No warriors party

Zeckul

Here's an interesting constraint: build a party without any warrior class

- No Fighter or Fighter kit
- No Paladin or Paladin kit
- No Ranger or Ranger kit
- No Barbarian

Additionally:
- No more than 1 cleric

I started a game with this party:
- Half-Orc Cleric of Lathander, plays the role of tank. 18 dex and 16 constitution are of the essence. Could have gone with dwarf or gnome too, but 19 strength is always nice to have.
- Elven Assassin as thief and damage dealer, bow expert. 19 dex and sneak attack ftw.
- Human Avenger, versatile but fragile caster.
- Half-elf Bard
- Elven Sorcerer
- Human Sorcerer

As you can see this is heavily skewed towards arcane magic, I like arcane magic Been playing with this on Insane for a few hours, the 3 ogres group in the starting cave fell easily to a well-placed Color Spray (deals with the Ogres) and Entangle (deals with everything else). Requires a lot of micromanagement but should be a fun challenge. Fighters make the game easy.

How would you do it?

hispls

I'd probably lean toward a druid, 2 priests, rogue, mage, and bard. IMO if you pick the right stats priests can hang on the front line if needed, but mostly the priest is far more useful than mage to create durable chump blockers with summons.

I also like to abuse the hell out of trap setting so that is key for me.

My last playthrough was wizard slayer (in retrospect a very weak choice, but I hadn't played the game in years and just got through a BG trilogy play where arcane casting enemies were some of the toughest fights), Dwarven Defender, Lathander priest, Thief (no kit), Dragon Disciple (who by the time he gained 100% fire resistance could easily solo just about any hoard), and a mage/cleric dual for some redundancy in healing/buffs and for the ability to actually carry a larger assortment of mage spells.

I'm definitely glad I didn't ONLY pick sorcerers for arcane casters since there's a big variety of useful spells or some that might just be fun now and again that are worth having in the spellbook.

I recall a couple battles where all your party's buffs are dispelled when walking in the door on them in the expansion pack section.... that might be rough, otherwise I don't see you having much trouble if you know how to play the classes you've picked.

Grum

Swashbuckler (like a warrior)
Blade (decent warrior/mage)
Sorceror (boom!)
Totemic Druid (healer with free summons)
Assassin (ranged poison, and traps. The swashbuckler gets the thief skills)
Skald (can fight in a pinch. Does buffing magic, gives much needed bonuses)


All elves or half-elves for a theme.

CaeDares

The only thing you need to win the game is a Sorc, so whats the point of the constraint?

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DreadKhan

All Halflings would be more unusual. Your warriors rocking 17 str aren't exactly game breaking early on. No Arcane, no Druids, and likely max traps for any fight worth mentioning. I'd strongly consider 2 Bounty Hunters.

Its like ewoks tripping AT-STs, except the Chicken Walkers are ogres.

Pixil

I finished the game on insane difficulty, very easily with:

Elf Shadowdancer (my sneaky sneaky)
Elf Totemic Druid (my summoner)
Elf Priest of Lathander (my undead exterminator)

Totemic druid makes armies of summons, shadowdancer leads said animals through dungeons.
Priest of lathander because of "turn undead" and healing in case something goes wrong.

Skatan

Swashbuckler: prolly shorty for the saves or human for dualing to mage
Blade: defensive spin is a good option.
Cleric or cleric kit: dwarf. Singleclass for best turn undead possible.
Druid: unsure if totemic or avenger. Either would work really, but I lean towards totemic.
Sorceror: yeah they are too good to not include ofc.
Bard: Unkitted or Skald if dualing the swashie, otherwise I would use an unkitted mage for some more arcane. If not for the restriction of only one cleric I would have brought a C/M for some redundancy in arcane and divine spells.

Juris

Yeah a front line of a Swashbuckler, Blade, Assassin, and Monk. Clerics of Lathander are just awesome (and make pretty good fighters with their special ability). Backed up by a Sorcerer or Wild Mage and you've got a very good fighter-free front line

JuliusBorisov

Sheesh, people, relax a bit. If you want to discuss different spells in IWDEE (such as Skeleton Warriors, Cone of Cold, Chaos and others), you can always do it in other topic. I've transferred all the off-topic comments to http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/41052/arcane-level-5-spells-in-iwdee?new=1

It's better not to continue your argument before it crosses the line.

God

Druids in IWD are so OP that you could turn all your other characters into squirrels and still get through HoF easily.

OlvynChuru

I've done a six pure mage playthrough, and it's really fun. All the mages end up with different spells; they can't all spam Stoneskin. They can do all kinds of cool things.

This is kind of irrelevant now that we have IWD:EE, but in the original Icewind Dale, with Heart of Winter installed, a six pure mage playthrough was NOT fun, because of this one reason: you couldn't rest in Yxunomei's lair!

That was a BIG annoyance. It meant that whenever you wanted to rest (which was often if you were using a pure mage party, because you would rely totally on your spells and eventually they'd run out), you'd have to go all the way back through the area to Marchon of Waterdeep. And of course in order to do that you'd have to go through the traps and hope that none of your six characters step on any, because if they do they would quite possibly get confused AND poisoned. Confused characters can't drink antidotes, and pure mages can't cast Neutralize Poison. If that wasn't enough, pure mages can't disarm those traps, and unless you have the Wand of Trap Detection or have memorized where the traps are, then yeah.

Sorry if that was off topic. What's important for this thread is that I think all-mage playthroughs are fun in IWD:EE and more people should give one a try.

bob_veng

i liked the resting restrictions in the original. somehow always made sense to me.