Hey,

I thought about beating the game with a party of 3 members. Is is possible with this setup?

* Paladin or Fighter/Cleric
* Fighter/Mage
* Fighter/Thief

I always had a paladin as a party leader in Baldur's Gate, but the play style is similar to a Fighter/Cleric dual class. Is it correct that the Fighter/Cleric will have more spells available than the Paladin? I remember (it's been a while) that my Paladin in BG 2 had some cleric spells he could cast, but he was always a few levels behind. If so, I think this would be a big advantage of a Fighter/Cleric over the Paladin in a small party. What do you think? Are the any advantages of the Paladin over the Fighter/Cleric?
What are your suggestions for a 3 member party capable of beating the game?

Thanks for your time :)

Yes, absolutely. Yes, he will. A Pally only gets a very few spell castings per day. The Cleric gets more. In IWD, there are 1 or 2 spots where a Paladin will get a convo option that a Cleric won't, and it will lead to an extra XP award. Other than that, there's the immunities a Pally gets and you also can find the Holy Avenger (only useable by a Paladin), which is the best weapon in the game. That's about all I can think of. What you have looks fine to me. I beat the game with a 3 character party consisting of a

Dual classed Human Ranger 3/Cleric X
Dual classed Human Fighter 3/Mage X
Elf Fighter/Thief

The only problem you'll run into is that your party will be a bit over-leveled (due to its small size) and your mage might have difficulty finding level-appropriate scrolls.

I'd personally say you should dual-class for the Cleric, and multi-class for for the Mage and Thief.

I've beaten the game with a 3 member party.

Dwarven Fighter

Human Ranger/Thief

Elven Wizard/Cleric

I played now for a few hours and it's pretty easy so far. I am done exploring the Vale of Shadows without any problems. The only minor flaw is that I had to roll forever to get decent stats for all my characters because of the multiclass requirements. Only my fighter/cleric has 18 strength, the others have 17. They still miss a lot. I hope that gets better with higher levels.

The 2nd edition rules are a little weird with attribute scores, particularly with strength scores. The difference between 17 strength and 18/00 is actually a pretty massive gulf. You'll never really overcome this, but there are a few good spells out there that can boost your strength score temporarily that should work well for you.

Not to mention there's tons of gauntlets of ogre strength in the expansion areas that give 18/00 to strength. I'm sure you'll be fine with 17 strength for the time being :)

I didn't encounter any before Heart of Winter, so that's a long time to wait.