I'm wondering what weapon skills I should be focusing on with my ninja. I always put points into Stealth to protect him and Throwing to make use of his critical abilities, but what others are good to work on? I've been using nunchaku a bit (mostly because I like it) but I was wondering if there are any other skills I should be working on to be able to use the nifty weapons later on.

If it's a fairy, put points into Staff & Rod. Trust me, you will be <u>glad</u> you did. ;) If not, I tend to go for shuriken and martial arts. If you pump your critical, martial arts gives you many, many chances for instant-kills a turn. [img]smile.gif[/img]

if you keep on training your ninja stealth. upon reaching 100 and above the game become too easy.

Ninja is about criticals. So improve critical skill.

Do you know you can throw with both hands? But then, you need two-handed skill to improve you hit chance.

For weapons, i usually fight bare-handed early (marital arts skill). But later, there are some cheap daggers with 5% critical chance (just found a sai in trynton), so dagger might be another choice.

I've been making my Ninja more of a thorwer. On level ups I've been dumping all her skill points into Stealth (3), Critical Strike (3), Dual Weapons (2), and Ranged Combat (1). Right now she has the 2nd highest kill rate, my Ranger is the first, due to all the instent kills.

I've been going in the direction of throwing (since he can get criticals with it...) but throwing weapons seem to be hard to find in any decent quantity. There's plenty of bullet stones, arrows, etc., but not too many shuriken to be found. And when I'm throwing with each hand, they don't seem to last very long. *GRIN*

Yaaj - What skills have you given your ranger to make him your number one critical kill party mamber? I plan to run my next game with a ranger.

Hey Lunilord - I have three ninja's right now. One is the fairie ninja that uses the cane o' corpus. He completely rocks the house. I have gone with staff skill to perfect this. The only problem is that anytime you fight a boss, you paralyse them and the challenge soon vanishes. Stealth, senses and speed also help. Eventually you will be able to buy some anhks of speed and strength to increase damage done.

My other ninja is a lizardman. I gave him strength and speed. With bare hands, he makes most unfriendlies go to "sleep" so they just stand there for additional beatings.

My third fights with a pole arm of some sort, and you don't want to screw with him from a distance. Eventually you will get your ninja so far up there that you will max out all your categories. My ninjas are currently leaning to be mythologists and masters of skulldugery.

At level up I've been pumping 3 points into Sence and Dexterity, he's level 10 now with 97 in both. Skills; I started by dumping 3 into Scouting, 3 into Bows, and 3 into Ranged Comabt until level 5. At level 5 I stopped working Bows (which worked out well anyways, because he maxxed his Bow skill at level 9 anyways. Some advise; get the Double Crossbow ASAP and use that has his main weapon.) and put those points into Alchemy until I got Alchemy to 15, then after I got Alchemy to 15 I started working on Modern Weapons.

That kind of sucks. I've been having no problems keeping my Ninja equiped. I'm always finding Dart, Throwing Daggers, and Shurikens.

I made my ninja a pure tank with critical strike and martial arts, and just had her fight hand-to-hand. She really rocked at the end.

Well, if you use your ninja for martial arts, you could have taken a monk. A high-level monk does 50% more damage with hand&feet than a high-level ninja.

Thanks Yaag. How has your ranger done as an alchemist? Once I jammed points into my ninja to learn alchemy spells, but he did not learn them as quickly, nor did he get cool spells. Is this the same story as the spell learning ability of a lord vs. priest or a monk vs psionic?

His Alchemy skill itself is going up pretty fast. All I've really been doing is mixing potions. His Realm skills are another matter, I haven't been casting too many spells with him yet.

So far I'm really happy with him. His kill rate is up to 177 while everyone else is still below 100. [img]smile.gif[/img]

As far as training your hybrid for magic, practice is what matters. I usually run a party with a bishop and some form of hybrid and it works out well after the hybrid picks up some buffer spells. Specifically, the samurai rocks eventually because the mage has buffers in all but water, so he can practice a lot as well as save your main caster (if you have one) from using points in those areas. The problem with ninjas as casters is that they tend to have too many good qualities to practice casting in battle. Whenever I use a ninja, s/he ends up with a high divine from casting heal, a moderate earth from casting chameleon, and a low water from stamina, but most other things are negliable. The lord/valk are great as hybrids because you will use their skills more often for healing/stamina than you will want to use your ninja. Plus magic screen/armorplate/soul shield are almost a necessary in late game, so this class will get lots of practice. The ranger get some practice, but already having a ranged attack really hurts magic casting since you probably will want to attack rather than cast. Monks are also quite handy, especially once they develop enough to start casting Haste. Overall, i would say that the ninja is the weakest of the casters when you consider casting against whatever else s/he could be doing to cause damage

--Mr. Tesh