IWD: to dual or not to dual...
Fylla & Sprit
Dwarf fighter
Human fighter
Human paladin
Elf fighter/thief
Halfling cleric
Gnome cleric/illusionist
My original idea was to dual the human fighter to necromancer at level
9, but now I start to get the feeling that a straight fighter may be
more useful. Any advice would be welcome...
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Before you buy.
Rune Christensen
>I am in chapter two with the following party:
>
>Dwarf fighter
>Human fighter
>Human paladin
>Elf fighter/thief
>Halfling cleric
>Gnome cleric/illusionist
>
>My original idea was to dual the human fighter to necromancer at level
>9, but now I start to get the feeling that a straight fighter may be
>more useful. Any advice would be welcome...
Don't dual-class your fighter. The general consensus of posters in this
group seems to be that we don't actually have much use for wizards. Sure,
they are great for casting Haste and the beneficient Emotion spells, but
they rarely pull their own weight.
The thing about IWD is that by the time you reach Chapter 3 or so, your
characters are so loaded down with potent artifacts of destruction that they
don't really NEED a mage to cast those wimpy Magic Missiles. Chances are
that half of the opposition is dead by the time you get that Magic Missile
spell off anyway. Area of Effect spells such as Fireballs are suicidal in a
game like IWD, where you seldom get the chance to cast the Fireball before
the enemy is on top of you.
I've completed the game, and by Chapter 3 or 4 my wizard's only remaining
job was to cast Haste, beneficient Emotion spells, and Identify magical
items. I cast Stoneskin spells on him, and gave him a sling and bullets to
keep him out of harm's way while the rest of my party pounded the opposition
into little pieces in melee combat - a job at which they succeeded
admirably, by the way.
Here's my party:
Human paladin (melee)
Dwarf fighter (melee)
Human cleric (melee)
Elf fighter/thief (archer)
Elf ranger (archer)
Human conjurer wizard (wimp)
My original party had a bard instead of the elven ranger, but I swapped them
after Kresselack's Tomb. In hindsight, having completed the game, I would
have been better off losing the wizard and getting another melee fighter.
The bard would more than fill the role of the wizard (see above), only with
better hit points, THAC0, and weapon abilities.
Rune Christensen
Fylla & Sprit
Ragnar
I use the mage for combat support and give him a bow for ranged combat.
Fylla & Sprit <fylla_o...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8m6214$dfm$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> I am in chapter two with the following party:
>
> Dwarf fighter
> Human fighter
> Human paladin
> Elf fighter/thief
> Halfling cleric
> Gnome cleric/illusionist
>
> My original idea was to dual the human fighter to necromancer at level
> 9, but now I start to get the feeling that a straight fighter may be
> more useful. Any advice would be welcome...
>
>
>
>
Colin E
news:8m65ie$vv$1...@news.cybercity.dk...
> The thing about IWD is that by the time you reach Chapter 3 or
so, your
> characters are so loaded down with potent artifacts of
destruction that they
> don't really NEED a mage to cast those wimpy Magic Missiles.
Ohh! I'm no great lover of Mages but I can't let that one go :-)
Wimpy MMs - No Way.
Saved my butt against a series of blast skeletons time after time
in Dragon's Eye. Once each from my Mage and Cleric-Mage took them
out every time [usually] before they got in range. Now they're
proving their worth against the variety of Shamans [Shamen ?] in
Severed Hand too.
--
Colin E
Rune Christensen
In BG, Magic Missiles were great. Your party was low-powered, and did not
have QUITE as many magical items as you're likely to have in IWD, where
every other goblin and his pet rock carries a +3 sword. Sure, MM is a good
spell. But in my opinion spellcasting is somewhat futile in IWD, as your
fighters annihilate all-comers without breaking a sweat. Why even BOTHER
doing the two clicks and the drag of the pointer across the screen necessary
to cast a Magic Missile when the target is most likely a bloody mess by the
time you get the spell off?
