Woot! I LOVE this party! "The halfling assasins"

[Merkin]

I was getting tired of my "vanilla" party, and combat was just to damn easy. Rather than change the difficulty from normal to hard, I. of course beganagain. I wanted a party that was both more challenging and more interesting to play. I decided to go for speed stealth, and agility.

I went with the following:

Hobbit Samurai
Hobbit Ninja
Elf Monk
Hobbit Ranger
Hobbit Bard
Fairie Psionic

These guys are kickin butt! The strengths ( and the weakness) of the party should be pretty apparent. They ALWAYS hit first...always. No one has a speed of less than 75 at this point (level 6). And with none of the fighter types having a dex less than 70, they almost always hit. Three of them have critical up to 39-40%, I'm almost
always getting at least one insta-kill per melee round.

The drawbacks...each hit does squat for damage. Unless I critical, I'm watching 2's and 4's and 7's fly up from combat all damn day.
They have squat for hit points. I haven't had a death yet (but I've still got Arnika Road ahead), but it's been close. A couple of hits and each one of these guys is at death's door.

This is kind of a tricky party to play, but watching shuriken and kung-fu chops flying all over hell and gone is serious fun!

[Skrewloose]

Ahh... if only you could purchase infinite ammo of your choice. That and lack of a really good teleport spell are my only peeves with the game.

I'm so close to finishing (I THINK!) but my next party, I believe, is going to be 3 Monks and 3 Bishops. We'll never level, but if we practice enough, we should be able to wail on anybody!

Merkin - have you finished it yet?

I'm on my fourth party now. My first two parties cleared Trynton, my next one did all the Umpani quests, and my current one has done all Umpani, all (except the last) T'rang and has possession of the 3 artifacts (thanks to Xignal!!!!). I have the android as my only NPC, and he's up to level 19 now, I've made him use a pole arm, and he's at about 80 skill in that, and attacks twice per round at 3 swings each. And that's with the Mindblast Rod, so we're talking some serious damage. He does nearly as much as my main Sword fighter, and if he doesn't kill who he's attacking through sheer damage or critical, then he leaves them paralyzed or unconscious.

Sorry, I kind of wandered off there! I don't have a monk in my party, but RFS is just so cool now that I want 3 of them! But so close to finishing, I think I'm going to wait just a bit!

[Virgil]

Hey Merkin, I played a party like that for a while, with a bishop instead of the psionicist and a rogue instead of the bard. I had the monk, samurai and rogue on the front line and the ninja was a thrower. Oh, gadgeteer instead of the ranger too. I found the samurai never hit (using bloodlust) and the ninja never did any damage. I think next time I start over (I hope to finish the game with my current party), I'll give a samurai another try.

Skrewloose, I think monks are the coolest too. I have a PC monk in my part, as well as RFS-81. RFS isn't on the front line, but I gave him a Hakai Bo, and he attacks twice, for two swings each for ~20 damage. Whenever he gets an instant kill, he says "RFS-81 functioning at peak." The first time he did that, after instant killing an ironhide croc on the first hit, I nearly fell off my chair.

[Merkin]

Screwloose: Finished? *sob* no *sob*, not even close. I'm a charter member of Beginagain anonymous. My tally so far, 12 (I think) partys created, 5 abandoned in the monastary. Of the 7 that made it to Arnika road, 3 more got abandoned on the road. So 4 made it to Arnika, 1 more got abandoned there. 3 parties are stuck in Trynton right now, with my new "halfling assasin" party almost to Arnika. I've never even *sob* been to the swamps yet!

Virgil: The trick on Samurai seems to be to ignore strength and vitality completely, put all attribute points into dex, speed, and sense. All of my skill points go into sword, dual, and critical, ignoring close combat completely. He's got a bow available, but I don't put any points into it either. Usually he's a powder/bomb thrower from a distance. He doesn't hit for much damage, but he's hitting a lot now, and as I said previously, starting to get insta-kills already (now level 7) Late last night I took down a Hogar in the second round of melee. Sweet!

[vesselle]

:: pats merkin on the back :: there, there. it's okay.

some of us are tinkerers at heart, and also, to some degree, delayers. i know i just got to the area before the mines with my bestest Blonde Brigade, but also have a couple of others traipsing around (Bumbling Brunettes and Redheaded StepDaughters).

besides, i believe that we soak up every bit of ambiance in our love of the game. especially since there are very few games that are great enough for us to invest so much time in.

so don't be down, you aren't alone!

[Virgil]

Actually, I don't sob about not finishing the game, I sob after I finish the game. I've spent so many hours and hours playing the game and getting to like my characters, I don't want it to end. For that reason, I rarely finish RPGs, although I plan to finish this one.