Hello, I've never played a party-based RPG before, and I'm unfamiliar with DnD game rules, and I decided to try and play one.

Naturally, when I got to party creation and made a couple of characters, I realized that I have no idea what I'm doing. So many choices, and I don't even know how half of the stuff works.

So I would like to ask someone to give me some basic party suggestion - roughly complete with all the characteristics and abilities and such - I'm likely to mess everything up without someone to hold my hand for the whole creation process.
Also, as a side note, I'm a quite conservative player, so an aggressive party probably wouldn't work for me.
Also, do the alignments do anything important in the game?

Thanks in advance!

There's a great FAQ Here that explains a lot about the AD&D rules, which should help get you familiar with the system the game uses.

Alignment has a couple of effects in game:

1) some items are restricted to specific alignments
2) some spells affect only specific alignments (or don't affect specific ones)
3) some classes are restricted to specific alignments (Paladins, for example, must be Lawful Good)

I don't believe there's anything else.

As for a party, you'll want to have the basic roles covered: Healer (Cleric), Tank (Warrior class), spell caster (Mage), and rogue (Thief).

I'd recommend something like this:

1) Paladin: (must be Lawful Good), go with high STR (18/75 or higher is what I prefer, 18/00 is best), high CON, high DEX. Everything else you can dump to the lowest allowable minimum. Since he has high CHA (it will be minimum of 17, you can use this guy as the 'face' of your party - the one that talks to everyone. You could also use a Bard in this role. More on the Bard lower down)

2) Fighter: Dwarf, whatever alignment you like. Again, high STR, high CON, high DEX. Everything else can be dumped to minimum.

3) Druid: must be of a Neutral alignment. Choose whatever race is allowed that you like. Druids have some nice spells to help in combat and can also heal. High WIS is the primary concern. 16 CON is the maximum you need (more doesn't benefit the character), and you can decide if you want to go with high STR or not. DEX should be as high as you can afford for better AC.

4) Fighter/Thief: some like Halflings for this role; I like Gnomes. High DEX, CON, and the rest in STR. When levelling pump up Find Traps and Open Locks. It's up to you if you want to invest in Sneak for some backstabby goodness or not.

5) Wizard: whatever race you like best for with. Max out INT and go for 16 CON. High DEX is good as well. The rest is up to you.

6) Bard: many people would likely say to forget the Bard, but I like this guy for his Songs (at level 11, he gets a healing Song which pretty much eliminates the need for healing spells and resting to heal the party) and as a secondary caster. I also like to use him as the party 'face'. High INT and CHA (15 is enough for CHA and you can pump it to 20 with the Friends spell, which is great when dealing with shop keepers for better prices). High DEX and 16 CON if you can get it. If you plan to use him to identify items (Bards get a Lore bonus), keep WIS at 9 or better to avoid a Lore penalty (I think that's correct).

Try to have everyone with a ranged weapon (I like to have the Bard use bows/crossbows and maybe slings as well. Slings for pretty much anyone else, as you can also use a shield with them and you get your STR modifier to damage with slings as well). For melee weapons, I'd say look to large swords with your Paladin, axes with your Fighter, and whatever else you like with the others. Hammers is probably a good choice for one of them. The Thief can only use specific weapons if you want to backstab, so keep that in mind as well if you're going that route (I can't recall all of them off-hand, but I think daggers, large swords, and quarterstaves are among them). Remember that skeletal undead are resistant to slashing and piercing damage, so make sure you have a blunt weapon handy for them. You'll likely want to keep your Mage and Bard out of melee though.

That's all I have time for now. Feel free to post more questions or ask for clarifications. There are s number of people on the boards here with great info and advice for these games.

There are many different party combinations which work. Tell us what you'd like to play and we'll give you the fine tuning.
You should have at least

- 1 character with thief levels for handling locks and traps
- 1 character with cleric or druid levels for casting priest spells
- 1 character with bard or mage levels (illusionist works too) for casting mage spells
- 1 character with fighter,paladin or ranger levels for physical combat
Since even 2 multiclass characters are enough to cover this there are many possibilities for a working party of 6.


Strength is important for everyone, for doing damage and carrying capacity, try to max it.
Dexterity is important useful for ranged combat but even more for armor class, always take the racial maximum
Constitution is important
Intelligence is useless for everyone but mages and bards who should max it
Wisdom is useless for everyone but clerics and druids
Charisma is useless except for one character who talks and buys stuff

You need a character who can scout for you, and this will be extremely helpful to you in preparing for battles so you aren't caught off guard and getting ambushed.

A thief has the Move Silently skill to do this for you. However, the game does not allow a thief to both move silently and detect traps at the same time.

Thus, you really need one character who can scout, and a separate character who can handle traps.

One route you can go is to have a ranger in your party. A ranger has the move silently skill, and can be your scout. When your ranger is not scouting, your ranger provides superior offensive capabilities as compared to a thief (though restricted to lighter armor, still is not someone who can fight on the front lines).

Then your thief can concentrate on maximizing the find traps and open locks abilities- and if you are only concentrating on developing those two skills, you can multiclass your thief and still stay ahead of the curve with those two abilities.

