Yes, you can. But you'll be a little shy on gear.

The only thing I don't like about IceWind is if you try to cross build a thief he/she doesn't wear that cool thief's cloak.

I'm very fashion conscious when fighting the forces of evil! :D

Good luck. I found it pretty dull, personally--a game where you fight trash mob after trash mob, based on a game system that wasn't particularly well-adapted to that sort of thing.

Yeah I'd like to try bard too. I chose two "pure fighters" (a paladin and a fighter) so that I have two main tanks, behind which others can hide if needed. But the druid/fighter and even the cleric became also quite competent melee fighters, good backups, so they could quite often also be in the front line.

For some reason I always like to think that cleric is supposed to be merely a healer, ie. useless and fragile in hand-to-hand combat (even more so than mages), but apparently in AD&D games they are some kind of hammer-wielding killing machines who just happen to be good healers too. The cleric was probably my third-best melee fighter, gimped by her weapon restrictions.

And yeah, thief, at least multiclassed, is quite important. I wanted her to be useful also outside of finding and disarming traps, so mage/thief for me.

Something that is still a bit unclear to me is how charisma, intelligence and/or wisdom affect your dialog options with NPCs. I think in IWD some dialog options are available only with e.g. high wisdom, while some with high intelligence? And does charisma affect them too? Mainly like if you can talk yourself out of something (without fighting), convince someone to do something, or things like that. Like, only if your negotiator has high enough wisdom, you will remember to tell certain NPC to leave all his belongings to you, before he leaves the scene for good. Then you get some useful items from him, yay.

An excellent decision!

The first game is very tough and requires a party of 6 in my book. The second game can be done with 4 and that's what I did the last time I played Icewind Dale 2.

In IWD1 CHA affects shop prices. A Bard with 15 CHA and the Friends spell (boosts CHA by 5) will get the best prices. I can't recall there being any CHA-related dialog options other than possibly one at the beginning of the game. There are a couple INT-based ones and there are a few that are based on class (there are ones specific to Paladin, Cleric or Paladin, Druid or Ranger, and Bard). No WIS-based convo options that I remember.

I've never managed to beat the IWD games. Not because of difficulty, I just get bored halfway through.

Good luck, hope you enjoy it more than I could (bought a few D&D games with that one promo and frankly they just aren't for me), but it sounds like you'll like 'em a lot.

From my experience, this game is very easy if you have a lot of archers in your party.

I don't know how I would have defeated the first ogre if I didn't have my pally kite him around while my archers and sling shot guys fired at him. He was one-shotting everyone before I came up with such an ingenious strategy!

Indeed. Nothing is more effective than having 1 tank running around while the rest of your party unleashes HELL with arrows on all those fools going after the tank. Archers in IWD -> OP.

Oddly enough, this game is one I usually default to after finishing other games. I often find I flail about wondering what to play next and more often than not I just do another IWD run. I love the game, and have probably run through it at least 3 dozen times.

The ogre is a cakewalk if you have a Sleep spell handy on your mage. Even on Insane difficulty, where you encounter 4 of them in that cave, if you have Sleep, you'll win. Sometimes you have to resort to kiting, but usually Sleep just turns into an "I Win" button for that battle.

Ah, thanks for the tip. I have that spell available but I am a magic missiles fanboy from curse of the azure bonds days, even though I know it's super weak at early levels. I know sleep is more useful early on but figured the ogre would be too powerful. I'll adjust my strategy a bit.

magic missile and sleep spells...ah the good old days :)