Hmmm. Looking at the walkthrough, that's a long time from now. I would've expected my party of 5 to have levels like that by then, unless the exp requirements increase a lot by then.

Ah, my bad. Where you said you were half way through Dragon's Eye, I read that as Dorn's Deep for some reason. Yeah, I was only a level or two higher than your party at that point.

My party sucks, no lie. The only real AD&D game I've played was Baldur's Gate II, and there I could rely on the other "pre-made" members of my party working to carry me if my main wasn't up to snuff.

I'm not at home right now, so I'll update this post with more info once I get home. I know that a lot of what I'm saying makes sense only after I post the stats.

My party has 4 characters, two of which are suppose to be primary frontline fighters and two of which are oriented more towards backline casting. In fact, my frontline fighters have strenghts of 16, due in large part to minimum Charisma class requirements. My backline peeps have strengths of 18. *shrug* :p

Anyway, here they are:

Human Paladin: My generally better tank. If only one is needed, he's my go-to guy. Just the typical pally stuff: Lay on Hands is great in a pinch, Smite Evil is nice, Protection from Evil makes my healers breathe a bit of a sigh of relief, and Cure Disease is REALLY handy (I can vendor some of those precious Mummy's Teas :p).

His specializations include crossbows, greatswords, and longswords. I have one of each for different situations: respectively, for when I'm going for completely long-range damage, when I need to tank but incoming damage will otherwise be low, and when I need a shield for maximum mitigation.


Half-Elf Druid/Fighter: Not quite as good of a tank as the paladin in most cases, but still a decent tank. Tanking, buffing/debuffing, and off-healing aside, his major contribution is Entangle and Barbed Roots (I think that's what the spell is called). The fomer helps keep enormous AoE groups in place, and the latter helps kill them off.

The weapon specializations are wonky, but then again druids don't get the best weapon classes: missile weapons (for darts), clubs, and daggers. Right now, along with his shield he wields a really good dagger that is as good or better than the other one-handed melee weapons my party has.


Half-Elf Cleric/Ranger: Possibly my favorite character out of the group. I suppose there was little need to multiclass him with ranger, since clerics have good martial potential anyway. But he's the main healer, a buffer/debuffer with Bless, Prayer, etc., a ranged damage dealer when he's not casting, and can tank very well when things get really out of control. His niche rolls include Summoning Undead to distract enemies while my druid/fighter casts Entangle and quickly firing off Commands to slow down enemies.

His most used weapon specilizations are Missile Weapons (for slings) and Maces. There seem to be a ton of +1 Morningstars and +1 Maces... for whatever reason.


GnomeThief/Mage (Illusionist): I LOVE mages, so I had to have one, and a theif is so handy for lock picking, taking care of traps, etc. He's mainly there to awkardly wear robes while firing his shortbow and laying down the pain with direct damage spells, mainly Fireball and Agamar's Scorcher for AoE, Magic Missiles for single target damage, Chromatic Orb for the stun (soon to be paralysis), and, when possible, Enslave Person for awesomeness and win.

The one major thing that annoys me about him is choosing a gnome for this position. I was tired of half-elves, so I figured I'd add some flavor to the races a bit. Gnome multiclass mages HAVE to be Illusionists, and it's no exaggeration to say that most of the extremely small number of mage spells I have found so far are NECROMANTIC, which is the school opposed to the Illusionist, and thus cannot be cast by my gnome.

His weapon specializations include Shortbows and quarterstaves. He basically never, ever uses his quarterstaff for melee, always sticking to range.

So, can someone explain what's good about thief-mages? I've never tried one. How are you supposed to play one?

I like fighter/thief because you can still tank a little on the side or run after a couple more archers or mages after backstabbing. Actually, I'd feel pretty paranoid about backstabbing with a thief/mage...

As far as I can tell, I would just use a thief/mage as a mage in battle, maybe to scout a little, and to disarm traps and open locks. I'd just look at it as sacrificing a few spells just to use up one less party member slot.

I suppose a surprise fireball might be nice if you're ready to run away afterward, but you could just as well use invisibility and not take thief levels. Or if you want an invisible thief, have a bard or mage cast it for you.

The more I play these the more open I get to better strategies, but I don't think I understand thief/mage characters yet.

Overall, I'd likely default to the FTR/Mage more often than not, but it depends on your play style and party composition. My three character party has a RGR 3/CLC X and FTR 3/Druid X as the tanks. That leaves only the last character for arcane casting and thief skills, so the mage/thief fits in brilliantly.

It's handy for the traps and locks, obviously, but you can still use it to scout (sneak or invis, either way works). I often scope out the area, then lay down a field of web and grease just out of the mob's range. Then you go in for a quick fireball (or whatever) strike to soften them up. When they try to chase you down, you drop a nifty little Spike Growth with the Druid on the web/grease field and watch most everything die. Whatever gets through, you take out with the tanks and plinking with the mage with a bow.

Thief/Mage - Maybe to scout, unlock, disarm, identify, cast some spells like Web. Just an idea.

