Beating the game with a party of 1

Yeah, Flame Strike, that was the spell's name! My brain is really tired this week... after all the years I've played AD&D, I can't believe I forgot the name of that spell.

Now sibley, you seem to have a big problem when it comes to clerics, mainly about their THAC0. Well, if you ever checked the tables, you'd find that clerics actually have the 2nd fastest THAC0 advancement, next to warriors. I can't see how you can find that horrible, not at all! Also, if you multi-class between two characters, the THAC0 table used is the best of the different classes. Thus, a Fighter/Cleric would not have a mixture of Fighter/Cleric THAC0s, it would strictly use the Fighter's THAC0. Advancement would be a little slower, since you're splitting XPs between two classes, but let's face it... if you're a solo character, you're in no danger of failing to max-out your XPs.

I understand why you wouldn't want to add a 1st level cleric in with your warrior, so you'd probably want to start the cleric at the beginning of the game, and build him up a few levels. You could take him all the way to where your warrior is now, export him, then import him into the warrior's game. Then, he'd be at about the same level. I don't see how you're worried about splitting stuff between two characters, when this game is designed to have MORE than enough loot for 6 characters... 2 should find plenty of good stuff without stepping on one another's toes.

In any case, before I start to ramble... clerics do indeed kick alot of ass, with the ability to wear any armor, alot of great (if only blunt) weapons, and cast a pretty good mix of spells. I don't know where all this prejudice against them began, but it's time to stop!!

Well, I can explain in a little more detail why I dislike the offensive ability of clerics. Yes, they can wear any armor and can be used as a tank. As I said, I have done this.

The party I'm currently running in IWD is level 9. The fighter/thief and fighter/mage are a level or two behind this, of course. They just started Dorn's Deep. Everyone has THAC0 4 or better with their main weapon (axe for the tank dwarf, bows and crossbows for everyone else) -- except the cleric, who has THAC0 11 with a +2 sling and THAC0 13 with a +3 flail. Furthermore, everyone gets at least two attacks per round except the cleric, who gets only one with either weapon. As you might expect from these numbers, the cleric is responsible for only about 2% of the kills by the party. This is all just awful.

Yes, I'm comparing things that maybe shouldn't be compared in some sense. Bows shouldn't be compared with slings and flails, for instance. Nonetheless, I claim mine is a valid comparison. I'm comparing one class of character with another, and that includes weapon selection.

And yes, it's true that all the other characters in this party are pure fighters or multiclassed fighters. But I think you're trying to argue that a cleric's fighting ability compares reasonably to that of a warrior and the above does show this idea is incorrect.

If you want to like clerics, it's fine with me. But I'm sure you can see from the above why I believe they lack offensive punch.

In IWD and BG THAC0 is important. The foes you fight are designed to be hit often only by a warrior with low THAC0, not the THAC0 a cleric at the same level would have. That's why my tank dwarf cleric in BG couldn't hit anything. Of course, your experience in other games (say, pencil and paper) might well be different. It's just a difference in design. IWD in particular is designed very tightly, as is allowed by the linearity of the game. Providing you're running a party of six, the designers know what level you are and what kind of gear you have everywhere in the game. And they didn't design it for the THAC0 of a cleric. They designed it for the THAC0 of a warrior, which is very much lower.