Different parties for E2/E3?

[Hondero]

I am curious as to what people pick for their parties for Exile 2 or 3. It's neat that the whole Exile series doesn't have restrictive classes like so many RPGs.

 

I usually take:

1. Human "tank" - Bladed weapons, only weapons-related skills.

2. Slith "tank" - just like #1, but with pole weapons.

3. Human "tank" - just like #1, but with bashing weapons for diversity.

4. Nephil "thief" - some skill in bladed weapons, some archery, lockpicking galore.

5. Human mage

6. Human priest.

 

Yes, it is a might-centered party - I mainly use the spellcasters to buff up the party with things like Major Blessing, or heal when that is needed, and let the fighters do 95% of the damage. A lot of the high-level monsters are magic resistant, so physical always seemed like the best choice.

The fighters in this party are all similar, but I usually give the #3 tank lots of armor, so they can stay at the front lines and be pretty much immune to any physical attacks. The #2 Slith might have less armor but a ring or boots of speed so that they can flank the enemy spellcasters early in the battle (less encumbrance + added speed is a real advantage).

 

What kind of parties do other people take? The reason I'm asking is that in other Role Playing Games, I only usually play with one type of party. When other players wrote about different party make-ups that I wouldn't have thought of, it opened some doors of possibility and made the game even more fun.

[Lilith]

My standard party is three melee fighters and three mage-priests. I like to mix weapon types up a little, but generally I'll go with one pole user and two sword users (especially in E3, where dual-wielding is just too effective to pass up). I keep everybody in light armour because blessing provides better protection and losing action points to encumbrance sucks.

 

A tip on facing magic-immune monsters: the second-level priest spell Wound ignores all resistances, and inflicts about as much damage as a good hit with a halberd.

[Callie]

1. Slith tank - pole weapons, assassination, strength

2. Human fighter - melee weapons, defense,

3. Human fighter - bashing weapons, alchemy, wide skill spread

4. Nephil archer - archery, melee weapons, lockpicking/disarm traps, and defense.

5. Human priest - some bashing weapons

6. Human mage - some melee weapons

 

I actually think this is a weaker party, since bashing weapons aren't very useful, and archery doesn't cause much damage. All characters end up have training in priest spells, and in one game all my characters could cast divine thud (I could also turn a battlefield into a painful field of blades). I use spells a lot, and I use my warriors to take out more important monsters like mages or jeweled golems, and to simply take damage. I haven't played in a long time, though, and haven't developed any new strategy.

[The Mystic]

My standard party, regardless of Exile game, is as follows:

2 humans, 2 nephils, 2 sliths; all priests/mages, all tanks

1 nephil has lockpick/disarm trap abilities

1 has alchemy (race varies)

[Hondero]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

My standard party, regardless of Exile game, is as follows:
2 humans, 2 nephils, 2 sliths; all priests/mages, all tanks
1 nephil has lockpick/disarm trap abilities
1 has alchemy (race varies)

That is a good idea - in my current E2 party, my fighters are all maxed out as far as weapons skills and defense skill. I planned to pump points into assassination but forgot that priest spells aren't penalized by encumbrance, so I will have to get them some priest spells.

Thanks for the Wound spell tip, Thuryl. I knew it did damage different from regular 'magic' damage but kind of forgot about it since my casters are usually all in the back and out of range. Is there a way to increase the damage that Wound does, as well as other spells in general? My priest PC has 20 intelligence and magical aptness, but does caster level factor in also?

[Eclipse]

I was going to make a thread just like this, how strange...

 

Well, this is what I use for all games + BoE

 

3 fighters (pole because magic halberds do the most dmg)

2 magi (Major Blessing, Slow Group, and then fire ball or firestorm)

1 priest (Curse All and Revives)

 

This set up owns all in my opinion. The Fighters can tank and take most of the damage.

[Celtic Minstrel]

I generally prefer to avoid pole weapons so that I can wield two weapons. That, and I like everyone to be able to cast spells.

[Slawbug]

Dual-wielding is disgusting in every single Exile game. The difference is that without the Ambidextrous trait, you can't really employ it without pretty high stats.

[Randomizer]

But it increases your damage so dramatically.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Thuryl

A tip on facing magic-immune monsters: the second-level priest spell Wound ignores all resistances, and inflicts about as much damage as a good hit with a halberd.

