Pimp My Party - Any Ideas?

Remove all ads!

I'm kind bored with my current party, mostly because it's the same type I always play- 2-3 fighter types with a fighter thief, cleric, and mage- type.
I'm playing with:

* Human fighter - dual wielding large swords and short swords

* Aasimar paladin 3 fighter X - Long sword shield combo (but currently using the ice spear because its +4)

* Human barbarian 3 druid X - using great swords

* Tiefling fighter/ thief equal levels - dual wielding shortswords with weapon finesse

* Aasimar cleric of Lathander - mace and shield

* Wild Elf sorcerer (with one level of monk thrown in because I went through the monastery without a monk last time and I wanted to see what I would experience with a monk this time around.)

Any ideas on new races and classes/builds I should try? What have you guys played that have been fun? The following are my thoughts on why I don’t play what I don’t play:

As you can see, I tend to play the taller races. Occasionally I'll throw a dwarf fighter in my party. I'm not against demi-humans, but for CRPGs, they don't seem to appeal to me as much.

I tend to stay away from bards and monks. Bards because as far as I can tell, their song is the only thing they are good for. The spell-like effects of a bard's song can be duplicated by spells, potions, and other stuff. The fact that they have to stand around doing nothing while they do their song makes them less than desirable in my opinion.

Monks. I have never played one before because they are the antithesis of why I play these games. I love finding neat and cool weapons and outfitting my heroes with all the looted plunder. So, playing a class that is only worth something if they abstain from using all that cool stuff is not cool to me. I did notice on my previous run through the game that there are more items for monks in this game than other IE games.

I'm not saying that I won't play either of these classes. I'll give them a try if someone can show me what I’m missing out on. Same with little guys. I'll play a gnome or a halfling if there's a cool build to try with one.

So, if any of you out there have ideas, I'm open to suggestions and crtiques of my current party. Oh, BTW, my group just arrived at the monastery.

 

Ugh...I hate the eight chambers. It has been a long time since I haven't just killed Salisman and taken the key from his corpse, good-aligned party or not.

You might try a party of four if you have become bored with your usual party. Or for that matter, a party of three or a solo campaign.

Show some love for the shorter races by playing a deep gnome monk. You can start in Targos with a 25 AC and decent spell resistance and access to mirror image and invisibility once a day. If you put a DG monk into a party of four you can have a spell resistance of 50 (IIRC) by the end of the game. And, as you noted, there is some valuable monk-specific swag to be obtained.

Also, a drow paladin(1)/sorcerer(x) can be a fun and effective party member. A pure rogue is worth it, imo, just for the extra backstab bonus. A bard can be interesting and very useful since he can be the party spokesman, cover basic rogue skills and access an array of useful spells.

 

You should try this: http://www.gibberlings3.net/iwd2npc/
You make up your party depending on the NPCs you pick.
Constraint allows for creativity.

 

Your are already too far advanced in the game for changing your party development strategy.
But you could speed up the pace by turning down the difficulty.

 

Dale Keeper, my friend. With it, I can make my party to be whatever I want, when I want. The problem I am having, is I don't know the what.

 

Here's a thought. I think it works, but you can test it with Dale Keeper:
Change Tiefling fighter/ thief into 4 Fighter/x Rogue.
But don't max dex. Keep it at 13 for dodge and pump strength. Then manually run him around and "sneak attack" with a big 2 handed weapon. Really funny and keeps you busy during combat. You don't even need to hide. You should be able to do this even if you're running around in full plate.

If your druid is a caster druid, you can try using a shifter druid. If you're using a shifter druid, you can try a caster druid.

You may wish to convert your pure cleric into a Dreadmaster for the +2 wisdom bonus from a later quest. Use lawful neutral to keep it realistic for RP'ing purposes and spell conversion to cure.

You also don't have a spell sword. You can try taking 4 levels of wizard (specialist works well too) to gain access to mirror image, or 5 lvls of sorcerer for the same. Then take combat classes. However, you're gimped into using light armor with armored arcana, no armor no AC, or taking monk levels and min-maxing your stats. Of course, mirror image, shield, expertise, and deep gnomes are the basis of power gaming high AC characters.

You may also try to take a Bard character for Tymora's song and try to stack luck. Stack Tymora's song with Luck, (later in LATE HoF, if lucky 2 Tymora's Loops and Lucky Nucky), with +7 luck, scimitars, and Improved Critical, you can reach 50% chance to threaten a critical. Since you're goal is fun, I'm assuming you're not beyond temporary cheesiness. Get the feat lingering song and for one fight, pause the game, turn on Tymora's song. Turn it off. Turn it on. Repeat as many times you want (beyond 19 stops being useful), then enjoy the next turn of combat as you now have a luck of +19 and all of your die rolls are locked at 20. Abuse of this beyond the first few novelty times is not recommended.

You can check out the power gaming guides for some interesting builds, especially the maximum damage and maximum AC builds.

I personally like Drow sorcerers. I use them as diplomats and nukers, they're cool, they've got spell resistance, and I just like drow.

You've got a lot of fighters, you may wish to drop one of them for a wizard. If you don't mind being cheesy, take a specialist wizard with 1 level of sorcerer to eliminate the spell restrictions.

And nunsbane's right about the Deep gnomes. They're awesome. I originally dismissed them, but now I'm in love with them.

 

Alright. I made my pure fighter into a deep gnome monk of the old order and I'll see how that goes. I'm thinking my monk can handle the thiefly duties of my party now, so I want to make my fighter/ thief into something else. Maybe a bard. Maybe a fighter mage.
My cleric of lathander is nice, but I really liked my Battleguard of Tempus I had before for thier awsome tankness.
The druid barbarian is not as cool as I envisioned, so I might revamp that guy as well.

 

For the barbarian/druid I'd shift 2 or even all barbarian levels to druid to get more powerful spells. A spellcaster who's 3 level lower than he's supposed to be just isn't that great.

 

If you pick a good portrait & voice,you can work around an enjoyable PC for RPG sake over stats. I also use Dale Keeper Beta2 to adjust for fun. Try these cool pics for example and ideas from this dude. It helped me to no end. http://www.mv.com/ipusers/starfire/index.htm It is Defenders of the Dale site. One pic is almost identical to my wife heh...^_* Lol. I have 4 PCs level squatting 5 x3 & 1 @ 1(Tempus Cleric Dwarf-tied to Portrait and sound)and gaining 750xp per Goblin Rider in Horde Fortress or Boring Beetle later Chap 2. Party 10th easy each,but I have not adjusted for the fun of it. By your area I should be 15th.

There is a Mod to disable the 'favoured' status of races to 'any' for all,which opens up new race ideas. There is also a Deep Gnome xp adjustment patch as it is deemed a bug in the xp allocated for the race level.

 

Monks

I've recently started trying out various monks. One was a Deep Gnome Monk. He's very good at absorbing attacks with his high AC and saves, and Mirror Image. Send him in first to get mosters to target him and then the rest of your party gets a clear path to take out annoying spell casters. He's a very defensive character and for much of the early game, he has the worse offense until I give him weapon finesse at level 3. The +3 LA is pretty steep.

I also tried out a Strongheart Halfling Monk. I gave him 2-Weap Fighting/AmbiDex at level 1 and then Weapon Finesse at level 3. He uses two short swords/daggers most of the time. This monk has more offense than the Deep Gnome as you get to level 3 fairly quickly. Unfortunately, Weapon Finesse does not work with his unarmed strikes which is why I went the 2WF route. This way you get to use some magical goodies with him, although they are only small blades. Still your other melee types would probably be using larger weapons, anyway.