npc distribution

[clock sendak]

why so few monks, wild mages, bards, kensai as npcs in these games we play?  It's funny that neither bioware, nor modders (as a whole, it seems) are that into diversifying the class pool.  I don't mean this critically, or to disparage the work of those who have done different classes, I'm not trying to provoke anybody.  I'm going to test out Andyr's "eranon" over at g3, and it got me thinking about different classes.  There are, however, those cool, change "___" class to... (but there could always be more, ha ha).  I dunno, i guess people do the mod of the class they want to play.  Just wondering what you guys think about the npc pool, and if maybe an easy way to make every npc have alterable class kits were available i would download it and be happy like a flower.

cheers

[the bigg]

There are 2 kensais (Chloe and Nathaniel), 2 monks (Kiara and Yikari), 1 Wild Mage (Zaiya) and at least 2 bards (Fonick, some BWL one-day NPC, and Haer Dalis) floating about in BGII.

[jcompton]

I can't swear to Bioware's motives but it could have something to do with the fact that more esoteric classes can be trickier to play well. Monks are extremely weak at low BG2 levels, so an earlier level monk NPC might not have made a very compelling companion on the drawing board. Nearly six years of hindsight shows us that, yes, virtually anybody can be a serviceable helper in a skilled player's hands, but I can understand their reasoning.