While I'm running through IWD1 with my trad party, I want to plan ahead and do the same for IWD2. I think this is going to take more strategy than the IWD1 party as I'd have to plan for feats, point buy attributes, and whatnot. But, the rules are the same, 1 of each category (warrior, priest, rogue, magic user), all single-classed, preferably all different races and alignments.

Also, if we can keep it as spoiler-free as possible, that would be cool. Ironically, it's been longer since I've played IWD2 than IWD1 and I remember next to nothing about the content.

1) The Warrior. I'm tempted to go with another paladin, but since it's point-buy for IWD2, putting into charisma is going to take from the physical stats. Not to mention, fighters getting all those bonus feats makes them more attractive. Then there's the barb with it's damage resistance, rage, and other specials. Whoever it is is going to be in the thick of it and has to be able to handle that.

2) The Priest. Obviously a cleric (and good aligned), since spontaneous casting is implemented. Nothing really jumps out for me in terms of the deities, though.

3) The Rogue. This is all pretty cut and dry. Locks, traps. I'd like him to be combat capable too, to get his sneak attacks in.

4) The Magic User. Here we can choose between a sorc and a wizard. Considering the lag with getting spell scrolls in IWD1, and I expect this is also a problem in IWD2 (especially with how fast a 4 person party will level), the sorc might be a better option.

So, how would you build this party (class, stats, feats, etc.)?

1) I'd go with a 1/2 Orc Fighter. Sure, Barbarians get Rage and a d12, but I like the extra Fighter feats. Spec him up with two-handers (Greatsword or Polearm). For feats, Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Improved Critical, Power Attack, Cleave, Dirty Fighting, Dodge, and Maximized Attacks (this last requires 4 ranks in Concentration and Specialization in two weapons, so plan accordingly). Note that some feats (Dirty Fighting, for example) require 13+ DEX. Again, plan accordingly.

2) Shield Dwarf Cleric of Tempus. You get two slots in Axes right out of the gate, so he's set up for melee right away. I'd consider putting another point in Clubs (Club of Disruption) and the other feats should go to things like (assuming you're going for a melee presence) Power Attack, Cleave, Dirty Fighting, Improved Critical, maybe Ambi and TWF as well (plan your DEX accordingly). Grab Combat Casting since he'll likely need to be casting some spells in combat.

3) Tiefling Rogue. Tieflings get a boost to both INT and DEX, both important attributes for a Rogue. Spec him with ranged weaponry and take feats like Rapid Shot, Point Blank Shot, Improved Critical. If you want to go the melee combat route, I'd highly recommend grabbing Fighter levels. I know this doesn't exactly fit your idea of the iconic party, but the extra HPs and feats will be invaluable for the character to have a melee presence, and you'll be able to pull out a shield if you need to. Then you can concentrate on feats like Ambi, TWF, Weapon Focus, Specialization, Dirty Fighting, Improved Critical, Weapon Finesse, Dodge, etc. For skills, you'll want Disable Device, Open Locks, Search, and consider some into Pick Pocket, as it can net a you a few good items (not a lot though, so consider carefully whether you want to burn points on it). If this guy is going to be your party 'face', you'll also want Diplomacy and perhaps Bluff. UMD can be useful as well. You'll want to consider Hide and Move as well. (He'll need a high INT score).

4) I'd go with a Sorcerer here. There are only a limited number of spells that you use on a regular basis, and he can flip out some scrolls for anything else. Skill him up with Concentration, Spellcraft, Alchemy and Knowledge Arcana (plan his INT accordingly). For feats, go with the Spell Focus line in whatever schools he uses most as well as feats that enhance his casting and spell damage (later on there are things like Spirit of Flame, Aegis of Rime, etc). I'd look at either Human for this one (extra feat and extra skill point per level) or Aasimar (boost to CHA and WIS). The Aasimar gets the level penalty, but will still be an effective nuking platform.