Probably my favorite damaging priest spell in the Exile series; seems like it damages everything, and it's cheap too.

[Slawbug]

By "disgusting" I meant "disgustingly good"

[Mistb0rn]

Quote:

Well, this is what I use for all games + BoE

3 fighters (pole because magic halberds do the most dmg)
2 magi (Major Blessing, Slow Group, and then fire ball or firestorm)
1 priest (Curse All and Revives)

This set up owns all in my opinion.

Well, I'd say three Mage-Priests instead of 2 mages and a priest works way better. You know you get a few extra spell points for each level of mage and/or priest spells when you first make your party? I usually start with three levels of mage and 5 levels of priest for the last three, with the bare minimum of strength and intelligence, then increase them later.

But for the basic three-fighters-in-front + three-mages-in-back setup, I agree. Is very good. ;-)

[Hondero]

Thanks for the advice all. I have started to boost my thief character's mage and priest skills, as well those for the three fighters, and so far it is a major help to have the little casters use their SP on healing and curing poison, so that the main priest has SP freed up for the party-buffers and damage spells.

 

Interestingly and off-topic, I was playing through the Vahnatai Fortress in the northern chasm area and I noticed that every Vahnatai Bladesmaster didn't die. At first I thought they were really tough, then I cast Scry Monster, and noticed an HP of 1500!! And after taking a hit, they lost no health and were still listed as "unwounded." Fortunately a reload of the same save file fixed everything.

[S M Adventurer]

This is my current party setup.

 

1. Slith Pole Fighter/Tank

2. Nephil Warrior/Archer/Thief

3. Human Warrior

4. Human Mage

5. Human Mage/Priest

6. Human Priest

 

#1 has a great amount of HP, so he is the main tank of the party. He deals pretty good damage with the Halberd too. the Tank is well armored as well.

 

#2 has decent archery and edged weapons skills. Although I notice that

he hits more often than #1 sometimes. Must be the Nephil's bonus to dexterity.

 

#3 is just a backup fighter instead something breaks through the tank. He's the secondary tank. He wields a flail and decent armor.

 

#4 is a high level mage, she helps bring Troglodytes down to size. They can't survive a well placed Fireball or Firestorm spell.

 

#5 is a high level mage, low level priest. Essentially she also throws

multiple Firestorms at the enemy, but she can also heal everyone a bit.

A backup priest in case the high level one dies.

 

#6 is my main high level priest. With up to level 5 priest spells, he

can help buff my fighters up.

 

Of course, I'm still in the training phase, but this party tore through the Slime and Roach quests. Troglodytes don't last too long.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Hondero

Interestingly and off-topic, I was playing through the Vahnatai Fortress in the northern chasm area and I noticed that every Vahnatai Bladesmaster didn't die. At first I thought they were really tough, then I cast Scry Monster, and noticed an HP of 1500!! And after taking a hit, they lost no health and were still listed as "unwounded." Fortunately a reload of the same save file fixed everything.

This is a consequence of the Guard ability that they have: if the town they're in becomes hostile (for example, if you accidentally damage one of your own summoned monsters), all monsters with that ability become Superman.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

I haven't played E3 since before I joined the community, and I never played E2, but I play E1 and BoE and I use the same party in both. All my PCs are humans.

 

Queso Blanco - Fighter with Ambidextrous, Good Constitution, Highly Alert, Exceptional Strength, and Recuperation. At creation, I give him a few points each in edged, bashing, and pole weapons and defense, 3 dexterity, and then pour the rest into strength. Once strength hits 10, I start bringing dexterity up to 10, then switch back to strength until 20, then dexterity again. Along the way I usually boost the weapon skills and defense a few points, and maybe some mage lore if I particularly need it for something and I can't spare skill points for my priest/mages (Queso Blanco levels up much more quickly than they do usually, so he has more skill points available). After that, I just pour everything into luck. I haven't gotten my latest tweaking of this party build to high enough levels for me to do this, but once Luck is maxed out I'll put points into Assassination.

