Tweaking My Party

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Greetings All,

I am no novice to D&D or 3E. I have played (some more then others) IWD/IWD2, BG/BG2, PS:T, and NWN. I have never played PnP however, and most of the previous games I have played walk you through a lot of the process of character creation and advancement. ToEE does not hold your hand as I'm sure you all are aware. I am not good with the math or the rules, but I do have a formula that works really well in IWD II and I would like to translate it somewhat to ToEE. Please advise me in any way you can on making these characters more fit for this game.

The area I'm mostly unsure about is the feats, because a lot of the feats I took/am taking in IWD II don't work exactly the same or as effectively in ToEE, or atleast, thats what I'd assume.

Basically my normal (6 member) party would go like this:

Human Fighter 4/Paladin X (Diplomat)
Feats: Power Attack, Cleave, Longswords, Greatswords (?)

Dwarf Fighter 4/Barbarian X
Feats: Power Attack, Cleave, Axes, Hammers

Human Cleric
Domains: Sun, Healing
Feats: Combat Casting, Spell Focus Abjuration (?)

Human Ranger 6/Rogue X (Archer Primary, Sneak Attack secondary)
Feats: Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, Dodge

Human Sorcerer (Main Bombardier)
Feats: Evoc 2, Combat Casting

Human Wizard (Backup caster, non-evoc spellcaster)
Feats: ?

So obviously I have to ditch one of these characters. The wizard is the character of this group I don’t really care too much about, I mean, he’s useful, but if I’m goona fill a character in with an NPC, the wizzie is the one I’m most apt to do so with. If I did this I would just get Spugnoir to fill that spot. However, looking at his stats, I know I could build a far superior wizard with 18int, better feats/ect. I’ve heard Elmo is great, so I could always supplement the Barbarian with him… but the pally/barb tag team is kinda special to me

What do you guys think?

 

Jatsu, your experience matches mine exactly!

My main concern for your party is the level ten cap. In IWD2, tagging on an extra four fighter levels was relatively cheap. Not so in ToEE. You might be better off taking a pure paladin with a pure fighter (or pure barbarian to get the damage reduction at level 10) rather than mixing fighter levels into your paladin and barbarian.

Same with your rogue-ranger - I'm not sure that he'll have enough power by level ten to have a serious impact. He's the one you can most afford to drop from the roster. If you crave archery power, give your wizard/sorcerer the Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot feats - without those two, your odds of hitting anything is nigh-on nil. Or make a rogue-fighter, but spend the fighter feats on archery skills - you'll save levels, and still be able to wear heavy armor.

You shouldn't drop the wizard for Spugnoir, because you'll need someone to create magical items, and NPCs never pick the item creation feats. Your melee guys will be very dependent upon the loyal spellcasters that sacrifice their precious XP to equip the troops. That's one very significant difference from IWD2 - mid-to-late game, there's very little spectacular magical equipment to find, so you'll have to mint your own. There's nothing quite like giving your frontline fighters Gauntlets of Strength +6 and Amulets of Health +6 with +3 weapons.

I wouldn't recommend taking the Healing domain unless you're playing an evil cleric. Thanks to spontaneous casting, good clerics have all the healing spells they need. I'm partial to Law and Destruction (for my Lawful Good cleric, of course!), but the other domains are good, too. Healing is maybe the worst, utility-wise. Actually, you might even want to replace the cleric with a druid - you still get healing spells, you get better offensive magic, and you get a VERY useful animal companion. I had a Barbarian 1 / Druid x that shredded all in her path (with her dire chicken's help).

Anyway, that's my advice. Enjoy! And make sure you install the latest patches and the Circle of Eight enhancements!

 

I’ve decided to listen to all the advice and drop the rogue. So instead I’d either make an elf-dex-fighter-archer, or make the cleric an elf of Correllon with archery feats. For Item Creation I was told the cleric would be a good character for that, I mean, in my experience wizards eat up a lot more feats the clerics do, what do you guys think? Of course, if I took archery feats with the cleric I might not be able to also take Item Creation. Hmmm.. what if I drop the Sorcerer, take a Druid for crafting, but also craft some with the wizard and cleric, the cleric being the archer as well…?

Below I organized all the viable options for each character. The pally and barb are pretty open and undecided, whereas with the cleric I’m weighing what to specialize in.

Paladin
Vanilla Fighter
Vanilla Paladin
Fighter 2/Paladin 8
Paladin 2/Fighter 8

Barbarian
Dwarf or Half-Orc?
Vanilla Fighter
Vanilla Barbarian
Fighter 2/Barbarian 8
Barbarian 2/Fighter 8

Fighter
Elf Archer

Cleric (Good, War)
Item Creation
Elf Correllon Archer Cleric

Sorcerer

Wizard

Druid

Asside from the various builds of each character, the possible parties look like this:

Paladin, Barbarian, Archer-Cleric, Druid, Wizard
Paladin, Barbarian, Archer-Cleric, Sorcerer, Wizard
Paladin, Barbarian, Archer-Fighter, Cleric, Druid + Spugnoir (only takes scrolls, takes Item Creation feats on his own)
Paladin, Barbarian, Archer-Fighter, Cleric, Sorcerer + Spugnoir

I’m totally ADDed out right now, got a million things running through my head, so if anyone has any advice or renditions on these combos and what not, please do tell!!

 

I wouldn't take an Elf cleric since they IIRC can't have Pelor (spelling?) as deity, which gives you the greater turning feat for free, which is a life saver in some parts of the game.

 

As long as you take the Sun domain, you get the greater turning feat. And elves can choose to worship Pelor, but you don't have to to get the Sun domain. I like Ehlonna personally .

 

I went with single classes for all my pcs. With only ten levels to work with, it doesn't allow for much creativity. My party consisted of:

Human Paladin of Heironeous

Human Cleric of Pelor

Dwarf Fighter

Halfling Rogue

Human Wizard

My halfling rogue was a great sniper!! He was deadly after Fernok had an unfortunate accident in the Deklo grove and my rogue found his ring o' invisibility...

 

Reliable:

A charismatic human paladin (the spokesperson)
A tough dwarven cleric (the healer)
A huge half-orc barbarian (the tank)
A tiny halfling rogue (the thief)
A slim elven wizard (the mage)