Finally! It is mine! (and a question...)

[WinnipegDragon]

After much digging around, my local EB managed to bring in (as he described it) the last copy of Wiz8 in Canada! I had seen it at $29 on the shelf before, and always meant to pick it up, but just never did.

Anyhow...

My first party is as follows:

Liz Fighter
Liz Fighter
Dwarf Priest
Elf Mage
Elf Bishop (Psion/Alchy)
Hobbit Rogue

I have the Fighters in the middle, Priest on right flank, Rogue on left flank, Mages and Bishop in back. The monastery has been easy, and I think my fighters are already at level 5 or 6 and have unlocked Ironskin. The question I have is about magic schools.

It seems there are nowhere near enough skill points to go around. The Mage needs to have skill points in Wizardry, Fire, Earth, Water, Mental, Divine, etc... The Bishop is even worse since I am trying to use her for Mythology. The Rogue seems to need dozens to go into Dual Wield, Dagger, Close Combat, T&L, Pickpocket, Stealth, etc...

So, since this is my first group, and I on the right path at least? Is it always like this? I make a point of trying to cast a spell every round, and spread them out over different schools, but they still climb so slowly, I doubt they will ever be over 25, let alone approaching 100. And the Bishop advances so painfully slowly... Urk!

Much obliged for your responses and guidance [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ChaosTheorist]

For primary casters, you usually won't bother putting skill points into the Realm skills (Fire, Air, Mental, etc.); they'll rise just fine by themselves with use. Maybe put a point or 2 in early just to get the first circle yellow instead of red. Put your skill points into the Mastery skills (Wizardry, Divinity, etc.). Actually, they'll also climb fairly rapidly, but you want to keep pushing them so you can learn the spells as soon as you meet the profession-level requirements. This is especially true for the Bishop; push those Mastery skills exclusively. If you want your Mage or Priest to be competent sling/staff users, you can put skill points into those, otherwise use the points for whatever Realm skill is behind.

For the Rogue, the skills to focus on are Dual Weapons, Dagger, Stealth, Locks, & (optionally) Pickpocket. Dagger and Stealth will come up with use; you want to push Dual Weapons up as fast as possible to reduce the penalty applied to the offhand weapon. With your caster setup, you've got tons of Divine Trap/Knock-knock power, so Locks doesn't need to be pushed much.

WRT formation: with your party, I'd go 3x3--the 3 melee guys in front, the 3 casters in the middle. Once past the first few levels, your casters will spend the majority of their rounds casting spells, not flogging with staves or stones, so there's little advantage to putting them at melee range. If they're protected by the melee characters, you can stretch out the combats to cast until they're out of spell points, which will raise the magic skills faster. The key to raising magic skills is to cast every chance you get.

chaostheorist is exactly right. what looks like an overwhelming number of skills early, particularly for casters, will quickly build up through practice.

your strategy of casting as much as possible will yield big results. keep in mind that it will be easier to learn skills if you have built up the attributes that control your ability to learn the skills. in the case of casting, that's intelligence and piety. for some spell books, dex is important (alchemy) or senses is important (psionic).

numerous testers at the board have reported that building intelligence is enough if you cast often. so make sure those casters run intelligence right to the top. you will find that around levels 8-11 (for the mage) and 11-14 (for the bishop), with the higher intelligence, wider access to more spells, and more frequent combats, your spellcasters will go through a massive transition, from 25+ in the realms skills to 60, 70, or even 80+ in frequently used colleges.

regarding rogue development, drop points into those things the rogue learns slowly. if you build up strength and dex, for combat purposes, you will probably find it more efficient to drop points into close combat and dual weapons, as they will build more slowly (since they rely on intelligence). i also agree with CT that stealth will learn quickly on its own and that your spellcasters will provide ample support, mitigating the need to build locks and traps to any significantly high level (say, no more than 30-50).

finally, i would add that the priest doesnt get a whole lot of fantastic attacking spells at the higher levels. so you are probably better off not developing intelligence and, instead, focusing on your fighting skills. the buffing spells the priest gets dont really require high spell casting skills nor powercasting ability.

good luck, i hope you enjoy the game as much as the rest of us do!

[EEWorzelle]

Welcome back CT! I missed your posts.

Excellent advice by both of you, and I agree with almost all of it with the glaring exception of your advice, Sultan, about the Priest.

