Icewind Dale 3-Man

[Murk]

I solo'd as fighter/wizard/thief (fun fact, could still equip shield, bwahaha) and as fighter dual'd to wizard, and as fighter dual'd to cleric. All are doable (those are three solo runs btw, not a party of those three, but that would work just as well).

I would suggest never having a pure thief or pure fighter and to either multi or dual class them (I prefer dual class over multi, but whatever works for you).

I would, I believe, do something like Fighter dual to cleric, fighter dual to wiz, and fighter/thief/wiz multi or thief dual to wiz. For the priest class you could also do ranger -> druid, paladin -> cleric, or fighter -> druid, or ranger -> cleric of course depending on what you want.

If I'm not mistaken IWD 1 has some weird non-bug where if you equip a one handed sword and no shield you get an extra attack per round to simulate some awkward "dual wielding" thing for rangers. Or was it on anyone? If so, having ranger -> cleric or druid may be a nice option to get an extra melee attack (or just use a archery, for which there are plenty of "extra attack" bows/crossbows and haste-abuse).

Ranged combat is pretty abusable in IWD because of the natural choke points in many of the dungeons -- if you can build a brick-house tank with proper buffs and have him field damage while your archer-casters rain fire, arrow, and death upon them then you'll be set.

I was replaying IWD 2 as a monk/druid solo but I think I may just switch to doing another run of IWD 1. Ahoo hoo hoooo.

 

[sea]

I would suggest never having a pure thief or pure fighter and to either multi or dual class them (I prefer dual class over multi, but whatever works for you).

I'm pretty sure you can max out lockpicking and trap detection pretty quickly, so like the other Infinity Engine games there is never a good reason to level a thief past about 7-8. Plus you find almost enough Master Thievery potions to make maxing out a thief redundant anyway.

 

[Murk]

I concur, and it is why I prefer dual over multi. But, in some cases, I like the high level abilities of thieves in BG 2 (use anything) and perhaps to max out the two stealth abilities.

BG 2 did make potions of master thievery too easy to come by and thus pickpocketing from stores very simple (infinite gold from Mevar's guildhall shop with mace +1s).

 

[laclongquan]

IWD2 has plenty of traps, and fond of teleporting troops in behind your line of defense. 3-man squad is asking for being surrounded, but since you cant find more, it cant be helped.

The notion of having a few level of fighters is worthwhile because the fucking impossible difficulty (outside of HoF mode) will hit you like truckers hit hitchhikers. You need the few HP difference to survive until the warriors kill enemies. Cleric is nice because they can wear heavy armors, but wizard is soooo fucked with their paperthin "armor". Also advise both your casters invest in summons to make meatshields for your ass.

As said above, there's plenty of traps. A few levels of thief to detect them is fine, but a good wizard is nearly as good in that, provided you remember to turn on the detecting. IWD2 is very stingy with Master thievery potions in my impossible game, very stingy.

Thief as archer kill their fair share with good bows. Dont try the backstab or they will analrape you since your damage is rarely killed worthwhile targets in one shot.

 

[Gregz]

But I wanted IWD 3...man, title trolled

 

[Vadeross]

I just did this a few weeks ago and made f/m, f/d, and F/t. The druid was very effective with the combination of 1st level entangle combined with level 3/4 area control spells spike growth and spike stones. There is a free action ring and a pair of boots with with entangle immunity so two of your characters can be immune to the entangle. The F/t gets evasion so if they have to cross the spike growth they can evade the damage. I used SCS with a three high powered characters (3 18s) and the "cheat" from the tweak pack that let the F/D use metal armor like Jahiera in BG so I wouldn't have to wait until I found the super cool druid armor in the game.

 

[DemonKing]

I always liked playing these games with the full 6 characters - you get to enjoy almost all the cool equipment you pick up and the interaction of all the different character powers/abilities.

Also, I imagine with only 2-3 characters inventories would fill up pretty quickly meaning you had to leave a ton of stuff behind.

 

[laclongquan]

Dont forget the increased number of enemies. 30% more, If I remember it correctly.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Since the highest difficulty level in IWD gives 2x experience I find that playing with 6 characters on Impossible level the best solution. IWD has a quite boring char development/party setup possibilities, so I think playing it with few characters can unfortunately multiply that impression. Also mind the wizard overleveling - if you play with few characters and/or high difficulty level the slots for better spells are often wasted for long periods of time.

Oh, and ranged warrior is actually one of the better characters for impossible difficulty.

 

[ghostdog]

In IWD for a three character party on insane I'd go with :

Fighter/thief multiclass
Ranger lvl3 dual to cleric
FIghter lvl3 (or better 6 if you are patient) dual to wizard

Due to increased XP maybe more multiclassing is viable, but dualclassing is probably better and less frustrating. Fighter/Thief is always great for multiclassing.

