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Greater Command, it's unlikely that we could memorize more than just one or maybe two copies of the Spell Resistance spell.

Noting that enemies have either no spell resistance at all (a vast majority of them) or they have a very high resistance (Chahopek, monks in the monk chambers, Slayer Knights of Xvim etc), the Spell Penetration feat is actually a minus rather than a bonus, as it'll only make our own party hurt more. For those rare occurrences where it becomes important to drop someone's spell resistance, it's just plain easier to use the Lower Resist spell repeatedly while keeping the own party better protected from own spells. Or just bombard the enemy with spells that don't allow for spell resistance, such as Skull
Trap or Horrid Wilting. Even HOF Slayer Knight of Xvim squeals in pain after having popped a dozen Skull Traps, believe me.

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2.6 - The power of four
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Since IWD2 allows a maximum of six persons per party, surely six characters should be more powerful than having just four? Well, in theory maybe, but in practice, no. Not only does the game become tedious with the poor path finding AI with a group of six, but a group of four is actually stronger as well. Here's the proof.

One thing that has to be kept in mind is that many of the abilities that make these parties shine aren't available until the characters have leveled up enough to achieve higher level spells in sufficiently large amounts. If we took six (or even five) characters, the little EXP rewards that we receive during the early chapters would be divided between just too many characters, making it impossible to reach high enough levels until "too late" into the game. I used quotes here because it is most certainly relative what too late means, but at least I'd like to see the real action starting as soon as possible and not right before the final battle. Getting the fireball spell before entering the Goblin Fortress area makes the whole area a cakewalk, whereas a pure melee group will have lots of trouble. Similarly, getting
Mass Haste before going to battle with Iron Golems in the Black Raven
Monastery is something that I couldn't personally live without.

It is also worth noting that while six 1st level characters in fact are more powerful than four, the situation is soon turned totally upside down when those four characters reach level 5 at 10,000 EXP each. Having six persons in the party would bring the EXP value down to 6,666, meaning that the very important 5th level that brings goodies like Fireball (for a wizard) and Animate Dead (for a Cleric) would still be 3,334 EXP away. A four-person party should ideally reach this point before the famous Shaengarne Bridge battle, making it gazillion times easier all of a sudden. And the difference gets just bigger later on, for example when 4-person party gets Mass Haste (level 12 for a Sorcerer) at 66,000 EXP each, a six-person party would still be struggling at 44,000 EXP, which means level 9. Adding the effect of ECL races makes this disparity even larger.

One nice thing about races with high ECL penalties is that when calculating party's average levels, the actual character level is used instead of ECL.
This means that while a party without any ECL penalties would level up faster initially, they'd also reach the point where their level is "too high" as compared to the monsters they're fighting and they'd start receiving reduced
EXP for monsters, and pretty soon no EXP at all! On the other hand, a party with higher ECL would keep receiving full EXP a couple of levels further, and quite possibly receiving extra EXP for some time, as they'll reach some areas like the Horde Fortress as "too low" level characters.

If you still insist, after reading all the warnings and no-no's, that you
MUST have the 5th and even 6th characters, I would still urge you to wait until you re-emerge to the surface from the Underdark, or if you want to have those extras earlier, add them at the Wandering Village. That way your main characters will have received the necessary levels to be effective enough on their own, and adding new characters at this point will bring the average party level down quite a bit. Even if the first couple of battles will be tough to manage with new 1st level characters, just have them flee the battle and gather EXP as cowards for a couple of levels. You shouldn't worry about the EXP being divided amongst 5-6 characters now, as you'll receive plenty of extra EXP due to your party's average level being way below what it "should" be in such late stages of the game.

It is also possible to play with only two characters, gaining the initial levels doubly as fast as the party of four. This is possible by taking only the first two of the characters in the Melee Party. However, even if the leveling will be super-fast in the beginning, the difference between having two characters instead of four does hurt quite a bit, as killing enemies becomes slower. Therefore, while this isn't really recommended, it is possible to try such an approach to make the party micromanagement even less of an issue.

