After quite a lot of thoughts, I decided to go for that evil NPC party run, with a Vagrant as protagonist. Most of the evil characters remain quite suboptimal IA-wise, hence me bringing some tweaks to the table.
My party will consist of the following :
Grautshöd, Vagrant, 18/00 �“ 18 �“ 19 �“ 11 �“ 17 �“ 13. Some very good dice roll, I gave him the 18/100 through EEKeeper though, didn’t want an early game with weakish 18/23.
Korgan : He remains untouched but for max HP per level on hire (EEKeeper), a real fine beserker as he is.
Dorn : I gave him 19 consistution and max HP per level. He’s an half-orc after all, and won’t compete with a custom Kensaï or Barbarian anyway. Permanent NPP and Lilarcor in the early game should make him quite an asset though for difficult undead fights.
Cernd : I don’t have much room for a healer, so I might as well pick the best one there is. Hard for me to foresee a run without him anyway.
Jan : I wanna try him in IA (thanks critto for the suggestion), never did so far. He’s the character that I might kick out if I feel like I need more melee power. Jaheira would definitely fit my style much better, but I played her every run since she got that new kit. I could switch to Edwin instead too, but the extra rogue abilities are too handy to pass up.
Neera : Could’ve picked Edwin there too, but since I got Jan already, I want a sorcerer for the access to these tasty spells. Her personnal robe makes her stronger than Imoen, and she’s neutral aligned.
I’ll play on core, with ToD and The Four installed.
Difficulty will be lowered to easy for spell-scribing purposes.
My party is not as melee-oriented as the ones I’m use to play : I’m affraid I won’t be able to use my usual heavy pouding tactics to get dangerous enemies down fast. I might also lack a bit of healing potential, none of my characters include a good self-healing �“ I could then consider Viconia instead of Jan, but apart from GR, my melees got enough self-protection to deal with strong debuffs a cleric could counter.
Wake up. Free and kick Imoen, Jaheira, Minsc. Dungeon-Be-Gone.
Vagrant soloes circus, some tasty XP there. We keep the +1 reputation reward for later, I’ll need extra reputation playing with Dorn.
Join Korgan, Dorn (cleaned up Radiant Heart �“ not sure there, but his quest might remove the actual Radiant Heart map from my game, when I came back in later, it was still the wedding’s map, no knights in there). Join Jan. We head to the docks to get these +2 axes from Kangaxx’s minotaurs. Vagrant claims 2, Korgan 1. Head to Trademeet, Join Cernd, clean druid’s grove. Ithafeer has never been that easy. Everyone had +2 weapons, but still, I remember this fight as much messier.
Faldorn was killed by a bear of hers, Vagrant charmed one sucessfuly and tanked the other one.
We head back to the city �“ Mae’var questline is to be done. Join Edwin midway. Mae'Var himself is blasted in no time, nothing difficult enough to mention.
Join Rasaad, goodbye Edwin. We go for the amphitheatre and Rasaad personnal quest. Items to be looted there are definitely quite decent for this state of the game.
Twofold tests, final fight (easily dispatched, malison + emotion does wonder). Bye Rasaad.
Let's head to Umar Hills. We do the minor stuff, kill some wizard for 4k gold, join Valygar. Heading to the slums, open the sphere, bye Valygar.
Tried Copper Coronet part 1, but I needed a breach for the beastmaster. So, join Neera, we reveal the hidden camp and destroy the beastmaster back in the slums. Was a breeze, no one got even hardly injured.
Jan's quest. We meet Suna Seni in the process. Neera hastes right away, Cernd goes emotion and retreats. Both Vagrant and Dorn fall to greater command but Korgan remains. Neera and Cernd rain emotion then damaging spell on their team. Only priest and wizard remain up. Korgan tanks through it and with refreshed emotion on the enemies, team is up soon and hack&slash them all. Made it on first try, no problem there.