Good Avernum 3 party?

[Admiral Snackbar]

What's a good, unusual party for Avernum 3 that has no trouble finishing the game and can take advantage of the games perks and items? Thanks.

[Bender Bending Rodriguez]

If you want a challenge, then go for a singleton. Are you replaying the game, or do just want an unusual party to play it for the first time? 'Cause if you are replaying it, singleton is definitely a fun challenge. I'll warn you, though, some things are very hard, like getting enough nature or arcane lore to identify items and open the caches.

[Drakefyre]

A very fun party that can roll through the game is a 2PC party with a Slith fighter-priest and a Nephil mage-priest.

[Admiral Snackbar]

I don't think I am looking for quite as much of a challenge as singleton. I have never finished the game although I have gotten pretty far. Any 3 or 4 character suggestions?

[Kelandon]

One that's somewhat traditional but a little unusual is a swordsman, a polearm/archer, and two mage/priests.

[Lochmacher]

My fav is still a Human swordsman (Dex focus), Sslith polearm (Str), Human mage (Int), Nephil priest (Int) (Avernum 1-3, as it only has 4 PCs...).

 

This allows you to benefit from most encounters with bipeds and keeps everyone alive when you can't reason with people. Also, I use the custom for all classes and do not rely on the defaults.

[Alorael at Large]

Kel's suggested party is my favorite party, pretty much. If you make a mage, you might as well make it a priest at the same time. What you do with the two beefy hack and slashers is your own business.

 

—Alorael, who usually makes a sword guy and a polearm guy, then arbitrarily assigns one to be the archer and Tool Use repository and the other to be the outdoorsy type and often the Arcane Lore repository.

[kuc]

Quote:

Originally written by Increditable:
Kel's suggested party is my favorite party, pretty much. If you make a mage, you might as well make it a priest at the same time. What you do with the two beefy hack and slashers is your own business.

—Alorael, who usually makes a sword guy and a polearm guy, then arbitrarily assigns one to be the archer and Tool Use repository and the other to be the outdoorsy type and often the Arcane Lore repository.

Ditto, 100%.

What's better than 1 Mage starting with Haste, and 1 Priest starting with Blessings?
2 Mage/Priests starting with both

[Alorael at Large]

The advantage isn't actually that great, because a lot of the time I find myself wanting one mage and one priest. The real benefits are those times when extreme zapping can save the day, two characters absolutely need healing immediately. The latter especially comes up a lot, but it also isn't the entire reason for making characters good at both.

 

So what is the reason? Energy. You can't boost either mage or priest skill as high if you're boosting them both, but the combined total will be higher than the single total, which means you'll be running around with more spell energy to burn.

 

—Alorael, who hates potions, resting, and all other sane means of conserving energy. Having more of it is therefore a very necessary thing for him.

[Admiral Snackbar]

I tried to use the 2 man party of fighter priest and mage priest. What skills/attributes do they need? And is that better than 2 mage priests?

[kuc]

The 2 mage/priests was in reference to PART of a 4-character party, accompanied by 2 melee characters.

 

It would be a harder 2-character party to play, pretty much for the sole reason that you lack melee. Nuking or running your way through dungeons is tedious at best. Potions are "teh suck".

 

To answer Alorael's question (regardless of probably rhetoric as he gave his own answer) I like to buff my melee characters. It is particularly enjoyable, to make god-warriors, then just pick off any stragglers with the odd Flame Bolt. Offensive Spells tend to come into play when there are excessive ranged or caster enemies.

 

I am a traditionalist. Augmented hack'n'slash all the way!

[Kelandon]

Personally, my favorite duo is a simple brute fighter and a mage/priest. It's pretty straightforward, and it's not nearly as difficult as a singleton.

[Drakefyre]

Quote:

Originally written by Justin Y.:
I tried to use the 2 man party of fighter priest and mage priest. What skills/attributes do they need? And is that better than 2 mage priests?

Start them off with enough priest spells so that both can cast War Blessing and one can cast Repel Spirit and Smite.

As for character traits, go for Fast on Feet for both, and give the mage/priest Natural Mage.

[Admiral Snackbar]

Thanks Drakefyre. If I make them custom what points do they get respectively? I don't want them to overlap in specialization.

[Lilith]

A custom character has no default skills, but gets 65 skill points that you can spend on anything you want. Experiment a little and see what works best.

[Admiral Snackbar]

Cool, I did it. But for my fighter/priest should I put points into both pole weapons AND melee weapons? He is a slith so I was using a spear but I bought a fine waveblade and it does alot better. If I should stick with pole I will reload and not buy the waveblade. Thanks.

[Lilith]

It's best to stick with investing skill points in a single weapon type from the start. In Avernum 3, damage is capped at 199, so you'll eventually do 199 damage to everything no matter what weapon you're using. As such, it doesn't actually make a huge difference which weapon type you use. (Pole weapons are somewhat better in terms of damage, but they're mostly two-handed.)

[Alorael at Large]

Once you can do 199 damage with rocks and sticks, the added abilities of your weapons become more important. I'm generally more impressed by the swords than the polearms. Very few of the latter stand out, and many of the former do. On the other hand, you'll probably be using only two, and at most four, so that's not really a concern.

 

I like having one character specialized in each, personally.

 

—Alorael, whoose level of typso seems to be incresaing dramatically. Funy things, typos.

[Thralni]

i tend to put most points into the melee. Although I'm now coming to a point where my nephil can do much greater damage with pole weapons, because they are simply stronger weapons. Now I invest in pole weapons, and they are really FAR better.

[kuc]

I found that across Avernum, Shields simply didnt do enough good to warrant not using huge polearms/greatsword types.

 

Until damage maxes out, and you scale down in weapons, I always found that huge damage > slight protection, but nasty encumbrance.