Some party config help please

[Ultra Marine]

Hi,

I am new here. Played IWD 2 years ago. Completed once but restarted a few times. So here I am starting up again. Inspired by all the board members here.

I need some help with making a party. Memory tells me that this was very frustrating. This time, I go INSANE mode and play a Bard, Druid, Cleric, Mage, Paladin, and pure fighter. I don't plan to dual-class so much. So this is what it looks like. Comments?

1) Paladin (what weapons should I give him?)
2) Pure Fighter (would an elf or a gnome be better?)
3) Cleric (should I multi? or dual a fighter at lvl9?)
4) Druid (fighter dual to druid at LVL3)
5) Elf Bard (my first bard ever!!!)
6) F/M/T

Last time, i only used the cleric as for healing, protection from evil and skeletons. Druid is much better. What use is a cleriC?

What weapons to put on paladin, fighter, cleric such that i can try most good single handed weapons and bows?

There are lots of questions here. To all who help me, thanks in advance.

Btw, sorry for my poor english. It's not my mother tongue.

Happy new year!

[JrKASperov]

1. Long swords (gee, I wonder why )
2. Gnome, because of this cool helmet thingy.
3. Because of the dual class druid, try a multiclass, perhaps a cleric/mage?
4. Good enough.
5. Bards are cool in this game
6. Ditch it for a mage, F/M/T's are only useful when soloing.

Clerics can buff your party, prepare for the hard fights and all that.

Paladin: Long Sword/anything
Fighter: Try flails and axes, it'll work.
Cleric: whatever the rest isn't using.

[Zaleukos]

I just completed the game on insane together with my gf. The Cleric buffs are very nice to have, a human F7 (or 9 for that matter)/Cleric X with draw upon holy might gets a very nice AC and every hit hurts a lot. Bard is nice. You will want to use disabling spells such as web (the key to our victory) a lot.

The paladin could do with axe (I think there is a relatively early AC axe and a +2 throwing axe that will hit most dangerous enemies) and a blunt weapon.

We had the following party where some of the chars probably match the roles of those in your party:

a F7 (with 3 points in crossbow and 2H swords)/necromancer (might as well have dualed at lvl 3 as the pre-web game was a pain) ended up the top killer with heavy crossbow of speed and fireball (on webbed mobs). A thief dualled to mage after maxing out traps/locks (or just traps if your bard has lots of knock spells memorized) could work too.

Paladin with Axe/Longsword/Flail/Greatsword as main tank

Dwarf Fighter/Cleric wasnt too useful. Its nice to have healing from the start but this char tended to get hurt a lot, and the healing spells are mostly too weak to make a difference in the heat of the battle. We could have used your Fighter/Druid instead. This char didnt really work in the intended role as secondary tank but we might not have been using her in an optimal way.

Elven fighter/thief: Bow/longsword/spear girl. Second best killer in the party thanks to the bow. The spear turned out to be a better weapon for her against weapon resistant enemies than bow, thanks to the extra range.

Fighter 13/Cleric X. Unfortunately we only got experience enough to reach cleric 12 before the expansion:-p But draw upon holy might actually made this char a better melee option than the paladin towards the end. Mace and Sling are the obvious weapons and seemed nice for a cleric. Cleric also has a bunch of spells that help your AC. Some fights in Lower Dorns Deep were quite a breeze with an AC of -24 from all the buffs

The bard worked out very well. Plenty of proficiency points made it hard to pick a weapon, he ended up with a light crossbow of speed. He wont be fighting much anyway. An elf bard with a bow is probably better than our human

In your party I'd use the gnome fighter, the gnome (?) helmet with its AC bonus would be much more useful than the elfs Thac0 bonus with longsword, as a pure fighter with GM will land almost every hit anyway.

For the cleric I'd dual at lvl 9, It'd give you one more stron melee option.

The druid would be a F3/Druid, or F7/Druid. Maybe even F9 to max out slings, but then you'd be without priestly powers for a very long time. I dont know much about druids as the only infinity engine one I've used is Jaheira in BG2.

I dont like the F/M/T, but you need some thief skills and its nice to have this char able to hit worth a damn with ranged weapons which a low level thief dualled to mage wouldnt... You already have the bard who wont contribute much to direct damage dealing. Normally I prefer to leat an elven fighter/thief take care of thieving skills, but then you would have to change one of the other chars.

