Thought Experiment: Stealth-Based Team for Icewind Dale
Tad_Has_A_Cold_Olive
Member Posts: 183
So, a thought has crossed my mind recently. In a usual balanced party for IWD, there's probably only 1 or 2 PCs who are really specialized for using stealth. What if we had a party where every member could ghost their way around enemies to find the perfect place to ambush them?
To create this party, we first need to create characters who can continually hide themselves from the enemy. There are 3 such classes:
- Thief: The most obvious choice. If one is going for a pure thief in this party, they might as well play an Assassin to maximize use of backstab. Or possibly a Shadowdancer, to hide wherever and whenever you want to.
- Ranger: Rangers automatically get thief points put into hide and move silently. One probably wants to play as a Stalker for this theme, because you'll never be wearing heavy armor and backstab is a good fit.
- Monk: Monks can put thief points into the stealth skills too. They can't backstab, but starting a fight with a stunning blow or a quivering palm could be quite helpful.
The following class combos could also be useful, multi-class or dual-class:
- Fighter/Thief: A classic, to be sure. Thief backstab paired with Fighter THAC0. Just be sure that if you dual-class, you put enough points in the stealth skills to reliably hide.
- Thief/Mage: Mage spells can be quite potent if they're cast in the right spot. With a stealth team, you'll know just where to cast your stinking cloud or web spells. Plus invisibility in the middle of a fight can mean another backstab.
- Fighter/Mage/Thief: They develop slowly, but if you want a mage who can stealth and has a decent sword-arm, this is your guy.
- Thief/Cleric: Cleric spells to repair damage can be quite helpful, since your stealth team is going to be favoring lighter armors and therefore won't have super big AC. Limited to using clubs and quarterstaffs to backstab, which can kinda suck.
- Ranger/Cleric: Probably a little better than thief cleric, considering you only really need the stealth skills, you get some druid spells, and you have better HP for when things go wrong. Again, though, if you're dual-classing with a Stalker, you'll want to use either quarterstaffs or clubs (probably clubs, considering the free dual-wielding pips).
There's one final component, if you like:
- Bard: Yeah, they're off-theme because they can't stealth outside of using invisibility spells. But what they can do is Sing the Song of Tymora, which gives a considerable boost to the rest of the party's stealth skills. They can also provide some mage buffs to the party, which can definitely be useful.
Anyway, those are all the components of a stealth party that I can think of. Which do you think would make the best stealth party? Is having an entire party that can hide overspecializing in one particular thing? I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject.
To create this party, we first need to create characters who can continually hide themselves from the enemy. There are 3 such classes:
- Thief: The most obvious choice. If one is going for a pure thief in this party, they might as well play an Assassin to maximize use of backstab. Or possibly a Shadowdancer, to hide wherever and whenever you want to.
- Ranger: Rangers automatically get thief points put into hide and move silently. One probably wants to play as a Stalker for this theme, because you'll never be wearing heavy armor and backstab is a good fit.
- Monk: Monks can put thief points into the stealth skills too. They can't backstab, but starting a fight with a stunning blow or a quivering palm could be quite helpful.
The following class combos could also be useful, multi-class or dual-class:
- Fighter/Thief: A classic, to be sure. Thief backstab paired with Fighter THAC0. Just be sure that if you dual-class, you put enough points in the stealth skills to reliably hide.
- Thief/Mage: Mage spells can be quite potent if they're cast in the right spot. With a stealth team, you'll know just where to cast your stinking cloud or web spells. Plus invisibility in the middle of a fight can mean another backstab.
- Fighter/Mage/Thief: They develop slowly, but if you want a mage who can stealth and has a decent sword-arm, this is your guy.
- Thief/Cleric: Cleric spells to repair damage can be quite helpful, since your stealth team is going to be favoring lighter armors and therefore won't have super big AC. Limited to using clubs and quarterstaffs to backstab, which can kinda suck.
- Ranger/Cleric: Probably a little better than thief cleric, considering you only really need the stealth skills, you get some druid spells, and you have better HP for when things go wrong. Again, though, if you're dual-classing with a Stalker, you'll want to use either quarterstaffs or clubs (probably clubs, considering the free dual-wielding pips).
There's one final component, if you like:
- Bard: Yeah, they're off-theme because they can't stealth outside of using invisibility spells. But what they can do is Sing the Song of Tymora, which gives a considerable boost to the rest of the party's stealth skills. They can also provide some mage buffs to the party, which can definitely be useful.
Anyway, those are all the components of a stealth party that I can think of. Which do you think would make the best stealth party? Is having an entire party that can hide overspecializing in one particular thing? I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject.
Post edited by Tad_Has_A_Cold_Olive on
2
Comments
1.) Ranger/Cleric multi: almost a no-brainer here. Access to (nearly*) all of the divine spells, fairly tanky, plus stealth.
(*Depending on your choice of game settings)
2.) Shadowdancer --> Mage: Primary arcane caster. Could go with swashbuckler instead, but HIPS meshes with this party concept too well to pass up.
3.) Fighter/Thief multi: reliable backstabs, also responsible for locks/traps. Alternatively, you could go with F/M/T if you want someone able to cast arcane spells before your shadowdancer duals, but the slow leveling means you'll be limited in the progression of your thief skills.
4.) With the critical party roles covered in the first three slots, anything (or nothing) goes here. I'd probably choose either a stalker or monk (probably sun soul). I'm a big fan of the stalker kit, and it would work well in this group to take out high-priority enemy targets while having decent survivability. Alternatively, with all of the undead in the game, a stealthy sun soul monk could allow you to get in position to hit large concentrations of them with sunsoul ray/beam at the start of combat. Poor AC and low-ish HP could make it difficult to survive the early levels, though.
Stalker
Dark Moon Monk
Gnome Cleric/Thief
Elf Mage/Thief
Assassin
Makes 5 which I think is a big enough party for this concept. Multis rather than duals keeps the focus on the stealth concept and builds the whole party into backstabbers.
Focusing everyone's points into stealth for quite a while will be important else there's not much point even though it will gimp you a little in some ways.
If, during battle, their target goes invisible, they'll tend to follow it until they find a new target.