Hi,

I am finishing IWD2 for the 1st time and thinking of starting it again.

I am considering this party:

1. Paladin
2. Melee Axe Barb.
3. Throwing Axe Barb.
4. Cleric
5. Wizard

I am looking for a 6th member. I wanted someone with fighting skills and summoning abilities. On the other hand, some thieving skills would have been important, too. I don't know. What is your opinion?

Sounds like you want a Bard.

Cleric and Druid are the only classes that are good both in combat and at casting summoning spells. An over-leveled multi-class Paladin/Sorcerer can also work, but with a 6-man party you won't be over-leveled enough for it to work very well.

For thieving skills, your wizard could actually cover matters. Due to the typically high intelligence score a wizard will boast you can have plenty of skill ranks to spend on cross-class skills, and since disable device is an intelligence-based skill he actually gets a sizeable bonus to it.

Your party is reasonably well-balanced as is, with a divine and arcane spellcaster and three combat-oriented characters. You could add pretty much anyone (or just run with these five) and be happy with it. I tend to like spellcasters so I'd go with a Sorcerer, but any class should be fun. If you want something more exotic, half-orc monk is actually quite effective (max out your strength).

Yup, looks to me like you just need a secondary spell caster. A druid, bard or sorc will do just fine.

Darvin is right about the wizard being able to cover thieving skills. For the few chests he won't be able to open (at least not right away) he still has the knock spell.

Personally, I would go with a bard. Not only do they rock but with 4 frontliners, they are going to get some nice boosts with a bards buffs and songs. You will also have a high charisma character that won't refuse quest rewards. Get that bard and don't look back :)

You've already got the Paladin for high Charisma, and you have plenty of spellcasting power as it stands. At the very least, you should look into multiclassing a thief, likely as a fighter/thief; single class thieves can be done, but it is markedly harder. Either way, you want someone who is able to disable traps with no real cost; sure, you could have Gandalf over there summon a few monsters for that purpose, but that's going to eat up spell slots in a dungeon.

Plenty of ways to go, as has already been pointed out. I'd personally lean toward a Bard or FTR/Thief.

Thanks all for the answers. I think I will try the bard this time. To be hones, I wasn't even thinking of having a bard as a member of my team. However, your comments have convinced me to give it a go. Thanks for your time.

Bards make better party leaders/conversation specialists than paladins in this game, because A] bards get most of the conversation skills as class skills and B] paladins automatically turn down a lot of rewards because of their pesky paladin code. And sometimes they just start fights immediately whereas the bard can trick them into revealing more information. (Which typically gives you a bunch of XP to boot.)

Bards are pretty good in this game. Give him spell focus: Enchantment (all good bard spells tend to be Enchantments) and Lingering Song and with a bit of micro-management you can keep the song effects up permanently while casting spells in tough battles.

A Sorcerer would work equally well in the high-CHA role, though. Less utility value, but a -lot- more firepower.

How does the throwing axe barbarian work out in practice? I can't say I've ever tried throwing axes in this game.

They actually work out very well as long as they can switch to another weapon if the enemy closes in. IWD2 has a lot more selection for throwing axes than IWD1 and their proficiency also applies for melee axes leaving more feat points open to place elsewhere. For IWD1 and 2, you just can't go wrong with the axe proficiency.

It's been a while since I played IWD2 but to answer that question depends on the situation you're in.

As a general rule though, the guy using haft over head would be the guy that attracts the monsters due to being closer than everyone else. Once he has their attention (preferably after throwing an axe or two), he can kite them around while a caster can fire off an entangle, web or slow spell or your other characters can just make pin cushions out of them. Or when you get the boots of speed, give them to him and he'll be able to do hit and run attacks (I forget when they first come available though). In narrow spots (like bridges), you can block them up with summons making the lower range of the axe a non issue. Once again, it depends on your situation, what spells and equipment you have available and what enemies you're facing. I never found the lower range of the axe to be a serious handy cap to be honest but I'll have to play through again to see specifically what I did.

In BG though, yeah, I did end up only using missile weapons in tight spots or to make sure squishy characters (like Imoen and Viconia) stayed in the back, they just weren't as powerful as the two handed or duel wielded melee weapons. You found magic more effective in BG2? My last playthrough of BG2, the only mage in my party was my triple class f/t/m PC until I got Imoen back. Having a second mage was really only a convenience at best though because in BG2, I never really used any hard hitting magic (Viconia's implosion spell being the exception), it was all buffs and breach. Direct damage spells in BG2 just didn't seem as efficient as melee.

I meant I find magic more efficient in Icewind Dale 2, actually.

But I definitely prefer magic in BG2 too. I never play without at least 2 mages, preferably 3. BG2 is the game where mages reign supreme.

Now, mind you, for most of the game direct damage indeed isn't the best way to use mages. (Though having 3 of them loose skull traps at once does end easy fights quickly.) But they excel in debuffing/crowd control. First mage casts Greater Malison to lower enemy saving throws. Two seconds later (so the malison will hit first) the second and third follow up with Emotion and Slow, or Glitterdust and Chaos, or Cloudkill and Teleport Field.

A mage-heavy team in BG2 can completely ruin the enemy's plans in the first round. Your fighter types can then finish them off at leisure without ever losing a hitpoint. This is especially important when fighting parties of enemy adventurers. You know how annoying it is when the enemy mage gets his Chaos spell off and your guys start attacking eachother? It works the other way around just as well.

