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Ive recently started a game with a new party Im going to try and advance all the way through ToB. I like putting together parties for a theme mostly this one is going to be the nature guru's.

Malaki a half elven fighter/druid with the exact same stats as Jaheira except for an 18 wisdom.
Jaheira
Minsc
Valygar
Cernd
Yoshimo/Imeon

This party may or may not be challenging. I like the compostion of it with 5 tanks (Minsc, Valygar, Jaheira, Malaki, and Cernd) and 3 druid casters (Jaheira, Malaki, and Cernd).

Malaki is a specialist with the spear and quartestaff and two weapon style.
Jaheira will use a club or scimitar and a shield offhand.
Valygar will dual weild.
Minsc will usee two handed swords and longbows
Cernd will shapeshift and fall back to cast cures if needed.
Yoshimo/Imoen will handle the thieving.

So far Im having an easy enough time. Spellcasters are no problem since someone has Insect Plague memorized.

Malaki is trying to restore balance to the realms and may do good an evil things, whichever he sees may benefit nature the most. Since most of the Bhaalspawn are evil he will find himself on the side of good more often than evil I suppose.

I thought of doing something like this as well. I take it you included Yoshi/Imoen just for plot purposes and to fill the slot? They don't really have any nature orientation AFAIK (although Imoen does say that she dreamed about Dryads).

Are you going to limit yourself to just the outdoorsy quests or are you going to do the city stuff as well?

Aha

I kept Yoshimo because he was nuetral and Malaki sensed the "Neutral side of the force" within him. Imoen is of course his sister and from a plot point will replace Yoshimo.

I just did Nalia's quest. Malaki decided to check out the state of the seige that she described at the Copper Coronet. When he learned that trolls had attacked the castle he at first wasn't going to help Nalia, seeing that the trolls were a natural force reclaiming the enviroment and all. But when the captain described Yuan Ti attacking the castle, Malaki decided some looking into was necessary to find out what made up this unnatural alliance.

What is odd is at the end of the quest Nalia offered the keep to Malaki. He was tempted at first but declined thinking there were people more capable of handling the situation (I.e. Is this a bug? I thought he would only be able to do the stronghold quest?)

After his refusal Nalia took off and Malaki and the nature squad head off for Trademeet....

Eh, last I checked trolls were pretty evil and far from natural.

Since you are a fighter/druid, you have a choice of the fighter stronghold or the druid stronghold. So, no bug.

I too sometimes play with theme parties. The theme party that has been the most surprisingly fun is the Paladin party. It consists of:
PC-Undead Hunter
Keldorn
Anomen-Paladin wanna-be
I intend on picking up Mazzy

The surprise has been that I usually play with combination of a goon or 2, backstab, archers & spells, and this party tends to just stay in the fight and cream the enemy with melee - all goons!

I have tried the nature squad, but got bored with it early. My PC was an Archer though. The all evil party just made me feel unclean (hence the Paladin party).

I have wanted to try a rogue party - Theives & Bards!

Specialty parties

Melee heavy parties (such as the Nature & Paladin squads mentioned) tend to be real powerhouses on the lighter encounters, in my experience, but I think you may run into some problems with the higher level caster encounters, especially as (once Yoshimo goes) you have neither a thief nor a mage. For bad caster encounters, consider everyone with decent THACOs dual wield - interrupts are critical.

That being said, good luck and have fun!

I would consider dual wield as a main weapon stylefor Jaheira - once she gets that good THAC0, she can do very nicely with, say, Blackblood/Belm or some such combo. There are alos quite a lot of nice staves out there too, enough for both Jaheira and your character to be using them.

When I had Minsc & Valygar, I had Minsc on flails, maces & two hand swords, Valygar on Katanas, spears and polearms, and both using longbows. I should have had one of them on axes, maybe respeccing MInsc from the (nearly useless) maces with SK. You might also want to have one of them do hammers - Crom Faeyr + Runehammer is a wicked combo.

Anyway, unbalanced parties are cool.

A ranger/cleric would have fitted nicely in your nature-team, especially since you already have a fighter/druid.

hmmm

hmmm, you might be right about that...I might change Malaki with shadowkeeper......