Evil_Penguin

What kind of skills does your singleton have? It seems like most people go with an archer/priest for a singleton, which tends to be very effective. Archery in general is by far the easiest way to kill spellcasters, since they tend to have high magic resistances and stay out off melee range. In fact, the singletons I've made haven't had any melee or pole weapons skill at all, relying solely on archery and magic, and its worked out quite well. Who needs melee? The damage might be higher (unless you've played through canopy...), but being able to stay out of harm's way and picking your targets is a big advantage, especially vs. spellcasters. As a singleton who uses primarily melee, I don't know if there is an easy way. Obviously war blessing is necessary, for the resistance and the extra AP, which you'll need to chase the buggers down. Those skills that raise magic resistances (hardiness, luck, resistance, magery, etc.) are crucial in my opinion, but some people seem to think they're a waste if you can get your resistances from radiant shield. These people are wrong.

I figure Erika started out as a strictly spellcasting singleton. Apparently the trick is not to get a powerful, terribly inconvenient curse put on you that evil Vahnatai archmagi are aware of and can take advantage of.

If it means anything, I've been dying to play as vahnatai ever since Exile 2. That would, I think, be the logical next choice if any races are added as playable. I doubt they would be, though, just because it really would necessitate making the differences between races actually significant, instead of limited to minor bonuses and small, irrelevent special encounters. Anyway, though, the humans, nephil, and slith all have a lot more in common than any do with the vahnatai (life span alone is a huge cultural gap), and there are reasons that would make implementing them difficult, such as being greatly harmed by sunlight. But if they WERE implemented, they would have some truly awesome bonuses AND drawbacks, which would make things very interesting.

It's not that maximillian does poor damage - my warrior generally hits in the low 300s. It's just that my archer does even more. And he does have plenty in blademaster. Incidentally, though, is there some reason blademaster is very powerful that I'm not seeing? I thought it was just equivalent to a point each in melee and pole weapons, meaning its only worthwhile when it becomes cheaper to get all the prereqs in pole weapons and THEN start buying it than to add more points in melee.

My tank has maximillian, but still does less damage than the archer (though its still a lot), chiefly because the archer has more skill points to spare to raise his damage.

A word on the pure archer - it most definitely is viable, and extremely powerful. My party consists of a front-line tank (human, natural warrior), a pure archer (nephil), and two mage/priests. The archer kills more than any of them. Why? Well, three reasons. First, adlerauge, the incredibly powerful bow from canopy which does 1-9 per level plus some ridiculous bonuses, is comparable to the highest damage melee or pole weapons. Personally, I think it's rather unbalancing. Ranged weapons usually do less damage for a reason, which brings me to the next two points. Second, unlike a tank, which has to put lots of skill points into endurance and defense and the like, the archer is free to be entirely offensive, since they should only very rarely be in harm's way in the first place. In this way they're much like magic users. Also, while a tank should probably have a couple points in either bows or thrown, so he doesn't waste a turn if the enemies are out of range, the archer does NOT need any points in melee or pole weapons, since these will do less damage than the ranged attack anyway, there's no restriction on point blank shots, and it's easy and cheap to buy lots of arrows often. Thus, the archer's attack level (dex/2 + bows + sharpshooter) should be considerably higher than the warrior's equivalent. And third, the archer should have high dexterity (and therefore high initiative) and doesn't have to move much to attack. Therefore, he will almost always get a very high damage shot or two (or three) before the fight even really begins, and does the same every turn while being in relatively little danger. What this amounts to is being able to pick which of your enemies you want to fight least, and killing them before they even know what's happening. This makes the archer particularly indispensible as a mage-killer, since silencing their spells early is important, and mages usually hang back and are resistant to magic.

In my most successful party, I had two almost pure magic users, both of which started with 6 mage, 5 priest, with one getting high level priest and the other getting high level mage. Since they both boost spell points, its not really a waste, even if you don't use most of the spells. But you will use some all the time. Practically all the tough fights I was in, they both hasted themselves first. Next turn, they would almost certainly go first, and so that's four spells I can cast a turn, starting probably with hasting, blessing, and radiant shielding my fighter and archer. And, you know, not everything is undead or demonic (even if it might seem that way sometimes), and its good to have attack spells that actually work.