Dual or Multi Fighter/Druid

[Stworca]

Druids have pretty good attack spells in IWD, IIRC.

You mean the insects?

[GawainBS]

You mean the insects?

The accumulated Lightning Discharges as well, amongst others. Some summons too, IIRC.

[Sykar]

I do not worry, kind sir. You had no real points to begin with. Thus it is best that we indeed agree to disagree, before it escalates.

Sincere regards and best wishes.

Just because you think they are not real points does not make them so. Wishful thinking is a nice thing, just has nothing to do with reality.

Edit: Already awaiting the 'You thinking you got real points is wishful thinking' reply. :laugh:

[Stworca]

Just because you think they are not real points does not make them so. Wishful thinking is a nice thing, just has nothing to do with reality.

You thinking you got real po-

Edit: Already awaiting the 'You thinking you got real points is wishful thinking' reply. :laugh:

Yes, this argument was pretty straight forward. :laugh:

In all honesty though, i prefer dedicated (specialized) characters over jack-of-all-trades, this is why my opinion about Spellcaster / fighter multiclass is poor. They can be fun, they can be effective, but i'd rather have a dualed one, which allows me more freedom, and faster spell progression. Not a level of fighter more than i need. (I'm a 3 ed. guy)

[Pellinore]

and my CHA has to be a 17

Are you sure? Players Handbook says 15. Paladin needs a 17.

[kmonster]

Read the dualclassing rules.
Cha is one of the primary druid stats and therefore must be at least 17 if you want to be able to dual to druid.

[Pellinore]

You are correct, sir. I completely forgot about that. Thank you for the correction.

[cbarchuk]

Well I was finally able to get some good stats though it took forever. I've got:

STR 18/89
DEX 18
CON 17
INT 3
WIS 18
CHA 17

I really wanted the 18 in CON as well but I just didn't think I would roll any better. At any rate I've already started and I dualed at level 7. I think he's going to be a powerhouse for sure.

[GawainBS]

You're only missing out on 7 HP now, so it's not really worth bothering, I'd say.

[Kastagir]

As long as you don't let your character talk to people, you should be fine. INT is one of the governing characteristics for dialog choices, though it doesn't come up often.

[Endugu]

I'll repeat myself : Never multi spellcaster classes in Icewind or Baldur games, unless you go for Mage/Cleric.
Loosing high level spells is never worth an extra +X THAC0 and XX hp.

I don't hink I get what you mean by"loosing high level spells".

A multiclassed fighter/mage would end up with the same amount and levels of spells as a dualclassed fighter/mage or a pure mage.
Unless you play IWD without the expansions and have a party of six multiclassed characters - in that case I'm not sure if all characters would reach the highest level in all classes.
But otherwise I've never seen this as a problem, but maybe I' missunderstood your post.

Could you elaborate please?

As long as you don't let your character talk to people, you should be fine. INT is one of the governing characteristics for dialog choices, though it doesn't come up often.

From the top of my hand I can think of one dialog where the character's intelligence score plays a role, but so does class.
What are those dialogs where it comes up? Just curious, because I wonder if I've missed something in the game.

[Kastagir]

I'm just guessing here, but I imagine "losing" (rather than "loosing") refers to not having access to high level (i.e. 7th level) spells if you multi-class. However, assuming you're playing through IWD, HoW and TotL with a full group of six adventurers, you should have enough experience to get a fighter/druid's level high enough to access 7th level priest spells - though just barely. I believe it comes out to something like fighter14/druid14, whereas if you dual-classed a human fighter to druid at fighter level 9 (for grandmastery), you could attain druid level 17-18. This gives you more spells per level. If you add up all the spells you can cast across all levels, a 14th level druid can cast 29 spells - an 18th level druid can cast 44, not including bonuses for wisdom. Both have access to 7th level spells, but the 18th level druid has a lot more spell casting potential, and a higher caster level.

There are some notable reasons not to dual-class, too. First is that only humans can do it and humans have the worst saves, though admittedly half-elves don't get any great bonuses in this department. Another reasons is if you plan to use the character in HoF mode or a higher difficulty setting, in which case you'll be much better off in the long run with a multi-class character.

[Broncosrock05]

i like doing a druid til about lvl 8 and dual classing with the fighter, or im currently trying thief

[kmonster]

In a normal game with both expansions and a party of 6 each character will have a little less than 2,500,000 XP at the end.
A fighter12/druid13 multiclass won't learn to cast level 7 spells or shapeshift to water elemental like a dualclass who will reach fighter7/druid17 during the game.

[Endugu]

Thanks for the information, I figured as much.

Since I almost never play in normal nor with six characters, this has never come up in my games and multiclassing has never been a problem for me.

[Kastagir]

As for the ranger, there's one (and only one) reason to chose ranger over fighter: two-weapon fighting! Just make sure that your of-hand weapon can surpass the penalties to THAC0. There are some nice off-hand weapons, like every magic weapon with "Defender" in the name.

There are no "off-hand" weapons in Icewind Dale. The version of the Infinity Engine that IWD uses does not allow for weapons of any kind to be equipped in the shield slot, and non-equipped weapons in your quick-weapon slots do not confer their special abilities. The game simulates "dual wielding" by granting an extra attack per round when a weapon is equipped and no shield is equipped. This weapon can be a sword, a mace or anything else as long as it is a melee weapon.

Edit: this includes two-handed weapons. The IWD manual is full of errors with regard to abilities and proficiencies. Whether the manual reflects actual AD&D rules and intended modeling of said rules by the IE, this is often not how the game works.

[kmonster]

Rangers using a two-handed melee weapon do get the extra attack.