About stats and dualclassing....

[Pippin]

Hi!
I recently finished Baldurs Gate and I`ve now purchased TOTSC and I`m re-playing it. The plan is to dualclass a fighter to mage, but I`m not so sure about the stats. I re-rolled a while without too much luck and ended up with these: strenght 18/31, constitution 18, dexterity 18, intelligence 18, wizdom 5, charisma 5.
My worry is wizdom and charisma, is it bad to have so low stats? Or will it work just fine?

Happy new year!

[Lemernis]

The low charisma will be a problem with respect to getting anyone to join you. That's a practical problem.

And then there is the roleplaying angle, which is more aesthetic. 10.5 represents average ability. 18 could be considered right at two standard deviations above the mean, so that anything above it (19 and up) could be considered a genius or otherwise truly exceptional (top 1st percentile--in a group of 100 people the odds are that you're unsurpassed by anyone). 3 is the lowest humanly possible. So a 3 in charisma would represent someone who is utterly socially repulsive; not just annoying, abrasive, etc. someone you would literally recoil from. So 5 cha is too low to be 'realistic', i.e., from a roleplaying perspective you want charisma to be closer to 10 for it to be believable that anyone would join you.

If you can manange to roll up a total of 92 that can be distributed into four 18's and two 10's, which is appropriate for Bhaalspawn.

[J'aran]

Other than the things Lemernis pointed out, you won't have any problem in dual-classing your fighter to a mage with these stats. For dual-classing you need to have a minimum of 15 in the prime requisite of the starting class (in your case fighter, which means STR and maybe CON, I forget), and a minimum of 17 in the prime requisite of the class you switch to (in your case mage, which means INT). You've got 18's in all of those, so as I said the dualing itself won't be a problem.

Low CHA will give you high prices in stores, as well as bad reactions from NPCs.
Low WIS won't give you any practical problems in the game.

[Pippin]

I`ve been rolling stats for ages now and the highest i`ve got is 88 points:
Strength:18/62
Dexterity:18
Constitution:18
Intelligence:18
Wizdom:8
Charisma:8

If low wizdom won`t give me any practical problems as J'aran says maybe i should reroll and put more points on charisma and put the wizdom to 3? But I seem to remember that wizdom will give you better resistance to magic, but i`m not sure.

[J'aran]

In 2nd E AD&D core rules, high wisdom gives you a bonus to certain saving throws (vs spells IIRC) and maybe some other things I can't remember off the top of my head right now.

However, all this hasn't been implemented into the game, so withing BG all that wis does is determine how many spells a cleric or druid gets, and if it's really low it causes those classes to fail while casting spells occasionally.

I for one wouldn't go too low on any stats because it's not realistic roleplaying-wise, i.e. if you have a party-leader (which your character is gonna be, being the main hero) with very low wisdom and still having him make the good decisions. If you roleplay him correctly you would't get anywhere with the game.
But it's your call of course. If you don't see a problem with that, by all means, go ahead.

[Midget Gems]

I'm playing a Dual Class Fighter Mage at the moment with stats very similar to the ones above. This is my first time at Dual Class and I guess I'm quite pleased with the outcome. All I wanted was a Mage with good bow skills so I dualled early in the game. This allowed me to get the fighter skills back at the end of Chapter 3, when I was ready to dual Imoen. The lack of Charisma hasn't been a problem, I always use someone else to do the talking.

Now that I have reached the end of Chapter 6 Imoen has got here Thief skills back but then I got a nasty suprise - she only gets 1 weapon slot. Why is this, since both a Mage and a Theif get 2 slots I expected a Dual Theif/Mage to have two as well. Has anyone got any advice for what tactics to use with Imoen, it hasn't quite worked out as I planned?

[J'aran]

quote:

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Originally posted by Midget Gems:
Now that I have reached the end of Chapter 6 Imoen has got here Thief skills back but then I got a nasty suprise - she only gets 1 weapon slot. Why is this, since both a Mage and a Theif get 2 slots I expected a Dual Theif/Mage to have two as well. Has anyone got any advice for what tactics to use with Imoen, it hasn't quite worked out as I planned?

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Do you mean the quick weapon slots that appear both in the inventory screen and on the toolbar below the main window? A thief/mage has more special icons on that toolbar (hide in shadows, thieving, find traps and cast spell) than both a normal thief and a normal mage, so there was only room for one weapon slot. It's even worse for a cleric/mage/thief, because they also get turn undead. They have to go to the special abilities menu (the star on the far right) to use their thieving skills.

As for tactics, I myself use a mage/thief practically as a normal mage in combat, except that I have her attack with a short bow or other missile weapon in between the casting of two spells. Out of combat, I have her use her spells primarily to complement and boost her thief-skills, like casting Improved Invisibilty when scouting, cause that's more reliable than Hide in Shadows.

[Midget Gems]

Thanks for the reply.

No I do mean the main weapon slot. I wanted to have a bow and a backstab weapon but I can't have both, I'm just using a bow at present. You're right about the buttons on the bottom of the screen - when I had a Cleric/Thief it took me ages to figure out where the disarm traps button was located.

[J'aran]

quote:

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Originally posted by Midget Gems:
No I do mean the main weapon slot

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I think we're both talking about the same thing here. The slots in which you can equip weapons, right?

[SixOfSpades]

Yup--Mage/Thieves & Cleric/Thieves can only have 1 Quick weapon, which is a pain. Looks like you'll have to go into the Inventory screen to shuffle weapons if you want to Backstab.

I wish they gave you an option to shuffle the bottom-row buttons around--I've got a Mage/Thief too, but I NEVER Find Traps with him (That's what my pure Thief is for), so why can't I remove his Find Traps button and get a 2nd Quick Weapon? And I also NEVER Turn Undead, so I should be able to give my Cleric/Thief another weapon slot, too. Ah, poopie.

For building a Fighter->Mage: Are you really going to melee that often? If you're planning a character who swings a mean blade most of the time, and only takes his armor off to cast Identify, keep the 18/xx Strength. If, on the other hand, you're planning a Longbow-totin' spellcaster who only draws his sword to help take out some Xvarts, give yourself 15 STR and put those points somewhere else. You can always carry a few scrolls of Strength if you need it.