Rune Christensen
AndrwHow
later levels, but many of the "bosses" have magic resistance. I would keep the
fighter as a fighter.
mykl...@my-deja.com
I was sooo glad I had my two mages, both against the trolls, and
against the large groups in severed hand... most of the time tho, they
just function as archers... Fireball is *great*, just remember to turn
AI off first... If I'm *really* swarmed by enmies, I even find it
useful to fireball my own party, to minimize the beating my unarmored
chars take. My party:
Fig (dwarf)(axe=4/x-bow=2)
Fig/Cle (dual at 6)(mace=4/sling=2)
Fig/Thi (dual at 6)(l-swo=4/l-bow=2)
Rng/Cle (dual at 3)(hammer=2/sling=2)
Fig/Mag (dual at 6)(g-swo=2/l-bow=4)(evoker)
Fig/Mag (dual at 6)(l-swo=2/x-bow=4)(conjurer)
They *really* failed at making ranged combat more balanced, and
backstab is still *nice* (at least if you got 18/00 in str).
>
> Don't dual-class your fighter. The general consensus of posters in
this
> group seems to be that we don't actually have much use for wizards.
Sure,
> they are great for casting Haste and the beneficient Emotion spells,
but
> they rarely pull their own weight.
>
> The thing about IWD is that by the time you reach Chapter 3 or so,
your
> characters are so loaded down with potent artifacts of destruction
that they
Atlus Seven
>group seems to be that we don't actually have much use for wizards. Sure,
>they are great for casting Haste and the beneficient Emotion spells, but
>they rarely pull their own weight.
>
>The thing about IWD is that by the time you reach Chapter 3 or so, your
>characters are so loaded down with potent artifacts of destruction that they
>don't really NEED a mage to cast those wimpy Magic Missiles. Chances are
>that half of the opposition is dead by the time you get that Magic Missile
>spell off anyway. Area of Effect spells such as Fireballs are suicidal in a
>game like IWD, where you seldom get the chance to cast the Fireball before
>the enemy is on top of you.
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on this one, Rune. Having played through
IWD a totally of 4 times (and on my 5th game as we speak) I've found that a
Mage, while not a must-have, is very very beneficial to the party. Granted,
you can tear through the enemies if you're heavily armed with Fighter-type
classes. No doubt about that. But throw a mage in to the mix and you can make
their job much easier. Let's take your statement about area effect spells
being suicidal as an example. Sure, if you don't know how to strategically use
area effect spells, they can harm you just as much, if not more, than the
opposition. But if you "know what you're doing", you can pull off some nasty
tricks. For example--
Say your gang of melee fighters are in a huge squabble with a fairly large
enemy group. Carelessly tossing a Fireball into the fray could potentially
kill several of your characters. But try this trick--manually pause the game
and instruct your Mage to cast a Fireball slightly in front of the group.
Next, drag the cursor around your melee Fighters and instruct them to retreat
past where your Fireball is targeted to hit. Unpause the game and see what
happens. Basically, by the time your mage get's his/her Fireball off, your
Fighters would have safely retreated beyond the Fireball's effects, while the
enemies chase your retreating Fighters and get caught in the effects. Work
wonders when you're being swarmed by Cold Wights in Dragon's Eye for example.
It takes some practice to perfect, but once you do, you can turn the tides of
those swarm-type battles heavily in your favor.
Other good Mage tricks are to load up on Fireball or other area effect damage
spells that are 3rd level or lower (there's not many). Cast a Stoneskin and a
Globe of Invulnerablility on your Mage and have him/her walk into a large group
of monsters and go balistic with the Fireball, etc. All the enemies will be
decimated while your mage comes out unscathed.
Or try casting Greater Invisiblity on your Mage and have him/her walk into a
group of monsters and cast a high level Chain Lightning at them and quickly
high-tail outta there. Rinse, repeate untill the entire enemy group is no
more.