 

[laclongquan]

FT is a great archer.
But why on earth R3-C? You get dualwield for leather armor, I presume? Paper tiger, I am afraid. And a waste of Cleric feats in armors as well as failure rate in divine casting.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

He's talking about the first IWD. And let me repeat - having an overleveled (when compared to playing 6char party on normal) wizard in the first game makes no sense - he will be wasted.

 

[Captain Shrek]

FT is a great archer.
But why on earth R3-C? You get dualwield for leather armor, I presume? Paper tiger, I am afraid. And a waste of Cleric feats in armors as well as failure rate in divine casting.

THat is correct.

Also Overleveled wizards:

I did play it a long time back. But doesn't "over leveling" them give them the super important DC that is necessary for the impossible difficulty?

 

[laclongquan]

And talking about wasted potentiality of overleveled wizard, IWD2 dont have that severe problem. at the ice temple beyond the ice maze, there's a battle arena that award prizes upon winning. Each tier has a chance to spawn a wizard scroll of that level number. Since there's 9 tiers, you have your chance to harvest high level spells quite early. You may have one short period of wasted potentiality from level5-7, but at ice temple it all goes away.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

The only thing I remember is that when I was playing 6char on impossible my pure wizard had these extra levels simply wasted and that changed only when I decided to start doing the expansion because there you get access to high level spells in shops.

 

[Captain Shrek]

The only thing I remember is that when I was playing 6char on impossible my pure wizard had these extra levels simply wasted and that changed only when I decided to start doing the expansion because there you get access to high level spells in shops.

Damn it. I have now GOT to retry IWD.

 

[Johannes]

I would guess that the most interesting and practical three-person IWD party would be:

Fighter/Druid
Ranger/Cleric
Fighter/Mage/Thief

The F/M/T will be a bit of a slow starter but you really don't want to do without a thief, too many nasty traps. Fighter druids get some spells get some nice magic and can wear any damn armor they like due to a poorly worded PHB and a ranger cleric can get an extra hammering in per round by having a one-handed weapon in each of his first two weapon slots and not carrying a shield.

This is a good party. Everyone has both something to cast and can manage even when out of spells. And it's powerful to boot.

 

[DalekFlay]

I went with 4 because I'm a pussy.

 

[Father Walker]

Why don't you go with 6? The more, the merrier.

 

[Mastermind]

I went with 4 too, mostly because 6 levels excruciatingly slow (actually 4 does too, mostly thanks to multiclassing) and I'm too popamole to go with max difficulty on first playthrough (well, sort of second, i played it without finishing ages ago).

 

[DalekFlay]

Man you guys weren't kidding about large amounts of enemies... glad I went with 4 characters. Walk in to crypt, 15 skeletons on my ass immediately.

 

[Raygun_elf]

Is there some way to make the UI bigger on higher resolutions (with the patch)? The environments look grand ind 1920x1080 but I have to lean forward right up to the monitor every-time I pause for commands/spells, so tiny.

 

[Minttunator]

I'm currently running with a full 6-character party - the XP gain is fast enough on Insane, I think. If I had to cut it down to 3, I guess I'd take:

• Fighter/Thief gnome
• Fighter(7)/Druid dual
• Fighter(7)/Mage dual

Would probably be viable, but I'd really want to add at least another fighter-type character to this (such as a Paladin or a pure Fighter).

 

[Captain Shrek]

Hey Guys.

Did IWD have automatic HP regen for CON 20+??? Never hit anything above 18 so never found it out. Is it true?

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

This is the party I've played last time, on insane (so twice the XP) with 5 PCs, the Paladin and the fighter/druid maxed out anyway, so taking only 3 characters into the party seems like a waste.

- Paladin; for the Paladin-only sword, however the longsword of action+4 (?) with AC and Dex bonus plus another full atack is better, so take a dual class fighter 12 or 13/cleric for more power instead. However, as soon as he exceeds lvl 20 and gets access to 5th and 6th level spells (chaos shield, heal, righteous magic etc) he becomes a pretty serious threat. Has good saves.
- gnome fighter/cleric multiclass; for the helm of the steadfast defender and for healing early on you'll need a cleric otherwise you're going to have to rest for months or even years
- human fighter (12)/druid, good character, who reactivates quickly as soon as you dualed because druids gain levels faster than even thieves I think
- fighter (13)/ mage; it's a fighter/mage, he kicks ass obv
- elf fighter/thief/mage multi; surprisingly great character, with excellent ranged THAC0, enable 3e sneak dice in the settings, get her a bow with +attacks eventually (like the bow from the werewolf ranger dude), she dishes out obscene amounts of damage, can do all the thieving stuff, can lay down that sleep or web early on, has good defense with mirror image, stone skin, improved invis and can serve as a serious arcane backup if necessary. Of course she misses out on the "awesomeness" of summon monster 9 and pw kill