I'm in the last chapter now. Some of the 3E rules could have been more throughly incorperated. For instance sneak attack has 3E damage, but uses mostly 2E circumstances it can be acheved, since it's also limited to 1/round it's fairly week, really, and I'm dissipointed given what a total monster my half orc fighter / barbarian is once we throw down some buffs. Lack of some key armor types from 3E is also a big disipointment for me, since I'd like my fighter / rogue in a chain shirt (simply to match her portrate). There's also a large lack of feats, and I've found that at 12th most of my PCs don't need to many more tifelinf pure rogue excluded), only one of my three front liners took more than 4 levels of fighter.
Seeing all the connections to the first IWD is really heart warming. Both (as well as heart of winter) are excelent Hack and Slash, and I'd have to say I'm enjoying it far more than Neverwinter (stupid, stupid henchmen!) for the single player game.
My biggest problem with the game itself is either I'm ahead of the XP curve or the're seriously stingy with higher level spells, I always go through roughly 1/2 to 1 1/2 full levels before my wizard gets access to scrolls with for new spell levels.
My party:
Grosh, half-orc Fighter 4 / Barbarian 9. Uses a great axe. A true monster in every sense of the word, I've seen his strength as high as 32, and his damage is typicaly in the 16-28 range with 3 attacks, 4 when hasted. Without his daily bulls strength(I needed to drop a dispel magic before my last save) he has a 23 str right now...
Oresia of Tempus: Human battleguard of Tempus 9 / Fighter 4. Uses a battle-axe and a shield. Also quite nasty in melee, and gives me a few more daily buffs, some summoned undead and quite a bit of healing to boot.
Lelia: Half elf fighter 7 / rogue 6. Miss generality, she uses whatever weapon she can find (no specific weapon feats). A nice flanking partner for....
Iouna Shadeheart: Tifling rogue 13. Started with 18 int and dex, and took her a while to get all the basic feats I wanted. It's almost a good thing two weapon fighting dosn't help Ice Wind Dale II rogues much, in this reguard. Many skills maxed. Note: Yeah, ECL rules here are wrong, but perhaps work better than the 3e rules over a long run, since the extra bonus from tifling at least becomes more and more insignificant as I progress in levels.
Alessia Moonshade: Human Silverstar of Selune 13. She's a pure cleric who uses a long bow. Took a while to get the basic feats for bow use, since I wanted a pure spellcaster, but there's an abundence of feats in IDW2, with no meta magic or item creation. All she needs now is greater spell penetration and mabye some more spell focui.
Threen Spellspear: Human transmuter 13. Poor guy only just got his first 7th level spell scroll, and it's rather weak (sufficate). Oh, well.Mass haste rocks the party, as does his daily cats graces for Iouna and Alessia.
Like all PC games, it's low magic (items at least. Spell scrolls have some issues, too) comparied to 3e default, and uses a super inflated cost system for magic items.
). He was the strongest, after that I used a deep gnome female as a illusionest. I made the rest of the players with regular stats and no other ECL's. Other than one ECL you are screwed at the low levels. This is a serioulsy hard game but for me that is a good thing. I also like to challenge myself and put it at the hard difficulty. It is a pretty fun game, but I wish that I had the time to go through it again. I would like to see if I could get different outcomes for certain events.
