Help choosing class combos and feats

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Fighter get their bonus feats at 1st lvl and then every even level (1,2,4,6...) IIRC.

 

That's what I thought, but it says something like "Receives a bonus feat at first level and every two levels after that" on the character creation screen. So maybe 3 or 5 is best. I dunno.

I will take AjaX's advice and skip the barb/druid split.
Would a Sorcerer/Druid be any good? Or a 3 way split of sorcerer, druid, and fighter for a buff tank instead? It's stat dependant I guess, taking both Wis and Cha, but if the spells are mostly for buffs and such having a high DC shouldn't matter much.
I always liked Mage/Clerics in BG2 for the versatility, which this would be similar too I guess. Not sure if splitting divine and arcane caster levels is a good idea in IWD2 though. You'd get a wide variety of buffs, but I guess maybe you'd get the good ones much too late.

For my rogue character...maybe I should instead go for Bard 5/Rogue 5/ Sorcerer X? I get the luck song, I get better and higher level arcane spells eventually, makes an excellent diplomat if I mix the levels up right, and if I want I could eventually mix the 4 fighter levels in too. If the character isn't meant to be a fighter, maybe making them a buffer and speaker in addition to my rogue is better.

 

Then go for 5, because 3 levels won't enable the Weapon Expertise (3 proficiency slots).

Being "multi-class" in IWD2 is much worse than in BG2. In BG2 a full mage would be level 18 at about the time a multi-class mage/cleric gets to levels 14/15 (cleric levels a bit faster I think). In IWD2 if you go multi-class, you would be a mage 9 / cleric 9, casting level 5 spells max, while your single class competitor gets to level 18, casting level 9 spells. The difference is just too great. The problem is that 2e took current class level into account, while 3e only considers the total character level, so you won't level up faster because you're still a low level mage. Hopefully you understand now how wasteful multi-class characters are.

Arcane and divine casters should be kept separate as much as possible. I have a bard 5 / cleric X myself, but I compensated this by taking only bard spells that can be cast outside of combat. This way, I can take off my armour and avoid the risk of spell failure due to armour/shields.

Although the sorcerer has a better spell selection than the bard, there's a lot to be said for being 5 levels further as a bard. Since you'll be taking along a sorcerer already, if you become a high level bard you can add some bardic flavour to your spellcasting. I've never tried Summon Djinni or Efreeti in IWD2, it may be fun. Bards also get a bit more hitpoints, which is always helpful.

 

Pure Barbarians are suicidal characters. Sure the Greater Rage is good, but if I'm not wrong they get 1/- DR at 11th level, and 1/- more every 4 levels thereafter. That means 5/- DR by level 27... please. I'll take my Stoneskin on a more efficient char, thank you very much.
Multiclass in IWD 2 is a lot more balanced in my opinion, coz you need to really think what classes to add, when to add them, for what purpose. And none of that "primary stat of this class should be so, and of that class should be such" crap. Lot more freedom. But I agree, a pure Arcane caster, and nearly pure Divine caster should be there in every party.
Bards get more hitpoints, but their spell advancement is way slower than Sorcerers (I remember having ONE 4th level spell at level 11) and they get FAR fewer spells. Some spells they don't get at all. You want your arcane caster to be a slight bit of a combatant, throw in a Pally level, or maybe a Fighter, focus on some ranged weapon and take Rapid Shot. With Bless, Aid, Recitation/Prayer, some magical weapon, and Haste, I'm fairly sure you can get 3-4 attacks per round (if using Hell Bolter, 3 is standard), and at a GOOD attack bonus. All this with minimal sacrifice to arcane casting.
Or, if you're really desperate, cast Mord's Sword and follow through with Tenser's.

 

DR is a minor feature of barbarians, that only pops up late in game anyway. Tireless Rage at level 20 is much more important, as are the extra hitpoints. But DR shouldn't be completely diregarded. Let's say you get struck by an axe that also has extra fire damage. DR of 1/- will protect against the slashing AND the fire damage. If an axe gives extra slashing damage (like 33% chance 1d6 slashing and 10% chance 1d10 slashing damage), damage is again resisted, because it's applied separately. Don't be mistaken: the total damage you avoided can amount to a lot. And unlike Ironskin (10/- DR for the first 8 attacks), it doesn't wear out after 8 blows and needs to be recast. The main advantage of DR and Ironskin over Stoneskin is that it also protects against +5 enchanted weapons, so will help you in boss fights.
My conclusion: DR won't be the deciding factor in crucial fights, but will help your barbarian to stay alive longer before he needs healing.

