Just a little background here. I beat the original Baldur's Gate years ago and I bought a physical copy of this game but never played it. Recently, I bought it on GOG to play multiplayer with a friend since I heard Icewind Dale is awesome for coop. We decided to play two multi classed characters each since he was brand new to this kind of game and we could cover more classes this way.

One of the problems is he wanted to keep it as realistic as possible and not reroll his stats in the character creation section. As a result, his characters constitution is a bit low and on top of that multi class characters level slowly and have fewer hit points than single class characters.

We played probably a total of 5 hours before he decided he didn't like the game and so I picked up the entire party and I am trying to finish the game.

Our party is:

Thief/Fighter
Cleric/Ranger
Druid/Fighter
Conjurer

So at this point, we are at the Severed Hand and the Druid and Cleric only have about 50 hit points which seems low and I've only recently started to try to reload and max out their hit points every time they level. My mage has about the same hit points but that makes sense. I feel like this is a more challenging party to play and I have to use healing spells/potions and rest more and retreat more than the normal party.

Is my party too weak? I could create 2 more characters and roleplay that we were looking for 2 mercenaries to join us to give my party more firepower if I have to.

Well you could add a Bard who just plays songs while the others fight, would already help a lot.

Also there is an option that makes you gain max HP possible on level up, saves you the reloading.

What stats do your characters have? I know yuou said you didn't want to reroll stats but you have 3 fighter characters so they each better have high STR, DEX and CON. Did you also just accept the rolls given or did you allow yourself to customize each stat on the first roll? Also, what difficulty level are you playing? You should be able to finish the game with that party but I'm thinking you're having trouble because your stats are borked.

Did you check the option that give max HP when leveling up in the IWD config program? That will also go a long way in helping. However, if I were you, I would just restart the game and make the characters you want to play as as well as use the whole 6 slots.

Shame about your friend not liking the game because he insisted on a self imposed restriction on your first game that caused trouble.

Thanks so much for the replies guys.

RyaReisender: Yes, I've checked off gain max HP as an option. At first I thought it was cheating and too unfair but than again by reloading I am doing the same thing.

IwubCheeze: I am playing on normal difficulty and my own two characters did not have the same restriction that the other two characters had so they have stats that I allocated myself. I definitely don't want to restart the game because I've probably spent 40 hours on it already. And it's not like it is impossible to progress but I just have to heal and rest a lot more than I normally would I think.

My fighter/thief has STR - 16, DEX - 19, CON - 17, INT - 10, WIS - 10, CHR - 10.

My conjurer has STR - 11, DEX - 14, CON - 18, INT - 18, WIS - 8, CHR - 10

My cleric/ranger has STR 14, DEX, 14, CON, 14, INT - 15, WIS 15, CHR 8 (it is lower because of an item)

My druid/fighter has STR 12, DEX 12, CON 15, INT - 10, WIS 12, CHR 16

The last two characters are the ones that did not reroll.

Well you could always use the IWD Keeper (save editor) to "fix" the stats.

Or just play on an easier difficulty.

Alrighty then, your first character is fine (though I really would have put him at 18 STR), The conjurer isn't too bad, but he get's no benefit from having 18 CON so you have 2 points wasted there. Next time you create a mage character, NEVER go beyond 16 CON. An 18 CON and 16 CON wizard will have EXACTLY the same HP. Don't forget that wizards have a lore bonus from their INT and WIS so try and keep WIS at base 10 if you can.

Your last 2 characters are totally FUBARed though. The cleric/ranger is a front liner and needs all the STR, DEX, CON and WIS they can get. 15 INT is completely wasted on this character as they get no benefit beyond the lore bonus (which the conjuror will be better at anyways) and their other stats aren't high enough for him/her to function properly. The same applies to the fighter/druid that they need all the STR, DEX, CON and WIS they can get too. A fighter should never have a STR as low as 12. Fighters really should have 18 STR if they can but NEVER lower than 16. Also, keep in mind that clerics and druids get bonus spells based on their WIS stat so this should really be maxed.

