[NobleNick]

Originally posted by Calsiumus: Ahhh I hate mages!! no affence to you "mages lovvers" but I hate mages I mean when you are a mage yourself you suck big time but when you fight a mage they ´kick ass!!... Arghh...

Calsiumus,

I hate coming up against enemy mages, too -- hate it, Hate it, HATE it! But that is exactly the reason that I am building a magic-heavy party.

I disagree with the "your mage sucks" part of your message. I think you are doing something wrong. My guess is that your problem is not with the offensive power of the mage (heh, heh, bet you've already been on the receiving end of that!); but with the defensive vulnerability of the character: they are low on hp and get killed before you can fully exploit their offensive power.

I have five suggestions that would help for your IWD journeys.

The first two are, far and away, the most important: 1.) Most important --> Dual class from fighter, to get BIG TIME booster on hitpoints; and 2.) Second most important (but most important to maximize offensive power) --> SPECIALIZE! (The loss of the ability to get spells from the opposing school, when you specialize, is a VERY small pittance to pay in order to gain the extra spell slot per spell level. And you can nullify even that pittance by having two specialist mages in different, correctly chosen, schools.)

The last 3 suggestions can also have a significant positive impact on your character's viability: 3.) max out intelligence, during character build, to get the ability to write more spells per level (gives you wider selection of spells from which to memorize) and has other benefits; 4.) Max out constitution during character build, to get more hp per level; and 5.) Check the "max hitpoints per level" button in your options menu, again, to maximize hitpoints.

I am building a "two-and-a-half" mage party (all specialists). My fighters (the "two") have not yet dualed over to mage (waiting until about fighter level 9). Therefore, the only magic user (so far) is Sashii, my gnome Thief/Illusionist (the "half"); and she is THE pivotal character in the party! All my exploring tactics revolve around her thief abilities; and virtually all my combat strategy AND tactics revolve around her mage abilities. Even though she is only a multi-class Illusionist, Sashii easily gets her share of the kills; and I haved lost count of how many times she has saved the party's bacon.

If I didn't have so many characters proficient in ranged weapons, the strategy would be even more "Sashii-centric." It would go something like this: "Everyone except bard and Sashii: Protect Sashii. Bard: sing! Sashii: KILL!!" A very powerful character: THE most powerful. Makes me sweat to think of adventuring without this chick. If I had to go through and remove characters from the party, one at a time, to form successively smaller paries, she would be the last one eliminated. And if it came down to a one-character party: I would rather solo with her than any other character.

A-a-a-an-nd..... I can hardly wait until my selected fighters have about 130 hitpoints, each, and dual over to specialist Sorceror and specialist Conjuror: Wha-a-A-A-A-A-A-A HO-O-O-O-OOOO!!!!

Party On!

edited for spelling an clarity, and to get quoted message to not mess up my "signature" font color.

[ 10-06-2002, 03:01 PM: Message edited by: NobleNick ]