Party Composition

[Ceylon]

What is the best party composition in A4?

 

Does it make sense to have a slith and a kitty, or is it better to go all human?

 

Who should train in lockpicking? A mage for combination with the unlock spell?

 

Is it better to have your fighters use melee or pole weapons?

 

I searched around the forums a little bit and I could find any really strong opinions. If this topic has already been addressed, could someone direct me to where.

[Kelandon]

Definitely the mage should be the one with the lockpicking skill. The other two are a bit more subjective. I think I used all humans, but I forget what the results of the investigations into this were. I think I primarily used melee, but eh.

 

Here\'s where to go for this stuff, though.

[SevenMass]

Quote:

Originally written by Ceylon:
What is the best party composition in A4?

Does it make sense to have a slith and a kitty, or is it better to go all human?

If you are looking for min-maxing, power-gaming, and making the strongest party possible then the general rule of thumb is to use everything that gives you the highest possible XP penalty.

This may sound odd, but due to the way XP gaining and XP-penalty/trait-bonus is balanced, this actually works in A4.

So yes, use nephil and slith characters, their bonuses outweigh the penalty.

(along with divinely touched and elite warrior/natural-mage/pure-spirit)

I'd use nephil for a sword using melee, as well as for your mage, they can double as archer but don't require any investment in archery skills, allowing you to focus on mage skills and warrior skill respectively.

A slith warrior-priest is also a powerful option.

Quote:

Who should train in lockpicking? A mage for combination with the unlock spell?

Yes, the unlock spell stacks with the tool use skill for defeating the difficulty of the lock.

You will need to put 13 points in Tool Use anyway, in combination with +3 tool use from magical items this will give you the 16 TU you need for the most difficult to disable trap and the most difficult to operate control panel.
This 16 TU can then conveniently combine with the unlock spell for locks.

Quote:

Is it better to have your fighters use melee or pole weapons?

Pole weapons do more damage, but you will lack a shield, this will hurt you on the long run because of the magic bonuses from the shield you will end up missing.

But the slith warrior-priest makes an interesting character. You can have both a sword and a pole in your party though...

An other philosophy is to make a party with 3 priest and one mage, giving all of them a few melee skills so they can hold their own VS magic immune enemies. (I'm playing a party like that through A4 at the moment)

[Drayk Armitage]

One important thing to note is that mage spells and priest spells are equally effective on the offense. Mages have a little more versatility, but a priest doesn't really need a melee backup any more than a mage does, particularly given the strength and ease of using archery as a backup.

 

It is useful to have at least one strong hand-to-hand fighter to deal with highly resistant enemies like pylons. You can either make him a tank who attracts all the melee attacks (using nephil for the dodge bonus, and edged weapons to use shields) or a focused attacker (using slith for the pole bonus). A slith pole fighter will do upwards of 30% more damage than a nephil fencer (formulaically). Normally that doesn't matter much, but against pylons et al it's quite useful. Either way his role is to protect the spellcasters.

[Alorael at Large]

As far as races go, there are two rules. Firstly, any archer should be a nephil and any polearm user should be a slith. Secondly, anyone and everyone should be at least a little bit of an archer. That means a party with three or four nephilim is set up nicely.

 

—Alorael, who slightly prefers swords to spears but thinks its nice to have someone designed to use each. A nephil with a sword gets both a shield and nephil Gymnastics to make tanking easier. A slith just hits things.

[BrownieMix]

After reading through the various threads, it appears that the following points have been generally agreed upon:

 

-On lesser difficulties, you can make just about any party you want, and as long as you play intelligently, you should be fine.

 

-The "best" party seems to be either 4 nephil, all divinely touched with a combo of priest, mage, archer and front line fighter, or 3 nephil and 1 slith, all divinely touched, with the slith being a warrior priest.

 

I am curious as to whether anyone beat the game on Torment with the parties mentioned in the various threads. I really enjoyed reading about the challenges of playing on Torment, but I never read that anyone actually beat it. I assume people have, but I'd love to hear final impressions of the "best" party to fight in Torment.

[Randomizer]

I beat the game on Torment as a singleton nephil divine touched with pure spirit. As a party of 4 I used a nephil archer swordsman, slith pole weapon fighter, and two humans spellcasters that both had mage and priest spells with one having tool use.

 

It just requires patience to play on torment since it's easy to die if you get too careless. When moving into new areas go slow so you get a chance to see monsters before you get into combat. Wait for the return trip to pick up too much loot so you aren't encumbered.

 

Have fun, it's not that bad it just takes longer to kill them.

[SevenMass]

My current philosophy with Avernum is to play torment only.