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Icewind Dale 2: Ultimate Powergaming Party FAQ
by Ken J. Egervari
ken@extremephp.org

Game..........................Icewind Dale 2
Guide...........................In-depth FAQ
Platform..................................PC
Version.................................1.21
First Published.............January 26, 2003
Last Updated..................March 10, 2003

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Table of Contents
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1. Introduction
1.1 - About This FAQ
1.2 - Credits/Thanks
1.3 - Updates and Revisions
2. The Party's Development
2.1 - Striking Perfection & Balance
2.2 - Enter The Humans
2.3 - Tradeoffs & Stuff
2.4 - A Note About Sorcerers
3. The Party
3.1 - Shield Dwarf Fighter(4)/Barbarian(x)
3.2 - Shield Dwarf Battleguard of Tempus(x)
3.3 - Human Morninglord of Lathander(x)
3.4 - Drow Rogue(1)/Conjurer(x)
3.5 - Human Sorcerer(x)
3.6 - Aasimar Sorcerer(x)
4. Last Words
4.1 - Contact Info
4.2 - Copyright Info
4.3 - Coming Soon

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1. Introduction
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First, I'd like to say thank you for reading my FAQ and I hope that it aids
you in building the best possible party the game can offer (well, without
cheating of course).

Next, I'd like to talk about myself a bit so you can learn a bit about my
credentials. I've written several other FAQs for Might & Magic 7 & 8 and
Diablo 2, Starcraft and Warcraft III. I might have written others in the
past, but they don't come to mind. I'm also a veteran IE gamer, playing
all 5 IE games to date. I'm also a big RPG and Strategy gamer fan as well.

In terms of my career, I'm a software architect who developers in J2EE and
.NET mostly although I've been doing programming for several years in other
platforms prior. I'm also a co-author on three published books:

* Professional PHP4 Programming
* Professional PHP4 XML
* Professional PHP Web Services

I can't help but give me a shameless plug: Please purchase these books if
you find these topics interesting. I, as well as the other authors, would
really appreciate it. These books are some of the best on PHP after all.
Be sure to check your local stores and amazon.com!

Anyway, needless to say, I'm an accomplished writer and a logical
thinker - two things that I believe are important to writing FAQs =)

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1.1 - About This FAQ
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The purpose of this FAQ or Guide is to cover one question and one question
alone:

"What is the most powerful party?"

If there is any question asked by new and veteran players alike, this is it.
In a nutshell, every section of this FAQ is committed to either showing you
exactly how to build your characters throughout the game and to help you
understand the decisions behind them. To give this party a name, we have
dubbed it the "Ultimate Powergaming Party" or the "UPP" for short.

It's hard to say if this FAQ can be understood by new players or not. It's
been a long time since I was introduced to D&D rules, so everything is very
well developed in mind. Have no fear though! I have made every effort
to ensure that I explained the "whys" whenever it was appropriate. I dared
not assume that you know anything about the game and the D&D 3E rule set in
general. I hope that you don't feel that this undermined your intelligence,
but this was done to ensure that you understood the party and could make the
most of it while you played the game.

I also would like to comment that if you don't understand D&D rules very
well, you should simply use one of the pre-made parties distributed with the
game. These are pretty easy to use, are effective enough to beat the game
and you don't have to worry about multiclassing and stat allocation - you
can just enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played. You should only
play HoF mode if you really like the game and want to get the most of out it.
HoF mode is probably the most enjoyable aspect of the game actually.

A Secondary Goal:
-----------------
The lesser goal of this FAQ is battle and character strategies. Many times
we'll look into spells in an in-depth manner (since no other FAQ does this)
and we'll give you some great tips to finishing tough battles with these
characters specifically.

In the "Alternate Character Choices" sections, we'll discuss other builds
that you might consider trying. These are builds that didn't make the cut
as far as the UPP was concerned, but they can help you build other
characters. Overall, if you read this FAQ from start to finish, you should
gain the skills to building powerful characters, casting the right spells
at the right time and knowing the inner workings of the game as well as
we do.

A Note To Role-players:
----------------------
The last thing I would like to mention is that if you are a role-player at
heart, please don't read this FAQ or even email me stating that I'm promoting
powergaming and that I should die (or something along those lines). Before
reading any further, make sure you personally feel comfortable and support
the idea of powergaming before reading this FAQ.

