How would you do a full party?
Sloty1984
Member Posts: 164
Which classes and races do ypu take along your journey through the icewind dale?
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That said, I tend to be human-centric. At least mostly human. 4 or 5 members of the team human, then something else (usually a multi-class character).
I also lean towards melee heavy parties. Most often three front-rank warrior types. I recently did a run with three Paladins. But of course single class fighters do perfectly well here too. It’s partly the nature of this game, you won’t need to do any of the mage duels. No doubt, a mage is still a good idea for AoE and crowd control, as is a cleric for healing and a thief for dealing with traps and locks. But the signature part of IWD is LARGE groups of foes. Battles with masses of undead, lizard men, giants, whatever. You’ll want a strong melee front to keep your casters free to do their thing, or even just to lead the way and grind away at your foes. It’s all a very different vibe than BG.
1. Paladin
2. Ranger
3. Bard
4. Druid / fighter
5. Wild mage dualclassed to cleric
6. Fighter - thief
2. Female elf sorc (dragon disciple)
3. Male human sorc (dragon disciple)
4. Female human sorc (dragon disciple)
5. Male elf Mage/thief
6. Another sorc (dragon disciple), any race.
Sorcerer Elf with slings
F/M/T Elf with crossbow, longsword and dual wield
Archer Elf with longbow
Fighter/druid Halfelf with sling, scimitar, club and dual wield
Berserker(7) to Cleric Human with Flails, Slings, maces and dual wield
Dwarven Defender Dwarf with Axes, Hammers and dual wield
Can this party be strong and beat the game on normal and a second time on heart of fury?
What do you think?
If not which characters would you replace?
Dont like sorcers(none special advantages), so would exchange for bard (great songs).
Berserker should reach lvl 13. Gaining exp in icwind is much easier then other ie games.
Not really? Sorcerers are the strongest class. They don't rely on learning spells from scrolls to cast them, which is key in IWD because there are few scrolls... and they can cover all needs (they can become warriors with the tenser transformation, especially at high levels with the Black Blade of Disaster and a good dagger in their off-hand) except for thief skills.
If you are dragon disciple you have better HP's and 100% fire res pretty soon, so all you have to do tru the game is spam firestorms and other fire spells. Fire elementals are great to tank mobs since they are inmune to fire. For the few moments when fire is useless you can always use other elements, magical damage, or go Tenser and fight. When a monster is magic resistant, you can use Lower Magic Resistance.
Why should I wait till level 13 to dual my Berserker?
Locks can be bashed mostly. Traps can be disarmed by pet - cat. Bard song is rising thieving skills. If thief really needed, then better than berserker/cleric is paladin. Are effective, yes. But need to sleep much to often, so full team of only sorcers is boring.
The one essential class for combat, strategy optimization is a single-class cleric. Unlike the BG games, healing and resurrecting can be a little more expensive, especially healing in the early game. At least, relatively speaking. Their offensive abilities are solid as well. You don't have to take this class but it ends up being extremely helpful. Especially for new players or players doing some kind of challenge run.
I'd recommend against any single-class mage. The spell scroll distribution just doesn't quite work with how single-class mages level up. This ends up meaning you'll have a sub-optimal mage during certain stretches of the game. I would also recommend against any single-class thief, for the same reasons as the BG games. Thus, I also think a good member of the party is a thief/mage.
Other than that, I'd say classes like barbarian, druid and bard get a little special love in terms of interactions and gear. But they are not essential.
I know lots of people love making overpowered parties with sorcerers and BG2 kits like undead hunter. Nothing wrong with this. However, I do think you can break the game's intended challenge by doing this. I personally suggest people stick with the classes that were in the original IWD for the most fun, challenge embracing type run. Just a suggestion, but to each their own.
you can beat the normal game with any team ( hell even just 6 normal fighters you could beat the game )
so after you beat the game with this team and then try HoF mode, i would definitely say yes
in fact, i have a save game right now where i started HoF mode at level 1 with the "default beamdog team" and im in the goblin valley right now, once i start getting those skellies, this difficulty is over
Single class cleric is very useful here (they are both more powerful offensively than they are often given credit for, and the game is punishing in a way that makes a capable healer extremely helpful)
As for the special/newer classes and kits, some fit in and work better than others. As you note, barbarian can fit very nicely. I think the Undead Hunter is appropriate, the last one I ran actually had no strength bonus, so she was dynamite against Undead (about half the fights) and mediocre otherwise.
But Sorcerer is hopelessly broken. It truly has no place in any 2E based game. It was added as a publicity gimmick (3E was just coming out when ToB came out). But because of how careful the balance is in IWD, and how spell availability is metered by scroll availability in the game, sorcerers just smash the balance all to pieces. Just say no… To Sorcerers. Do not use, unless you want to play an overpowered cheat. Obviously, I have a strong personal bias there. Many years spent DMing, and I would just never allow this class in a PnP game.
