Icewind Dale 2: Party setup

[Jeivar]

I'm thinking on grabbing Icewind Dale 2 off gog.com once I've cleaned up my backlog of half-finished games.
I played the game a bit years ago, but don't remember much about the tactics or pitfalls.

For my party I'm thinking: Paladin, Fighter or Barbarian, Druid, Cleric, Wizard and a Rogue. It seems like that should leave me pretty well covered; Two smashers, one with a bit of holy, two healers with a different set of support spells, arcane kickass and someone to scout ahead, open locks and deal with traps.

Right?

Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of? Anything I absolutely NEED to have or something that will be pretty much useless?

[Eldonauran]

I'd recommend the following:

A Paladin/Cleric (2 levels Paladin, the rest cleric, gear towards buffs)
A Barbarian/Fighter (X Barbarian levels/4 Fighter levels)
A Pure Cleric (or sub a druid if you want, gear more towards healing)
A Rogue Wizard (1 Level rogue/Wizard X)
Two Sorcerers

The fighter levels for barbarian are just for weapon specialization, and bonus feats of course.

Reason for the Rogue/Wizard, is with 18 Int (or higher if you go subrace), you will have enough skill points to keep the main rogue skills maxed, as well as spell craft and concentration. Also, you will probably only find enough scrolls in one playthrough to keep a wizard's spells versatile. No way for two wizards. Also, you will find most scrolls after you are able to cast that level spell, even with the delayed progession from a dip of rogue. This character can focus on the fun stuff like the arcane buffs and leave the blasting to the sorcerers.

Two sorcerers get the blasty spells they need and can split their focus between more blasty and the other slightly less blasty (still blasty though) and more buffy, with one being the party face. Also, sorcerers don't have that issue with not finding scrolls in time. In the hack-and-slash style of game that this is, more spells per day > versatility. Tailor one towards spells with fire/lightning and the other acid/cold.

[Triaxx]

I don't actually recall any real need for a rogue. Backstab is nice, but sheer numbers mean it's not going to thin the heard that much. Invisiblity and the speed and HP of a barbarian make for a much better scout, who isn't going to get instantly squished when he's inevitably detected.

I'd go with a pure wizard, pure cleric and a pure druid. Druid will be a frontliner, and will get Panther and Shambling Mound transformation feats. Panther lets it keep up with the Barbarian, and turns them into a nasty first strike team. Shambling Mound entangles targets it hits and it's immune to electrical damage. That makes it perfect for what's otherwise an INSANELY annoying fight late in the game. Plus it's pretty strong against undead, like skeletons. Make sure the Sorc gets haste and not the wizard. You'll want lots of casts, or some of the fights take FOREVER.

I never found Cold to be particularly helpful, but fire and acid are excellent. The former because it's ICEwind dale, and the latter to disrupt opposing spell casters.

[Maryring]

There are a ton of traps in IWD2. I can't recall anyone that is outright lethal, but still enough that having some means of trap-finding is a good idea.

Now, beyond that, if I recall correctly then you should have a Paladin, because a Paladin is the only guy that can use the Holy Avenger, and you may want to multiclass that Paladin, because IIRC, pureclass Paladins can't do a late-game stealth route.

There is also a workshop in the game where a Transmuter wizard good with alchemy can do a rite to boost his health. Nothing huge, but neat.

I can't offhand think of any other classes that get something special, but those two at least.

[Jeivar]

Y'know, I never multiclassed in ANY of the old D&D games. I really don't know the first thing about what to do with it.

Also, can magic items raise stats above the normal maximum? I'm thinking of going with an Aasimar paladin and pumping CHA all the way up to 20, since I can. Fantastic or waste of points?

[Eldariel]

Rogue 1/Wizard can handle traps long as you stick to the bare essentials. My experience, Rogue/Wizard, Wizard, Cleric, Cleric, Sorc, Druid is about as good as it gets. Make a Battleguard of Tempus and a Morninglord of Lathander and enjoy some quality sustaining frontliners with ridiculous buff stacks. Casters obviously disable and then assist in destroying as necessary.

[Marnath]

I always played with a 4 man team actually. A bruiser, a melee cleric, a wizard and a rogue. With 4 people they all level up faster, and with 6 people most maps will lead to a traffic jam if you all try to advance into range of the enemy. AI pathing was considerably less advanced in those days. You can still make it work though, I guess.

[Anteros]

Y'know, I never multiclassed in ANY of the old D&D games. I really don't know the first thing about what to do with it.

Also, can magic items raise stats above the normal maximum? I'm thinking of going with an Aasimar paladin and pumping CHA all the way up to 20, since I can. Fantastic or waste of points?

It's not exactly optimal, but you'll be more than able to complete the game with such characters. You'll probably have more fun playing the characters you want to play anyway than with a party designed to break the game apart.

[Eldariel]

It's not exactly optimal, but you'll be more than able to complete the game with such characters. You'll probably have more fun playing the characters you want to play anyway than with a party designed to break the game apart.

