How would your underpowered party look like?
Elvenblade
Member Posts: 21
In my opinion the difficulty scaling in this game is a bit funky. It takes a big leap upwards when you arrive to dragon's eye, trolls, bombardier beetles, sword spiders, yuan-ti archers, and then takes quite the drop when you reach the severed hand. It doesn't really pick up again until lower dorn's deep.
The severed hand and upper dorn's deep is usually where I start over because I feel too overpowered
I'm currently thinking of a new party that would intentionally be on the weaker side: no min/maxing abilities, using no kits or using "underpowered kits", no dual class, weird weapon combinations etc.
Halfling wizard slayer focusing on clubs?
A Beastmaster front liner?
A half-orc barbarian dual wielding daggers?
How would your party look like?
The severed hand and upper dorn's deep is usually where I start over because I feel too overpowered
I'm currently thinking of a new party that would intentionally be on the weaker side: no min/maxing abilities, using no kits or using "underpowered kits", no dual class, weird weapon combinations etc.
Halfling wizard slayer focusing on clubs?
A Beastmaster front liner?
A half-orc barbarian dual wielding daggers?
How would your party look like?
0
Comments
Honestly over powered is partly in the character rolling and your pre-prepped tactics. You can do a lot for and against how powerful your party feels just by messing with those two factors alone. I had one friend back in the day that would limit himself to 5 rolls of the dice roller when making characters and he'd keep the best one of the lot. Every once in a while he'd also hold himself to playing with the stats as they came up instead of moving points around to better suit his build and play style.
part of what makes kind of power gaming so to speak easier in icewind dale over say the BG series is that you do kind of get to design a full party of optimized characters. Where NPC's are rarely optimized even when made fairly good at their roles.
I'd go with an evoker who rolls with a quarterstaff, uses only spells that conjure weapons or utilize touch attacks as a frontliner (kind of like @semiticgod 's spider concept, but without the good stuff), a bard who only wears cursed or nonmagical items, or a stalker as the party's sole caster.
For example, a 9 int mage will only learn up to level 4 spells and has a scribing chance of 35%. He is also limited to 6 spells per level. Or a fighter with low dex and con.
A cleric with low wisdom has a chance to fail spell-casting.
Fighters are the strongest class by far and the more you have in your party the easier the game will get. Unlike in Baldurs Gate 2 the Kensai and Berserker kits aren't overpowered. Kensais are worse than vanilla fighters imho since most of the opponents are physical. Wizard Slayers are on the rather weak side since there's not that many spellcasters to disrupt. Only the Dwarven Defender is op. If you want to pick any fighter at all (which I'd not recommend for an underpowered party) go for Kensai or Wizard Slayer.
Rangers (except for the Archer kit) and unkitted Paladins/Inquisitors are meh since there's basically no Ranger/Paladin specific gear (except very late in the game) and their special abilities and very late divine spellcasting doesn't benefit you much, simply making them weaker fighters which makes them great for your runthrough.
Clerics are strong multiclassed and weak singleclassed. They have solid buffs and can become competent fighters but they're at their strongest multiclassed to Mages (most of the Clerics useful spells are prebuffing so once in a fight you don't have *that* much to do, giving you a lot of time to cast offensive spells with additional mage class. Also clerics lack offensive spells so Mage is really nice addition.), Fighters (Holy Power+Draw Upon Holy Might+Armor of Faith basically makes you a temporarily better Fighter while you still have party buffs and healing spells) and Rangers (same category as Fighter with less Attack Power but some nice additional Druid spells). So you can use them for your underpowered party but I'd recommend single class cleric (obviously unkitted since the kits don't have disadvantages) or if you want to multiclass avoid Fighter, Ranger and Mage.
Druids are similar to Clerics but they don't have party buff spells, instead they focus on lasting AoE damage/status and summons. Single class unkitted Druids (none of the kits have any Drawbacks) are like Clerics but stronger since they give up the party and self buffs for total control of the entire area with their AoE damaging and movement and casting impairing spells and they also have a bunch of strong summons (meanwhile being immune to damage with Iron Skins). You can only multiclass them with Fighters to make an incredible tank once you have access to Iron Skins but you would give up the ability to control the area (due to delayed spell aquiring and less spells being available) so it has ups and downs. I would avoid Druids if you aim to make an underpowered party.