Intelligence is very important for a Priest. There is absolutely no challenge in making that character good at buffs, healing, etc., but with Powercast (Intelligence = natural 100) those Spells are more effective plus the attack Spells, which are few in number but very strong, do not die out later in the game (when enemy resistances become high).

The Priest Spell Banish, usable against Demonic monsters, is particularly strong in your party (with Powercast) given that you have 3 that can cast it. Spells that damage all of the enemies, or all in a group, evenly, are best when cast by several of your characters.

In addition to Banish, Falling Stars (with Powercast) can do a lot of damage per round when your enemies are large in number.

Death Wish (with Powercast) can also be very effective for your fighting party (two Fighters and a Rogue makes it that) because it can thin the number of enemies you are facing, which means there are that many fewer to damage you before the Fighters and Rogue get around to killing them. Very effective.

So, adding it up, Powercast adds about 10% directly to all of the Priest Spells of all types. Add to that the fact that the Priest's Attack Spells remain effective with Powercast and not if you do not have Powercast. However, since, as Sultan said, the Priest has few Attack Spells, let's estimate that at only another rough 10% of effectiveness.

This is how I reach the estimate that a Priest without Powercast is only 80% as effective as one with it. That might be generous, given how powerful they can get with Powercast, but the Priest is such a powerful character that even that 80% can make them a jewel in your party. Even if their Attack Spells are useless and their buffing and healing not as powerful, they are still great!

Now, on the other hand, look at the alternatives. The Priest will never be a great fighter. Fair... perhaps even good, but never great. Nothing you can do with the Priest's fighting Skills can improve their effectiveness even close to as much as Intelligence and Powercast improve it. Having developed a Priest in over a dozen parties, several ways, this is not even a close call. Actually, developed well, the Priest can get all the benefits of Powercast plus pretty good fighting skills (the key being to start that development early). Lots of players don't like the Priest or thinks it weak. I have never found any player examples, however, where a player develops the Priest to full strength and still thinks he or she is weak. Any character can be strong or weak in Wizardry 8, depending upon how they are developed.

An 80% effective Priest is a great character. A fully effective one, with Powercast, is just that much more. If for role playing reasons you do not want to give your Priest Intelligence, by all means be free and go for what you wish, but your should know, as an alternative you can consider, that Intelligence, because of Powercast, is the most important Attribute for a Priest in Wizardry 8, as measured by their Spell effectiveness throughout the game. It ought to be Piety, but it just doesn't add up that way in this particular game design (unlike many other games where Piety/Wisdom is absolutely vital for Priest/Cleric characters).

The point CT made about not putting points into Magic Realms at level-up, that Sultan agreed with, and I also agree with depends on controlling attributes. What makes that most true is when Intelligence is high, since Intelligence is the Primary Controlling Attribute for the Magic Realms. Piety is the Secondary Controlling Attribute, however, so raising Piety while leaving Intelligence alone might be almost as good, or perhaps even as good (players do not know for certain). If those Magic Realms are allowed to grow slower than they potentially can, by not pushing Attributes appropriately, then those Realm Magics will not grow fast enough on their own, without level-up points, even if heavily used.

Bearing on this last point, there was an objective measurement (by DraconFighter) on the VN boards recently with Music (the Bard Music Skill), observing that by making Dexterity (Primary) = 100 and leaving Intelligence (secondary) = 55 (155 total), that Music rose just as fast to the top (96 at the same place in the game in both cases) as when Dexterity and Intelligence were both brought to 90 (180 total). While this is an objective observation, it is not proof of anything, but merely evidence in favor of the theory that the Primary Controlling Attribute is more effective than the secondary, or perhaps even that there is an extra Bonus (besides opening the Expert skill) when an Attribute reaches 100.

Gee, this one ended up more strongly worded than some of my posts. I hope its definiteness is not due to a bad mood, but there is very little conjecture here, it's just simple measurement of Priest Spell effectiveness with and without Powercast. The Priest should not be slighted in this respect, he or she benefits from Powercast as much as any caster does (although other types of single school casters are only about 40% as effective, later in the game, in their spell casting without it, according to player measurements).

