playing a party with two fighters, a ranger, a thief, a mage and a cleric

I find that fighters are pretty much useless due to the massive amount of enemies and the fact that healing spells take too long to cast. Ranged weapons pretty much dominate and my mage's fireball spell pretty much rules the battlefield.

Because of this my strategy is to open a door, retreat, fireball, shoot some arrows, retreat some more to a place i can rest and heal my wounds and recharge my spells, rinse repeat.

This gets very tedious since you cant rest in most dungeons and dungeons can get very large. Is there any way to play the game another way?

IWD 1 I assume?

Your fighters should be able to take the punishment and deal out the pain as well. They should have maxed CON for high HPs and give them the best armor/weapons you can find. Make sure, of course, that you have pips in the weapons you're giving them for more attacks and damage. High STR is a must as well for more damage output. Your Ranger gets an extra attack per round if you don't equip a shield. This makes a long-reach weapon a great choice for them.

Buff with spells and potions.If you're going to be casting healing spells, make sure you start when the character is only down to about 1/2 HPs.

Ranged weapons are a must for the opening salvo and have your non tankers keep pelting with them. Concentrate on one opponent at a time.

At lower character levels though, you'll need to rest often in order to keep any kind of spell arsenal, since your casters get so few spell slots. Later on it gets much better when you have more spells available. Once you get the capability, summon monsters/animate dead. It's a great way to give yourself meat shield while you pound away with ranged weapons to weaken/cull the mobs.

I always (try to) play with a rest-only-once-a-day policy, and it works in most areas.

A good tank with as low AC as possible to be the target of most melee attacks is important.
But the most important thing is to scout out the area first so that you can plan most battles in advance. The goal is to kill the enemies as fast as possible using as little magic as possible. Learn when Fireball and other damage spells is needed and when you you can do without them.
If there are lots of nasty groups of enemies in the same general area, buff the whole party, including casting Haste, and then mop up the enemies as fast as possible before the Haste spell expires.

Don't underestinate the power of backstabbing. Backstabbing is a good way of softening up the opposition at the start of the battle. Very useful for taking out enemy spell casters, for example. But if you have a single class Thief instead of a Fighter/Thief it is less effective.

Use summoned monsters, charmed enemies and undead minions (result of Animate Dead) as meat shields while you pummel the enemy with missile weapons.

Don't be afraid to use wands if you have them, so that you don't need to memorize damage spells as often. And buy Healing Potions if you can so that you don't need to re-memorize so many healing spells. Always use healing services if available, instead of spells or potions. If you have a Bard of high enough level, you'll only need potions or healing spells for emergiences, since the bard song that regenerates hit points heals your characters in a matter of minutes.

Mmmm i disagree... i found the game pretty easy with "fighters" in fact the half of my team were fighters... as i said in other post i copy past what i was saying there bellow. I´m talking about Icewind Dale 1 and Heart of the Winter...

I finished the first game & expansion years ago with this party: Anyway i try to do "balanced" parties but i use to "roleplay" the "portraits" and make a character race/proffesion that fits that guy/girl i use to played with 3 guys and 3 girls, al them mostly good or neutral.


1 Paladin / Human
1 Mage Specialist /Half Elf (i think it was transmuter or enchanter? the one that is versus adivination can´t remember)
1 Cleric / Elf
1 Fighter / Dwarf
1 Thief-Fighter / Half-Elf
1 Druid / Human

It worked pretty well that time, the best character was probably the Mage or Paladin, and the one that worst worked was the Thief-Fighter, recently i started the game again, with a more "evil" group, not totally evil (as the plot dont let you be... sic...and of course there is no much roleplaying on IWD1) but more chaotic, evil and neutral in general. 3 girls & 3 guys. This time i wanted to do some experiments with mixed classes to see if they work or not in combat.

1 Fighter / Human
1 Mage-Cleric / Half Elf
1 Mage Specialist / Elf
1 Ranger - Human
1 Thief - Halfling
1 Fighter-Mage-Cleric / Half Elf

I´m just started i dunno if they will work fine or not. I´m focusing more in magic that last time, that i focused more in combat, but i chosen two multiclass characters because i still wanted most part of the group can fight with weapons, as there are many many combats in IWD1