Quote:
Originally posted by Xen:
Hi! Could someone introduce me to 3ed rules set and new party please. I have searched the forum but would still like you advice.
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GameFAQs has character guides and powergaming party stuff. Don't know if this appeals to you, Xen, but thought I'd post it.
I agree with Timber Loftis. You can play any character with any class/kit with 3rd edition rules. However, some races have preferred classes and gain bonuses with those classes, and strange race/class combos suffer certain penalties. (Want to make a Tiefling ranger? No problem! Need to balance out the CHA penalty, though.) Powerful sub-races take a long time to level up. You can make Aasamir (half-celesial), Tiefling (half-demonic), and Drow characters, and they get fantastic bonuses. To counter those bonuses, it takes Aasamir and Tieflings two levels of experience to level up, as opposed to other classes' one level, and takes Drow three levels of experience to level up.
It's all in the manual. Gets very tedious, but it's worth a skim.
Three items of note: stat rolls, skills, and feats.
Stats are rolled differently in IWD2. Instead of the BG system of rolling all your stats for hours trying to come up with the best numbers possible, IWD2 sets every stat at 10, adds or subtracts racial bonuses, and you get a certain number of points to add to the stats. You can also subtract as much as you want to add to other stats. Balances out the character a bit so you don't have some bizarre 18/18/18/3/18/18 combination.
Skill points are pretty basic. The number varies depending on class. Any skill considered useful to the class is a class skill. Any skill considered not as useful to the class is a cross-class skill. For example, rogues and monks have Move Silently as a class skill. They don't wear armor (or they wear light armor), and they're used to sneaking around. For every skill point a rogue or monk puts into the Move Silently skill, they recieve one rank in that skill. Fighter classes can take Move Silently as a class skill, but they need two skill points to get a rank in it. It's all that heavy metal armor and such.
Feats are kinda like ToB's HLAs. They're these super-powerful abilities that characters recieve once per level up (humans and a few other classes get two feats in character creation instead of just one) and gain new feats for every three levels. Not every race or class get the same feat pool, and there are combos to be had, like Power Attack/Cleave for fighters.
Another nifty thing about 3rd edition rules is that dual-classing is nonexistant. Any character, human or demihuman, can multiclass. Some classes can multiclass in other classes and still level in their original classes. (For example, a Paladin of Mystra can multiclass as a wizard and still gain paladin levels. If the multiclass was, say, rogue, the character couldn't gain paladin levels because rogue isn't the preferred multiclass.)
My advice? Build a party with three fighter classes and three non-fighter classes. My first IWD2 party was a fighter/rogue, two paladins, a fighter/cleric, a mage, and a bard. Rogues aren't crucial to IWD and IWD2--bards are.
(Where's Arundel's Comeuppance when you need it? [img]tongue.gif[/img] )
[ 11-02-2003, 03:23 AM: Message edited by: Pirengle ]