Starting party with no intent to multi class

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What would you choose?
I would like a monk, druid, cleric, rogue, bard, [sorcerer or wizard(specialist of choice)]
Also does multiple race have any quest advantages or just favoured class. Been ages since I last played this.

 

Your party is playable. Pure classes are more fun to play anyway.

I would choose the sorcerer because you don't have to find scrolls in order to cast the important spells.
Specialist mages are always lacking some important spells, if you want a specialist I'd choose transmuter although they can't cast stoneskin or finger of death.
You can get 5 extra HP with a transmuter with high enough alchemy skills in chapter4.

I don`t know any racial special quests, but dialogues can be different.

 

If i would play with pureclasses I would probably have:
Deep Gnome Monk
Shield Dwarf cleric
Half-orc, halfling or almost any cool race Druid
drow wiz
drow or aasimar sorc
extra char (maybe bard)

BUT!!!
Planning multiclasses to make the party better is much funnier than plain chars. Every character can then be made to be really fun to play with and they bet better!!

By adding a fighter-type lvl to the cleric and druid they become better since they then can use the best weapon you have at any given time. When they have 20-lvls as casters some extra fighter-lvls can give them Weapon Specialization without too much sacrifice to spellcasting abilities.

By changing the DG monk into a DG monk1/rogue1/paladin1/illusionistX and maybe add some more classes you get better AC and a lot of magic to the cost of some melee-power. This makes him much more fun to play.

Giving the wizard a rogue-lvl to start with makes you able to maximize skills and gives a lot of starting skillpoints. A level of monk or a second lvl rogue gives evation and, due to a but in the game, a lvl of monk, cleric or sorc gives the ability to cast any spell to a specialist wiz. This won't sacrifice spell-casting abilities since you haven't been able to get new scrolls at the new levels with a pure wiz.

The sorc gets much better saves by taking a paladin level, but this makes him a worse talker.

A bard is not as good as a Bard11/Sorc19.

The Sorc is the only player that won't get much better with multiclassing. All others will improve and are also more fun to play with!

 

I would be tempted to develop a certain kind of universal tactic in the use of magic. That means, for example, the ability to cast area damage spells concentrically. I did this with two sorceresses and a morninglord the first time I played. You could also use a druid and/or a wizard, as well. Just no more than one wizard or you're going to be in trouble scroll-wise.

If you get two clerics, two sorcerers, a rogue and a proper tank, you should be more or less invincible. This is because two sorcerers provide almost the versatility of one wizard spell-range-wise, while much, much more firepower, while two clerics offer more than enough healing, so you can concentrate on buffs, summoning and the like. A well-buffed cleric can outdo a fighter in melee. Two clerics can buff up the whole party to insane levels, together with sorcerers. Imagine two sorcerers with Stoneskin and Improved Invisibility. Because of their number of spells per day, you should be able to have your whole party stoneskined or invisible as soon as the sorcerers get level 4 spells. Next level, next of the two. Sorcerers are very good for individual buffs like Bull's Strength or Cat's Grace, as are good clerics (because they don't need to memorise healing spells).

In order to avoid sameness, if you have a problem with it, you can make one of your clerics a proper tank (once buffed) and the other one more of a caster type. You could also vary your sorcerers a bit.

Well, but maybe you want some classic gaming fun rather than powergaming fun, so... in a big party, you need a healer, a mage, a rogue and tanks. In any proportion you like, although you normally need at least one. It's not an absolute need, though, so you can experiment.

 

I like your proposed party as is. I would go along with the suggestion of the DG monk. He will make a great decoy with his inate mirror image and blur. With a great decoy, tanking is not always needed. Just make sue the cleric, rogue, druid and bard have a decent array of weapons for the big fights. With proper feats, your rogue will have the most kills by sneak attacking. And the cleric and druid can summon plenty of upfront meat cannons.
Since multiclassing penalties won't apply, why not have a variety of races. Why not a halforc druid with 20 STR, you can always add WIS through level ups. Or a halfling socerer, who slings when her spells run low.

 

I wouldn't bother with 2 sorcerers, Chevalier. Too boring. If I wanted 2 mages, I'd take 1 sorc as the pure nuker and one generalist wizard or specialist wizard to be the jack of all trades mage who can cover the spellbook holes that sorcs always have by their nature.

A 2nd sorc seems so boring. But a specialist mage can actually force you to be a little more inventive in your spell choices. I once played a conjurer as a secondary mage (to a sorc). And I had her take about 45% summoning spells and 45% attack spells (mostly the gaseous cloud attack spells), with the remainder for self buffing. She was a surprisingly interesting and effective backup mage.

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Mad Haggis, some people prefer pure class, others multiclass. I'm marginally in the pure class camp, but will build some multiclass characters. That said, I never take more than 2 classes. I'm against taking a bunch of different classes, simply to skim off the 1st level benefits of those classes. It seems very much against the spirit of the game.

