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Jukka's Ultimate Powergaming Party (JUPP)
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created by Jukka Mikkonen
rechet@hotmail.com

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Game..........................Icewind Dale 2
Guide...........................In-depth FAQ
Platform..................................PC
Version.................................1.00
First Published................May 9th, 2003
Last Updated..................Jan 13th, 2004

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Table of Contents
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1. Introduction
1.1 - Glossary, terms and abbreviations
1.2 - About This FAQ
1.3 - Credits/Thanks
1.4 - Updates and Revisions
2. The Party's Development
2.1 - Two different parties? What the heck?
2.2 - Balancing things out
2.3 - Various party roles
2.4 - Armor Class: Useless or not?
2.5 - Spell Resistance: Useless or not?
2.6 - The power of four
2.7 - Cheap tactics - why not?
2.8 - How lucky can you get?
2.9 - Thou shall be saved
2.10 - Notes on various spells
2.11 - Spell combinations
2.12 - Things that might be nice but were left out
2.13 - Statistics and formulae
-Power Attack
-Quest EXP
-Ultimate AC
-Ultimate Damage
3. The Melee Party
3.1 - Tank & healer & debuffer
3.2 - Decoy & utility infielder & buffer
3.3 - Berserker & buffer & bombardier
3.4 - Diplomat & bombardier & buffer & debuffer
3.5 - Optional: First extra bombardier
3.6 - Optional: Second extra bombardier
4. The Arcane Party
4.1 - Decoy & utility infielder & bombardier
4.2 - Healer & buffer & bombardier
4.3 - Buffer & debuffer & bombardier & diplomat
4.4 - Utility infielder & bombardier & buffer & debuffer
4.5 - Optional: First extra bombardier
4.6 - Optional: Second extra bombardier
5. Do-it-yourself UPP
5.1 - Set goals for the party
5.2 - Start with the protector
5.3 - Add Druid
5.4 - Check available buffs
5.5 - Fill the remaining character positions
5.6 - Assign party roles
5.7 - Stick to the plan
6. Last Words
6.1 - Contact Info
6.2 - Copyright Info
6.3 - Coming Soon

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1. Introduction
===============================================================================

Welcome to the world of powergaming!

First, and foremost, thank you for downloading this guide. It is designed
to take a deeper look into the game know as Icewind Dale II, and hopefully
giving out some tips for everyone while we're at it.

Second, a word of warning for role-players. The characters outlined in
this guide will, for the most part, have very little to do in terms of being
actually imaginable PnP characters, so please don't email me about it. If
a thing A just works better than a thing B, this guide takes all the freedom
in the world in choosing A, even if it sounds "wrong", "unimaginable" or
even "outrageous" in terms of fitting into the fantasy world known as Faerun.
Most notably this concerns min-maxing statistics. Yes, no one says that a
character with CHA 1 or INT 3 sounds realistic. But think it this way: If the
character isn't going to talk to anyone, having a higher CHA wouldn't really
matter. And for the case of low INT, if you'll get exactly the same benefits
from having an INT of 11 or 3, it's easy to see that those 8 extra stat
points could be used to boost something more important. The game doesn't
penalize characters with low INT in any way except for not being able to
take the Expertise feat, which would require INT 13 already. That's quite
a sacrifice for just one feat unless the feat is critical for the character's
success.

However, as most of the statistics really don't make much of a difference
if they're a couple of points higher or lower, I've also included a
non-optimized option for starting statistics. Feel free to select it if
extreme min-maxing just isn't your kind of thing.

Third, a word about myself. I'm a fan of fantasy strategy games such as
Heroes of Might and Magic series and role-playing games such as Might and
Magic 6 & 7 and, of course, Icewind Dale II. I enjoy devising clever plans
to be better at these games with a scientific approach and quite often
succeed in such goals. This FAQ is one of such projects.

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1.1 - Glossary, terms and abbreviations
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Don't worry, you don't have to memorize these in order to read this
document. These are just for quick reference.

