I am just having trouble creating my party, especially deciding what races, skills & feats to take. The classes that I want to play are:

1. either a Paladin or Ranger for the leader (leaning towards Ranger and using him like a rogue for disarm traps and pickpocket)
2. Barbarian
3. Monk/Cleric (evenly multiclassed, starting w/ Monk)
4. Specialized Wizard or Sorceror (not sure which, leaning towards conjueror to make up for the lack of a druid in the party.)
and

I only want to take 4 characters. The Monk/Cleric and Barbarian are definite characters. The other 2, I am not sure of. I like the combination of Monk/Cleric b/c Monk's need high wisdom for the AC bouns and Clerics need wisdom for their spells. I am planning on multiclassing her evenly. Another question I had about skills. I created a human barbarian w/ 18,16,18,8,8,8 stats. When selecting skills, it mentions an ability associated w/ each one. None of them are related to str, dex or con, so I picked Wilderness Lore and Intimadate since it was a 1-1 skill point. However, is my barbarian going to be hinder since his int, wis & cha are 8?

Thanks for your help,
Vassago

[ 10-16-2002, 08:22 AM: Message edited by: Vassago ]

I like Paladins, but a multiclassed Ranger/Rogue would probably be a good choice for your 4 person party. A Ranger/Rogue wearing light armor would get ambidexterity/2-weapon fighting for free.

I'd suggest the sorceror if you're comfortable picking the proper spells. The one negative that a sorc has compared to a wizzy is that your normal wizard will get tons of skill points to dump into those wizard type skills and this means that a wizard with a high arcane knowledge is able to ID almost every item without going to a merchant or casting an ID spell. sorcs get far fewer skill points and those skill points usually need to be dumped into concentration and diplomacy. Sorc's do make great party talkers, due to their necessarily high CHA's.

Wizards seem like the safer choice. But a sorceror with a well chosen collection of spells can kick some serious a$$. Doesn't hurt to select your feats carefully as well.

A con of 8 is terrible for anyone, and especially for any fighters. An 8 will take off 1 hit point every time the character levels up. See the table on p. 134 in the manual. I suggest a min con of 10 for everyone.

Int is not that important for barbarians, but you will have few points at level up time to begin with, and again, 8 will mean even less.

That low wisdom means your barb will be very susceptible to mind control spells like charm person. This is usually not a good thing.

Keep in mind that every four levels you can increase a stat by one point. So you may want to consider lowering a higher one so you can beef up the weak ones.

I myself prefer sorcerers to wizards. Sorcs don't have as wide a range of spells known, but (a) they can cast more than a wizard of same level and (b) they get a choice at level gain time, where wizards have to hunt around for spells. Finding good high-level spells can be a problem.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

Monk / Cler is a bit of a weak character (personal opinion). Monks are only powerful towards the higher levels. By spreading your exp on cleric skills will lessen the monk's martial effectiveness.

Paladin leader is always a good choice. Aura of courage helps as does the ability to "detect evil" (it may no longer be a spell/skill, but it is still in effect.). Also "Holy Avenger" comes to mind.... i still haven't found it....

As others have mentioned, Con 8 for a barbarian is going to be a major problem.... What did he grow up on? Eating grass and berries?

Anyway, whatever your party, it will be fun playing with it. You can always choose a different party the 2nd time round.... Based on comparison with friends; there seems to be lots of different available conversations and outcomes depending on your party.

Itsnt the order:
Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wiz, Cha?
Wouldnt that give his Barbarian
Str = 18
Dex = 16
Con = 18
Int = Wiz = Cha = 8

Am I wrong?

[ 10-16-2002, 02:09 AM: Message edited by: Seraph ]

Quote:

A con of 8 is terrible for anyone, and especially for any fighters. An 8 will take off 1 hit point every time the character levels up...I suggest a min con of 10 for everyone.

Quote:

As others have mentioned, Con 8 for a barbarian is going to be a major problem.... What did he grow up on? Eating grass and berries?

