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Tricky's thread on monks got me to thinking about interesting dual combinations. I normally go for multiclass, instead of dualclass, but I've played this game enough that unusual is good

Now, I was just experimenting and it *is* possible to dual from a kensai to a druid, because I successfully did so. The only problem is that owing to the high charisma and wisdom requirements for a druid, and the fighting requirements (str, con and dex) of a kensai, you either have to roll forever and hope, or you have to go into Shadowkeeper and edit your game. Whichever route you take, you practically have to create a superhero in order to even have the option to dual class from a kensai to a druid.

But, the idea does intrigue me, none the less. I'm thinking that you could put three slots into scimitars and three slots into two weapon fighting when you are at the kensai creation stage, and then once you regained those abilities you'd have a pretty good fighter/druid build. A druid's ability to shapeshift and cast spells would also add interest to the mix.

Thoughts? Has anyone tried this combo? If so, how did it work out?

Thought about a kensai/druid because the staff of the woodlands would provide a very decent AC of 0. It would fit both the kensai and druid spirit as the staff is only for druid but the staff remains the most important part of the gear.

Having a challenge untill you retrieve the staff could also be a very valid argument for the over-experienced players.

I haven't played a kensai/druid in BG2, but I did for a while in BG1 Tutu. You're right about the stats, but I managed to roll an acceptable PC in a few minutes:
str: 16
dex: 15 (I got the Gauntlets of Dexterity quite early in the game)
con: 15
int: 3 (the whole druid philosophy isn't very intelligent anyway IMHO )
wis: 17
cha: I forget. Probably as low as possible

When my pc got his kensai abilities back there wasn't much that could stop him... but that was BG1 and I realize that SoA will be another matter. Still, I believe that the kensai/druid is one of the most powerful duals possible.
The hardest part will obviously be the part before you get your kensai abilities back.
Of course, to make it even more interesting you could try a wizard slayer/druid. You know, worst of both worlds

After looking at the experience tables, I'm beginning to wonder why more people who want to play a Druid don't play a 9th level Kensai dualled to a Druid. It takes 250,000 experience points for a Kensai to reach 9th level and only 125,000 experience points for a Druid to reach 10th level, so it wouldn't take long to get the Kensai abilities back.

Coot wrote: str: 16
dex: 15 (I got the Gauntlets of Dexterity quite early in the game)
con: 15
int: 3 (the whole druid philosophy isn't very intelligent anyway IMHO )
wis: 17
cha: I forget. Probably as low as possible

Druids are required to have a minimum Charisma of 15. Don't ask me why. I guess they're supposed to be crabby, arrogant, huffy, AND charming.

The primary stat of a Kensai is Strength, which is the same as any Fighter. So in order for a Kensai to dual-class, the character's Strength must be a minimum of 15. The primary stats for a Druid are Wisdom and Charisma. So in order for a character to dual-class to a Druid, the character's Wisdom and Charisma must be at least 17. Your character must have had 16, 15, 15, 3, 17, 17.

Even with an extraordinary Charisma like that, the stat roll total is only 83, which isn't very hard to roll. Obviously, you'd want higher stats if you could get them. If you could roll a character with 90 stat points, you'd be in good shape.

(EDIT: I don't know about BG1/Tutu, but in my current game of BG2:TOB, a Kensai/Druid is not permitted to use the Gauntlets of Dexterity. On the other hand, a Kensai/Druid can wear a girdle of giant strength.)

The absolute minimum requirements for a Kensai dualled to a Druid are even less than that:
STR: 15
DEX: 3
CON: 3
INT: 3 (I suggest a minimum of 9 so you can use wands and scrolls)
WIS: 17
CHA: 17

I'm having trouble picturing a character like that. A clumsy, sickly, drooling moron with an unpleasant personality, a fetish for nature, and a confused idea of what it means to be a "sword saint" but who has extraordinary leadership qualities and remarkable insight into the mysteries of life. Gee, I can't wait to roll one up and play her.

