This valuing of Parties is interesting!

[tequila]

if you do not have a bard you are missing out big. the lore is great, yes. but, the bard gets a song that regenerates your entire party. you dont even need a cleric to heal at that point. just hang out and listen to the tunes and you are good. I would ditch my cleric, but he is also a fighter with high strength and I need the muscle to fight these salamanders in lower dorns.

btw, my party

human ftr/druid - awesome
dwar ftr
human ftr/cleric
hafling ftr/thief
human ftr/conjurer - btw, conjurers get screwed in HoW, so if you dual, I would not go with one.
human bard

[This message has been edited by tequila (edited 06-08-2001).]

[Xod]

I love my party:

M Human Fighter - Great Swords/Halberds
F Gnome Fighter - Long Swords/Axes
M Half-Elf Cleric/Ranger - Hammers/Maces
M Human Fighter/Thief (dualed at 6) - Crossbows/Swort Swords
F Half-Elf Bard - Axes/Missle Weapons (darts)
F Elven Fighter/Mage - Bows/Spears

I wanted to add a pure druid, but couldn't decide who to dump.

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"This place will be your tomb."

[Sir Lagalot]

The party that has worked wonders for me:

Human Paladin
Dwarf Fighter/Cleric
Human Ranger
Halfling Fighter/Thief
Human Druid
Gnome Illusionist

In all my experience with AD&D I never realized what a kick butt class the druid is, especially with the HOW addin spells and abilities. I do note that I seem to be missing some fun in not having included a Bard...perhaps next game.

[kopema]

1. Human Paladin
2. Dwarf Fighter
3. Human? Cleric
4. Halfling thief
5. Human? Bard

The ones with question marks may be a different race. My only real rule is no elves, because they can't be raised.

I started a sixth character fighter I was planning to dual to mage. Then I learned the hard way that there was a requirement that the prime characteristic of your *starting* class has to be higher than normal. I was going to try to hack the character, but instead just got rid of him, took my Bard's armor off and used her as my only mage.

The bard gets 50% more hitpoints than a mage. She doesn't get quite as many spells, but with the same experience she is a higher level so many of the spells she does have are more effective. I did have to go in and hack her int up to 18 though to mem the spells.

Now I have elven chain mail. So far I have certainly not missed the extra spells. I figure that's what scrolls are for. I could use a LOT more cleric spells, but I mainly use my mage spells for special purposes and emergencies rather than meat-and-potatoes stuff.

I just reached level 11 and so far this works fine. I really have no idea what I would do now without the regeneration song. I almost think I could do without a cleric now! Well, not really, but when it comes to healing, the Bard now heals many times more points than the cleric, and now resting is an option I use when convenient instead of a constant hassle to climb back through 4 levels just to get outside to take a nap after every 3 fights.

This plan might turn around and bite me later on. The Bard always lags about one max spell level behind where a mage would be, but I will just try to work around that.

To really powergame, I should have two dwarf fighters. The paladin lags a level about 1/2 the time and his spells are really more of an inconvenience than a real benefit. But he is cool for roleplaying.

I really like single-classing the thief; the extra levels make up for the lack of hitpoints. Using the Bard frees up those extra pickpocketing skill points.

It seems to me that multi-classing a thief/mage could result in some interesting strategic possibility. Has anyone tried this?

[Ravashack]

Hmmm...

The party I have at the moment on HOW is this:

Human F Paladin, LG
Halfling M Fighter/Thief, NG
Human F Cleric, LG
Human M Druid, N
Human F Mage, LG
Human M Bard, NG

All currently are at the Vale of Shadows and averaging around level 7 or 8 on HOF mode so far. Since it is on HOF mode however, I'm relying on summons and status spells instead of my Paladin on getting the job done--the party just speeds things up. I've found myself using lots of Charm Persons with the two wizard-oriented spellcasters early on, and now swapping to Chromatic Orb for the Hold Effect on everything and Magic Missiles since Skeletons have physical resistances up the arse. The Cleric was pointing and holding while the Druid went Entangle, but once I got Animate Dead the Druid switched to Call Lightning.

Giant Insect is very underrated for a druid when in HOF mode.

[Leafy]

4 or 5 characters in the party is good. The IWD expansion, HoW seems has a "fury mode" that makes every monster much tougher and worth more xp. It seems designbed for the "second time trough" when you want to play again, tougher, but with your cool characters already leveled up with goodies from going thru the game once. if you have an empty slot or two, you can pick up some of those classes you may not have experimented with like the Bard or the Druid.

as for the Thief-Mage. yeah, some cool possibilities there. There's even a "shadowed robe" for sneaky mages and some special daggers and stuff. Thief mages don;t need to pick locks cuz they can "knock" them open. and you can "sneak" around invisible like...

[Glycerine]

The party I beat the game with:

Human Paladin
Dwarf Fighter
Human Druid
Human Cleric
Halfling Thief
Elf Mage

Glycerine

[Shakir Do'Urden]

Human Female Fighter
Human Male Mage
Elven Male ranger
Half-Elven Male Thief
Dwarven Male Cleric
Human Female Paladin

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I will Slay you all

[Leafy]

a Half-evlin Thief? please tell me he's a pick pocket! (half elves have good pick pockets) Otherwise, why a half elf? Half Elves are cool for one reason: Class choices. Check it out, half elves get the classes from both human and Elf and are the ONLY race that can be a Fighter/Mage/Cleric.

As for you who choose straight classes; i can understand your wanting to level up more quickly. but what happens when your thief maxes out at level 30 when he reaches 4.4 mil? Better to dual class or multiclass to eat up all that EXP, in my opinion. Of course, you could take the EXP cap off, but does that rais levels beyon 30? (probably not, probably just lets you level that multiclass character to 30/30, eh?)

I tried to play Fury Mode with a brand new party; boy is that a pain!
the party looks like this

Human Druid (to dual class into fighter at level 18, then attain lvl 30 as ftr)
Human Fighter(to dual class at 10 to Mage to attain lvl 30; Tenser's Trans!)
Dwarven Fighter Cleric (the tank)
Elvin Fighter/Mage/Thief (for early magic and necessary thieving abilities)

This party gets pretty powerful in the end, with everyone specialized in thir magic weapon of choice (scimitar for druid, longsword and bow for mage, everything clerical for the dwarf, and daggers and bows for the elf).
The problem was, they never made it past the first big room in the Orc cave.
Even with druidic Entangle, clerical Hold Person and magely Color Spray i couldn't seem to hold off the wave of fighters, archers and shamans long enough to mash their over-inflated ugliness down.
Fury Mode is definately for the high level party (or low level party with magic items)

[Ravashack]

Actually, I found that I had to do hit-and-run waves of Charm Person for the rooms there. That is, dash in, cast Charm Person or "Charm Person or Mammal" (Which unfortunately doesn't seem to work as often for some odd reason) on different targets, and then get out of sight so that the Charmed units are targeted instead of me (since they're the ones on hand doing the whacking) and then come back in with missiles armed. I don't suggest using any spells in HoF mode that forces your spellcaster to get close. If you can charm multiple things, you can have them gang up on one guy to speed up the deaths (and make it easier to deal with the rest after the Charm wears off) and you don't have to worry as much about the more dangerous melee attacks.