Hi folks,
My first post here, but I've been following you for some time. Has anyone tried using Piety as a Primary attribute instead of Vitality for Fighters and other melee types? I am curious about the results. I finished my first Wiz 8 game last week, and am thinking about my next setup. Upon reflection, I realized that maybe 70% of the deaths in my party were from:
A) My tanks turncoat and massacre my back rank, or
B) The tanks succumb to some sort of instant death spell.

The front line had such good AC that they hardly ever took any serious amounts of direct physical damage; that might have been also because they would immediately kill everything in short range. And they had reasonable spell protection on; I always had Magic Screen screen on, Soul Shield and Element shield were always up on round 1, and I had cloak of many colors on them too.

My wacky idea: pump piety instead of vitality. This would open up Iron Will instead of Iron Skin for extra spell resistance. I know there is a significant downside to this: reduced carrying capacity and only half as many hit point bonus. But it makes me think.

Thanks!
-Dedzy

Welcome to the board, Dedzy !

No, I think it isn't a good idea to give piety to the tanks. As you already mentioned, HP's and carry capacity are very important ( an ebony plate with weapon and shield is heavy ). It also builds up stamina, so that the tank can fight longer before he gets exhausted. And VIT builds up resistance to poison, disease etc. too.

I havn't tried it, but I'm sure the highlevel monsters with turncoat or instant death ability aren't really impressed by the "Iron Will" resistance.

With all magic protection up ( like you had ), death doesn't happen that often and you can ressurect a dead character during combat easily.

But, of course, that's only my opinion.

[img]graemlins/monster5.gif[/img]

[ 03-24-2004, 07:27 AM: Message edited by: Loudhy ]

I have tried parties in which either one or all members go for iron will. The problem with only some of your parties going for iron will is that they will be more likely to have their magic resistances go over the top and go back down to very low when you use your screen and shield spells (this is a very irritating bug in the program, in case you didn't know, I think it kicks in over 255 so that 256 = 0, 257 =1, etc. for magic resistance). Having all characters going for iron will can be useful, but if you have a balanced party then I think it doesn't help too much. (It has been good for me in all magic user party - for the loads of spell points - and in solo or duo melee parties where I have few or no buffs).

However, I don't think iron skin is so useful. Fighters in particular have more than enough hitpoints even with average vitality (as you mentioned they don't get killed by monsters in melee). I would take the points you're putting into vitality and put them into str, dex, sen, or speed.

A simple Soul Shield spell at the beginning of battles should help against turncoat and insanity.

And overflow bugs are common in such cases in many programs, and I'm surprised that they didn't take measures to correct it. I hope my Priest with a high IW skill, magical resist items, magic screen, element and soul shield isn't actually rolling over to something low. I wonder if that would show as low on the character information screens?

It does show - you get a red bar wth the number. Funny about the red bar - is that part of the bug, or was it designed in for some unimagineable reason.

I think the red bar is generally used when your current values are lower than the original ones (for example hexxed stats).

The overflow usually only occurs for divine resistance, if you wear two items with high resistance bonus (for example, two amulet of healing, one one with CoC).

for stamina, there's that helmet. carry capacity could be a problem, but I thought that was based on str only. I know vit affects your resistance to disease (once you get it anyway), but not sure about nausea, web, etc. piety supposedly affects skill learning, and my valk with 100 pie has mastered her stuff a lot faster than everyone else.

I don't think iron skin is very useful either. my Lord is not getting hit with physical attacks enough to make a difference, even on expert level. the skill doesn't seem to go up much on it's own. anybody if there's a way to train it, other than walking around naked? (which still doesn't work very well). I tried jumping off the monastery ledge a couple of times with a solo dwarven monk, but nada.

I agree, Iron Skin is pretty useless. Goes up VERY slowly (I cant find a way of training it), and by the time you get it you are pretty tough anyway with good AC. Both PIE and VIT give extra Stamina which is always useful.

The more I play the more I come to realise that Resistances are more important than Hit Points.
But is a long haul as few chars start with more than 50 PIE, so that 17 or so levels to max Pie and unlock Iron Will, then it needs to be trained of course. Max 100 Iron Will gives an improvement of +25 to all Resistances I think.

But for a non-spellcaster putting half your level up points for most of the game into PIE to improve Resistances that can be improved by other means (such as Magic Shield, magic armour, weapons, rings and amulets, even shields) does seem to be quite an extravagance.

Personally I have come to the conclusion that PIE is pretty useless, and VIT usually needs to be no more than 50 - 70 or so for most chars.

Except for pure spellcasters my experience is that you dont go far wrong by maxing Dex for near all chars, and for melee chars maxing Str is sensible.

[ 03-24-2004, 11:16 PM: Message edited by: Mr Creosote ]

Yah, Iron Will had never seemed to make much difference.
Iron Skin can be practised only by taking damage. You can do that in a way similar to training Stealth/Shield/Reflex/Snake, but instead of being missed, you have to do it with something that can hit you and not kill you doing it repeatedly--like you need some Regen items and maybe a bunch of Millipedes...
It's still not very much help, esp if you have the regen items...
I usually also max Dex first on all chars and Str for whackers and Int for casters.

Thanks folks,
I got some questionable advice early on to max STR & VIT for my fighters rather than STR & DEX. It looks like the informed consensus out there is:

1) That extra 20-25% resist all isn't worth all those PIE points you have to put into it, and
2) 100 VIT and Iron Skin isn't as good for fighters / other melee types as DEX would be.