Could i actually get started with this game?

Mrpenfold666

Hey guys, I mainly bought icewind dale purely to support beamdog, but I thought I may aswell beat it and noticed you have to make an entire party of 6. can anyone recomend a decent starting party? 

I was thinking druid, paladin, mage, cleric, cleric, rogue any thoughts on what i might face?

oakheart

You don't need a full party of 6 - in fact, your characters will gain xp faster with smaller parties.

You'll get a million different answers as regards to party composition, depending on personal play style. But clerics are definitely useful, as the game is full of undead. A rogue is good too for disarming traps and picking locks, but I prefer to multi class them for utility.

FWIW, here's one of my favourite party compositions:

1) Fighter/Druid (Tank, summons, healing when needed, utility spells)
2) Dwarven Defender (or plain fighter. Tank)
3) Fighter/Thief (Scout, DPS, utility)
4) Cleric/Mage (Healing, buffing, summons, can melee if absolutely necessary)
5) Sorcerer (because sorcerers are awesome)

Grond0

If you don't want 6 characters just delete the characters you don't want on the character generation (and don't replace them with your own.

Penumbra

I recommend a full party playthrough with the basic setup of your own design.  Use core rules.  
Write up some backstories for your characters biographies to add some flavor so each character means something to you.  I would pick some interesting kits.  Your two frontline tanks could be a paladin kit and a fighter type kit.  Your middle two could be rogue and fighter/ caster type, and your back two could be a shaman and magic user (or any other kit you can dream up).  You can't go wrong as long as you roll your numbers decently and apply them appropriately.  The best balance will come on core rules.  After your first playthrough, take your same team to insane difficulty, then to heart of fury.  Remember that if you go the heart of fury route to have a character with summon abilities, or a power party.  Although, it can be soloed.

Have fun.

Skatan

Some general info, though I'm not experienced compared to others:

* I'd say two fighter types in the front dishing out the damage and drawing all the aggro, ie fighters (or kits), paladins, or multiclassed F/D, F/C, F/M.

* Mages are reliant on scrolls and scrolls are fewer than in BG, sometimes you might have open spell levels but no scrolls to fill them with if you level to fast by increasing difficulty and EXP gains and/or playing with a small party.

* Sorcerers are superior to mages for this reason; no scrolls needed and gains immediate access to their spells each level. The game wasn't designed for sorcerers though.

* There are some minor things, like dialogue, that rely on class, ie Druid, Bard, Paladin IIRC, but it's not necessary.

* Bards get cool songs compared to BG.

* Rogue skills are secondary in a hack'n slash as IWD, though scouting can sometimes be benefical

* Druids get cool skills compared to BG

* Crushing damage is usually a good choice, but there are potential drops of great longswords with APR etc.

* I tend to find great crossbows, so having 2 pips on crowssbows on at least on fighter to open the battle with that (or too shoot at webbed enemies) is good. One character should have longbows for Sseth.

* There are a lot less hard mage battles in IWD, so your team should be more prepared for pure straight up damage output and AC for sustained dungeon crawling with less rest-spamming (in general, I mean). A single web with ranged weapons on switch wins many battles without much fuzz.

So with this said;

* Two fighter types; Dwarf F/C is a good one, dwarven defender is good as well, berzerkers are never wrong, paladin UD is good since there are quite alot of undeads.

* One ranged character to pew-pew at enemies and you have a guaranteed drop of a great longbow (Sseth) quite early mid into the game, suitable for a F/T or a ranger archer.

* Multiclass or dualclass your thief of choice. The only other rogue option I could recommend is a bountyhunter if you want to prep fights with some traps and lure enemies into them. I don't really bother though myself.

* A bard because bards are cool and their songs are great. I've even played with only a bard and no mage which is doable. A bard and a sorc is all the arcane firepower you need and then some.

* A sorc, because they are 'better' than mages, but mages are still great.

* A druid because of their cool spells and because druids overall are cool. I'd argue for avenger if singleclassed for their Web spell. This one could also be a F/D instead.

So with this setup you choose with either having the F/T as one of your warrior types, switching armor from plate to naked for thieving duties and keep the archer OR you go with one warrior type, one F/C and one F/T and skip the archer OR you go with a F/D, F/C and F/T, making the first two melee and the latter one ranged and skip the archer. 

I think I confused myself with this, haha.. but anyways, maybe you got something out of it. The point is to try and have two main tanks, one ranged, one multi/dual thief, and still have slots open for a arcane user, one support arcane and a diviner or two. With higher diff and increased EXP, I tend to favor multiclassed characters from an optimization point of view. The game isn't that challenging though and many fights can be cheesed with some kiting etc.

