Mage choice ?

[ogreballerina]

I know I'll take a rep hit with Edwin, the Wild mage is just too high maintaince.
Too bad, I liked her..but until you get BG2 levels that class is not seemingly helpful.
I plan on dualling Imoen at lvl 5 to mage.
My question is....will Jaheria and Edwin play ball until I reach Baldurs Gate ( the city ) ?
If I remember right they evetually fight each other.
I just need him until Imoen can handle herself as a mage.
I like Edwin too but he is evil

[Edomaden]

Edwin is a great mage...I enjoy having him and really lament that he is evil. You think the sparks fly between him and Jaheira, put him in the party with the Pally. That ♥♥♥♥ dont last long. I believe that party interactions are on a random seed. If they happen to do get in a fight, reloading might buy you some time, I had this issue with Jaheira's beau and Montaron, I had to reload twice cause those two bickered like old boyfriends before I finally upgraded my party and gave Monty the boot.

[Edomaden]

I have the Wild Mage in my NPC stable back at the Friendly Arm, but haven't tried her yet....My reasons being what yours are.

[.//slayer]

Why do you fellows feel the Wild Mages are high maintenance, anyway? They offer more advantages than other specialized mages as in they can learn all schools of magic, and yet they receive an additional spell slot for being specialists. If you think that random surges will cause you trouble, then you overestimate their effect - those random things are too rare to really have an impact, and sometimes their effects are beneficial.

And well, Chaos Shield loads the dice in your favour significantly. It's not something I'd call high maintenance.

[ShadyMofo86]

Dynheira, xan , are other options, and the gnome mage (Illusionist though) on baulder's gate bridge. I think that's it unless someone can remeber another.

[ogreballerina]

They are high maintance due to reloading because she just fire bombed your party instead of the baddies.
The extra slot is useless since you need that slot to use the spell that somewhat controls your Wild magic better, for awhile anyway. Otherwise every spell cast is total choas.
In BG2 the handicap is minimal and fun to play.
I was only asking about the Wild mage and Edwin.
Once I run into other mages, Imoen will high enough to take over. I have my party pre planned, with one extra slot but do not want to be dependant on random mages NPCs. Especially if they don't play well with others. I want to pick and choose the 6th slot for RPing not because I need someone.
I'll go back and get Edwin.
His dialogue is a hoot.

My HO Fighter / Thief is tearing this game up. I remembered it being harder.
I'm still level 1 but have 15 Thaco and 0 AC already. Core difficulty.

[Proteus]

Wy should wild mages be expecially maintenance intensive?

I only use one slot for the special wild mage spell that Neera has and another one at level 2 for this surge shield, all other of her spell slots I fill with the normal Spells which she learned/wrote into her spellbook.
Using the normal spells hasn´t caused any problems in my case so far ... never encountered a wilde surge while casting a normal spell (only with the special wild mage spell, which is rather expected and the reason why I only use him on special occasions [and, now that Neera can cast Spell level 2, only in conjunction with the surge shield]).

Insofar Neera plays like a normal mage for me, with a little extra

[PyroANTIC]

Baldur's Gate has a lack of Good aligned mage chracters from what I can remember. The only one I can think of at this time would be Dynahair, but you need to free her from Gnolls.
Xzar [who you have to talk along side Monteron] and Edwin are two exsamples of decent mages, but I can understand you might not want them. The new Wild Mage, Neera chracter is interesting, but I agree, too unstable.

Oh, and I forgot about Xan, but I never really liked him. And since he is a Speaclist Mage, there will be some spells he can't cast. Same with Dynahair actually.

[.//slayer]

Otherwise every spell cast is total choas.
In BG2 the handicap is minimal and fun to play.

Well, that's a bit of an overstatement now, isn't it? I wouldn't call a 5% chance of a surge a "total chaos", especially not on every spell ;)

It's more of a psychological problem, at least it was so for me - "what if she flips and I fail to kill that gosh darn demon again after spending half an hour to wear him down?!" But then I beat BG2 with a wild mage-main, and just as easily strolled through BG1 with Neera. But the choice is yours, of course. All I'm saying is, Wild Mages play just as any other mage.

[Old Dragon]

I'm going to see if I can make it to the end with Neera. As some have mentioned already, the other Good aligned mages are meh. Besides, the random spellcasting is kind of funny.

[EmotionallyBroken]

Цитата допису .//slayer:

Why do you fellows feel the Wild Mages are high maintenance, anyway? They offer more advantages than other specialized mages as in they can learn all schools of magic, and yet they receive an additional spell slot for being specialists. If you think that random surges will cause you trouble, then you overestimate their effect - those random things are too rare to really have an impact, and sometimes their effects are beneficial.

And well, Chaos Shield loads the dice in your favour significantly. It's not something I'd call high maintenance.

I always seemed ot get a wild surge every single time I cast, I thoguht that was how they worked, was i bugged? XD




Also, Xan, he may think life is hopeless but he was a usefull mage.

[Elyan]

Wild mage are especially suited to nuking, and *not* buffing:
1) there are more wild surges which affect the target than the caster, so you should stack the odds in your favor by using as few personal or party spells as possible.
2) failling a damaging spell is often more forgiving than failing a buff spell (you will just have to use one more nuke spell to kill the enemy, while you may have lost your last buff of a specific type...)
3) for the same reason, reckless dweomer can be somewhat useful to send a freeby at the beginning of a combat, or at the end if you're losing (nothing to lose use cases...)
4) more spells mean more damage throughput

Do not forget to cast chaos shield before a combat to increase your odds in case of a wild surge in the middle of it...
It is true however that you will have to wait until late game for the surges to become less painful: improved chaos shield or chaos shield + 10 levels puts you within the 25-125 bracket where there are only 5 potentially catastrophic failures: 31 (caster targeted), 47 (wolf polymorph), 48 (random target), 54 (demon gate), 65 (random spell)
There is besides 33% chance for your spell to work as intended or better, 33% chance do to nothing or something easily remedied, and 33% to do something else detrimental to the target (that's why you should not target your spells at yourself or your party...).

[ogreballerina]

I'm going to really have to pass on her...
Last 3 fights she has stunned herself.
All I need is to keep Jaheria from killing Edwin long enough for Imoen to take over mage duties.

[Elyan]

Well the wild mage was intended for bg2 initially, were you would already have 8 levels and chaos shield right at the start, and by the end of the game, you were on par with a sorcerer. Think how many level 1 slots you can fill with reckless dweomer at the end... Moreover, when you have say 25 levels + improved chaos shield, you are within 50-150, that is at least 60% success rate ;)

[MobySlick]

I just started with Neera the wild mage, she has cast the Reckless Dweomer twice and both times wild surged. One was nothing of consequence. For the other I was helping Drizzt with the gnolls and instead of a Burning Hands I got a Choking Cloud... it was kinda funny seeing most of the gnolls and the melee half of my party suddenly drop unconscious. :P

[Elyan]

Reckless dweomer will always do a wild surge, but it will add your character level to the cast, improving your chance for a good result, contrary to naturally occuring wild surges (5% of every other spell castings) which only benefit from the shields.