Your Icewind Dale Party

[Voldecanter]

I am currently Playing Through the Great Game of Icewind Dale and I am currently wondering other player's parties .

My Own Party is :

Alicaster : Fighter 8/Mage 8

Brandz : Fighter 6/Mage/7/Cleric 7

Elara : Fighter 6/Mage 7/Cleric 7

Viacaria : Mage lvl 10

Ellar : Mage Lvl 10

Mordenkaith : Abjurer Lvl 10

I find this Party Very Effective , Ever seen about 30 magic Missiles hit a target at once ? Very Handy ! And my mages all get a fair amount of spells and I can distribute the spells that are useful that I want without relying on 1 spellcaster , and with enought armour and abjuration effects my Fighter/Mage is - 8 armour class and he is mainly used as an archer .

[Thiel]

I must admit that I've never really paid much attention whole character creation part of the games. I usually just goes with the traditional set-up:
Fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric, plus two bonus slots for those classes you never really get to play around with. I tend to ad a ranger since I find the wilderness lore skill to be fun but not all that use full. And no, I'm not letting any druid into my party before they get an animal companion.

[Philistine]

Personally, I never liked multi-class casters in AD&D CRPGs due to the way the XP tables are set up. They're okay at low- to mid-levels, but their pure-class contemporaries leave them farther and farther behind after about level 10. Dual-classing is a different beast entirely, though; it can make the early going slower, but in the end it costs only one caster level at most.

So my "typical" IWD party might be more like:
A) 1 Human Paladin
B) 1 Human Ranger-Cleric (dual-classed around 9)
C) 1 Human Fighter-Druid (likewise)
D) 1 Human Fighter-Wizard or Thief-Wizard (dual-classed around 7 if a Fighter, or 8 if a Thief)
E) 1 Human Cleric-Wizard (dual-classed once C gets its Fighter abilities back)
F) 1 Halfling Fighter/Thief (unless D starts as a Thief, in which case Human or Half-Elf Bard)

That gets me 3 healers, 2 mages, and all the thieving skills I need; and every party member can fight, as well.

[Moonshadow]

Human Ranger
Halfling Thief
Half-Elf Cleric/Mage
Human Paladin
Human Bard
Half-Elf Fighter/Mage

I'm considering changing it though.

[Ronsian]

I forgot most of the races, but I think it was almost all human because of the extra feats.

Human Ranger (bad idea, Rangers are really wimpy, go rogue/1 ranger, still wasn't bad as an archer)
Human Sorcerer (one of the main damage dealers)
Human Cleric: Battleguard of Tempus (I should have gone LG for the level of paladin so I could use the Uber sword)
Half-Orc Fighter 4/Barbarian (fighter for Weapon Specialization and feats)
Human Monk (just because they're fun to play, was never very powerful, I had about 30 stunning fists every day, but never used any of them)
Human Necromancer (went Necro for barred school of Illusion, went back and forth with being more powerful then sorcerer)

It was a pretty good party, going back I would get rid of the Monk, Ranger, and maybe change the Cleric to Lathander, for extra damage spells.

[Moonshadow]

You don't get feats in IWD. Thats IWD2 >_>

[Miklus]

Let's see...

Human fighter (crossbow/bastard sword + shield)
Human fighter (bow/axe + shield)
Human cleric (sling/mace + shield)
Half-elf fighter/theif (crossbow/ large sword + shield)
Half-elf fighter/mage (bow/halberd)
Half-elf fighter/mage (bow/greatsword)

All of them had monster stats. I did most of the killing from afar with the ranged weapons. There is two in the front line, two specialists and two heavy artillery.

[Remmirath]

Last time I played through it was like so:

Human Paladin (sword and shield); Human Ranger (spear); Human Cleric (mace and shield); Human Thief (bow and arrows); Elf Fighter (greataxe); and Elf Mage (didn't fight).

As it turned out, the elf fighter was by far the best member of the group. The ranger was okay, and the mage was a decent if fragile mage, but the others just weren't so great.

I usually have some combination of three fighters, a cleric, a mage, and a thief (or fighter-thief).

[Fri]

I created an adventuring party for Icewind Dale 2 once. Somehow the party evolves into an amazing adventuring party inside my mind, with epic backstory, intraparty banter, personal quest, and everything, not unlike the order of the stick. I even created a campaign setting for them once, though sadly it's unfinished.

