This game is very hard.

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I'm a veteran of BG, BG2, NWN, NWN2, and even IWD, and this game is just destroying me at every turn. I managed to slog through the Shaengarde Bridge battle with some difficulty, but it was a very narrow thing.

Turns out I ain't seen nothing yet. Just about every encounter in the field outside the Goblin Fortress is a life-or-death struggle. My main problem is that most enemies have gone from a +3 to +5 attack bonus at Shaengarde to a +9 to +10 attack bonus at the area outside the fortress (the one with the bridges and drums). Even the standard orc archers suddenly have massive modifiers, and I'm still wearing the same armor I was using at the Palisade. All of my characters (except the wizard) have an AC of 18-19, except the rogue, who has 21 once buffed with cat's grace. I was fairly wealthy after the Shaengarde fight, so I checked back in Targos for new equipment, but the general store doesn't have anything better than splint mail, and the lord's wife was only selling a single ring of +1 deflection.

My buff regimen is fairly simple: Bull's Strength on both Fighters, Cat's Grace on the Ranger and Rogue, Bless on everyone, 2 hastes on the fighters as needed.

My wizard has a couple of paralyzing chromatic orbs memorized, but at level 5, I can only cast one or two of anything before I need to rest. Also, I've yet to find a scroll of Fireball for him to scribe.

Any tips or suggestions? I feel like I'm definitely doing something wrong here.

 

I actually find the first parts of the game much tougher than the later parts. You are extremely limited in what your magic allows you to do, you dont have much HP so you die easily, and dont have good equipment. Later on it gets easier, as your characters get more into the swing of things.

The horde fortress is difficult, not much else to be said. It gets a little easier when you get some powerful area of effect spells like fireball.

What characters are you using?

Cast cats grace on your fighters too, so that their AC improves. Although that depends on what armor they are wearing. Do you have any castings of Mage armor? That can help some characters, its +4 armor bonus and lasts a long time.

 

Yeah, I made sure to pack some Mage Armor with me, but it works differently than in NWN/NWN2. In those games, the armor bonus was considered an enchantment bonus, so you could cast it on someone with say, nonmagical Full Plate armor, and they would get +4 AC. I could be wrong, but in IWD2 it seems to be standard armor bonus that doesn't stack with whatever armor you're wearing, so someone in splint or half-plate doesn't get a bonus at all.

Sleep was worth its weight in gold when dealing with goblins and such, but it's no longer effective at crowd control. I assume the enemies are now too high level to be effected. Problem is that I don't really have a replacement spell to fill that function anymore. Chromatic orb does some nice stuns, but it's only one creature at a time.

My character setup is pretty simple:

2 fighters, one human and one shield dwarf (for whatever reason I never get much use out of paladins or barbarians; paladin abilities seem of limited use, and I don't like the fatigue effects of rage)
1 wild elf ranger (I'm a sucker for dual wielding, though she actually does quite a bit less damage than either fighter)
1 halfling rogue (just cause you have to have one)
1 human cleric (pretty useless in combat, not much STR)
1 human generalist wizard

 

There are many tactics that can help but since you've played through the BG series and IWD you should already be familiar with them. IWD2 is mainly about hack and slash and crowd control. The rules have more in common with NWN but there are major differences (character creation, sneak attacks among other things).

Try buffing more, try to draw you enemies and isolate them so you face them one at a time (or a few at a time) and never get surrounded.

Reading your post I gather that you have two fighters, a ranger, a wizard and a rogue... but no cleric? A cleric really makes the game easier so it's never a bad idea to have one to tag along.

Sorcerers don't need scrolls to learn spells and that is a huge advantage. Really, having a wizard who in theory can cast a high level spell but in practice either doesn't know a high level spell or only knows spells you don't want to cast is a real pain.

If you want some advice you should do as Proteus_za suggested and let us know about your party. The more details you give the better.

 

What are the actual sneak attack mechanics in IWD2, by the way? I never quite got the hang of them in NWN/NWN2. It always seemed a bit random whether or not a rogue was considered "behind" an enemy enough to count.

 

Sneak attack deals extra damage any time her target would be denied a Dexterity bonus to AC (whether the target actually has a Dexterity bonus or not), or when the rogue flanks her target.