Before you go off saying that CHA 3 or INT 1 are unrealistic stats, keep in
mind that they are chosen that way because they have no effect on the
characters whatsoever. The game doesn't have any rules stating: Int 3
characters do not realize their own existence or even can't hold a sword.
Since the game doesn't have these restrictions, I see no reason to impose
some made-up restrictions on these characters. If you want to create
meaningless biographies and warriors of 18 Intelligence and Charisma, go
right ahead - no one is going to stop you. The whole point is that BIS
developed the game to enjoy and I believe it's up to each individual to
decide how they would like to enjoy the game. For some reason, they fail
to understand this and push their "belief systems" on us :/

Although the realism of these characters might be shattered if you apply
some common sense, it's still possible to enjoy the real 'role-playing'
aspects of the game. I like doing quests and selecting different dialog
options. I wish there were more actually and some random encounters like
Baldur's Gate 2 has. Oh well, needless to say I still got a lot out of the
game and I'm not sure why there is so much hostility between the two crowds.
I can't see how a character with 15 intelligence would make these aspects of
the game any more or less enjoyable.

Writing the FAQ:
----------------
It only took me a little over a week to write this entire FAQ, so if you were
thinking a becoming an author, it really isn't that much work and you can
draw some satisfaction from unlocking all the aspects of the game and trying
to help people. I still can't believe this thing is above 50 pages and over
3000 lines, so you printer-happy people are warned in advance =) I think I
finally wrote over 500 pages of published material this year. That's
a personal record =)

You will find the most up to date version of this FAQ at:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/

This FAQ looks best in a fixed-width font, such as Courier New. I personally
like to use Lucida Console since it isn't so dark and I have terrible eye
sight. Anyway...

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1.2 - Credits/Thanks
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Since I'm not the sole author to the party's construction, I'd like to say
that there were many others that were involved in developing this party over
a period of 2 weeks. One of these individuals is named High Cleric and he
was responsible for spearheading the initial development of these ideas and
party itself. After that point many people collaborated and developed what
you see here (I was one of them, wee!).

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

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
Dorlan - Shades actual spell stats

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1.3 - Updates and Revisions
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Version 1.21 - March 10, 2003
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* I finally got a little time to add a minor adjustment to the faq. I added
a notice that you must choose a male Drow in order to avoid the experience
penalty for the Rogue/Wizard character (since female Drow have a favoured
class of Cleric).
* Fixed some spelling errors in the Rogue/Wizard section.

Version 1.20 - January 29, 2003
-------------------------------
* Added additional information on the "Shades" spell
* Fixed Morninglord's Feats. We took a feat that already existed with the
Paladin level (Doh!). We replaced it with Discipline.
* Added that the player should take non-lawful alignment when choosing
their fighter at character creation.
* Added an option for the player to take a Half-Orc instead of a Shield
Dwarf (although I personally don't recommend it)
* Added a note that the Paladin level is optional on the Morninglord of
Lathander.
* I added an explanation on why we chose a Human Morninglord rather than an
Aasimar Morninglord to clarify our reasoning for this decision
* Changed Tiefling Rogue(1)/Conjurer(x) to Drow Rogue(1)/Conjurer(x). This
has been something that we have been discussing for a great deal over at
the BIS forums. The idea evaporated until Mithrandir mentioned it again.
After some more consideration and a set of stats I came up with, we all
decided it was for the better. I added an explanation and comparison to
the Tiefling and I fixed all the areas of text that referenced the
Tiefling specifically (so that it will make sense as far as a Drow is
concerned).
* Added a note that the player should not lower the Rogue/Wizard's Strength
score because of the Chain of Drakkus
* Added a section on why we didn't choose more than 1 Wizard
* Fixed various typos

Version 1.10 - January 26, 2003
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* Fixed Minor spelling mistakes & inconsistencies
* Re-assessed the Rogue/Conjurer's feats. Removed Precise Shot, re-ordered
Spell Focus feats and added Iron Will
* Removed Blind-Fight feat from Shield Dwarf Barbarian/Fighter, pushed back
Extra Rage feats and added Lightning Reflexes
* Removed Blind-Fight and Dash feats from Shield Dwarf Battleguard of Tempus
and added Discipline and Iron Will
* Removed several feats from Morninglord of Lathander class. Added Martial
Weapon, Long Sword feats and Iron Will, Great Fortitude and Lightning
Reflexes
* Made Morninglord of Lathander(x)/Paladin(1) official. This was an idea
long discussed and was buried for awhile. I brought it back to life and
provided an explanation

Version 1.00 - November 5, 2003
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* Start of the project

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