how important is difficulty class for spellcasters?

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I've seen a good number of people suggest that leveling spellcasters past a certain point is wastefull ... examples being Clerics past 16, wizards past 20, etc

My questions is will this hinder there ability to blast things in HOF mode? Isn't it better to have a higher class caster to overcome Spell Resistance and Saving throws?

 

DanSkibo - I think it IS important to improve your spellcasters' DC. I think spellcasters should always be continually levelled up, unless you are focusing on buffs only.

 

But with spellcaster feats: sp penetration, spell focus, scions of ..., your DC is high anyway. So you could put some levels elsewhere if needed. Pure socerers and clerics do kick butt though.

 

The higher the caster level the greater their DC and length and power of their spells. So naturally it would seem that taking maximum levels possible is essential for any caster.
However thats not necessarily true.

For Sorcerers it is very advisable to keep them as pure as possible. They never really stop learning new spells. And since they can only learn so many spells, most of these spells would be of the offensive nature. Also their Char score can be raised by Eagle's Splendor to levels which Int cannot match.

Wizards as a rule are not the sole arcane spellcasters in any IWD II party. As such their role is generally to support the Sorc. For them DC is not as important since quite a few of their spells will be buffs. Also they are the ones who would take all the useful but fixed duration spells, which the sorc should stay away from.

For Clerics, their primary roles are healing, buffing, summoning and disabling the enemies - in that order. Regardless of the fact that a few of the higher level spells can be really damaging, you would probably be hardpressed to find the spell slots to accomodate them.
Thus Clerics can be played both ways. Stop at L15-18 and take enemy damaging spells only if you can. Or go pure Cleric and concectrate on enemy debuffing, disabling and damage.

Druid, as spellcasters work pretty much like Clerics do. However your decision would have more to do with whether you want the various elemental shapeshifts or not rather than their spell abilities. Druids seem to lean more towards the summoning side of things at higher levels rather than damaging the enemy so as a spellcaster its not really a big deal giving them more levels.

 

@Shrikant

Have you even played a druid? Druids are nothing without damaging spells. They have good ones in almost every lvl. Spells like sunchorch, rainstorm, call lightning, flamestrike, static charge and firestorm, finger of death and maybe tremor makes them as good as my arcane casters in that role. The summoning spells are often crappy (except the really powerful but dangerous Elemental legion). Summon natures ally X are worthless.

 

I was talking about the 9th level spells. Mass Heal, then Elemental Legion, Summon Nature's Ally IX, Shambler. I have never used Tremor since I'm afraid that it might affect party members. Does it?

 

When your pally 2/sorcerer X is levelled high enough, is there a class you can add which gets him extra feat points? (thinking rogue or something like that...?)
Goal is, of course, to boost spell focus and armored arcana and things like that...

 

Fighter's get extra feats. If you want to be a fighter/pally/sorcerer and not suffer from an XP penalty, you'll need to have your favoured class as a sorcerer (which means wild elf or moon elf, I forget which) or be human or half-elf (whose favoured class is ANY).

 

Fighter gets an extra feat at L1, L2 and every even fighter level thereafter.
Wizard gets an extra feat at L1, L5 and every fifth wizard level thereafter.

So you can take Fighter[2]/Wizard[1] for 3 extra feats.

 

It only affects enemies, quite good spell though.