GameBanshee Forums

I`m going round again. I just finished with my Wizard Slayer/Mage and I was totally peed off with him. I had a whole bagful of posh gear but he couldn`t use most of it. Even with his armour on (and spells cancelled) he was a total wimp.
This time, before I start I would like your help. I`m thinking of a Berserker/Mage combination. What stats should I give him at the start and what level to dual?

I`ve never really been happy with my character. They never seem to be as strong as other team members. In one game my fighter could only carry 20lbs. more than Jaheira. So I`d appreciate some advice on starting stats.
Keldorn is a must for me as well as Aerie and Jaheira.
Cheers

Well, you are going to need a minimum of 15 STR and 17 INT in order to dual class from a Fighter Kit to a Mage. How you proceed from there is really a matter of taste and playing style.

I would personally leave both stats at that point and maximize DEX and CON. These are essential, especially for a melee fighter and there are numerous items throughout the game that increase STR. However, if you are concerned about getting a naturally high STR, simply keep rolling until you get something above 18/50.

Minimize CHR and WIS if you like, although I usually like to keep them above 10, without wasting too much time re-rolling. Especially WIS, since this impacts your Lore ability if it is too low, and you might want an extra point to sacrifice during a certain phase of the game. There are also several items that boost CHR (as well as one cheesy way to maximize it) so I wouldn't worry too much about it, unless you are a purist.

As numerous people will no doubt tell you, stats are not terribly important to the enjoyment of the game. It all depends on how much time you want to spend rolling and how important you think role-playing is vs maximizing advantage.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot that you asked what level to dual. I would go for level 9 because I don't like to wait too long to regain my fighter class. Most people advise waiting until 12 if you are playing through ToB, or possibly 13 if you want the extra 1/2 attack.

A Berserker/Mage can be a great character. I'd dual him at 9th Level or 13th Level, depending on how many people you have in your party (which affects your rate of advancement) and how long you are willing to wait before your first class becomes active again. Here are a few suggestions for stats.

First of all, if you're playing a warrior, don't settle for less than 18/51 STR. The combat bonuses are just too good to pass up. This includes Fighters (single-class, dual-class, or multi-class), Rangers, Paladins, and Barbarians.

When you roll up a Fighter, you ought to be able to get 89 or 90 total stat points in less than 100 rolls. (I usually roll anywhere from 20 to 200 times.) When I first played BG1, I didn't realize that you could redistribute stat points since I had never done that before when I played D&D, so in my ignorance, it seemed really hard to roll up a good character at first; but since you CAN redistribute stat points, it shouldn't be too hard to create a decent character.

In order to dual to a Mage, your Intelligence needs to be at least 17. It doesn't really need to be any higher than that. As I explained in another message thread, the manual is wrong when it says that your Intelligence has to be 18 if you want to learn 9th Level spells. The game developers decided to change that at the last minute to give everyone a chance to use them. (I'm sure that this is true for Throne of Bhaal, but now that I think about it, I'm not so sure about Shadows of Amn. But no one is supposed to be able to cast 9th Level spells in the first place in Shadows of Amn, since Mages aren't supposed to be able to reach 18th Level.) If you're playing on "Easy" or "Normal" difficulty, there isn't any risk of failing to write a spell into your spellbook (on "Core Rules" and above, there is a chance of failure). There is a limit to the number of spells you can write in your spellbook, but you can use Potions of Genius to get around that (as well as prevent failure when you write spells into your spellbook). So if you have INT 17 and some Potions of Genius, you're all set to be the greatest Mage of all time.

I wouldn't settle for less than 16 Dexterity and 16 Constitution. If you plan to use ranged weapons, I'd bump up Dexterity as high as I could, since high Dexterity gives you ranged weapon bonuses. The Armor Class bonuses are nice, but if you're playing a character who can cast Stoneskins, Mislead, Improved Invisibility, etc., then I don't think that a couple of Armor Class points are really all that critical, and you could even get by with DEX 9. Constitution hit point bonuses are nice, but again, the same considerations apply. If you avoid taking damage, you don't need lots and lots of hit points in the first place. Ask any Mage.