[ 10-09-2003, 12:50 AM: Message edited by: EEWorzelle ]

Originally posted by EEWorzelle: ...and I agree with almost all it with the glaring exception of your advice, Sultan, about the Priest.

somehow i knew you would, eew and i believe you worded it assertively, but not antagonistically, so no offense taken. [img]smile.gif[/img]

while i dont contest any of the facts you listed with regard to the priest's abilities and development, i do disagree with your conclusion about effectiveness. of course, i've only taken 1 priest to the peak and you've taken dozens, so clearly i have more to learn.

having said that, i would note that winnipeg's priest is a dwarf, which is the same race as the one priest i've run. even with a full 17 points into intelligence at the start, and a full 3 points into intelligence at each level up, the dwarf priest wont get powercast until level 18. in a six-pc party, assuming no use of npc's, that's much too close to the end of the game for powercast to get to any reasonable level for the the effectiveness benefits you list.

i might add that eew makes a great point about the benefit on learning of running up intelligence, as opposed to piety, which is something not to be overlooked, even if you dont intend to develop powercast.

btw, winnipeg dragon, welcome to the board. i hope you find our musings interesting, or at least amusing

[dplax]

Welcome to the boards WinnipegDragon!
You posted that you want to run up mythology for your bishop. I don't think that this is the best possible choice, since the bishop has so many skills to dump points into, that i never even considered putting points into mythology, and on the other hand, I thound that even if I do not put any points into mythology since during my experience with the game I found that mythology goes up fast enough on its own,and if you do not go too early to certain places, you should be able to identify all monsters to a sufficient level.

I myself never needed mythology, since its biggest use is telling you what special attacks a monster has, and what its resistances are, but most of the time these can be guessed if you know the monsters name. Like slimes most probably will be water resistant, and have attacks like poison or nauseate or paralyse. Fire elementals would have fire resistance. If you get a general idea of what types of monsters are resistant to what then mythology is nearly useless, so I would not put any points in it, though if you prefer then try it, it might help you in your first game.

[Wereboar]

WRT formation: with your party, I'd go 3x3--the 3 melee guys in front, the 3 casters in the middle.

I'd put the fighters and the rogues in front, and priest and bishop in the flanks.

The rogue is a fighting machine in Wiz8. It is second only to the fighter. So he must be in the front. He has less AC from armor, and less hit points, but when he builds up his stealth skill, most monsters will attack the fighters instead of him.

The mage is most vulnerable, so i'd protect him from attacks from the side. Both priest and bishop can use quite some armor, and a shield. I usually give them a whip, so they (especially the priest) can strike when they don't want to cast a spell, and late in the game there are two whip-type weapons.

[dplax]

Originally posted by Wereboar: The rogue is a fighting machine in Wiz8. It is second only to the fighter. So he must be in the front. He has less AC from armor, and less hit points, but when he builds up his stealth skill, most monsters will attack the fighters instead of him.

I don't totally agree with the rogue having a lower AC. In my experience I always ran up dexterity for the rogue (I think it is the most important attribute for him along with speed), and when you get it up to 100 you get reflextion which helps a lot with AC problems, though stealth is an option also. I do agree with the less hit points, but he can wear some things which at least compare to the fighters armor, add to that the reflextion and stealth, which both add AC, and I don't think the rogue has an AC which could be problematic.

[Wereboar]

I don't totally agree with the rogue having a lower AC.

I only wrote he has less AC from armor. But when you add up to 10 AC for stealth, total AC isn't much lower. With reflexion, there's 6 more AC (but fighter types can get that too).

In addition, with a high stealth skill, monsters will often ignore this character, even if his AC is lower, and attack the fighters instead.

Yes, i wrote that he has lower hit points and AC. But i though i wrote that this isn't a problem.

[dplax]

Originally posted by Wereboar: quote: I don't totally agree with the rogue having a lower AC.

I only wrote he has less AC from armor. But when you add up to 10 AC for stealth, total AC isn't much lower. With reflexion, there's 6 more AC (but fighter types can get that too).

In addition, with a high stealth skill, monsters will often ignore this character, even if his AC is lower, and attack the fighters instead.

Yes, i wrote that he has lower hit points and AC. But i though i wrote that this isn't a problem. [/QUOTE]I am sorry if I misunderstood your post, I did not notice, the word armor in it. Regarding fighters getting dexterity maxed: I think that they get it much later than rogues, so benefits would also be less from reflextion. But I think that both of us agree that as far as melleers go the fighter and the rogue are the best, and I too agree that the ower AC is'nt a problem for the rogue because of stealth.