Personally, I like going singleclass in IWD when not optimizing since it seems more 'old school', and kitless even. Fighter (tank), Cleric (tank/buff), Druid (sling/buff/summons), Thief (ranged), Mage(arcane) and Bard (songs, support arcane), but that's not optimized of course (especially the thief.. I rarely end up actually using a single classed thief as it seems as such a waste on a slot, hehe).

sarevok57

Mrpenfold666 said:

Hey guys, I mainly bought icewind dale purely to support beamdog, but I thought I may aswell beat it and noticed you have to make an entire party of 6. can anyone recomend a decent starting party? 

I was thinking druid, paladin, mage, cleric, cleric, rogue any thoughts on what i might face?

you don't actually have to make your own party, you can just use the party that beamdog made for you, which will be enough to get through the entire game, infact it's probably better that you do if you never played the game before because you do not know what to optimize where to your play style

so have a play through with the already premade party, and then if you decide to play the game again after you beat it, then you will know what you want for your next play through

DreadKhan

I strongly recomend either using either a sorcerer or F/I for your mage, consider running both. Arcane scrolls are few and far between, and are almost always a bit low level or frankly a filler spell. Its not a good time to run a single class wizard imho, but a F/I and sorcerer gives lots of arcane spells while suffering less from the scroll shortage. 

I don't recomend taking ANY risks when scribing any halfway decent spell, make sure you have guaranteed success one way or another.

For your rogue needs, I'd use a dual classed thief, and dual out after you've got enough trap finding and lock picking. That said, a Bountyhunter isn't a bad choice, and will benefit from higher level, so they are decent for a single class choice. If you push things, I'm pretty sure a Swashbuckler 5 can pretty much handle all your actual thieving needs, and be a slightly better warrior in some ways if dualed to warrior.

Clerics and Druids both have good spells, but try to have your damage dealing warriors the same alignment as your cleric, as there is a nice buff that cares about alignment iirc. Then again, there is a fair bit of aligned equipment, so unless you like being unpleasantly surprised (ie a Good fighter GMing in short swords is a bad plan imho), do some cursory research. Most of the aligned gear isn't gamebreaking, but it can be pretty nice.

Also, in favour of multiclassed fighters, paladins, rangers, etc, you never quite know what you'll get for many drops, so diverse proficiencies are a big asset. It can allow you to use a great weapon early on, and upgrade to something completely different.

Final point, cleric weapons are actually pretty great most playthroughs, so F/C builds are usually a good choice. I've never lacked decent morningstars/flails.

jsaving

Arcane scroll availability is a real issue in IWD, for sure.  It actually isn't especially uncommon to level up as a mage and then find that, oops, I don't have any spells for that level yet so I'll have to leave the slots blank for the time being.  I can't remember that ever happening in BG/BG2 and it is a great argument for putting a sorcerer (or even two sorcerers) in the party.

Given the huge number of enemies in the game that are immune to slash/pierce damage (and backstab), singleclass thieves make even less sense in IWD than they did in BG/BG2.  I'd suggest FMT for that slot as there are some nice synergies there, though FT can work as well if you wanted to go with a kensai/thief or berserker/thief dual. 

As to your melee characters, the leading guide recommends they all be FMCs.  I wouldn't go that far personally as it makes for a boring party but FCs, FDs, and RCs are almost always going to be better choices than a singleclass warrior.  You may be tempted to go with an inquisitor given how useful they were in BG2, but you don't need one here because mage battles rarely happen, and even when they do you rarely need dispel magic to win them. 

sarevok57

one thief type the works real well with IWD is a swashbuckler 10/fighter 11+

it seems that the most of the worry some traps and locks and what not are all within that first 160 000 XP of that thief, and then after that, traps and locks kind of start going the way of the dodo, so this is perfect time to dual over

for me, usually i hit the 161 000 xp mark when i finish off dragon's eye, then dual over to fighter, and then the time i hit the frost giant caves is when my fighter finally out levels my thief, and with this combo i go with archery style and damn is it effective, or even better yet, throwing axe style for that +2 throwing axe that never runs out of ammo, mmm mmm that with a nice STR score and you will do some serious damage from the back line, and best yet, you all the thieving you need and not a point more and now when you gain levels, you actually gain levels in a class that can utilize them win/win

Aerich

I do like a multiclass F/T. Gnomes can wear a great helmet and have exceptional strength, halflings can have 19 Dex for awesome archery and wear the helm as well.

Kenji

I'd say don't worry about beating the game. But rather, enjoy the process of learning and making the characters. See the atmosphere and how immersive the music will meld you with the icy scenery of the Spine of the World.

Savor those moments, too. Because Icewind Dale, as much as I love it, is very linear. Nothing is as sweet as that first time exploring everything and listening to the music.

Iamdorf

You have already received good advice. I will second having a bard. Once you get War Chant of the Sith, you don't have to rest nearly as much. There are tons of longswords in this game but there is also a lot of undead. I have found fighter clerics to be more effective fighters but you don't get to pick the deity that way and there is some unique dialog for Clerics of Tempus. Anyway have fun with it Oh bear in mind that there is no unique dialog or items for Shaman.