Another thing worth mentioning is multiclassing EXP penalties. Some of the characters in JUPP can't avoid receiving those, especially the high-AC ones.
While this does bring the immediate EXP gain down a bit, this is compensated by not advancing in levels that fast and thus keeping the average party level down a bit further. This also allows the other team members to gain levels faster.

Level squatting:
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I probably should mention level squatting as well. What it means is that even if you receive enough XP to reach the next level, you just don't use the level-up, but decide to stay at your current level. In contrast to PnP rules, it is possible to get multiple level-ups at the same time in IWD2, and this can be used to our advantage. Remember that the game gives more and more EXP the lower the party average level is when killing monsters? By not leveling up at all, the monsters will eventually become "too hard" so we start gaining extra EXP. Why reduce the EXP gains from monsters if one can beat them at their current level?

As a suggestion, I would level up only to character level 7-8 with JUPP, as that gives access to 4th level spells, and squat all the way through the
Ice Temple as there are a few of monsters that give humongous EXP, most notably the golems, and besides, things do not get any tougher for quite some time anyway. By the time things actually DO get too tough, we'll have acquired enough EXP to jump several levels at once! Please note that if you do squat, you can't divide the level-ups between classes, and in some cases this might lead to multiclassing EXP penalties.

An alternate and even more advanced squatting strategy would be to advance only one or two of the characters, gaining their high-level abilities while still keeping the party average level down. Most notably, the high-AC characters are mostly covered from greater harm already at very low levels, as their low hit points are counterbalanced by the fact that monsters hit them almost never. For example, I managed the whole Battle at the Shaengarne
Bridge having my high-AC tank at level three and did just fine. Furthermore, the Melee party doesn't gain anything exceptionally useful after the
Sorcerer learns Mass Haste, so leaving that character at level 12 or so won't slow down questing at all. The Arcane party needs a high-level priest (character #2) and sorcerer (character #3), other two characters can easily wait with their level-ups.

Further tweaks for fast EXP gain:
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Since IWD2 calculates party average levels as an integer value, you can also find dead zones in level advancement. Say that you have levels 5, 5, 9 and 9, the average becomes 7. However, the average stays at seven even if you up the level of the third (or fourth) character to 12 due to round-down.
Upping to level 13 might not be worth it immediately, as that would take the average level up one notch - it might be better to wait until a couple more levels can be taken. Other noteworthy breakpoint for melee-heavy chars is the acquisition of an extra attack, which is more important than getting a small bonus to BAB at levels in between. Stopping at 2 or 3 attacks per round to squat a couple of levels doesn't really change much, but gives good payback via increased total EXP gain.

Yet another trick to reach extremely high levels fast is to use "mule" characters. This works ONLY with parties with less than six characters. The idea is to add brand-new, 1st level characters before some encounter that is supposed to give good EXP. Examples of such encounters are the Ice Temple area with many golems & Sherincal, Cold Marsh, Black Raven Tomb (golems again) and Ice Temple revisit. By adding 1st level characters, the average level goes down a LOT. For example, a party with 4 12th level chars would become level 9 average - three whole average levels! This effect becomes even stronger when the main characters have reached higher levels - for example, a 4-person 22nd level party would end up at level 17 average after adding just one mule. With two, the average would drop to 15.

Of course the mule character(s) will be very vulnerable to just about anything, and won't do much good as melee or ranged attackers either. But no worry, it's not their point either. Their purpose is just to EXIST in the same area as the main characters, safely tucked into some far-away corner, preferably under some sort of Invisibility effect. Do NOT advance their levels, and remember to ditch them from your party when you don't need them anymore to return to "normal" mode of play.

Now, a party that has lower average level gets a quite significant boost into their EXP gain, right? As a matter of fact, the EXP difference can be huge. Totally absurd. Outright unbelievable. Or how does 28,800 EXP by killing just Sherincal sound? (In HOF mode, that is.) Even if one counts in the fact that the mule(s) take a share of the gained EXP, the net gain can easily reach +100% and above. For example, re-entering the Ice Temple with a high-level party in HOF spawns the area with at least a dozen Gelugons, and after killing the first one, adding two mules brings the average level down by zounds. After that, it's pure EXP fest - tens of thousands of EXP per one killed Gelugon isn't unheard of. One nice thing about muling is that it works best when the other characters are at high levels - which basically means that one can start with intense level-squatting and change to muling when all those level-ups have been actually taken. So.. don't worry about reaching those high levels that much, especially in HOF mode.

