Is It Just Me?

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I'm playing a game of IWD for a change - need a BG2 break. I have only played through once, and I had something stand out to me that I wondered if people agreed with.

My single class Conjurer was next to useless. I found it very irritating that there were hardly any scrolls dropped by enemies, there were few scrolls sold at shops, and what scrolls that were sold were insanely expensive. Is this correct? There is absolutely no reason to have a single classed mage - you are almost forced into taking a M/T or F/M, just so he can do something as he has a poor selection of spells at his disposal.

I also found out that warrior types owned in the game. As such, my party consists of:

Paladin
MC Fighter/Cleric
MC Fighter/Druid
MC Fighter/Thief
MC Fighter/Illusionist
Bard

I figured go with a gnomish fighter/illusionist because at least that will give me one extra spell slot with which to place another pretty much worthless spell.

The bard is completely for kicks and his identify ability. I don't even get enough spells for my mage, so my bard is definitely not going to get enough spells.

 

The first time I finished IWD I played with a bard instead of a mage and I found it much more rewarding. I was having exatly the same problem that you describe, Aldeth. It was depressing to be a level 4 mage with only a couple of 2nd level spells and not many more 1st level ones from which to choose. At least the bard could sing and use a bow, and IWD has quite a number of bard-only items.

The second time I played with a mage and had more fun out of it because I somehow managed to get more spell scrolls. I had HoW installed, though. I wonder if that made a difference.

 

I also have HoW - I bought the game about a year ago, and got the box set that included the expansion. So I have only played with HoW.

I seem to remember a store having only three spell scrolls, with prices along the lines of:

1st level spell: 1,500 gp
2nd level spell: 3,000 gp
3rd level spell: 4,500 gp

Then I would blankly stare at the screen with a WTF? look on my face.

To me, there is no justifiable reason that a first level spell scroll should cost more than a complete set of plate mail.

 

What are you talking about?? 1st level spells costing over 1000gp?!?

I just started the game and checked the prices and that innkeeper in Lonelywood sold 1st level spells for 120-160gp. 2nd level spells for 200-400gp

And 3rd level spells for over 4500gp?!? sure haste and lightning bolt did cost about 1200gp but not almost 5000gp!!

I'm quite sure that Orricks spells in Kuldahar cost the same. Are you sure that the person that talked to the shopkeeper doesn't have a charisma score of 2 or something?.

 

Damn $1,000 for a 1st level scroll, you must be really in need of the Charisma spell.

Anyway, the issue with mages is to imoprt/export them; this way you can have a useful mage at previously visited stages of the game... Boring.

SO... Better yet, give your mage a dose of Dalekeeper and assign him/her all the spells of all the levels of all the schools. This should take care of the issue.

And in case you wonder if you assign the spells and not spell slots, you can't be cheating that bad, you won't probably be casting a Disintegrate at 3rd level even if you have the spell written. All you did was to "find the scrolls"... "quicker".

Give it a shot Aldeth, I'm sure you'll find the game much more interesting this way.

EDIT:

Give us a feedback to see how this works, it did wonders for me.

 

Oh boy, do I feel stupid. As it turns out, while I recenltly re-installed IWD and HoW, I never got the patch. Evidently, this is a known bug, and is fixed by the patch. I just went back tot he store - level 2 scrolls now cost 218 gp - pretty reasonable.l

 

In response to Aldeth's comment that "warrior types own the game":

At the beginning of the game, when your mage is so weak he can only cast Magic Missile or Burning Hands, they sure do. Later on, with spells like Sunfire and Force Missiles, and even more so with Suffocate and Horrid Wilting, no quite so (and that's not even counting the less destructive but even more useful buffing spells). In fact, at certain points I would send my mage (no specialty) alone to slaughter just about everyone on the map area (a lot faster and more fun than just bashing).

On the other hand, a friend of mine played through it with a party of 5 warriors and a bard. The bard would sing all the time and never cast a single spell. I guess it all depends on your playing. However, don't underestimate mage power later in the game. They may not be as powerful as in BG2, but they're no pushovers either.

 

Suffocate?
Horrid Wilting?
In IWD:HoW?

Is Ziad mixed up or is my memory?

My conjurer was damn useful and I did find enough scrolls. Its all down to the random drops. But melee does own the game.

I had a:
Paladin
Fighter
Ranger/Cleric
Fighter/Druid
Thief/Conjurer
Bard

Lots of heads got bashed in, few corpses burnt

 

HoW, especially with TotL contains lots of 3E stuff adapted into 2E mechanics of the game.

 

I still say mages are next to useless. Multi-class them or dual-class them so thay can do something while not casting spells.

 

Shrikanth, I don't know if they're in regular HOW, but they definitely are there if you have Totl. And they pack quite a punch. Unlike BG2 however, Wilting does hit your own party, and it hurts when it does!

Aldeth, I still insist they are useful
Seriously, I enjoy spellcasting my way through the game more than bashing, and sending my mage by himself wrecking all sort of havoc was a great deal of fun (not to mention extremely destructive). Besides, I almost never had my mage NOT casting spells (except at the start of course), so multi-classing didn't have much of an appeal.

 

First time I played through I noticed that little thing of single classed characters too. Now I always have multi classed characters unless they're a cleric to get the spells quicker. Even then with 2 clerics in the party one is multiclassed as well. Any mage or thief I use has fighter added to them as well.
It is a hack slash game I suppose

 

Hmm, I always found mages more useful in Icewind Dale than in Baldur's Gate 2.

 

My mage in IWD:HoW is almost always a Human Theif[9]/Mage[x] if I have a Bard in my party.
The multiclassed Theif/Mage is used only if she is the lone arcane spell chucker.

I find spell casters to be very useful in the game even if my style is basically melee oriented. Getting an Ogre in the cave outside Easthaven stunned by your Chromatic Orb is very useful too

 

i, on the other hand, always found mages more useful in BG2 than in IWD this is because i control the creation of all my characters and can make most of them tanks hehe, kinda cheesy i know. Besides, after playing BG1, I love the chance to use mages that can actually DO something. aside from 1 magic missile. hehe.

 

When I played through IWD I found mages were pretty much useless for the first half of the game, then was complaining to myself that I should have gotten more mages because they were so godly. And got rid of that oh-so-useless druid.

 

One mage in the team is useless in the very beginning when levels are low. But if you have two of them, that's a different story. The problem is: scrolls.

 

@Halberd-Blue: Actually, I think Druid is pretty powerful in this game (more than in BG), my Druid has the second highest killing score in this game. Just use Entangle (lv1)+Spike Growth(lv3) on a monster pack and they will die in no time (I kill Yxu-something this way without any real effort)

 

I'm running a bard and a mage in my game. It's true that spells are not exactly spilling off the shelves of the stores, and you certainly don't find very many just lying around, but I've always found enough to keep my two spellcasters competitive. Both of them have many more spells than they can use as of end of chapter 4.

As for fighters ruling in IWD; that's especially true in the early going, where you really don't need a mage or a cleric. I started both of them as human fighters, then dual-classed them as soon as they reached level 3. This gives you extra hit points--a lot of them in the case of the mage--plus specialization in one weapon and mastery in another, abilities they don't normally have, obviously useful later in the game. (Think of your mage swinging a great sword with weapon mastery and 80+ hp; or maybe you'd rather not.) Their later xp aren't divided, as they would be if you multi-classed them. This is a big bonus for putting 4000 xp into fighter at the beginning of the game.