Advice on making a 4 man party: I am bad with Kits.
Sillyfish
Member Posts: 17
Hello!
Been many a year since I had a bash at IWD and I have decided it's high time to go through it and then through the sequel. As such, my first hurdle is to decide upon group composition!
My standard group is usually 6, but for this playthrough I would like to challenge myself and use only four party members. This should make them better equipped as there is more loot to go around, level up more and so forth.
I have thought about it and read some threads and I think what I would like is something like this:
1 Melee fighter type dude.
A sneaksy thief person that also casts spells for maximum pain. I like blowing things up.
A support character that can heal, but also dish out some buffs and pain to the enemy.
Fourth I am undecided. Perhaps another melee that brings something else to the party, or perhaps a long range character.
I am told that it is good if each class has some range ability. I have no issue with that and think it's a great idea.
Now, I do not know much about kits, but I think I'd like to partake! I hear people talking about all these special classes and they all sound interesting, I just don't know what works well with one another.
I would also like to mention that I don't like gnomes. Like, at all. I guess I could stomach a dwarf if I had to, but only one. I like humans and normal sized things. Elves are fine, whatever. Just not so good on the short races. Or orcs. They're ugly.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Even if it's "Play three orcs and a gnome!" I'd like to hear from you if you're serious.
Been many a year since I had a bash at IWD and I have decided it's high time to go through it and then through the sequel. As such, my first hurdle is to decide upon group composition!
My standard group is usually 6, but for this playthrough I would like to challenge myself and use only four party members. This should make them better equipped as there is more loot to go around, level up more and so forth.
I have thought about it and read some threads and I think what I would like is something like this:
1 Melee fighter type dude.
A sneaksy thief person that also casts spells for maximum pain. I like blowing things up.
A support character that can heal, but also dish out some buffs and pain to the enemy.
Fourth I am undecided. Perhaps another melee that brings something else to the party, or perhaps a long range character.
I am told that it is good if each class has some range ability. I have no issue with that and think it's a great idea.
Now, I do not know much about kits, but I think I'd like to partake! I hear people talking about all these special classes and they all sound interesting, I just don't know what works well with one another.
I would also like to mention that I don't like gnomes. Like, at all. I guess I could stomach a dwarf if I had to, but only one. I like humans and normal sized things. Elves are fine, whatever. Just not so good on the short races. Or orcs. They're ugly.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Even if it's "Play three orcs and a gnome!" I'd like to hear from you if you're serious.
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Comments
In a perfect world, if there was any unique loot that particular classes can really benefit from, I'd love to take advantage of that. Like, I think I always end up using Crom Feyr and Flail of Ages in BG2 for example.
dude 1: cavalier or undead hunter
paladins are pretty good in IWD, especially the above kits, where all paladins are immune to disease but the cavalier is immune to poison and the undead hunter is immune to hold and gets + to hit/ to damage on undead ( which there are A LOT of in IWD ) plus paladins add a little flavor over boring fighters
dude 2: theif/mage or fighter/mage/thief
since you will only have 4 team mates multiclassing wont be all that terrible since you will be gaining more XP per character, elf works really well in this scenario because they get a pretty good stealth bonus and 19 dex, plus if you want to use a bow, elf is also a great choice, although if you want to use longbows, then fighter/mage/thief would be better, also in IWD crossbows are much stronger than their bg counterparts, so even if you want to go the crossbow route, that could still work
dude 3: fighter/cleric ( or maybe even cleric/ranger)
this could be a great character that you can use to buff/heal your team and once that is done, go thick into melee afterwards ( or perhaps even a sling if you prefer) crushing weapons are great in IWD because of all the undead baddies, and if you luck out, you might find the +4 defending morning star ( which is just a brutally wicked item) dward would probably be the best option for fighter/cleric because you will have AWESOME saving throws and some good HP, but with cleric/ranger you can only do that combo if you are a half-elf ( or be a human and dual class ranger 7 to cleric afterwards, which is probably best)
dude 4: fighter/druid or bard ( perhaps even skald )
druids in IWD are very good casters, they have lots of offensive spells that are quite nice, so while you have the fighter/cleric ( or cleric/ranger) dealing with the defensive stuff, you can have your fighter/druid deal with the offensive stuff, plus I like the fighter/druid combo because it gives you some great melee capability if you so desire, or if you are more into the summoning sort of thing, then the totemic druid in my opinion could also be a great choice
but if that's too much divine spell casting, then you could always go with a plain bard or a skald, they require a bit more micro management, but if they are micro managed properly, they can be awesome, the skald gives great bonuses to your melee guys while singing their bard songs, or you can go with the normal bard and use their improved songs at higher levels to protect your melee chums ( they even get a song of regeneration, top notch stuff) plus another thing that is great about bards is their fast levels up, and since they grow up levels quick you can give them spells that require duration based on level so then your durations will be longer
but in the end, what I would suggest at the least is that you have at least one guy that goes toe to toe with baddies, a thief of some sort, a divine caster of some sort, and an arcane caster of some sort, or at least some combination in between, that will make your IWD experience less of a hassle
Last question: Is there any specific equipment that I should look out for? Like, if I make a Fighter in BG2, he's gonna be good with Warhammers and Flails due to Flail of Ages and Crom Feyr.
