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Realistic Romans having a hard time


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Has anyone here tried to beat the game as a completely non-magic Roman party on Torment? (By completely non-magic I mean no spells, no potions and no magic items.) I gave it a shot yesterday, but switched to Normal when in Goagh-Nar.

 

Some observations (I'm no powergamer, so bear with me):

 

The worst problem - by far - is healing. First Aid is great, but there is no way to heal in combat without spells and potions. This becomes a real problem on Torment, since you will be taking a lot of punishment (most critters could kill my poor Romans in two or three hits). Since I could neither heal damage nor prevent it, my only option was to keep as far from the enemy as possible. That meant I had to rely on ranged damage, which meant javelins.

 

The "run, pray and throw javelins" strategy worked very well, especially combined with the Fast Feet trait. Javelins were cheap and the damage done was quite sufficient (at least until I ran into fomorians). In big outdoor battles, this was the only viable option. Getting swarmed meant certain death, no mather how puny the enemy was.

 

When it was impossible to retreat or when faced with a single powerful monster, I had to rely on the old switcheroo. That is, to engage the enemy with one of my fighters, then pulling him out in the nick of time and having a new fighter take his place (usually after a couple of rounds). Lather, rinse, repeat. Needless to say, all the fighters who stood in the back were meanwhile chucking javelins like crazy. In this way, I could usually buy my party up to eight rounds. This was the only possible way (that I could think of) to survive bigger monsters. Sometimes it was surprisingly effective; Dolojan fell on my second try.

 

I gave up when I reached Goagh-Nar. Fomorians have insane amounts of hitpoints on Torment, and while I probably could have gotten through with a lot of grinding, the game just wasn't fun anymore. So I switched to Normal. It wasn't about beating the game on Torment anyway, it was about beating it with a "realistic" Roman party.

 

I am, however, curious about what kind of character build would be best for a run like this (on Torment). My characters were all pretty identical (since each man had to be capable of - quite literally - taking their wounded comrade's place). All were capable of dealing out some good damage with both spears and javelins. But should I have focused more on defense (endurance, defense, hardiness and armor use) or offense? Since I felt there was no way to prevent damage anyway, I focused on my offensive capabilities and pretty much ignored defense, aside from armor use and some points in endurance. Is there any viable way to prevent taking heavy damage on Torment? Putting 20+ skillpoints into hitpoints just so the monsters could kill me in three hits instaead of two, didn't feel like a smart thing to do...

 

Also, what traits would you prefer? I gave all my characters Fast Feet (which turned out to be a lifesaver) and Rational Mind (a natural choice for my "realistic Romans"... and I'm not a powergamer, damnit!) I think Toughness might have been a good choice too, if only to prevent a little amount of the stupendous damage I took.

 

 

EDIT: I have to say, though, that I enjoy playing as a realistic Roman very much. You live and die by your choice of battleground and your tactics... just as I feel it should be. You're Roman, after all, and you didn't conquer half the world by mindlessly charging into battle, now did you? Leave such foolishness to the celts... wink

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It's been a while since I played but one thing is increased defense and armor use to reduce your chance of being hit and increase the effectiveness of armor being worn to reduce damage. Damage avoidance becomes more important to keep characters from needing to be healed in this type of game.

 

In the original game it was possible to make a character that could never be hit. How to do it in the original game.

 

From Strategy Central for reducing damage:

 

Armor use on how to make armor do more.

Resistances

 

Edit - Thinking it over, since the new version is based upon the BoA game engine, it should be possible to increase dexterity, defense, and luck to miss getting hit from melee and missle weapons. You would need to increase resistances for magic, but armor would help there. It's just a matter of getting levels before going into places with long fights like Goagh-Nar.

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