All Soldier or Fighter Party

[JAJ28]

Hello,

 

New to forum here but glad to be aboard. I am rather new to these games only dabbling in them. Looking to either start a game in the Avernum Remake(2000) or EftP.

 

My questions are, has anyone tried using an all fighter party? Is it possible to complete the game without magic? Is it possible to do this in any of the games in the series?

 

I suppose for fun, is the adverse possible? An all magic party?

 

Just some odd thoughts and questions, Im hoping that the knowledgeable people in the forum may be able to help me in my quest to answer these questions!

 

Thank you for any help in advance!

 

-JAJ

[Randomizer]

It's harder to do an all fighter or all magic party because some monsters have an extremely high resistance or armor to a specific damage type. It's isn't impossible. but this considered a challenge party.

 

All fighters need to have more potions for healing and curing damage and won't have the mental resistance against fear and charm attacks. You will also need weapons that can do magical damage for those monsters with high armor. Otherwise those fights can last an hour as you get 5% penetration per attack.

 

Same with an all magic party when you have certain fights. The Avernum: Crystal Souls remake has an area where you need to be able to do physical hits with Demonslayer to damage demons by breaking their initial resistance before magical attacks. Try doing that where you only have a 5% chance of hitting about 50 monsters.

 

Good luck playing.

 

Welcome to Spiderweb Software. Please leave your sanity at the door. Too late if you are considering this.

[Archaeolagent]

4 hours ago, Randomizer said:

It's harder to do an all fighter or all magic party... It's isn't impossible. but this considered a challenge party.

 

I emphatically disagree with the above, as far as all-mage parties in A:EFTP and A2:CS go.  An all-mage party isn't a challenge party, it's an easy button.

 

In theory everything Randomizer says makes intuitive sense, but the mechanics don't show up that way.  The reality is that "extremely high resistance or armor" basically never comes up in a way would block a build entirely (i.e., either for physical damage, or for all magical elements -- since casters have access to all of them).  Instead, the trilogy relies on blanket level-based resistance scaling that favors magic elements significantly by the end of the game.

 

For that, among a number of other reasons, magic is incredibly strong.  You can run an all-mage party and never look back, and the games will likely be easier than with a standard "1 of each" party.  This is particularly true in A2:CS.  (You can still have one mage who can hit accurately with Demonslayer for that area, or you can just ignore it and blast away.  This issue is overstated and does not force use of a warrior.)

 

A:EFTP is also easy with an all-mage party, though the theoretical "best" party there is probably 3 casters and 1 warrior.  (The difference is due to a combination of factors, including some minor nerfs to dual wielding and the loss of certain OP weapons from the first game.)

[Randomizer]

In general an all magic party is overwhelming once you have the energy to keep casting spells. 

 

As I said there are monsters that have 95% resistance or armor against damage type. In A:EftP you can do it with an all magic party and I think someone else did an all fighter party. There was one fight that I remember taking an hour to finish since I could only get a few points of damage past resistance each hit.

 

A:CS has the boss fight against Garzahd where until you get the required hits against him with Demonslayer, you face ends spawns. The other demon fights in there are tedious, but able even at 5% to hit chance with Demonslayer. But I tried several times with an all magic party and kept being teleported away before I could break his shield.  Getting that one character back in place before getting overwhelmed by swarms is hard. I had to go back to fix my party to have a decent to hit chance since I hadn't dedicated a mage to have thought of this in advance.

[JAJ28]

Thank you for you feedback, both of you. Looking forward to giving EftP a go!

 

Would you say that the same comments you hold true for the original trilogy as well? I own 1-6 as well... think I will start with the newer remake though based on all the research Ive been doing. Just excited to "pick" all of your brains on this, just spitballing. Excited to finally get into this series.

[Archaeolagent]

I ran an all-mage party on Torment in A2:CS and had none of the issues with the Garzahd fight that Randomizer is describing.  I don't know why he experienced those.  (Maybe you tried that during the beta, and Jeff made changes afterwards?)  But this does seem to be an issue that nobody else ever brings up...

 

2 hours ago, Randomizer said:

As I said there are monsters that have 95% resistance or armor against damage type.

No, there really aren't any cases where this is a thing in the way stated, i.e., impeding an all-one-type party, at least in the first two games.  Resistances show up very little in the defs files, it's almost all just the automatic per-level resists, and where they do show up, it's exclusively stuff like fire lizards where they resist or block one magical element.  That won't slow down a mage party at all.

 

Please, point me to any enemy that has 95% resistance against all three primary magic attack types (magic, fire, and ice) but not to physical damage (and that isn't a "gimmick" enemy easily conquered in some other trivial way).  There aren't any!

 

2 hours ago, Randomizer said:

The other demon fights in there are tedious, but able even at 5% to hit chance with Demonslayer.

20% is the minimum hit change in A2:CS, not 5%.

 

2 hours ago, JAJ28 said:

Would you say that the same comments you hold true for the original trilogy as well?

Mostly, no.  The original trilogy has substantially different mechanics and game balance.

[wackypanda]

It's definitely possible to complete A:EftP and A2:CS without magic, and it's probably possible for A3:RW. But I think that's best attempted after a first playthrough with a mix of types. As Randomizer said, the major challenges are no mental effect removal (there is no item that removes mental effects), having to use potions for healing and curing, and physical-resistant enemies. Fighting large numbers of enemies, especially enemies with mental or ranged attacks, is also challenging.

 

For mental effects, you have to raise mental resistance as high as possible, sometimes at the expense of other armor bonuses. You can grind infinite potions and restock stores. There are weapons which fighters and archers can use to deal non-physical damage. Fights will need some micromanagement to use your battle disciplines (mostly Adrenaline Rush) effectively, and to do things like use chokepoints and doorways.

 

Overall, you need to be quite familiar with what all the stats do and where to train them, how combat and battle disciplines work, and where to get potion ingredients and good armor and weapons. The pinned Strategy Central threads have a lot of that information. A2:CS also requires at least one character to have 2 levels in Arcane Lore, which requires 2 levels of Mage or Priest Spells, even if you never use magic. There are threads about the gritty details of completing A:EftP and A2:CS without magic.

 

All magic parties don't have these challenges, have a much higher damage output, and are not that much more vulnerable to physical attacks in comparison. You may have energy issues in the early game when fighting enemies like fire lizards that resist your low-cost spells. What I like to do when playing an all magic party is to impose some other requirements, e.g. make everyone put stats in a secondary attack, make one character a pacifist (only summons, buff/debuffs, and mental effects), make everyone Anama (no Mage Spells), etc. I haven't seen anyone post about playing a party with Mage Spells but not Priest Spells. There's a lot of room for experimentation, and you're most welcome to post about yours!

Edited May 9, 2023 by wackypanda