Wizard+cleric in BG

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Cleric/mage is a strong choice overall, but you'll likely want to carry a full mage in the party as well. As to which race you should take, go for the gnome cleric/illusionist -- the extra spell slot at each spell level more than offsets the loss of a few necromancy spells, especially for a multiclass character.

I wouldn't mind loosing most necromancy spells but loosing Abi Dhalzims and PW Kill really hurts.

BG Trilogy or BG TuTu?
You'll get different opinions on this question, but having tried both I would say TuTu is the better choice. It has fewer bugs and better support, plus you don't lose access to the BG1 music. But either one is perfectly workable, so if you really like the idea of fusing everything into a single game, opt for Trilogy instead

Last time I played BGT a couple months ago with the latest version it was pretty much bugfree. The transition between BG1 and BG2 worked flawlessly (as opposed to earlier versions) and all characters kept their classes (dualclassing),stats, spell selection and XP. Kinda neat.

 

[Vulture underbelly fur]

On another note when you complete the game once, try installing tactics/ascension and completing it again.

Personally I like playing classes that are not available from the NPCs; thieves...

A warrior/thief multiclass is also ridiculously overpowered when soloing the game as you get access to "use any item'' ability which in turn allows you to use cleric and mage scrolls. Using the assassination skill coupled with a time stop scroll causes every attack to hit and you also gain the x5 backstab multiplier. Using an improved haste scroll beforehand is also a good idea lol.

 

[Azrael the cat]

If you're talking about maxing spell power, then you need to make room for 1 more, as you're missing out on the 2nd strongest NPC mage in the game, and she arrives very very early. I'm talking about Imoen, of course, dual classed at an appropriate level. Dual-classing her turns her from a decent-stats-but-useless-cause-she's-a-straight-class-thief-in-2nd-edition NPC to the backbone of your party. Give her enough thief levels to handle traps and lockpicks duties, with combat points in bows, and then switch to mage as soon as you can do the game's traps and locks without a struggle. You can do it so that she can handle any trap in the game, enough locks so that casting knock can cover the rest, and still get the max level in mage - just lookup the spellcap, and how many thief levels you can fit in while still getting the highest mage level possible under the spell cap (a lot, b/c 2nd ed works on exponential exp points, and thief exp requirements are particularly low - which is why dual classed characters are hands down more powerful than single class characters, and why they're better than multiclass from about L9 onwards).

Dual classed mages are at a particular advantage over single class. Not only will it mean that your thief skills are covered, meaning you don't have to waste a spot on a thief (a HUGE bonus, given that in 2nd ed you don't get backstab damage on ranged attacks, and that straight thieves have too little hitpoints to survive in melee in the low-level BG1 campaign), but you can also actually contribute when you're not casting, by having bow proficiency. Again, this is assuming you time it so that you don't lose any mage levels.

Dual-classing Imoen to mage (her stats invite it) became such the 'standard' thing to do with her character in BG1, that in BG2 she starts off dual-classed with the emphasis heavily on mage.

 

[Vulture underbelly fur]

If you're talking about maxing spell power, then you need to make room for 1 more, as you're missing out on the 2nd strongest NPC mage in the game

Actually, no. The strongest spellcaster in the game in ToB is Aerie or the PC wizard/cleric multiclass. The only thing that can compare with the sheer spellpower and versatility of this class is the wild mage with its Nahal's Reckless Dweomer (the risk of turning yourself into a squirrel is nothing compared to the ability to cast 9 additional any known 9th level spells; improved chaos shield and a high level cut this chance to very bearable numbers). And Edwin is a much better offensive spellcaster than Imoen (although his lack of divination spells can really bite you in the ass).

Thieves are useful only for their backstab/set trap/detect illusion in TOB. The detect/disarm trap and open lock skills are nice, but not essential. These skills also become useless at higher levels as stoneskins and elemental protections can soak/avoid damage from almost any traps. The thief/ mage multiclass is only viable when you're going for a time stop + improved haste/assassination combo. Taking so few thief levels as in the case with Imoen is equivalent to throwing your spellpower away without any really useful gains.