Instead of a ranger doing scouting, you could also have another thief who will do the scouting. Your thief can concentrate on developing move silently alone, and get good really quick- thus multiclassing this thief would make sense as well. (Fighter/thief comes to mind if you want to try your hand at backstabbing.)

To make your scout/trap handler combination work together, just have your trap handler follow your scout. Move the pair slowly with a straight-line or follow formation, just make sure your scout is breaking fog of war. Have your auto-pause options set to pause at enemy detection and trap detection.

First off, are you playing Icewind Dale 1 or 2? Since the first game uses 2nd edition rules and the second uses 3rd edition rules, it's very important, because character generation and levelling will be very different between the two.

Second, if you've never played D&D before, I wouldn't advise you to start with either Icewind Dale or ToEE, since those three games are more combat-focused and harder than the other D&D based RPGs on this site. Starting with Baldur's Gate if you can would be a better idea imo.

About opposing schools change and bard songs just read the Heart of Winter manual.
With the expansion installed expect to have about 2,500,000 XP per character at normal difficulty the end, far away from the max reachable level 30, there's no XPCap any more.
Dualclassing works well in IWD to make characters stronger, even 2 fighter levels offer a lot of benefits to casters for almost nothing and level 3 or 7 offer even more for only fractions of a level, even 9 is possible.
But more powerful characters don't always mean more fun. You might want to have your characters be able to cast those low level spells while they are useful and class-specific weaknesses might add to the diversity and fun.

Two thieves are not necessary since even one multiclass is more than enough to handle all the skills. Your pure class will feel useless, replace him with a druid or another warrior or at least another multiclass thief.


Characters good in NWN2 don't work always well in IWD2 since IWD2 is a party game where 6 characters with different strengths and weaknesses work together as team and you need specialization to be effective, multiclassing sorcerers or clerics is going to cripple them, taking away the high level spells your party is supposed to have access to.

As kmonster noted, dual classing can make a very powerful character. For that second thief spot, I'd maybe try something like a Fighter dual classed to Druid at level 3 or 7 (if you go this route, be warned that the character must have a 17 CHA and 15 WIS minimum), a straight-up Druid, or kmonster's suggestion of a second FTR/Thief multiclass. Check out planet baldur's gate for Bard Song descriptions. The individual songs don't improve with more levels, but they can be quite useful. More info on the game itself and some of the mechanics in links to the left of the page I linked to as well. Again, as kmonster noted, it may not translate all that well from NWN2 to IWD2. A pure SOR is generally better than a Pally/SOR due to the delay in gaining new spells as well as the fact that you're going to be keeping that spell chucker out of melee anyway, so you don't really need to worry too much about those save boosts and immunity. That's not to say a Pally/SOR wouldn't work, but pure Sorcerer would be better. One of the Paladin 'flavors' allows you to freely multiclass with Fighter, so that could be a decent mix (PAL/FTR).

One level of Rogue and then going specialist WIZ would be a decent idea, depending on the makeup of your party. If you have a SOR or two along with him, then you'd be golden.

Recently I played through IWD2 a couple times and had good fun with the following party:

1/2 Orc Fighter. He specialized in a two-handed weapon - polearm or greatsword (I did a couple runs and used the same type of character, trying one of these weapons in each run). He also specialized in another melee weapon so I could grab Maximized Attack, which can be a fun feat.

Dwarf FTR 1/CLC X. This guy was a cleric of Tempus, which gave him the free Martial Weapon Battle Axe and Weapon Focus Battle Axe feats. The level of FTR just granted him an extra feat, which is useful. I used him as a secondary tank, focusing on buff spells and healing, as opposed to trying to bother with offensive spells. I only pumped Wisdom enough to be able to cast the spells I wanted. Other ability boosts went to STR. On another run I went with a more spell casting focus, but didn't enjoy it as well as the battle oriented character.

Wild Elf Fighter. This one was mainly focused on ranged attacks, specializing in the bow and taking the few ranged-oriented feats available. I also grabbed the dual weapon fighting feats, and specialized him in small swords, using a pair of short swords, daggers or one of each when there was need to melee. On another run I did a 30/30 split of FTR and Rogue with this character and it worked out very well.

Tiefling Rogue 1/WIZ (sometimes I specialize this one). The INT and DEX bonus was the incentive to go with this race for this character. Even though the level progression was slowed due to the late acquisition of WIZ levels, he was still fun and effective. I dropped this character on the run where I went with the FTR/Rogue and slipped another melee character into this slot instead: a PAL/FTR.

Human SOR. Pretty self explanatory here, but this one as the party 'face'. She took all the social skills (Bluff, Intimidate, Diplomacy) as well as Knowledge:Arcana, Alchemy, and Concentration and Spellcraft (I maxed out her INT for the skill points).

Aasimar SOR. Slightly delayed spell progression due to the racial adjustment, but the +1 to CHA is a nice bonus. On another run, just for yucks, I went with a Strongheart Halfling for this character.

Obviously there are stronger/more optimized parties, but I'm an incorrigible min/maxer and these combos were more than powerful enough to wipe the floor with the competition with my min/maxing.

