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Xyx's spell guide also has a through review of the HLAs:

Baldur's Gate II - Spells Reference

There is of course the Girdle of Hill Giant Strength (19) from Barterman. Then there are the Girdles of Stone Giant Strength (20, in Suldanesslar) and Fire Giant Strength (22, in TOB--Yaga Shura's Lair).

For Viconia, you could switch her from Flail to Mace as a melee weapon and give her the Mauler ...

I think you're going to get the best real-time time by soloing the game, since you're not going to find enough boots of speed or potions of speed to haste a whole party. I could be wrong if you've got mages casting lost of hastes, but I doubt it.

This is why the sorcerer is probably the best PC ...

minsc... wow i totally forgot about minsc. That's a good idea, he's even faster to get than korgan--I dont know why i never considered minsc or jaheira before.

You would still have to walk over to get the key and come back to release Jaheira though, while with Minsc you just speed through the ...

Some additional thoughts:

--As far as character creation, it seems like a sorcerer would be the best option since it would grant you multiple hastes from the start (and obviously you won't be worrying about getting scrolls). Go ahead and take Minsc. Minsc won't slow you down since he doesn't have ...

Bodhi shouldn't be that hard if you have a party. Take the (short) time to grab the mace of disruption in the lair, and perhaps run in to the tavern at the city gates and grab Daystar (free Sunray). Those should let you take out the rest of the vampires pretty quickly. Having your best two fighters ...

As for backstabbing, every now and then a thief in my party manages it but its usually accidental so I never rely on it. I prefer mage/thief npcs cos they can just stand back and attack with spells or ranged weapons from a distance, and unlike mages they have access to shortbows and all the ...

Though it may not be applicable in your case, it is also impossible to side with Bodhi if your PC is a thief. Bodhi will inherently distrust you even if you're more than happy to kill off the Thieves guild.

CFM, I read Gaider's comments.

The Ascension mod sounds great, although, the thought of a tougher Abazigal battle and a tougher demogorgon battle (without HLA's) is a bit terrifying.

I'll report back on the experience.

Those are some of the most fun battles to work out. Enjoy and let us know ...

The urge I have is collect the best of the best, or the Greatest Hits so-to-speak and install them all, hoping to create a substantially new BG2 experience. But it sounds as though that might actually lead to chaos and frustration for me, primarily because of cross compatibility issues.

I don't ...

The second time I played SoA/ToB as a sorcerer, I used Time Stop maybe once the whole game, however, I continued to use Improved Alacrity consistently just for fun.

The Time Stop/Improved Alacrity combo is neat the first few times you try it but extremely lame afterwards unless you're soloing I ...

upgrade to the SoA/ToB experience???

I hear/see the terms 'ascension' and 'tactics' thrown around a lot. Would these be considered the best efforts out there to-date? And what the hell is WeiDU??? Obviously, I want to avoid any controversial/buggy/cheesy/lame mods.
Thanks!

Ascension is pretty ...

A question I would like to add to this topic, if anybody knows, is how the spells affect the target once Time Stop finishes. Do the spells affect the person in the order you cast them, or the order the animations reach them ?? The reason I'm asking is because I'm quite fond of stacking save-or ...

Time Stop lasts three rounds and Improved Alacrity lasts two rounds, and both of them have a casting time of 9. In my opinion, it doesn't really matter which one you cast first, although the experts out there might disagree. After I cast Improved Alacrity, I use the space bar to pause the game ...

Aerie's a good choice but I would probably go with Jan--not out of power concerns but because I have never liked playing without thieving skills. The advantage of Jan over Imoen is that as a multi-class he will continue to improve his thief skills (including getting their HLAs). I'm a big fan of the ...

I've decided its just going to be too much hassle lol. I'm currently playing through BG1 Tutu with this character with the view of going right through to TOB. I want to switch to Assassin just after the prologue area in BG2 to reflect her desire to kill her captor. From a roleplaying point of view ...

I just looked at the other thread.
Maybe you could copy and paste the affects info for the backstab multiplier of an existing high level assassin?
Combine this with the bonus abilities from my original suggestion, and you'll have yourself a mega-overpowered backstabbing rapemonster of the highest ...

It at least seems like a better approximation to go with the Kensai/thief and then just plug in the poison weapon ability through SK, which is easy enough. The main drawback there is that when I tried out the same thing in a game I couldn't figure out how to bump up the backstab factor to x7 for the ...

For divine spells I would suggest a half-elf ranger/cleric. Is the ultimate divine spellcaster and dual-wielding Crom Faeyr and Flail of Ages makes it a very though tank.

That is an excellent idea as well to replace the fighter character, though I'd say with the caveats that the other spots would ...

The sorceror shouldn't seem too limiting as long as your spell selections are sound--there are plenty of threads available to give you advice on that. If you really want cleric/druid spells, however, I would recommend just going with a multi-class cleric/mage rather than dual-class. Much of the ...