80Maxwell08 said:
Well have fun with that. So far I haven't really considered other races than human since I hadthat same problem with Neverwinter Nights 2 with all the different racial bonuses.
In IWD you don't get a whole lot of racial bonuses. It uses an older ruleset than NwN2.
Dwarves can go to 19 constitution instead of 18, so they get more hitpoints. Elves can go to 19 dexterity instead of 18, so that's great for your armor class, but especially for your archery. That's why I choose those instead of human fighters. Elves and dwarves also get free infravision, but that's useless.
Humans are handy, in that they can dual class, instead of multiclass. Multiclassing means having more than one class, all at once, and the EXP gets divided between them. Dual class means switching from one class to another; you stop gaining EXP in your old class, start gaining EXP in your new one, and when the level of the new one exceeds the old one, you can use the abilities of both classes (before that point, you temporary lose the abilities of the old one). Sounds complicated, but it means that you don't have to split those two classes fifty-fifty, you can get what you want of one, and then focus on the other for the rest of the run. That's the main advantage of a human.
But I would really consider the other races too.
I'll illustrate with the party I've posted:
- one fighter's a dwarf, because he can take more hits, making him good at melee.
- one fighter's an elf, because he can shoot bows better, making him great at a distance.
- for the mage, the race doesn't really matter (except for the fact that only gnomes can be specialist Illusionists, but I believe they can't use Evocation, ruling out, for example, fireball and magic missile, so I wouldn't consider them)
- for the fighter/thief (or mage/thief, or cleric/thief) I wouldn't take a human, because I'd do it multiclass (50-50) and not dual class. Why? Because if you change from fully skilled thief to something else, it's gonna take a real long time to get those thief skills back, if that's even possible before the end of the game. And you can't miss those for a second. And in this particular party setup, there's no plan B for rogue skills. So just go for any other race than human. Halflings are good, because they can also get higher dexterity, improving their thieving skills.
- for the druid the race doesn't really matter either, except for those races that simply can't be druids of course.
- And the fighter/cleric, as I've said, will be dual class, thus a human.
As for alignment, it doesn't matter in IWD.
In BG, some characters will leave after spending time in the party with certain others. In BG2 they might even start fighting to the death. This is because of alignment.
But in IWD, apart from some small but neat roleplaying opportunities (that have little effect in the grand scheme of things), alignment is largely ignored. Some classes have alignment restrictions (paladins can only be lawful good, druids only true neutral), but that's it.
Anyway, I hope this is helpful. It's a great game, but yeah, the ruleset takes some hardcore getting used to.