Others have already listed a great deal of useful advice, so I'm only going to add a tiny bit to that:

It's still not clear whether you're playing IWD1 or 2 - which of course makes a huge difference, as the rules are almost completely different - but for IWD2 I'd recommend a Tiefling Ranger/Rogue as one of the melee characters in your party. Start out as a Ranger, and keep levelling him in both classes until you reach level 5 in both, after which you should only take rogue levels. Needless to say, at character creation, max out DEX (20 for Tiefling), and also make sure that STR and CON are high enough (15+). You can lower stats like CHA and WIS (don't lower WIS too much though, keep it at least at 7-8) for this class a bit to get some extra points. Take the Weapon Finesse feat at the beginning, have him dual wield short swords, and make sure you only put light armor on him so that he gets the benefit of the Ambidexterity and Two-weapon fighting feats without having to waste points on them. This way you'll probably end up with a rather efficient damage dealer/backstabber.

Another melee build which I personally haven't tried but sounds effective (and wouldn't be too hard to handle on a first playthrough) is a Paladin of Helm/Fighter mutliclass.

And I agree that single class rogues quickly become "dead weight" (both in IWD1 and 2 actually), so even if you don't fancy the idea of the ranger/rogue, don't waste the room in your party and take a mutli-or dual class fighter/rogue or wizard/rogue instead.

Thanks

just two more question:

I get both games with all expansions on gog and the rules of the latest expansion are used for the entire game, right?

Do the expansions continue where the original game ends or do you start with a new group at lvl 1?

Correct, and the games are patched to the latest version as well.

IWD 1 is the only one that actually has expansions, but yes, they 'sort of' continue from where you left off, although it is possible to start either one earlier than the end of the first game.

I say 'sort of' because of the fact you can start them before you finish the original game.

Hello everyone, sorry for taking so long, it's been a very busy day.
To correct myself from the first post: I'm playing the first game, sorry for making some confusion in here, when I was writing the first post, somehow the idea to clarify which game I wanted to play didn't pop up.
Thanks to all the helpful answers, right now I'm still a bit busy, but later I'll carefully check through everything, and perhaps ask a couple of more things, if anything else comes up.
Thanks again!

I just finished ID1 with a party of six. At the end of the game, each character had around 2.4 million xp. The ending level range for single or dual class characters was 16 for the paladin and transmuter, 18 for the cleric, and 21 for the thief.

Dual-class is fine, but you want to do it early rather than late. I had three characters who started as fighters, but after 3rd level, switched to transmuter, cleric, and thief respectively. It worked well for the transmuter (three proficiency slots in crossbow was very useful). It was good for the cleric, who did not do a lot of melee but nevertheless benefited from the extra proficiency slots in mace and sling.

I had two characters in the party with thief ability. One was a multi-class mage/thief whose thieving abilities concentrated early in opening locks and finding traps. The other was the one who started as a fighter and switched to thief after 3rd level. For this character I had planned to do scouting and backstabbing.

I was never able to make effective use of the backstabbing. Many encounters have big groups of monsters, getting around them to flank your backstab target is hard to do, and when the backstab goes off it's hard to deal with the attention afterward.

If I were to play again, I would not go with a dedicated thief. I would have one multi-class thief to deal with locks and traps. I would have a second character to do scouting, either a ranger or a second multi-class thief (fighter/thief if I wanted another try at backstabbing, but I'd probably skip the backstabbing).

Though there aren't enough items to really support more than one tank (I wanted to), don't have too many characters who are weak in stepping up to melee. Monsters surround and flank you far more often in ID1 than BG. You need one dedicated tank, but at least two other characters who can serve as emergency tanks.

I found the most effective way to do this was potions/spells of Haste and potions/spells/ring of invisibility as well as potions/spells/ring of Freedom. Buff up with Freedom and Haste*, then go Invis and run up behind mister Big Bad and get the backstab. Immediately have your casters lay out a field of Web and Grease in front of the party and high-tail it with your thief back to the group. Often you can take out the boss or one of the tougher mobs in one backstab which makes the battle much easier. The mobs will follow the fleeing thief and run into your AoE soup, which should be augmented by that time with Spike Growth (if you have a Druid) and your casters should be waiting to unleash hell when the mobs show up.

*One of the reasons I like my multiclass FTR/Thief to be a Gnome is because they an wear the helm that negates the fatigue factor after being Hasted. Very useful in the above scenario. (As well, Gnomes can get 18/00 STR, as opposed to Halflings).

What do you mean by not enough items to support more than one tank? There are plenty of armor and weapon options for two or three tanks in the game.

In addition to the armor and shield, there are items that add to AC and stack with armor, but there are not a whole lot of these. By the end of the game, my paladin had AC -17 from armor/shield/items/DEX. My next two were able to get AC -10 and AC -9. Impressive usually, but deep into the game, AC -10 gets hit in melee too much to do full-time tanking. At least that was my experience.

I did not have a bard in my party, and perhaps the bard song would have made a critical difference. Instead of stacking the best special items on one character, spread them out between two and get that additional AC boost.