I did a LOT of testing with these kits and I found the following useless:
1. Swashbuckler. no backstab, no reason to be a thief. A fighter with find traps? Hell, just be a fighter/thief.
2. Monk. deceptively cool, but low hps, bad AC, and you have to wait until the end of chap 4 for the guants of crushing (if you find them) to get a decent weapon that hits "immunity" creatures. Has "find traps" ability, but can't remove them. Waste. This char is only good for chaps 1 and 2 since you are kind of effective w/o any items.
3. Bard. I never understood this class in traditional AD&D and it still makes no sense. Bard song is a luxury in a game you can't afford to have luxuries in.
4. Sorcerer. less spells. Why would you want this? Only good if you have a game you never find a scroll in.
5. Barb. well, I love the mass HPs, but to not be able to go above 2 specializations totally sucks. They should be able to specialize (advanced) in one weapon only or something - no ranged weapons, only melee weapons - kind of the opposite of an Archer (see below).
6. Wizard Slayer. Can you say useless? Can't use magic items except weapons and armor. Man, is this class useless.
7. Archer. This class should be a fighter class, not a ranger class. The fact that everyone thinks "rangers" and "archers" are sysnonomous is kinda silly. I'd rather be able to go full specialization in bows AS WELL as getting some added benefit, and eliminate my specialization in melee weapons. Also, since there are almost no decent longbows/composite bows in this game (the best are short bows), you probably would have selected the wrong type of bow to specialize in your first time through, heh.
8. Assasin. This char only gets poison. He should get an additional backstab modifier and have a penalty to "find/remove traps" abilities.
9. Paladins. Except for the presence on the Holy Avenger, a fighter is much more useful with his added specialization. "Dispel Magic" ability of the inquisitor is very nice at 2X the level, but not good enough (IMO) to overcome the lack of advanced specialization. The Holy Avenger makes this class useful, but w/o it you'd be better off with a fighter.
10. Rangers. Well, charm animal is neat, but I want my fighter to fight. Same probs as Paladins with specilization. Here's the exception: For Dual-Classing, Ranger/Cleric is WAY cool. Ranger gets 2 extra profs in dual wield allowing you to get a nice char in the beginning of the game. And as you go up in levels and pass your Ranger level, your cleric gets those BOSS druid spells! Single-class rangers are inferior - a fighter will take them out any day.
11. Multi-class chars. In this game, the cap leaves you at a pretty low level for spell casters, and you never get those great higher level spells. The exceptions are Fighter/Thiefs and Illusionist/thiefs. F/T is cool cause you get decent fighting skills plus thief abilities. I/T is nice, because you are a specialist and get an extra spell per level, plus thief abilities.
|