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A bit from the Icewind Dale II forums:Josh SawyerA multiclassed party
I tried playing through the first half of the game with a party of four characters, all multiclassed:
* Bastine the Witness -- LG human male Paladin of Ilmater / Cleric of Ilmater
* Niamh Elari -- TN half-elf male Bard / Cleric of Oghma
* Kendel -- LN lightfoot halfling male Old Order Monk / Rogue
* Rakael Laumera -- CN moon elf female Fighter / Wizard
This did not work out well. My characters had a lot of low-level spells and low level abilities. In my previous game, despite being slightly behind in XP, my six single-classed characters all had 2nd level spells by the second area of the game. I did not. This sucked. I wound up running away from a lot of battles -- but boy oh boy, my party members sure were versatile. I think the problems are twofold:
1) In the first few areas of the game, the difference in XP between a four character party and six character party are not astronomical.
2) At low levels, multi-classed characters don't find a niche quickly, and have a tendency to suck equally at all things.
My advice, for those who care, would be to play through with a mix of multiclassed and single-classed characters, play through with even fewer characters, multiclass later, or set the game on Easy difficulty for the first few areas if you really want a party like this. Multiclassing in 3E is very tempting, but it often has many low-level disadvantages.
Human skill point bonusses
In IWD2, human characters start with 2 bonus skill points and get an additional skill point every level. This gives them a larger advantage than they would have in PnP, but we couldn't do it the way I thought would best represent the skill (2 bonus sp at first level, 1 bonus SP every other level). Similarly, it would have been nice to give characters with an effective "0" sp/level (due to low intelligence) fractional sp (1 every two, three, or four levels).
Ilithids
Many of the illithids in IWD2 are big, big babies who have no problems with running away when things go against them. Of course, they often leave their thralls to mop up,
Portraits
There are a total of 83 portraits in IWD2, with about a third of those being new -- so around 25-30ish.
Bards
The bard songs are essentially the same, except that War Chant of Sith has changed to heal 3 hp/round, but only when enemies are visible. Pickpocket will definitely be worth it. You can pickpocket a lot of creatures for a lot of loot.
Elemental spellcasting
Aegis of Rime, Aqua Mortis, Scion of Storms and Spirit of Flame have all had their pre-requisites changed to: the ability to cast 4th level spells, 10 ranks of Spellcraft. This was more of a programming issue than anything.
Lesse planar ally and related spells
In IWD2, the spells Lesser Planar Binding, Lesser Planar Ally, and their ilk summon elementals that are hostile towards everything around them. They attack the nearest non-elemental that isn't protected by Protection From Evil.
Roolz lawyers among you may be thinking, "BUT JSHO, PLANAR ALLIES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR FRIENDS AND GIVE YOU KISSEYS!"
That is true. However, in PnP D&D, these spells also take ten minutes to cast and often require "bartering" with the summoned creatures. Elementals are tough dudes. They have 10/+2 damage reduction and can pound you pretty heavily. Their hostile attitude is the trade-off you get for using these spells.
We had about five or six balance meetings where we got together to talk about balance in the game. One of the recurring things I heard was, "This area was really hard... BUT THEN I SUMMONED FOUR FIRE ELEMENTALS AND HAD A SODA WHILE THEY MOPPED UP."
Basically, their damage reduction and the player's ability to manipulate them were the main problems. They could post elementals at locations where creatures without magical weapons would rush through. The creatures would get waylaid by the elementals and inevitably get pummeled into bits. Now, when you summon elementals, they look for the nearest target not protected by Prot. From Evil. MAYBE it will be the one you want it to attack. MAYBE NOT. Once that target is gone, the elemental may move to almost anywhere. And if they don't see targets, they just wander around looking for something to mess up. That makes them less exploitable as damage-absorbing barriers.
Avatar and interface
Well, Grand Master BWeir got that baby avatar working after much toil and trouble. Here's the interface with the avatar in it:
http://feedback.blackisle.com/images/inventory2.jpg
http://feedback.blackisle.com/images/inventory3.jpg
The avatar has a normal idle animation. This changes to a "battle stance" when enemies are visible. It shows whatever armor/weapons etc. the character is wearing, but not states (blur, color shifts, etc.).
The avatars always stay the same pixel size, yes.
Unfortunately, you cannot pick your avatar. I believe your avatar changes to whatever class you have the most levels in.
DanienBoth weapons bar
The "both weapons bar" is a good idea but one that probably wouldn't have fit into the game in the late stage of development just for . You see, the action button and spell icons were already done and the code was made to support a straight list of buttons. The additional buttons would have required resizing all the art, making sure they look ok, together with significant code changes to support functionality like this. We decided on the "keep it as simple as possible" route. It may not have all the bells and whistles and may lacks certain features that some people might wish for, but with the time constraints and all, this was what we settled on and we believe it will be quite easy to use for most.
While the above statement might look like a put-down to some people, my personal belief is that the game is the focus, not the interface. The ultimate interface would be one that would be completely transparent and natural. If the interface enhances your experience with the game, it has done its job. If it detracts from it, then we should all slap it.
Scott EvertsAssigning palettes
You can't assign default palettes to custom portraits. You still have to pick them manually. There is an internal data file that keeps track of the default colors for the standard portraits. When you select a custom portrait it doesn't check that data file so there is no way to make it work.
Another thing we added was racial colorsets for skin and hair. For example, if you pick a drow you'll only get color choices for drow skin and hair shades. The default portait color button does override this. So lets say you pick a red headed, light skinned portrait and made it a drow. Your skin & hair color choices would be limited to a drow but if you pressed the default color button it would snap back to red hair and white skin.
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Icewind Dale II Forum
