Dual Class - Bishop to Mage

[The Wiz]

I'm new to this forum, but I've gotta say (as I notice many have before me), that Wizardry 8 is an incredibly well designed game - the balance is excellent, and the number of tactical options that balance allows is great!

On the specific subject of optimising a magic user, I've read a number of posts, and a number of websites on dual classing. One thread in particular seemed relevant: "More testing results". Based on the theory (and his tests) that in the end game the most influential variable in cutting through resistance is level, the author of that thread recommends taking a bishop to pure magic class at level 18.

Has anyone out there experimented with this approach? And can anyone verify that if I switch to mage (actually, I'd do it at level 19, so I can grab all those non-mage level 7 spells during the level 18 promotion), all the mage spells will be cast as level 19 mage, and progress from there, without any kind of restart?

Currently my bishop is level 16, and I have not used any spell picks on buyable/findable spells, so by level 18, I can get nearly the whole spell book. If from there I get the best bang for the buck by dual classing, that sounds great. If all the non-mage spells stop at level 18 effectiveness, but the mage spells continue to improve (and with faster levelling than I'd get as a bishop), that's a great tradeoff to make - but I'd hate to find out late in the game that I'd lost something critical in switching over to mage.

Any info on this would be much appreciated!

[ScottG]

Welcome!

Interesting question. I've found the determining factor to be character level versus monster level, not class level (though not true for stamina casters). For a particular mage class I've found that your major and minor skill levels (for that spell) are an additional factor (asuming we are firing off the spell at full power). This is just a general feeling, no hard anlaysis here. Others may have found differently (I'll be interested in reading other experiences on this subject.)

In otherwords you shouldn't have any problem with your switch other than the fact that your major skills (other than the mage's single major discipline) will not continue to improve.

[Gimli]

You do also get the mage's +25 perk to wizardry which is nothing to sneeze at.

[The Procrastinator]

You have a very detailed explanation of what happens to your casting skills when you change class on this page:

http://wiz8.web1000.com/perko.html

In short, your mage skills wouldn't get any penalty, and you'd get the 25% bonus. For the other spellbooks, I'd have to re-read the article...

[Squigle D'Muerte]

It seems the only disadvantage of changing a Bishop over to a Mage at 18 would be that you must max out as many of your other main magic skills (divinity, psionic and alchemy) as possible before 18. Those skills won't increase after you switch classes only wizardry will improve.

The thing I am not sure of and havent seen covered is that while a mage can cast spells in all 6 realms does casting a non-mage spell give you a chance of raising that realm skill? For example a 20 mage casting Insanity, can he/she increase Mental (since this is not a mage book spell)? If not then you need to max out any realm skills you don't plan on using mage spells in but still plan on using (Divine for example).

Dual classing is kind of odd in this game and requires experimenting to figure out what really happens. If you change your lv 20 fighter with 125 sword and close combat over to a rogue do you get to immediately start backstabing for the same damage as a fighter does (well a non-berzerk one anyway) or do you get a lesser backstab ability or only get backstab with rogue weapons? Almost every class combination has these kinds of questions. Save your game, try it then if you don't like it go back and then either way post here so I won't have to. lol

[The Wiz]

Thanks, all, I think this gives me the answer I was hoping for. Squigle, you're right about the non-mage skills stopping, I'm working on training all the non-mage skills to max before the switchover. Definitely a pain in the neck, but I just can't seem to resist the urge to optimize [img]smile.gif[/img]

I'll keep an eye out to see if casting non-mage spells raises realm skills, and report back on that. Also, if anything goes wrong on the class switch (hopefully not!) I'll report on that, as well!