Mages are underpowered in IWD with a few exceptions. The level 3 spells Haste and Slow (and to some extent Fireball) are insanely OP, like totally ridiculously overpowered, it's not even fair anymore. So for an underpowered party either don't use those spells or don't use Mages. Also, Mages are strongest when multiclassed because overall their spells aren't that great except for the ones I mentioned. Fighter/Mages become strong once you have access to Stone Skin, Cleric/Mage I already explained and the triple Mage class I don't have to bother explaining. Mage/Thief is the only weak Multiclass but it's not even that weak since you kinda need a Thief and Mages are really only useful for the OP level 3 spells. Use an Abjurer Mage for your party (he can't learn Haste and Slow) and it will fit your UP party pretty nicely.
Thieves (with the exception of the Swashbuckler kit) are the worst class in IWD, but you need at least 1 Thief in your party imho. Backstabbing is mostly useless in IWD except maybe if you use a 6 man Thief party and can backstab 6 creatures at once or backstab one creature with multiple thieves. The worst Thief would be a single class Thief in your party, definitely use that.
Bards as a class are alright, what makes them good in IWD are items, 2 items in particular. The Bardic Horn of Valhalla that summons a bunch of Warriors (purchasable in Kuldahar) and a suit of armor in the Severed Hand that doesn't disable spellcasting (though that comes rather late and might be a random drops, not sure). If you plan to use a Bard which I would limit yourself to not buying the Horn and then the Bard will be underpowered. To my (very limited) Bard knowlegde all the regular songs suck in IWD (I might be wrong here) making any kitted Bard stronger than the unkitted version, so avoid those. Bards are weak in battle, learn few spells slowly and have a Pickpocket ability (there's only 2 good Pickpocketable items in IWD and you will need a Thief anyways so it's useless) making them a jack of all Trades and a Master in none. Definitely go for a Bard, same rule as with Mage though: Don't use Haste or Slow because even if a Bard has very few spells, Haste and Slow are so good that having a Bard in your party with all stats on minimum, no equipped items and not using any spells *except* Slow/Haste would make him a worthwhile addition to your team. Don't use fucking Haste/Slow man, don't.
Sorcerers are stronger mages since the amount of useful spells is very limited and the Sorcerer gets to use them a lot more times than a Mage. (Also they get Haste and Slow, by now you know what's up with Haste and Slow. Don't use it, man.) Don't use Sorcerers even when limiting yourself to not using Haste/Slow and especially don't use Dragon Disciples.
Monks. I haven't used a Monk yet in IWD since I don't like Monks and I love loot but I can't see how they would be of any use in the game until they get to a pretty high level. Would make an excellent addition to an UP team.
Barbarians are essentially fighers that dish out less damage but can tank better. Don't use them.
So, to summarize which classes are best for an UP party: Thieves (except Swashbucklers), Rangers (except Archers), Paladins/Inquisitors, single class unkitted Clerics, Abjurers (or Mages without using Haste/Slow), Bards (without buying the Bardic Horn and not using Haste/Slow) and Monks. Also, don't use any Fighter, Ranger or Paladin as an Archer since Archers are strong (that's why the Archer kit is the strongest kit in the game along with Dwarven Defender and Dragon Disciple) and don't use the Half Orc race since it gets +1 to Strength and Constitution.
And no matter what you do avoid the following classes/kits (ESPECIALLY the Bold ones):
Dwarven Defender, Archer, Cavalier, Inquisitor, Blackguard, Shapeshifter, Sorcerer, Dragon Disciple
Lots of different routes one could go with this, even without mod kits. One Skald and three vanilla bards with Ballad of Three Heroes, Tymora's Melody, and War Chant of Sith leaves you with just two party members to handle... pretty much everything. Granted, those two party members will be OMGBuffed to hell, (end-game, +5 THACO, +5 damage, +4 saves, +6 AC, +1 luck, +2 hp/round regen), but still...
I've also thought about running something truly stupid like 2x Jesters, 2x vanilla bards with Siren's Yearning, a Sorcerer with nothing but SoE spells, and a Kensai or Monk. Disable everything and let him go to town.
The nice thing about Bards is they greatly reduce your micromanagement requirements.