Too much PC class diversity kills a party?

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So I'm no expert at IWD2 by any means. But the few times I tried to play the game, I've noticed parties with characters that weren't as spread out in terms of classes fared much better than those parties with characters having varied levels of varied classes.
For example, a typical party with 1 paladin, 1 fighter, 1 barbarian, 1 thief, one druid/cleric, one sorcerer, became quite powerful with no dual / triple classing.
Maybe it's just me, although some class-combs are intersesting, such as thief/fighters or mage/fighters or cleric/ranger. More classesc is too much.

 

Unlike in 2E you don't get about 10 levels for free if you multiclass in 3E.

Pure thief, pure mage and pure cleric are far more useful than your suggested classcombos, multiclassed spellcasters are crippled spellcasters and you loose quite some sneak attack damage for adding fighter levels to a rogue.

 

so basically what I thought: single classed parties often are more powerful than the multi-classed one in IWD2

 

Um, that's not strictly true at all. Consider Jukka's Ultimate Powergaming Melee Party:

Deep Gnome Rogue(1)/Monk(1)/Dreadmaster of Bane(28)
Deep Gnome Rogue(1)/Druid(12)/Illusionist(17)
or: Deep Gnome Rogue(3)/Paladin(3)/Fighter(4)/Illusionist(20)
Drow Stormlord of Talos(18)/Barbarian(3)/Fighter(4)/Sorceress(5)
or: Drow Dreadmaster of Bane(1)/Druid(29)
Drow Bard(11)/Sorcerer(19)
Optional : Drow Paladin(1)/Sorcerer(29)
Second Optional : Drow Paladin(1)/Sorcerer(29)

There's all sorts of multiclassing going on here and this party would blow away one made up of six pure classed characters.

Judicious multiclassing goes a long way in this game.

 

Ok, let me rephrase:

Basically, a single-class party OR a party where PC have a dominant class (for example one or 2 levels of such and such and all other levels of something else) are superior to say parties with equal levels multies?

Again, I am not a experienced IWD2 player so I'm just getting some info.

But from what i can gather from what you said, the best PCs are those that take a few levels in certain classes to get some skills (like your first example with 1 level of Monk & rogue) vs for example equally split levels?

 

OK, the MOST powerful parties are the ones with freaky exploitative oddball multiclasses like the party above.

The next best parties are the ones where the characters are mostly one class, with a few mix-ins of classes where the benefits come from the first few levels.

The next best parties are the ones with pure classes.

The least powerful classes are ones with dumb multiclassing (like Wizard 5 / Sorcerer 6 / Bard 6 / Barbarian 6 / Cleric 7)

But the best parties of all are the ones that you find to be the most fun.

 

well said.
fun roleplay is the one and only factor to make your party!

 

I wouldn't take "Jukka's Ultimate Powergaming Melee Party" mentioned by Harborboy too seriously.

Your average party level won't be higher than level 16-17 at the end of a normal game and even if you play HOF mode you'll have to cheat in order to reach level 30 with a regular party.

Such powergaming parties are just an example how far you can get if you like heavily abusing game mechanics or just using an editor to start with level 30 characters.

 

ok kmonster, well said.

I have to admit I'm not to big on cheating or abusing the game for the sole purpose of being more powerful.

 

What are you talking about? A four person party easily makes it to level 30 by the end of Heart of Fury mode.

 

@kmonster
You really should read jukkas guide before accusing him of having to cheat to use his party. Surely he mentions lvl-squatting and muleing, but his parties are designed to survive the whole way towards end of HOF. They aren't only good at lvl 30. And aa harbourboy said: a 4-person party should reach 30 before end of HOF. At least if you don't try to sneak past everyone.

 

@Harbourboy:
The game was mainly designed for 6 character parties since all pregenerated parties are parties of 6.
A party of 4 sounds rather special than regular.
With level squatting it's no problem to reach level30 during the first half of a regular game.
But I don't think you can reach level30 without level squatting or muling which I consider cheating.

@Mudde
I've read the guide. It's an interesting, well made guide with many useful hints although I prefer other parties.
But I wasn't referring to the guide, I was referring to the party Harborboy quoted, 6 level 30 characters.
I don't think you can get 6 level 30 characters without level-squatting, muling or using other cheats.

 

I don't agree that the game was "designed" for 6 characters. It lets you have up to six characters, but that could just be because if they restricted it to four, people would complain if they wanted six. I much prefer playing with four instead of six.

 

In the party harbourboy described jukka sais that the optional characters should be added later (if at all) just to ensure that the important 4 reaches high enough level!
Reaching lvl 30 for 4 persons early in normal mode is hard even with squatting. You may need to level up only your sorc and have the rest of them almost as mules.
I squatted quite heavily with one party and only reached lvl 27 with my lowest-ECL-chars.

 

Level squatting = cheating in my mind.

Honestly, imagine a this were a paper RPG. DO you think others players would wait for your character to get more powerful to level-up while their own characters stay weak and vunerable??

I think you get more fun out of playing in a role playing set of mind without level-squatting: it makes the game more challenging and forces you to pick your brain more for tactics and such.

 

The only reason why I usually avoid taking more than 5 people is because the pathfinding AI @$%^#!!!. I like micromanaging spells and battles, but having to micromanage characters even while walking around is a bit too much.

 

^Just use CTRL+J if they decide to wander off a lot. Works for me.

A spell-caster needs to stay as pure as possible to be powerful in his spells, that is my two cents.

 

Adding some characters later than others to make sure the first ones reach higher levels while the later ones stay at far weaker levels is muling.

It's actually quite easy and you can keep all your characters at the same level.
If I hadn't strictly excluded level-squatting my party would have reached level 30 in Fell Wood and I would have missed the challenge and fun in the later parts of the game.

 

@kmonster
Sorry, didn't mean that he added them as mules, he added them later on so that the xp was divided by 4 long enough to give them high lvls and then added them.

How do you do that?? It's easy in HOF-mode on second run through, but the xp-tables won't give infinite amounts of XP for orcs and the other weak monsters you find before fell wood. Surely the ice temple gives some, but they are hard to kill with lvl1 chars??

 

The skeletons in the Fell Wood labyrinth respawn endlessly, they only hurt when a critical hit was followed by a critical failed save and my party could gain a few levels there before they got too strong to gain XP.
If I hadn't leveled up there the party could have gained enough XP for level 30 pretty fast.

It might be possible to reach level 30 even before since the worg riders keep respawning until you rest or leave the area, but I never tried this.