I may have spent more time planning/reworking my party than actaully playing...
I like to play NWN2 a lot and really don't care to power build. Here is what I am doing now. Going pure thief-mage-druid-cleric seems to be a waste. Dual-Class with 3 levels of Fighter seems to be the way to go.

Human Paladin High STR and CHA - Swords and Hammers
Human Fighter3/Cleric - High STR and WIS - Maces and Flails
Elf Fighter/Thief High DEX - Bows Daggers - Does not Pick Pocket
Human Fighter3/Mage High INT - Crossbows, Staffs - Generalist. I want to have all spells. Determines purpose ot items.
Human Druid High DEX WIS - Slings, Spears - Good crowd control spells

(I could never figure out how to get a Fighter3/Druid dual class. I gave up.)

I had problems getting it to work as well. Then I discovered that Druids have two core stats: WIS and CHA. In order to dual class, your character must have a minimum score of 17 in each of the new class' core stats. So make sure your FTR has at least 17 WIS and 17 CHA and you should be able to dual class without issue*.

*Assuming your character is Human and his alignment is Neutral.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will give it another try. Let me ask another question you probably know...

So I have my Human with 3 Fighter levels. I have put 3 weapon points into large swords.

I then Dual Class to Druid. When my Druid reaches level shouldn't I be able to use large swords with the additional attacks/bonus/damage that comes from my three fighter points? I thought this was the case, but maybe I am just not getting something. Or can I only use Druid weapons once I Dual-Class?

You can use large swords and you'll get the bonus. But only after (assuming you dual class at FTR level 3) your Druid hits level 4 (the new class has to surpass the old before the benefits of the old class kick in).

Yeah, that was the idea behind that class selection. He was made to be the cast-all utility character, with the thief's utility and the mage's burst damage plus falling back on shortbows for steady damage output.

He's my biggest damage-dealer, accounting for 36% of my 4-person party's damage. My other characters are hovering around 20-22%, though to be fair my Mage/Thief is the only character whose only real combat role is burst and steady damage output.


If someone would be so kind as to give some feedback on my party choice from my previous post (http://www.gog.com/en/forum/icewind_dale/so_whats_your_icewind_dale_team/post18), I'd appreciate it. I want to get into the more complex Temple of Elemental Evil as well, with the crazier AD&D 3.5 rules, so feedback would also be helpful for that :p

Scyld, looks like you've got a good handle on things with that group. Your strategies seem sound enough to me. Don't worry about the dearth of spells. You'll soon be finding lots of good ones your Gnome can use.

Hmmmm. The web is between your mage and the enemies at the time of casting? It sounds a little tricky to stay out of detection range and still get close enough to get their attention afterward.

No, the web is behind the mage. I have the Ring of Free Action, so she can just waltz right through the web AoE after firing off the fireball (or whatever).

I've been having good results with this team:


Human Paladin - He's not the sharpest sword in the arsenal, but he does what he does best: smiting the crap out of things and tanking.

Human Fighter/Druid - The healer and secondary tank. There seems to be alot of magic daggers lying around so he took that specialization. I'm rather surprised how effective daggers can be as a primary weapon. The damage output is a little low but the number of attacks makes up for it.

Dwarf Fighter/Thief - Mostly there to disarm the traps and get rid of those pesky locks. Most of the time he either helps the Paladin and Druid in melee combat or hangs out in the back plinking away with his crossbow. I kinda wish I gave him some kind of sword or dagger skills because I discovered that you can't sneak attack with a hammer or axe....

Human Fighter/Necromancer - Dual classing the way to go to fix the inherit squishiness of spell casting classes. Has a high intelligence and wisdom, and can ID items well. When he runs out of spells, he either dons his armor and starts stabbing things or he's chilling in the back shooting things with his bow.

Human Fighter/Invoker - I don't know if Invoker is a good specialty, I just liked the description for it (manipulates energy). I like using specialist mages since you get more slots for spells and if you're running multiple mages anyway, you're gonna need to split up the scrolls and one mage will usually get the spells the other can't get, so it works out well. She's pretty much the same deal as the necromancer, except that she prefers swords for melee combat but she rather just use her bow.

Half-Elf Bard - She gets the spells that neither mage can learn or already has. Picked a flail as a weapon of choice because she thought they make her look more intimidating. I'd like to think of her as the ditz of the party.

I ran each character through the prologue a couple times on very easy as I've already started over too many times and I hate low-level DnD. Plus, waiting for the dual-classers to get their Fighter abilities would be too painful to deal with normal gameplay. It's been going very smoothly though. The Druid or Paladin distracts the enemies while everyone else plinks away with ranged weapons or spells. I love creating the "Death Zone," where I spam Entangle, Web, Grease and any other spell that impedes movement and adds damage over time. Those that get through die from a hail of arrows or the tanks crushing them.

Sounds like a great team.

I love doing this. So many ways to dish out the pain once you get a few AoE damage spells under your belt.