Direct damage has its uses in BG2 too, but I mostly use it against enemy spellcasters. That way I don't need to breach and counterspell so much. Most of their protective spells just do not work at all against area of effect damage spells, so you can just skull-trap and sunfire them to death. (Liches are immune to skull-trap, but not to sunfire.)

Later on, spells like Horrid Wilting become the best damage-dealers bar none. Sequencers filled with 3 skulltrap or 3 lower resistance spells also become game-changers. And that's not even starting on the defensive uses mages have. There's a reason the sorcerer is a contender for strongest player class in the game.

Still, it's by no means the only way to play the game. I've also had plenty of fun using a backstabbing assassin as my main damage dealer. Since BG2 for the most part focusses on smaller fights against tougher opponents than Icewind Dale 2 does, and since you have more class-choices and special abilities available to you, (kits) you can generally come up with more varied tactics to win battles. It's one reason I prefer BG2 as a game.

Just wondering but the spell combos you mentioned for BG2, were you playing on a higher difficulty by any chance? Spells like gillterdust and malison I never bothered with. I also never bothered with sequencers except for the dragon fight in Watchers Keep. I did use chaos and slow though it was all I needed, after that even throwing darts would have brought them down. Casting additional spells would have been overkill. A sequencer with 3 skull traps is destructive (assuming you don't miss of course), of that I have no doubt, but I'm not sure where you would need such a combo. Later in BG2 (especially TOB), fights got very easy no matter what you did. I have heard a lot of these spell combo strategies on various BG forums but they all seem very superfluous and are there just for the coolness factor. If difficulty isn't the factor, then I can only assume this is down to playstyle.

Mind you, I was playing the game on normal difficuly. Next playthrough I will be bumping it up a notch, IWD was more fun that way but I haven't tried it with BG yet. BTW, how much ingame time did it take you do finish BG2 will a 3 mage party?

On a slightly higher difficulty, but admittedly my last couple of playthroughs were with difficulty enhancing mods installed. (Swordcoast Stratagems is great, though later versions do change a lot of rules, if you want it to. For the better, mind.)

As for time ingame; 67 days and 20 hours to finish Shadows of Amn. (I don't really like the expansion and haven't played it in years.) But a lot of that is due to playstyle: in an effort to roleplay some, my parties adventure by day and then sleep/rest at night. They can't rest during the day or during dungeon crawls. Which, admittedly, helps explain why I find 2-3 mages important. I have to use my resources carefully this way. Makes the game more fun, i.m.o., since you don't spend much time resting and casting buffing spells and it creates a greater sense of danger. It also means my melee fighters can't get hurt too much or I'll run out of healing spells, again making disabling magic more important.

If you rest more often to heal damage/recover spells, you can obviously play much more aggressively than I do.

Another factor, of course, is that the more mages you have, the less viable brute force tactics become. So it's also something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you bring three mages, you'll need to use tactics like I described more since you won't have many fighters who can take it on the chin.

And finally: some of my favourite joinable NPCs in the game are mages. (Edwin!) I don't like most of the fighter types nearly as much. That also plays a role.

Switching the topic back to Icewind Dale 2: my favourite tactic there is to have a rogue with evasion and lots of reflex saves (Deep Gnome for optimal survivability) lure all the enemies to one spot, and then bombard them with magic. A sorcerer has enough firepower to wipe out most areas single-handedly, if the enemy is nice enough to clump together. This is why I never really felt the need for conventional archers.

Still, I have noticed that there are -much- better magic bows in this game then there are in BG2, and much better and more plentiful magic arrows to boot. If I ever decide to re-play the game, I should try specialising a fighter in archery. And perhaps use some throwing axes.

Only 67 days? I would have thought it was have taken longer due to the rest needed to replenish spells. My fighter heavy party of my f/t/m PC (He was primarily a front liner using support magic and buffs), Korgan, Minsc, Jaheira, Imoen and Viconia. In that game I finished SoA 55 day mark. I know time doesn't account for anything, I just wondered how much potential time would be added with additional resting. I don't like the idea of being able to rest anywhere in BG or IWD, to me, that's cheese. In one playthrough of IWD, I used a party of 5 figthers and 1 f / t. That really nasty part in Dragons Eye where as soon as you enter, you get swarmed with ghouls, that was a nightmare. Without access to magic, those firey oil potions Oswald had were a life saver, I hoarded them in that game. The alternative was to go all melee, enter the area and pull back then everyone starts hurting bad. However, the idea of doing that, resting outside the entrance for like 27 days then going back in to try again didn't really sit well with me so I stocked up on loads of healing potions instead.

IIRC correctly, there was a cloak in the Severed Hand in IWD that granted immunity to skull trap. I usually don't have magic user heavy parties but i like this cloak on a frontliner. Rogues weren't of much use in IWD and even less so in IWD2 so I don't always have them meaing I didn't always have a character who could dodge AOE spells. I never found it necassary though because animate dead is a lot more powerful than it was in IWD1. Before the cloak, i tend to just dump AOE spell on my own summons (usually animate dead). To me at least, that cloak, animate dead and a wizards high int for cross class thief skills all but made the rogue obsolete. When I get round to doing a non magic run of IWD, I will definately have a balanced rogue/fighter though.