 

[Vulture underbelly fur]

Also, has anyone ever tried to solo BG1? I've never played it due to it being inferior to BG2 in the tactics department. Is there a levelcap?

 

[baronjohn]

the risk of turning yourself into a squirrel is nothing compared to the ability to cast 9 additional any known 9th level spells

How is this better than Wishing for rest?

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Wishing for rest means reload reload reload because even with high INT+WIS the option doesn't appear often.

 

[Azrael the cat]

If you're talking about maxing spell power, then you need to make room for 1 more, as you're missing out on the 2nd strongest NPC mage in the game

Actually, no. The strongest spellcaster in the game in ToB is Aerie or the PC wizard/cleric multiclass. The only thing that can compare with the sheer spellpower and versatility of this class is the wild mage with its Nahal's Reckless Dweomer (the risk of turning yourself into a squirrel is nothing compared to the ability to cast 9 additional any known 9th level spells; improved chaos shield and a high level cut this chance to very bearable numbers). And Edwin is a much better offensive spellcaster than Imoen (although his lack of divination spells can really bite you in the ass).

Thieves are useful only for their backstab/set trap/detect illusion in TOB. The detect/disarm trap and open lock skills are nice, but not essential. These skills also become useless at higher levels as stoneskins and elemental protections can soak/avoid damage from almost any traps. The thief/ mage multiclass is only viable when you're going for a time stop + improved haste/assassination combo. Taking so few thief levels as in the case with Imoen is equivalent to throwing your spellpower away without any really useful gains.

I was allowing for Edwin, when I said SECOND strongest NPC mage. The Aerie thing is a mixed bag, for me. On 1 hand I'd consider her dialogue to be so intrusively annoying that I'd almost consider it the equivalent of a stat decrease. On the othe hand, the cleric-mage combo IS very powerful. The reason why I rate Imoen ahead of Arerie is twofold:
(1) we were talking about BG1, and Aerie doesn't appear until BG2. Actually, that's a pretty damn good justification in and of itself, isn't it? I mean, I'm sure that Gandalf and Darth Vader would pwn Imoen as well, but seeing as neither Gandalf, Vader nor Aerie are in BG1, why don't we leave them out of it
(2) a thief is a must-have-but-limited-use-character in BG1 and BG2 (the post, and my reply, was regarding NPCs in BG1, but I'll extend it to BG2 b/c it applies there too. Yes, it isn't necessary in ToB, but that's a long way from the start of BG1 - though even in ToB an argument can be made for thieves using trap-cheese-exploitation). Basically you need one to progress efficiently - especially in BG1 before you can memorise repeated detect traps and knock spells (and it's a fair way into BG1 before those even turn up). But they add nothing to combat in BG1, and not a great deal in BG2, and you definitely don't want more than 1 in your party. Hence a dual-class thief serves a necessary purpose extremely efficiently. If you take Aerie (pretending she was in BG1) you'll STILL need to take a thief with you.

So the real comparison is: 'Aerie plus a thief character' vs 'Imoen plus a healer'. For most of the game Aerie will be more powerful than Imoen - but NOT the whole game, because Imoen will get access to higher-level spells MUCH earlier, which means she gets a much longer window-of-usefulness' for spells like cloudkill, where they are immensely powerful for a while, and then become useless as enemies level past them. Similarlly, Imoen will get game-changing spells like Maze, Banishment, Confusion, Haste and fireball much earlier. Still, I accept that for most of the game Aerie will be considerably more powerful, as Imoen's advantage only exists during the short periods that she has access to an unbalanced spell, before the enemies level up. The issue, though, is that powerful healers are plentiful in BG1 and BG2, and healing classes generally are powerful in 2nd ed DnD, whereas the thief class is gimped. Secondly, there are advantages to having a straight cleric over a multiclass (as well as disadvantages, of course), such turning/destroying undead with a straight cleric being uber-overpowered in BG2, whereas there is no significant advantage to a straight thief over Imoen.

