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distribute your abilities wisely. Well, since i never play a full time paladin before, so i wouldn't give me unwise suggestion here.
3 >>> Barbarian
Barbarian is strong but unpolished fighter.
By default, a barbarian walks faster then others. Barbarian gains most hit points per level.
A barbarian has 'Rage' ability at start. Once cast, it grants you some useful bonuses for fighting. As it wears off, it makes you fatigue and lower your abilities. As you lvl up, your 'Rage' becomes better and at lvl 20, it will become 'Tireless Rage'.
At 2nd and 5th lvl, you'll gain 'uncanny dodge'. Respectively, while attacked by invisible foe you apply your dex bonous to armor class, you cannot be sneak attack by rogues unless the rouges is 4 lvl highier than you.
At 11th lvl, you'll gain damage reduction and resistance to all sorts physical damage.
STR, DEX, CON max them out. WIS, CHA minimize, whatever left is in INT.
4 >>> Rogue
Rogue is about sneak attack.
A rogue damage may not be as high as others, but as soon as they are sneak attacking, They deal out extra damage according to 1d6 per 2 lvl.
Rogue gains 'uncanny dodge' just like barbarian but in lvl 3, 6. in lvl 2, rogue has 'Evasion' to evade area effetive spells. sucessful reflex save to evade all damage and uncessful reflex save to take half damage.
The show starts at 10th lvl. Now the rogue will have access to some rogue-only skills. Since these are strictly availavle to rouge, you might want to pick them as soon as possible, because these skills are very useful, like 'Crippling Strike',
'Improved Evasion', 'Slippery Mind'.
Simply put, DEX max. CON, STR, INT are up to you. WIS and CHA, min. Your DEX is going to be highier than you STR, so it would be useful if you pick up 'Weapon Finesse'. Most people will dual wield a rogue so you might want to pick up 'Two-weapon Fighting' and 'Ambidexerity' as well. but there is a better solution to this. please see the conslusion of this part. p.s. 'Hamstring' is also a must pick feat.
5 >>> Ranger
Ranger sucks. i know i'll get flamed about this comment. But sadly, it's true. i like ranger also, i started my D&D adventure as an half-elf ranger. and now it turned out that half-elf is the most useless race and ranger is the most useless class. Note that 'most useless' doesn't not mean 'absolutely useless', just 'relatively useless', in this game. Bottom line is, rangers just cannot show their usefulness in the game people called Icewind Dale 2.
Though it sucks, ranger has one minor advantage, automatically gain 'two-weapon fighting' and 'ambidexerity' while wearing light or no armor. Now keep this in mind.
One important note is while choosing 'favored enemies' and 'weapon focus'. Both are deeply related. Don't do stupid thing like Valygar did in BG2, racial enemy: golem, weapons: katana and spear, like that is going to help? >>according to [Adam Frederick] who built a solo ranger.
STR- 16 DEX- 18
CON- 16 INT- 8
WIS- 10 CHA- 8
Every level I put my point into either hide or move silently and because of that I can scout out most maps without getting in a single fight. As for proficient points. I put 2 into martial weapon bow and if you want to get 4 lvls of fighter put 3 in
(I did this it helps). After that I just put in Improved critical and improved initiative and after that I just put it into whatever is appealing. And once you get to around lvl 8 I find I can fell most opponents in 2-3 hits and I lure them to my tank so that by the time they get to him 3-4 of the enemies are dead. And this is the build I use for party and solo games.
6 >>> Monk
They might be useful
If you want to be a monk, be a full time monk. Multiclass a monk will utterly spoil their unarmed damage ability. In simple words, a 20lvl monks will have much much higher base attack then a 20monk/2fighter.Monk has a long list of bonuses while leveling, so i wouldn't list them here.
The reason that they 'might be useful' is that, IWD2 don't count unarmed attack as a weapon which they should. Furthermore, in IWD2 unarmed attack will evoke 'Attack of Opportunity' which further de-grade the real power of a monk.
Conservatively building is to max out WIS because this is what gives a naked monk Armor Class. CON should be maxed also for high hp. STR and DEX are equally important. INT and CHA can be neglected even if the modifiers go to negative. There is no use of CHA for a monk. INT for a monk will only affect the skill points. Monk don't have any much needed skill to invest so INT can be minimized.