 

Emmental - Mage/priest with Magically Apt., Cave Lore, Woodsman, Good Constitution, Highly Alert, and Bad Back. He starts with 5 mage, 4 priest, 4 intelligence, 1 SP (because of the mage and priest spell levels, he ends up with 28 SP to start.) I first focus on getting his intelligence to 10, then I get the SP up to 40, then 15 intelligence, 50 SP, 20 intelligence, and the rest is SP. Along the way I boost mage spells as needed, and sometimes give him a few mage lore points. He also wields a cursed knife, but that's for roleplaying reasons. In E1 he does not do this because sadly, there are no cursed knives in E1. Instead, he carries a steel dagger.

 

Brie, Mozzarella, & Gouda - Priest/mages with Magically Apt., Good Constitution, and Highly Alert. They start with 5 Priest, 4 Mage, 4 intelligence, and 2 SP (bringing them to 29). I distribute their stats similarly to Emmental's, except they train priest spells instead of mage spells, and the put fewer points into SP and more into mage lore.

 

Provolone - Priest/mage with the same attributes as the previous three. He trains the same way, except instead of mage lore, he trains alchemy. I don't really use alchemy, but I'm under the impression I need to for a quest in E1, and I've heard that making Knowledge Brews in E3 can be quite profitable. In BoE I don't use alchemy and put the points into mage lore like the other three.

[Celtic Minstrel]

...You name your characters after cheese?

 

But... but... you forgot Wensleydale!!!

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

No, I didn't forget Wensleydale. First, I didn't know there was such a thing, and second, the choosing of the names was partly because I particularly like those cheeses, and partly because I thought they would make good names for my characters. I considered using Feta, Gorgonzola, and Pepper Jack, but I decided the first sounded too unhygienic, the last sounded too cowboyish, and the middle one just sounds like a character similar to TB SMITH, from my latest BoE scenario, so I decided against them all. I like the names I chose.

 

I don't have an Avernum party yet, but when I do the names will be Hardtack, Oyster, Saltine, and Graham. I don't like crackers nearly as much as I like cheese, but I needed a different theme, and think they will make a good party.

[Emz]

Front line in combat

1. Human - Figher (edged weapons)

2. Nephil - Figher / occasional Bowman

3. Slith - Figher (pole weapons)

My back crew

4. Human - Mage

5. Human - Mage

6. Human - Priest

 

I scatter all of the games skills a little between each one, for example always having one who is Highly alert, and one who is a woodsman. I name my characters over me and my pets

[Cryomancer]

I usually have:

 

Fighter (blades)

Fighter (pole)

Ranger (ambidextrous, blades, archery)-this character owns in E2 at high levels. Best fighter ever w/ light armor and high dex.

Thief/Assassin (mostly for lockpicking/item lore)--low str. high dex. high poison and assassination skill make this one a killer.

Mage

Priest

 

I use spells mostly in outdoor battles or single-big-fight encounters, and in long dungeons I use my fighters for all the damage, and use magic to heal/bless/haste them. Works like a charm. High level mages and priests wipe the floor with enemy armies in outdoor/special encounter battles. At one point in E2 my mages and priests were higher level than the fighters, cuz all the enemies died from my spells before my fighters could get off a hit.

[Thaluikhain]

I generally have 3 fighters, 1 mage, 1 mage/priest and 1 priest. Though, later on, everyone gets priest spells.

 

I've been using a slith mage, because they get bonuses to intelligence, and to using a pole weapon. Using a pole weapon means no shield, which encumbers you, which you dodn't want for a mage. For that reason, my mage priest takes two edged weapons. Sometimes is a nephil, with archery as a backup (starts with few sps), but archery isn't useful to me...sometimes gets the disarm traps points as well. When i get magic items, the mage priest gets ones to make them faster...very useful.

 

Fighters...maybe a slith fighter, if so, this person goes first, for encounters in dungeons when you see a weak monster, go into combat mode, move first character close and atatack, kill in one go. Otherwise it can be tedious having to take more than one turn on weak monsters. This means this character levels up faster than the others, so I have to rotate. One of my other fighters will have high defence and low encumbrance to go fsater...though, since sliths use poles and ave less encumbrance for no shield, maybe they'd be a better choice for this.

