A6 - Which of these two torment parties should I use? (Forced to use humans)

[PorkSol]

I'm designing a party for a Torment playthrough of A6, but I have an unfortunate limitation on my party choice.

 

Due to the portraits available and my strong negative feelings towards quite a few of them, my party can only have a maximum of one Nephil and ideally only one Slith as well. I am a little bit flexible about including additional Sliths, but I really can't possibly include more than the one Nephil.

 

I figure this won't be too harmful, as I can at least make my primary casters non humans for the battle disciplines, and my fighters would end up with enough points in weapon skills to get the battle disciplines anyway.

 

So:

 

Party 1

Human DT/EW Dual wield melee / Tool use / very minor priest

 

Human DT/EW Dual wield melee / minor priest

 

Nephil DT/NM Mage / moderate priest

 

Slith DT/?? Primary Priest / moderate Polearm Fighter -

 

Not sure if the Slith is better off going with EW and putting all points in priest stuff, or going with Pure Spirit and having to spend some points on melee skills and STR for the encumbrance reduction?

 

Only real problems with this party are the lack of a secondary mage and the fact that the priest may not be meleeing all that much. Still, nice to have someone who can use the Jade Halberd and other good pole weapons, without having to spend very many points on it.

 

Party 2

Human DT/EW Dual wield melee / Tool use / very minor priest

 

Human DT/EW Dual wield melee / minor priest

 

Nephil DT/NM Mage / moderate priest

 

Slith DT/NM Primary priest / Moderate mage -

 

For the Slith strongly favoring natural mage over pure spirit, so he can cast in armor. You can duplicate pure spirit by putting more points in priest skills, but there is only one way to cast mage spells in heavy armor

 

Only real issue with this party is that all the pole weapons and free Slith polearm skills will go to waste, as the Slith in this party won't reasonably have any points for melee.

 

Is a secondary mage valuable enough to completely give up the use of pole weapons? With two dual wielders for damage, I would imagine a secondary mage's casting ability would primarily be useful for emergency haste buffing, and he'd want to save the rest of his mana for heals.

 

Ideally I would like two dual wielders, a polearm fighter, two mages and two priests, but you can't really do that due to the limitations on using mage spells in armor.

 

Has anyone tried having a DT/EW melee with minor mage spells, and just not using any heavy armor?

[Randomizer]

There is enough decent armor out there that not having NM for a backup mage isn't as big a handicap. Especially since you don't have the strength in the early part of the game for armor. There is runed plate near the end and a few other that aren't bulky armor that blocks mage spells.

 

Having both spell casters with low level spells in each other's primary area really helps. There are plenty of places where you want more choices for damage types.

 

I have a DT/EW singleton that is using both spell groups so it is possible.

[Earth]

there are alot battles where mage and/or priest spells are needed and due haste got weakened it is good to have 2 healers etc in group. get mage to so high on priest-skill that he can cast divine fire (L10) and priest so high on mage-skill that he can cast dispel barrier (L11).

[mlahut]

If ugly portraits are a concern, that's easy to fix.

 

Go to Avernum 6 Files\Graphics Core\G2xx.png

 

where xx is a number between 20 and 44. Browse through to find the image you don't like, copy a different portrait overtop of the offending image, restart game, problem solved.

 

(Presumably you don't also need the character animations replaced; that is a slightly more complicated project.)