GameBanshee Forums

Hi all,
I've never played IWD before, although I recently completed IWD2 and BG1/2, and thought I'd give this game a try.
I have IWD, HOW and TotL installed, and I'm thinking of applying a few of the G3 tweaks for cosmetic purposes.

Now you have my game background, my questions relate to my initial party formation.
I don't want to fill all 6 slots, but would like to go with only 4 or 5 characters.
My thoughts so far have ben thus :

1 - Human Paladin - party leader and tank.
2 - Human Cleric - healer/fighter.
3 - Half-elven thief.
4 - Elven Mage.
5 - Unsure about this one but I've been thinking of a human fighter for some extra smush-power. This could be foregone depending on your advice.

I think I've covered all of the bases here, but I'm unsure if I'll have any success or whether I'll really struggle.

One thing I must point out is that I enjoy RP-ing my games rather than number crunching to min/max stats etc...
Therefore, my female Paladin of Helm has a nice purdy picture but she doesn't look all that strong, so I won't care if her STR is only 12 or 13 or so rather than 18/98.
Her CHA will be maxed, and I'd like her to be smart and sassy, so her INT and WIS will also be high, even though this has little effect on game performance.

I also endeavour to use the same weapons that the character portrait does. Thus my cleric will use a mace, just like the cool portrait of the white-haired lady in blue.
You get my drift here right?

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.
Lum

Instead of a pure Thief I'd go for a Fighter/Thief, Mage/Thief or Fighter/Mage/Thief instead. A pure Thief very soon maxes out thieving skills and suffers from lack of protection, in form of helmets and/or spells.
Figher class gives you better HP, THAC0 and AC, while Mage gives better protection (Armor, Shield, Blur, Mirror Image etc) and a secondary Mage can be useful.

For the fifth member I'd go for Druid. Druid are quite powerful and very fun to play in IWD, with lots of special spells and shape changing options.
Figher/Druids (Dual- or multi-class) are also good.

I strongly advice against picking a Bard, since once the Bard reached lvl 11 you'll get the War Chant of the Sith that totally breaks the game with it's (very rapid) regeneration of HP.

If you pick a sixth member I recommend a Ranger. The Tracking skill is quite fun and Rangers get three attacks per round if using no shield and having two stars in the weapon they are using.

For the paladin you should know that low strength does also mean low carrying capacity. I don't think it increases roleplaying fun if she hardly has enough strength to carry her own gear and you therefore have to spend a lot of time with inventory management in order to avoid her being encumbered.
If your other party members are that weak too you'll have trouble carrying the loot you find.
It will take a very long time until you'll find equipment which sets strength to a certain value.
The strength spell which works exactly as described will be the only help until then.

I recommend making your cleric good aligned, the alignment restrictions for spells in the manual do apply.
Since your cleric is a human I'd consider starting as fighter or ranger and dualclassing to cleric after 2 or 3 levels. This way he can specialize in maces and slings and get 18/.. strength (which solves the party carrying capacity problem) and do more than twice as much damage per round.

I recommend multiclassing your thief. Pure class thieves are hardly better than mages in spellfree combat and it's not that great if their skills max out so early in the game.

For your mage you should know that "raise dead" doesn't work on elves, "resurrection" is far more expensive in temples and requires a far more higher level cleric.

I disagree with octavius about the bard, the song is not gamebreaking, it's just comfortable since you don't have to do an annoying search for resting places and allows to try out other spells than healing spells with your cleric.
Bard is the best class for dialogues, there are some bard-specific dialogue options in the game, 15 cha grants all charisma based dialogue options and with the friends spell you can get 20 for optimal shop prices.

For the fifth character there are many choices besides bard, druid spells are really good in IWD and if you take a druid or fighter/druid you also have healing spells from the beginning so you have from the start even if you replace your cleric with a dualclassed fighter/cleric.

If you rather want a warrior than a spellcaster taking a ranger will at least allow to have a few low level druid spells late in the game. Optimal weapon type is 2-handed sword.