Odd Hermit, this is one of the things not under debate, so take it seriously.

Yeah, bards aren't nearly as poweful as sorcerers, and they still can't wear armour due to spell failure chance. Jack-ass-of-all-trades

If you're really desperate, you won't even have the 2 rounds to cast MSword and TTransf. Doing a futile casting dance only to get disrupted is extremely frustrating. If you're surrounded you rely best on quick-cast spells, from Magic Missile to Executioner's Eyes. Equipment and weapons are crucial choices in a pinch, and taking a warrior level often allows spellcasters to use warrior-only items they badly need.

 

LOL @ Bards comment.
If you're that desperate, combat is stupid anyway. Cast Blur/Mirror Image/Haste, run around like hell, and fire away with Malavon's Rage and Sunfire spells. I had said "desperate" meaning wanting to use weapons with your caster rather than spells.

 

I believe the game was designed to test your party's versatility. There are frequent points where you lose control of the game bar, a force-talk starts, and you are rushed by enemies. Some are right after traveling, so you can't even reload and buff up to prepare.
But the magic swords are often more powerful than warrior attacks, and stay strong against powerful enemies:

Spoiler

The Slayer Knights of Xvim are demonic with high spell resistance and deal out scary amounts of damage. Enchantments won't work, damage spells are mostly resisted, they're immune to necromancy, and taking them on in melee is dangerous. In Heart of Fury mode, a horde of summons isn't enough to hold them at bay. The only thing that worked well for me was charging my barbarian forward so he's targeted, encasing him in Otiluke's, and having my Sorcerer and Illusionist cast MSword so they can attack at range (I don't think Rapid Shot feat gives MSword an extra attack), and I managed to get most of them before ORS wore off. Just for fun, try killing a Slayer Knight with only ranged weapons, you'll see how unreliable ranged weapons are.
Similarly, the end bosses are immune to +4 weapons if I remember correctly. Mordenkainen's Sword is +3 so won't help. This is when Mirror Image + Black Blade of Disaster works better. BBoD isn't ranged, so you need to get up close, but it is +5 enchanted. The HoF end battle isn't easy to summarize though, and requires many spells and tactics.

This may not be of interest to you, but spells that have set damage (Malavon's Rage) and spells that are capped early (Fireball's 10d8, not Horrid Wilting's 25d8) become less useful in HoF. The best spells are uncapped stuff like Spell Trap and Delayed Blast Fireball.
Wail of the Banshee is a great insta-killer, bypasses spell resistance, but doesn't work against undead and demons.
Earthquake's HoF damage is poor, but it works as a Mass Sleep, bypasses SR, even when enchantments wouldn't work.

 

There is only one scenario in the entire game where pre-buffing is completely impossible, that is the outside of Dragon's Eye. Its the only place where I'll use Otiluke's Resilient Sphere technique. Everywhere else you can buff yourself up before battle (of course I assume you know when battles are coming).
Actually, I think BBoD is overrated. That +5 enchantment is only useful against certain bosses, or very late HoF. These opponents have such insane BABs and damage, that sending a mage against them armed with Blur/Blink/Mirror Image and BBoD is only marginally short of suicide. Besides, by this time your main tankers should have the ability to take them on anyway. Although its true that BBoD and Mord's Sword are better than most regular weapons. A tanking/decoy based character can make excellent use of them.
Horrid Wilting's damage caps early, but its still useful for penetrating SR. Its a life saver against HoF Slayer Knights, stupid Yuan Ti thieves, and Viper's Fang assassins.
Skull Trap, I agree is one rocking spell. DBFB is a godsend.

 

When leaving Dragon's Eye, when your party tries to buff eachother up, you better hope none of them moves 1mm forward or the cutscreen kicks in.

Spoiler

Anyway those salamanders at Dragon's Eye entrance should be easily dealt with. I can't remember what I did exactly, but not Otiluke. Perhaps Holy Word followed up by Wail o/t Banshee (HoF), or a killzone: Entangle, Slow, Grease, Fiery Cloud etc. The threat was so low, I think I may have resorted to ranged weapons too. The traps on the bridge can be switched off, but not disarmed.

BBoD doesn't match up to MSword, but I'm glad I had it for that fight. If you're lucky they'll be distracted by summons. The bosses tend to switch targets often.