3E - Third Edition rule set of Dungeons & Dragons. IWD2 uses this.
AC - Armor Class
BAB - Base Attack Bonus
CRPG - Computer Role-Playing Game.
DBFB - Delayed Blast Fireball, an arcane 7th level spell. Especially useful
spell to blast decoys with, as the spell is completely resistible by
high enough spell resistance and it deals huge damage.
DC - Difficulty Class
DG - Deep Gnome. One of the races. Also known as Svirfneblin.
DM - Dungeon Master. The "narrator" of a game.
DUHM - Draw Upon Holy Might, a divine 2nd level spell. Best used with a high
level Cleric of any kind, this spell gives huge bonuses to all three
physical stats, that is STR, DEX and CON for a whole 10 rounds. On top
of the obvious benefits, this spell can give a theoretical +150 hit
points for a 30th level Cleric due to increased CON!
ECL - Effective Character Level. Some races in IWD2 have an ECL penalty,
which means that in order to get to, say, 5th level would require
as much experience points as a non-ECL race would require to reach
level 5+ECL. For example, a Deep Gnome requires 28,000 EXP to reach
5th level (ECL=+3), whereas a human (no ECL) requires only 10,000!
EXP - Experience
HOF - Heart of Fury mode. An insanely difficult play mode, available via
the configuration program. Monsters have triple hit points PLUS they
get an extra 80 hit points as a flat bonus on top of it. They also
hit between doubly or triply as hard, and have totally insane BABs.
They also receive a hefty bonus into their saving throws & stats.
IWD2 - Icewind Dale 2.
JUPP - Jukka's Ultimate Powergaming Party, this document as a whole.
NPC - Non-player character. A character controlled by the DM.
PC - Player Character
PnP - Pen and Paper. As opposed to CRPG, this means the ordinary, in real
life version of Dungeons & Dragons, with a real life Dungeon Master,
actual physical dice rolling, character sheets on a sheet of paper
and a group of people gathered together to play.
SR - Spell Resistance
Stat - Any of the six statistics describing player characters. These include
STR - Strength
DEX - Dexterity
CON - Constitution
INT - Intelligence
WIS - Wisdom
CHA - Charisma
UPP - Original Ultimate Powergaming Party FAQ by Ken J. Egervari

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1.2 - About This FAQ
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The purpose of this FAQ is to give two propositions as the most powerful
party that is possible to create in IWD2 - well, apart from cheating, of
course.

Why only propositions, you ask? Because the term most powerful is closely
related to personal preferences. For example, many people would consider a
rifle being a better weapon to take along when the purpose is to go hunting
deer instead of a hunting crossbow. However, it's hard to value the feeling
of using such a traditional weapon to hunt, as it is most certainly more of
a feat to pull to kill a deer with a crossbow than it is to snipe one from
half a kilometer away with a hunting rifle. It's a matter of taste, really,
as both get the job done. Similarly, someone might consider a four-man party
being better suited to tackle the hordes of monsters in IWD2, while another
player prefers to go hiding, sneaking & backstabbing everyone with a solo
character, acquiring level-ups faster. However, the focus of this FAQ is not
on the two parties themselves, but at the process through which they were
created.

Now, this document would be rather pointless if we didn't say that yes, the
four man party IS actually better suited for the job. For the purposes of
this document, most powerful relates to things like getting the job done with
the least amount of time, minimizing the amount of micromanagement needed
to play, doing highest damage, receiving lowest damage in return, working the
numbers to our advantage, not needing any cheap tactics to be able to
survive, beating the enemies as mercilessly as possible and reducing the
chances of losing the game as much as possible.

Extra attention should be paid to the last one. If this is your first time
through the game, please stop reading NOW and go play the game through once
with whatever party you think should be workable. After reading this FAQ,
you will be so spoiled that playing through the game seems rather redundant,
as there won't be much of a chance of actually losing anymore, and how much
fun is that? This guide drops things like aesthetics, suspension, realism
and believability in the role-playing sense in favor of more efficient
monster killing ability, as deep down inside IWD2 is just a hack'n'slash
game disguised as a RPG. Don't call me a spoilsport for spoiling your fun.
It's totally up to you if you do it. This guide isn't supposed to be about
having fun in the game, this is serious number-crunching business.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. I won't warn you again.

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1.3 - Credits/Thanks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many thanks to Ken J. Egervari for creating the original Ultimate
Powergaming Party FAQ (UPP). This work probably wouldn't have seen daylight
if that FAQ didn't exist. All the person mentioned in UPP credits list
deserve to be mentioned here as well, so here you go.

These are the individuals who contributed in some way and are in no
particular order:

Krysalyn - A note on dual-class spell casters with same casting stat
High Cleric - Spearheaded Initial Idea and Main Contributor
OddHat
Ariana
Manscatha
Gimble
UnDyMaKinG
Dark Meadows
Nevryndar - Consistent sound advice throughout the entire process
Mystiquee
koz-ivan - Consistent sound advice throughout the entire process
Kwyn - Insight into Dwarves being better than Half-Orcs and Proofing
Mithrandir - Suggestions to remove Blind-Fight, Dash and other feats in
exchange for others. Other ideas also implemented in
version 1.1 (UPP)
Dorlan - Shades actual spell stats
Bloggyelf - Ultimate Powergaming Party project wouldn't be complete
without nay-sayers, and Bloggyelf is the best of the best.


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1.4 - Updates and Revisions
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1.00 - First Release (non-draft) version
Tweaked the Berserker in Melee party for better ranged capability
Redesigned the Arcane party to avoid EXP penalties
Added advanced level squatting info
Added spell combinations section
Added statistics section
Added more character development examples
Added guide for creating own UPPs for special needs (Chap. 5)