Another trick includes taking your mage and carefully inching toward where you
know an enemy group is and staying just outside of their LOS. Using the Fog of
War to your advantage, start casting spells like Web, Stinking Cloud,
Cloudkill, etc. Even though you can't see the enemies, the spells effects will
harm them. Take your ranged Fighters and start pelting the enemies from a
distance while they sit there incapacitated by the spells effects.
And let's not forget how useful Magic Missle and Melf's Acid Arrow are in
disrupting enemy mage's spells. MM, for example, comes off so fast that you
can disrupt many enemy spells before they have a chance to cast them. Not only
that, but there's no save against MM, pretty much guaranteeing success unless
the mage has magic resistance (which not very many do). And Acid Arrow can be
a godsend in the case of enemy spellcasters as well. Like MM, AA comes off
very quickly. And not only that, but at higher levels, the AA hits 2 or 3
times. The initial casting of it disrupts the enemy's first spell, and by the
time he/she/it's in the process of casting their second, the AA does it's
damage again. On their third attempt, it disrupts it yet again. This gives
your melee Fighters time to dispatch the bigger, tougher enemies.
You also can't rule out the benefits of such spells as Identify, Emotion:
Courage and Hope, the numerous Summoning spells, Haste, Slow, etc.
Besides all these benefits that don't seem quite apparent on the surface, who
wants to bore themselves to death simply sending in a buch of sword weilding
knuckle-heads to dispatch the enemies? =D I certainly don't. I gotta have a
Mage to make things interesting. Basically, Mages add a deep strategic element
to the battles.....something I heavily prefer over standard melee combat.
Smooth like Reggie Miller in an airborne freeze-frame......
....Funky like the Kung-Fu that can put you to shame. =D
Arjan
> characters are so loaded down with potent artifacts of destruction that
they
> don't really NEED a mage to cast those wimpy Magic Missiles. Chances are
> that half of the opposition is dead by the time you get that Magic Missile
> spell off anyway. Area of Effect spells such as Fireballs are suicidal in
a
> game like IWD, where you seldom get the chance to cast the Fireball before
> the enemy is on top of you.
>
with
your fighter/thief to find an interesting group of enemies and you decide
where you want to cast your fireball. Then you ask your mage (mine is double
class cleric/mage to have some extra healing and support) to throw the
fireball
to that point. The mage will walk to a point in reach of the spot, cast the
fireball
to soften up your enemies and then you can call her back. Short sighted
enemies
often don't even see you and you can repeat it if you want. if only one or
two
come after you your mage can simply run back to the prepared ambush.
>
> Rune Christensen
>
Arjan
Ykalon Dragon
> Area of Effect spells such as Fireballs are suicidal in a
> game like IWD, where you seldom get the chance to cast the Fireball before
> the enemy is on top of you.
I've had great success with fireball in the game most of the time. Only
had trouble with rooms right around a bend (you will be seen coming
around the bend) but even that I solved with an invisible mage with
minor globe and just casting the fireball at his feet. After magic
missile and the boosting spells (haste and the emotion spells mostly)
fireball was my most used spell. Cloud kill on the other hand seemed to
be weaker than I remembered from BG. But that may be because the enemies
are generally more high level than BG and make their saving throws more
often.
Sheitan
"Colin E" <co...@elliottc.globalnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:8m771e$2h6$3...@gxsn.com...
> Rune Christensen <r...@vip.cybercity.dk> wrote in message
> news:8m65ie$vv$1...@news.cybercity.dk...
>
> > The thing about IWD is that by the time you reach Chapter 3 or
> so, your
> > characters are so loaded down with potent artifacts of
> destruction that they
> > don't really NEED a mage to cast those wimpy Magic Missiles.
>
> Wimpy MMs - No Way.
> Saved my butt against a series of blast skeletons time after time
> in Dragon's Eye. Once each from my Mage and Cleric-Mage took them
> out every time [usually] before they got in range. Now they're
> proving their worth against the variety of Shamans [Shamen ?] in
> Severed Hand too.
>
They're also nice against the incredibly irritating skeletal archers.
Ranged weapons and swords to stuff all vs these, whereas a single MM seems
to take em out.
- Sheitan