Ability score + item ability score bonus

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I just finished the game last week (finally, after weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of getting stuck at Dragon's Eye level 3 because of the annoying Iron golem guarding Mandal's sword) and now I've decided to create a new one from scratch in HoF mode, while importing a character or two from my previous party with nifty items. I decided to create a cleric this time instead of a Druid. My problem with clerics is that they tend to idle away (at most) while others are fighting for their lives. So now, I decided to max out my cleric's Dex and Str while keeping my wisdom at a low 14. With a wisdom score of 14, my cleric can only cast fourth level cleric spells, right? But if I give him the 'Every God Ring', boosting his wisdom from 14 to 19, is it possible for my cleric to cast spells exceeding level 4 because of the item bonus?

[ November 21, 2006, 09:12: Message edited by: Half-elven Duergar ]

 

As long as you equip the ring, yes.

 

Clerics can be good tanks without reducing wisdom. You can set int and wis as low as possible, more than 14 dex is useless because of the great heavy armor they can wear.
I had a dwarven battleguard of tempus with stats 18-16-20-3-18-1. He got the most kills in my party with his 2-handed and later throwing axe.
Start with at least 14 dex, so you can drink the potion which trades 1 dex for 2 wis (can be won in the battle squares) without loosing the rapid shot feat.

 

Okay, so... low Dex and Wis with max Str then. I could've wished for Zen Archery to be included in the IWD2 feats though, then I'd have a low Dex Sniper with maxed Wis. Thanks for the info guys.

 

Kmonster means low int and cha. Typing error. Also quite low dex is ok. maximise wis! Like kmonster said: if you minimize int and cha you'll have enough free abilitypoints for maximized str, con and wis and fairly high dex. you'll still get i skillpoint/lvl with an intelligence score of 1 (2/lvl for human with int 3. And minimized cha shouldn't make any difference since turn undead isn't any useful anyway. You also probably have someone else as party spokesman

 

But I do use Turn Undead... especially in the Kuldahar pass and against the Banite Heipherus (the shadows behind the party). I always get energy drained by them stupid undead, so I use Turn Undead... and undead are chunked. What's more, not a lot of items in IWD2 offer a boost to Cha.

 

Get any weapon that disrupts undead(club from Battle Square or halbeard from monk tomb iirc) and you start wishing that all enemies were undead. With any of those weapons you'll start seing undead as free XP (not the warriors of holy avenger, but most of them). Those extra points in wis makes your spells harder to resist and gives some bonus spells, which is much more useful than turning.

 

The undead aren't difficult.
Energy drain isn't very problematic. The penalty is low and you can cast the lesser restoration spell (cleric/druid level 2) afterwards. The penalties for being drained are ridiculously low compared to older games anyway.
But even with 1 cha your cleric should be able to turn nearly as good. 2 cha only give one bonus HD, so you'll need 20 extra cha in order to turn one additional 10 HD undead with your level 15 cleric.

You can consider the cha bonus gained by "eagle's splendor" permanent since the spell lasts 1 hour per caster level.

 

I'm more of a role player than a power builder... the reason why I have trouble dealing with somewhat simple things. The trouble is, if I place my low hp spellcasters behind, they get energy drained (40+ hp becomes less than 30 or 20, one slash away from death), and if I place them up front, they get chunked by orogs (Heipherus).

The fact is, I'm more of an 'offensive spell' freak. I tend to memorize only spells that inflict damage to opponents. Honestly, I've never used (even in BG, BG2, TOB, NWN, SoU, HotU, IWD, HOW, TotL) spells like Eagle's Splendor, Cat's Grace, Champion's Strength, etc.

 

This is a good game to start using those kind of spells. At high enough caster lvl your bulls strength, cats grace and some other spells last almost forever. Compared to the low damage of the attack spells in those lvls the choice is easy, at least when you've reached those 10+ lvls.
When you first get the low spell lvls the damage ones might seem interesting since they usually can kill an enemy with one casting, but at higher lvl they barely scratch the enemy.

 

Spellcasters with less than 40 HP in Kuldahar ?
Maybe you should give them proper constitution at creation.

But even low HP mages aren't very vulnerable. With spells like mirror image they're nearly invulnerable at higher levels.

You can always put some summons between your party and the enemies, so you don't have to expose your casters.

 

Currently im going through the game with a human banenite with start stats 16-13-18-8-18-3(or4 cant remember) going to give him 1 dex and use the potion to lose it again for 2wis. then raise his str most likely, since he in kuldahar gets another free wisdom boost being a baneite. given the right feets, the buff his reflexs savings and given the white dragon belt from battlesquare, he serve as a great tank. i gave him one warrior lvl so he can use all weapons without penalties and he is currently my party's tank.

as far as i have experienced, his abyssimal cha dosnt effect his turning. secondly my party has an Aissimar paladin, so should it fail, she takes over.
So my cleric serve as a greater buffer for the party, he got some nifty summons (like undeads) and he has some nice disrupting spells. since i made him neutral (yea banenites can be neutral) he can convert all is spells to healing, which is why he allwas memories sanctuary. i havent had to resort to it yet, but he can easely turn a battle around.
since my part contian, him as healer/buffer. a paladin because they rock, a fighter(3)/rogue(x). a fighter(1)/barde. fighter(1)/sorcerer and a pure druid, I have 4 great melee chars (rogue, priest, paladin, druid) 4 great casters (bard,sorc,druid and priest) a nice scout/damage dealer (rogue) and a nice tank/damage dealer (paladin). So far my team as walked through the game with no problems at all.

 

Yah Kmon... low hp spellcaster... my sorcerer, actually. This was in Nrm mode, mind you. As for mirror image, I kinda only use it for bards... maybe it's because of Haer'dalis.

But hey, I'm already working on my HoF mode party. And yeah, the only character I imported was my sorcerer (the low hp guy in Kuldahar). But now he's got 90 hp and a bunch of wicked spells. I also have the melee cleric with high str, wis, average dex, con, low int, cha character you guys taught me. Turns out he's quite good as a tank especially with the Greatsword of Souls +5, even at HoF mode.

I never thought all my five new characters would reach level 11 even before leaving the pallisade... the power of HoF.