Best characters of BG2 ? I play BG2 for few days now (played also before almost till the end) and I wonder what are your favourite charactes ? I find most interesting Minsc and JanJansen because they are incredebly fun and usefull.

Jan Jansen is a favourite of mine. Funny and useful.

I found Minsc to be very useful in BG1, but in BG2 he's outclassed by Keldorn, Jaheira, Anomen, Korgan, Sarevok and Valygar.

Edwin is both fun and very useful. If you role play a good character you're stuck with Nalia as the only full mage. At least until you get Imoen back.

Aerie is one of the most interesting companions, since she can mix mage and cleric spells. Putting Cleric spells in sequencers and triggers opens up new possibilities.

Keldorn is very useful due to his Dispel ability, and being the only one who can wield Carsomyr.
Anomen is useful due to being able to Grandmaster in Flails and dual wield Flail of Ages and Defender of Easthaven, and to get all the Cleric buffs.
Jaheira is useful due to Iron Skins and Insect Plague/Creeping Doom.
Korgan is useful due to his Berserking and there are some excellent Axes he can dual wield eventually.
Mazzy is a sub machine gun with the Taguin Bow.

Viconia has 50% or so MAR, but suffers from low HP.
Haer Da'lis has some excellent combat moves and can be a good spell caster, but like Viconia he suffers from low HP.

The dullest character is Cernd.

Jaheira. She has good stats. She can take any role; pure caster, tank, dps - anything but ranged.

Except for the following:

In BG2 alone (no Throne of Bhaal installed), she never gets 7th level spells, as she needs 3 million XP and the XP cap is only 2.95 million.

With Throne of Bhaal installed, she still gains druid levels very slowly after 1.5 million XP; 14th level (and 7th level spells) are not learned until 3 million XP, and the next druid level doesn't come until 6 million XP (ToB XP cap is 8 million, but I hear that, on a typical playthrough, the party ends up with only around 6 million). This means that Jaheira will not get as many HLAs as most characters (until really high XP totals), and she will be stuck with only 1 7th level spell for a very long time (at 6 million XP, she jumps to 6 7th level spells).

That's a good point, but I think the number of people who only have vanilla BG2 right now are few and far between. You get BG2 + ToB as a package on this site, and the discs sold on Amazon have ToB bundled with BG2.

Jan Jansen is by far the best NPC to have around. His dialogue is hilarious. Esp. if you have some super serious NPCs in your group like Anomen.

I like Keldorn most for his True Seeing ability. Very useful against illusion spells like invisibility, mirror image or mislead

I never used Mazzy for ranged attacks as I'm usually more in the market for an extra melee char

I recently startet playing this great game again (EE)
I deliberately want to use characters i never, or rarely used in my other playthroughs, ending me with the following party:

Mazzy: I never used her before, but i like her character (though power-wise i would have preferred longbow and longsword as her skills)
Jan Jansen: I mainly took him as a thief, but his dialogues are hilarious. How i missed him in all my playthroughs...
Anomen: While he is a good aligned, he is a somewhat of a dick... (pre-test). For that reason i rarely took him and prefered Viconia, even in a generally good party
Aerie: I have a soft spot for her, i had to take her ;)
Neera: I liked her in BG1 EE, so i took her again. She is also the one to switch out for other members for their Quests, but she will be in my party later on.

My main is a dualclass Fighter(9)/Mage.

A very caster heavy party, but works quite good so far.

Really, this kind of topic 16 years after game's release? I bet you can find thousands of posts naming "every" character as favorite. Even Anomen.

What's wrong with having this sort of discussion now? New things are discovered about old games all the time, and new strategies are developed. Plus, some players don't encounter the game until years (sometimes decades) after the initial release.

Plus, the Enhanced Editions change some things; some strategies are no longer possible, some new strategies are introduced, and some strategies, while still viable, might need to be done a bit differently.

From the classic NPCs Jan has funny stories, and Viconia is a good romance/strong melee character. Edwin is The Caster. And only in BG1 you'll have mixed alignment problems aside the question of reputation.

