GameBanshee Forums

Hi folks,

I haven't played BG2 for several years, and hence, have been reading up a fair bit to try and decide what class to play.

I think I have settled for a Swashbuckler, to make up the following Evil-based party:

1. Me - Swashbuckler
2. Korgan
3. Viconia
4. Edwin

What I really need to know is, Is the Swashbuckler a good kit, or is it completely boring? Or am I better off to go Kensai(9)/Thief? Or something else altogether? Can this party succeed on Core Rules difficulty? And also, a bit of advice on which proficiencies to choose would be great too. I'm leaning toward dual-wielding Katana/Scimitar for Celestial Fury and Belm.

Any advice would be great.

Hohnikus wrote:Hi folks,

I haven't played BG2 for several years, and hence, have been reading up a fair bit to try and decide what class to play.

I think I have settled for a Swashbuckler, to make up the following Evil-based party:

1. Me - Swashbuckler
2. Korgan
3. Viconia
4. Edwin

What I really need to know is, Is the Swashbuckler a good kit, or is it completely boring?
Or am I better off to go Kensai(9)/Thief? Or something else altogether?
Can this party succeed on Core Rules difficulty?
And also, a bit of advice on which proficiencies to choose would be great too. I'm leaning toward dual-wielding Katana/Scimitar for Celestial Fury and Belm.

It's a backstab-less thief with slightly better combat abilities, but still limited to one base attack per round. I'd go with a fighter/thief multi, but that's just me.
Yes, easily. You have all the bases covered with the some of the best single-class NPCs available and you'll level up pretty rapidly. If you have ToB you'll be even more set with the NPC there. Again, a fighter/thief multi will do you a bit better.
Scimitars/Katanas are good, but you may want to invest some points into short swords with that party setup (Kundane will also give you an extra attack per round as well). Long swords are a good choice, and for backstabbing (not a problem with Swashies) you'd want to go with quarterstaves.

Hm, Fighter/Thief Multi - I hadn't even considered that. Is it a better alternative than Kensai/Thief Dual, and why? Also of the three options (Swashbuckler being the third), how do they all compare in terms of tanking the front line alongside Korgan? I don't want to find my character taking a serious beating all the time, which I'm a bit afraid a Kensai/Thief might.

All in all, I'm still not 100% decided on which to try.

It's all a matter of personal preference of course, but I'd say Kensai/Thief dual classed is probably one of the strongest build there is.

The character has to take a back seat for a little while whilst building up the thief class, but once the Kensai class kicks in again the character is very strong. Once you gain Use Any Item (very cheesy*) you become an unstoppable force.

* I say cheesy because really you should never be able to wear armour as a Kensai, I think you'd have a hard time finding a 'real' Dungeon Master who would let you get away with it. However, within the context of this game there's nothing wrong with it. If an evil thief can wield Carsomyr without it losing it's abilities and taking damage from touching it, anything goes after all!

PS There is a mod that makes a Swashbuckler more effective, you'll have to search this forum for it though, because I can't remember what it's called, it should be mentioned in one of the sticky threads though. Perhaps someone else can point you in the right direction.

If you don't have ToB installed neither the swashbuckler nor the kensai9/thief are recommended. Take a berserker9/thief, fighter9/thief or fighter/thief multiclass instead.

With ToB installed it's different.
Swashbuckler bonuses improve until level 40 and you can take whirlwind HLAs for 10 attacks per round. So if you don't want to backstab you get a great tank.
If you want to play a human who can backstab take a kensai9/thief, UAI removes the kensai's armor restrictions.
Multiclass fighter/thief is the most powerful choice with ToB installed since you get both fighter and thief HLAs and can backstab.
Fighter/mage/thief multiclass can be even more powerful, you'll get enough XP to max out fighter and thief powers and mage spells up to level 8 offer new powerful choices.

What kmonster said - it all comes down to whether you have ToB or not.

About proficiencies:
If you dualclass put ***** into katanas and ** into dualwielding before dualclassing. Take other proficencies during the dualing period or the points spent will be lost.
If you choose swashbuckler or multiclass start with ** in katanas and dualwielding, add ** in scimitars afterwards.

On a few occasions you might want to be able to use effectively:
A blunt weapon (like the club +3 you can buy in trademeet) for hurting monsters immune to other damage.
A weapon which can hurt monsters immune to +3 weapons.
A ranged option (daggers or bows for using the magical arrows, don't take the same profs as Korgan).

Swashbucklers are a strong choice for frontline fighters. Depending on weapon choice, the Swashbuckler can rival and even outclass the 9 or 13 Kensai/ Thief. But like kmonster pointed out, that's with ToB installed, but even without it, I'd still favor the swashbuckler.

Speaking of which, I would recommend dualing at level thirteen and maybe even fourteen. Dualing at thirteen gives you two bonus points to hit and damage as well as an extra half attack per round. I just like dualing at fourteen for the purpose of using up as much experience as I can.

I would strongly advise against choosing Katanas as your weapons of choice, rather, you can use them, just don't invest points in them. There are only TWO decent Katanas in the series., a +4 one and a +3 one. The latter is available very early on in the game, but doesn't compare to some of the other items you can get. If you plan to backstab, I'd suggest longswords (even though you'd get the most damage by using a staff) since they make good backstab weapons and good frontline weapons. If you don't care about backstabbing (which should be the case if you play the swashbuckler) I'd suggest going for flails. They are a very solid choice, both offensively and defensively. I really like having high attack speed though, so I usually have my characters use scimitars as well, just so I can have five attacks per round written on my character sheet.

The CF katana is one of the best SoA weapons and better than the longswords you'll find in SoA, so I wouldn't start with longsword profiency instead.
Flails aren't great for swashbucklers, thieves can't use them and even with the UAI HLA in TOB they'll suffer from being unable to put proficiency points into this weapon type.

It's all dependent on whether or not the original poster has ToB installed.

Personally, I care for the end result more than how the character functions at the start. In any case, I think it's inefficient to spend five whole points on two half decent weapons. Also, in my opinion, the difference between three and five points is very small so it may be better to just assign up to three points to a weapon and have more weapon knowledge under your belt. Yes, CF is a good SoA weapon, but I would NOT dedicate five points to it.

Like I said earlier, I'm a fan of attack speed, so Belm +2 is one of my favorites. I usually aim for it and Kundane +2 first. Personally, one of my top three longswords is The Equalizer, which, through its' ability allows you to use other weapons effectively (depending on opponent, but usually it doesn't matter).