Suggestions for a two man run?

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My friend and I just finished a two character run through the Baldur's Gate series and it ended up being no match for us. With the xp cap removers we started getting ToB abilities in Spellhold. We were a fighter/cleric and fighter/mage duo. Fighter cleric dual wielding warhammer and flail and the fighter mage using bow and halberd.

We realize that we'd both never finished Icewind Dale and want to do this next, from the beginning to Trials of the Luremaster, but what would be wisest characters to play? Should we take our builds that we already have on the road with us? Or is there a smarter way to build a two man group in Icewind Dale?

(also, is Heart of Fury mode a good idea? we're vewy good at these games (we like to think))

If this is an inappropriate first post im preemptively apologizing.

-B

 

Your builds are fine. You could shift the fighter/cleric to ranger/cleric to gain druid spells and get an extra attack per round.

I tried a ranger/cleric, fighter/mage/thief two person party and found it challenging. I ended up adding a third fighter because I don't like resting all the time.

 

If I'm correct; if you've got Heart of Winter installed, you're Ranger/Cleric doesn't have access to the Druid spells until the Ranger reaches the required level (6) to cast the spells. Even then, you only get the Druid spell(s) for that particular spell level. I don't think it's that great a tradeoff and personally, I would stick with the Fighter/Cleric.

My brother and I did rather well with a Paladin and Dwarf Cleric.

Also, I've soloed Icewind Dale with just a Fighter, even though nobody believes me.

 

I have tried the F/M/T and Bard combo, but got stuck in a few areas. I think both characters need some kind of multi-warrior class. F/M/T and F/C are excellent together as both characters can melee and you cover all bases, giving yourselves lots of options. But you can drop the thief and keep your original builds from BG, but i like having the thief levels as well for scouting.

Have you thought of trying both dualed F/M and F/C? You really don't need the mage or cleric levels early on. Just a few fighter levels, possibly even as low as 3 levels, opens up weapon specialization and multiple attacks while still reaching epic casting levels at an earlier point.

 

My ranger/cleric had access to all druid spells, for all spell levels she could cast as a cleric, when she hit 6th level. I had HoW and TotL both installed.

Another bonus: the R/C gets one additional attack if using a one handed weapon and no shield -- plus has the same specialization levels as the multiclass F/C. A dual fighter/cleric can be a more effective fighter early on (dual to cleric after you get ***** in maces), but will ultimately become a weaker melee fighter as the THAC0 of the multiclass becomes much better.

 

I like having the higher spell capabiltites with the dual class, but your right T2, the Multi is definitely a better melee combatant. I just enjoy the option of more spells! With only using 2 characters, I have experienced that an incredibly high THACO is almost overkill and unnecessary.

 

I like pounding enemies to goo. Overkill in melee is always a good thing.

 

"Me smash you to goo!" - BG1 Ogre voicing?

Yeah, your right, especially in the IWD series. I just liked the challenge of using spells to defeat your enemies. Otherwise super-melee just gets monotonous and boring to me, even in the IWD games. Probably why i try to avoid HoF mode. Tried it, done it, gets boring after a while.

 

Play normal difficulty. Since you're playing a party of 2 instead of 6 you'll level much faster than you're supposed anyway and other difficulty settings grant extra XP (easy or hard +50 %, very easy or very hard +100 %) which will shift the balance towards spellcasting and make the game easier.
Don't be surprised if the mage reaches a casting level before you found a scroll of that level.


For a party of 2 I'd take a ranger/cleric and a fighter/mage/thief, but if you don't use thieving skills like slowly searching for traps or hiding for a backstab there's no point to spend XP for the thief class, in this case multiclass fighter/illusionist or fighter/mage is better.

For the fighting priest fighter/cleric, fighter/druid and ranger/cleric all work, I'd take the ranger/cleric for the extra low level druid spells.

Unlike in BG2 18/00 strength is very useful.

 

So we decided on a fighter/cleric and a fighter/illusionist. We've hit a NEW snag though, doubt it warrants a new thread.

Each of our characters kill the same monsters for different xp! His difficulty is set to Hard and we THOUGHT it did it for both of our machines, since he's hosting, and my difficulty slider is greyed out and stuck on normal, but it isn't the case!

So they're hitting us harder and half the time giving less xp! Both of us are running HoW and ToL, is this a common glitch? Is there a fix? Are we stuck just playing on normal?

I'll letcha guys know how our two man run goes!

-B

Edit: btw THANK YOU for the help! we were thinking about a ranger/cleric but realized that with ToL, it fixes the glitch where you get druid spells for your cleric casting levels once your ranger is of casting level and decided to go with the faster levelling of the fighter.

 

I'm trying it with a ranger/cleric and a mage/thief -- will try same in BG2 and BG1 as well.