Advice please

[x lance x]

hello everyone I just picked up the forgotten realms deluxe ed and I need some help with Icewind Dale, firstly my party consists of a fighter, and a paladin who are pretty much the same, then i have a fighter/mage and a fighter/cleric and lastly i have a ranger and a thief which uses a sling and throwing knives etc. Is this a good party? If not please help me to make a new and better one?

secondly my mage is lvl 1 and can only cast 1 spell? Is there any way I can cast any different spells??


And lastly Is there any way which I can identify items without using a spell??

This ed did not come with a instruction manual so I need help from you guy's

Thanks

[AvatarOfLight]

There's an awful lot of good party ideas you can find on these forums.

The manual you can also get here:
replacementdocs: Downloads / PC / Icewind Dale

At a glance your party looks fine though I'd singleclass the cleric and mage. As for your mage question, yes that is correct. Wizard spellcasting improves based on levels and intelligence.

[kmonster]

Single class thieves are lousy in IWD, even a triple class thief gets more than enough thieving skill points. A fighter/thief multiclass would do more than twice as much damage and have defensive advantages too.

The rest of your party is fine (especially for first time players) if you distributed the stats and weapon proficiencies properly (maxed out str, dex, con for everyone, maxed wis for the cleric, maxed int for the mage, everyone should be specialized in both a melee and ranged weapon type).

A character can identify an item in his inventory by rightclicking it if he has high enough lore for it.