Hence I still think Imoen is a better choice, even in BG2 where Aerie doesn't have the drawback of not existing, because the advantage to not having to waste a spot on a straight thief is MUCH greater than the advantage conferred by not having to waste a spot on a straight healer.

As for the 'taking so few levels of thief is throwing your spell power away without any gains', you miss the point of the dual-classing. Firstly, in the case of BG1 you should time it so that you aren't losing ANY mage levels. Even in BG2 she doesn't lose significant casting power (I may be wrong, but she might not even lose any mage levels). The 'significant advantage' is NOT that she can play like a thief, but simply that she has enough trap and lock skills that taking a separate thief is unnecessary. Sure, levelling a thief up to get improved assassination might be nice, but you don't actually NEED it in the same way that you need someone on traps to get through BG1 - and whilst in BG2 you can use casters for detect traps and knock, doing that eats up so many spell slots that it isn't viable. Much better to use Imoen for most traps and locks, and have a single knock spell memorised for the odd one that she can't handle.

So I'm not saying 'thieves rock, take Imoen because she's an awesome thief and can be great by doing thief stuff!'. I'm saying the opposite, i.e. 'thieves SUCK, and so you should dual class Imoen to mage, because that way you can take just enough thieving to get by without having to waste a full character, or in the case of Jan half a character, on such a shitty class'.

 

[Vulture underbelly fur]

Well, if you put it that way. I was talking strictly from a powergamer's point of view. Using Edwin or Aerie will yield much more spellpower in the long run while making some points early in the game excrutiatingly hard. Also, having Imoen in your party is hardly a valid choice if one wants to complete the game with Ascension installed (if I'm not mistaken, Imoen is transformed into the Slayer at the begining of the battle and pitted against the party for a few turns).

 

[Vulture underbelly fur]

the risk of turning yourself into a squirrel is nothing compared to the ability to cast 9 additional any known 9th level spells

How is this better than Wishing for rest?

Urgh, you get the ability to cast 9th level spells instead of your 1st level spells with Nahal's reckless dweomer (1st level spell allowing you to cast any spell instead of it with a higher chance of spectacular failure) before trying to wish rest.

Wishing for rest means reload reload reload because even with high INT+WIS the option doesn't appear often.

Not if you fill all of your 9th level spell slots with Wish. With 23+ wisdom you get some very good defensive and offensive wishes which can sometimes be better than casting a Quest level spell even if you don't get a "restore all spells" option. With the Wild mage your probability of wish-resting successfully is even greater keeping in mind Nahal's RD.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Well, if you put it that way. I was talking strictly from a powergamer's point of view. Using Edwin or Aerie will yield much more spellpower in the long run while making some points early in the game excrutiatingly hard. Also, having Imoen in your party is hardly a valid choice if one wants to complete the game with Ascension installed (if I'm not mistaken, Imoen is transformed into the Slayer at the begining of the battle and pitted against the party for a few turns).

Nice, I forgot about that one - I only played ToB through twice, once normally and once with ascension, but given the comparative shortness I wasn't paying much attention to it. But yeah, you certainly don't want to do anything that will make the Ascension battle harder - it's the only battle I found seriously difficult out of the IE games. I remember having to reload a bunch of times on the 2nd last fight with Irenicus the first time I played the game, and there was some hairy moments in the IWD series, but nothing on that scale (though I never played HoW for IWD, so I imagine that adds some equally difficult fights). On the first few attempts I just couldn't believe how much shit the mod through at you in the last fight - even with the monk bhaalspawn helping you it was nuts. Several times more demons than the vanilla fight, then imoen/slayer, then Irenicus and Bodhi together - am I remmebering wrong, or did you have to fight the previous ToB bosses at that point? - then an uber-hard Melissan sequence. It wasn't that the pre-Melissan stuff was difficult, it just ate up your spells - all stuff that you 'can' beat, but not without using good spells/potions. Mind you, I had a magic-heavy party, and a lot of folk argue that whilst magic is the key in BG2, melee classes come to the fore in ToB (everyone makes their saving throws and enemies have insane resistances, so insta-death spells are often gimped, and disabling spells are much less reliable; high HP diminishes the usefulness of AoE damage; warrior classes get great epic abilities; high-magic campaign regarding weapons and armour; thieves get use-any-item; etc). Never played a melee-heavy group in ToB so I don't have personal experience, but I can see where those arguments are coming from - as well as the previous reasons, I also suspect that the uber-high-hitpoints of high-level warrior classes would make heal (which by those levels is a fairly cheap spell) absurdly powerful. With the damage coming from melee, that would greatly increase the party's stamina in the end fight, and it would be more efficient to use heal to repair 100 hp on a fighter than 50 on a mage (using half the healing spells to counter the same amount of enemy damage output).