Wisdom and Charisma are a good place to make tradeoffs. I don't think that Wisdom has any effect on anybody besides Clerics. The manual says that Wisdom affects your saving throws, but the manual is wrong, because that feature was never actually implemented in the game. You can raise your Charisma a lot of different ways, and it only has a limited effect in the first place. Even though the prices are higher in the stores if your Charisma is low, I never worry about gold because I do so much shoplifting and fencing. You could also let a character like Keldorn (who has CHA 18) do your shopping for you. Charisma does have an effect on some of the dialogue options, but not nearly enough, in my opinion. So you can take advantage of a deficiency in the game and put your stat points somewhere else where they will make more difference. On a related note, there's one item in the game that raises your Dexterity to 18, so you might take that into consideration as well. Doing things like "min-max" and "meta-gaming" are considered to be cheesy, but if it doesn't make any difference to you, there's no reason why you can't use such strategies.

To preserve continuity (or to cheat, depending on how you look at it), I usually assume that I used a couple of tome in BG1, since I always did. I didn't give every single tome to my main character in BG1; I gave them to various party members where they would be most effective. You might take that into consideration if you plan to edit your character. And speaking of editing, you can make your character as powerful as you like if you decide to use an editor; it's completely up to you (cheating or not).

And speaking of editing and rolling 200 times, you could save yourself the trouble and use an editor to give your character the stats you want.

To sum up, your character should aim for the following stats:

STR 18/51 or higher
DEX 16 or higher (9 if you plan to use the Gauntlets of Dexterity)
CON 16 or higher
INT 17
WIS 3 or higher
CHA 3 or higher

That's a total of 73 stat points, which you should be able to roll on the first few tries. If you get lucky and get 89 total stat points (for comparison, Imoen has about 87), you'd have an extra 16 points to distribute. That would let you raise your Wisdom and Charisma to 8 or 9 (the average for a Human) even if you raised all of your other stats to 18. You shouldn't have any complaints if you can roll stats like that.

Regarding the stats. allocation Van Dondu made a good explanation, I would add that high str. is not that important, there are so many str. enhancing items that with 15-16 you'll do fine. Remember that in the beginning the spell strenght sets your str. to 18/50 and last a long time! while in the second part of the game (and more in ToB) a str. of 18/50 is "quite" low, so you would like to raise it anyway. A couple of point of AC (and missile ThAC0 for ranged weapon and MMM) are always good, and the same to 18 hp, so I would keep Dex and Con to 18. The rest is up to you, although should be a RPG so if your PC is going to be a leader should have at least a decent Cha. So my allocation would be:
Str. 15
Dex. 18
Con. 18
Int. 17
Wis. 10
Cha. 12+
This set up needs 90 points and shouldn't to difficoult to get.

Regarding the lev. to dual there are many threads on the topic, but I would point out that for me it all depends on how you want to play your mage:
if you want to play a mage as a mage (casting spells and avoid to get into melee) with better defensive capabilities (hp, immunities from rage), then dual at 9; you will regain your class earlier and you will be an higher lev. mage (4-5 lev ahead).
If you want to play your mage as a F/M (raise protection and get into melee) then 13 lev is a better option (and maybe a kensai/mage an even better one).

Thanks a lot. Plenty there to get me started. I`ve also decided to try with a smaller party this time.
By the way, what is `min max and meta gaming?`.
Cheers

"Min-max" means that you set your most important stats to the maximum and set your least important stats to the minimum. The result is an imbalanced, unrealistic character, but it's desirable if all you're concerned about is power. "Power gamers" and "munchkins" (terms that I'll let other people define) tend to do a lot of things like that.