 

The really funny part is, if you move backwards rather than forwards, there's PLENTY of space available
As to the traps, they CAN be disarmed, but the DC is damn high. Best keep a healer near the thief, just in case.

 

There is a mod to remove the Race 'favoured class' problem,ie make them like Humans. This alters Racial choices for classes. So a Drow Bard/Rogue/Sorcerer as described above is a go...^_* for example.

 

THAT'S CHEATING!
I should shut up now; I've altered moncrate.2da, cheated every IWD2 item in before I went to Icewind Gate II, and used all kinds of mods which change the game rules (monks wear robes, druid half-dragon transformations and additional spells, armour/shields give damage reduction, etcetc.).
But disabling race/class/alignment restrictions is too much like breaking the spirit of the game. But that's just my opinion.

 

The favored class thing just seems like a nuisance to me, especially since some classes have no race that favors them, and some races have bad annoying favored classes. Maybe if they'd included more races it would've been more fair.
Things are FAR from balanced in IWD2 and 3E in general anyway.
I mean, let's face it-

Rangers suck.
Barbarians are quite possibly worse than rangers.
Bards, only good for a few songs bonuses. Inferior as a jack of all trades to many multi-class builds.
Clerics are obscenely powerful.
Fighter levels are really only good for specialization and a few extra feats not much going for them at higher levels.
Monks and paladins give much too powerful bonuses for 1 level.

And looking at races -

Half Elves are terrible. An elf or a human is superior always.
Half Orcs are barely more useful, since they have a slight advantage for melee classes if you're going for maximizing damage.
Tieflings suck compared to Aasimar. The -2 charisma doesn't really make much sense, and makes them 2 attribute points behind Aasimar. And their elemental resistances are much too minor to really make up for it.
Duerger? I feel sorry for them, even if they are evil. I don't even remember what their bonuses are, I just remember that they suck.

 

I agree that everything isn't balanced, but the favored class makes it more interesting when designing new characters. 3E at least don't have bard as favored class for the already underpowered normal gnomes...

Barbarians are possibly the best fighter-type class (sometimes a paladin can take the place). To bad that clerics do the fighting a lot better with all their buffs.
Bards are weak by themselves, but they might actually be good enough in larger parties to have a place, even in powergaming lists. The songs are only bad for small parties.
The bonus from one monk lvl is good, but usually not worth loosing a lvl in your primary class. And the favored class system also stop a lot of these mix-in builds for many races.
Paladin mix in give one really good bonus, but fighter types usually have too low charisma to benefit from it, and high-cha characters are usually the party spokesman and don't want to miss all bonus items.

Half orc is one of the best races for fighter-type characters.
Thiefling are far from underpowered, and can be really useful in a lot of builds.
Half-elves wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for the fact that humen are always better to choose.
Duergar are underpowered!! A spell resistance in the same way as drows and DG would make them balanced but still far from overpowered, but as they are now, they are the only significantly underpowered race.

Rock gnomes have no builds where they are the best choice, but they aren't really bad, just that there are better choices. The favored class of bard in 3.5E didn't help them so I'm glad this is 3E.
I also think is unneccesary with two halfling subraces that are almost exactly the same. The last halfling subrace at least has a different favored class.

 

I don't see how it makes it more interesting, it's just an annoying limitation IMO.
Basically just forces you to take a human or a specific race for many builds.
I think giving races attribute bonuses and such is enough to give them an advantage for certain classes already, the favored class deal is overkill.

To some degree it's more of a problem in IWD2 with less sub races to choose from than PnP, and of course with a level limit ECL races have a large advantage at the end. But I still don't like it.

 

I also disagree about the barbarian being a bad warrior - they're the best. Easy to use, and good in any fight. Rangers have a bonus only against chosen monster types, paladins have better saving throws, but that doesn't help them in melee. The fighters get more feats, which gives more options, but after all feats which add passive bonuses have been taken (i.e. continuous and which benefit them all the time), it still doesn't match up to the barbarian's Rage, Extra Hitpoints and Damage Resistance.