>>[Domen Gostincar] defending the usefulness of monks (and nuns).
I have made a human monk, with the following starting stats:
STR- 16 DEX- 18
CON- 18 INT- 3
WIS- 18 CHA- 3
She gets 2 skill points per level, which I put into hide and move silently, making her an excellent scout. Also good for saving money, as she doesn't need any armor or weapon. For feats, I choose dirty fighting, dodge, great fortitude, iron will and lightning reflex (the last three because I ran out of other sensible feats, and the better ones were still beyond my reach, and because having high saves can't hurt.
In the Clack Raven monastery, my monk was level 11, and I had no problem defeating the 8 rooms with her. The only damage she received was via lightning bolt, the spinning blades and the flame strikes - those that were not avoided (high accuracy means a high reflex save).
==CONCLUSION==
Except for monk, you might want to multiclass your tanker into at least one other class, simply because you don't really need a fulltimer in any of the above classes. By multiclassing, you'll have bonuses that other class provide which would be really useful. for example,
A rogue are bounded to wear light armor. in addition, they are not proficient in shield. So what the hack, multiclass to a lvl 1 ranger to gain 'Two-weapon Fighting' and 'Ambidexerity' by default. In addition, you can further multiclass rogue into fighter for some extra feats.
A fulltime paladin would not bring you far also. wWat people usually do is set a low WIS and CHA paladin and stop leveling up after 3rd level, after gaining all the bonuses. Continue to level up in fighter, rogue or barbarian. Doing so, the character not only has some nice bonuses but also the luxury to use
'Holy Avenger' one of the best weapon in the game, well almost every other game. Or you can go the other way around, by building a 4 lvl fighter and every lvl to paladin. Doing so, you'll get the much needed 'weapon specialization' and not letting go the spell casting ability of a paladin. Either way, it works.
Further multiclassing rogue into fighter would benefit much also.
A lvl 20rogue/10fighter is just slightly worse than a lvl 30 fighter in face-to-face fighting. By multiclassing into fighter, a rogue gain more feats to fully acquire all the needed abilities.
Another popular multiclassing pattern is go into 4lvl fighter with any other tanker class. By do so, the character will have access to the ever useful 'weapon specialization'.
All these are just multiclassing a tanker class to another tanker class. Because i see that unless you are not playing a band of 6, there is not need to multiclass a tanker into a spellcaster simply because their abilities don't overlaps. If however, you are doing trio, duet or solo, you might need to do so and this would be above my limited knowledge.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
II.2.2 back-row caster ppgcr4
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
They provide support to frontline as well as main fire power to damage monsters. In general, you would want to pick up 'Combat
Casting', 'Sbuvocal casting, and max 'Spell Penetration' as soon as possible. Although i would not mention, but 'Dispel' is equally useful and important for all spellcaster and should pick up as soon as possible. Throughout the discussion, arcane refers to wizard, sorcerer, bard and it's spells; divine refers to druid, cleric and it's spells.
1 >>> Bard
Jack of all, master of none.
Bards do have something they are specialize in. A bard provides bard song that will boost everyone's ability, as they gain level, they gain new songs which have different uses according to different occassions. Note that a bard casting ability is based on CHA, so to cast lvl x arcane spell, you need 10+x CHA.
The significant level for bard is lvl 11 as this level gives you the final song to sing. You can continue after to level up after this or choose to concentrate in other multiclass. If you are not planning to have highier bard level and cast highier level spells, don't invest too much in CHA then. The major selling point of a bard is bard only items you found along the way. You can get a horn in early Chapter 2 from an evil merchant.
This horn will instantly summon some barbarian to fight for you.
Handy meat shields instantly.
2 >>> Cleric
Heal
Yes heal. Of all the spells that a cleric has, heal is the single most important spell you have. It provides instant and full hit point to any character and its casting duration is very short.
Other seriously important cleric spell are 'Animated Undead' and
'Tremor'. 'Animated Undead' is the best and the only useful summoning spell. It upgrades as you lvl up. 'Tremor' will instantly damage all enemies and might knock them unconscious.