Thanks for the replies!

Hmm... see my problem is this. I don't power play, but I can never bring myself to have stats like intelligence lower than 10, I'll go with 9 if I have to, but that is as low as I'll put it...
I mean... I role play... and I really don't want to RP a drooling idiot....

Druids are required to have a minimum Charisma of 15. Don't ask me why. I guess they're supposed to be crabby, arrogant, huffy, AND charming

You know, as an aside, I've never really understood why druids are required to have a minimum 15 charisma in 2 nd ed rules. For heaven's sake, they live out in the woods most of the time! Sure, they "charm" animals... but like animals are really going to have the same standards as humans where "charisma" is concerned...

I am considering playing BG1/ToTSC Tutu sometime soon, and I think, given that NPC banter is less there, I'll probably play with a 3 person party, to hasten my levelling. Then I'll import my character to BG2. Given certain stat enhancing items available.... this might be doable.

Does anyone know how Tutu impacts the BG1 level cap?
I hope this is not too much out of the sphere the BG2 forum, but a lot of this stuff covers both games

why would you go fighter (any kit) -> Druid. A F/D is more powerfull in every respect; better thaco, more attacks, access to 2 pools of HLA and not too bad with respect to casting druidic spells, especially if you have less than 6 people. I just can't see the advantage of the dual class

Edit: Also even if dualing why Kensai and not Berserker ?? without any armour your AC will be simply appaling even with 18 dex.

Jedi_Sauraus wrote:why would you go fighter (any kit) -> Druid. A F/D is more powerfull in every respect; better thaco, more attacks, access to 2 pools of HLA and not too bad with respect to casting druidic spells, especially if you have less than 6 people. I just can't see the advantage of the dual class

Edit: Also even if dualing why Kensai and not Berserker ?? without any armour your AC will be simply appaling even with 18 dex.

I'm not looking for power, I'm looking for an interesting class combination that I've never played before

I don't know much about BG1 Tutu. I don't mean to criticize the mod, but the idea of playing BG1 with BG2-style characters does not appeal to me. After playing both games several times, I have reached the conclusion that they are totally different games. Atmosphere, difficulty, storyline, dialogue (the style as well as the substance), tactics...there are just too many differences. Would a Kensai even work in BG1? I don't see how you could play a Fighter without any armor in BG1 even if you had a +2 Armor Class bonus. BG1 just wasn't made for fighters without armor who can't use arrows. In theory, I like the idea of continuity--the idea that my BG2 character really did start out in Candlekeep as a 1st level character. But in practice, it doesn't really work for me.

I suppose you could play a Fighter dualled to a Druid in BG1/TotSC, but due to the way that BG1 is calibrated (experience cap, difficulty, expected levels at each encounter, etc.), I'm not sure a BG2-style character (e.g., 9th level Fighter dualled to a Druid) would play well. You could certainly do it, but I'd have to try it before I could say whether I liked it.

Let's look at experience. The total amount of shared experience a party can earn in BG1/TotSC is roughly 1.2 million points (your mileage may vary). Each member of a 6-member party can reach about 200,000 experience points, give or take. Each member of a two-member party can reach about 600,000 experience points. It seems to be pretty linear. So each member of a 3-member party could reach about 400,000--just about enough for a 9th level Fighter dualled to a Druid to regain her Fighter abilities before the last few encounters.

So where would that put you? Let's say she has about 100,000 experience points when she finishes Chapter Five (before Durlag's Tower) and heads to Ulgoth's Beard. She'll probably be a 7th level Fighter. By the time you finish Durlag's Tower, she'll have about 200,000 more experience points--enough to reach 9th level and dual to a Druid. If she has 50,000 experience points as a Druid when you return to the main storyline, she'll be a 7th level Druid, which would be appropriate for the non-TotSC parts of the last few chapters, since the original experience cap was 89,000 points (except that you don't have a full party of six). Somewhere in the last chapter, she'll reach 10th level and regain her Fighter abilities, and she'll finish the game as a bad ass dual-class character. Was it fun for you, too?

