I'm thinking of making a fighter/druid and basically having the party consist of humans and dwarves. I just need to do a little more checking stats to make sure I get them balanced out correctly.

If you do a Fighter/Druid mix, take exactly one level of Fighter and put the rest to Druid. The reason for this is that a level of Druid give +3/4 progression to your attack and +1 to your spellcasting, while Fighter gives +1 to your attack and nothing to spellcasting. Even before we get to a more nuanced analysis, this difference in their progression is just ridiculously one-sided.

My reasoning for going with a fighter/druid is that is I don't want to get into dueling something like a paladin/druid because it seems like that would be a bit redundant.

Paladin/Druid isn't even a legal combination, since Paladin requires you to be Lawful Good while a Druid cannot be.

There is one and only one reason to multi-class into being a Paladin in IWD2, and that's the Divine Grace class feature. This is a great class feature that gives you a huge boost to all your saving throws and is one of the best defensive class features in the game. It requires you to have a very high charisma score, though, which limits the applicability of multi-classing Paladin since most classes cannot afford a large charisma score.

As a Druid, the best option is to stay single-class. If you want normal weapon proficiency, then a single level in Fighter, Barbarian, or possibly Ranger is reasonable. Don't take more than one level in your non-Druid class, the benefits are grossly outweighed by the penalties.

LOLI I've never even played a Paladin so I wasn't even sure if a paladin/druid could be multiclassed. Didn't think so but I was just using it as an example....a wild far out one but an example LOL...forgive my ignorance...I usually just play a fighter when I point my number one in place. He serves in the purpose. I just buff him as much as possible. The difference is this time I'm having to setup a whole party and I want to make sure I get them all correct. One is easy to do. Four or five not so easy.

There are actually pretty few class incompatibilities in 3rd edition, all of them involving the Monk or Paladin. You just happened to mention one of the few illegal combos.

It's not a problem; this is an advice thread, the general presumption is that you're here looking for answers. I have a pretty good knowledge of the 3rd edition D&D rules and the peculiarities of the individual games that use those rules, so I'm happy to share what I know.

If you're looking for a brutal front-line fighter, my personal favorite is a Half-Orc Fighter/Barbarian multi-class with maximum strength and a two-handed weapon. No better way to protect the squishy mages than hacking every threat to tiny bits as quickly as possible ;-)

Never thought of playing a Half-Orc. I always thought of them as being evil and I usually don't play evil characters. Not sure why just don't. But I have played a Barbarian before and he was fun to play.

Is rogue/wizard a viable combo? To be more clear, I'm thinking to pick rogue for skills, both "thievish" (locks, traps, etc.) and "social" (diplomacy, bluff, intimidate) and wizard for the combat part (with Intelligence being a good start for wizards, that should give him plenty of skill points).

And how important would Charisma stat be for him, would it be okay to leave it at 10 (so no penalties) and get all the social skills from well, skills, and not stat modifiers? (I was thinking of starting stats along the line of Int 18, Dex 14-16*, Con 12-14, and leaving the rest at 10, that should be doable with the starting stat budget, if I recall)

*So he'd be at least decent with a bow or so, when not casting.
(I thought of just picking a bard for social things, but Intimidate isn't a class skill for them I think - unless it's possible to use skills of different characters in the same conversation? If so, I could take Intimidation on a barbarian or so, if it's a class skill for them like in NWN, haven't checked yet)

The character would start as a rogue (more skill points off the bat) but go wizard at level two, and then probably alternate between classes at level ups (unless less rogue levels would turn out to be enough, then less of them, and more of wizard's).

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Also for another character, I've read in some earlier post, that a paladin is good for saving throws if you have good charisma, so would level 1 Paladin/rest Sorcerer be a good idea? (I guess crossing them with a bard would be difficult if not impossible, due to alignment conflict - can alignment in IWD2 change, the way it's possible in NWN, and if so, would the character lose his paladin abilities, becoming a Fallen one?)

Paladin1/sorcerer is worse than pure class sorcerer (missing a casting level) but still playable. Alignment change isn't possible in the game and loosing enough reputation to fall isn't a good idea since this would also affect shop prices.

For a rogue/wizard 1 rogue level is enough, cater levels are extremely important for casters.

You won't be able to get all the social skills without hobbling yourself. Rogue/Wizard has no synergy beyond skills, so you're hobbling yourself in every other way. Rogue is already the weakest non-spellcaster in combat so taking Wizard levels exacerbates his greatest downside, and Wizard spellcasting falls behind incredibly quickly if you multiclass so taking levels of anything else hurts. As kmonster mentions 1 level of Rogue is doable; don't take more than that.

General rule of thumb for Wizard or Sorcerer multiclassing: 1 level in another class is a sacrifice, 2 levels in another class is a steep sacrifice, 3 levels in another class makes you borderline incompetent at wizardry/sorcerer, and 4 levels shouldn't even be considered. 10 charisma should be fine. I ran a Paladin/Sorcerer in my last IWD2 run. It works, but it's kinda underwhelming. At low levels I got some utility out of being able to wade into combat with protective spells, but the party barbarian was cleaning house without the paladin/sorcerer getting a chance to do much of anything. At higher levels it was just a Sorcerer with slightly reduced spellcasting and massive saving throws and I had little reason to ever bother with melee. Just be an elf; they get proficiency with longbows for free, no multiclassing required. I don't recall ever having much use for intimidate. Conversation skills aren't used too heavily in IWD2. Nice to have, but I got by just with diplomacy.

Is it true, what I think I've read somewhere, that if you have a character at lower level than the rest of the party, you're getting more XP?

Well though, what I really want to know is: I'm still in chapter one, after cleaning out the dam & bridge area of monsters, about to return to Targos. If I replace one of my characters, will the new one be stuck a lot behind the rest of the group (who are all level 5, if I recall), levels-wise, or would they catch up soon enough?

Also, can a multiclass paladin wield the Holy Avenger sword, or would they have to be pure one for it?

The newbie should be able to close the gap after awhile. I don't remember if they'll receive a larger amount of XP for being a low level character surviving comparatively higher level encounters; at the very least, the newbie needs fewer XP to level, so he'll catch up some even if he ends up a level behind long term.

A multiclass paladin should be fine wielding the Holy Avenger. It is having any paladin levels at all that matters, not whether you have anything besides paladin levels.

Something about IWD really grabbed me. The music and ambient noise in Kuldahar the Tree Town is perfectly done. I usually restart these RPGs a couple times. But I dove in and made so much progress that I'm already looking for Priest Aurentile in the Vale.

My party functions perfectly okay. But I usually stress the roleplay elements. I kind of wanted to be a band of Robin Hood type of figures with multiple archers. Is there any way to kill off party members and replace them?

You can use the Character Arbitration screen to modify your party as you see fit.

If you are playing the Enhanced Edition, you will need to copy the save to the multiplayer save directory, use Character Arbitration there, then copy the save back afterwords.

If you do this on Icewind Dale 2, be aware that your whole party will gain more XP due to a design flaw in the way XP works in that game; to prevent this, use a console cheat to give your new characters an appropriate amount of XP and level them up. (In IWD1, you can do this, but failing to do so won't ruin game balance.)