Different domain affects cleric's domain spell. each lvl of domain spell has 1 additional spell over a choice of two. What god you want to worship is totally up to you. I like Demarch of Mask just because of its invisibility spells and 'Executioner's Eyes'.
Max WIS for cleric. Max CHA if you want but it is not that crucial.
CHA controls your undead turning ability. Have some points in INT and that's it. One important note, you can take 1~2 points intended for WIS and put them to DEX, later into the game, you will encounter a potion that exchange 1 DEX for 2 WIS in Battle Square, not a bad deal.
Simply put, cleric strength allies, weaken enemies.
3 >>> Druid
Nature's servant awaits - Jaheira from Baldur's Gate
A druid do not support that much as cleric, but heal is still available to druid at a highier level. Generally speaking, druid has druid spells which deals some amount of damage and cannot be learn by cleric nor arcane spellcasters.
Some might use druid as a support to main tanker(s) but i just use druid as pure spellcaster. Shapeshifting might work but sadly, it looses its usefulness because enemies get stronger faster.
>>[Jae Shin] wants to denfend for shapeshifters
"It basically allows your druid to become a tank (which is why I use my druid for the Battle Square). The bear you get at 12th level combined with a 'champion's strength' spell is vicious and can easily do over 20 damage per attack. The only problem is that the game seems to have a minor bug in it which causes attack damages and bonuses to get a bit confused whenever you switch between forms. It's easily overcome by unequipping and reequipping weapons, but it can be a bit of a hassle. Then again, having a tank with healing spells is really, really useful. What's even better is that it changes your characters' stats. Bears have no problems with forcing locks open."
4 >>> Sorcerer
Keep'em coming
The thing about socerer is that they have more ammo to dispose
3 >>> Barbarian
Barbarian is strong but unpolished fighter.
By default, a barbarian walks faster then others. Barbarian gains most hit points per level.
A barbarian has 'Rage' ability at start. Once cast, it grants you some useful bonuses for fighting. As it wears off, it makes you fatigue and lower your abilities. As you lvl up, your 'Rage' becomes better and at lvl 20, it will become 'Tireless Rage'.
At 2nd and 5th lvl, you'll gain 'uncanny dodge'. Respectively, while attacked by invisible foe you apply your dex bonous to armor class, you cannot be sneak attack by rogues unless the rouges is 4 lvl highier than you.
At 11th lvl, you'll gain damage reduction and resistance to all sorts physical damage.
STR, DEX, CON max them out. WIS, CHA minimize, whatever left is in INT.
4 >>> Rogue
Rogue is about sneak attack.
A rogue damage may not be as high as others, but as soon as they are sneak attacking, They deal out extra damage according to 1d6 per 2 lvl.
Rogue gains 'uncanny dodge' just like barbarian but in lvl 3, 6. in lvl 2, rogue has 'Evasion' to evade area effetive spells. sucessful reflex save to evade all damage and uncessful reflex save to take half damage.
The show starts at 10th lvl. Now the rogue will have access to some rogue-only skills. Since these are strictly availavle to rouge, you might want to pick them as soon as possible, because these skills are very useful, like 'Crippling Strike',
'Improved Evasion', 'Slippery Mind'.
Simply put, DEX max. CON, STR, INT are up to you. WIS and CHA, min. Your DEX is going to be highier than you STR, so it would be useful if you pick up 'Weapon Finesse'. Most people will dual wield a rogue so you might want to pick up 'Two-weapon Fighting' and 'Ambidexerity' as well. but there is a better solution to this. please see the conslusion of this part. p.s. 'Hamstring' is also a must pick feat.
5 >>> Ranger
Ranger sucks. i know i'll get flamed about this comment. But sadly, it's true. i like ranger also, i started my D&D adventure as an half-elf ranger. and now it turned out that half-elf is the most useless race and ranger is the most useless class. Note that 'most useless' doesn't not mean 'absolutely useless', just 'relatively useless', in this game. Bottom line is, rangers just cannot show their usefulness in the game people called Icewind Dale 2.
Though it sucks, ranger has one minor advantage, automatically gain 'two-weapon fighting' and 'ambidexerity' while wearing light or no armor. Now keep this in mind.
