Straight Up Mage Solo?

[Novos]

Hey all!

Just finished destroying BG2 SoA for the hundredth time with my rediculously overpowered Kensai/Mage solo, and I thought I would turn my attention back to ID 2, considering I beat this game about 8 years ago and I remember nothing about it.

I wanted to stick with the solo theme. Is a straight up drow wizard viable? Im a huge fan of ripping through massive amounts of enemies via high level spells, but is it even posible to do this without dual-classing?

Im also wondering if I should do sorc instead of mage. I wanted to stick with mage for the whole drow theme and all, but i've heard scrolls are alot harder to come by in this game than in SoA... Any thoughts?

Lastly, must have spells. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks everyone
- Rob

[kmonster]

You should be aware that soloing IWD2 is harder than soloing BG2 where you get overpowered mage spells at every corner, IWD2 spells aren't that overpowered and you might reach a casting level before finding a scroll of that level even in a party game. Be warned that you won't get much combat XP after the beginning because of the dynamic XP calculation. But any class can solo IWD2.

I recommend dumping wis and cha to the minimum, you'll face many big battles which can get slow and boring if you're playing a wimp.
I'd start with 18-18-16-20-3-5 and raise only int at level up. Very useful are long lasting self-buffs like bull's strength or cat's grace.
Don't take the "improved initiative" feat, it doesn't work.

[Stworca]

WIS isn't a dump stat in IWD. The lower your wisdom, the lower your WILL save. On a solo play most vs will spells mean game over.

I advice against playing drow, you will suffer because of their +2 ECL.

Well.. unless you play on Normal or something, in that case do whatever you want

I soloed the game as Sorcerer on HoF. As a mage i was struggling. The stats that i dump as sorc is Str. Don't swing your staff.
The only realy hard part are those damn Xvim knights, who hit for.. what.. 70? And are immune to everything.

The easiest way to solo the game is to take - i believe - 1 lvl of paladin, for the overpowered sword that you get quite far in the game... Or was it lvl 2 for +Cha to all saving throws? No idea, never cheesed my way through IWD2

[kmonster]

Wis is a dump stat in IWD2, the remaining stats are far more useful. As drow you have spell resistance which keeps eliminates almost all saves but even without SR and racial bonus to will saves you can dump it.
There's even a feat which is as useful as 4 wis for wizards but I wouldn't take it.

[Novos]

Thanks a bunch guys

Yeah the drow level thing is getting to me, I decided to roll human sorc. About the pally level, should I start as pally and then go to sorc? Or do the pally level a little later?

[Stworca]

If you roll the pally as first, then you'll have an easier time at the very beginning of the game, but slightly more challenging here and there.
Read a guide on the subject or something.

[Philos]

While I normally agree with you about 98% of the time kmonster. I do disagree that:

Wis is a dump stat in IWD2. As drow you have spell resistance which keeps eliminates almost all saves but even without SR and racial bonus to will saves you can dump it.

For something different, I just finished taking a power gaming set of builds through the normal mode of IWD 2 and have just begun HOF mode. I built the Drow spellsword exactly as described in the sticky.

I lost count of how many times the enemy beat my Spellswords spell resistence on the whole and specifically the racial benefit on will saves. I would guess that my Drow was taken out of the fight at least 8-10 times by hold person, emotion fear, cloak of fear, domination, mind blast, etc. etc. leaving the rest of group to clean up the mess. Granted he wouldn't have gotten attacked when dominated but any of the other cases would definitely have meant game over if soloing as Stworca mentions. It happened so often I even considered wasting a feat on Iron Will early in the game (but didn't) which is the feat I think you alluded to.

While the SR worked most of the time, it was overcome much more easily than I would have suspected. If you have a party where some have a good will save and can cast remove paralysis or dispel magic it is fine for one/some of the characters to dump wisdom.

We each have our own method and preferences. I may be missing something but it sure seems like Will saves are called upon too often to have a PC vulnerable in that when soloing in my humble opinion.