Now I'm holding my breath and waiting for the veterans to tear this apart

[ 01-05-2006, 05:50 AM: Message edited by: Zaleukos ]

[Aerich]

Originally posted by Zaleukos: Now I'm holding my breath and waiting for the veterans to tear this apart

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).

[krunchyfrogg]

I just want to throw my two cents in here (and hey, howcome nobody's commenting on my party! waaa! ):

I like you party, I like it a lot. The FMT is a very good option if you're not into backstabbing (I'm not). If you use a thief like I do, which is to say they're just about useless except when opening a lock or disarming a trap, you have two choices:

1) The FMT
2) Dual-classing

I like both options. Right now, I'm trying a character that takes 7 levels as a thief (with an 18 dex, he has a 95 FT and a 90 OL -- should be more than enough), has the ability to Evade some attacks, and just switched over to Fighter. You say you've played BGII before? Well, I basically remade Imoen with that character. Good enough Thief, will be a powerful Wizard.

[Aerich]

Originally posted by krunchyfrogg: I just want to throw my two cents in here (and hey, howcome nobody's commenting on my party! waaa! ):

I'm getting there, I'm getting there.

Don't forget the multiclass F/T option - that's the class I prefer to use to get the thief class into my party. It's a great sniper and therefore fulfills at least two key roles in a party (thief, archer with longbow or crossbow). The sneak attack makes it a good secondary melee option, too, as long as you make sure it doesn't get swarmed. A spear or greatsword is also an option for this character in melee.

As a general comment on the party above, I'd give some serious thought to having a multiclass fighter in the second spot as opposed to a single-class fighter. I know grandmastery is very seductive and powerful, but it's nice to have a tank with ways to influence a fight other than with its brawn. My experience on Insane is that spells are vital to protect your characters and weaken the enemy. Therefore, it is nice to have as many spellcasting options in the party as you can, while making sure that almost every character is better than average in melee and ranged fighting (e.g. has fighter classes for multiple attacks per round, hit points, exceptional strength, and specialization). A fighter/mage or fighter/specialist (illusionist? transmuter?) would fit very well in here as either a multiclass or dualclass. The Cleric could become a multiclass Ranger/Cleric if you want an offensive melee juggernaut with healing capabilities (beware that it can be fragile if playing without a shield, as it should for the extra attack, so it should never be the focus of all enemy attacks if you can help it).

My most dominant party to date on Insane was a P, R/C, dc F[13]/M, F/D, F/T, and Bard. I am using substantially the same party lineup (with a mc F/M instead of the dc) on HoF mode, having started with lvl 1 characters at the beginning. I'm up to the Tiers of the Dead in Upper Dorns. For my play style (magic-heavy, weaponry-intensive, and tactically sound), this is what suits me the best.

[ 01-06-2006, 02:21 AM: Message edited by: Aerich ]

[Ultra Marine]

Which would be more effective?
1) Take a mc f/c and a dc fig(9)/d
2) Take a mc f/d and a dc fig(9)/c

I've not really used a cleric's domain spell other than for healing. So I don't really know if the cleric's high level spells are that good. But I do know that druids summons are very effective.

[Ultra Marine]

Off topic ....

I could put a LVL9 Fighter then dual to mage. Lets say my other fighters reach level 16. The F(9)>Mage(x) is going to have a really bad tachco compared to the fighters -- this is going to be a disadvantage right?

[AeonsLegend]

I played a fighter/druid multiclass with great fun in this game. Druid's have great spells that can easily match up to a mage's in IWD.

I think my party was like this if I remember correctly:
F/D
Fighter
Fighter
Thief/Mage
Fighter/Mage

I deliberately took only 5 characters because of the loss in XP with the multiclassed characters.
This party completely slaughtered the enemies in the game with ease. Good mages combined with almost all good close combat fighting.

[ister]

Originally posted by Ultra Marine: Which would be more effective? 1) Take a mc f/c and a dc fig(9)/d 2) Take a mc f/d and a dc fig(9)/c

The cleric has better combat buffs than the druid. Therefore I'd be inclined to do the F/C and F->D rather than the other way around. Fighter druid dual is a beast to roll though.