new guy here. couple questions

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hi all. first post here. got the game coming in the mail and i'm trying to get an idea of what to make for a party. i have a couple questions concerning a couple of posts i've read so far:

what about a holy avenger i heard tale of?

when you say "paladins and dreadmasters of bane" do you mean a paladin of bane and a dreadmaster of bane? or do you mean paladins in general. i didn't know a paladin could be evil. also when do they get the stat boost? is it a specific quest? or at a certain level?

i read somewhere on here that someone advised against using a paladin as the speaker due to quest rewards. what about a bard?

that brings me to this question:
are bard's any good in ID2 or are they kinda crappy like in other games with the exception of ID itself. IIRC that is. it's been a long time since i played any of these games (BG series and the ID series). anyway. do they have decent songs?

guess that's it for now. i'm sure i'll have more later

 

1) Sure, Cera Sumat is great. It's still not a weapon that would be the deal maker or breaker on paladin levels. And, if you're used to playing BG2, then the Holy Avenger isn't even as good as you'd expect in IWD without Ease-of-Use mod.

I'm not sure what you're asking - is it good to have a paladin in your party? Absolutely. But it's definitely not necessary. And you can go for a few mix-in levels of paladin (to be honest, high paladin levels usually aren't necessary), but that just feels wrong to me.

2) No such thing as a paladin of Bane. So, read that as "paladins" and "Dreadmasters of Bane".

3) Aside from the stat boosts every 4 levels, the only other time stats are enhanced are during a couple of specific quests (and through items, of course). The quests are mid-to-late in the game.

4) Bards are great as "diplomat characters". Just pump up the CHA.

5) Some people love bards in IWD2. Others don't care for them. I almost always take a character with at least 11 bard levels (the last song comes at level 11). There are a number of good songs - I typically use the one that increases combat ability, one that increases luck, and one that increases defense. The others are okay, but not as excellent as those in my opinion.

 

that's to bad. the holy avenger is supposed to be the mac daddy
where can i get the "Ease-of-Use mod"?

does just having a paladin in your party make it so you don't get quest reward? or is that only if you use her as the "talker"?

ok. that's what i thought.

does it matter what class you are? does it affect the entire party or just one member?

i usually don't use a bard but i think i'll give one a try just to see what i've been missing

thanks for the replies. much appreciated.

 

Right here at SP of course. ;-)
http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/IWD2/index_mods.php

Only the talker effects the reward. Monks and paladins (pure levels only) will often refuse rewards. Occasionally, there will be additional rewards (XP/items) if the talker is a particular race or class.

It does matter what class you are. For the paladin reward, anyone who has any paladin levels will get the boost. I can't tell you about the Dreadmaster reward, as I never play them. (I'm partial to good-aligned parties.)


So, what party ideas do you have right now?

 

POWERGAMING advice

1) Barbarians: You can take a (near) single class barbarian and have a reliable warrior with tons of hitpoints. I recommend my CE Gray Dwarf Fighter 4 / Barbarian X 18-18-20-3-14-1, improve constitution (or strength).
2) Bard: The best bard song is Tymora's melody at level 5, luck is great, and unlimited luck is awesome. A (near) single class bard is not too bad, but sorcerers have way better spell selections and amounts. Unless you really want to play a bard, I'd go for sorcerer.
3) Cleric: A cleric is practically unmissable in your party, as it is the only class that can cast raise dead an resurrection. Their selection of buff spells and summons are unmatched by the other divine casting classes too. My big tip is to make your cleric a battlecleric; you don't need maximized Wisdom, since Difficulty Class (DC) is irrelevant for buffing and summoning. I had 2 clerics in my party:
CN Drow Bard 5 / Battleguard of Tempus X 18-15-16-5-15-11, impr. CON

