Quote:
Originally posted by Zaleukos:
Now I'm holding my breath and waiting for the veterans to tear this apart
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There's no "tearing apart" here. There's just preferences and powergaming. Any reasonably balanced party should be able to finish the game.
@ Ultra Marine - welcome to the forum [img]graemlins/happywave.gif[/img]
The great thing about Insane difficulty mode and the double experience is that you can diversify your characters a bit. Multiclassing is a good alternative to dualclassing, and it is necessary - your fighters cannot "hold the line" as well against creatures doing double damage, so you need lots of other melee and magical options.
Here's some specific comments:
1) Paladin - a solid choice. Longsword is a must. One handed melee weapons are preferable if you intend to use this character as your primary melee fighter, because you can use a shield for better AC. There are good longswords fairly early in the game, so you lose nothing in taking longsword over axe. The benefit to taking axe as a melee/missile weapon, or sling as a missile weapon, is that you won't have to switch out your shield if you want to change weapons. To sum up, the necessities are longsword, a missile weapon (I prefer bow, but that's just me), and a blunt weapon (I prefer flail, because of the flail with stunning effects that you find in Dragon's Eye).
2) Fighter - take gnome over elf. Elves have -1 to Constitution, which is not something you want with a melee fighter. Gnome fighters can also use a great helm (-3 to AC) bought from Conlan. If you still want to go with elf, take longsword and bow to get the racial bonus. As the fighter would then have longsword proficiency, you might then want to take Axe as your paladin's first melee proficiency, and add in the longsword to the paladin later for that special sword.
3) Cleric - I favour a multiclass fighter/cleric here - pureclass clerics are a little light on offensive options for my taste. Dwarf is a good class for the saving throw bonuses, or you could go with gnome and use the magical gnome's/halfling's helm here and make the fighter an elf or dwarf. Weapons - certainly sling, probably mace and hammer. Clerics are good for mass spells to increase your party's defensive and offensive prowess- try Prayer, Recitation, Defensive Harmony, and Shield of Lathander in addition to Protection from Evil 10' Radius. A fighter/cleric can make great use of Draw Upon Holy Might to become a much more powerful melee fighter.
4) Druid - I'd prefer to get a little more out of a dualclass than lvl 3 - you could go to lvl 7 for an extra 0.5 melee attack per round, or lvl 9 for maximum HP, or lvl 13 for another extra attack per round and grandmaster. However, as you have conceptualized the character, I see a strong spellcaster with a bit more weapon skill. Sling is a must, as is scimitar or spear. I would seriously consider at least taking this character to lvl 7, as it takes very little additional experience; you can dual at 64 000 XP, then regain your fighter lvls at druid lvl 8 - 60 000 XP. That gives you a lvl 7 fighter/lvl 8 druid for 124 000 XP - a lvl 3 fighter dualled to druid with the same amount of XP would only be lvl 9 as a druid. You could also go with a multiclass here (my preferred option).
5) Bard - good class if you have Heart of Winter and therefore access to all the new songs, mediocre if you only have IWD without HoW. Weapons don't matter, as this character should be singing when not casting.
6) F/M/T - not bad if playing on insane. Choose elf for the bonus to swords and bows; the +4 HP bonus for 18 Con is divided by three and rounded down anyway, so a 17 Con will make no difference to your HP. This character makes a decent archer, decent thief, and eventually a decent mage. Be warned that it will take a long time to level up decently, and may never be a dominant mage. It is, however, a versatile support character to a powerful melee party (which is what you have, or could have).