Most useless NPCs.

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I Know that all of the NPCs have thier pros and cons and can all be developed into a very good party asset, but we have that 1 or 2 NPCs that piss us off or just never seems to work in your party or fit your playing style. who fits this bill for you? My Most useless NPCs are usually the same suspects.

Good Guys:
Ajantis= I usually have a good frontline by the time I get to him.
Kivan= Coran and Monty are better archers and he has never ben a good melee option in my games.
Yeslick= Sucks as a fighter and by the time I get him I already have a strong cleric.
Alora= I like her, I just wish I could get her sooner!
Dynaheir= Not my kind of mage, and her dex sux!

Bad guys:
Edwin= Rarely fits in with my parties, he disrupts the chei or what ever the chineese call it.

Neutral:
Xan= I only like him when I do a party challange (a party ful of weak NPCs for fun), + he is a downer!
Branwen= I usualy take Jaheira or dual class Xzar, otherwise she is not bad.
Skie= Can not take her personality for very long.

Who are your downers?

 

Probably Xan. The moonblade is next to useless as he gets cut to pieces if put in the front line.

 

Yeah, they probably thought that by giving Xan that Wraithform spell, which he already has in his book if your level is high enough when you recruit him, would make him a front-rower. This would be true, since it's supposed to give immunity to normal weapons IIRC, but in my game it never worked.

And you can't find that spell from the shops either, so maybe they thought that it'd unbalance the beginning of the game too much and removed it. Some random encounters might give that scroll, but it's useless compared to mirror image. This spell helps with Xan as well, but you still wouldn't want to put him in the first row. Or take him in at all.

 

You can take Ajantis very early. You can go to area north of FAI after you get to FAI.

Kivan has 17 dex and 18/12 str, Monty has a 17 dex too so he isn't a better archer. Kivan's thac0 will be 1 point better than Monty in the end. (Kivan becomes lvl 8 Ranger and Monty becomes lvl 7 F/lvl 8 T and uses only fighter levels for calculating thac0)

Also with such stats Kivan is a much better frontliner than most other fighters.

 

I always liked taking Kivan, though I would always dump him for Coran who is, IMO, the best NPC in the game.

My line-up is usually like this:

PC - Usually a mage
Jahiera (I find some way to get rid of Khalid)
Ajantis
Misnc (I find some way to get rid of Dynahier)
Coran/Imoen
Viconia

Many of the NPC's in the game are pretty useless IMO.

 

For joinable NPCs, Skie. By the time you get to her, you've passed by 4 thief types (5 if you dual Shar-Teel) one of which you have molded and shaped the way you want.

 

Dengo, Kivan's THAC0 will be 2 points better in the end if you're using a bow... he's an Elf!

I don't like any of the NPCs you meet in Baldur's Gate. You meet them way too late for my tastes. I'd only add them in theme parties or when I'm playing a "no ressurrection" game.

 

Perhaps a bit blasphemous, but I find Monty pretty useless. There are better fighters and better thieves in the game and his personality gets on my nerves. He's just too evil and slimy to have around. Xan's personality I actually find entertaining. Not so with Monty's.

Branwen, thanks to that special ability of hers (Spiritual Hammer -- but unlike the standard spell her's is +4 I think and the duration is essentially forever) makes her quite useful. She fights pretty well and is a good cleric.

 

Umm Xan and Garrick ... and DO I needa reason

 

Yeah, I am aware of this, but I usually take Khalid, Jaheira, Xzar, Montaron, and of course Imoen at the start. the reason I do this is so that I can watch the "dispute" that erupts between Khalid, Jaheira, Xzar, and Montaron. Besides, with Minsc on my front line Ajantis has no place there. Plus, with his low dex. he gets hit a lot. I have Played with him and he can be a solid NPC but I generally have no use for him.

Give Monty the Crossbow of speed or accuracy, or Darts of Wounding and Stunning and he will score a lot of devistating hits, in the end he will be just as effective as Kivan if not more so. As to his melee abilities, when you pick him up he usually has low hit points due to his low con. and he has ** in spear so this sans a shield. In my experience he gets hit a lot and with the options of Kagain, Shar-Teel, Minsc, and Khalid he will always be a close second. As far as archery is concerned, Coran is King. and Khalid can make a better archer than Kivan when set up for it. Shar-Teel with **** in small swords is steel rain with daggers. And I have already outlined Montaron's virtues with missile weapons. Kivan is far from the best game in town in any regard. That said I do like his character and will sometimes take him along with Viconia for fun. He is a well thoughtout character with good skills using a bow and eventualy decent with a melee weapon but when it comes to combat skills there are others who have the edge on him, for me, he is my last choice for a strong combat roll in my party.

 

Who's the gnome you meet in BG who's also in the sequel?

 

Quayle, although, he is not a party joinable NPC in BG2.

 

Nooooooo! I don't and will never agree this.
No one can be as effective as Kivan! All fans of Kivan unite! Victory to Kivan the Great.