One thing I'm curious about though - is there a replacement fight if you don't have Imoen in your party? Seems very non-Gaider (author of ascension) to put a non-telegraphed C+C in his game, especially one that makes the 'good' path, or any particular character selection, more different than the alternatives. I would have thought it more typical for him to have you fight a conjured Slayer if Imoen wasn't in the party, or some similarly difficult monster. Actually from memory didn't you fight a Slayer regardless? I remember pwning one by turning into the Ravager (against which the Slayer was SOOO BG2).

Now we just need someone to make a mod replacing the "Slayer' graphics from BG2 and ToB with an animation of Buffy Would even suit the vampire setting of BG2.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Imoen turns into the Slayer only a short time and afterwards joins you again - really no big deal, just watch out that you don't kill her while transformed.

The battle starts out with a fight against Bodhi, Irenicus, 2 Fallen Solars and Demogorgon and his minions, at least it was that way last time I played. You can avoid Demogorgon but why would you? The 2 solars are annoying and resurrect everyone you killed. Demogorgon is also annoying. It's propably best to kill them all.

Then come the 3 fights at the platforms and then the final fight muuuhahhahaaa against Melissan and the other Bhaalspawns. I think that was a pretty cool sequence.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Hmm, I think I'll use BGTrilogy then. And I'll dual-class Imoen into mage early on - have to find the experience levels somewhere to calculate the best level to do that. Iirc, the cap was 89,000 XP for normal BG1 but since I'll have TOSC installed it'll be higher... Actually, if I use BGT, will the whole game use ToB exp cap? Or does that come to play only after transitioning to bg2-side?

And as for the party, looks like it'll be Imoen, Xzar, Montaron, Jaheira, Khalid until Nashkel, where I can drop Montaron, Jaheira and Khalid for Edwin, Branwen, Xar. Later I guess I'll drop Branwen for Viconia since darkelf girls are hot. That should give me a funky enough group for the game :D I'll post how it goes when I get to it, though that won't be until September :/

 

[Vulture underbelly fur]

Well, if you put it that way. I was talking strictly from a powergamer's point of view. Using Edwin or Aerie will yield much more spellpower in the long run while making some points early in the game excrutiatingly hard. Also, having Imoen in your party is hardly a valid choice if one wants to complete the game with Ascension installed (if I'm not mistaken, Imoen is transformed into the Slayer at the begining of the battle and pitted against the party for a few turns).

