Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition

Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition

View Stats:
kae Oct 31, 2017 @ 6:48pm
Sarevok - Dual to Thief
He's level 17 when he joins the party in Throne of Baal. I wanna dual him to thief, but not yet. I'd love for him to get a couple more proficiency points on the halberd first. When do you think it's too late to dual him? As in, when is it gonna be too high to ever get there as thief, so as to reclaim the fighter abilities again as well?

Next level, at 18, he'll have another proficiency point, but after that, not until level 21 (at which point he'll also have a crazy THAC0 and a bunch of HLA), but it might too late to get there as Thief later.

What do you think?
< >
Showing 1-15 of 20 comments
Berendor Oct 31, 2017 @ 7:36pm 
I honestly wouldn't bother dual classing him at all. Your thieving needs could be taken care of with Hexxat, Imoen (at least for the simple find/remove traps stuff), or the Gnome (can't remember his name) located in the Government District who also doubles as a Mage/Illusionist.
Last edited by Berendor; Oct 31, 2017 @ 7:47pm
Damn_Monkey Nov 1, 2017 @ 1:24am 
Why would you want to dual him to a thief?

Most of the big bad's can't be backstabbed, and can see though stealth (although you wanting to use more points into Halberd makes backstab moot I guess).

The other primary reason to go Thief is to use Carsomyr with UAI. But again, your desire for Halberd WPs wouldn't make any sense for that either.

If you're just looking to have more OP traps, not sure if it's worth spending most of the game with out his Fighter levels. Not to mention missing out on GWW
Eisenfell Nov 1, 2017 @ 3:24am 
Only 2 Reasons to dual Sarevok to a thief.

1: you want a Fighter/Thief just for the last few maps of ToB and waste your time on the others with a low Level Thief.

2: and that one is actually legit. you want him to use a SPECIFIC item he cant use for some reason (Carsomyr/staff of magi etc.)

if you don't plan on making him a auto hit magic dispeller you are better off just using him as what he is, a decent fighter.
if you need a thief take Imoen, she has all the thief needs , or if you want for some reason less mage levels and spam traps you take Jan Jansen.
kae Nov 1, 2017 @ 12:48pm 
i'd be doing because Sarevok is cool and i need a thief in the party to detect and disarm traps.. i have Jan currently, but he's kind of useless apart from just that.

the halberd because i'm trying to cover lots of different weapon proficiencies in my party, so i can use many of the cool ones that come my way. and i have a kick-ass halberd hiding in a bag of holding somewhere
kae Nov 1, 2017 @ 12:58pm 
and i've never dualled before, so i'm just curious to try it. and besides, Jan is pretty useless apart from disarming traps, so i know i can manage without the 6th character.
Eisenfell Nov 1, 2017 @ 3:24pm 
Originally posted by martinleifs:
and i've never dualled before, so i'm just curious to try it. and besides, Jan is pretty useless apart from disarming traps, so i know i can manage without the 6th character.


a mage in ToB useless ? you might actually wanna read those spells and what they do for a while... and not just let him shoot his crossbow.. mages are the gods of BG2...
red255 Nov 2, 2017 @ 2:01am 
Yeah, Jan's biggest draw is his gear giving him a good +25 to most thieves skills early, and late game the number of epic spike traps he gets.

also Use any item allows him to use those interesting pieces of gear you'd otherwise not be able to, so he has paladin bracers in his inventory to swap in when he needs to raise the dead once per day.

Mages in BG2 I usually just found a good summon and had them summon it and send it to attack the enemy.

mainly to wear down the enemies spells and defenses.

Spawn Spider
Animate dead
Mordenkain's sword
Summon Planetar.

make a crew of summons, cast haste. Cast strength of one. cast chant. send them against your foe.

if the foe has death spells just make a couple, don't buff them, just send them in to bait out the death spells, until the death spells stop, Then make an army and send it in.
kae Nov 2, 2017 @ 7:21am 
Originally posted by Eisenfell:
a mage in ToB useless ? you might actually wanna read those spells and what they do for a while... and not just let him shoot his crossbow.. mages are the gods of BG2...

i know. i have two mages, my character and Aerie. and then three good fighters. having a third mage is too much trouble, so i prefer having a sixth one that's interesting to have around, and preferably a thief to disarm traps. actually, a second cleric would come in hand... just realising that now. cuz a lot of the time Aerie is unavailable to raise dead etc. (or dead herself.)
red255 Nov 16, 2017 @ 4:45pm 
So I started a fighter thief dual class myself. Looking at Sarevok and thinking it might be a good idea to dual him to theif.

TC mentions he wants to give him points in Halberd.

Fighter gets prof points every 3 levels, so at 18 he gets his last prof point.

Thief gets prof points every 4 levels so at 20 He'll be able to stick points in Halberd.

So if you stick one point in at fighter 18, dual to theif, you'll get your next available point at 20, 24, and 28. for 5 points in Halberd.

Course you can't BACKSTAB with a Halberd. and with Use any item you'd probably have him use a holy avenger or equivent greatsword anyways.

if you wanted to dual him to theif the option of a Staff of the Ram makes more sense.

but yeah. dual him at 18. to maximize halberd prof points, 24 is the first HLA so 3 million XP (huge downtime) 28 will get you the grandmastery in Halberd.

but you won't be able to backstab with it. and if you are going to use a two-hander with use any item, why not use the Holy avenger or something?

so edit, just to elaborate on huge downtime. I took Sarevok into TOB he starts at 2,700,000

you'd need 3 million for UAI. If you are doing a halberd though you should just keep him a fighter.