Itsnt the order:
Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wiz, Cha?
Wouldnt that give his Barbarian
Str = 18
Dex = 16
Con = 18
Int = Wiz = Cha = 8

Am I wrong?</font>[/QUOTE]You're right, this has been the pen and paper order for as long as I can remember.

Yes, I set my barbarian up as str=18, dex=16, con=18, int=8, wis=8 and cha=8, but I just noticed that in my first post, the last sentence stated that my int, wis & con was 8 and I should have made it int, wis & cha. I think that is where the confusion came in. I'll edit that.

I had not planned on multiclassing my Ranger w/ a Rogue, I was just planning on uping his Rogue abilities (i.e. Pickpocket & Disarm Traps).

As far as the Sorc, do you pick your spells like you would for a cleric or druid instead of memorizing them like a mage? I've read other posts where people were having troubles w/ their Sorc and was not to sure about him. I never used a mage in the first IWD, stuck strickly w/ a Druid. I just wanted to try one out this time around.

Any suggestions for race on my Monk/Cleric?

Well I would probably go with a Ranger over a Paladin, otherwise you'll have some problems with thief-type skills. And as was suggested I would probably give him some Rogue levels, maybe something like 4/1 Ranger to Rogue. Rogues also get access to alot of the dialogue skills which you can build to make him a good leader. I would start him out as a Rogue at level one because he'll get alot more skill points.

For the Barbarian, you might want to take 4 levels of Fighter to be able to get weapon specialization and 3 extra feats. I would probably drop his Cha and Int and raise his Wis. Int is basically worthless (you'll get 1 skill point per level no matter how low Int is, from 8 down to 1); and so is Cha as he won't be your leader. Wis helps with Will saves (also I would take the Iron Will feat), and with Wilderness Lore. Also I like 1/2 Orcs as Barbarians [img]smile.gif[/img]

The Monk/Cleric I don't like if you do it evenly split in levels. I could see taking a Dex-type Cleric and taking one level of Monk to get the Wis bonus to AC (which only counts if he's not wearing armor BTW), and for RP purposes. But if the levels are evenly split, what I see happening is he won't be very good in combat with martial arts, and also won't be very good at healing because he won't have access to high level spells, and he's your only healer.

I would go for a Sorcerer over a Wizard, mainly because you've only got 4 characters and I think you'll level faster with a Wizard than the availability of scrolls. In other words, you'll be hitting levels where you could cast level X spells before scrolls are available in the game for that level. You could take a heavy ECL wizard to try to avoid that (like a Deep Gnome or Drow), but I think with a pure Wizard it will still happen. Or you could multi class when/if you find yourself at a Wizard level where you can't cast spells for which you would qualify for lack of scrolls. Also the Sorcerer is Cha-based and could double as the leader if you wanted. Wizards don't get any higher rate of skill points over Sorcerers, it's just based on Int, so if you give your Sorcerer a high Int, he'll get alot of skill points too (I have done this with a pure Aasimar Sorcerer and it works very well). The only class that gets a higher base rate of skill points is the Rogue. Wizards do get a bonus feat every 5 levels though.

Yeah, glad that "Con 8" was only a typo. Cha 8 for a barb is not a problem.

As to the sorc, any spells he or she knows are available for casting as long as you still have "slots" left. No memorization is necessary; if you know the spell, you can cast it. The trick comes in choosing the spells you want to have. That does have to be done with some care.

My first team had both a wizard and a sorcerer. For me, there was no question that the sorc was superior, so future groups had 2 sorcs. This is handy because you can split alchemy and arcana between them.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

Ok, so now I am thinking about...

Ranger/Rogue
Barbarian
Monk 1/Cleric X (starting off w/ Monk)
Sorceror

Suggestions for races? I have decided that I want my Barbarian to be Human (not Asamir or Tiefling), but I am open on the others. I would like my Ranger/Rogue to be the talker of the party. I think I will start him off as a Rogue for the first level and then develop him into a Ranger. Not sure at what levels though.