In effect, you'd be starting BG2 with a 9th level Fighter dualled to a 10th level Druid. That's overpowered for the first chapter of BG2. The character importing utility wants to cut your character down to 161,000 experience points to keep the game balanced. Since BG1 has a 161,000 experience point cap, your 400,000 experience point character would be overpowered in BG1, as well. At least the two games have that one thing in common.

I wonder if you would be happy if you played a multi-class Fighter/Druid in BG1 and then played a Kensai dualled to a Druid in BG2? Can you still say they're the same character? I think it's worth a try. There's a lot of inconsistency between the two games to begin with. Look at the character portraits, for instance. Look at the way the NPCs act and talk--they're practically all-new characters, with the exception of Minsc. You could start with a 7th or 8th level Kensai and work your way up to 9th level pretty quickly, and getting another 125,000 experience points to reach 10th level Druid would be pretty easy in Chapter Two. One or two characters such as Minsc and Yoshimo could do all of the work for you while you healed them if you felt like your own character was too weak. Just think of it as taking a break while your character rests and recuperates from her caged ordeal. Maybe she can't cast spells in Irenicus's dungeon because she hasn't seen a tree for so long. When she gets her spells and her fighting skills back, she'll return to her old self, only even better.

That's the way I would play it, anyway. I don't mean to discourage you from playing BG1 Tutu if that's what you want to do. I just think that BG1 Tutu stretches a lot of things to make BG1 and BG2 continuous, and maybe using your own imagination would be just as effective.

Even though I've already put a lot of thought into this, part of me wonders whether it's a mistake to do too much planning in advance. Maybe you should just jump right into it without doing any more thinking about it. Just try it and see if you like it instead of trying to plan so many things ahead of time. And then you could tell us what it was like.

VD is right, kensai/druid would be very powerful, and not very enjoyable for us non-powergamers. DW, how about another interesting char, one that won't become too powerful? Have you ever tried a cleric/thief, either multi- or dualclassed? It's fun, different and challenging, at least in BG1.

If you are going to play BG1Tutu I would recommend installing both BG1NPC and Sword Coast Stratagems over at gibberlings3.

One brings BG2 style banters and romances to BG1 npc's and the other upgrades the AI and encounters which I think is necessary given the advantages some of the kits from BG2 have.

There are several other Tutu related mods available: [url="http://modlist.pocketplane.net/index.php?ax=list&cat_id=98"]Browse Here[/url]

hmm, I'm interested in playing a kensai/druid myself. what do you think is the best weapon combo to dual wield with? I was thinking scimitars, but I'm pretty sure the druid can't use wakizashis or ninja-tos. although the kensai part may cancel that fact out, but i'm unclear on that rule and doubt it. I also notice there are too few clubs in the game...

You can use exactly the same weapons druids can use. The best off-hand weapon is the scimitar belm because of the extra main hand attack it grants. For the best main hand weapon there's the club+3 which deals extra damage (blackblood ?) you can buy in Trademeet after solving the quests there.

For monsters which require +4 weapons you'll have to use the quarterstaff+4 you can buy from Ribald or the one you find in chapter6.

An alternative to dualwielding is using the throwing dagger/quarterstaff combo. The throwing dagger+2 you can pickpocket in chapter1 does immense damage, later you can buy firetooth, for immune monsters you can use the quarterstaff.

VonDondu wrote:Would a Kensai even work in BG1? I don't see how you could play a Fighter without any armor in BG1 even if you had a +2 Armor Class bonus. BG1 just wasn't made for fighters without armor who can't use arrows. In theory, I like the idea of continuity--the idea that my BG2 character really did start out in Candlekeep as a 1st level character. But in practice, it doesn't really work for me.

I've played BG 1 with a Kensai and i did pretty well. The lack of armour can be offset by Barkskin if it's really important but the awesome combat bonuses usually mean you kill your enemy before he does any damage to you. The lack of a missile weapons sucks though.