Spoiler

There's an item in the game which gives a HUGE wisdom bonus when equipped

NG Drow Fighter 4 / Morninglord of Lathander X 18-18-16-5-18-5, impr. CON
4) Druid: Not as good as the cleric, but pretty decent. Like a poor man's sorcerer with healing. It adds some charm to the spellcasting. My tip is to take a druid along if you like shapeshifting too. My druid:
LN Human Monk o/t Old Order 1 / Ranger 1 / Druid X 18-16-18-3-18-3, impr. WIS. It's more important to improve wisdom for druids since they have quite a few attack spells. So (near) single class druid is the way to go with this build.
5) Fighter: A (near) single class fighter is an option, it'll give you loads of extra feats to choose from, and they are the only class that can choose weapon specialization after 4 levels. For this reason, a mix-in of 4 levels fighter will give to the best this class has to offer in any build. a single level mix-in can be useful for the extra feat, and weapon proficiencies for spellcasters. I have 2 characters with the 4 level mix-in.
6) Monk: A good warrior. I never tried a (near) single class monk. I prefer weapon selections over fists, because I love using items, and monk fists only reach +4 enchantment. But they become killers later on. Also, they don't require much tactical thought, since you don't need to think about which weapon and armour would be best for an encounter. Good qualities of a monk are the free Evasion feat at level 1, allowing you to avoid most reflex-save spells, and the armour class (AC) bonus from wisdom. The wisdom AC bonus carries over to shapeshift forms, that's why it's ideal for a druid.
7) Paladin: (Near) single class paladins are a good battle-oriented build, with some spells (nothing special) and a saving throw bonus from charisma. The saving throw bonus is the best feature of taking 1 level as a mix-in, and the paladin 1 / sorcerer X is a classic powergaming build. You can complete the quest and get the bonus with just 1 level paladin too.
8) Ranger: Lousy spell selection, attack bonus against a few chosen monster types. A full ranger is the most unappealing character, but just a single level allows you to use two weapons as if you had the feats Ambidexterity and Two-Weapon Fighting, on the condition that you wear light or no armour. The condition of wearing light or no armour isn't an issue for arcane spellcasters, who wear robes to avoid the risk of casting failure due to armour. Wizards, Sorcerers and Bards also risk casting failure if they use a shield, that's why using a 2nd weapon is ideal. The ranger level as a mix-in is the most useful single level you can choose. Traditionally an arcane caster has the quarterstaff as his weapon of choice, but a level ranger gives them a wide variety of other options: proficiency in other 2-handed weapons, all proficiencies except bastard sword, and the ability to use 2 single handed melee weapons. Just think of it, the ranger level offers useful combat feats (Ambidexterity, Two-Weapon Fighting, and any weapon proficiencies you didn't have yet) to a spellcaster, who can't choose those feats because he/she needs all their feats to improve their spellcasting.
9) Rogue: Taking many rogue levels is unnecessary, as you can complete the game with limited rogue skills anyway. Sneaking and backstabbing is fun, but you need to protect your rogue because he's quite weak. Many rogue skill use the intelligence modifier, and since INT also gives bonus feats, it's ideal to mix-in a few rogue levels with your wizard. 2 levels is ideal, since you get Evasion like a monk, and can evade reflex damage spells.
10) Sorcerer: This is your ultimate spellcaster, but you must choose spells wisely, as you're stuck with them. No need to find and learn scrolls or decide how many castings of a spell you may need before you sleep. Many people even travel with 2 sorcerers in a party of 4, that's how good they are.

Spoiler

As a mix-in level, the sorcerer can enable forbidden schools for a specialist wizard. It's not a spoiler, but a cheesy exploit all the same.

My recommended sorcerer: LG Human Paladin of Mystra 1 / Ranger 1 / Sorcerer X 16-18-18-3-3-18, impr. CHA
11) Wizard: The traditional arcane spellcaster, not as good as a sorcerer, but great for taking care of rogue skills in the party. Unlike a sorcerer they get bonus feats every 5 levels, which comes in handy. Specialists get an extra spell each level, but the restrictions can be disappointing. Inlike BG2 Conjurer isn't the best way to go, because there's a very useful divination spell: Executioner's Eyes. Any choice of specialist will restrict you from using useful spells, but can add charm to your spellcasting like a druid, in my opinion. It's not much use as a mix-in. My recommendation for a wizard: NE Deep Gnome Ranger 1 / Rogue 2 / Illusionist X 12-20-18-5-18-1, impr. INT Start as a rogue!

This was probably more advice than you needed, but I just like to talk about leveling choices, it's my favourite aspect of the game.

 

Hi and welcome to the forums!

I have a few beginners advice on party creation in IWD2 (some are the same as for most games you probably already played, but there are some differences between D&D 3E (IWD2) and 2E (BG1-2, IWD1) that make for example clerics much more useful:

1) Dont multiclass spellcasters (one or two lvls of mix-in classes are ok, but a multiclassed cleric/wizards will be both bad healers and bad arcane classes.)

2) Have at least one (almost pure lvl) arcane caster (wizard or sorcerer, bards aren't good enough to be a main caster) and one divine caster (cleric or druid since rangers/paladins are bad casters).

3) Divine casters (clerics and druids) with high str, dex and wis can be very effective both as melee characters and divine casters. They have sufficient HP/lvl and BAB to be successful in the front lines. By keeping them as almost pure casters with at most a lvl or two of a fighter type class they will also be great casters. Clerics have also buffs to make them do more damage that pure fighter type characters and heal (which both clerics and druid gets, but earlier for clerics) make them stay alive much longer.

4) Arcane casters are weak at early lvls, but get very powerful later on. You'll notice that when you throw your first fireball at a large crowd!!! Mirror images are extremely useful to keep them alive if they get attacked.

5) Save often and in different saves.

6) 6 characters are more fun than fewer (in my opinion). They will lag behing in lvls, but dynamic xp-calculation in IWD2 makes the difefrence quite small. With 6 you have room for more "far from optimal"-characters that are there because they are fun to play with and not necessarly very powerful.

