A2CS: What would be harder, Torment with min/max or...

[Praxis]

Hey guys I'm looking for an opinion. I'd like a challenging torment-like first play-through. I mostly enjoy playing melee oriented parties. After looking around however, it seems the balance is heavily skewed towards casters, and playing torment with fighting oriented party might end up being frustrating.

 

So, instead of 1-stat min/maxing casters on torment, how would playing Hard with convenient, versatile hybrids compare ? Imposing half and half (or 2/3 - 1/3) split. No purposeful gimping otherwise, basically optimizing with those conditions imposed.

 

Thinking something like

 

Paladin - Str/End, melee + priest spells. Takes advantage of many priest spells that don't scale with int. Sword and shield.

 

Ninja - Str/Dex, pole + bow. Hopefully evasion will help with survivability. Poles instead of dual wield because it might spread it too thin ?

 

Priest that can shoot - Int/Dex, priest spells + Bow. Or maybe throwing? Although I don't think I can go back to limited ammo after playing remix 1.1 of eftp. I really like this build in other spiderweb games though. Mainly this guy helps a lot with trash without having being conservative with SP.

 

Not sure what to do with mage. Unlike priest they have 1SP spell for trash so ranged combat is redundant. I'm thinking Int/End and focus more on utility traits like summoning etc.

 

What do yall think about this idea ? Would this party be as challening as torment with typical min/max party ?

[Aleric]

I'm actually playing torment on my first run through A2:CS. It's not blind in that I've played Exile 2 and Avernum 2, so I kinda know what to expect, but it's definitely been a challenge. I find that my hybrid tank is having a difficult time hitting things when it's slightly out of his league.

 

For example, my mage priests pump full INT and have 90% to hit almost everything I've seen so far. That said, they die to breezes in the wind, so it's a trade-off. Nothing looks funnier then when a golem breaks through and hits one of them for 280 when I have ward of steel up.

 

My hybrid is a paladin similar to what you describe, except I went INT instead of STR, so it's INT/END. It uses a sword/shield and at level 20, I'm looking at INT 24 (+5), END 10, STR 8 and DEX 7. He parries a lot, and is a dependable tank, but not so dependable with damage, as he only had a 55% or so change to smite the golems in the above mentioned fight.

 

That said, it's not required for you to min/max, and more important is to have fun with it.

[Lilith]

Yeah, accuracy can be a problem for characters on higher difficulty levels, especially if they wear heavy armour -- on Torment even non-hybrids tend to run into that issue. It usually resolves itself by later in the game as your stats improve, but there can be some rough going early on. Then again, you did say you wanted a challenge.

[Slawbug]

A fighting-oriented Torment party is definitely doable. A fighting-oriented Torment party made up entirely of hybrid characters would be a stretch. Probably not too bad on Hard, but you will run into the accuracy issues mentioned above.

 

This is much less of a problem for magic-users, because the default hit rate for all (or almost all) damage spells is 50-60% higher than the default hit rate for most weapon attacks.

[Aleric]

You need all the accuracy you can get. I miss more at 90% than I hit at 20%. Sounds like complaining, but I'd really like to see my numbers. I'm at Erika's Tower right now getting pelted while I've missed just about every other attack.