Overall, I like the theme. The half-orc, cleric of tempus, archer rogue, and sorc make for a very rugged and almost barbaric team. I was actually thinking of doing something like that to contrast my IWD party concept of Paladin and Cleric of Ilmater from Waterdeep on a mission, thief and mage travel guides (independent). My idea was something like Ranger, Druid, Rogue, sorc, but your idea is better.

1+2) Looks good.

3+4) The ECL classes I expect won't really be noticeable with a reduced party size. I like your archer idea, with maybe weapon finesse thrown in so he can land some sneak attacks. IIRC, he can't sneak attack with bows, right? With the charisma hit and attribute points being tied up in Dex and Int, I doubt I'd make him the face man. OTOH, I don't know if the sorc would/could have enough Int to go around. I'm counting six skills including the socials. So, that means he'd need an Int of 18, or 16 and be a human. Once I max Cha and throw some into Dex and Con, I'm not sure I'll have much left for Int. Perhaps I can drop Str and go easy on Wis and that will get me there?

The only downside I'm seeing overall is that the (expectantly low Cha) fighter is going to be on point, which means that I'm not going to have my party face available for all the little situations where you find yourself in an instant dialogue on sight situation. Is there a way around this other than having my fragile sorc lead the way?

Remember the golden rule with 3rd edition: keep your attribute scores even rather than odd. I'd say this is one area where you can go multi-class without breaking your theme. Fighter/Barbarian is a great combo that stays true to its "pure warrior" roots while giving him a nice balance of muscle and feats. My suggestion would be a half-orc with 20 strength. You might consider Druid, but otherwise Cleric is your go-to choice. Remember that unlike the 2nd edition games there aren't any hard rules on what weapons a Cleric can use; if you multi-class (even one level) as a fighter or invest a feat in weapon proficiency, you can use whatever you like. For some silly reason, IWD2 implemented a weaker version of the 3rd edition sneak attack rules. This makes single-class Rogues very underwhelming in combat. I was really disappointed with my party rogue in IWD2. With multi-classing veto'd, I'd say go with the bard for your thiefy character; there's not a lot to get out of sneak attacking here but the party support of the bard could be quite useful. The scroll issue isn't as bad in IWD2 as it was in IWD1; I always at least had something, even if the selection wasn't as good as I'd like. Both Sorcerers and Wizards are great character classes, and which one you choose is really up to your preference.

As for attributes, here's how it breaks down:

Strength: primary fighters should max it, those who are secondarily melee (such as clerics or rogues) should get it as high as they can afford, and everyone else should drop it to around 8-10 (which gives you sufficient carrying capacity)
Dexterity: max this out for ranged attackers. Note that this includes wizards and sorcerers! Many of their spells technically count as ranged attacks and you need to successfully "hit" the opponent for them to work. Dexterity improves your armor class, but is "capped" by heavy armor. For instance, if you're wearing platemail you get no bonus for a dexterity score above 12. You might go for 13 to meet the prerequisite for the "dodge" feat, but that's about it. For those wearing light or no armor, a high dexterity score is necessary to get a good AC.
Constitution: everyone needs this. Having at least a 14 is advisable; don't go below 12.
Intelligence: this gives you additional skill points. Many characters in your party (looking at you, fighter) don't really need that many skill points, so this makes an easy dump stat. No matter how low your intelligence score goes, you can never earn fewer than 1 skill point per level (2 if you're human!) meaning that there's a certain point at which further intelligence reductions have no further penalty and you should just drop it down to 3. For fighters and Paladins, there's no difference between an intelligence score of 9 or 3, so either boost it higher for additional skill points or dump it. (this is why 3E normally sets "8" as a minimum ability score for point buy; IWD2 ignores this convention). Wizards should max this.
Wisdom: this affects your will saving throw. Many of the most dangerous and debilitating spells target the will saving throw, so avoid having a penalty here. For most characters, 10-12 is a good number. Paladins and Rangers should have 14. Clerics and Druids should max this.
Charisma: unless you're a Paladin, Bard, or Sorcerer this attribute does very little and only provides a bonus to a few of your skills, making it strictly inferior to intelligence. For Sorcerers, ensure you max it out. Bards and Paladins should have at least 14, preferably 16.

