- Every mage, pure, specialist, Wild Mage or multiclass, has to have Int 9, as does Sorcerer. But Dragon Disciple ... for some reason does not. This means you can make a Dragon Disciple with Int 8 and be unable to use scrolls and wands.

- Warriors get a -2 penalty for attacking with a weapon they are unskilled with, wizards get a -5 penalty, and everybody else gets a -3 penalty. Except Shadowdancer. For some reason they get a -5 penalty for using a weapon unskilled, as if they are wizards.

Some of this may be based on 3rd edition rules, which were in the process of being developed when Baldur's Gate 2 was first released. Of course, Enhanced Edition had about a decade of 3e to work with.

I'm pretty sure Dragon Disciple was based on 3e Sorcerer, not Wizard. (Further, I think in 3e it was a prestige class, something not incorporated into the BG series.) The Sorcerer controlling ability in 3e was Charisma, not Intelligence.

The penalties for unskilled weapon use were probably part of the standard weapon proficiency rules in 2nd edition. Shadowdancer, however, was another 3e prestige class. Since 3e didn't use those proficiency rules, the developers probably just had to make a judgement call.

Why yes Dragon Disciple is a 3e sorcerer prestige class. Bascially you get d12 hitpoints instead of d4 and your stats all raise up over the board and in the end you can even fly.

It was translated back into AD&D in a really weird way. Raising Con in AD&D doesnt make any sense because, well, Con above 16 dont give extra hitpoints in AD&D at all, unless you are a warrior.

I believe Dragon Disciple was added with the Enhanced Edition, by a company other than the one that produced the originals. Hence, the BG1EE/BG2EE version of the class was designed by a different designer than the one who designed the original BG2CE sorcerer (a design that was copied into the EEs).

Hence, you get some different design philosophies here.

I'm pretty sure you're right, dtgreene. From I recall of classic BG2, the 3e sorcerer class was, if not fully developed, at least conceived well enough to include in the computer game. However, the 3e rulebooks were still not yet out. Dragon Disciple was probably not yet designed.

Actually, I may be not remembering this quite correctly. Wizards of the Coast famously issued a revised set of 3e rulebooks halfway through the run, called 3.5. Among other things, these introduced several new prestige classes (or collected them from various 3.0 books). It may be Dragon Disciple was only introduced then, almost a decade after BG2's release.

Sigh.

Why yes BG2 introduced Barbarian, Monk, and Sorcerer. Also most kits, except the ones the EEs introduced, and the new mage specialization Wild Mage.

The EEs introduced Shaman as well as Dwarven Defender, Blackguard, Shadowdancer, Dragon Disciple and the two Monk kits

Btw to this day nobody has implemented Ranger/Druid, Druid/Mage and Fighter/Druid/Mage, all of which are *official* AD&D multiclasses of the 1995 AD&D PHB. Apparently they used the 1989 PHB which didnt have these multiclasses yet. So they got omitted in the original game and nobody has corrected this ever since.

And yes strangely enough Ranger/Druid was a thing in AD&D, despite the obvious conflict of alignment requirements. Apparently in the 1995 AD&D PHB the Druids have been expected to be NEUTRAL, not TRUE NEUTRAL, just like Bards, thus R/D has to be neutral good.

If they ever make another iteration of BG 1+2, I would also expect Warlock and Favored Soul.

Geronimo, If you think I was being condescending, that was not my intention. I apologize if you read it that way.

I think at least some of those multi-class combos may be implemented in the Dark Sun CRPGs (at least the first two; there's no way to play Crimson Sands these days).

Then again, that setting has some major differences in races and classes. For example, you have Preservers instead of Mages (and Defilers appear as enemies). Druids also are the only class to get spells like Cure Serious Wounds; Clerics get only spells of their element past the 3rd spell level.

The one old class I'd like to see implemented is the 1e Bard, which can only be accessed through some fancy dual-classing that would probably be more feasible in a CRPG setting than in tabletop. Chances are very few people have ever had a chance to play this iteration of Bard. (Bard is a really strange class in AD&D; the 2e Bard, in particular, has never felt like a Bard to me.)

(By the way, I believe Wild Mage appeared early during 2e's lifespan, in 2e's Tome of Magic, along with some Cleric spheres containing some very unusual spells. There's the Numbers sphere, for example, which would be perfect for a cult similar to the Pythagoreans.)

No I was just hoping other people would have noticed small quirks like the two in the original posting. And since the discussion went another way, I gave a complete breakdown of what was introduced when.