You're right that you don't need to restart as you can add characters mid game anyways. But getting to the Severed Hand with a 4 man party with 2 poor characters would have been very frustrating to say the least, it definitely shouldn't take 40 hours to get that far. However, the game is actually easier from that point onward so you should be okay as long you add an additional 2 characters with decent stats. Here is how I would fix it.

Forget the bard as RyaReisender suggested as the bard bonus will not turn your two crappy 2 front liners into decent ones. Your party has no decent frontliners so I'd fix that by adding two single class fighters with high STR DEX and CON, proficient in a missile weapon, two melee weapons with two different damage types (one of which would be bludgeon) and show those two pansies how front lining is done ;). Your two gimped characters will still be able to give healing support to the fighters (though their WIS shuld really be higher). At least this way, the two messed up characters will still have some use. Maybe you can role play that your 2 gimped characters got in a fight over grabbing the last turkey leg at the last inn they went to, got in a fight and ended up killing each other at the same time requiring that they be replaced ;)

That sounds good. I'll consider it.

The only issue I see is that if I add characters, they will be level 1 characters and their HP will be especially low for this part of the game unless I can edit them to a higher lvl. The program editor I have DaleKeeper doesn't allow me to do this.

Actually now that I think about it, I can just edit the characters that I have and give them better stats like taking points out of INT and putting them where they should be. I think it would be fair as I would have never kept those stats if it was just me playing the game the whole time.

Basically what I'll do is add up the total number of points each character was allocated at the start and reallocate them as I would have if I had control of them in the beginning but the total points will be the same. I'll take a bunch out of Intelligence and Charisma and put them to Strength, Dex, Constitution and Wisdom for those two FUBARed characters. LOL!

I'm pretty sure you can increase Exp with the Dale Keeper, you can just level them up then ingame. Am I remembering so wrong?

Also, the characters don't have to participate in combat when low level, they still get exp. A bard could just stand in the back and keep the song playing.

In that case, what you can do is enable the cheat console in the IWD config program, go into the game, hit CTRL + TAB to bring up the cheat console and without the quotation marks, type "GETYOURCHEATON:SetCurrentXP(XXX)" where XXX is the amount of XP you want to add. This will help bring new characters you add up to speed.

As for stats, if you aren't opposed to mix/maxing, certain characterscan have certain stats reduced to 3 and it won't affect the game in any way. Fighters for example don't use INT or WIS beyond the lore bonus so if you need stat points you can always take them from here.

The fighter / druid at character creation has a minimum CHA of 15 so using Dale Keeper to edit lower than this might be be cheating somewhat. With STR, DEX, CON and WIS all being important to fighter / druids and a min CHA of 15, I say don't be afraid to pillage your INT stat for all its worth. Also, your fighter / druid got a very poor roll with a combined stat point total of 77 points (I think the max you can roll is 91). For a fighter druid, try and get the full 91 points, or at least high 80's if possible.

Do keep at least one character with at least 15 CHA. Not only does it affect bartering but you also have opportunity to get XP in the HOW areas of the game which wouldn't be available otherwise

Problem is, the OP only has one character that can participate in front line combat and it's still not the best role for a fighter/ thief. Don't get me wrong, bards are great characters but there's no point in using one when there are no characters who can hold the monsters back. The OP needs good front liners first. Fix the fighter / druid and ranger / clerics stats and/or add a good single class fighter (or paladin) then we can think about using a bard.

You can still go back and rest in Level 3 of Dragon Eye once it's been cleared right? You can babysit the newer members while you kill Cold Wights. That should level them fairly quickly.

Also the beginning of the next chapter immediately after Severed Hand is an excellent place to grind some exp from resting/wandering monsters. Don't want to spoil it, but that is where I would level up any characters that need the exp.

I rolled a paladin with 99 points in IWD:EE
minimum is 75 points and max is probably 108 (6 x 18)

So in the EE version, it's possible to max all your stats? Didn't know that :S. The OP didn't mention if they were playing the original or EE though so I just assumed they had the original. I don't have EE so of course I can't mention any differences between the two versions :P

If gnarbrag rolled a pally with 99 points, then it's unlikely the EE system is the same as the original. On my several playthroughs of IWD with many more characters created, I have NEVER seen a roll even remotely as high as 99 attribute points.