 

How so?

 

^Yes, how so?

It is really like powergaming though, gaining a ranger level for dual-wielding, or fighter level for weapon/armor proficiencies, or 4 fighter levels for weapon specialisation, or one single cleric level for a specialist mage to be able to learn his banned schools as normal, etc. etc. It seems like evil multi-power classing, but they are all legal. As far as 3E rules go, that is.

 

While I agree, I kinda think for this game, powergaming *is* the spirit of the game.

 

No, I don't think that powergaming is the spirit of the game. D&D is a ROLE playing game and IWD2 is a computer ROLE playing game. Now, I fully admit that the designs of IWD1 and IWD2 are hardly about roleplaying, but the fact remains that they are still at their core base on a ROLE playing game system. Thus, powergaming is the antithesis of roleplaying.

In pencil and paper D&D, this probably isn't much of an issue because DM's would certainly monitor their players to damp down any powergaming impulses.

However, CRPG's often tend to be different. They largely depend on the intent and will of the designers. The game engine is in the position to play the role of DM for the CRPG player. So, do designers only have the game engine apply the raw rules of the game system or do they also put in a layer of DM'ing intelligence into the game engine to enforce a degree of roleplaying sanity into various player decisions? Using only the raw rules without any DM-ing ends up promoting or at least condoning powergaming, by not providing a "spirit of the game and the rules" conscience to the game.


This is why simply taking a level of this and a level of that and so on to simply cherry pick the 1st level abilities of various classes is against the spirit of the game.

 

I love the RP-part of my super-multiclass decoy!
Raised by a monk-mother but having more luck as a thief so she took the easy way out. At least until she met my evil mage in my party. Now she learns a bit from every other in the party. She tried to learn how to fight, but gave that up since she's too weak. She tried, after some talk with good party members, the paladin way but also there noticed that her strength is not enough and that the totally good way isn't always the best way. She will later on get inspired by the cleric and after that want to try the life of a ranger, but notice that she fits best as a mage. Also my evil mage, who happens to be an enchanter (who loves every control-spell), has at least some influence on her choice...

 

^That is cool Mudde, can you say what levels that char actually has?

 

Wierd, I think IWD2 is the most powergamin'est powergame to ever be powergamed, and I'm not even a powergamer.

I think the designers of the 3x editions deliberately made multiclassing, "cherry picking" and (although absent from IWD2) prestige classes a juicy possibility quite on purpose. Its fun.

Fun = spirit of the game

 

No "fun" is NOT the the game. Fun is the spirit of gamING. But the spirit of any particularly game is in the background environment. The spirit of D&D is roleplaying in a swords and sorcery fantasy environment. But the fact is that in any game-mastereded roleplaying game, the GM is the guardian of the spirit of the game. Players will always try to do their utmost to skirt the rules to their own advantage, but it is the GM's role to see that the rules lawyers do not break the spirit of the game and the story that they are trying to tell.

 

I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

ArtEchoke, have you never played a real, non-computer gamemastered RPG?

 

@Silverstar
For now she's a Rogue1/monk1/paladin2/Fighter1/illusionist11 and will soon take fighter2, ranger1 and more illusionist to get better spells. Somewhere in HOF it's probably the right time for her to get influenced by my cleric and as lvl29 she will be inspired enough of my sorc to try that profession, but it won't give her anything. The sorc will be angry on her for not concentrating on her own skills and just trying to do as everyone else, so she'll take her last level as illusionist showing that she's back on the right track.

 

Well, yes (my geek cred: played D&D "Basic" in 1978 - AD&D, Gamma World, Call of Cthulhu, currently play a 3.5 edition session on Sunday nights with a group I met on this website), but that doesn't explain how or why multiclassing is somehow bending/breaking the rules, or violating the intent of the designers. Its not like you're hacking the game for it.

Truth be told, I played through IWD2 the first time with a Cleric, Fighter, Sorceress and Rogue (yes pure Rogue), it was fun, but I don't see how its any more "legit" than using any of the funky multi-classing combinations that people come up with.

 

@crucis: My party was a paladin (talker, tank, backup healer), dwarven fighter pure class (frontline pwnz0r), ranger/rogue (who did all the rogue job and was much better than a rogue combat-wise but delivered ridiculous damage for his huge hitting ratio and his own impressive HP), cleric (backup fighter and artillery, sometimes summoner or healer), two sorceresses (pure artillery plus artillery/transmutation geek). No min-maxing stats and pure pwnage.

 

@crucis
I love the strategic aspect of D&D-games. I usially have too many ideas of how a character should be so I usually first decide some guidelines of her life like major class and evil/good and then I create a char that is as powergamish as possible as long as I can find a reason for every step. I would not give levels in everything just for powergaming, but multiclassing heroes just make them less stereotype.