy (i.e. the spellcaster). Then, open your battle with a backstab triple-quadruple-or later even quintuple damage (splattering him across the room before his stoneskins went up) -- it's like cutting the enemy off at the knees. Of course, then you run very quickly out of sight, leading the enemy into your traps, back into the shadows, and repeat. There really shouldn't be much left for the tanks to do!

The reason I say dual fighter-->thief is really for the HP bonus, ability to grandmaster, maybe an additional attack per round. The same reasons that Anomen is a better overall cleric because he has some fighter levels. This character will quickly get his fighter attributes back and will level rapidly to achieve the thief HLA's.

Of course you could do the multi-classed fighter/thief which at high levels is probably even better than the dual class.

Enjoy!

Nerull, play a solo sorceror first if you want to get to know spells. Then play a solo thief, and then play a solo mage/thief if you're still up for it by then [img]smile.gif[/img]

So, you are saying to instead learn one thing then the other, instead of just trying to "cram" both lessons at the same time? Makes sense. I might just start in BG1 with BGTutu with the solo sorcerer. Everyone talks about how strong they are soloing, so time to find out. Thanks!

So, you are saying to instead learn one thing then the other, instead of just trying to "cram" both lessons at the same time? Makes sense. I might just start in BG1 with BGTutu with the solo sorcerer. Everyone talks about how strong they are soloing, so time to find out. Thanks! </font>[/QUOTE]Sorceror is extremely overpowered, but it's a great class to learn off of.

BTW, Nerull, just because of this topic, you got me in to starting a solo Assassin to get into the thief stuff ;) . I've always been planning on soloing one of these, but there's so much to do that the time never came...

Hey, best of luck with it! That will probably be the one I do after the sorcerer.