Well, it depends on your taste really. I didn't understand how could you make Monty as effective as Kivan, if you give his proficiency points to Xbow and dart Kivan will be still much better. But if you mean backstab, sadly Monty is better than Kivan.

I agree she rocks. She has better stats than Kivan the Great.

 

Ditto for Tiax.

Just the weapons are inferior there. With the crossbows either you've got slightly better THAC0 with half the attacks per round, or worse THAC0 with the same attacks per round. And darts aren't common enough to use reliably.

And Monty has lower HP due to multi-classing.

Without inventory pause, Monty either won't be using a shield either, or won't be using a crossbow. This is at most an advantage when using darts, which as I've said above are too rare to be a consistent strategy.

I've noticed that too. He gets hit bizarrely often for whatever AC he has; put someone else in the same situation with the same AC, and they won't get hit as much as Kivan.

 

Here's my list of the people I never take:

Eldoth - Not enough DEX or CHA for a Bard. Is way behind other evil NPCs in usefullness. Is also tied to...
Skie - Urge to kill... rising... More annoying the Paris Hilton on Helium, and not as much use as a proper thief you've been able to develop from early on. Let Monty shoot her down with the LCoS. It's for the best.
Quayle - Give him "the bum's rush" as the journal puts it (no, it's not a gay thing). His class combos would be useful... if he wasn't the worst cleric in the game. Also, he's even more annoying than Skie.
Tiax - Too late to be of real use as a thief, multiclassing just serves to lower his number of cleric spells. Not as annoying as Quayle, though.

 

Eldoth - Poison arrows...and no DEX. Right. He might make a decent assassin type if you shuffled his stats, but even then he doesn't have any exceptional scores to put in DEX anyway. And getting him so late ruins what little value he might possibly have had.
Quayle - One extra Invisibility a day can't make up for crap stats. But do try a gnomish I/C sometime; they're a blast.
Skie - Pointless at best. Even if getting a thief so late didn't hurt them, Alora's in BG as well and she's 10 times better (50 if you factor in attitudes). Take my advice and slaughter her and her guards for no rep loss; it seems even the designers acknowledged that the game world was better off without her.

Everyone else has their uses. Even Alora, surprisingly enough for getting a thief so late.

 

Statisticly you are correct. And in most cases I would bow to your superior knowlage, but after having them both together in my party many times, (I am a fan of Kivan too), Monty always delivers the goods and Kivan is a distant second. The Bolts of Bitting,Lighting,Darts of Wounding and Stunning and Monty's ability to hit with them make him awsome. His hits with regular crossbow bolts score damage than Kivan's hits with arrows. Kivan is usually a negative experience for me. He should have ben given stats to match his great character.

I have Monty use normal darts until we face a powerful foe and when he scores a stun I switch weapons to conserve on the magic darts.

I think you answered that complaint well enough.

 

I've always found it the other way around. Monty's decent with a crossbow, and distracting with darts, but with neither has he ever matched Kivan's expertise, in my experience.

And they happen half as often. Even comparing, let's say, 14 to 8 (which is high on Monty's side), when you double 8 you get 16. It's easy to be impressed by more damage per hit, but not so easy to factor in hits per round. But with a lot of experience with having each of them fire at separate targets of the same type, Kivan's always goes down first.

Having tried darts with Monty because I had Kagain in the same party using a crossbow, and good crossbows and bolts are much rarer than bows and arrows, I can tell you that doing half the damage 1.5 times as fast usually leaves me with about 60% effectiveness (though the math doesn't add up).

Nothing beats bows. But Monty with a good bow can get pretty close to Kivan. Not quite, since he doesn't have the Elven bonus and he'll be a level behind due to multi-classing (plus you'd have to either wait until level 6 or GK a couple of proficiency points to bows), but almost.

It's not a complaint; I was only pointing out where your "advantages"...weren't. Truth be told, both of them have enough HP to tank reliably, Kivan's occasional bad luck notwithstanding. In fact, my first Tutu game is relying on Kivan as the sole tank (adding Viconia once I get her), and he's doing quite well despite having a early version of EasyTutu before the spawns were reduced to a sane level.

 

There is only one problem with Kivan the Great. He is an elven ranger and that means he needs high dex because he needs to be stealthy and use his bow. Even his portrait shows him using his bow. Why does he have 17 dex? Even Imoen and Skie (human) has 18 dex and Coran (half elf) has 20 dex. If he had 19 (or more) dex he would be much better: Kivan the Magnificent.

 

My only point is that, all things considered, I usually have a positive experience with Monty and negative one with Kivan. When I get both NPCs at about the same time and Monty's info sheet always shows him ahead of Kivan in kills and experience and my parties combat effectiveness does not seem to be affected by the loss of Kivan...
If you and others say you have good play with him I believe you, convention says he should be a great archer and be able to tank some to. Ijust never get that experience with him. I wish I did, I like him. Its the same way with faldorn for me. Most say she blows but she hasalways delivered what I need when I need it. Its just one of those things that its real but you can't explain it