Icewind Dale EE: Arcane Spellcasters

Arcane spellcasting is perhaps the most powerful form of spell casting in Icewind Dale. From summoning monsters to creating invinsible barriers Arcane spell casters can do pretty much anything. Unfortunately early on a mere Goblin can become a threat but later on they can become unmatched, so be prepared to suffer a huge power penalty early on.

Here is a compilation of the Arcane spellcasting classes available to Icewind Dale

Mages are the most common form of Arcane spell casters. They have to find scrolls to learn the magic that allows them to become both offensively and defensively powerful. But it takes a lot of time to be able to use the high level spells and early on it is difficult to survive Icewind dale because Mages are very frail and they are terrible at using weapons. It is because of how frail they are that I suggest players either dual class into Mage or play a Mage multi class.

• Mage

May not wear armour
May only use: Dagger, Sling, Dart or Quarter staff
May not exceed 1 slot in a weapon skill
May not use any fighting styles
May use arcane magic
Hit Die: D4
Needs intelligence to be at least 15 to dual class, and needs high                                                            intelligence to learn and cast spells effectively

There are also specialist mages, they are mages that get one extra spell slot but can't use a certain type of magic school. They may not multi class but they can dual class

• Abjurer

Abjurers use defensive magic
May not use Illusion or Alteration magic

• Conjurer

Conjurers use magic that can summon things
May not use Invocation magic

• Diviner

Diviners use magic that allows them to see thing that others can't
May not use Conjuration magic

• Enchanter

Enchanters focus on manipulating the mind
May not use Invocation magic

• Illusionist

Illusionists use magic to fool the foes into thinking something is real
May not use Abjuration or Necromancy magic
May multi class if you play as a gnome

• Invoker

Invokers mainly focus on manipulating energy
May not use Divination or Conjuration magic

• Necromancer

Necromancers use death based magic
May not use Enchantment or Illusion magic

• Transmuter

Transmuters focus on altering physical reality
May not use Abjuration or Necromancy magic

• Wild Mage

Wild Mages focus on the randomness of their own magic
Gets access to wild mage spells and whenever a spell is cast a wild surge may produce a random effect, it may be bad or good.


As I've already said on as a single class mages start off too weak to bother using so here are some good combos: Kensai/Mage (dual class as level 9 or 13), Berserker/Mage (dual class at level 10), Swashbuckler/Mage (dual class at level 10), Fighter/Mage multi class and Fighter/Illusionist Gnome multiclass. I playing as one of these classes I strongly recommend becoming good at using long swords because they are common and you can get a +1 early on in the game.


Sorcerers are almost the same as Mages except instead of learning spells and relying on Intelligence, they learn spells as the level up (less spells in total), they can use more spells per day and they use the Charisma ability score.

Like Mages Sorcerers are incredibly weak to begin with but later on they are very powerful. Sorcerers become much more powerful than pure Mages because of the sheer number of spells they can cast per day.

• Sorcerer

May not wear armour

May only use: Dagger, Sling, Dart or Quarter staff
May not exceed 1 slot in a weapon skill
May not use any fighting styles
May use arcane magic
Hit Die: D4
May not dual class
Needs high Charisma

Later on Sorcerer is probably the most powerful class in the game, by picking the right spells when you level up you will have an easy time slaughtering enemies with your huge toolbox of spells. I tried soloing with a sorcerer and it didn't go well to begin with, basically I tried the small quests at the beginning of the game but I found that I had no way to beat the wolf in that small house, nor could I take down all the Goblins.

Overall not a safe class to play unless you are using a team, or if you start with the Heart of Winter storyline.

• Dragon Disciple

+1 bonus to AC
3rd level may use Breath weapon once per day (deals 3d8 damage)
4th level gains 25% fire resistance
5th level +1 AC and Constitution
6th level Breath weapon increases to 4d8 power
8th level fire resistances raises to 50%
9th level Breath weapon increases to 5d8 power
10th level +1 AC
12th level Breath weapon increases to 6d8 power and fire resistance raises to 75%
15th level Breath weapon increases to 7d8 and +1 bonus to AC and Constitution
16th level fire resistance increases to 100%
18th level Breath weapon increases to 8d8 power
20th level +1 AC
Hit Die; D6

May cast one fewer spells per day per level

At first glance this class looks very promising but when you look at it realistically it isn't great. The Constitution bonus that you get a total of 2 times is useless if your Constitution is already 16 or above, this is because Sorcerers can only gain a +2 bonus to their HP, so if playing as a Dragon Disciple have a Constitution of 14 to make full use of the bonuses (this will make you weaker early on) The fire resistance is nice but with all the defensive spells available you can survive fire hits anyway. The AC also looks nice and is actually useful early on but with all the defensive spells it becomes redundant. The Breath weapon is good but can only be used once per day.

Then we look at the disadvantage of casting fewer spells, which may seem like it isn't much but imagine if you needed to cast one more fireball, maze or stoneskin. These spells are too powerful to give up as are many other spells and are not worth replacing with redundant bonuses.

This doesn't mean this kit is bad, it just means it is outclassed by Sorcerer.


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