For some reason, Divination, Transmutation, and Enchantment wizards get away with only one opposition school in IWD2. If you're going to be a specialist wizard, pick one of these three. The opposition schools in these cases are evocation, necromancy and abjuration respectively. All three of these schools are easily discarded, so there doesn't appear to be any particular balance consideration here, and these are strictly superior to the other specialization options. Most of the good necromancy and abjuration spells can also be cast by Clerics, so it's really easy for wizards to get away without these spells if there's a Cleric in the party. There are plenty of damage-dealing transmutation and conjuration spells, so evocation spells like fireball aren't necessary and there just aren't enough utility spells in this school to redeem it. It's easily discarded. I wouldn't bother with Maximized Attacks, period. The damage boost just isn't significant enough for a once-per-day ability that requires you to get weapon specialization in two weapon types. It will still be noticable, but it'll definitely be more manageable once you've got a few levels under your belt.

You should be fine with the Rogue as the face. Even if his CHA is low, as Darvin noted, it only gives you a minor penalty (or no bonus if it's 10) to your social skills. For a Tiefling, you could easily go with:

STR 10
DEX 20
CON 10
INT 18
WIS 10
CHA 10

That's if you don't want to munchkinize (personally, I'd munchkinize this guy, but that's me*). IIRC, this gives you 8 skill points per level (you'd have 9 if you munchkin his INT to 20). As you can see though, he's weak and he doesn't have many hit points either. So he's not suited for much in the way of melee. This is why I'd focus on ranged combat for the Rogue.

If you decide to go with the caster as the face, then you'll have to pump INT a bit to get enough skill points. What you can do is something like this (for an Aasimar):

STR 8
DEX 18
CON 10
INT 18
WIS 6
CHA 20

for skills, since you get a +5 modifier from CHA, you can go with 2 points at creation in each of Bluff and Diplomacy and alternate adding points as you level. You can max the others. This is obviously a bit munchkined, so you can adjust as you see fit. But I'd go with the Rogue as the face. Oh, and don't worry about the low WIS, since Will is the high save for arcane casters anyway.

*While I love roleplaying, I'm also an incorrigible power gamer as well, so take my advice with that in mind. For the most part you'll be fine and can choose which character to speak with. For those occasions where you can't choose, I actually consider it cheating by the game most of the time this occurs, so I wouldn't hesitate to reload, rearrange the party so the game chooses your face as the character it talks with, and continuing on. This, of course, is up to you. While I concede your point, the reason I suggested it is because a pure Fighter is going to run out of decent feats to take. When I ran mine through the game, I took this feat, since I was specializing in two weapons anyway (one two-hander and a sword and board option for those times when you need the extra AC protection). I found it was actually somewhat useful, expecially if you're in a battle with something with a lot of HPs and you're using a weapon with a wide damage range (like a 1-12 two-handed weapon). But absolutely, it's not something to build your character around. Still a decent choice if you're flailing around for a feat to take.

Oh, and to Kneller, one thing I will mention re feats: don't take Improved Initiative. It looks like it might be a decent choice, but as far as I know it doesn't work at all and I don't think this was ever addressed in a patch.

I used it in my playthrough, as well. In my case it was for an archer who used both a bow and a melee weapon (also a pure fighter). I wasn't particularly impressed with it, and that was an ideal situation where I had lots of feats, I was getting weapon specialization in two wepaons anyways and I was using a weapon-class that needs all the damage bonuses it can get. Once you add in damage bonus from strength and enhancements, the range doesn't look nearly as wide. A more accurate range would be something like 16-27. Maximizing that is nice, but not nice enough for a once-per-day ability. I discovered this the hard way. The feat is bugged and simply doesn't work.