Nice, I forgot about that one - I only played ToB through twice, once normally and once with ascension, but given the comparative shortness I wasn't paying much attention to it. But yeah, you certainly don't want to do anything that will make the Ascension battle harder - it's the only battle I found seriously difficult out of the IE games. I remember having to reload a bunch of times on the 2nd last fight with Irenicus the first time I played the game, and there was some hairy moments in the IWD series, but nothing on that scale (though I never played HoW for IWD, so I imagine that adds some equally difficult fights). On the first few attempts I just couldn't believe how much shit the mod through at you in the last fight - even with the monk bhaalspawn helping you it was nuts. Several times more demons than the vanilla fight, then imoen/slayer, then Irenicus and Bodhi together - am I remmebering wrong, or did you have to fight the previous ToB bosses at that point? - then an uber-hard Melissan sequence. It wasn't that the pre-Melissan stuff was difficult, it just ate up your spells - all stuff that you 'can' beat, but not without using good spells/potions. Mind you, I had a magic-heavy party, and a lot of folk argue that whilst magic is the key in BG2, melee classes come to the fore in ToB (everyone makes their saving throws and enemies have insane resistances, so insta-death spells are often gimped, and disabling spells are much less reliable; high HP diminishes the usefulness of AoE damage; warrior classes get great epic abilities; high-magic campaign regarding weapons and armour; thieves get use-any-item; etc). Never played a melee-heavy group in ToB so I don't have personal experience, but I can see where those arguments are coming from - as well as the previous reasons, I also suspect that the uber-high-hitpoints of high-level warrior classes would make heal (which by those levels is a fairly cheap spell) absurdly powerful. With the damage coming from melee, that would greatly increase the party's stamina in the end fight, and it would be more efficient to use heal to repair 100 hp on a fighter than 50 on a mage (using half the healing spells to counter the same amount of enemy damage output).

One thing I'm curious about though - is there a replacement fight if you don't have Imoen in your party? Seems very non-Gaider (author of ascension) to put a non-telegraphed C+C in his game, especially one that makes the 'good' path, or any particular character selection, more different than the alternatives. I would have thought it more typical for him to have you fight a conjured Slayer if Imoen wasn't in the party, or some similarly difficult monster. Actually from memory didn't you fight a Slayer regardless? I remember pwning one by turning into the Ravager (against which the Slayer was SOOO BG2).

Now we just need someone to make a mod replacing the "Slayer' graphics from BG2 and ToB with an animation of Buffy Would even suit the vampire setting of BG2.

Don't really know about the Imoen-slayer replacement as I finished that fight with her along with the Imoen romance mod installed (guess I'll fit just right among you guys lol). The heart of winter expansion for IWD wasn't all that hard, you just had to take out a dragon in the final fight, which was easier than Firkraag, due to the said dragon having a shitty implementation of his Wind(g?) Buffet attack.

I remember having trouble with Irenicus in TOB as the bastard used a combo of protective spells fired from a chain contingency, involving improved invisibility + spell immunity-divination, which made him impossible to target with abjuration spells and dispell magic didn't work for some reason (maybe my wizard lvl was smaller due to my PC being wizard/cleric). The funny thing is that I managed to finish him off before his contingencies worked, by placing 3x flame arrows in a spell trigger and firing it at the start of combat, easiest boss victory I've ever had lol.

I used every cheesy tactic imaginable during the fight with Mellisan, including replenishing my spells by having my project image cast harmful spells on me, while having a spell trap active and using project image followed by the said image casting time stop, improved alacrity and a subsequent barrage of Quest lvl spells. Managing and trying not to run out of spells was the hardest aspect of the fight for me as my party consisted only of a PC and Imoen.

Edit: paragraphs and spelling.

 

[Jaesun]

Hmm, I think I'll use BGTrilogy then. And I'll dual-class Imoen into mage early on /

Do note that in BGII Imoen starts at Level 7 Thief/Level 6 Mage, so if you do decide to switch her early, you will be missing any thieving skills (unless you are going to play a thief).

While you don't really need a thief, it can just be a bit painful for some areas of BG+TotSC and BGII.

 

[Melcar]

Imoen turns into the Slayer only a short time and afterwards joins you again - really no big deal, just watch out that you don't kill her while transformed.

The battle starts out with a fight against Bodhi, Irenicus, 2 Fallen Solars and Demogorgon and his minions, at least it was that way last time I played. You can avoid Demogorgon but why would you? The 2 solars are annoying and resurrect everyone you killed. Demogorgon is also annoying. It's propably best to kill them all.

Then come the 3 fights at the platforms and then the final fight muuuhahhahaaa against Melissan and the other Bhaalspawns. I think that was a pretty cool sequence.

