I've always preferred bows for my fighters, mainly for speed and ease of use (in earlier rules, a heavy xbow could only fire every other round). Regular bows just seem more right, somehow.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

P.S. And if one can talk the DM round into giving one a strength bow (and having an 18/00 strength, I did talk, heh), arrows can hurt a lot. Pity they didn't allow strength bows here.

Yeah it does suck - composite bows are supposed to add your Str bonus to them, but in IWD II all they do is give an increase in the bow's range :(

Actually, you'd have to get one of the "mighty" composite bows for the strength add. I see by the table in the PHB that such longbows go up to +4 damage, while shortbows get up to only +2. Whereas my 2nd ed fighter has a bow that allows for the full +6 damage.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

First let me post the starting stats my all-Drow totally munchkinik shamelessly min-maxed party.

Fighter 18/20/16/5/16/5
Broadsword - Mace / Throwing hammers

Paladin 16/15/12/5/14/18
Longsword - Longsword / Returning throwing dagger

Barbarian 18/20/16/5/16/5
Greatsword / Throwing Axe

Cleric 15/12/12/5/18/18
Longsword - Shield
(One level of Paladin)

Druid 18/20/14/5/18/5
Flail - Scimitar

Wizard 12/19/16/20/8/5
Short sword - Dagger
(One level of Rogue)

1/ You could pick a Druid as the last party member. Great healer. Great blaster. Great melee character.

2/ The argument of scrolls cost money therefore piking up sorcerors is not a good one. I normal mode I ended up with the best equipment of the game (including the uber-expensive bonus merchant stuff) and still had about 800.000gp. OTOH I do not use bows / crossbows / slings, those missiles are expensive :D .

3/ Featwise. I am a two-weapon ambidexterity freak. Even the wizard has it. I also picked up Dirty Fighting for everybody (great skill). Every feat that enhances spell saves (Iron will,...). The spell casters have different spell penetration feats and one or more of the Spirit of Flame/ Scion of Storm/... feats. And of course weapon specilization in their favourite weapons.

4/ Skill wise. I avoided / regretted putting points in: Wilderness Lore, Picking locks (bashing them instead), Bluff, picking pockets.

Scrolls costing money is not the only problem with wizards... even if you have the money, the good spells are hard to find. Also, you can only have a few spells at a time memorised. If you do not need a spell, you don't use it, and you regret memorising it "just in case". With a sorceror, if you do not need a spell at one particular point, don't use it... use what you DO need.

As to the party, I made a party I called "The Denizens of the Underdark" (any better suggestions would be appreciated). I had a drow ranger (not drizzt btw), a deep gnome rogue, a duergar fighter, a drow cleric, a deep gnome conjurer (i love summons), and a drow sorceror. I played upon the strengths of the races a lot... the extra charisma for drow as the leader and the sorceror, the deep gnome dexterity (the conjurer used bows)and the dwarven constitution. It worked quite well, despite all being ECL classes

Right, 3rd Edition has the "mighty" thing - they had those types of bows in Neverwinter Nights, don't know why they didn't implement that rule in IWD II.

"Scrolls costing money is not the only problem with wizards... even if you have the money, the good spells are hard to find. Also, you can only have a few spells at a time memorised. If you do not need a spell, you don't use it, and you regret memorising it "just in case". With a sorceror, if you do not need a spell at one particular point, don't use it... use what you DO need."

I think it's good to have one of each. The problem with the Sorcerer is that they have a very limited selection of spells compared to a Wizard. I don't mind so much the cost of scrolls (money isn't much of an issue in the game), and you actually can find more than you know what to do with if you just have one Wizard (more than that and it would be pretty tough). And it's worse to make mistakes as a Sorcerer - pick the wrong spells to learn and you're stuck with them for the whole game; all a Wizard needs to do is rest and memorize different ones. That being said I like both classes, a Sorcerer with good spell picks is very cool.

Try going with a basic party. 1 spellcaster. 1 healer. 1 thief. 2 fighters. 1 ranged attacker. That will always be that party I choose.

Warhammer,

Why is almost everyone dual-weilding?
With high strength, a two-handed weapon is very powerful.

Also, why does everyone seem to have such high Dex scores?