First off, I've been playing D&D for about 8 years.

I have two problems right now in IWD2 (I haven't ran any patches yet, just starting Chapter 3, should I?)

1. My Drow level 10 Ranger cannot cast any spells, even though his wisdom is very high and he wears light or no armour. Is this a bug or am I missing something? When i make the icon for cast spell its just black and says "no spells". Since he casts clerical spells he should get them automatically no?

2. This one is odd. I made my rogue at first thinking him to be only a rogue (tiefling), but soon when he got to level 4 I saw he was powerful enough so I started multiclassing to fighter.. this was the best thing I could have done, he is now a 5/5 fighter/rogue and even though I thought he would be my weakest character at the beginning, he is now my toughest (as far as attacks go).. I gave him ambi/two weapon, and he wields two short swords. What seems odd to me that this character has higher attacks (2 main, 1 off) then my ranger with the same feats but 10 levels of ranger (higher by +1 on all stats, with no magical weapons).. Is this right? it seems odd to me that my ranger would have lower base attack then my fighter/rogue.

Thanx for the help.

Trypt

Install the patches, they fix a lot of issues.

For the ranger, go to the "Spellbook screen" and memorise the spells by allocating them. After they are memorised, then customise your toolbar for spells. BTW Rangers don't need higher than 16 WIS and that would only be beneficial if you hit level 30, which if you are playing normal mode, you won't reach.

If this does not help the spells, then....? Sorry, I dunno...

As for the Rogue multi class. You did the best thing yet, single class Rogues are "krappe" at best.

The BABs should be lower, but since he is wielding shortswords, perhaps the penalties are lower? If the off hand weapon is light, and a shortsword is, the the penalty is only -2. So I am wondering, does your ranger have a light or a heavy off hand weapon, because if he does, then his penalties will be -3 or -4, perhaps more, so this could explain why the multi Rogue, has a better BAB.

Does your Ranger wear more than Light armour, that is, Chain or more, because if so, the dual wield feats are negated and so he will have max penalties.

Just check it out and see if it is better. A ranger should use a dagger or shortsword, off hand until at a quite a high level when the -4 for a longsword is negated by a high BAB. Perhaps around level 10 or more.

Hope this helps.

I suppose it depends on the following things:
Is your Rogue sneak attacking?
What is the difference in stats?
What types of Feats do both characters have?
You should look at these things to answer your own question. Also, patch the game! it's important to patch a game like IWD2. There were a number of bugs fixed in the patch.

1) Surely you have made him memorize some spells and then rested, right?

2) You are comparing raw BAB, right?
A fighter_5/rogue_5 should have +8/+3 BAB
A ranger 10 should have +10/+5 BAB

[ December 01, 2002, 02:16: Message edited by: Quint ]

Thanx for the speedy reply guys.. I think that I just forgot to memorize the spells for my ranger, lol, will check that now..

Like I said, I've been playing DND for a long time, i know the drill, so no, there is no mistakes like a big off weapon or medium+ armour, everything is as it should be.. I checked my players handbook and it seems ok actually, so I think its all figured out, as far as that goes. The stats are the same too, well, the rogue/figter has a dex of 22 to the rangers 21, so that helps, but the rest is the same (strength for example). i gotta say, the figter/rogue combo is deadly good, I want him to be like lvl12 figter/lvl5 rogue (or is there anything special at lvl6 rogue?)

btw, is there an experience cap to IWD2? I would hate that since I try to kill every monster and finish every quest, and thats a lot of experience.. also, is there a expansion that I can play with my party once this is done? Thanx

Trypt

Xp cap = 435000xp or level 30. No expansion. But there is HoF mode, which is actually the only way to get up to the high levels without cheating or going solo. Can't be sure that going solo would yield any xp either...

@Khazraj
That cap means any drow can be up to 28 level (effective 30)?

It's really a shame that there'll be no expansion to IWD2 (at least that's what Black Isle is saying to the masses.)
I'd leave the Rogue level at 5 and then continue on with the Fighter level. I believe that the Rogue's sneak attack damage increases every odd level (1d6 at 1st, 2d6 at 3rd and so on.)

Alex, I wrote the basic "vanilla" cap for regular characters from the manual. Yes the ECL classes can get up to 3 more levels depending on the ECL penalty, being 1, 2 or 3. So a deep gnome can be level 30 ECL 33, just way high xp...