Storm of Zehir party ideas

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I'm looking for nice soz party ideas. I would love to have bard and a thief as companions and I would like to do run without cohorts and with ECL penalties. I would also love to do three od two person party run.
I just don't know how to mix in bard and thief in the mix.

What is best companion to bard/thief multiclass?

I had in mind pure bard human, paladin/cleric aasmiar , and wizard/thief moon elf?

 

Sounds good. Note that many skills (like Survival, for example) are much more useful in Storm of Zehir. Variety is key, and ideally you should have a 3-4 person party.

That wizard/thief would make a great arcane trickster. This character is ideal for handling your rogue (open lock/search/disarm traps) needs and overland map (spot/listen/hide/move silently) needs, and it's basically a wizard too. Finally, this character would make a great crafter - it would probably be best to make this guy a generalist mage so you don't miss anything. Make sure his intelligence is as high as you can make it.

Bards are always good in NWN2, especially ones as close to pure as possible. Make sure to pick skills that complement your wizard/thief/AT like Appraise, Bluff, Diplomacy, etc. With buffs, good armor/shield, decent dex, Improved Expertise and the AC Inspiration bards can become near-unhittable in NWN2, and by switching to a BAB Inspiration/Improved Power Attack/offensive songs/debuffing spells/Taunt they also make dangerous melee fighters.

Paladin/cleric is decent. Note that clerics are already more of a martial class in NWN2 though (especially with a prestige class like Warpriest) while paladins already have enough cleric in them (good spell progression, excellent feats). It might be best to just stick to cleric as much as possible.

Ideally you'll want someone with full BAB progression for Legionnaire's march. Ranger might be ideal for your group, potentially giving you an extra ranged attacker. That way your wizard/thief can focus mostly on spellcasting/crafting/rogue skills while your Ranger takes care of hide/move silently/spot/listen/survival. You get a free animal companion out of the deal, too.
If you plan on sticking to just three people, you might want to make your paladin/cleric a pure paladin. Your bard can just pick mostly healing/support spells and focus on defensive buffs/inspirations.

 

A cleric can also at times become full BAB for Legionaire's March with the Divine Power spell.

 

What did you choose in the end, Cecily?

I recently tried to start SoZ with a dwarven F/DD/WM, but then got hit with the option to create 3 more party members, so now I'm back to the game I had ongoing in the OC. Having to think up builds for so many characters is a bit daunting to me, especially in the 3.5e system.

 

It's been a while, but I think I choose bard, wizard/thief and paladin/cleric and gave up after some time.

 

TBH, my old computer can't run the game anymore, while my new laptop doesn't have the requirements.

Beren, I don't like your party, but it does sound super powerful.

 

Interesting builds, Beren. The explanations help a lot as well to understand why you've chosen something (or not)

The Favored Soul / Paladin / Stormlord build is fairly similar to the character I have running through the OC, though that one trades some FS levels and the Divine Champion part for Weapon Master. I'm not sure my build would be stronger or not than yours, the Weapon Specialisation you get at FS lvl 12 would make up for the extra crit range and multiplier, perhaps. But I do have a bit of fondness for the WM class, stemming from the original NWN.

I may reconsider some feat and skill choices based on your build, though.

Does the parrying for the swashbuckler build really work that well, though? I thought I read that it doesn't work as it should.

I was also wondering why one would take only a single cleric level for a warlock build, but I see now that you do that for the extra feats.

And are ranged weapons really viable in NWN2? They always seemed quite useless in NWN, though I suppose that was in part because it would always be your own character drawing the attention of enemies as the followers did only that: following.

For a future SoZ run, I was already thinking up some builds (which was always half the fun for me in NWN), and was thinking of a Favored Soul / Bard / RDD / Stormlord, which is probably cheesy as hell, but I couldn't not make a build with two elemental immunities.

Also a Gray Orc Cleric / Doomguide / Warpriest, possibly sprinkled with maybe 4 levels of figther or divine champion for the extra feats and BAB. Gray Orc is possibly not the 100% best choice for this kind of build for the -2 CHA penalty which hurts the loads of turning you'd get, but I do like the idea of a gray orc with lots of cleric related classes thematically.

