Like our previous disagreement on character-building advice, I feel our difference in opinion primarily revolves around which level range we're putting emphasis on.

Given that this is a SoU/HotU advice thread, I feel that my comments still stand. The primary level range we're looking at are pre-20, and if we're looking at SoU it's level 1-10 that's most important.

I apologize if I came across that way. I was referring to the original poster, who (by his own admission) is new to the NWN series. I don't doubt that you've got full system mastery of the spells.

True, but you need to be clear what you're referring to. Pale Master by the same logic is terrible, but it's a godlike class for melee tanks in an epic environment.

Fair enough.

At the same time, there's a lot of spells that are going to be counter productive for him to use. For better or for worse, direct damage spells typically wind up being the best (with a few exceptions).

My two centavos...

I don't consider Ranger as weak, but rather... limiting. It suffers from feat starvation with a profile pre-invested for dual-wielding with light armor. Ranger can be a somewhat all-or-nothing class with its intrinsic power realized much later than what would happen with the plain-Jane Fighter class. To it's merit, though, it has a very good skill set that could be considered rogue-like by some... good stealth and detection capacity. Like most fighter-type classes, in short-duration campaigns like SoU, it does pretty well. By the end of the sequel, HotU, your toon will be attaining the 26-28 level, so Bane of Enemies will kick in for most of that campaign (most probably during the second chapter). Choosing FE's is not really all that difficult choosing blind. Focus on the races that are crit immune and/or have damage reduction like undead, constructs, elementals... and start adding broad races like elves, dwarves, humans, orcs, etc as icing on the cake. Granted, you can fine-tune the FEs after learning the environment better. Still, a ranger is still a fighter so does very well regardless.

But... IMO... cleric is the easiest and most powerful class and will benefit from multiclassing more than most classes especially in HotU with the uber weapons available and the cleric's powerful melee presence. Divine spells will not suffer casting failure wearing heavy armor/shield while divine damage buffs will pierce DR and be effective against enemies that have elemental resistances and immunities. Selecting the best domains can be tricky because the magic level of the environment can alter the relative effectiveness of your choice(s). Some choices are able to mimic part of the druidic spell prowess if that spell repertoire is attractive. They can gain rogue-like skills with Trickery and a few rogue levels. Really, there are so many effective combos using cleric as the primary class that the class is often nerfed on servers due to its innate potential... right along with the arcane classes. You'll need to familiarize yourself with feat and spell changes before you can determine how effective it can be on a potential PW. Playing a serious self-buffer depends on whether you are comfortable with the time it takes to apply the boosts. Some players just do not like spending the time or planning effort to use its full potential.

Actually, if you don't mind being limited to wearing light armor, a cleric/ranger would synergize WIS nicely and the damage would become very impressive in epic levels, BoE available about half way through HotU. Add a dump class like rogue or assassin and you'll even have access to arcane items with UMD. Just threw that out as an example. There are many ways to enjoy experimenting on your own without hurting your combat prowess.

One difficulty you had with the wizard is that wizards are very reliant on finding spell-scrolls to buy. Without lots of spells, they're crippled sorcerers.

You were playing the original campaign. The expansions added lots of great spells, like the Missile Storms, Acid Sheath, Greater Magic Weapon, Flame Weapon, etc, etc. But none of those are for sale in the OC. If you didn't pick them on level-up... yeah, as you noticed, you were bang out of luck.

In SoU and especially HotU, this is not an issue. All spells are for sale in the second expansion.

And more good news: the expansions are better and don't have nearly as many trash-mobs. The OC has a ton of filler content. One giant cave full of orcs... now another giant cave full of ogres... rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat. Gah. Dungeons in SoU are smaller and much more interesting. Enemies in HotU are typically more varied. More fun is to be had.

Still, wizards in single-player do have to rest a lot. (not as much as you did, but still quite a lot) Or use disabling spells and then spend a lot of time standing around watching their henchman and summon kill things. One alternative is to play a sorcerer: after playing the OC you should have a good idea what spells you want, and if not NWN is very friendly in allowing you to change all your spells each time you level. Sorcerers don't need to rest nearly as much as wizards, since they can keep casting fireballs (or better, Black Tentacles) all day. But if you didn't like the spell-casting gameplay in the OC at all, best skip the sorcerer.

