Quote:
Originally posted by Starfire:
How on earth do you people create such great parties? lol I have tried so many different party combinations and races and the farthest I've gotten was finishing the prologue. After that none of my parties have been strong enough to survive any battles in chapter one. I must not be developing my characters properly because they have all been terrible and do more dying then killing! lol
I am getting so frustrated with this game, I have actually thought about uninstalling it and giving it away, but I really hate giving up on something so I keep trying lol
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Starfire, do you have much or any experience playing D&D based CRPG's? Have you played BG2 or IWD1, for example?
All of these games are about party management and party tactics in battle. People who know what they're doing can usually take even a piece of crap party and make it work out, after a fashion.
Also, are you using the computer AI to control your party in combat or have you turned it off and are you controlling every member of your party yourself. IMHO, most experienced players turn OFF the computer's party AI and control their party's actions in combat themself. This is what I do. I keep a tight reign on every party member and tell them exactly what I want them to do. My parties fight like a well-oiled machine. I run a tight ship!
What kind of tactics do you use in combat? Do you just charge at the enemy? Or do you try to maintain your party's defensive formation?
I'm a strong believer in maintaining a good defensive formation (most of the time) and letting the enemy come to me, not the reverse. This lets me get off a volley or 2 of ranged fire at the incoming enemies before they hit my "melee wall", i.e. my 2 tanks.
In a party of 6, I keep by 2 best tanks in the first 2 slots, so that they can form the melee wall to keep the enemy from trying to pass thru to the mage. I keep my cleric and mage in the #3 and #4 slots, and I keep my ranger and rogue in the back 2 slots. Of course, with varying party compositions, this order will change, but I like keeping my mage in the #4 slot so that he has a couple of party members covering his back. In many parties where I keep the cleric in the #4 slot, he will become the party's 3rd tank and will join the meat wall if needed.
Depending on your style of play/combat, the purpose of your party's tanks is either as the primary fighting force or the primary protection for the mage(s).
Either way, it is the job of the tanks to keep the enemy from penetrating the line and getting to your mage(s). Tanks should do their best to maintain their formation, their wall. Use additional characters from your party or summoned monsters in the wall, if necessary, to prevent any breaks in the wall. A well maintained meat wall will both protect the mage(s) and keep the enemy bunched up for more efficient killing.
Ohhhh, BTW, a KEY to efficient battle tactics in D&D combat, particularly for your tanks, is to focus on KILLING the each enemy, then moving to the next target. It's OK for your mage to chuck a fireball at the incoming enemy and wound a bunch of them. In fact, it's a good thing to use magic to thin out (like using a web or entangle spell) the number of monsters getting to you or using an area effect damaging spell to wound a bunch of approaching enemies. It's like a pre-battle bombardment to soften the enemy up.
A slightly more advanced tactic is what I call the "kill zone". Use immobilizing spells, like web, entangle, or grease *OR* stunning spells like horror, hold person, or Holy Word or Symbol of Hopelessness later in the game, to immobilize a large bunch of the enemy. They cast area effect damaging spells onto the immobilized enemies. They can't do a thing to evade the damage. A bit later in the game, there are some long duration, area effect damaging spells, like spike growth and spike stones (druid spells) or cloudkill, acid fog (arcane spells) that are awesome for dumping on a group of immobilized enemies. That's when you really start to appreaciate a truly deadly "kill zone". Have a couple of active immobilizing spells to keep'em pinned in place and a deadly fog slowly killing them.
And all the while, your party sits back outside of the kill zone and laughs, firing their ranged weapons at just about any target in the kill zone. (The best targets are either the nearly dead or ones that have regained mobility.)
But once the melee begins, focus on killing 1 or 2 targets, then move on to the next. The reason is that a monster with even a single HP hits just as hard as a fully healthy one. If you have ten 100 HP enemies and you spread out 100 HP evenly across those 10 enemies, you still have ten enemies hitting just as hard. However, if you focus a good amount of damage on 1 enemy, and those same 100 HP of damage will kill 1 enemy and reduce the enemy force by 1.
It's all about tactics, tactics, tactics. This game is not that difficult with good tactics.