Eeevil Parties

[Cass]

Being somewhere near the end of BG1 playing as an all-round, jolly-nice, kind-to-kittens-and-old-people, sweet'n'luvverly party, I made the decision to create and play as a filthy, nasty, kill-your-mother-for-her-teeth, evil party. Unfortunately, things haven't really gone my way: I've found that indulging in random acts of vice and larceny will get you noticed fairly rapidly and, being eeeevil, while I'm not averse to killing officers of the law - or indeed, slaughtering innocents in their own homes - I've found that it makes the game unplayable. Once you arrive at a major population centre i.e arrive at The Friendly Arm Inn with a Reputation as black as pitch you are ambushed by hordes of teleporting Flaming Fist mages with an arsenal of spells that are beyond the capabilities of even my fully experienced good party and certainly beyond a bunch of first level petty criminals. Is there any way around this? Even minor infringements of the rule of law appear to crucify your Reputation. Do any of you have any tips on playing an eeeevil party?

In fact I'll broaden the request and also ask for tips on eeeevil character class types, party choices and behaviour...

Cheers, any help gladly appreciated...

[Sojourner]

Playing evil calls for some subtlety and lots of well-placed bribes (READ: Donations to temple to get those Flaming Fist Enforcers off your back).

As an evil character, you don't do anything for free - so demand rewards (the game does allow for this). Go ahead and kill Drizzt - but be prepared to visit the temple afterward. You might choose not to save the slaves in the Cloakwood mines (this may require a trip to the temple) or you might choose to save them just to stick it to the Throne.

A good thief never gets caught - there are a lot of areas which don't require the whole party, so send in your thief alone when "five-finger-discount" shopping. Many times, your thief need only wait until wandering NPC's are out of his/her line of sight to be able to steal without raising an alarm. When this is not possible, be prepared to run him/her out of there before the Flaming Fist can talk to him/her.

If you don't plan on playing a thief class yourself, I recommend picking up Montaron, as he's the best evil thief in the game.

Here's a link to a story written by someone running an evil party:

Lyngellen's Tale.

[Coot]

I found this article: http://www.gamespy.com/articles/december00/bg2badstrat/

[Cass]

Thanks, guys.

I've created a Neutral Evil Elf Fighter with the following stats:

Str: 18/69
Dex: 19
Con: 17
Int: 11
Wis: 10
Cha: 18

...and am busily restraining my most murderous instincts. I'm trying to keep my Reputation low - but not so low that I attract unwanted attention. One excellent method for doing this is to batter people unconcious before robbing them - no guards and no loss of Reputation. Mmmm.

I've got Montaron and Xzar (because they're wonderful) and I skipped over to Peldvale to pick up Viconia. Kagain comes next and I really want Shar Teel but don't know how to get her before Nashkel. Will continue to ruminate...

[Mini Me]

sharteel is in the basilisk area, just go west from the beregost temple and avoid the wolves you come out on the left of the map, go straight up and youll see her. You dont need to finish nashkel for it as far as i know.

also, as my tip:
if people hate you, sneak around the towns, and charm people who wont talk to you (algernons cloak is magnificent)

[Cass]

I ended up getting Shar-Teel quite late but am now doing rather well. Actually in Baldur's Gate itself (Chapter 5) robbing houses and stores, working with the Thieves' and Merchants' Guilds, picking pockets, beating up mothers and children and still maintaining a low average reputation.

Odd that you should mention Algernon's Cloak as I've only just noticed it's remarkable usefulness besides the Charisma increase (with a natural 19 in Charisma, the Cloak gives me 21 - even average rep is more than enough for most NPC encounters). But, charming people so that you can steal their belongings without them informing the guards is so much easier than beating them up (especially if you're in, say, the Flaming Fist compound). Do you have any idea how many uses you can get out of it and how often?

Also, after killing Drizzt, Montaron is one stylish mo-fo with the +4 Mithril Chain as it still allows him to use his thieving abilities. w00t.

[VonDondu]

Originally posted by Cass
Odd that you should mention Algernon's Cloak as I've only just noticed it's remarkable usefulness... Do you have any idea how many uses you can get out of it and how often?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that Algernon's Cloak has 64,000 "charges" and it can be used as many times per day as you like. Or perhaps it's a "zero charge" item that has an "infinite" number of uses. If that's the case, then for all practical purposes, it has "no limit". It's too cheesy for my taste, so I rarely ever use it. I'm going by what I think I remember seeing in one of the game editors (Gatekeeper or something similar).

I usually don't post things like this unless I'm sure they're true, but in this case, I'm fishing for information. If what I posted is wrong, I hope that someone will correct me and tell me the truth.

[Mini Me]

mine hasnt run out yet so its very probable your right.

whats cheesy about it? its not got illegitamately, its there for you to use...its just expressing that you can use a high charisma to charm people...

[garazdawi]

I'm currently running through with a prty containing

Me ( vanilla mage to be made a wild mage in BGII) w Lawful Evil alignmen
Kagain
Shar-Teel
Viconia
Montaron

and Tiax when I get to BG

I've so far been utterly evil and my rep is *sigh* at 0 so I can't buy anything and I always get those soldiers that attack me....... that's the only really bad thing about being evil, you have to buy everything at a MUCH higher rate and discount is only something you dream about