So my favorite class by far is the cleric! Divine magic might not be the most popular out there, but i actually enjoy divine magic more so than arcane. Throw in the fact that you can put on a full plate, still cast your spells and have nifty abilities like turn undead, couldn't enjoy playing the cleric more... or could i?
The only problem i have with clerics in Baldur's Gate are the kits, which force you into a specific direction and removes many of your choices. Let's take a look at the cleric kits now, and i'm going to take the cleric stronghold in Baldur's Gate 2 as part of this discussion.
Priest of Talos - You're evil, deceiving and brutal. You'll sell your own mother AND dog if it makes Talos happy. While the stronghold quest is probably the best one out of the 3 cleric ones, it really awards you for backstabbing and being as mean and cruel as possible. Tell someone to go kill their wife's lover, kill someone yourself and frame someone else. It's fine if you're into being 100% cruel, but i'm rarely 100% anything so it fails there for me.
Priest of Helm - I love the idea of the Priest of Helm when it comes to alignment, I'm a sucker for lawful neutral. But once you do the stronghold quest it really annoy me how they follow the rules 110%. I'm all for following a set of rules, hence why i play lawful neutral, but when you have to do it every single time. The stronghold quest are so hit or miss for me. It doesn't help either that the watcher's keep should be a wonderful thing for Priest of Helms, but looking at those helmites, they really are fools all of them. This together with Anomen whom i'm not to keen on, really makes Helm stand out as something bad in my mind. Still it's the one i prefer out of the choices.
Priest of Lathander - You're good, like really good, and nice! Oh and you are good at slaying undead! I'm normally all for playing good, but it turns a bit too sweet with Lathander. And reading the description in the game of Priest of Lathander "And there are numerous wealthy temples devoted to him" makes me raise my eyebrow, what is this? Sune? Some greedy god? I'm probably taking it the wrong way but for me a temple of Lathander should be a spartan temple with only the necessary things. The stronghold is fine although very bland in my opinion, comes in last place on the list.
So for cleric strongholds : Talos -> Helm -> Lathander
And for cleric kits : Helm -> Talos -> Lathander
So what i would like to get introduced are a few kits that aren't so 100% following their alignment. I really liked what they did with the two new kits in IWD but no one have ported them as a mod to Baldur's gate yet and i'm a horrible modder. I'm curious as to why Beamdog doesn't add them to Baldur's Gate? And secondly why aren't there more cleric kits to start with? I would imagine they are very simple to do, the gods and history is already out there, you'll only have to add 2 spell like abilities and that's it. Yes i'm not expecting them to make new strongholds, but I'm sure that you could put them into one of the existing strongholds and i wouldn't mind. I can see from a roleplay view my character working for some other god that is friendly/close to his own god and in that way make choices that the other god might not agree with.
There was a BGEE mod out there for new cleric kits that also gave these kits to NPC's. This was awesome and i really enjoyed it, sadly the mod got broken with 1.3 and it doesn't look like it'll get fixed anytime soon.
Anyway, that's my rant!
The only problem i have with clerics in Baldur's Gate are the kits, which force you into a specific direction and removes many of your choices. Let's take a look at the cleric kits now, and i'm going to take the cleric stronghold in Baldur's Gate 2 as part of this discussion.
Priest of Talos - You're evil, deceiving and brutal. You'll sell your own mother AND dog if it makes Talos happy. While the stronghold quest is probably the best one out of the 3 cleric ones, it really awards you for backstabbing and being as mean and cruel as possible. Tell someone to go kill their wife's lover, kill someone yourself and frame someone else. It's fine if you're into being 100% cruel, but i'm rarely 100% anything so it fails there for me.
Priest of Helm - I love the idea of the Priest of Helm when it comes to alignment, I'm a sucker for lawful neutral. But once you do the stronghold quest it really annoy me how they follow the rules 110%. I'm all for following a set of rules, hence why i play lawful neutral, but when you have to do it every single time. The stronghold quest are so hit or miss for me. It doesn't help either that the watcher's keep should be a wonderful thing for Priest of Helms, but looking at those helmites, they really are fools all of them. This together with Anomen whom i'm not to keen on, really makes Helm stand out as something bad in my mind. Still it's the one i prefer out of the choices.
Priest of Lathander - You're good, like really good, and nice! Oh and you are good at slaying undead! I'm normally all for playing good, but it turns a bit too sweet with Lathander. And reading the description in the game of Priest of Lathander "And there are numerous wealthy temples devoted to him" makes me raise my eyebrow, what is this? Sune? Some greedy god? I'm probably taking it the wrong way but for me a temple of Lathander should be a spartan temple with only the necessary things. The stronghold is fine although very bland in my opinion, comes in last place on the list.
So for cleric strongholds : Talos -> Helm -> Lathander
And for cleric kits : Helm -> Talos -> Lathander
So what i would like to get introduced are a few kits that aren't so 100% following their alignment. I really liked what they did with the two new kits in IWD but no one have ported them as a mod to Baldur's gate yet and i'm a horrible modder. I'm curious as to why Beamdog doesn't add them to Baldur's Gate? And secondly why aren't there more cleric kits to start with? I would imagine they are very simple to do, the gods and history is already out there, you'll only have to add 2 spell like abilities and that's it. Yes i'm not expecting them to make new strongholds, but I'm sure that you could put them into one of the existing strongholds and i wouldn't mind. I can see from a roleplay view my character working for some other god that is friendly/close to his own god and in that way make choices that the other god might not agree with.
There was a BGEE mod out there for new cleric kits that also gave these kits to NPC's. This was awesome and i really enjoyed it, sadly the mod got broken with 1.3 and it doesn't look like it'll get fixed anytime soon.
Anyway, that's my rant!