Hearts of Winter can be kinda rough unless you go through at least moderate optimization. Buff stacks make it fairly simple though but you do have to ensure reasonable high level and high caster level magic availability.

It's also worth noting mundane classes don't really offer anything in this game engine, outside 2-4 level splices to replace the levels that don't grant you higher level spells. While it's fully possible to go through the game with a Barbarian or a Fighter or whatever, it's not quite as strong as full caster party. This, again, is only relevant on Hearts of Winter though (and even there, the difficulty is not to be overestimated; it's basically just playing against high numbers, the AI is still dumb as bricks).

[Jeivar]

It's not exactly optimal, but you'll be more than able to complete the game with such characters. You'll probably have more fun playing the characters you want to play anyway than with a party designed to break the game apart.

True.:smallsmile: There's always that fight between optimal and... y'know, FUN. Lately I'm trying to focus less on optimization and just do whatever I want to do.

[Mordokai]

The first and only time I finished it was with party of all humans, except a wizard, who was high elf. I had a barbarian X/fighter 4, rouge/fighter, split about half/half, as far as levels go, paladin 1/sorcerer X and pure cleric. Surprisingly enough, I specced sorc more towards battlefield control, rather than damage dealer and gave wizard more summons and direct damage spells. Cleric was there to heal and buff and barbarian and rogue were damage dealers. Was pretty easy, finished the game in about two in-game months. It was far from optimized, but very much fun. With some more optimization, it would be even easier. Next time, I will probably start with a band of random misfits, just to see how it works out.

And speaking of misfits... I always heartily recommend everybody to read CapitanGarlic's Let's Play of Icewind Dale II. I do it at least once per year and always have a hearty laugh. It can be found here (http://lparchive.org/Icewind-Dale-2/Update%201/). Mind you, there's a lot of reading to be done, but I consider it a worthy investment of time.

[Johnny Blade]

The NPC Project (http://www.gibberlings3.net/iwd2npc/) mod for IWD2 is pretty decent, at least the characters I tried (which were the more vanilla ones).

As for classes to go through the game with: Eh, whatever. I beat the game three times and had no problems with thoroughly unoptimized parties. I never really tried Heart of Winter mode, but you don't have to, either. To be honest it always just felt like number porn to me, because, like Eldariel said, the AI isn't all that great.

A few points, though:
The game's stingy with stat points at character creation, and unlike in NWN each point costs the same (whether it sets a stat to 9 or 18) IIRC. So classes like Monks who need to be solid in several areas are disadvanteged, whereas classes that only need one or two good stats like Sorcerers are favored. Paladins are still worth it, though. They get to unlock a pretty good feat after a certain amount of class levels.
There aren't a lot of great feats in this game, so I never cared much about giving a character too many Fighter levels. A Ranger is nice to have in a certain area about halfway through, and Barbarians are really good.
As has been said, a Rogue is nice, but a multi-classed one is sufficient. There are some Rogue-only feats that are good if multi-classed with a melee-heavy class.


EDIT: This has nothing to do with the question asked here, but is still important. The XP allocation system in this game is weird and stops giving you XP around late mid-game. There's a fix for it, but I don't remember where to get it and a quick search didn't yield anything. I also don't know if it works with the GOG version, or if that version even still has that "bug". So, all I can tell you is that you should probably look into this.

[Eldariel]

EDIT: This has nothing to do with the question asked here, but is still important. The XP allocation system in this game is weird and stops giving you XP around late mid-game. There's a fix for it, but I don't remember where to get it and a quick search didn't yield anything. I also don't know if it works with the GOG version, or if that version even still has that "bug". So, all I can tell you is that you should probably look into this.

I recall you can circumvent this by just not taking levels until you have enough XP to cap out. Been about 10 years since I really played the game last time though so my memory is hazy. Also, it might have to do with multiclassing; the game clumsily models 3.X multiclass penalties (for some ridiculous reason).

But yeah, if not playing Hearts of Winter, it really doesn't matter what you have as long as you have some access to healing (the game doesn't support Wand Healing, and it's a royal pain to lack easy out-of-combat healing at some points) and someone with at least 1 level in Rogue (well, technically you can get through the game without one, but you'll miss stuff and probably need to trial-and-error the traps)

[Morty]

I remember that when I played Icewind Dale 2, my fighter ran out of feats pretty quickly - by level 11 or somewhere around that - and I had to take some seriously useless ones. I didn't finish it, but I imagine it would have only gotten worse in time.

[Triaxx]

That's why I went with Paladin and Barbarian over fighter, because of the 3e lack of feats.

[Philemonite]

I played the game with the following party

Paladin/Fighter 4
Morninglord/Fighter 4
Druid/Fighter 4
Elf Rogue/Wizard
Wild Elf Sorcerer
Bard

It was a bit too castery, bat it worked. My elven casters had bows, Bard was there to support and the other 3 were for close combat.
If you switch the Bard for a class you like better you get a pretty decent team.