No the only way to make a good dual wield build with str is using way to many ranger levels for the free two-weapon fighting skills. If you look at the str modifier for small weapons and I think for off hand especially it comes out, that the str bonus is really not worth it. A dual wield build is about many weaker attacks not few strong attacks. You can create weapons with a lot of elemental damage bonus so it doesn't really matter that much.

Don't restart, use the console

Step 1: enter debug mode
Step 2: use giveXP (negative value) to remove all your XP back to 0 (your char is now level 1)
Step 3: use commands to modify your attributes (to either a legal build or a non)... you could start a new game to use the character creator to calculate the legal values for you, write them on a piece of paper, and then reload the messed up save.
Step 4: use give XP to give yourself the exact amount of XP you had before starting.
Step 5: Level up.
Step 6: enjoy. Rogues have 3/4 BAB progression, as such they perform fewer attacks per turn then a fighter or a ranger would. Stacking elemental enchantments are a wonderful way to boost damage. Although you should ALSO have strength for the two to stack and a high BAB for more attacks (since each additional attack gives you another hit with all those elemental enchantments)

In DnD mages are gods not because they are the best TM in combat (you can make uber broken builds of many classes), but because of their utility.
In NWN mages have NO UTILITY AT ALL. At best you would be allowed to solve a "puzzle": by casting a cantrip on a pedestal for a magic item and a bit of XP.

If you can rest with no limitations then you can use isaac missile storms to annihilate enemies. But it is VERY VERY tedious having to constantly reapply buffs.

If you can't or don't want to get carpal tunnel then make a min maxed meleer. I min max them up the wazoo... they are terribly nerfed in NWN due to lack of reach, but dealing 60 damage per hit and attacking 6 times per round can make up for that.

Wizards are the bomb in a more true implementation like TOEE
See http://www.co8.org/forum/showthread.php?t=8045

Note that I explicitly said NWN not NWN2. (A mistake on my part, I Thought the OP said NWN1 but he is playing NWN2).

I disagree with you that casters are vastly more powerful in NWN. they are only a LITTLE more powerful.
Rest anywhere is USEFUL, certainly... but you can min max a fighter up the wazoo to make him almost as deadly and you don't have to spend 5 minutes reapplying all your buffs after every rest.

In fact, all it takes is a single +1HP/round regen item for you to never have to rest again, ever, as a fighter.

In pnp you have access to a TON of broken spells. In NWN you do not.
In PNP you have access to a lot of awesome utility spells (teleportation!) which break campaigns. In NWN you do not.
The onlyu thing you have is killing things, that takes away over 90% of the awesomeness of casters.
It just leaves them as slightly more lethal glass cannons that constantly have to rest, avoid getting their buffs chipped away (stone skin = life)... and spend way too much time reapplying buffs after each rest

I'd argue that casters, and especially arcane ones, are actually even more broken in NWN than in NWN 2. You get Time Stop, for one thing.

I replayed HotU recently, and there is an optional fight against an elder blue dragon near the beginning. With a wizard, it's Time Stop + 2 empowered Isaacs = dead dragon in 3 rounds and 5 seconds, with no damage taken.
With a melee, no matter how powerful, you actually have to run up to the dragon, make your save against fear, and beat it down. All in all, you'll take quite a bit of damage and it'll likely take you longer.

You might like the MetaPrepa mod, or the Rod of Preparation it was based on, for batch-reapplying your preferred buffs after resting.

Also, new players should keep in mind that unrestricted resting is mainly a feature of the original campaign, while the other campaigns have restrictions on resting, and the better downloadable modules do too. I think that the OC Makeover mod, which gives you the features in the OC that were added in later expansions, also can optionally use one of the later resting systems.

What kind of restrictions?

In Mask of the Betrayer, areas are ranked by how safe they are to rest in. The more dangerous the area, the more likely it is that you'll be awakened by a random encounter and have to fight without having been fully rested.

Storm of Zehir uses the same system as Mask of the Betrayer for wilderness areas, but doesn't allow resting in dungeons unless you buy some "stones of alarm". It also doesn't allow resting in towns, except at inns.

And custom maps... they just go brutal on you. Have to wait X real life minutes, can't rest at all in many places...
In OC there are sometimes places you can't rest at all in, period. Sometimes during end sequences so you go save your spells for the boss fight
You now have to rest and spend minutes reapplying buffs.
Also, the fighter doesn't care he took damage, he has tons of it and regneration.

