Please share some battle strategies with me

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Have a high AC decoy, they are very useful.

Basic example:A deep gnome lvl 1 monk with 20 DEX and WIS will have raw 24 AC (+10 from abilities, +4 deep gnome dodge bonus) right at the start of the game, WITHOUT items, feats and/or spell buffs! This is amazing! Add in some buffs (bark skin, armor, protection from evil, cat's grace, etc.), expertise feat (for additional +5 AC!) and some items which giives deflection bonus to AC:you can easily have 40+ AC in the very early stages of the game! You can send the monk to melee without fear of gettign killed, while all other characters stay at the back and pelt the enemies with ranged attacks and spells. Most of the enemies can not hit the gnome unless they roll a natural 20! Deep gnomes also can cast Mirror Image/Blur and Invisibiliy, and they have spell resistance, excellent saving throws, which really enhances their tanking abilities, they are tough nuts to crack!

 

Both powergaming party guides available on the net (Jukka's and egervari's) include a character with barbarian levels. I personally think they could get better ones without. Seems like they also thought that bonus strength for rage stacks.

But if you you aren't extremely powergaming barbarian levels can make sense.
A barbarian3/fighter x is better than a pure fighter since you run out of good feats to take.
A rogue scout benefits from the higher speed.
Damage reduction doesn't hurt either. A pure barbarian is better in the defense than a pure fighter.

 

I'm a pretty green player myself but I thought I'd put in a brief comment.

As has been often noted, focus your attacks on one enemy at a time - usually the most powerful. Gang up on 'em. The exception for me is when there are spellcasters toward the back - then I have my ranged weapons/spellcasters hit them while the melee fighter work their way through the frontliners.

Mass damage spells, in my experience, don't kill all the enemies, but they can soften them up enough that one more hit will finish them. And it's fun to watch them burst into flame!

Letting the AI run the combat sometimes doesn't work well, so either pause a lot manually, to check yours and the enemies' status, or have the game options set to pause automatically at different points during combat.

On the other hand, it's kind of fun to just go in swinging. I have to admit part of why I like the game is the chance to kill things, and just sitting back to watch that happen can be fun.

 

Well your party is close to what mine was, so I think you have plenty of firepower. I very rarely rested and almost never used buffs (I prefer to have my mages cast destructive spells and my clerics to heal).

You need to control your party -- don't let the computer decide who you are attacking. Use pause often. It also helps to send a hidden/invisible scout to evaluate the enemies.

Prioritize your targets:
1. Bosses (there aren't very many of these).
2. Spellcasters -- equip your fighter with a bow and have your R/R and fighter target separate spellcasters. The R/R may be able to sneak ahead and attack the spellcasters as the rest of the party engages.
3. Everyone else.
4. Always concentrate on a wounded target. A nearly dead opponent hits just as hard as a barely wounded opponent. Concentrating on the nearly dead guy makes him dead fast -- dead guys can't hit back.

It is important to focus your attacks on one or two enemies at a time (the only exception being multiple spellcasters -- you want to hit them every round if possible).

Choose your weapons carefully. Generally, go for the biggest bang but look carefully at the extra abilities the weapons offer. There are a couple of weapons (a short sword and dagger I believe) totally ignore your opponents armor -- these are perfect for your dual welding rogue/ranger.

 

Good stuff, T2bruno.

I always turn off the party AI. I want to micromanage my party in combat. And I pause often in battle.


I'm not sure that I completely agree with your prioritization. Bosses, for example. The degree to which I completely focus my entire party on a boss, depends on how immediately dangerous he is and how dangerous any minions present might be. It's very much of a judgement call.

For example, Guthma is technically a "boss", but I tend to find the spellcasters in the same room to be more of a threat to the party than Guthma. So in that battle I only use one or two tanks to keep Guthma busy while the rest of my party focuses on wiping out his mage friends.


Spellcasters tend to be at the top of my priority food chain, since their spellcasting abilities tend to be the biggest threat to my party.

I used to be a strictly 1 or 2 targets sort of player, but in battles where I'm having to hold my formation against a serious mob of monsters, I tend to worry more about holding formation, and using my mage and archer (if he's not in the melee wall) to try to pick off any of the near death enemies or to attack enemy mages or archers who are out of reach of my tanks in the melee wall.


I also agree that choosing your weapons wisely helps. It's good to have both an edged and a blunt weapon in your inventory, to deal with all potential foes.

 

Same here.

 

Crucis says:

Good point, formation is also very important, especially as the game progresses. On the other hand, very strong fighters against weak massed foes can do a lot of damage when they let themselves be surrounded by enemy and just lay about themselves. The cleave feat is a debated topic, but I've found it does work in that situation.

Bottom line, think tactics.

 

Revmaf says:

I don't like letting any of my characters get surrounded like that. Holding formation is perhaps the number one item in my IWD/BG "tactical manual". I don't like letting enemies get thru my melee wall to engage my mage in melee.

Even in the battle against the Hook Horrors where you constantly attacked from both the front and rear, I pay careful attention to maintaining a melee wall both front and rear to protect my mage, even if those melee walls require my rogue, cleric, ranger, or whatever. (Of course, in those battles, I also use summoned monsters, front and back, as decoys to sucker the HH's into attacking the decoys, rather than my thin melee walls., while my spellcasters nuke away.)

IIRC, the closest I come to losing formation in any IWD2 battle is in the Shaengarne Bridge area battle. After blasting thru the first enemy force, I tend to rush the bridge, while using a pair of characters, supported by a summons or 2, as rearguards.

My experience with my IWD or BG2 parties is that when I lose my formations in larger battles, the risk of being defeated in detail rises immensely.

I almost always use the staggered 2 by 2 formation when walking. And depending on the risk of an attack from the rear, I will place my primary mage in either the #4 or #5 slot. When my party has a pair of scouts (usually some sort of rogue MC and a ranger), I often put them in the #5 and #6 slots so that a) I can use the hot key for selecting the 5/6 slots together, b) I can use them as my rearguard, and c) I can keep them together as a team for their "recon in force" scouting duties. It just makes my micromanagement a tad easier, but it also gives me a reasonably potent rearguard. I've had a lot of fun using a rogue MC and a ranger mini-team for my recon in force duties.