Flanking is when you have two party members striking from direct opposites. Doesn't occur if just one person is behind the opponent if there is nobody to flank with.

Targets are denied dexterity when surprised, prone etc.

You may want to check any rules you are unsure of on the d20 SRD as this has information on the 3/3.5 rules for pnp most of which are the same for the 3rd edition games.

I have not analysed the mechanics thoroughly enough to say if there are extra times this happens or alternative options.

 

Ok, I've just seen your reply, not that much information but for starters it would be useful to know in which stats you put your points as that make quite a difference.

Nothing wrong with having fighters around provided they hit hard enough and don't get flanked (something that is good about the barbarian besides moving much faster than other warriors). With high STR characters it's best to use two handed weapons.

Dual wielding works well with weapon finesse and uber DEX but it won't yield that much damage. Unless you take Power Attack as well but that would mean spreading abilities quite a lot.

Don't overlook the fact that some ranged weapons (like slings and thrown weapons) add the STR modifier to the actual damage so it can be quite good with Rapid Shot.

I like rogues but you don't need a fulltime rogue in that game. Most players use a rogue/wizard multiclass with only a few rogue levels. I like having a high level rogue for sneak attacks (preferably with high STR and a long weapon) but that involves a lot of micromanaging.

The cleric should be useful, is the STR that low (even with buffs)? STR should not be a dump stat.

 

There's nothing wrong with this party, per se... although it does sound more like a 2e party than a 3e/IWD2 party.

Before I continue, I should note that I am not an uber-power-gamey 3e player. I don't do the wacky class combos, etc. I also tend to prefer more balanced (with some slight min-maxing of stats) parties. I've liked using rangers and rogues in my parties, in spite of the fact that neither class is all that powerful (or necessary).

On to your party...

There's nothing wrong having two fighters as your party's lead tanks. Personally, I tend to like having a paladin, cuz I like some of their special abilities, etc., but it's a matter of personal taste. (Heck, I played a party where the lead tank was actually a fighter with a small number of rogue levels, just so she could be a little stealthy... It was a role-playing decision...)

While I like rangers, they are rather underpowered for IWD2. (They may work fine in a more role-playing environment of p&p D&D, but in the much more heavily combat focused IWD2, it seems that much of what may make rangers good in 3e D&D doesn't translate into usefulness in IWD2.) Rangers in IWD2 seem to work best as "light fighters" ... that is, warriors having max DEX and moderate STR, tend to wear light armor (to take advantage of their high DEX), and usually tend to focus on archery and stealth, but can support the party in melee, when necessary.

Caradhras correctly points out that weapon finesse works well with dual wielding. In large part, this is because many dual wielders tend to have higher DEX values and likely less than max STR. Thus, there's a symbiotic relationship between high DEX characters, dual wielding, and weapon finesse. Unfortunately, for better or worse, 3e/IWD2 also has a couple of features that make these sorts of characters and 1H weapons generally rather weaker than 2H weapons. First of all, 2H weapons get an additional 50% bonus to damage from your STR bonus. Also, the presence of higher damage resistances (DR) on tougher monsters often tends to force characters into needing to use more powerful 2H weapons to produce enough damage to overcome those higher DR's. It's a bit of a shame, cuz one of the nice things about the older 2e games, i.e. BG1/2 and IWD1, was that you could use pretty much any types of weapons and be successful, but in IWD2, the game system produces a strong bias in favor of 2H weapons and against 1H weapons.




I like using rogues. Sometimes I've done multi-classed (either ftr/rog or ranger/rog) rogues, and sometimes I've done pure class rogues. If one does pure class rogues, I think that to get the most out of the rogue, you'd want to do a lot of Sneak Attacking.

Sneak attacking is easier than backstabbing in the 2e rules. You don't really need to attack from stealth to succeed. Once an enemy's melee-ers have engaged your tanks, just run your rogue around behind the enemy and attack them from the rear. I don't know the exact details of the process, but I think that once you attack target "A" in a round, it will be a number of rounds before you can get another sneak attack on target "A". Thus, the most effective way to get a lot of sneak attacks is to shift from one target to the next to the next. When you see that you've done SA damage to target 1, shift to the next target for another SA, and so on. It may seem like a lot of micromanaging, but I think that different people have different tolerances for so-called "micromanaging".

