Balanced Party

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I agree, and that's usually what I do anyway.

Besides, a little trick I do to let Imoen catch up in XP is the kick everybody out of the party (save first, just in case they run!) and have her scribe all of the scrolls I've set aside for her. She'll gain massive amounts of XP from this, and in some cases, she passes some of the other characters in my games!

ON EDIT: Had to quote Aldeth again!

Right-on!

My current party covers all the angles, and suits my style as well (I like smaller parties so I level faster):

Protagonist: Berserker (I will Dual-Class to Cleric at level 13)

Jaheira (Fighter/Druid)
Minsc (Berserker- I've SK'ed him b/c it fits him better than Ranger IMHO, although Ranger would work just as well)
Imoen (Thief/Mage - I've SK'ed her thief levels into Swashbuckler levels, b/c I started a Tutu game and played her that way).

4 person party, every angle covered. Heck. I'll be more than covered in the divine magic area after my protagonist switched classes. And when he hits Cleric level 14, 3 out of 4 of my party members will be good tanks.

 

(A bit off topic) I would take Imoen for the role playing value, except she just annoys me to no end. It kind of goes back to BG1 when she had the most annoying voice (who needs wail of the banshee, just have her scream) where I had to run around the fountains in candlekeep to keep her from catching me before I spoke to gorion. She is much better and somewhat less annoying in BG2, but save for the fact that she's a good mage and a pretty good theif, I hate her.

When it comes down to party value, though, I have to say Imoen has always worked better for me than Nalia. Of course, that could be because I disliked Nalia for always giving me that *whopping* 650 gp to clear her keep of trolls when I wasn't a fighter. It does come down to roleplaying value for me, because I can really make most any character work. Generally I never put either of them in my party and wether I am good or not I take Edwin (and just keep my REP right below where he'd leave at). He is, as it's said, a bloody good spellcaster. There's some real roleplaying, when you work to keep your half good half evil party together. (Yes I know this has been slowly getting more as I've been going along)

Though, in the end, I would go with Edwin as my main offensive spellcaster, and imoen (or, blech, Jan,) as my defensive spellcaster. I'd most likely then go three fighter types and one cleric or druid. If I'm going multiplayer, then I'd have to go one paladin, one berserker-dual-mage @ lvl 9, Kensai-dual-Mage @ lvl 9, archer, illusionist-thief, and a ranger-dual-cleric @ lvl 7. I played through with close to that party many times. Quite an array of characters. Why am I writing this at 2:30 am?

 

Hmmm... to me the most balanced party would consist of:

Keldorn
Jaheira
Minsc
Jan
PC Sorcerer/Kelsey
and if PC is NOT a sorcerer or Kelsey, Imoen.
If PC IS a sorcerer or Kelsey, then perhaps Anomen.

As I stated above, almost all of these people fill more than one role.

 

There does seem to be a more common balanced-party emerging...

1.5 Fighters
1.5 Cleric/Druid
2.0 Mage
0.5 Thief
0.5 Other

 

Actually, here's the party I started last night:

PC Undead Hunter
Keldorn
Minsc
Jaheira
Jan
Kelsey

So that's:

3.5 fighters/rangers/paladins
0.5 clerics/druids
0.5 thieves
1.5 mages/sorcerers

Like I said, the fighting arts and arcane magic are what you need to focus on, which is why all six characters do one or the other. Also, as can be seen, since clerics/druids and thieves are the LEAST necessary classes, I only have one spot spent on them, and both of those characters are multi-classed with something else for more flexibility. There is no reason to have more than 0.5 thieves, and never a reason to go with more than 1.0 cleric/druids. 1.5 is just too high - once you get half way through the game, the number of divine spells you get makes them superfulous. The only thing I'm missing out on is some high level cleric spells (my undead hunter will be able to cast cleric spells for levels 1-4).

 

Looks good. I personally, would have a full-time cleric and a backup cleric (or druid). You have this covered with Paladins/Rangers acting as pseudo-clerics to provide the low level healing and buffing. You actually have more people able to cast divine spells than I would normally have, it's just that they can't cast very high level spells (I would say 1.0 - 1.5 clerics in total). For your party Anomen might be a better choice than minsc to give you better cleric support - think of clerics as tanks not just healers (which does seem to be your way of thinking).

 

Anomen is only an average tank, not because of his armor or weapon selections (which are quite good) but because I look ahead to ToB, and Anomen only receives cleric HLA's which pretty much suck.

 

Fair enough, can't argue with that one too much.