I guess we're probably not going to come to an agreement on this one, but I'll add one more thought: the feat lasts for 10 seconds, IIRC, which is basically 1 1/2 rounds. Assuming your fighter is getting 4 attacks per round, that's 5, maybe 6 attacks that are dealing maximum damage (again, assuming they all hit). I think that's also applied to a critical hit as well, so max damage on crits. Again, if you're up against something with a lot of HPs, this is going to add up fast.

I'm not saying it's the best feat in the list, but it's better than a lot of other filler feats one could choose when you have an open feat slot and nothing much of urgency to put into it. It's not going to make or break the character, but I think it's worth looking at.

I love multi-class, often doing so in ways that are detrimental to the character's overall power. My party leader in IWD2 was a Paladin/Sorcerer Rogues are already pretty weak in combat; they need sneak attacks to keep up with the fighters. It's not bad at low levels where you only get one attack per round, but at higher levels (a hasted 16th level Rogue gets four attacks every round) it's a pretty big drop in your damage output.

Don't you think that a 9th level rogue getting +5d6 on every single flanking strike might be a little OP? I mean, yeah, I'd prefer if they had their full ability, but with this I figure I can have him run around the field to get his hits in, then fall back and start some archery.

You mention going with a bard for my thiefly character. It's tempting. However, won't he always suck at locks, traps, and most thiefly tasks? I mean, even with a high Int, he won't be able to keep up with the cross-class skill cost.

Totally down to preference. I don't really enjoy the BBN class, so I tend to go to Fighters. Besides, I find if I go with BBN, I definitely run short of feats. It's better to be searching for filler feats than wishing the character got more, IMO. And keep in mind the filler feat 'problem' doesn't arise until the character's pretty high level anyway. You've far more discipline than I, or you're not as obsessive. I can't stand the thought of not having my characters optimized. Even a single 'wasted' skill point bugs the hell out of me. Good points, and the Ghostwise Halfling would definitely be on my list of candidates for that position. However, he'll have a STR penalty, which is not a good thing for melee. And DEX bonus aside, if the only thing you're getting out of it is an extra feat, why not go Human and grab the extra skill point per level as well? Oh yeah, absolutely. Believe me, with my optimization obsession, I've considered this as well. Thing is, they level fairly soon after a non-ECL race does. Once you get a few levels under your belt, it doesn't really make that much of a difference. Yeah, sorry, I mean the vanilla Dwarf. As for thoughts on the other races, sure. You can certainly make a great argument for an Aasimar Cleric (but if your concern is as noted above with ECL races, you have the same issue here) I'm a sucker for Dwarves though. Probably my favorite race, so I often tend o go with them over other races.

Re the Bard, if you can get his INT his enough to handle all the skills you want, it would be a great substitute for the Rogue. Sure, the Rogue skills are cross class for a Bard, but I believe you'd still be fine as long as you have the skills maxed to the Bard's allowable level. And as a side bonus, you'll have a secondary spell caster at your disposal. One that can wear armor with no spell failure as well (as long as you take the proper feats). Great support character and probably my favorite class in the NWN series of games.

Lots to consider, I guess.

On paper it may look that way but if you do the math on what a typical Rogue can expect versus what a typical melee tank can expect it's actually pretty tame.

Let's take your 5d6 sneak attack damage 10th level Rogue as an example. Let's say he has 16 strength and a +2 shortsword. This gives him 1d6+2 from his weapon, and +3 from his strength score. With sneak attacks, that's 6d6+5 = 11-41 [average 26]

Now let's compare that to a 10th level Fighter with a higher strength score and a bigger weapon. If he started with 18 strength, added both his attribute advancements to strength, and has a strength-boosting item, he could easily have 22 strength by this point, which is +9 damage with a two-handed weapon. Weapon specialization would be +2. If we give him a +2 greatsword, that's 2d6+13 damage = 15-25 damage [average 20].