If you finished watchers keep in SoA this will be hard. if you haven't you could take him to the floor of the machine of Lum the mad and give him er... protection from magical energy, protection from petrification a helmet with some defense an ring of immunity to poison and something to prevent level drain.

then he'd really only be vulnerable to imprison and the lowering stats rolls, so you can click thru the results and get him 100,000 XP everytime it rolls that roll. Do it 30 times and he's back up to snuff.

it makes sense if you want to abuse Use any item. Or to backstab. doing the various NPC questlines like Rasaad's and Dorns net some pretty powerful items for classes like Monk, Paladin, blackguard.

Rasaad's quest for instance gets a helmet that casts righteous magic once per day. the paladin bracers cast resurrection once per day. Game didn't seem to want to let me wear jan jansen's adventure wear. which is sad.

Mainly for the paladin and monk only items, if you really want you could take amonen or viconica and get them to cleric 25 thru the same method to get sarevok a ring that gives him +1 strength and some minor magic resistance.

but yeah its mainly for user specific and class specific really powerful magic items. Jaheira's pin grants non-detection and +5 save vs spell. which is useful for backstabs.
Last edited by red255; Nov 18, 2017 @ 5:39am
anferFFmax Nov 24, 2017 @ 6:28pm 
Originally posted by Eisenfell:
Originally posted by martinleifs:
and i've never dualled before, so i'm just curious to try it. and besides, Jan is pretty useless apart from disarming traps, so i know i can manage without the 6th character.


a mage in ToB useless ? you might actually wanna read those spells and what they do for a while... and not just let him shoot his crossbow.. mages are the gods of BG2...


I think the reason why people like him think that about Jan is because as a multi-classed character, each of his classes will get half of the total xp that character gets accounting for a slow level progression. If the multi-classed toon in question is in a large party (5-6 players), then the level progression is even slower. That's why they perceive Jan as a weak toon. He's not the only one suffering from that undeserved bad wrap. Aerie and Jaheira too. These guys think some of the most useful and powerful companions available are weak just because they don't know they should be in smaller parties for their strength to really show. I have been hearing opinions like his for 16 years, and no matter how much you explain this to them they just don't get it. It's amazing, really!
red255 Nov 24, 2017 @ 9:24pm 
Jan Jansen When I used him I treated him like a thief, but I ignored his stealth since he could cast invisibility, and true seeing so I could ignore his detect illusion.

so he could focus on removing traps, and opening locks and picking pockets.

thanks to his gear he has a very high starting pick pocket score. useful for getting a ring of regeneration and Ring of the ram at the start of the game. also a random assortment of items off the guards.

Until the game gave you Hexxat the game didn't have any full theives in it. not counting Yoshimo for reasons.

He'd cast true seeing and Breach to contribute to a fight. which was good enough beyond the traps, ended up soloing the final boss of ToB with epic spike traps.
anferFFmax Nov 24, 2017 @ 10:39pm 
Originally posted by red255:
Jan Jansen When I used him I treated him like a thief, but I ignored his stealth since he could cast invisibility, and true seeing so I could ignore his detect illusion.

so he could focus on removing traps, and opening locks and picking pockets.

thanks to his gear he has a very high starting pick pocket score. useful for getting a ring of regeneration and Ring of the ram at the start of the game. also a random assortment of items off the guards.

Until the game gave you Hexxat the game didn't have any full theives in it. not counting Yoshimo for reasons.

He'd cast true seeing and Breach to contribute to a fight. which was good enough beyond the traps, ended up soloing the final boss of ToB with epic spike traps.


Seems you are underuntilizing him. He's a specialist mage. You get an extra spell per level with him. He can be an incredible mage if given the right spells and leveled enough. The idea of having a multi-classed toon is to have two classes in one toon. If you are only using one class, while bearely using the other, then you aren't taking advantage of the multi-clase system.
sick duck Nov 26, 2017 @ 1:45am 
want to know the fun thing about Jan? iron golems can do as much as 40 damage. jan can backstab for quadruple damage. jan can shapechange into an iron golem.

Invisible iron golems will leave a smear on the ground that almost resembles whatever it was before jan backstabbed it.
anferFFmax Nov 26, 2017 @ 1:51am 
Originally posted by radolf rhitler:
want to know the fun thing about Jan? iron golems can do as much as 40 damage. jan can backstab for quadruple damage. jan can shapechange into an iron golem.

Invisible iron golems will leave a smear on the ground that almost resembles whatever it was before jan backstabbed it.

Good point. These guys are speaking as if Jan is half a thief and half a mage. He's a bullblown thief and a fullblown mage. So can do both jobs well. He's one of the most powerful companions on the game beyond any doubt.
red255 Nov 27, 2017 @ 7:30pm 
As I said he was killing alot of things with his epic spike traps.

the problem with backstabs is most things cast stoneskin and Protection from magic weapons.

Epic spike traps deal damage thru Stoneskins and protection from magic weapons.

enemies without those things tend to just die.

what level does Jan get transform into iron golem? the only things I stabbed with him in the back really were the genies on the way to firkaag. simply by casting strength on Jan so He could hit something. worked mostly well enough.
Last edited by red255; Nov 27, 2017 @ 7:30pm
< >
Showing 1-15 of 20 comments
Per page: 1530 50

Date Posted: Oct 31, 2017 @ 6:48pm
Posts: 20