Starting party with no intent to multi class

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My favourite party without multiclassing is: Drow sorceress, Tiefling Wizard, Human Wizard, Aasimar Paladin, Shield Dwarf Morninglord of Lathander and Human Druid.

 

What an odd party for ID2 - 3 arcane casters seems an incredible over kill not to mention the annoyance of finding scrolls for the two wizzies. I don't care much for playing without a rogue of some sort either in spite of the fact that its not "necessary"...

As for the drow sorceress - I played one in my first party and altho she performed well I regetted the decision at the end when she only made it to level 14 or 15 instead of 16 or 17.

 

@pyreforge
Unlike wanderon I never had any problems with drow levels in normal game. That party seems very good. Maybe 2 sorcs and 1 wiz would be even better. The paladin might get a bit booring with almost no magic power but the morninglord is a powerful domain and druids are fun with their powerful evocation spells in almost every spell level.

 

I guess that I don't determine the excitement level of a given class based on the ability to cast spells.

Pure rogues can be very fun to play with their stealth and sneak attacking and no magic whatsoever.

 

I'm not sure what

means exactly.

That having a main spellcaster finish 2 levels below the non-ecl level is ok??

Most folks do agree that a "normal" game finishes up at about level 16 - 17 so that puts a drow at 14-15 which means no level 8 spells.

or that you discovered some way to get more levels than I did. I suppose you could get one back with the "book" and finish only a single level back.

In any event as I stated she performed well it was just dissapointing not to get the higher level spells.

 

The benefits of the Drow race, coupled with the increased XP from having a lower average party level, more than outweight the minor ECL penalty of the drow in my opinion. Because of this, ECL classes in IWD2 are definitely more powerful than their non ECL counterparts. If I was powergaming, my party would be stacked with Drow and Deep Gnomes.

 

Harbourboy, I don't think that wanderon's comment was so much as about having a drow in the party, so much as it was in choosing to have a drow as a Sorcerer, thus ending up with the main nuker being 2 levels behind.

I suppose that the more powergamish thing to do would be to have a drow tank or rogue, so that you don't lose out on any high level spells, while maintaining the benefit of having an ECL raced party member.

 

@wanderon
How do you play the game to end up at lvl 16-17?? Even in my first party when I didn't know you could lvl squatt I ended up at about lvl 20 (with 6 chars). The lower level of the Drow will increase the party xp so by the end of the game it will probably end up one level after what it should be as human.
In my games the drow should therefore end the game after he has gotten the last level spell. And who said the sorc must be the main spellcaster??? with 2 wizards one of them can take that role if one level behind is too much. They gain new spell-lvls one lvl before the sorc anyway (but probably won't have the good spells by then).

 

@Mudde

Level 20 without level squatting? I'm with Wanderon. Level 16-17 is the norm for every normal mode game that I've ever played with a full party.

The only difference that I can imagine is that perhaps you are using more high ECL classes than I've used. I rarely, if ever, play any race with higher than a -1 ECL.

 

@crucis
I was using some ECL-races then and did have a hard time through fell wood without wilderness lore which gave me much extra fighting. That and the fact that I completed almost every quest even the first time may explain my high level. Nowadays I usually lvl-squatt and end up with much higher levels.

 

@Mudde

Ah. OK. I had trouble the first time thru the Fell Wood, until it occurred to me that there must be some reason to use my Ranger's Wilderness Lore.

 

I also killed skeletons in Fell Wood until I didn't gain XP for them any more, but my party had still only reached lvl16-17 at the end. The XP you gain there won't matter at all at the end because of the dynamic XP calculation.

Fell Wood is really horrible, especially if you don't use save and reload.
Even with enough wilderness lore I had to use pen and paper to find my way through it. It would have taken even longer without that skill.
At the end my party just ran through the areas to explore while the skeletons (the game developers who created that maze and gave the blind-fight feat to them must be very sadistic ) shot at them.

 

I suppose if you were level squatting when you entered the Fell Wood, you could probably get a bucketload of XP for just going around in circles.

I've never been terribly bothered by the Fell Wood. Sure, it can be annoying, but it's nice to have something that's a bit of a challenge.

BTW, regarding the Fell Wood, I remember noticing that the last time I played HOF, the skelly archers really seemed to hate my cleric.

No matter where he was in my party's lineup, they seemed to want to pepper him with those energy draining arrows. It got to the point where his tactic was to cast Sancturary and hide, while the rest of the party went skelly bashing.

 

They also attacked only my cleric. But this was fine since he wore the damage reduction girdle and had a good AC.
So he never took damage and only got drained when a critical hit was followed by a critical failed save, what happened a few times.
The skellies were too weak to be a threat.

 

kmonster, is this "attacking the cleric" behavior also true in Normal mode? I can't say that I've ever noticed it in normal mode, but I was also not paying attention either.

 

I played normal mode. You probably didn't realize it because the skellies hardly ever hit.

 

Hey guys... D&D isn't real life (although I love the calcualtions of the mentally retarded community if D&D were real). LOL!

 

I agree that most classes aren't very good for multiclassing. On the other hand a rogue dual wielder with 4 or so levels of fighter for extra feats and specialisation is almost too easy. 3.5e worked to remove a lot of the "front loading" of other classes, but it still needs to do better. I think it should take five or six Paladin levels to get divine grace. That would stop the cilched Paladin1-2/SorcererX muticlass.

 

I've always thought the divine grace bonus should be capped by paladin level. So if you had an 18 CHA, you wouldn't be able to take full advantage of it until your 4th paladin level.

As for the INT discussion back on page two, people are underestimationg the massive real life importance of intelligence. If you want to play a 18STR 18CON 3INT behmoth, feel free; just know that in real life he'd be mildly mentally retarded.

 

He'd be Thog, the anti-Greenhilt.