I don't think you fight Demogorgon in Ascension (played a long time ago though). All that I faced was a bunch of demons/planetars/other-high-level-shit after each power source node, and then the five along with Melissan. Imoen turned into a Slayer but I killed her quickly (she wasn't in my party so I don't know if she re-joins you afterwards or what). I was an evil monk, so I got Bodhi to join (who always "died" and was no help at all). The hardest fuckers (aside from Melissan) were Balthazar (he would walk through my Time Stops) and that bitch Sendai.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Melcar:

If this was not part of Ascension then it was part of some other mod like Longer Road or SCS2. I'm not 100% sure. But that was the first fight when you enter the Throne. Melissan speaks, turns Imoen into the Slayer and you fight Irenicus, Bodhi (Tactics version of Bodhi), Fallen Solars, a bunch of Demons and Demogorgon. You can solve a riddle to avoid Demogorgon otherwise he starts the fight with a double-length Timestop and summons his Servants. He repeats summoning stuff regularily and everytime he does it his HP and MR gets restored.

After you won this fight you do the 3 platforms with the essence wells and then the final fight vs the 5.
That was pretty ... *epic*, gritty and dark. But fun.

edit: but I could swear this is part of Ascension maybe you have to fight Demogorgon in WK and not seal him in? Also Imoen gets turned into Slayer as soon as you speak to Melissan upon entering the Throne, before the Nodes and definately not during the fight vs the 5

 

[Azrael the cat]

No promises, but this might call for a LP using a perky blond-haired monk, just so she can become 'the Slayer' halfway through the game. Now I just need a vampire romance mod

 

[Vulture underbelly fur]

No promises, but this might call for a LP using a perky blond-haired monk, just so she can become 'the Slayer' halfway through the game. Now I just need a vampire romance mod

Not sure if you know about this, but there's a mod on Weimer's website that allows Valen (Bodhi's underling) to join the party as a playable charater. Not sure about the romance thing though.

http://weidu.org/valen.html

 

[GarfunkeL]

Checking the experience tables, XP cap for TOSC is 161,000 so Imoen can be dual-classed as a level 6 thief (20,000 XP) into mage and then easily raised to level 9 (135,000) for a combined 155,000 xp points which is easily under the cap.
Whereas pure thief would be level 10 and pure mage would be level 9 anyway.

What's the difference?

Level 6 vs 10 thief: Backstab x3 vs x4, Ability points 130 vs 210, THAC0 18 vs 16. Not really much when you get 13 spell slots, 4 3 3 2 1 respectively.

So dualclassing Imoen at level 6 makes perfect sense. Waiting for her to be level 7 stops her from getting her thief skills in BG1 back in use before BG2 and I bet there's lots of traps in the final dungeons.

And my multiclassed cleric/mage will get to level 6/6 whereas pure cleric would be level 8 and pure mage still level 9, which sounds weird but that's 2nd Edition AD&D for you.

My cleric/mage will lack lvl4 and lvl5 spells from his spellbook (but I think I can cast them from scrolls so cloudkill for Sarevok yay) but he will have the same 4 magic missiles like if he was a pure mage. On the divine side, he's missing lvl4 cleric spells (Free Action, Cure Serious Wounds, Summon Monster 1, Neutralize Poison) which sucks but they are not THAT useful - you get potions or wands for all of those. And again, scrolls to the rescue if needed.

In conclusion, cleric/mage will be pretty awesome already in BG1/TOSC-game AND since I'll be using BGT, dualclassing Imoen rox.

Edit: and if you are using BGT, then there is only the 8 000 000 XP cap for the whole game so one doesn't have to worry about the 89k for BG or the 161k for TOCS. Yippeekay.

 

[Jaesun]

Edit: and if you are using BGT, then there is only the 8 000 000 XP cap for the whole game so one doesn't have to worry about the 89k for BG or the 161k for TOCS. Yippeekay.