 

Does anyone else use custom graphics for their PCs? I've put a copy of the pc.bmp somewhere safe, and am using a modified version. When modified monsters into PCs, very important you can immediately tell them apart, though, especially for area effect spells (mind you, the original sword and shield PC graphic 2 to the left of the last slith looked enough like a troglo defender for me to make this mistake when not paying attention). There's a few advantages to this, I get can get a graphic that matches the character better, and I can easily make new versions as the game goes on (a similar graphic, but in heavy armour now that I've bought some, or with magic sparks now that the fighter has priest spells etc) and I can have sliths and nephils not running round completely naked and unarmed...I mean, your slith and nephil PCs wear armour and caryr lots of gear just like the rest of them, but the graphics provided don't.

[Sss-Chah]

i usually used sliths for my magic users for the same reason, the +1 intelligence. it let me use the extra skill points for other stuff during character creation.

[ben4808]

2 uber fighters, one swords, one pole weapons

 

3 mages and a priest to ensure aforementioned fighters stay uber.

 

Admittedly, I haven't played much high-level stuff yet.

[Figgy]

1 Fighter with some throwing skill.

5 Mage/Priests

 

When you start the game make all your mage/priests pump as much possible stats into mage and priest spells as you can, you get bonus spellpower out of it.

 

Wound is unbalanced, it makes casters far too strong. It's the main reason you can get away with having a full caster party without any reprocussions at all.

 

Not only that but Bless with Slow Group makes your casters pretty much immune to all physical damage anyways. And if you really are in a pickle for some god-awful reason you can throw 5 charms in a row or 5 summons in a row for an instant meat shield, needless to say the danger fades veeeeeeeeeeeeery quickly.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Figgy

When you start the game make all your mage/priests pump as much possible stats into mage and priest spells as you can, you get bonus spellpower out of it.

I only get the first 3-4 levels, with a few levels of intelligence. For the most part, you really don't need the higher level spells right away; and even though maxing out when creating your party gives you a lot of spell points early on, my build puts a little more power into the spells you cast.

Quote:

Wound is unbalanced, it makes casters far too strong.

And, for some odd reason, it's not subject to "Immune to Magic" monster trait, so it can damage everything.

Quote:

you can get away with having a full caster party without any reprocussions at all.

And I usually do have a full party of spellcasters. Devastation follows in my wake.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

Originally Posted By: Figgy

When you start the game make all your mage/priests pump as much possible stats into mage and priest spells as you can, you get bonus spellpower out of it.

I only get the first 3-4 levels, with a few levels of intelligence. For the most part, you really don't need the higher level spells right away; and even though maxing out when creating your party gives you a lot of spell points early on, my build puts a little more power into the spells you cast.

What he means, I think, is that starting with highe mage/priest spells means you start with higher spell points... I think. (Actually I can't remember whether this is true or not...)

[The Mystic]

Yes, for each level of mage/priest spell skill you start with, you get 3 bonus spell points. For example, if you start with 2 levels of priest spells and 3 levels of mage spells, you get 15 bonus spell points.

 

The point I was trying to make is that I don't try to max out my spellcasting ability right away (although I do get at least 3-4 levels of each, as I said earlier), but instead prefer to invest in a decent amount of intelligence. My focus is not so much on the number of spell points I start with, but how strong my spells are when I start my game.

[Jean-Philippe]

My usual party in exile is:

 

 

A human tank, as he have SP to use he also is the alchemist

A nephil fighter who take care of locks and traps, some archery too, as long as I feel it useful

A slith warior mage, another fireball is always useful

A human mage/priest

A human priest/mage

A human priest/fighter, will get mage spell too when SPs allow it

 

That's for the beginning of the game (roughly the demo part in exile 2, or the first 12-15 levels). After I get party buff spells (haste all, bless all and the awesome major blessing), direct dammage spells (fireball mainly) lose their effectiveness. The main strategy become buff everybody and everybody at the front. So each character learn weaponery asap, blades for everyone except spear for the slith and bash for the priest/mage. I also get the two fighter learn a bit of priest magic, the wound spell is handy in restricted dungeons.

[ppd]

I always use the preset party but I change the statistics around.

 

1. Human fighter, pole weapons , alchemy

2. Slith fighter, pole weapons

3. Nephil thief, edge weapons, lockpick, traps

4. Human mage/priest, initially ineffective but at end of game can cast all spells, edge weapons

5. Human mage , edge weapons

6. Human priest, bashing weapon

 

My basic strategy has always been once major haste and bless party are attained, then use them! I have everyone attack. My magic users don't hit well, but they do some damage and have lots of tries from the hasting.