Cleric, which other people have suggested, is a good option. But do note that they rely heavily on buffing spells. It can be a bit boring to have to cast 10+ spells every time you rest. (But of course, you don't -need- to do that. Clerics have heavy armour and shields and will do adequately well without the buffs. Still, for tough fights you had best get cracking anyway.)

Paladins are pretty fun to play if you get Power Attack and Divine Might/Shield. They play like a fighter with a bunch of spells and special abilities to spice things up. Plus you might just be able to find a Holy Avenger sword somewhere if you're lucky.

Druids are a bit weaker than clerics, but a fun class. Fewer buffs, more offensive spells. I played on in SoU and was pleased to discover you can talk to all kinds of animals with them. It doesn't make a huge difference, but it's a fun bonus. You may want to add a single fighter level to get better weapons and armour, though.

Single class rogue is probably a bad idea. They really struggle against undead. Fighter/rogues are fun, though. Get Use Magic Device and use spell-scrolls and wands, get Knockdown and deliver sneak-attacks. Just be prepared for lots of enemies immune to such.

I always play something I want to roleplay, that takes precedence over mechanics to me, but after years of building characters I've managed to create a few characters that are both powerful and great for rping:)

With HOTU, the first time I played I made a Dwarven FTR/CLR/DEFENDER. If anyone is interested in that build I'm happy to post here.

Other favored combinations:Human Paladin/CoT, Half-Elven Ranger/Arcane Archer, Gnome Rogue/Wizard, Halfling Rogue/Shadowdancer.

A ranger/rogue multiclass is a great build for roleplay, a jack-of-all-non-magic-trades.
Plenty of skill points and if you feel like breaking the game, take a level of shadowdancer.
Points to dodge if you want resonably high AC with light armor.

There are some no-backstab heavy hitting enemies that are real difficult for a lightly armored melee character,
but for those instances there's the use magic skill. (which also enables you to use monk boots, extra AC). A tough opponent is less tough when you open with a fireball and then go melee stoneskinned.

Is there really much reason to go with Ranger over Fighter? You get marginally more skill points as a ranger, but if you're multi-classing with Rogue the difference is negligible. A human Fighter 2 / Rogue 6 with 12 intelligence already has 92 skill points. Going with Ranger instead of Fighter takes you to 96 skill points.

I suppose if you plan on dual wielding and are only taking a single level outside of Rogue it would make sense to take ranger instead of fighter. You're locked into dual-wield as a bonus feat and get favored enemy and trackless step instead of heavy armor proficiency, which could be a good trade for some characters. However, if you're taking a second level then the Fighter's additional bonus feat just overshadows anything the Ranger has to offer.

As game mechanics go, not really no.
Roleplay-wise both ranger and rogue tend to be similar light armor sneaky sort of types, so it's a good match. Light armor and dual wielding are something very natural for a rogue, and favored enemy "humans" is always a good bet.
Beside the actual skill points, I seem to recall ranger has more "roguish" set as class skills than a fighter, so there's that as well.

I've had great fun with Barbarian/Rogues (Conan!) and Fighter/Rogues (city scoundrel) characters as well.
Depends on the kind of character you're making.

I fail to see how the technicalities of which class combination you used to get your chosen abilities have any bearing on the RP of the character. It's the abilities you have, not which classes gave them to you, that defines the character.

I suppose if you want to pursue the animal empathy line some of the campaigns (SoU chapter 1 in particular) do support that, but that's about the only place where there will be any significant distinction between what a Fighter/Rogue and Ranger/Rogue can do. Otherwise, you're just giving up combat feats for very little in return.

The benefit is very small to begin with. An epic ranger who has a big bonus against a bajillion enemy types is one thing, but a non-epic ranger is getting meager benefits. For a non-epic multi-class ranger, you're unlikely to have more than a +2, meaning weapon specialization is just plain better anyways.