 

Crafting makes bows really powerful in NWN2. I usually keep Neeshka as a ranged character for most of early-mid game because a holy shortbow (2d6 extra damage against evil creatures) is just nasty on her. You can easily make one or two holy weapons early on depending on loot RNG - several containers can give you diamonds, but you can get at least two guaranteed diamonds as soon as you reach Neverwinter IIRC from merchants.
I remember you can get a good shortbow (duskwood was it?) from the Smuggler's Warehouse if you side with the guards. Gannayev-of-Dreams from MotB is no slouch either thanks to Owl's Insight + Zen Archery.

Parrying works well especially against enemies with a low number of very powerful attacks, which seems to be a recurring theme among various big bads in the game. It gets less effective against multiple enemies or enemies with too many attacks, but against those you should be on the offensive anyway (quantity vs quality thing).

A single cleric level gives you access to two domain bonuses and also opens up the possibility of getting specific feats like Divine Might or Divine Shield, so it's one of the single level favorites along with Shadowdancer (Hide in Plain Sight at first level).

 

Haven't looked at your vids yet, but does he do much damage when parrying? From what I gather, the counter attack requires a higher roll, and I can imagine that at lower levels you would just stand there, maybe not taking much damage, but not doing much damage either.

I'm a bit fuzzy still on the crafting mechanic, but it seems to me that none of your party members have any crafting skill. Do you have NPCs that do the crafting, or do you let someone else do that for you?

 

Crafting in NWN2 covers two distinct activities - basic crafting (eg, using mithral ingots to create a shield or duskwood planks to create a bow) and enchanting (giving that mithral shield a +x property, making that duskwood bow do extra elemental damage).

To perform basic crafting you need ranks in the appropriate skill (eg. craft alchemy/armor/weapon). To perform enchanting you need the appropriate feats (eg. craft magical arms and armor, craft wand), spells and depending on game rules possibly a few other material components.

 

I've been playing around with it, and I guess the campaign (at least the OC) is aiming towards crafting, as the enchanted weapons seem quite expensive, and it'd be much cheaper to enchant it yourself. At the cost of having to spend skill points (potentially not a big issue, if your build doesn't need / have many useful skills) you can create the base weapons, but having to spend a feat for enchanting feels a bit cripling.

By now I think I have enough build ideas that I could make a nice party for SoZ, though I'm still working out the little details of each build, as I need to have it all written down before I start. Too many variables to make a build and to remember it by heart. 2e this is not.

In reading up (I think I understand a bit better now how the swashie would hold in battle, though just being the dedicated tank and not doing much damage is not something I'd normally build for), I came across something a bit confusing about light blindness:

It seems to imply that the light blindness / sensitivity is applied when it shouldn't be (at night or indoors), but only to the stat sheet, not in the actual gameplay. So does that mean that these triats don't actually do anything, and that the feat to counter this one is thus also useless?

Just wondering if I'd need that feat for my gray orc build or not.

 

Enchanting is definitely worth it especially for classes like the wizard which gains bonus feats. The sheer number of feats may seem overwhelming at first but due to the way the game works, builds tend to gravitate towards certain feats and usually only melee/ranged combat-heavy multi-prestige builds are feat-starved. Which is fine since these builds lack basic enchanting requirements anyway.

The general consensus is that crafted items can actually be gamebreaking at lower difficulties and in MotB, so you'll need to reign in your inner powergamer there.

NWN2 follows a different meta compared to BG2. Survivability is much more important in NWN2, for example, because you can always just stick a good weapon or the right spell on a character and they'll be able to kill just about anything in the OC/expansions. A good character with sky-high AC (or good AC plus various other defensive means, like Beren's swashie) and which can switch to an offensive setup when required is much more valuable.
Combat readiness is also more important in NWN2 because many effects lack reliable counters - there is no complex breach spells versus defensive spells meta in NWN2, for example. Ideally you want your characters to be able to perform their various roles at a moment's notice since if you want to stop a caster from shutting down your characters the best thing you can do it is gang up on that caster ASAP.
This is one of the reasons why the Frenzied Berserker prestige class is considered very powerful - just activate frenzy->smash things.