Detailed:
- Aerie: characterwise she is a bit whiny. Party-wise her progression is sluggish.
- Imoen: hard to get. Mediocre stats.
- Keldorn: reliable. Not annoying. Very narrow variability.
- Mazzy: zounds of abilities. Mostly interacts with Valygar only,does a lot, but has only 1-2 speech to rotate through whatis annoying.
- Minsc: seriously overrated.
- Nalia: Mediocre stats, mediocre personality (similar to Imoen).
- Valygar: only interacts with Mazzy, and is annoying (check at Mazzy). Also overspecilaized.
- Anomen: weak by stats, annoying by personality. But I assume he can pass for female players.
- Cernd: pathetic.
- HaerDhalis: hard to get, and his class is weak. His personalequipment is also overspecialized. Not have any extra sidequest.
- Jaheira: terrible stats, and she's a druid. Too many sidequests. Elmonster. And I really hate her personality.
- Jan: strong caster, acceptable thief.
- Yoshimo: he shouldn't even be on thelistfor obvious reason.
- Edwin: if yu need a caster, he's your man. Also, excelent characterisation. Edwina4Life!
- Korgan: strong, but boring.
- Viconia: give her all the equipment she needs,and she washes the floor with the enemy from the front lines.

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Nowdays only playing solos, there learnt barbarian half-orc rocks.

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Someone should try wizardslayer/druid though (through the whole of the series. Dual at lvl 15 I assume).

All of the original BG2 companions are fantastic. The Beamdog companions reads like poor fanfiction.

I feel like going through and commenting on some of these points:

She is able to cast both cleric and mage spells, which allows you to do interesting things with sequencers. For example, have her polymorph into a form that gets a lot of attacks (like a spider), then launch a minor sequencer with Draw Upon Holy Might. This can get her lots of attacks and 19+ strength, a pwerful combination. (Use Mirror Image/Stoneskin to keep her alive.) In any case, if you get a Minor Sequence scroll, she is the best character (not counting custom characters) to be given that spell.

Also, she can use Vhailor's Helm. Give her that helm and a Scroll of Limited Wish, and you can get wishes early without using up the scroll; this is particularly useful for dealing with level-draining vampires. Also, she has enough wisdom to get all the good effects from that spell.

Assuming you are referring to the Spellhold version, she is actually easy to get, in the sense that you are guaranteed to get her unless you use a glitch to skip that part of the game.

Now, if you (for some reason) mean the Irenicus's Dungeon version, then you have a character who is hard to get (or, rather, is hard to keep past the beginning). This version has a lot of immunities thanks to Imoen's Belt, but will leave your party when her HP gets down to 1, and can't be re-recruited afterwords.

There's also the tutorial version, but I don't know of a way to get her into Shadows of Amn proper; this version is actually very good at setting traps. (You can get her in ToB by importing a tutorial save, but that may not be worth it.)

He gets a higher caster level than a mage with equivalent XP gets; this makes him a good candidate for spells that scale with level (if you find a Remove Magic scroll, give it to him).

There's also the trick of using Mislead with Improved Bard Song; even without stacking it, it enables you to have the song active while still having him available to fight.

Also, if you're not playing the EE, the ability damage from his swords can be used to kill enemies with minimum HP items; in other words, he can kill the game's equivalent of essential NPCs. (Note that this can break the main quest if you're not careful.)

As a caster, Aerie is better because she has more types of spells; both characters progress in arcane casting at the same rate.

(Of course, Jan does have his advantages, like access to thief skills and HLAs.)

Try other classes with this race. One nice thing about half-orcs is that they can get natural 19 Strength regardless of class, allowing you to get significant hit/damage bonuses without being a fighter.

Another advantage is access to the Cleric/Thief multi-class combo, which many players tend to overlook, and which I believe is not even available to a half-elf. (Don't forget that Draw Upon Holy Might boosts Dexterity, which affects most thief skills.)

Well, in an older speedrun he *did* one-hit kill the final boss.

(The "obvious reason" you mention was skipped in the speedrun.)

The content Beamdog added is worse because the game makes you put up with god awful voice acting.

True. Neera sounded like some Californain bimbo who was about to take her 5th selfie of the day.

Dorn was good though.