Is this idea crazy?

Remove all ads!

I lean toward a melee-heavy party, and in IWD1, I went with no wizard or sorcerer, and let my bard be my only arcane caster....and it worked great. So....I thought.....for IWD2, why not let my bard handle not only my casting, but also the thieving duties. He's a human with 18 INT, and I started with 1 level of Rogue...planning to go Bard the rest of the way. Is this unrealistic, or could this actually work?

I don't really have a strong grasp of exactly how high you need to get each skill, so maybe that is actually the implied question here....would he have enough skill points to level up each necessary skill sufficiently?

 

Human Rogue 1 Bard X can easily handle it all with Max INT. Pair him with 5 Battle Clerics. No need for warriors who are as dumb as their sword.

 

Well, I was feeling a bit shaky about it, but I'm going to take your word for it. Thanks!

 

In one of my playthroughs I had human rogue 6/bard 11 (party had sorceress, fighter/monk, monk and some kind of cleric). Bard had the least amount of kills, but was great as utility (buffer, debuffer, sapper and diplomat).

And I agree, in the long run clerics are the best "fighters".

 

Thanks Mati, much appreciated!

I'm wondering if someone could give me a good idea for what how high I need to take certain skills. I'm assuming that I need to level up open locks, disable traps, search, alchemy, spellcraft, and maybe 1-2 others....but no idea how high I need to take each one to be sufficiently effective. Thoughts?

 

Open locks, traps, alchemy, knowledge arcana, diplo skills - 18.
Search - I usually don't go beyond 14 and it works fine.
Spellcraft - 10 to unlock elemental feats (although bard doesn't have spells affected by elemental feats), as high as possible to discover spells that enemies cast (so you can know if you have to kill the mage ASAP or simply run away).
Concentration - max.

 

This is extremely helpful!!! Thanks so much!

 

The biggest issue is that the bard is the best diplomat aka party face. Consequently you wind up sinking your skill points into Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Bluff. Add in disable device, open locks plus search and you don't have a lot of points left over. Compound this by not all those being class skills for a bard. Pick Pockets is nice, but nowhere near vital.
I usually have a part-time rogue mixed with some kind of warrior class (and I include monks with warriors), and let the bard concentrate on talking skills and pick pockets since it's a class skill while disabled device is not.
If you use the bard for rogue skills, who is going to be the party face?
As has been noted, you don't need a dedicated rogue, and the sneak attack bonus can be very nice for your front-line fighter, especially if it's a warrior-heavy party.
Sneak attack works differently from the backstab of IWD1, if you have two party members flanking a monster you get the sneak attack bonus (unless it's a construct, undead or otherwise immune).
So having a couple levels of rogue can be a boon to a monk, fighter, or barbarian. Rangers compliment rogue levels as well since they get more skill points and get stealth as class skills.
Only advance your rogue skills when advancing rogue levels because you only have to pay 1 point instead of two, and don't advance the rogue levels every level, but only every couple of levels. Keep in mind that you can only save up a limited number of skill points, but take full advantage of that.

 

Thanks for that input; you make a great point....and I probably should have clarified earlier...I actually have my Paladin to be the face, so he takes care of the talking skills.
Sound ok?

 

Personally I find paladin terrible diplomat:
- refuses rewards
- makes diplomacy with reasonable yet evil folks impossible (not just "I won't make a deal with you, my god forbids me" but simple "Die, monster!") which often leads to fight (and deprieves you xp)

 

Did NOT realize this....much appreciated!! (Back to the drawing board, lol)

 

I'm probably going to reveal my ignorance here...but in IWD1 and BG 1 & 2, I never worried about this...I just knew that the enemy mage had to die first, so I rushed him. As long as my bard does not need elemental feats, is this skill really important?

Also, if I were to make my Bard my party face...then give him just one level of paladin for the CHA bonus to saves....would he start picking fights and turning down rewards like you described?....or is this multiclass idea not even an option?

 

You can't have bard and paladin because paladin has to be lawful good and bard can't be lawful at all.

Well, you can ignore spellcraft, but in the late game you better chop enemy spellcasters ASAP before they launch Wail of the Banshee or Power Word: Kill.

 

Got it! (Wasn't aware of that alignment issue.) Thanks!

 

Uh, paladins won't adventure with evil characters, they will adventure with chaotic neutral characters, but not lawful evil (or anything-evil).
Bards, rogues, and barbarians are just fine as long as they are neutral or good. It is only evil that matters.

 

It's mentioned in the loading screen tips that monks and paladins will often refuse rewards.
It might be worthwhile to read them, although now that I think about it, you might not be able to if playing on a modern system with a SSD. I sometimes had trouble reading them on an old system with an ATA-66 IDE drive, 512mb of RAM and a 1ghz processor (which was not that bad back when I first got IWD2. Slightly obsolete, but not much worse than the low-end systems available at Wal-Mart, especially laptops).

 

Well, tips are shown also in message box once you load game or new area, but I agree - widescreen resolution causes issues with loadscreen tips.

 

So....if I make a paladin, and then also create 1 or 2 evil party members....what would happen? (I experimented briefly by creating a paladin and one evil character. We got off the boat and spoke to the first couple of npc's....seemed ok. Would the Paladin eventually leave?

(I'm curious because I read somewhere that you need to have at least a few evil members in your party to survive one of the last battles where they use a spell that only hits good-aligned characters.)

By the way, I guess you could ignore my new thread about my party.....just read somewhere that a bard does not get fireball and some of the other cool offensive spells....so he won't work as my caster unless I MC to a wiz or sorc....but that seems a long time to wait for decent spells. Oh well.

 

It's been a while since I tried, but I thought the game just wouldn't let you add an evil party member when a paladin is in the party. Again, it's been ages, so I could be confusing one of the other Infinity Engine games.
That's the problem with 20 year old games, sometimes the little things you learn not to do you forget the exact consequences, just not to do them.

 

It's fine. There's no interaction between party members or falling from grace, so you can have LG paladin and CE priest of Talos in one team without consequences.