The adventuring party name is Dawnsong. Sadly (and I'm really sad on this) I forgot their names. But I still remember their classes and personality.

The leader is a charismatic, smart, chaotic good female human bard.
The second in command is a naive, straight from graduation, lawful good male human paladin of helm.
Then, a soft spoken, wise, neutral good, male half orc priest of lathander. Yeah, an educated half orc priest.
A true neutral old female duergar fighter with sword longer than her body and high intelligence.
A chaotic neutral femme fatale elf evoker with revealing dark clothing.
And a (forgot the alignment) crackshot and streetwise halfling rogue.

[Blayze]

I set myself a challenge for my latest playthrough -- Insane difficulty, Heart of Fury (I think it was called that) mode... starting from level 1. The bugs at the very start possessed the ability to instagib any member of the party they chose to attack... and there were goblins less than half an hour away.

My party was balanced when I designed it: Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Mage, Druid and Bard. I didn't get much further than reaching Kuldahar (Procrastination, bleh) and as such the Mage was of very little use until then. Even the Fighter would get chunked quickly, the Thief was only there to pick locks and prevent the party from getting gibbed by traps and the Bard's only purpose was to use her song to increase the extremely pitiful hit chance of the others.

The Cleric was useful once I changed her focus from healing/buffing spells to crowd control, but the Druid... he carried the party from goblin encounter to goblin encounter. I literally could not have completed the orc cave and its resident bugged repeatedly-spawning ogre (Spawns n+1 times, where n is the number of times you've slept in the cave) without him.

He had so much CC available to him it was unreal. Entangle was an early favourite, especially since it allowed the others to instantly hit without needing to roll. A combination of Entangle and multiple spike spells slaughtered enemies by the bucketload.

The best part about this whole situation? With the experience point gain from HoF mode and Insane difficulty, the entire party levels up very quickly. I'm going to have to start this challenge again tonight. I suggest people try it at least once (I think I needed to download a mod in order to make Insane double the EXP gain...). Let's see what happens when this party hits Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster...

[Dacia Brabant]

I created an adventuring party for Icewind Dale 2 once. Somehow the party evolves into an amazing adventuring party inside my mind, with epic backstory, intraparty banter, personal quest, and everything, not unlike the order of the stick. I even created a campaign setting for them once, though sadly it's unfinished.

The adventuring party name is Dawnsong. Sadly (and I'm really sad on this) I forgot their names. But I still remember their classes and personality.

Yeah I did much the same thing with my IWD2 party, except without the setting (I just used the FR for their story). They were a very Chaotic Good group but with one exception.

The leader was a human wall-of-iron, a gentle-giant, freedom-loving Fighter who was short on words and long on action. He wasn't particularly bright or charismatic but the party made him the leader because of his unshakable ethics and loyalty to his friends, as well as him just being badass.

His half-brother (intended to be an Air Genasi, which sadly isn't in-game), a Conjurer, was the party brain but too sarcastic to be an effective talker. He had the same basic ethics and morals as his brother but resented him for his overprotective bearing (despite being a wizard he was not physically weak).

The party tracker was a female Moon Elf Ranger, very stoic and suspicious of strangers but fiercly loyal to anyone who earned her trust. She was highly competitve toward the leader, especially in matters of combat and athletics, but also secretly in love with him.

Her twin sister was the party spy, a smooth-talking Rogue/Illusionist who prefered to change her appearance and bluff her way past threats to sneaking around (not in-game though). Nobody, not even her sister, completely trusted her, which she frequently made light of but inwardly was hurt by.

The party healer was an Aasimar female Cleric of Lathander, a genuinely sweet, gentle and caring person but possibly the most militant member, capable of extreme righteous fury when confronted by certain things like slavery (she'd have made a good Paladin of Freedom).

Her husband and lone Lawful party member was a human Paladin/Sorcerer, the party diplomat but not its leader (he preferred curbing their chaotic tendencies by example rather than command). Since he and the Conjurer worshiped Mystra in very different ways, they had many unresolved debates.

[Larrin]

You can't go wrong with the Fighter,Paladin,Ranger,thief,cleric,wizard party. I used that to beat Ice wind dale and BG2, and i never really had to over think things. Its not the most powerful, but you have everything you need to do good damage.

If i did it now, with my increase understanding, it would probably be

human Paladin
Dwarven fighter
dwarven fighter/cleric
half-elf thief/mage
elven cleric/mage
human mage

Muscle and magic, coming out my ears.