"Meta-gaming" loosely means "playing outside the game". In this particular context, it means using information about the game that your character couldn't possibly have, but which is available to you as a player. For example, before your character is even rolled up and sets foot in Amn, you can decide to set his Charisma to 3 since you as a player know that you can give your character a ring early in the game that will set his Charisma to 18. In effect, you know that giving your character such a low Charisma won't have any adverse effects, and you can decide to put more points into his other stats. A lot of people would argue that strictly speaking, you are playing by the rules of the game, but it certainly isn't roleplaying.

BTW, I'd like to reiterate what I implied above--namely, that a Berserker/Mage with the following stats, while not necessarily "god-like", is just about as effective as a character that has all 18's:

STR 18/51
DEX 18
CON 18
INT 17
WIS 9
CHA 9

It's not really a "min-max" character because, even though the most important stats are maximum (or close to it), the least important stats are average for a human, not minimum. Some people think that average stats are "low", "weak", "pathetic", and "unfitting for my character, by God", but if you put it in perspective and look at it the way that stats were intended in D&D, 9's are just as different from 3's as they are from 18's.

I'd also like to point out that I agree with lompo: if you want a realistic roleplaying character and not just a powergaming machine, you should put your stat points where you would like them to be instead of maxing them out. For example, I always give my character CHA 16 or higher just because I feel like it, at the expense of "more important" stats. But davfra, you sounded like you were frustrated about having "weak" characters, so I tried to tailor my advice to fit your needs.

VonDondu, thanks for that. I was lucky enough to roll a 92. Until this post, I thought that the roll was always the same and that the only thing you could alter was where the stats were allocated.
My Berserker has 18 in all but the last two stats. In these he has 10 and 9 (I think).
He is truly awesome. He`s so good, I`m not sure now whether to dual him or not. I suppose if I do, there`ll be armour problems.
I`m enjoying the game so much more since you all gave me such good advice.
This cheating thing is a funny subject. I used the walk thru at first but now I don`t really need it. I couldn`t imaging ever getting round first time without this help. I also use Jan (I think that`s his name) for a short time at least. In the thieves guild it`s like having a blank cheque. But is it cheating? I don`t think so cos it`s in the game and I`m merely taking advantage of it.
The other good thing is that the romance with Jaheira is working much better this time. Fingers crossed.
Anyway, thanks for the advice, and I`m enjoying it much more this time around!
Cheers

i was giving the question of whether to even out the stats or not a little thougt, and i think that it wouldn't be too strange to have quite large differences in stats and you would create a not very 'person' like character. For example (unless the character is actually destined to be some kind of fighter / mage / druid etc, not too familiar with the story line apologies for that) a character that is thin and physically weak as compared to others of his kind but who does have incredible power through intelligence and wisdom would become a mage or druid. Or am I way off? I mean everyone tries to exploit the features that make them great in order to 'conceal' their other features that they lack in.. This way they would probably train or something like that to explain them even more in which they will end up very good at the features they trained and lacking quite a lot in the less good features which they ignored because they were training their better traits. I mean it is natural that you would prefer to excel in some traits and lack in others rather than being average in all traits. That way wouldn't you get an unbalanced character naturally? (I am probably now completely going against the storyline). Just a piece of mind.

I think you`ve probably just explained why this game is to popular. There are so many ways to play it. Up to now I`ve always gone with the brawn approach. Mainly cos it`s very frustrating at the beginning, if you`re the sort of character you describe. The guy who gets sand kicked in his face but one day is a top dog.
I`m now trying a dual class (Berserker/Thief) and I`m having more fun than previously.
I`m allready thinking about what to be next time and I`m only on chapter 2 this time!
Cheers

yes indeed there are so many ways to play, experience and live this game... the combinations are just about endless, a shame that many just try a few (and usually even the ones that have already been tried by just about everyone). like the idea of kensai/mage must have been done many times before(not to offend anyone of course), while actually pioneering a class in this game (whether this is still possible of course ) is the true beauty of it.. and i like the idea of 'revisiting' those enemies that just played with you in the beginning but now you're grown can beat once and for all ...anyway im drifting off topic ...