But yeah, sleeping *in a dungeon*, in theory should only be done in extremis. Although even as I say that, I have many fond memories of adventuring teams trying to figure out how to secure a location and set a night watch. These are all things the IE games abstract to an extreme. I dislike that, apart from the fact you're probably trying to sleep because your party is all banged up or you're all out of spells; your team otherwise comes out of an interupted camp fully alert and ready to go.
Typically I always tell the players to plan on an expedition camp being 12 hours every 12 hours. So they can have 1/3 of the team "on watch", fully ready for any encounter. The rest of the team is "sleeping" and will need 1d6 rounds to get up and ready (+1 round for each point of armor class they ready, nobody gets to sleep in plate armor!)
Wow, some very fun memories of a team getting disturbed in the middle of the night... ("During the night" always led to dramatic moments!)
Obviously the IE does nothing comparable. What a shame, this is something a computer game should be able to represent.
The problem with the originals wasn't just the very limited number of scrolls; the problem was the lack of spells to cast, at all 🙃. Even with the expansion, a wizard could only learn and cast two level 9 spells: Power Word Kill and Summon Monsters (7). The same was true at lower levels—very little spell variety. In the Enhanced Edition, this changes, and all spells are added. That's where the big difference in power lies, not so much in whether they're sorcerers or wizards. I prefer to go sorcerer because it makes my life easy, tbh.
im playing a game right now with no new races or kits, to give it a more, nostalgia feel
In my case, the original game's "hostility" towards arcane magic always made me not play it much, since I basically play with magic, and its limited scope felt restrictive and boring.
Another reason I prefer sorcerers is that writing scrolls and memorizing them is so tedious to me 🙃
Will play Heart of Fury?
But I do love the range of kits and reimagined game. Except Sorcerers. Eh, no interest in a shaman either. But I love bards, clerics, all sorts of warriors. And the occasioanl Fireball from my artillery (er, mage.).
Well I play tabletop role-playing games with the ad&d 2E, I like it... but in the original IWD game there was a scarcity of spells for mages, I mean, less is more but not always 😅.
Dwarven Defender dual wielding axes
Undead Hunter dual wielding longswords (which ranged weapon would you give him?)
Ranger/Cleric dual wielding Flails/maces, sling for ranged
Fighter/Thief (dont know which weapons to use, any suggestions?)
Skald Crossbows
Sorcerer Slings
Is this party good?
And is one divine caster enough?
And then *act* evil (read selfish) in your playthrough.
nah, this one is just normal insane with double damage on, and extra XP off, i find HoF mode a bit boring
the only level 1 HoF mode team i have going right now is the default beamdog team to see if they can do it, and right now im in the vale of shadows and its still tedious even being at level 6, the AC boost the enemies get from HoF is absolutely insane because i think IWD HoF mode is broken from what i can tell enemies get
- no bonus to damage because i have seen then deal 2 damage with attacks many times
- either +5 or +10 to hit, because they hit A LOT, even with only +5 to hit, they wouldn't be hitting me as much as they should, although no 100% comfirmed
- the AC, holy hell, is thier AC bonus HUGE, it has to be at least a 10 point bonus, the berserker had to have his thac0 around 10 before he could start hitting dudes with an 18, hell even at level 6 most of the team still need 20s to hit some fodder guys
- saves, attacks and HP are probably what they should be
the best ranged weapon in the game is the throwing axe +2 because a) it has "infinite ammo" b) it is a +2 magical weapon so it hurts anything ( except the last boss in IWD, but enchant weapon can fix that ) and c) the damage increases with your STR, so if you can hit 19 STR you can deal some serious damage
and best of all there is another one in HoW in the ice cavern with the dwarf dude, he sells one as well, so you can have 2 chars with the throwing axe +2
but until then, it is entirely up to you, there are TONS of bows and crossbows to be found ( and in the later game of IWD some of those crossbows come with extra APR ) and there is lots of arrows, and bolts, to go around so you cant go wrong with either one, although bows can actually come with +3 arrows if you find them ( arrow of confusion and arrows of piercing ) no such luck with the crossbow or sling, although some darts you can find +3 or +4 versions of, but the probably with darts in my opinion in that they just deplete their stacks to quick, and when you find magical ones you can't duplicate them in most stores
I would go mage/thief or even fighter/mage/thief if you farm some xp. Sorcerer just be careful to select the right useful spells...
That's why I ignore melee and regular combat with weapons most of the time when I go HoF and use a team of 'bombardier sorcs', all magic around 🙃
If monsters are doing so little damage, go to game options because maybe the extra damage thing is disabled.
nope, its "enabled" , turning HoF mode on and off does not affect it from being on or off