| The Lurker said: I've just started playing Icewind Dale II and I'm finding the game ... well, pretty challenging. I've just killed Torak on my way to the bridge thingy, and I'm currently resting up in Targos. This seems to be a pretty common occurrence for my party, as every battle takes 5 or 6 saves to get through and winds up with my party in tatters and in need of healing. It wasn't so bad in the beginning, but the further I get, the more the flaws in my characters are starting to show. I've typed up the character sheets for each member of my party below. I'm after any tips, and advice people might have on improving them. So far, I've found that Vince is awesome, Heilyxx does his job and the others are pretty lacking in firepower. I wanted Elisa to be a high speed fighter, but she seems to be unable to hit anything ... ever. After Waxley's spells run out, he's pretty much a one hit kill for whatever enemy I'm facing, and probably the greatest weakness in the party. Heilyxx also seems to take forever to reload his bow. Though, I don't know whether that's the crappy AI or something skill based.
Total party gold: 3374
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Vince Brackleback — Lawful Neutral Human Fighter (Level 4)
Heilyxx Ga'adwyloch — Lawful Good Strongheart Halfling Ranger (Level 4)
Elisa Sultry — Chaotic Good Wild Elf Rogue (Level 4)
Waxley Fernhouse — Chaotic Good Rock Gnome Wizard:Transmuter (Level 4)
A few problems; Elisa's STR score is way too low and will cause her much grief in way of hitting anything with a melee weapon, the redeemer could be taking the Weapon Finesse (need one feat for every weapon though!) which will allow DEX to be applied to attack bouns rather than strength. She could also be wielding a shortsword instead, daggers are best suited either as a last resort weapon for melee weak mages and the like or as an off-hand weapon in two weapon fighting styles.
You also need a cleric, the cleric is a capable fighter in D20, arguably better than a Ranger when you factor in some of the awesome attack spells and buffs they have and the fact that they can wear all armor without suffering loss on innate abilities (as opposed to the Ranger which is supposed to operate in Light and Medium armor). Your Ranger is also quite unbalanced, the Ranger and Cleric uses WIS score to determine which spell levels they can/cannot use and the base rule is that a score of 10 + 1 for every spell level is required in order to wield the spell. A higher WIS score also grants vital skill points which improves your characters greatly and yields bonus spell slots per level. At this rate, your Ranger will not be able to use any of his spells at all and will have very low skill scores compared to some of the others. As a rule of thumb, Halflings make poor Rangers and other Fighter or Fighter dervived classes since they have scaled weapons (size increments cause all their weapons to have considerably less damage) and their racial STR penalty forces you to add more points to STR that could have gone elsewhere right from the start.
Fernhouse has the most well rounded stats of them all, the only one thing I'd change if I could was the CON score, which can be heightened in order to make the weaker classes a little more resilient by lending them more HP. The small stature is of little consequense to spellcasters as it usually just involves losing strength and melee/ranged weapon damage. I would strongly advice, however, to make your spellcaster a Sorcerer instead, as this is by far the best "artillery" class in all of D20 save for a small number of setting specific Prestige Classes.
Your fighter, which will deliver the brunt of damage and also recieve the most hits has a couple of problems; his WIS is such that he also will miss out on skill points that will give him better scores in many rather important skills. I like the fact that you made him human, fighters are among the most dependant on developing new feats as the level up and humans get more bonus feats than other races as well as no racial penalties to any one value in stats, saving throws etc which is a good idea for a fighter. His Dex score gives him a penalty, this reduces his AC and limits his use of feats such Combat Reflexes (which is a lifesaver when fighting large numbers of weaker enemies for instance) and Great Cleave. He will also be slower in Dodging or Tumbling. STR, CON and DEX are the main scores a fighter should excel in, with WIS preferably not dipping into the penalty range (less than 10) so as not to lose skill points. If you see that someone will end up with a 9 in one attribute you might as well remove one more point as the penalty for a 9 and an 8 is the same and rather place it in another stat to heighten the value.
As is, your party will never become very effective since most of them are specced in such ways that their class specific strengths are toned down or gone alltogether (like a ranger without any magic, he gets healing among other things). My advice is to start anew, make the ranger a human or an elf, add one more fighter with both being skilled with bows.
I usually have two fighters, one rogue with both ranged and melee capability, one sorcerer/sorceress, one cleric or paladin as a healer (a cleric would be best in a party with two fighter imo) and a ranger or another fighter type character as a 6th character (ranger, paladin or fighter). I give all of my fighter types (perhaps except paladins) ranger capability as this is very useful throughout the game (being able to deliver perhaps 1-3 ranger attacks with over half the party before the enemies close is invaluable) and make my rogue decent melee and ranged character as well for added strength.
Hope this helps! Been playing D&D and D20 for nearly 17 years (D20 since it came out) so I have a lot of experience to back up my claims and tips! 
Good luck!