Can you make any suggestions for weapon proficiencies for my Paladin? Sounds like I want to go Crossbows for my Mage/thief sinec oyu said they're better than bows.
Druid sounds great. I dunno if I'll go Fighter/druid yet, but lets assume the druid would actually hit stuff once he's tossed out some spells. Any weapon suggestions for that character?
Ranger/Cleric sounds REALLY interesting. How would I equip this one?
I'm sorry for such specific questioning, I'd just hate to spec into a weapon line and then find a really cool item down the line that could have been perfect for one of my characters.
but for a paladin, I would probably go with long swords, flails and axes, paladins can only have 2 proficiencies in any weapon, so its not like you have to build your character around one weapon for the whole game, so I would probably start with 2 points in long sword and 2 points in flail and then start building on the axe afterwards
depending on how you want to play your druid, do you want a back row spell chucker? or someone who goes in melee? usually for a druid I would go with sling, although a fighter/druid could be good in melee ( if you can get some good strength mind you) but personally I don't play druids much if at all in IWD so I don't really know what would be best for a melee weapon, there are a few scimitars through out the game which could be a good choice, because eventually you will find a +3 scimitar but its pretty late in the game so I don't know how long you want to wait for that one
cleric/ranger is pretty much in the same boat as paladin, where you can only have 2 proficiency points in a weapon and you can only use crushing weapons so not too hard to figure out how to use that one, I would probably start with 2 points in flails and 2 points in war hammers and then start building up maces ( I found good maces to be semi rare in IWD )
and remember, for a mage/thief if you go to use crossbows, you will only be able to use light ones ( although I believe there are a couple of light crossbows that give an extra attack per round, so I suppose in the end that's not too shabby) but if you ever want to use heavy crossbows, you will need some fighter in there somewhere
I think that works for me. I should have enough to go on for now.
Appreciate the advice friend. The reason I asked about specific weapons is because I thought there might be a bunch of named weapons throughout the game. Sounds like there's just a bunch of random generation though.
Setup is :
Undead Hunter Paladin (Tank, party leader and meatshield)
Mage/Thief (For the disarm/pickpocket stuff, throwing nukes and then standing back and shooting)
Cleric/Ranger (Support stuff and ranged attacking)
Druid (Whichever one is able to throw out spells then go whack things)
I am 95% certain I should multiclass an elf Mage/Thief. But I don't know about the Cleric/Ranger.
Can anyone suggest whether to multi or dual it and, if dual, what level combo to dual it as?
I plan on carrying this party over into IWD2 (if that's possible) but I don't really intend to do more than one playthrough of IWDEE, though I iwll do the expansion content. Hoping you'll chime in @sarevok57
and for multi class set up, an elf mage/thief and a half-elf cleric/ranger should be good to go, you could do some weird whacky dual class combo with those classes, but in retrospect there won't be much gain over their multi-class counterpart
now for a druid in melee, my suggestion would be make a half-elf fighter/druid, personally im not really a fan of druid shape shifts, I always find them to be a little lack luster, or, if you want to try something completely crazy, you could be a human fighter, that grows to level 7, then dual classes over to a druid ( this will give you some fighting ability for melee and true druid progression) plus this combo could work well since you already have a cleric, so the wait to level 7 will be a sinch, in fact, if you want to get real fancy, you could be a true neutral berserker and then dual over to druid just for the extra icing on the cake, the one thing to note about this however, is that if you want to be a fighter and dual over to druid, you need to be true neutral and have a minimum of 15 STR, 17 WIS and 17 CHA, so that could be a little tricky especially if you want to be a meleer because you are also going to want good DEX and CON, unless of coarse you don't mind your druid being as think as soup ( derp a derp doo) luckily in IWD you only need one character to have good INT for the very very few times you need it, so again the low INT will not be any what disadvantageous if you decide that route
Berserker --> Thief
Berserker --> Cleric
Berserker --> Druid
Here is an example racist, full kit party:
Human Paladin/Cavalier. Your "Tank" and melee guy. Cavaliers are strictly superior to Paladins in every way and have practically no downside(the missile weapon limitation can be easily circumvented with throwing daggers or axes)
Human Druid/Avenger. Your divine caster with few arcane spells. Avengers look like they have severe penalties, but in practice they don't really matter: STR is irrelevant for a pure Druid, you don't get any extra HP for CON over 16 anyway, and your "natural armor" limitation means you can still wear Ankheg Plate and Dragon Scales.
Human Thief/Swashbuckler. The importance of backstab decreases as the party size increases, and it's really best a tool for solo F/T or F/M/T - in other words, thieves that are supposed to end up in melee anyways. Don't put your Swashbuckler in melee, because they have absolutely no attacks per round; instead give them a shortbow, as the ThAC0/damage bonus they gain applies to it as well.
Human Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple. Dragon Disciple basically trades burst damage(spell slots) for uptime(does not become completely useless the moment their spells run out)
[Edit]Apparently I again misclicked on IWD:EE forums instead of BG:EE forums, and I wrote the above with BG in mind. Still, there's no reason why it shouldn't work in IWD as well. Well, except for the Avenger; I don't know if Ankheg Plate or Dragon Scales exist in IWD. You could swap him for a Totemic Druid(again strict improvement over regular Druid), Cleric/Lathander or Cleric/Talos.