((I never use the computer AI to run my party. NEVER. If I wanted the computer to run the battle, I'd just watch a movie. *I* want to control my characters, not watch them be controlled by the computer. So, I don't mind needing to "micro-manage" my rogue's sneak attacks. One thing that I might do if I intend to do a bunch of sneak attacks to prevent my tanks from attacking nothing if they kill their first target, is to put them into guard mode so that they'll attack anything within reach, while the rogue is running around behind the enemy melee line, stabbing away to his heart's content.))



Clerics are one of the most powerful classes in IWD2, and are surprisingly well suited to melee. No, they probably won't be as strong as normal warrior types (at least unless you are doing some very aggressive min-maxing), but they can be solid melee combatants. Personally, I've never liked using clerics as my front line tanks, but I'd still tend to make them lean strongly towards being melee competent with respectable STR and CON stats. I think that the way I've usually looked at clerics is as spell casters, medics, and as the bodyguard to my primary mage.


Wizards: The Wizard class tends to be somewhat weaker than the Sorcerer class in IWD2, in large part due to the difficulty in finding scrolls a bit later in the game, as well as the raw power that Sorc's tend to have. This isn't to say that a party can't make due with a wizzy... just that if you're gonna have only one arcane spellcaster, sorcerers tend to be better.

 

I would think that the game should be doable with your party. I mean, people have soloed the game with barbarians and sorcerers before.

That being said, there are some differences between the way that IWD2 works, and how NWN and BG work.

First, there are 5 different types of armor bonuses. Shield, dexterity, armor, deflection and generic. Only generic ever stacks. That is to say, if you are wearing any armor at all, and you cast mage armor, it wont do anything. But, if you already had a deflection and shield bonus, mage armor would help out. In general, the best armor is either very light, or none at all. This is because of the monk wisdom bonus.

But anyway, thats late game powergamey type stuff. I gather you dont want that, you just want to play with a party that makes sense, and have fun with it. Honestly, what you have should work fine, it should get a little easier from now on, although I would say you have too few spellcasters, divine and arcane, but thats just me.

One thing you should do with your current party is investigate multi classing possibilities. For instance, you ranger could easily do with 4 levels of fighter. Not only would this provide extra feats for things like weapon focus, it would also enable you to take weapon specialization for +2 to damage with a certain weapon. Give your cleric one monk level, and she gains evasion (which she needs high dex to use) and a bonus to her AC equal to her wisdom modifier. The best part is that you can still cast spells like mage armor, you just cant wear regular armor. Well, you can, but you lose that wisdom bonus to AC.

Does your rogue have high intellgence? Give him a few levels of wizard, he'll be able to share the load with your regular wizard. Alternatively, give him a few levels of fighter to make him a more effective warrior while still being the rogue.

Just be sure you dont run into any multiclassing experience penalties.

 

Agreed that the Horde Fortress is probably the most difficult part of the game. Those crazy warg riders have a +10 attack bonus, and they like to spawn right behind you. In the early game, I think the important part is not so much the class/level combos you choose (although having a deep gnome in the party can be really nice), it's your tactics and choice of weapons. In particular, Rapid Shot is a lifesaver. Even if you don't have a tank or decoy in the traditional sense (i.e. super-high AC that enemies can hit only on a 20), you can get most of the monsters to focus on one of your guys who runs around distracting the monsters while everybody else focuses on one monster at a time to kill it. Also, slings are better than bows for high-strength characters.

Not to mention the tactic of sneaking luring the enemy in one at a time into a prepared position, using the decoy, while everybody else is set up to start pelting each enemy with rocks as soon as he gets in range. That way you often don't have to fight a whole group of monsters all at once, just one or two at a time, so you take less damage.

Later on, enemies also start dropping healing potions more frequently, and I don't think the Horde Fortress orcs do, which is yet another way that's the hardest part of the game.

-Max

 

I'd have to say that in unmodded IWD2, taking 4 levels of fighter for a ranger is nearly a given, unless you really, really care about maxing out those ranger spells at higher levels. In the Light of Selune mod, it might be arguable that the value of keeping a ranger pure might be improved.