The game isn't as easy as BG2, so make sure you give good stats to your characters.
You can turn the difficulty down, this way you have easier combat and get more XP, so that you gain access to spells far early than you're supposed to and your mage gain levels faster than he'll find scrolls.

Personally I found that the game became just too easy when my Bard reached lvl 11. For healing I mainly use Potions, Lay on Hands and various healing items (mainly potions and scrolls, but I've also seen a Wand of Healing with 50 charges) I find, freeing up spells slots for combat spells. The Cure Wounds spells are too slow to be useful in combat anyway.

As for 2H weapon being optimal for Rangers I strongly disagree, as it's a waste of the Rangers' best selling point - dual wielding. With a one handed weapon and no shield - simulating dual wielding - a Ranger can get *three* attacks per round. I'd take Bows and Maces. Bows rule the battlefield and there's lots of skeletal undead in IWD, so proficiency in some sort of blunt weapon (Mace covers both Maces and Morningstars) is very useful, especially early in the game.
I'd rather give the Paladin or a Figher/Druid proficiency in 2H weapons.

In IWD, the Ranger also gets a free attack with twohanded weapons.

Kmonster is right about the bard, it's an incredibly handy character, but certainly not gamebreaking. All of his advice is pretty sound.

Given the nature of stats in AD&D (which means IWD as well), I'm a strong advisor of maxed out stats where necessary. High STR for your melee-ers will benefit you greatly, while I don't see the particular fun in having weak stats.

As for weapon choices, here's what I suggest, but it contains a spoiler:

Spoiler

Longswords for the Paladin.

Didn't know that Rangers got extra attacks with 2H weapons. That's stupid, but I guess it was easier to code...or else it was an oversight.
It's *supposed* to simulate dual wielding, so if you're a Role Player your Ranger should not use 2H weapons.

Maxed stats are boring and devalues items like Gauntlets of Dexterity, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Girdle of the Dwarves (don't remember if these actually exist in IWD, though) and Potions of Strength, Agility and Fortitude.

But of course, it's always the player's choice if he wants an easy game or a challenging one.
If you want easy use a Bard to take care of healing and make sure you have at least 18 in Str, Dex and Con.

octavius wrote:Didn't know that Rangers got extra attacks with 2H weapons. That's stupid, but I guess it was easier to code...or else it was an oversight.
It's *supposed* to simulate dual wielding, so if you're a Role Player your Ranger should not use 2H weapons.

Maxed stats are boring and devalues items like Gauntlets of Dexterity, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Girdle of the Dwarves (don't remember if these actually exist in IWD, though) and Potions of Strength, Agility and Fortitude.

But of course, it's always the player's choice if he wants an easy game or a challenging one.
If you want easy use a Bard to take care of healing and make sure you have at least 18 in Str, Dex and Con.

Well, there's only an average difference in damage of 1 between longswords and greatswords, so sticking to longswords won't matter much. Personally, I consider it an exploit to make use of a greatsword and the extra attack.

Maxed Stats frees up item slots for other things than those items. Apart from that, I think that reloading/restarting and relying on luck (the d20 roll) is boring. It certainly is a more challinging game.

Thanks for the replies everyone.
After some deliberation I've decided to cut my party size down to 4 members (I prefer to handle 4 rather than an unwieldy 5 or 6) consisting of the following :

Aurelia Starhelm - Human Paladin of Helm
Aelfric Iron-Fang - Human Fighter with great physical stats and a high WIS (will dual to Druid at level 3 so he can be a tank and a caster)
Bronwen Dawnbringer - Human Cleric of Lathander
Feanil Moonshadow - Elven Mage/Thief

If it seems like I have an unusal female bias to my party it's because I don't particularly like any of the portraits for males, but lots of the female portraits are excellent.

Feanil is way behind the rest of the party. She's still level 1/1 whilst the rest are almost 3rd level, but I'm assuming that the lack of mage scrolls to learn will balance the levelling problem out.