I guess Duergar / Gray Dwarves aren't that great. I took one for my party for one reason mainly: the ECL. It might be strange, but I wanted my warrior without spellcasting skills to have a bad Effective Character Level. If he didn't have ECL, the would bring up the average level of my party, to the detriment of my spellcasters. With two Drow, a Duergar and a Svirfneblin, my Human druid and sorceress are actually at an advantage when leveling up. Leveling up quickly is most important for them. It's all about getting more experience from kills, the XP gained can drop steeply by being slightly higher average level. Maybe you guys think this is a stupid consideration, but it may help your party out.
Also, a chaotic evil duergar is more roleplaying-sound. I'm not into roleplaying, but maybe my duergar is a weakness

 

I was under the impression they sucked in 3E. It seems like all they really end up with is lots of HP. Rangers and paladins both get a bit of spell casting, which can eventually net them some pretty good buffs right?
Fighters get more feats and weapon specialization.
Barbarians get mostly just lots of HP and rage.
I guess a level 4-5 fighter with the rest of levels as barbarian might be better than a pure fighter though.

Either way despite maybe being wrong about a few races/classes, I still think 3E is far from balanced, and that the favored class limitation makes it worse.

 

Rangers and Paladin's spell books suck. And having spellcasting ability means you may consider leveling up in WIS instead of combat stats to improve your spellcasting. Barbarians are simple to use, amd don't have such distractions. Leave spellcasting to the classes that are good at it. The barbarian's passive abilities definitely outcompete the useless feats a fighter is left to pick later on.

This may sound discriminating, but in real life races have positive and negative characteristics, and these don't equal out. It's not balanced or fair, these races are similarly unbalanced like RL. And the favoured class issue is a limitation which adds some structure and discipline to the character creation, as does XP penalty and ECL. Otherwise it would be a free-for-all, where you could just combine the most powerful race and the most powerful class:
A party of 6 Deep Gnome Clerics, with all sorts of mix ins, no XP penalty or ECL.

But I just love the aspects of character creation and leveling choices. That's why I'm opposed to anything that changes the basic limitations. Paladins of Mystra can choose sorcerer, Paladins of Helm can be Helm clerics, that's fine, it just removes the excommunication effect anyway. But completely removing restrictions is going too far, that's no fun.

from an old remark:

Just a question: Isn't it hard to roleplay chaotic aligned religious figures? How can a druid worship nature, and be chaotic too? It's disruptuve to nature! Crazy and Wise..? A LN druid is more roleplaying friendly.

---------- Added 2 hours, 19 minutes and 39 seconds later... ----------

Barbarians suicidal? Quite the contrary. In Heart of Fury I wondered why my battleclerics were getting chopped up to Near Death so quickly in melee , turned out it was because I was comparing them to my barbarian! It's not just the extra hit points. The damage resistance matters. My clerics were taking full damage after the first 8 blows (Ironskin wears off) with no chance to recast it in combat. My barbarian keeps resisting even after his Stoneskin (cast by modded druid) wears off .
If clerics couldn't heal themselves, barbarians would be the most reliable warrior build for HoF.

 

Even if that's true, and who knows if it is(can't really be tested), this is a game and not real life. It's not meant to be so imbalanced. Having a variety of positives and negatives that suit different styles of playing is good, but having obviously imbalanced power levels is bad.

I think a lot of the restrictions don't add anything, racial ones especially. However I agree that some restrictions should stay, a demarch of mask shouldn't be allowed to be a paladin, and so on. Although, if the game allowed shifts in alignment... I dunno. Alignment is kind of funny anyway, should be replaced with personality traits and/or background beliefs or something IMO.

My druid will be true neutral or neutral good, not chaotic. I might have made an error somewhere and said chaotic neutral, but she's not going to be chaotic.

 

IMO, Barbarians (heck, ALL pure warrior classes) suck ass only because you can make FAR more efficient warriors via multiclassing, and these warriors are considerably more versatile than any vanilla Barbarian. Greater Rage is jack ****, +6 STR can be done by Champion's Strength or Dwarven Ogre, and +6 CON can be done by Ilmater's Endurance, Draw Upon Holy Might, or you can get +4 CON from Aura of Vitality. Bonus to willsaves is pointless if a character ALREADY has high Will saves + SR. And you can ace it anyday with Chaotic Commands or Mind Blank. Damage reduction? I still scoff. Work on making your character hard to hit, and use Stone/Ironskin for backup, that's what I recommend. If he's getting hit too much, give him Big Death and toss him in the back, unless you want to be picking up his pieces every battle.
Barbarians are good for beginning players, who don't know the advanced techniques.

And Odd Hermit, once you've played the game over a few times you'll realize how balancing these "restrictions" in truth are.