Personally, I'm not particularly fond of this monk-cleric mix-in. It always seemed like 3e-cheese to me. That aside, given that you can get some heavy armors with up to 8-10 AC, the monk WIS bonus to AC never seems much to write home about unless you intentionally design the cleric from the start to have a high DEX as well. At that point, you will probably have a "cleric" with a pretty decent AC when you combine DEX and WIS bonuses to AC. And for a behind the lines type of casting-heavy/ranged attacks cleric, it might not be a bad combo.

Personally, I tend to lean towards more traditional moderate STR/CON, low DEX clerics that wear heavy armor and can handle themselves in melee at need. Of course, I don't particularly like doing class mix-ins on my spellcasters in the first place.

I think that you have to give a rogue more than a mere "few levels" if he's going to be able to share the spellcasting load... A "few" levels would be more like giving a rogue some ninja-like "magic" capabilities. (This can actually be an amusing concept with a little bit of imagination in one's spell choices.)

Also, I'm not completely sure that I'd say that doing a few levels of fighter necessarily makes the rogue a more effective warrior. Oh, you'll get some extra HP, and if you were to take 4 ftr levels, you'd be able to take weapon specialization (and +1 more BAB). OTOH, for those 4 levels, you'd be losing 2 sneak attack dice. Of course, it would entirely depend on how you want to use the rogue in the first place. If you don't care about sneak attacking, then a fighter-rogue or a ranger-rogue multi-class combo would be a very respectable secondary warrior. But if you want to be serious about sneak attacking and other rogue abilities, you'd probably want to stay as a pure rogue. Either path is equally viable.

Ranger-rogue can be a nice combo because you'd get the free dual wielding, you'd get the ability to take some Wilderness Lore for the Fell Wood which would be good if you didn't have another ranger or druid. You also don't lose out too badly on rogue skills, since you can focus on stealth and search skills when you take ranger levels, and the other skills when you take rogue levels.

Oh the whole, fighter-rogue is probably a little bit better warrior than ranger-rogue, while ranger-rogue preserves your rogue's skill set fairly well, and adds in some wilderness lore, which can be slightly useful.

 

Definitely don't multiclass the cleric and mage. For special advise about how to develope your party we need the character stats and alignments.

Have your cleric cast bull's strength at more characters. When he reaches level 3 he can cast "animate dead" which will make the game far easier.
Another great spell is "magic circle against evil". It grants a +2 deflection AC for the whole party.
The "protection from arrows" spell should make you immune to enemy archers.

There's also the option to decrease the game difficulty if you want an easier game.

 

He needs to reach level 5 to cast animate undead because its a level 3 spell.

I dont think that the +2d6 sneak attack damage is worth the extra levels. Rogue BAB progression and hitpoints are quite poor, and the +2 to damage is on every single hit, not just flanking attacks. Sneak attack just doesnt do enough damage to be worth the investment into an otherwise useless class. Well, my opinion anyway.

Yeah, I mean think what we need to see now are what your characters are like. What are their races and stats?

 

These are good points if you don't use your rogue for sneak attacks. With a fulltime rogue, held or stunned enemies are dead.

IMO as far as multiclassing goes rogue 1 (or 2) /wizard X is more useful than a rogue X /fighter 4. Sneak attacks are like spellcasting, they get really good when you go for a pure class character.

Precisely.

 

If an opponent is held of stunned, do you need to be behind them to get the sneak attack bonus? I mean, do you need to micro manage?

I just go by Amdahl's law basically (its a computer science law regarding processor design). Although the extra damage could REALLY help kill stunned or helpless enemies, or those you have flanked, situations like that dont happen often enough to be of much use.

Theres also the opportunity cost of going for sneak attack - as you say, it requires a lot of levels invested, to do one specific thing. Wizard or cleric levels are useful in a much wider range of circumstances.

But anyway... I know opinions on rogues in IWD2 can be strongly debated, I'll leave it at that. I like them from a RP point of view, not so much from a power gaming point of view.

 

During the latest playthrough I noticed that I actually prefer to NOT have my enemies stunned when I fight them. Sure, they're harmless in this state, but it also makes them IMMUNE TO CRITICAL HITS!!

