Quick Start

[Malthaussen]

Suggestion for a starting party:

Create six human fighters with 20 HP each. Wait until they level once (which should take less than 10 minutes of gameplay [img]smile.gif[/img] ), then change over to the class you want them to be for the rest
of the game.

Rationale: Survivability is the name of the game here. A human, regardless of profession, begins the game with 375 total attribute points. All other races except hobbits get 360-365; the furry-toed ones receive 370. Of course, if you think the racial bonuses/characteristics are worth taking a 10-15 point bath in attributes, go for the gusto.

Your characters should start as fighters for several reasons, at least twenty of them, in fact. Starting with 20 HP significantly increases your chances of seeing 30. Furthermore, fighters
receive good armor and weapons at the start, which makes them more formidable in the initial combats (which I’ll admit aren’t too tough anyway). They also start out trained in close combat and weapons, which adds to this potency. Lastly, but certainly not least(ly), fighters level after only 1000 EP. This permits a quicker addition to attributes and skills.

Agreed, this will marginally slow the development of spell-users. But then again, spellcasters are nearly worthless at the lower levels anyway, and their starting equipment and HP are lousy. Think how long it would take a normal mage to reach just the starting 20 HP if he started the game as a mage. Consider also that once a character starts to use magic, he will quickly acquire additions to the magic skills through practice, so the initial slow start becomes even less
significant.

I suggest converting at the first level-up, but one could continue longer as a fighter, especially if he’s going to switch to a fighter-type class later. Spellcasters will have to switch early, however,
because waiting too long to start learning magic will cripple them.

Possible exceptions to this suggestion are samurai, gadgeteers, and bards. The samurai begins with a katana and wakazashi, which makes him an offensive mincing machine, although he does lose a little in armor and HP. Gadgeteers and bards might start out in-class, as they will want a lot of points quickly in their specializations. They will pay a significant price in HP and starting equipment, however. Note that a character will receive an omnigun automatically if he
changes to gadgeteer.

Malthaussen

[Knip Dyolf]

Definately some food for thought there Malthaussen...thanks.

Knip

[KraGorn]

Hmmm. Taking 6 humans does mean missing out on one of the minor interesting aspects, the various races. Also, doing this with spellcasters is going to delay their acquisition of level 7 spells by quite a bit ... remember it takes a darn sight longer to level up from 18-19 than it does from 1-2 ... of course some like me think that the level 7 spells are by and large not all that great or much better then some level 5 or 6 cast at a higher level [img]smile.gif[/img]

[MaskedFrog]

I like your idea about taking all humans. For my second go through I have been thinking about doing exactly that. However, in my initial game I never had any problem with my spellcasters with low HPs. If you are going to play a ninja, you definitely better start as a ninja. The only place you can buy ninja clothes is way into the game.

IMHO I prefer to just make the character classes I want to start with. This does not mean I will not multi-class later. I am thinking of starting with spellcasters then converting them to a hybrid later so they can have better armor.