I'm having an internal struggle trying to decide who is more powerful. A solo sorceror, or a solo mage/priest.

While the sorceror is very powerful with attack spells, the solo evil mage/priest can use limited wish to summon vampires, and then turn them to the 'dark side' (well, they were already turned to the dark side, but yeah).

probably the mage/preist

Sorcerer

LOL. Already we have disagreement.

A third character who I believe may be equally powerful. The Wild Mage.

Sorcerer is the God of magic.

Wild Mage has tremendous potential to outclass them all, dice willing, but my bet would be the mage/priest - when considering versatility and power in one package and reliability, it comes out on top IMO.

[ 03-22-2005, 10:13 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

Cleric/Mage = best tank in the game, so many buff spells, contingencies with cleric spells ect. Just so many options

I still see a C/M as a backup spellcaster, and maybe as a backup tank in Timestop. If you want a tank get:
a) C/R - very powerful character. Probably the second most powerful tank,
b) Kensai->Mage - even more powerful tank. With PFMW, Stoneskin and Spell Immunity you're pretty safe from spells or other types of damage.

I think that K->M and C/R are the candidates for tanks. They're pretty much resistant or immunte to everything.

To clarify a bit:

The value of the sorcerer being able to decide what spell to cast on the fly (as opposed to only being able to cast spells in the quantities memorised) cannot be overstated. A sorcerer is easily worth two of any other type of mage spell caster - play one and you'll see what I mean. Over most of the game, a sorcerer is unquestionably the most powerful class.

However, once (but not until) your mage/cleric is able to cast level 9 mage spells, he/she will start to pull in front. Charming vampires is irrelevant. It is because of some awesome mage/cleric spell combos. Remember 'Harm' - which is virtually useless to pure class clerics, because they never have the THAC0 to hit anything that you need to use a spell of that level on? Under timestop all hits are automatic. So unless a creature is immune to timestop (and there aren't many that are) they have no defence against the timestop+harm+punch combo.

Also the cleric HLA spells count as level 8 - which means they can be put in a mage level 9 chain contingency, This is just possibly the cheesiest trick in the game. Chain contingency ignores summon limits, so try putting three summon Devas in a chain contingency set to trigger on 'see enemy'. Vampires? What are they?

Yet, as I said above, the sorcerer is easily more powerful during the first part of the game, to the extent that you may never reach a high enough level for the mage/cleric to take over. I gave up in disgust half way through my solo-sorcerer game because it had become far too easy to be fun.

Lets not forget that the Wild Mage can use level 1 spell slots to cast level 9 spells...