 

I fail to see how it's not to your advantage to have your opponents stunned, even with the loss of critical hits. Yes, you might lose the occasional crit hit. But in return, you will likely be able to produce plenty of damage and kills without risk of taking damage from those stunned characters in return. It's not like you get style points (or XP) from critical hits. (( Well, I suppose that you could be giving yourself "style points" for critical hits... ))

 

You don't need to get behind someone to land a sneak attack. A rogue can be used to sneak attack a foe who doesn't know he/she is there because the rogue is hidden or invisible but that is not the best way to use sneak attacks. You need to engage the foe with another character, then your rogue only has to target the foe and get a hit to land a sneak attack. Sneak attacks work provided the foe is flanked and doesn't attack the rogue. The rogue doesn't have to be behind the foe. High level rogues and barbarians are difficult to flank because your rogue has to be of a much higher level for sneak attacks to be enabled. Contrary to NWN, sneak attacks only work with melee. Switching between different foes can be tricky in the middle of a fight, that is why 2 handed weapons are better than short weapons. If your rogue can land a sneak attack without moving that much it will increase the rogue's efficiency. You have to be careful and make sure the foe doesn't attack the rogue because in that case any attack from the rogue will be treated as an ordinary attack.

A rogue who attacks a foe who is asleep, held or stunned will get a sneak attack. You don't need to be behind your foe.

You can create situations like these instead of waiting for them to happen. You also have to take advantage of these situations and make the most of them. There may be some interest in disabling some foes but a rogue will help in quickly finishing them off (no need for critical hits when you get cartloads of sneak attack damage).

A pure rogue will be a good sneak attacker just like a pure wizard or a pure cleric will be good spellcasters. Rogues can also serve as scouts and they can handle traps. If you play the Light of Selune mod you may need one to disable them, if you don't then you won't really need a rogue.

In regular D&D rogues are very important team members. In IWD2 they aren't so useful because traps are not that dangerous and locks aren't difficult to handle.

At high levels a warrior may end up serving as a bodyguard to a flamethrower (i.e. wizard or sorcerer) it doesn't mean that spellcasters are inherently better characters (an arcane spellcaster is a major liability at lower levels although in D&D 3 and IWD2 they get to use some ranged weapons that were forbidden in 2E).

That being said if the game wasn't so much hack and slash and better represented the roles of party members then rangers and rogues would be among the best classes in the Icewind Dale setting. Unfortunately that is not the case and I must agree with your statement about powergaming and IWD2.

Still, if you don't mind some micromanagement rogues can be a lot of fun. They may not rain fiery death on enemies but given the right circumstances they can cut them into pieces faster than any warrior could.

 

Exactly correct, Caradhras. Sneak attacks are not some situation whose occurrence is out of your control. You can create sneak attack situations almost at will. And unlike old 2e backstabbing, you can do sneak attacking in the middle of a melee. Does it mean that you have to pay attention to your rogue to create the sneak attack situations? Of course. Heaven forbid that you'd have to actually control your party members, etc. (Not directed at you, Caradhras....)

Quite true on both points. Light of Selune does make traps nastier (and I suppose that I could have made them even nastier still to really make having a rogue that much more important). Base IWD2's traps simply are not nasty enough to make you need good rogues (with the possible exception of 2 "death" traps).

I've said this about higher level warriors as well in the past. And I tend to think that it'd be true even if all of the warrior classes were equally capable. A party's spellcasters (particularly the arcane spellcasters) tend to be a bit fragile and prefer to not be bothered by a little thing like defending themselves in melee while casting all those nasty spells.

Caradhras, I think that you're generally correct about how the extreme hack and slash nature of IWD2 tends to not allow certain classes to show their value as well as they might in an environment with a greater role-playing component. And as such, I've come to the conclusion that if one wanted to make those weaker classes better in IWD2, you'd have to enhance their combat capabilities, and probably beyond what would be considered legit within the normal p&p rules.

 

I hate to even mention the game in this light, but in that regard I think WoW does a better job of making rogues more useful, since they are considered a DPS class, and can apparently do loads of damage per second, whereas warriors can absorb a beating but arent as good as dishing it out.

So, for rogues to be better in combat, they would need to more damaging in combat. I'm not sure sneak attack makes up for it.

Also... how do criticals work with sneak attacks? Will a critical multiple a sneak attack?