Since NWN1 allows you to carry over as many skill points as you like between levels, this is essentially a non-issue for anyone multi-classing Rogue.

Barbarian/Rogue works great. Paladin/Rogue is also a fine combination. They both do unique things that a Fighter/Rogue can't. That's my concern with Ranger/Rogue; there is precious little he can do that a Fighter/Rogue cannot do just as well or better.

Also, the ranger's dual-wield feat does -not- let you take improved two weapon fighting, even once your attack bonus is high enough. You need 9 levels of ranger to get it. And that's quite a lot if you're multiclassing.

Fighter/rogue works much better than the ranger version.

Ranger/assassin, on the other hand, is a surprisingly fun and effective alternative to rogue/assassin. Well, insofar as assassins are effective. You'll have far fewer skills than you would as a rogue, though, so it's really a different style character altogether.

I'm not really a power gamer at all and don't really care if one class combo gets slightly better results or not.
To me, a class defines more than the stats, it's also where you're coming from, backstory and stuff. So if I'm playing someone with city background, I'm not taking druid or ranger, even if there's nothing in the game preventing that.

Also to me, skill points mean more than feats. So barbarian or ranger are usually preferable to a fighter. With classes 50/50, a ranger or a barbarian can keep one more skill topped than a fighter. This is less important if you're mostly a rogue with just a dash of combat class to boost battle capabilities.

Okay. And even a quick and nimble character like Drizzt was trained as a *fighter* for a very long time. Nothing stops a fighter from being dex based and quick/nimble.

No one's saying you can't play Ranger/Rogue if you want to. It's your game, and you don't have to justify how you play it to anyone else. In the context of an advice thread, however, there needs to be some justification to recommend one combination when another does the job better.

I reject this notion. The player decides his character's background and history, and is not constrained by the technicalities of his class selection.

The skill difference is peanuts. With single-class Ranger versus single-class Fighter, it's a valid comparison that the Fighter is skill-starved. However, with any meaningful investment in Rogue levels the vast number of skill points offered by the Rogue will overshadow the relatively small difference between Fighter and Ranger.

First of all, one extra maxed out skill isn't a big deal on a character that already has 9 skills maxed. If you actually want a bigger skill investment than that, then 50/50 is the wrong proportions. The only reason to run that many levels of fighter is because you want the feats more than you want the skills. If that's not the case, taking more levels in Rogue is the way to go. You only need 4 levels of Fighter to hit BAB 16 by level 20, and you can put the remainder of your pre-epic levels into Rogue.

Eh, it's a bit of both, though.

I agree with you that the player defines his character's background and history, but the class choice does place some constraint on this. Sure, you -could- say that the cleric character you're playing doesn't worship gods but actually gains power because his great-grandfather was a god, or that your paladin character doesn't actually has to believe in following the law because... of unclear reasons, but you'd probably confuse other players and have to contradict some of the stuff written on your in-game character-sheet.

In principle, I think it's better for RPGs to separate things completely, as you want. To let the classes just decide mechanical abilities and let the rest be decided by the imagination of the player. But D&D does mix them up, by providing alignment and religion requirements for various classes.

That said, even in D&D there's a lot of flexibility, especially with classes like the rogue and the fighter. You can basically come up with anything and make it work with these classes.

To reiterate my earlier comment: it's the abilities you have, not which classes gave them to you, that defines the character. A Cleric has divine spellcasting powers, and in the Forgotten Realms setting you must follow a deity to have those (as an aside, that is a Forgotten Realms setting-specific rule. The actual core rules state that clerics gain their powers from faith alone and need not worship a specific god or any god at all). So those are the powers your character has, and the setting provides a framework for what they are. Beyond that, everything is up to you; there is no requirement that you be an actual priest or part of a clergy, and your relationship with your faith and your deity is up to you to develop and not spelled out by your class.

Paladin is one of the few classes I'll agree are an exception, since he has a specific code of conduct mandated by the rules themselves.