A single AB/saves/skill point is not going to make or break your character in the OC/expansions, and is definitely not worth a feat point on a class that just about specializes in buffs. Also, consider that the feat leads to nowhere (Weapon Focus opens up feats Power Critical or Weapon Specialization for fighters, at least).
I'd only take the feat for flavor or if I run out of other nice things to get.

 

Thanks for the clarification on crafting, but can you create a party in MotB like you can in SoZ? Otherwise, you'd be hosed for enchanting if you have a non-caster as your PC, it seems to me.

I haven't gotten far enough yet to get a good idea about what builds will do well in the campaigns, but in general I prefer straight melee builds, just because they require little management. Just point and click, as it were. This worked pretty well in NWN, so I'm expecting they'll do pretty well in NWN2 as well. Can't remember ever needing to worry too much about AC in NWN, though, just getting those belt with various DR was my usual strategy.

I think I'll take your advice and ignore the light sensitivity feat for now.

It's interesting that there appear to be quite a few classes that have feats that allow weapon's damage or AC from INT, though none of the classes would normally find INT very useful. Like the Swashbuckler build by Beren, which seems (at least partially) laid out to make optimum use of the INT bonuses (I didn't know Insightful Strike and Combat Insight stacked, that's interesting), though effectively it's only a +3 bonus each time, because the build maximises DEX instead (for two-weapon fighting and parry, I suppose).

On Beren's Swashie-build, it goes for two-weapon fighting, but at least the precise strike duelist ability doesn't work with anything in the off-hand. This at first led me to believe that none of the duelist abilities worked with anything in the off-hand, but I'm guessing they are only affected by carrying a shield in the off-hand rather than dual wielding?

 

MotB is a high level campaign though so you'll have a nice selection of high level NPCs to choose from/give crafting feats to. I suppose it's only a real issue if you solo. Safiya, in particular, just about specializes in crafting.

Beren's swashie is something of a skill monkey turned competent fighter (and vice versa) so INT was always going to be part of the build. Ideally those feats are more useful for wizard/swashbuckler/eldritch knight spellsword variants, but that kind of character has a completely different role.
While an argument could be made for wizard skill monkey variants, these tend to favor DEX and ranged touch attacks, especially the "Orb of X" spell variants which ignore saves/spell resistance. They also favor being sneaky (eg. Arcane Trickster gets Impromptu Sneak attacks) over being tanky or simply standing out.

Duelist skills can work with any number of setups, the restrictions vary from skill to skill. Flourish can work with spears, for example.

 

It does fit the party role quite well, and someone to handle the traps and locks is definitely handy to have around. Going wizard / rogue / arcane trickster would seem like a more logical choice for a skill monkey to me, but I can see how the swashie can easily double as a competent tank, which the wizard / AT would not be able to do so easily.

It's what makes creating a build in NWN 2 so interesting, I suppose. So many different ways to go about it, each with a different specialism.

 

A question, @Beren. Is the necromancer specialisation the update that you're talking about in the text? I see necromancer everywhere, but when you explain why you chose your specialisation, you're referring to an illusionist, instead. In the OC part of the guide, at least.

And another question on your warlock build for SoZ. You choose three feats to raise her DC for her invocations, but does that matter a lot for a warlock? Without having played one, I don't really have a way to tell, except that it seems a lot of feats for a rather small bonus.

The description for the Imbue Item feat for a warlock says that if you fail once at enchanting an item (failing the DC / UMD check), you can only try do that enchantment again after you level up the next time. Does that come up often? It seems like it would be kind of annoying if you're trying to enchant something and then have to wait x amount of time until you've gained another level before trying again (which only adds +2 to the DC check, if I'm not mistaken, so there's a chance that you'll fail again).