Evening all. I'm trying my hand and another playthrough after a previous one had the save file corrupt on me. I tried being (relatively) more experimental this time around. My party got through the initial quests okay, saving the bridge from ruination, but the next level is proving troublesome and I wanted to check if I'm on a hiding to nothing with this team:

1. Half-orc fighter. Sword and Board.
2. Half-orc barbarian. Two-handed weapon

These two are good, maxed out for strength, they are the first thing most enemies see.

3. Asimar cleric. I'm not a huge fan of clerics, but I have to have a cleric and this is my cleric. Wis is maxed and other points spread between Str, Con, Cha.
4. Human Ranger/Druid. This was supposed to be a support cleric-y type but with killer bow skills. I may have placed the stats badly, with points in Dex, Con, Wis. This character is now a bit of sweeper role, sometime melee as another tank and sometimes ranged. But not brilliant at either.

5. Drow Bard. The face of the team. Piled points into Dex, Int and Cha, and so has low Str, Wis and Con. Turns out this char is a killer from range (much better than the ranger/druid) and is absolutely a great face for the team. I also have this char doing thieving stuff (lockpick and traps). The high Int gives me skill points to play with, but I am limited in the amount of points I cna put into these skills. Is this viable or will my character fall behind the curve and be unable to deal with locks and traps later in the game? I initially wanted to go a bit more swashbukly with this char and go weapon finesse. With low HP is this a silly idea?
6. Moon Elf Mage. Maxed out Dex and Int. Proving to be quite useful from the beginning, and a useful support bow. An abolute glass cannon though, with only 3 hp per level.

Anyway, am I wasting my time with this lot? In particular can anyone help with the following questions?
- Is the ranger/druid a bad idea? I'm going for a 50/50 split on Ranger and Druid levels - should i focus on one?
- Do I need a rogue? If I bounce of a hard wall in another 10 hours or so because of unsurmountable traps or locks with my Bard on duty, I would prefer to restart again from here.

Thanks for any help!

With lingering song the bard songs will be so powerful at level 11+ that stopping to sing will reduce the party's damage output. Weapon finesse would be a wasted feat, if int is 13+ consider taking expertise so you can transfer +5 to hit into +5 AC. Thieving skills will be high enough, you won't get into trouble because of them.

Your ranger/druid will be more useful if you take only druid levels from now on.

Thanks for the swift response. I'll focus on the druid side of things with that char so.

I have struggled with one or two traps already. but for the most part its been working out.

I'm probably a bit late here, but here's my 2 cents. IWD2 inexplicably nerfed the ranger in a variety of ways and left it without any significant areas of strength, so it's basically only worth being one for roleplaying purposes as for combat utility it's completely outclassed by the Fighter and Barbarian. It also doesn't help that 3rd edition D&D nerfed archery into the ground and made rangers focus on dual wielding instead, so the class isn't even particularly good at what you want to do with it (the 3.5 update fixed much of that, but that's too little too late for IWD2). Fighter/Druid is a very solid combo, though.

The best ways to create this character would be to take 1 level of Fighter and then multiclass Druid and never look back. Even taking 4 levels of Fighter weapon specialization (which is very good for archers!) isn't really worth it because of how catastrophically it hurts your spellcasting power. Druid levels stack with your fighter's combat abilities (each druid level is worth 3/4 of a Fighter level) but Fighter levels do nothing for your Druid spellcasting power. No; I personally find Rogues completely useless in IWD2. Cross-class skills are more than sufficient to get you through the game, and their sneak attack is bugged and doesn't work correctly so they're kinda gimped in combat.

Rangers are good for guerilla combat. Hide in shadows, keep moving until you see an enemy. Fire off a few shots then run back until you are just out of sight of your opponent. Hide in shadows again and they'll stop chasing you. Rinse and repeat. This strategy is most effective in wilderness areas. The dash feat helps a lot.

Barbarians do it better; with their fast movement speed bonus (which stacks with dash) they can outrun most enemies and play a perpetual game of keepaway without even needing stealth.

You are correct that Rangers do have the very small niche of being the only full attack bonus class that gets to treat stealth skills as class skills, but this is an incredibly small niche as IWD2 is not very friendly to stealth-based strategies in general. This is a very combat-focused game, and the Ranger simply doesn't offer anything to compensate for its power-down compared to Fighter or Barbarian or even Paladin. Multiclassing Druid completely eliminates this advantage, anyways, since the Ranger class skills are irrelevant if you're taking most of your levels in Druid.

Well, the team is working well for me overall (so far). Much more effective than the team on my previous attempt. :D

In relation to the characters I was wondering most particularly about, the Bard is working a treat and the Ranger / Druid is... improving.

The Bard is doing a mostly great job of covering the rogue's duties so far - Opening locks, no problems; Finding traps (when I remember to look for them), also great. Having a few problems with disarming them though. I would be better off getting my Barbarian to walk through them a lot of the time and am conisidering investing one point in traps so that I can deal with exploding chests using the Barbarian also.

As suggested, I an now focusing on the Druid side of things with my Ranger / Druid. I have three levels of Ranger in there though. I suppose I have better survivability as a result, but in terms of heals / support /etc, the Cleric is doing much better.

Anyways, can't complain. This lot made short work of the orcs fortress and are now on their way into the ice palace. Excelsior!

If getting rid of trap damage is an issue, then consider using some low level summons. Everyone stands back while a poor sacrificial Nature's Ally 1 sets off the Trap-Of-Exploding-Doom for deathD6 damage.

I can't remember if you can try to attack chests, and when a trap triggers if you do. If it triggers when you start hitting it, then a summon can again go trigger the trap and you can get the goods afterward.

That might be cheaper than healing your barbarian, if the trap damage starts to add up.

That does sound a more practical approach to the problem.

Thanks for the tips, all. This is definitlely shaping up to be a more succesful playthrough than my previous attempts. And I say this in no way to tempt fate in any shape or form.