And he doesn't need to make a save vs fear because he is immune to all mind effects. Tons and tons of helmets give that

The cast is going to have it painful at low levels... but lets say you trudged through and made it to the end. You now have carpal tunnel and the fighter can still kill anything you do.
STR: 18 +2 racial + 5 levelup + 6 (at least) item + other items (don't stack in PnP.. do in NWN)
So... 31+ str aka 10+ mod
Aside from +10 to hit, its +15 to damage on a two handed weapon, like greatsword.
So you are attacking 5 times a turn (+1 from always on haste) and most of those hit too.
2d6 averages out at 7. So it is 7 + 15 + 5 if you don't know what you are doing... In PnP you would craft a multi elemental sword... +1 Icy Fiery Acidic Lightening for another +4d6.... in NWN your crafting is typically cobbled together (and varies in each and every expansion/OC with some gimmick that does not existing in PnP). it does not have the normal limits, instead the limits are on the individual pluses. So you might be rocking a +5 sword Icy burst firey burst acidic burst lightening burst sonic burst... But then you can stack a +3 fire damage with +1d6... and occasionally get higher dice too.

So, 40 to 60 damage per hit and you are doing 5 of those a turn. They slice through a dragon or mage's defenses like warm butter. And the AI is too stupid to cast defensively so all mages do is give you more free hits.. and they can't make the concentration check because even the elder lich enemy can't make a concentration check THAT high

A few do, yes, and I don't like those. But of the ones I've played, that sort of thing has been very rare.

No, you don't need to rest and recast buffs... Using 1 level 9 and 2 level 8 spells(you can do it with just one if you get a good roll IIRC) doesn't mean you need to rest. My lvl 15+ wizard can clear out the first level of HotU's dungeon without resting more than once. Plus you don't need to use that many buffs anyway. Just protection from evil and premonition/greater stoneskin basically, it's hardly going to hurt your fingers to cast those.

And yes, melee characters can get way overpowered weapons, which makes them able to do far more single-target damage than you can do with a caster. But you won't get those until quite a way into HotU, and they cost a hell of a lot of money.
While on the other hand, casters just need xp to be overpowered, and could frankly finish the game naked with no weapon if they wanted to.

A huge part of how well arcane casters stack up to melee characters is the equipment available in a given module. In low-magic worlds melee characters tend to struggle a lot more. HotU just really shifted the balance the other way, in allowing melee characters to basically craft a Holy Flamin' Frost-Brand Gronk-Slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' Woundin' an' Returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-Out-Yer-Bum. Kinda tweaks the balance a bit.

I played through every OC and expansion of NWN1 and NWN2 as a wizard. I can attest that it hurt my fingers.

In NWN 2 certainly not. My last Build (Bard 1, Red Dragon Disciple 10, Weapon Master 7, Fighter 12) was massively overpowered with 5 (or was it 6) APR, Massive Strength Bonus, A critical chance of about 40% for 3x Damage was a beast and with improved cleave and whirlwind attack it was pretty decent at fighting crowds too.

Did you actually play the game or is that just in your head? Because the whole praise for critical chance, great cleave and whirlwind attack makes me wonder. Also, you can't have more than 4 attacks per round unless you're dual-wielding or have haste.

I mean, you've just listed 2 of the most useless feats in NWN 2 and most of the enemies at the end of the OC and in MotB are immune to crits, making rogues and weapon masters pretty useless in those.

To explain further why great cleave is horribly useless, to activate it, you need to first kill an enemy which triggers cleave, and then to get an extra attack from great cleave you need to actually kill something else with your remaining attacks in the same round. Considering how much hp even trash mobs have at high levels, this will pretty much never happen, except maybe in a very fight against tons of very weak mobs, which you can win easily enough without an extra feat.

Whirlwind is useless for pretty much the same reason. There are almost no fights at high levels where you face lots of weak mobs, so giving up all your attacks in a round to attack everyone around you is a bad idea, since you're almost always better off killing a single enemy asap than hurting lots of enemies.


Finally, a melee-oriented cleric or druid, or even bard can have the same number of attacks as a fully dedicated melee character provided you take at least 4 levels of fighter or whatever else with high BAB.
Sure, he'll have less strength and he won't get the crit stuff (which is unfortunately pretty useless as I've explained), but let me tell you that spells more than make up for that.

Seriously, play your build through the OC and MotB, then play a melee cleric, the cleric will have an easier time every single time. He'll kill things slightly slower, but he'll have a lot more staying power and he can make himself immune to a lot of things that can ruin your fighter's day (like mind-affecting spells, elemental damage, insta-kill spells and so on).

As for pure casters, they're obviously a very different beast and hard to compare. Let me just say that until you get OP weapons through crafting late in the game, casters will do only slightly less single target damage, a lot more area damage and have a lot more utility than pure fighters.
I know, since I've played both.