[SixOfSpades]

Antonius, people complain about the lack of NPC Thieves because there IS a severe lack of Thieves. Having only ONE Thief that can actually gain levels is just ridiculous--it leaves you with 3 choices: 1) Play a Thief yourself, 2) Be forced to use that character, or 3) Carry around about a million Potions of Perception. I think the lack of NPCs in general in BG2 is just BioWare's way of encouraging us to try Multiplayer, as well. I'm doing a litle of that: I'm almost done with an Evil game of BG1. When I take my guy into BG2, I'm also going to create a second character as well, an exact copy of Montaron. None of the NPC Thieves are really Evil enough to belong in an Evil party, so I'll do the Harper quest, get Monty's body, cast Raise Dead, and.... pretend it worked.

As for the other NPCs.....None of the NPC Priests are very good, when you count things like Anomen's DEX and Viconia's CON. But luckily, there's a good selection of them, so getting one Priest and one Backup isn't difficult. Also, with Healing Potions and the various items that give Regeneration, you don't even need a backup Priest.

Wizards: There are PLENTY of damned good Wizards out there, no matter what their INT is. Why? INT only matters while the wizard is scribing spells. You're telling me there aren't enough Potions to turn even Minsc into a genius long enough to copy a few scrolls?

Warriors: Plenty of those, but sadly only Korgan and Anomen make good Tanks--the rest of them seem to have chosen either 2-Handed Weapon or Dual-Wielding. Still, Keldorn with the DEX Gauntlets or Mazzy with a Girdle will be fine, for any gamer worth his salt.

In summary: There's at least a halfway-decent selection for each of the main groups--except Thieves. I wish BG2 had the same variety of recruitable NPCs as BG1 did....I miss Kivan, and Coran's refusing to join my party is completely out of character. "Life is adventure or nothing."