(please note that neither of the above two examples are particularly well-optimized)

However, a Rogue's attack progression is also significantly behind a warrior's. His accuracy will be noticably lower, and at most levels he'll get fewer attacks (levels 1-5, 8-10, and 15 are the only levels a rogue matches a warrior for number of attacks). This means that although he may expect more damage per hit, he will land fewer hits. For your typical finesse rogue with mediocre strength and limited weapon proficiency, the fighter will still deal more damage than you even when you're sneak-attacking. There are a few tricks to optimize the Rogue, but at very best he's not going to outperform the fighter significantly unless he's getting a sneak attack on every hit.

Getting a sneak attack on every hit is highly unrealistic, and many enemies are simply immune to sneak attacks anyways. This means that on average the fighter will vastly outperform the rogue combat. That massive sneak attack damage is needed just to even the scales. Ironically, the best Rogue is one who pumps his strength score, multi-classes fighter (at least 1 level) and uses a heavy two-handed weapon.

Just as you like dwarves, I like gnomes and halflings. Also, the ghostwise would fit better thematically. As for the human, I'd only want to have one human in the party, if that. For all the reasons you mentioned, I would much rather use a bard. The extra spellcasting would be a great help. And, when he's not casting he can sing or do some ranged fighting. Looking at Darvin's sneak attack analysis, one of the rogues greatest advantages is rendered pretty irrelevant. I'm not sure how I would work out the skills, though. I would have to spend twice the points in the cross-class skills than the rogue just to keep up, which means I could only focus on half the skills. Let's say I take a human with 18 Int, that would mean I can focus on only three cross-class skills max. That would be Disable Device, Search, and Locks. Then I could take one class skill, perhaps pickpocket. Obviously someone else would have to be the party face (but we've already discussed the sorc taking that role). Even still, with the 18 in Int, I'm going to have to make some sacrifices in Cha or Dex. I'm thinking Cha would be the one to sacrifice. It helps with social skills (doesn't matter with this build) and spell save DC. As for the latter, if he just focuses on buffing spells, then Cha won't matter either.

It also seems a little weird. The bard is supposed to be the people person, but someone else would be the party face? How would that work conceptually?

Side note, isn't the level max for cross-class skills equal to CL-2, while for class skills it's CL+3?

Then by all means go with the Halfling. Not a bad choice at all.

You need a CHA of 10+Spell Level to be able to cast a specific spell level. So 16 CHA if you want him to be able to cast 6th level spells.

For skills, yeah, it's going to be dicey. Bards in IWD2 unfortunately don't get many skill points per level like they do in later editions of 3.X rules. Still, if you go with Human, you can get that extra skill point per level. A couple skills you can drop would be UMD (no need for it since the Bard is an arcane caster) and Pick Pocket (it can net a few useful items, but it's by no means vital). If you cross class Open Lock and Disable Traps and have high INT, you should be okay. One of the Bard song gives a bit of a boost to Rogue skills as well, so that can be used to help when needed. So you're looking at Open Locks (cross class), Disable (cross class), Search, Bluff, and Diplomacy for 5 skills (meaning 16 INT required with a Human or 18 with a demihuman). You could drop search for this guy and get one of your other team members to pick it up as a cross class skill, if they have the points to spare.


IMO it makes the most sense for the Bard if there's one in the party. Other than him, conceptually, would be the Sorcerer.

Cross class skill maximum is (character level +3)/2. They cost 2 points for one rank and the game won't let you buy a half point, but it does let you carry one point over from one level to the next. So you can save 1 point for the next level up. This way you can keep 2 of your three cross class skills topped up at all times. You'll have to alternate through them to keep them all evened out though.

This is not an ideal setup by any means, but unless you're going with a Rogue, it's about the only choice you have.

Would a bard be competent with that limitation? As the game goes on, he'll fall further behind the rogue. At level 5 he'll have 4 ranks to the rogue's 7. At level 11, it will be 7 ranks to the rogue's 12. At level 15, it will be 9 vs. 18.