I normally run a 6 person party, no NPCs except as required (e.g. taking Vi to He'Li). I'm running a 4 person party instead (Fighter, Samurai, Ninja, Bishop). Any advice on playing with 4 instead of 6?

Thanks, tuck

You seem pretty knowledgable about the possibilities, from earlier posts. I don't much care for fighters as I like the magic option (protection and transports). I always have a Fig/Lor/Val in my party. I have done 2 good 4-parties to the end and am about to finish a 3rd. For your 2nd char maybe a Rog/Bar. To mix it up add a Ran(Mook)/Sam/Nin/Gad. Add a Bis or change an Alc/Mag/Pri/Psi back and forth to get the basic protections. There are many ways 4 chars can succeed, and you lev up faster. I have tried one 3-party and a 2-party but they start to get a bit tedious. Alot of healing. I would think a solo would be even less interesting. Best of luck!

As a side note, I will be trying something more challenging next. A monk as the tank (and x-ray), a samurai for mage and sword, a ninja for alc and locks (probably faerie, weak at first as most know) and a bishop to cover the weak starting magic. This may not work, but worth a shot.

[ 06-23-2003, 09:59 PM: Message edited by: Ziggurat ]

FWIW, I'd probably take a Valk or a Ranger in place of the Ninja. Ninjas level as slowly as Bishops, and don't seem to have that much as compensation. A Faerie Ninja with the CofC is the obvious best bet but, as Zig says, it takes a long time to get one going. In contrast, the Valkyrie is a powerful melee fighter from day one, and becomes a good healer/protector; the Ranger is good from a distance to start, and becomes a kick-ass offensive magic user, competent healer, and fair melee fighter later on.

With the party you've listed, you'll probably want the Bishop to cover the Priest- and Psionic-book spells as a first priority. That being the case, it will be a while before you get the Ninja's Alchemy up to where you can generate a decent amount of cash to buy spell books for the Bishop, so you'll need to watch your budget. Or push the Bishop's Alchemy to 30 as quickly as possible, and use the bank vault to raise it from there--but that will mean leaving Psionics on the back burner for a while. Other than that, standard guidelines for building hybrids should cover it.

In this party, I am trying to make it a little more exotic and avoiding the big melee-ers. I agree the ninja will be a liability til lev 10 or so. A bard or rogue would be better. Samarais are limited, too. That's why I'm not sure if this party will get very far. We'll see...

To help out at the begining make one a Dracon. The breath weapon helps alot
at first. I have a dracon Lord in my party of 4.

Does the dracon breath weapon always the same damage or is it still useful in higher levels?

The breath attack definatly gets stronger as you gain levels; that's why I have six of them. I'm sure it has something to do with stamina though. With all dracon you can clean up small battles in one round; this will not help your skills however. My party will do 10-20 points of damage to each apponant right now x6 = a good anount of damage! Just try to wedge yourself in a corner whenever you can; as in all combat situations, it always helps!

If you like the breath attacks, try casting 6 fireballs at the same time or whipping rocks. That's a whole lot of damage to low level monsters.

That's actually something I tried in a party of 4 (not 6 fireballs, but 3.) One was the wall, and the rest would blast away with spells. So I had one Fighter and 3 bishops. Worked very well as long as the fighter was protected and buffed by spells. It suits expert mode very well too, because you can cure each character fast with spells, and the guardian angel protects against nausia, KO, disease and some damage. Later guardian angel could be replaced by body of stone. A fighter with full armor and body of stone isn't likely to get hit much. Only thing to think about is not to get surrounded by higher level monsters.

Everyone, thanks for the advice. The party seems to be working out fine so far. Of course, I'm hugging walls like crazy to avoid having the Bishop exposed by creatures that like to surround me.

The Fighter is a Dracon. I agree that the breath helps early and I'm tired of Liz fighters even if they are so very effective.

To Zig - good luck with the monk as a tank. I've tried this and wasn't a big fan until late in the game. Like you, I had several characters with critical hit skills. Even if they only hit for minimal damage, it just didn't matter anymore because of the rate of critical blows.

Yeah, I ran a "Ranged/CritHit" party once: Ranger, Samurai, martial-arts Monk, throwing Ninja, Gadgeteer, Bishop. By the time they got to level 20, most battles became a race to see if the monsters could avoid getting IK'd by the ranged specialists long enough to get close enough to get IK'd by the melee characters.

Of course, when multiple characters got driven insane/turncoated by something like Souleater, things got very ugly very fast....