One important note is while choosing 'favored enemies' and 'weapon focus'. Both are deeply related. Don't do stupid thing like Valygar did in BG2, racial enemy: golem, weapons: katana and spear, like that is going to help? >>according to [Adam Frederick] who built a solo ranger.
STR- 16 DEX- 18
CON- 16 INT- 8
WIS- 10 CHA- 8
Every level I put my point into either hide or move silently and because of that I can scout out most maps without getting in a single fight. As for proficient points. I put 2 into martial weapon bow and if you want to get 4 lvls of fighter put 3 in
(I did this it helps). After that I just put in Improved critical and improved initiative and after that I just put it into whatever is appealing. And once you get to around lvl 8 I find I can fell most opponents in 2-3 hits and I lure them to my tank so that by the time they get to him 3-4 of the enemies are dead. And this is the build I use for party and solo games.
6 >>> Monk
They might be useful
If you want to be a monk, be a full time monk. Multiclass a monk will utterly spoil their unarmed damage ability. In simple words, a 20lvl monks will have much much higher base attack then a 20monk/2fighter.Monk has a long list of bonuses while leveling, so i wouldn't list them here.
The reason that they 'might be useful' is that, IWD2 don't count unarmed attack as a weapon which they should. Furthermore, in IWD2 unarmed attack will evoke 'Attack of Opportunity' which further de-grade the real power of a monk.
Conservatively building is to max out WIS because this is what gives a naked monk Armor Class. CON should be maxed also for high hp. STR and DEX are equally important. INT and CHA can be neglected even if the modifiers go to negative. There is no use of CHA for a monk. INT for a monk will only affect the skill points. Monk don't have any much needed skill to invest so INT can be minimized.
>>[Domen Gostincar] defending the usefulness of monks (and nuns).
I have made a human monk, with the following starting stats:
STR- 16 DEX- 18
CON- 18 INT- 3
WIS- 18 CHA- 3
She gets 2 skill points per level, which I put into hide and move silently, making her an excellent scout. Also good for saving money, as she doesn't need any armor or weapon. For feats, I choose dirty fighting, dodge, great fortitude, iron will and lightning reflex (the last three because I ran out of other sensible feats, and the better ones were still beyond my reach, and because having high saves can't hurt.
In the Clack Raven monastery, my monk was level 11, and I had no problem defeating the 8 rooms with her. The only damage she received was via lightning bolt, the spinning blades and the flame strikes - those that were not avoided (high accuracy means a high reflex save).
==CONCLUSION==
Except for monk, you might want to multiclass your tanker into at least one other class, simply because you don't really need a fulltimer in any of the above classes. By multiclassing, you'll have bonuses that other class provide which would be really useful. for example,
A rogue are bounded to wear light armor. in addition, they are not proficient in shield. So what the hack, multiclass to a lvl 1 ranger to gain 'Two-weapon Fighting' and 'Ambidexerity' by default. In addition, you can further multiclass rogue into fighter for some extra feats.
A fulltime paladin would not bring you far also. wWat people usually do is set a low WIS and CHA paladin and stop leveling up after 3rd level, after gaining all the bonuses. Continue to level up in fighter, rogue or barbarian. Doing so, the character not only has some nice bonuses but also the luxury to use
'Holy Avenger' one of the best weapon in the game, well almost every other game. Or you can go the other way around, by building a 4 lvl fighter and every lvl to paladin. Doing so, you'll get the much needed 'weapon specialization' and not letting go the spell casting ability of a paladin. Either way, it works.
Further multiclassing rogue into fighter would benefit much also.
A lvl 20rogue/10fighter is just slightly worse than a lvl 30 fighter in face-to-face fighting. By multiclassing into fighter, a rogue gain more feats to fully acquire all the needed abilities.
Another popular multiclassing pattern is go into 4lvl fighter with any other tanker class. By do so, the character will have access to the ever useful 'weapon specialization'.
All these are just multiclassing a tanker class to another tanker class. Because i see that unless you are not playing a band of 6, there is not need to multiclass a tanker into a spellcaster simply because their abilities don't overlaps. If however, you are doing trio, duet or solo, you might need to do so and this would be above my limited knowledge.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
II.2.2 back-row caster ppgcr4
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
They provide support to frontline as well as main fire power to damage monsters. In general, you would want to pick up 'Combat
Casting', 'Sbuvocal casting, and max 'Spell Penetration' as soon as possible. Although i would not mention, but 'Dispel' is equally useful and important for all spellcaster and should pick up as soon as possible. Throughout the discussion, arcane refers to wizard, sorcerer, bard and it's spells; divine refers to druid, cleric and it's spells.
