i've reloaded BGII and started a party game with my first ever straight mage (male half-elf) - my party is Allixia (names were never my strong point ;) ), Jahiera (tank and healer), Valygar (scout and damage dealer), and Fade (a mod NPC sngle-class pure thief, used as thief and archer) - i'm going to leave it as 4

Fade is a really soild thief and i'm enjoying her banters - her first mini-quest was amusing (and the point it triggered was a nice surprise) - i've been impressed with some of her person- and place-specific interjections as well - all good.

Allixia has mainly been a back line damage dealer, sling swinger and occasional 'breach'-er. He might pick up a bit when the death spells and skeleton warrriors start coming in - can you tell i'm not used to mages?

I chose not to re-install tactics mod because i want to roll through and finish the game instead of getting bogged down. It has made it a bit of a walk in the park to be honest - difficult fights have been Tamora (? - the vampire mage anyway) who got me really bad and forced a reload. Ghoul town killed Jahiera through sheer melee damage (i'm missing a cleric but don't want to increase the party size) meaning i had to carry her body through the neighbouring lair. Most recently the main baddy in the planar sphere has just stopped me dead - well, stopped half of us dead at any rate [img]smile.gif[/img]

I'm a bit short on XP though - tactics is full of XP the 12,000 XP that you get for killing constantly spawning spirit trolls (and usually get for finishing off their unconscious near death forms as well) being just one example. (It reminds me of the tiny bit of pen-and-paper DMing i did in my youth - you let people get powerful so yo uhave to give the monsters more powerful stuff so the players get that so you have to . . . )

I guess that's it really - I'll give you an update on Fade when I've finished the SoA bit - she hasn't got any ToB content yet although i understand they're working on it.

[ 04-20-2006, 05:24 AM: Message edited by: Armen ]

Fade worked really well* as an NPC thief although power-wise she was a bit of a utility character, trap setter and inconsequential archer towards the end

* she kinda 'bugged' on me though - her dialogues stopped for some reason some time before spell hold (she should have underdark banters at least apparently) although they picked up again in S_ towards the end) - i don't know if this was some sort of error or if they stopped because i broke the romance somehow? :~

i can't be absolutely sure i used the best/latest version mind as the forums/website was a touch unclear to me on this - the 'guarded compound issue' (it gets locked for a period for plot purposes) never resolved itself which makes me wonder about the version i got - anyway, i'm not complaining really

it seems like the first 'full' release with ToB content and voicing is coming soon and i'd say she's definitely worth a go especially with the arguable lack of viable thief NPCs

given the lack of ToB content i've dropped her and dualled the new NPC to thief - wish me luck, i've never actually finished ToB before restart-syndrome had kicked in . . .

[ 06-04-2006, 05:31 PM: Message edited by: Armen ]