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2.7 - Cheap tactics - why not?
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Due to various bugs or anomalies, there are some strategies in IWD2 that make the game rather easy to play.. many would say way too easy. I've listed such strategies here.

Using the Animate Dead spell extensively: The 3rd level cleric (and 5th level wizard) spell Animate Dead summons various skeletons and zombies. Why would this be a problem, as there are many summoning spells that summon other types of monsters? The catch is that the "skeletons" and "zombies" just happen to be Apocalyptic Boneguards and Festering Drowned Dead at 17th caster level! If you've never seen those before, just believe me that they're quite easily amongst the strongest, most durable and most dangerous creatures in the whole game - and you get to control them as you please, and they won't even vanish before a whopping 8 HOURS have passed! A group of adventurers could just summon a group of these and stand back as these beasts brutally slaughter anything and anyone that comes too close, without even breaking a sweat themselves. However, after installing the 2.01 patch, this spell doesn't summon those anymore but caps at lesser monsters. Even then, the long duration of these summons makes the game rather easy.. and cheap.

Using Improved Invisibility: If you're using the patched (2.01) version of the game, this spell isn't quite as evil as it used to be, but it is still very good. It basically makes you totally invincible, as the monsters won't even TARGET you, no matter what you do. So, you could just walk beside the monsters, cast every spell from your inventory or just hack'n'slash them to death without fearing of getting ANY damage in return. Way cheap.

Utilizing Otiluke's Resilient Sphere to create invincible tanks: The spell
Otiluke's Resilient Sphere (ORS) can also be cast on your own characters. So, if you take one of your characters, run in the middle of enemy camp so that everyone targets him, and you cast ORS, the monsters will just keep on pounding the ORS even if they're not doing any damage! This leaves your other characters free to toss massive destruction spells with area effects with impunity, as the character within the sphere is totally immune to everything.
Way cheap.

Although it is fun to try these tactics just for laughs, using them exclusively is both monotonous and boring. Imagine how boring it would be to watch a Formula One race where only one driver had a Formula car, whereas the other drivers would have to walk around the track. Or a game of soccer between any of the world-class soccer teams and a team that consists of kindergarten kids.

Therefore, the JUPP has been designed in a way that these tactics become either obsolete (ORS trick) or just plain strictly banned in favor of something that works just as well. This doesn't mean that you CAN'T use any of those tricks, I'm just pointing that you really don't HAVE to in order to be successful.

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2.8 - How lucky can you get?
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IWD2 has basically three ways of obtaining Luck, by using the spell Luck, wearing Tymora's Loop or Ned's Lucky Knucky or letting a bard sing its 5th level song that gives +1 luck bonus. Note that while the Luck potion gives a luck bonus, its bonus is of the non-stackable type. As the items are either random drops (TL) or found in the HOF mode (NLK), most parties shouldn't be too concerned about these in the normal mode of play.

However, once these have been obtained, the results are nothing but earth-shattering. A luck bonus is not just a simple bonus to hit, damage or saving throws - it affects the dice rolls themselves! Most notably, to hit rolls will be shifted towards the 20, all damage rolls will be shifted towards the highest damage possible and so forth. Some have also reported that luck modifier reduces damage taken from spells by shifting the damage rolls towards 1, ultimately making a 10th level fireball do only 10 pts of fire damage instead of 10-60! So, if you have both Luck enhancing items plus the spell active, you'll have an effective luck of +6, and with the luck-enhancing Bard song thrown into the mix, the luck may reach +7.

With a luck of +7, any roll with a d8 (or smaller) will always give an 8, and even a d12 (say, the damage of a greataxe) will only give numbers between
8-12, with more than 50% chance of receiving 12. The effect on damage rolls