What are HLAs and Dual-classing?

Remove all ads!

Hello,I am new on this forum.I have beaten BGII:SoA once and now I want to play ToB with dual classed char - Berserker>Mage.I have read through the forum and I want a little info whats HLAs,IMHO and is there anything special I should know about dual classing

[ April 30, 2006, 16:50: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

Welcome to SP, eXternal.

HLA = High Level Abilities

IMHO = In my humble (honest) opinion. Some of us being always honest and never humble use IMO = In my opinion. In the FAQ's is a list of abreviations used here.

Never dual class; usually multi-class. I'm sure someone will be along to help with that one.

 

If you dual-class, you will get the HLAs of your second class only. In your example, if you are a berserker dualled into mage, when your mage levels hit 3 million XP (18 th level) you will get to choose mage HLAs only.

But a Multi Class F/M can choose BOTH of the mage and fighter HLAS once the total amount of XP is 3 million, not seperate levels. This tends to make multi-class characters rather effective when it comes to HLAs. Trade-off is, they can never have a kit, and their mage levels will develop soo slowly they will hardly be able to cast uber 9th level spells, only nearly end of the ToB. (I assume it is a vanilla game without any mods)

 

I'm going to assume you know very little about dual classing, so I'm going to write down some of the basics of dual classing. Just ignore this if you already know it.

1) Only humans can dual class.

2) Valid dual classes are:

• Fighter-Druid, Fighter-Cleric, Fighter-Mage, Fighter-Thief
• Cleric-Thief, Cleric-Mage, Cleric-Ranger, Cleric-Fighter
• Mage-Thief, Mage-Cleric, Mage-Fighter
• Thief-Mage, Thief-Cleric, Thief-Fighter
• Ranger-Cleric
• Druid-Fighter

I believe no Ranger-kit can be dualled, only the vanilla ranger can be dualled to a cleric.

3) You must have 15 in the primary stat of the first class, and 17 in the primary stat of the class you want to dual to. The primary stats for the various classes are:

• Fighter - Strength
• Cleric - Wisdom
• Mage - Intelligence
• Thief - Dexterity
• Ranger - Constitution
• Druid - Wisdom AND Charisma

So a Fighter dualled to a mage must have a minimum of 15 strength and 17 intelligence.

If I've forgotten something, or if some of the info is erroneous, please correct me.

 

'Twould be my pleasure.

Ranger - Strength, Dexterity, and Wisdom

 

You could download my handy-dandy guide from here - Baldur's Gate II: SoA and ToB Race and Class Listing. It's near the top.

 

That's a handy FAQ you've written, kuemper. I wish I had known about it before. One thing though. According to Felinoid the primary stats of a Ranger are:

But according to kuemper's FAQ it's:

So which is it?

Also, you list the Ranger kits as well with the dual classes, kuemper. I don't believe you can actually dual a Ranger kit. I know for certain you can't dual the Stalker, anyway.

 

I think the Ranger's primary stats are STR,DEX and WIS (like Felinoid said).

Also I don't believe it's possible to dual-class a ranger who has a kit,although I remember someone mentioning that an Archer can dual-class in cleric

 

It is STR, DEX, and WIS. This is both from the source books and the internal files of the game.

Only one of the three ranger kits can be dualled, IIRC. And I'm pretty sure it's the Beastmaster since I remember discussions on the other two, both of which ended with a definitive no. (Again, IIRC.) I'll go test them out now and edit in my results.

EDIT: Confirmed. Archers and Stalkers cannot dual-class, but Beastmasters and vanilla Rangers can (though only to Cleric).

 

Thank you all,i got more info than i wanted ;]

 

Which is very weird since I was able to dual all 3 ranger kits to cleric. I took a couple hours to test each kit with lowered scores and the only ones that would dual were a 15 in Str, Dex and Con and 17 Wis. Oh well, most people multiclass R/C anyway.

 

I seem to recall something about it being changed from SoA to ToB. As I remember, in SoA you could also dual all kits, but not anymore in ToB.

 

I believe that the Beast Master is the only Ranger kit that can dual-class.

 

It is possible that SoA allowed the dual-classes and ToB doesn't (since me test was done with a ToB game), but it's more likely that kuemper simply has a mod which allows it. In patched & umodded ToB it simply isn't possible.

 

Why can't kitted rangers dual? There must be a reason, or it does not make sense to me.

 

Here's what I had when I did the dual classing faq:
ToB official patch
Baldurdash ToB
Dungeon-Be-Gone

 

There is no reason for Archers and Stalkers not to be able to dual, which is why I suspect that Baldurdash is the culprit (or savior, if you will) in this case. I don't use it, for the simple reason of keeping my game as clean as possible. Anything that doesn't match 2e I can find my own way around, if I really want to.