1 >>> Bard
Jack of all, master of none.
Bards do have something they are specialize in. A bard provides bard song that will boost everyone's ability, as they gain level, they gain new songs which have different uses according to different occassions. Note that a bard casting ability is based on CHA, so to cast lvl x arcane spell, you need 10+x CHA.
The significant level for bard is lvl 11 as this level gives you the final song to sing. You can continue after to level up after this or choose to concentrate in other multiclass. If you are not planning to have highier bard level and cast highier level spells, don't invest too much in CHA then. The major selling point of a bard is bard only items you found along the way. You can get a horn in early Chapter 2 from an evil merchant.
This horn will instantly summon some barbarian to fight for you.
Handy meat shields instantly.
2 >>> Cleric
Heal
Yes heal. Of all the spells that a cleric has, heal is the single most important spell you have. It provides instant and full hit point to any character and its casting duration is very short.
Other seriously important cleric spell are 'Animated Undead' and
'Tremor'. 'Animated Undead' is the best and the only useful summoning spell. It upgrades as you lvl up. 'Tremor' will instantly damage all enemies and might knock them unconscious.
Different domain affects cleric's domain spell. each lvl of domain spell has 1 additional spell over a choice of two. What god you want to worship is totally up to you. I like Demarch of Mask just because of its invisibility spells and 'Executioner's Eyes'.
Max WIS for cleric. Max CHA if you want but it is not that crucial.
CHA controls your undead turning ability. Have some points in INT and that's it. One important note, you can take 1~2 points intended for WIS and put them to DEX, later into the game, you will encounter a potion that exchange 1 DEX for 2 WIS in Battle Square, not a bad deal.
Simply put, cleric strength allies, weaken enemies.
3 >>> Druid
Nature's servant awaits - Jaheira from Baldur's Gate
A druid do not support that much as cleric, but heal is still available to druid at a highier level. Generally speaking, druid has druid spells which deals some amount of damage and cannot be learn by cleric nor arcane spellcasters.
Some might use druid as a support to main tanker(s) but i just use druid as pure spellcaster. Shapeshifting might work but sadly, it looses its usefulness because enemies get stronger faster.
>>[Jae Shin] wants to denfend for shapeshifters
"It basically allows your druid to become a tank (which is why I use my druid for the Battle Square). The bear you get at 12th level combined with a 'champion's strength' spell is vicious and can easily do over 20 damage per attack. The only problem is that the game seems to have a minor bug in it which causes attack damages and bonuses to get a bit confused whenever you switch between forms. It's easily overcome by unequipping and reequipping weapons, but it can be a bit of a hassle. Then again, having a tank with healing spells is really, really useful. What's even better is that it changes your characters' stats. Bears have no problems with forcing locks open."
4 >>> Sorcerer
Keep'em coming
The thing about socerer is that they have more ammo to dispose
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- Icewind Dale 2 trainer by System on 09/12/2007, 05:07
- Icewind Dale 2 document by System on 14/03/2006, 06:30
All inventory codes as Word doc - Icewind Dale 2 document by System on 14/03/2006, 06:30
All cheats as Word file - Icewind Dale 2 document by System on 14/03/2006, 06:30
Items listing (zipped due to its size, v2.0) - Icewind Dale 2 editor by System on 14/03/2006, 06:30
Character + Savegame Editor - Icewind Dale 2 document by System on 14/03/2006, 06:30
- Icewind Dale 2 FAQ by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50
- Icewind Dale 2 FAQ by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50
Character Development Guide - Icewind Dale 2 FAQ by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50
- Icewind Dale 2 FAQ by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50
- Icewind Dale 2 FAQ by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50
- Icewind Dale 2 hints by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50
Cleric Spell List - Icewind Dale 2 hints by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50
Druid Spell List - Icewind Dale 2 FAQ by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50
- Icewind Dale 2 FAQ by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50