Since so much of the combat is long range, does it make sense to
place skill points on short range weapons? I noticed that most of the monsters are impossible to reach with non-ranged weapons. Any ways to engage in more hand-to-hand combat?

Overlord

If you want to get up close and personal. click on the walk option in the lower right hand corner of your screen (little man walking icon)...click walk (as opposed to "run", used for escaping lethal battles) and you'll see a "Walk Pending" window. When you activate that round of combat, you'll have a certain amount of steps to reach your potential target when it is your turn to move (or not...some enemies will come to you first).
Just remember that you are going to lose turns as you walk so it might be best to use half the steps to approach and the other half to keep strikng at your opponents long range (if they have a chance to kill you, you know ;) ) until you can get close enough to use your hand-held weapons.

All skills, as they are used, advance without having to dump bonus points into them unless you need to. :D

I suggest actually run instead of walk because it doesn't seem to consume that much more stamina but lets you charge faster. Or you may have more time left to ditch out a blow or too.

Well, this is not such a simple question. The first thing that comes to my mind is the Samurai. He is essentially a Swordsman.

My current Samurai is a decent shot with a Bow but get in close with Demonbane and a Wakizashi and we're talking major damage! And the lightning strike sure doesn't happen with ranged attacks. Also Monks with HtH.

I think that close combat certainly has its merits. You should be sure to put those people in the front position of your formation, and put the Valkyries (maybe 2 with Vi!) on the sides with spears. I have found this very effective.

But sometimes you just gotta charge. I notice that certain baddies with spitting and stinger ranged attacks do not advance to you. I just can't stand to waste the arrows and stones that it takes to eliminate then in 12 rounds from afar. I say charge and be done with it in 3 rounds.

Good Luck

Since you can't split your party up, ie you can't send your fighter ahead while your mages stands back, it seems like a good idea to decide ahead of time wether you want a ranged party or a melee party, and focus everyones skills accordingly. I know most of the posts have suggested balance, but it realy seems as if the extremes work well. If everyone focuses on range than most groups can be detroyed before they reach you (or at least be weakened a lot). If everyone focuses on melee, than you can rush in the first 2 rounds and hack everyone to peices in short order. If you mix your party, the melee fighters are doing very little to help if you stand at a distance, and if you rush in, your ranged characters generaly do a poor job protecting themselves and end up dieing. So imbalance seems to be the way to go.

I agree with Nydlari. Focus on ranged or melee.

I got a balanced party and it works very well. If you party is too unbalanced you might get some troubles in certain fight specially later in the game when you find a lot of spellcasters as enemies. And if you move right and have a good formation the monsters do not hit your mages or other ranged combat chars, and if it really happens, they normaly do no die the first blow, even my fairymage can take some blows ;)

Vader

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by John Doe:
I suggest actually run instead of walk because it doesn't seem to consume that much more stamina but lets you charge faster. Or you may have more time left to ditch out a blow or too.<hr></blockquote>

Good point but when you are weilding dual swords or getting more than one turn per round, stamina can run low fast! (At least it does/did on my Elite class characters...Monk, Ninja and Samurai)

It does help to have Bless cast on your party so that your ranged weapons are hitting their marks as you advance.

So true!

Monks going bare fisted totally suck up the stamina!

Ah...if only I was lvl 10 instead of 5.


Damn.....again.

~~scooby~~

sounds like you need to put some emphasis on your VIT with your monk.

i make sure she gets her VIT juiced regularly on level ups, and have NO problems with stamina. she is totally HtH, and it may drop about 10% in combat, but never more than that. even when she was 5 years old, it wasn't that big a deal. now that she's 10, wow! she's hot stuff!

V***V