Pick a new party combination for me

[Horn of Ammon]

I'm considering a re-start after reaching the end of Chapter 3 on my first play, due to 1) lousy brainwashing geas and 2) realizing my #2 PC, a priest-swords-missiles nephil, sucks lizard ass. Here is my current party, which I feel was mostly strong except for the annoying #2, who critically did not have Divinely Touched and oddly enough does the same average 40 damage with a sword, javelins, and Smite!

 

Divinely Touched/Elite Warrior Slith, pole-arms and tool use

Pure Spirit/Warrior Nephil, medium melee (??) and medium priest (and then missiles )

Divine/Priest Nephil, strong archery and strong priest

Divine/Mage, light archery and strong mage

 

After reading a few dozen posts here about party creation/optimization, I've come up with the following combos for a new party. I'll be playing on Torment and doing 100% of quests/exploring, but I'm not overly concerned about min/maxing and will be mainly spoiler-free in terms of making decisions (which is what got the damn geas on my head, of course).

 

1) Divine/Elite Warrior Slith, pole-arms and tool use (is same in all)

Divine/Priest Nephil, throwing missiles and strong priest

Divine/Priest Nephil, archery and strong priest

Divine/Mage Nephil, archery and strong mage

 

2)Divine/Elite Warrior Slith, pole-arms and tool use

Divine/Priest or Mage Slith , pole-arms and medium priest or mage

Divine/Priest Nephil, archery and strong priest

Divine/Mage Nephil, archery and strong mage

 

3) Divine/Elite Warrior Slith, pole-arms and tool use

Divine/Priest Nephil, throwing missiles and strong priest

Divine/Mage Nephil, archery and strong mage

Divine/Mage Nephil, archery and strong mage

 

4) Divine/Elite Warrior Slith, pole-arms and tool use

Divine/Priest Nephil, throwing missiles and strong priest

Divine/Mage Nephil, archery and strong mage

Divine/Mage Nephil (or Human?), strong mage and medium priest, no fighting skills

 

Let me know which combination looks best - I suspect 1 or 3 may be the most powerful and straightforward, but I'm interested in hearing what you think of how 2 and 4 would play. Of course, any new combinations are welcome too.

[Randomizer]

You should give your mage characters some priest spells at least enough to cast smite. In the next chapter you start to run into the sentinels and some take more damage from that.

 

The only advantage to sliths is for pole weapons when you want to maximize damage per round against splitters. There aren't many, but it speeds up those fights.

 

You can get through most areas with just spell casting except for the splitters.

 

It's pretty much what you like to do. Everyone has their own favorites.

[Txgangsta]

If you want a really strong party, I have found this to be the most versatile as well as powerful:

 

1) Divine & Elite Warrior Slith (pole use)

2) Natural Mage & Nimble Fingers Nephil (bows, mage, and tool use)

3) Pure Spirit Elite Warrior Slith (pole and preist)

4) Some other mage

[Øther]

If you are a beginner to this, I would stay with a pack of four and finish the entire game before you really start messing around with party creation. In this game, melee characters don't deal too much damage, so mostly the would be used as meatshields for your casters. A slith is good to have as your shield, as they have higher health (or they should) and higher resistances. Possible give a few points in priest or something, to make him slightly more useful. Then the others should be any combination of priests, mages, mage-priests, and priest-mages. Its really your choice on what to do. But I would recommend not using thrown weapons. They aren't all that great. You can if you want, but thats my opinion on them. Archery isn't to good either, but at least now you don't run out of ammo. I wouldn't have any characters put many points into archery/thrown weapons, but a few if they are going to use them (and I always put a bow on all my characters) just so they can use them and let them focus on something else.

 

Also, make all your people sliths or nephils (if they aren't going to be up front melee fighters, it may be a better idea to go with nephil because of the bow bonus) because they will get free battle disciplines. While not necessary, they are helpful to any kind of character.

[Horn of Ammon]

Originally Posted By: Øther

If you are a beginner to this, I would stay with a pack of four and finish the entire game before you really start messing around with party creation. In this game, melee characters don't deal too much damage, so mostly the would be used as meatshields for your casters. A slith is good to have as your shield, as they have higher health (or they should) and higher resistances. Possible give a few points in priest or something, to make him slightly more useful. Then the others should be any combination of priests, mages, mage-priests, and priest-mages. Its really your choice on what to do. But I would recommend not using thrown weapons. They aren't all that great. You can if you want, but thats my opinion on them. Archery isn't to good either, but at least now you don't run out of ammo. I wouldn't have any characters put many points into archery/thrown weapons, but a few if they are going to use them (and I always put a bow on all my characters) just so they can use them and let them focus on something else.

Also, make all your people sliths or nephils (if they aren't going to be up front melee fighters, it may be a better idea to go with nephil because of the bow bonus) because they will get free battle disciplines. While not necessary, they are helpful to any kind of character.

Well, since I'll probably only have time to play this game once through, I'm trying to make the best party I can for the run-through. I've beaten the 2 Avernum games before this, so I wouldn't say I'm a total beginner on this.

I'm leaning toward my second option now, due to the superior damage I've seen from Slith pole-arms in my first game.

2)Divine/Elite Warrior Slith, pole-arms and tool use
Divine/Priest or Mage Slith , pole-arms and medium priest or mage
Divine/Priest Nephil, archery and strong priest
Divine/Mage Nephil, archery and strong mage

I'd probably go with a mage on the second guy to get the two hastes a round, though I wonder if having only one priest will be bad later on since he'll have to cast all the expensive buffs (enduring shield, steel skin). I'm also not sure if I should make the #4 a dual mage/priest, since I do want to have the strongest mage attack spells possible on at least one character. Anyway, curious about responses.

[Randomizer]

The problem with thrown weapons is weight. There are more than enough for the whole game, but you run out of the best ones.

[Earth]

mage-priests or vice versa can get max-levels on mage-spells and priest-spells (and on both if really wants to spend skill points on that).

 

bows have that problem that you don't get that good bows until quite late/middle on game.

 

2 casters who can cast both mage and priest spells is good since enemies at later on game can do more damage than 1 priest heal (even as hasted) and fighters turns are better used for hitting enemies than using health potions/elixirs unless casters have run out of mana.

[Txgangsta]

Important Note: Mage characters can only wear so much armor.

 

I never make slith mages. Priests do not have this restriction, I do make slith priests. Your slith will have to wear bad armor, and will not be as great as it could when attacked. A Nephil, however, will get the nimble bonuses to dodge, get some battle discipline bonuses, and be a great mage.

[Horn of Ammon]

So, I ended up picking option 2, with a Slith DT/EW, Slith DT/NM (started with 5 Mage and 5 Pole Weapons), Nephil DT/PS (started with 6 bows), and Nephil DT/NM (started with 6 or 7 mage, no weapons skills).

 

I'm just finished with Chapter 1, and I'm loving the damage output of this party! The #2 slith spear-mage is great - he can do nearly as much melee damage as the #1 fighter, and he can also cast Well-Aimed firebolts that equal or exceed the damage from my pure mage. Having two PC's that can cast Haste and Augmentation is also great.

 

I didn't know that you can get a dual mage-priest to near full levels by the end of the game. If I decide not to build weapons skills on the #4 mage, I'll add some priest spell levels, probably starting in Chapter 3. So far, my strategy is to kill most enemies before they can do much damage to my augmented fighters, which is really different from my more defensive strategy in the last game.

[Txgangsta]

The next thing you can do to make the game fun is start decreasing the number of characters you take. I finished a game not long ago with 2 characters (normal difficulty), and it made multiple new challenges (unstable masses were brutal at early levels).