Going to be starting IWD2 again with a Fighter, Mage, Thief and Cleric :)

Just finished my run through the base game. Going to take a 3 character party through the expansion and TotLM, I think. Going to three characters, all dual classed (F/M, F/T, F/C), as it still covers all the bases, while maximizing the XP spread.

I've been thinking of starting a new run through IWD 2 as well, but will likely hold off on that for a while longer.

I've also been toying with the idea of a 5 or 6 character party through IWD 1 in HoF mode...

I may have to try a smaller sized party. Having six characters is fun and all, but it gets real hard to keep track of everyone during combat. I have the same problem with RTS and tatical squad games as well. More than four units and I go cross eyed.

My biggest complaint with 6 characters isn't keeping track of them in battle, but the need to keep an eye on them when moving, as sometimes they decide to take a long and roundabout path to where you want them to go. And this can have unwanted consequences (walking into traps, running into groups of enemies you don't want to face yet, etc.)

Lol, yeah, the pathing isn't the greatest. It's especially bad when going through doors since they'll just bunch up and spaz out like in an episode of the Three Stooges

Got stuck a while back, missing one of the badges.
I'd need to consult a walkthrough at this point, but then I got sucked back into Medieval 2 and Stainless Steel 6.4 mod.
And now Steam is having a Sega weekend and I also picked up Rome TW again.
(Already had a the DVD version, but the disk has gone bad.)

I did once complete the game with Human Paladin and Human Mage.
Called the Caramon and Raistlin for you Dragonlance fans. Was a real challenge but in the early chapters the REAL issue was where to carry the loot!

So, what would be the optimal party build and size?

I'm thinking of a party of four with three dual-classes and maybe a bard or paladin.

So maybe something like this prehaps:
Fighter3/Cleric
Fighter3/Theif
Fighter3/Mage
Paladin or Bard

I like Swords...I mean Paladin :P

Yes you are 100% correct.. I was going to do a fighter, however I decided I needed some healing capacity and turn undead as well. Sturm (closest of the companions to a Paladin) and Rastlin just didn't quite work for me :)

Call it poetic license or something if you want.

Lol. I played a Half-Elf Ranger once. Tanis anyone?

From the standpoint of soaking every last XP out of the game, you'd need a Paladin and a Bard. But it depends on how many characters you want to have in your party.

I figure a party of 3 characters would be sufficient to cover all the bases though. A Human FTR dualled to Cleric, a Human FTR dualled to Mage and either a FTR/Thief (dual or multiclass) or a FTR/Mage/Thief. You'd miss out on a few quest XP in the beginning without having a Bard and there's a pretty hefty award you can miss out on without a Paladin later on.

Personally, I like to also have a Druid (probably FTR dual classed to Druid) because I really like some of the spells in the Druid spellbook.

Druids have some pretty good spells, but their limited selection of equipment even when dual/mutli-classed is a huge turnoff. At least Clerics get all sorts of blunt objects to play with.

Multi- or dualclassed druids can use all armor clerics can and do quite some ranged damage with slings or darts. There's also no weapon problem, you can buy lucky scimitars for little money in Kuldahar and will find a scimitar+3 before the 2 battles you need +3 weapons for.