Icewind Dale & Baldur's Gate: Which classes do they encourage/discourage playing?
vladpen
Member Posts: 88
According to http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/34131/best-iwd-party-setup/p1, IWD encourages playing Druids, Bards, and Paladins. I want to get a general sense of which classes are encouraged/discouraged by which EE game and game series. Hopefully this doesn't include considerations like "class X is better in game Y because they can use item Z", but does include considerations like "IWD has many dangerous undead and not many Mages".
0
Comments
Well, BGI Doesn't really encourage a class in particular but you don't really need an enchanter class there because mages are not so powerful at these levels and a group mainly based of fighters can easily fight through all the game, but in BGII mages and clerics are really encouraged because your party really needs all the protections and the counterspells to dispatch all the mages and the powerful creatures you'll face until the end. I think BGII mostly wants you to have a balanced party, rewarding each class with items and class-related quest, giving you satisfaction with each class you would choose for your CHARNAME and your NPCs.
IWD advantages some classes instead of others, yes, but not only because of the class-specific items, also for the questline and the peculiar lore of that region. This doesn't mean that you can't have satisfaction playing with other classes (one should understand that there's no CHARNAME in IWD) but surely you'll lose some of the regional lore and the pleasure of interacting with that setting, also in my opinion is somewhat annoying to have so many items unused in the whole adventure, but all depends on how one roleplays their party, of course.
You make a party of several characters, so why not to try those combinations that generally get skipped at the character creation process for BG?
Also, IWDEE introduces wonderful spells for druids and songs for the vanilla bards.
This is why, from my point of view, you should take those characters who are rare on your selection in BG.
Druids get a bunch of spells in IWD that they don't get in the BG series, spells like Alicorn Lance and Wall of Moonlight, which improves their offense and debuffing abilities.
Bards (mainly kitless bards) get several bard songs that they can sing to help the party, including a song which grants them and their allies regeneration.