Nice, I was unsure of that myself. I'm still playing a Cannon game, so Imoen is almost 7th level thief then switching her to mage. Thats going to be fucking painful. D:

 

[Lurkar]

Also, does different weapon speeds affect anything in BG?

They affect your iniative throw, IE, how likely it is in any given combat round that you start your attacks earlier than the enemy, but they do not make you attack more often.

This is only handy if you play something that does huge amounts of damage, but has high AC, to kill enemies before they get to hit you in one hit - this is really only practical for Kensai.

It's also (slightly) significant while you are level 1 or 2, so you get to kill Gibberlings before they kill you.

You might as well ignore it, really.

Weapon speed can actually be REALLY important. Not only does it allow you to attack first, but it also means you can typically hit an enemy mage before their spell goes off, disrupting it. A thief with high speed can assure that no enemies can cast anything but instant cast spells.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Weapon speed can actually be REALLY important. Not only does it allow you to attack first, but it also means you can typically hit an enemy mage before their spell goes off, disrupting it.

Yeah...this. Weapon speed also matters when you have high level Fighter on Fighter (heh heh) too. If you're attacks hit first, you can sometimes disrupt their animations and their attacks, especially when you have a dual-wielding and/or improved-hasted freakazoid approaching 8-10 attacks per round.

Plus, it's the lone drawback for The Answerer, probably one of the best weapons in Throne of Bhaal.

A thief with high speed can assure that no enemies can cast anything but instant cast spells.

A thief? Anything special about them? I'd figure something like a Monk or Kensai, with class specific speed factor bonuses or a Grandmastery Fighter would be best, but do thieves have similar bonuses?

 

[Lurkar]

Weapon speed can actually be REALLY important. Not only does it allow you to attack first, but it also means you can typically hit an enemy mage before their spell goes off, disrupting it.

Yeah...this. Weapon speed also matters when you have high level Fighter on Fighter (heh heh) too. If you're attacks hit first, you can sometimes disrupt their animations and their attacks, especially when you have a dual-wielding and/or improved-hasted freakazoid approaching 8-10 attacks per round.

Plus, it's the lone drawback for The Answerer, probably one of the best weapons in Throne of Bhaal.

A thief with high speed can assure that no enemies can cast anything but instant cast spells.

A thief? Anything special about them? I'd figure something like a Monk or Kensai, with class specific speed factor bonuses or a Grandmastery Fighter would be best, but do thieves have similar bonuses?

Oh no, no bonuses. They're just most likely to use a weapon with low speed and to be behind the mage, while the fighter is up front with the other enemy fighters. They aren't BETTER at it then fighters, just more likely to be in the right position with the right type of weapon.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Update and necromancy:

for the first time ever, I'm about to finish Baldur's Gate & Tales of the Sword Coast. Woo!

Garfunkel, the badass half-elf cleric/mage is level 7/7 and his troupe includes Minsc (Ranger 8), Branwen (cleric 8), Kivan (ranger 8), Imoen (mage/thief 9/6) and Dynaheir (mage 9). Dualclassing Imoen makes so much sense it hurts, since with the help of potions there is not a trap or lock that can resist her.

I finished Ulgoth's Beard and most of Durlag's Tower - the chess game event bugged for somereason but I had already hit XP cap by that point so meh, I'll fix it for the evil playthrough. Now it's off to the Thieves Guild Maze and to hunt Sarevok down.

If anyone wondered, cleric/mage was quite fun - meant that I ran out of healing much slower than I used to and most of the fights in mid/late-game were becoming trivial thanks to the barrage that Dynaheir, Imoen and PC could spam. Plus the amount of buffing one can do with 2 divine casters... Let's just say that until I got the TotSC-content, there wasn't much challenge! During the early levels it was quite a different story - one needs some patience when PC lags behind the others, especially since some of the fights (Ulcaster ruins!) were upgraded thanks to the fixpack I used.

I did cheat once, sort of - by re-rolling stats until I got everything to 18, except STR to 15. Got lucky, didn't even take that long! And now, thanks to the tomes, everything is 19, except STR 16 and WIS 21