7) In normal mode it's possible to play through the game with almost any party/sole character. No need to powergame if you don't like it.

 

thank you all for your answers and advice. greatly appreciated
as for what kind of party i'll be taking it's hard to say without knowing what to aim for as far as prestige classes go. but off the top of my head i would say something like:

paladin
fighter/rogue
cleric
druid
bard
sorcerer

how many points to you get to divide up between your stats at character creation?

are there "kits" like in BG2?

 

You're welcome of course.

A sound party. Maybe not powergaming-ultimate, but it will be lots of fun I'm sure.

The points are set, but are dependent on the race you choose. Aasimar race for example gets +2WIS +2CHA. Normally stats can be altered from 3 to 18 upon creation, but the Aasimar's WIS and CHA are adjusted from 5 to 20. Negative bonuses, like a -2INT for wild elves, limits the range from 1 to 16.

No, IWD2 works with favoured classes concept. Normaly you get a 20% or more experience penalty when you have a character with 2 classes more than 1 level apart, meaning 20% of the experience going to the character is lost. Each race has an exception, a favoured class. For example, an Aasimar has paladin as favoured class, so many powergamers like to make an Aasimar paladin 1 / sorcerer X. If you added a level ranger to the mix you would suddenly get a HUGE XP penalty (like 80% at high level). Now the exception to this are Half-Elves and Humans, who take the most divergent class as the favoured class. So a human ranger 1 / paladin 1 / sorcerer X is fine.
The drow race actually have 2 favoured classes, dependant on their gender.
Now to illustrate (don't try these at home, they're ridiculous, an Aasimar paladin 1 / barbarian 10 / wizard 9 works with no XP penalty, a Half-Elf rogue 10 / cleric 15 works, but a human paladin 3 / fighter 7 / transmuter 1 gets 20% XP penalty. If you understand these, you'll do fine.

Oh, and there are "orders", they're totally different from BG2 though. BG2 had kits for bards, clerics, druids, fighters, rangers, thieves and wizards. IWD2 has "orders" for clerics, monks, paladins and wizards.

if you're interested in modding your game, check this out:
http://forums.blackwyrmlair.net/index.php?showtopic=38

Good luck and have fun!

 

i thought humans got no xp penalty regardless of how many classes they chose and regardless of what level differences there was?

 

no. as I said, the favoured class is disregarded for the determination of XP penalty.
although the human's favoured class can vary, there can only be 1. If there are still 2 other classes remaining with more than 1 level apart, you get a penalty.

 

ok. thanks. good to know. i might have made a mistake with levels had you not told me this. much appreciated

 

Also, you mentioned prestige classes in one of your posts, but there aren't any PrCs in IWD2.

 

really? that's crazy. that's one of the great things about 3.0 IMO
oh well. life goes on i guess

 

Also worth mentioning is the shift-click to convert any cleric spell into a Cure ____ Wounds spell (not Heal). It's great: Good and Neutral clerics don't even need to memorize these spells.
I always thought this was a pain in BG2: deciding how many cure spells to memorize, and how many buffs, summons etc. Don't choose an evil cleric, as they get Inflict ____ Wounds instead!
If you install Mindchilds newest Customdll fix, your druid can Shift-Click spells to Summon Animals, awesome

 

good to know. i loved that feature in ToEE. very handy.

will have to get that where can i find it? i looked on SP and blackwyrmlair.net and didn't see it.

 

Mindchild is right here on sorcerers.net
Look to the thread titled Bug Fixing in the forum. His fix is available on the site.

If you click the link I added in an above post, you have a COMPLETE list of all mods for IWD2 I know of, with links to the download locations. Check it out, I helped update it myself.

here's his fix:
http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/dl.php?s=IWD2&f=IWD2/IWD2Custom.rar

 

i must be blind as i do not see it in the post. all i see are coding files. sorry.

don't take this the wrong way but half of the links are dead

thanks for the direct link. much appreciated

p.s. i know things can be "misread" online and taken the wrong way. just want to let you know i don't mean any offence with my replies greatly appreciating your help.

 

ok i was blind. i found/see it now. i thought it was a coding file like the one above it

 

Hey, you're right!
The first post from Windwalker is from 2004 though, and most dead links are due to sorcerers.net being rearranged, but I may as well edit my post to include the new links. thanks

as for the P.S. I have no idea what I could possibly take offense from, so don't worry.

I'm just glad to help out - this communicating will help make your game more enjoyable. I'd hate it if players lost interest because they didn't understand something, or made a mistake, and then decided to go play childish graphic rubbish like World of Warcraft.

Really, that game was made solely to get money out of RPGers, and encourage them to go play first-person shooters. It mindless and colourful, like a baby's toy.Yeah I hate it.

I'm going to add some new links now, that'll calm me down

 

thanks. it definitely will!

stay calm now. you might want to sit down for this. oh wait. of course your sitting already. well, i was actually thinking of going to play WoW. but i chose to get ID2 instead

breath man breath!