I have decided that I want to convert my Bishop into an Alchemist at some point, due to lower XP/level (faster leveling) and also because of the cannot-be-silenced spell-casting of the Alchemist.

However, I do not know what level is best to make this change. I have seen people recommend making the change at level 9, and also around level 16-18 range. Any suggestions would be welcome, along with the reasoning behind them.

--Greystone

I never switch classes. It takes as much to go from level 1 to 2 of your new class as it would to gain the next level in your old class. Besides, the whole point of bishops is that they can cast any spell--just specialize in alchemical ones.

This all depends upon who's all in your party, and how much practise you can stand to let them get. If you look at the spell lists and what spells are really needed, and who else in your party will be able to cast them, that will tell you a lot. For Bish-to-Alch, i think you can change as soon as you get all the books from Crock, that really expands your mana pool, and leaves picks for L5 spells before you get all the way to Ferro. That's why L9 is good for me, and the only reason to go higher is if there's nobody else to cast a spell you find vital from the other Schools.
One of my fun characters was a Bishop-to-Fighter who switched at L13 total (one for Stealth) to get Portal, so all 4 chars could cast it.
Staff of Doom is quite a treat to Berzerk with.
Mostly, though, i don't switch Bishops, because i have them for the purpose of learning all the spells, and if you get that far (L22; if you switch at 18 and leave the 4 Alchemy spells, you can get all the rest) you might as well keep improving all 4 Schools, because it's too late to make up much in XP/Level ratio by the end. (unless you've got a tiny party)

That seems like a step backward. Why would you want to go from a character that can cast pretty much everything to a more restricted character?

When I dual it depends on the class change involved. For instance, I've routinely dualed priests or mages to bishop at L8-9 and it works very well. OTOH, I wouldn't dual a Bard until level 18 or 19, so that I would be able to play ALL the good instruments.

I've tried some other duals, but in general they haven't blown me away, whereas the ones I've mentioned above have lots of advantages.

Oh, yeah - there is one more - I played a samurai as a mage until I leveled up the first time, then switched to samurai. When the sam got his spells he had a little head start in spell points. That might work for the other fighter hybrids as well. I'd only recently thought of this one. Don't know that it confers a major advantage, though.

One big plus to switching a Bishop to a pure class is the +25% bonus to that school he'll get, will help you cast spell in that realm at a higher power level more safely. A 125 in a school is alot better than 100. It all depends on the party makeup too; I've had parties where my bishop was the lone pure caster, there I liked to have him learn all 4 books and stay a bishop. Had one party with 2 bishops, both 2 book guys, and a pure priest. One bishop I had as a priest/alchemist and I switched him to pure alchemist because I already had plenty of priest spells; the other was a psionic/mage, switched him to a pure mage because I think that school has better spells, plus I had a monk for more psionic magic and no other mage spell caster. That was in expert mode and it worked beautifully, you really want to get your spells cast at level 7 there as much as possible. I switched at level 18 because you can access level 7 spells there, but that also depends on how far you intend to level before you finish the game; some people like to go really high before they finish it, I don't reallly go for more than say one extra level once I'm done with evertyhing I need to do before the end of the game.

The reason why I switched from bishop to alchemist at level 9 or level 10, was because I wanted to be able to cast guardian angel at full power. I had 5 characters in my last party with the guardian angel spell, and that really saved alot of fights in my IM game. I think I got web, rest all and silence too for my alchemist as well. Later in the game, the alchemist/bishop/alchemist was level 22 while my pure bishops were level 20. It was also level 21 when my bishop were 19, so the experience loss isn't really that big. The gap in experience between pure caster and bishop starts for real around level 14 or something. And we all know that levels increase effectiviness of spells, as does the 25% bonus to the alchemy skill (and powercast).

I also classchanged my mage to bishop at level 1 to get soul shield and other divinity spells too (superman, rest all etc). So I changed the mage/bishop back to mage at level 13 when he could cast those spells more efficiently. That way, I had a fast mage with element shield AND soul shield (+ other level 4 divinity spells).

[ 07-08-2002, 10:58 PM: Message edited by: el_kalkylus ]