Spell Casters

[TinyMage]

The trang door is safe if you close it first. Monsters don't catch you sleeping when its closed

Basically the trang door is the ultimate because you can click the button and hit shift-m as fast as you can, where the other damage methods you have to wait.

[Sinteuil]

Thanks! Just might try that this time around... [img]smile.gif[/img]

[killerTeddy]

Well, i guess we shouldn't forget this thread was opened by someone new to the game, so it wouldn't be nice to reveal to many secrets, i think?
Personally i don't think this so-called powertraining makes any sense, it's simply boring. And the last thing i want from playing a game is being bored. You can play through the game without any powertraining. One might use it to try new, more extravagant party-variations, but thats it.

As for casters, i would choose 3 specialists, mage, priest and psionic. Later they could be switched to either bishops, or some maybe to hybrids - but one has to plan this right from the start! In my current game i thought about turning my dwarfen priest into a bishop, but he would have needed +20!!! in senses - no chance. He'll become a lord, though.
Why i don't like alchemists: they are perfect for making money, but whats the sense in being so rich that you can't ever spend all your money, i mean the game is no economic simulation. Mages deal much more damage, priests have way better protections, and psionics have part of both PLUS the have effective spells against many "difficult" enemies - all these muscled, several hundred hitpoint huge somethings seem to be easy turned insane The alchemists blind-spell, my favourite in wiz. 7, is pratically useless now - now the monsters run straight away (why they can run a straight line blindly i'll never know), and if you caught one or two the others won't be blind anymore.

[Sinteuil]

While it's true that power training can be incredibly boring, there is definitely some compensation for this in having a bishop who can cast all the spells at a high power level at the away-camp for example, which is about as fun as anything the game has to offer, so in this case it's worth the trouble!

[Pyrates]

I have 2 bishops in my party, a gadgeteer, a bard and 4 hybrids (yeah, 2 NPCs...), and I just let everybody use everything as often as it somehow suits. So no real powertraining, but just use the abilities often. That trains enough for everybody to raise skills and get the casters almost all the spells... of course, I make money via potions and buy spellbooks, so I can keep the picks for the high level spells. But I don't think you need to powertrain to have fun with even my heavily non-melee party...

Cheers
Philipp