Calling to all who...

[ister]

Originally posted by Aerich: Dual F/D: Should be 5 PP in either scimitar or club, IMO. Don't give him bow proficiency, it is a waste. Dagger might be ok, but I don't think it does enough damage. There are good random drop clubs available and a couple you can buy. 5 PP in staff would be a mistake; same in spear, because a shield is too important - even though you can get good spears. Give a ** in spear to your multi instead, then it can attack from relative safety.

I disagree with the reasoning here. (Although I agree with the conclusion) A well built character will do lots of damage regardless of which weapon he focusses on. You get +5 for GM, +4 for strength, figure +2 for weapon enchantment (at least) and at least +2 from spells and songs that will always be active in fights you care about. That's +13 damage per hit. So how much does it matter that a dagger does an average of 15.5 damage per hit while a scimitar does 17.5 damage? Those two points of damage per hit will hardly ever matter.

So the choice of proficiencies ought to come down to availability of weapons and types of damage they do. Dagger is a good proficiency because there are tons of them. However, the reason your F->D shouldn't take them is because piercing damage is resisted far more often than slashing and crushing. If most enemies had a 25% resistance to slashing and no resistance to piercing the dagger would be far superior to the scimitar.

I'd take club because the F/D will be taking the scimitars (for reasons already discussed), and because crushing damage is least resisted. But it is a tough call.

[Aerich]

There's also a +5 club available, and no +5 scimitars or daggers that I'm aware of. [img]smile.gif[/img] Good call on the piercing resistance.

That 2 damage per hit will make a difference in HoF; the more the better. I'm also not sold on the special effects of daggers available to druids (as opposed to mage daggers for a F/M combo). I'll take the 50% fire resistance from a scimitar or the blunt +5 damage of a club over pretty well all the daggers. Exceptions might be Fang of Gloomfrost, Dagger of Venom, and Lover.

[ZFR]

Are there any good clubs available at the beginning or mid game (say before Lower Dorn's deep)?. The reason I'm reluctant over clubs is that the only decent one (+5) I can remember can only be found by mid HoW.

[Black Swan Gauntlet]

IIRC, there are:

Dazer, a +1 club with a small chance of Stunning an opponent, found randomly in the Vale of Shadows;

Evil Spider Crusher of Doom, a +2 club with bonuses against Spiders, found in Conlan's smithy;

and Peacekeeper, a +3 club, found randomly.

I would say that clubs are generally not worth the early-game penalties, though the Star Metal Cudgel can be a nice weapon, once you get that spell. Basically, clubs are a wonderful late-game weapon choice, but are probably not the best choice for a primary weapon.

[Aerich]

You could say almost the same for scimitars, probably the most popular druid weapon. You won't find Frostbrand until the Frost Giant Caverns in chapter 6. Quite frankly, druids don't have a good chance of acquiring good magical weapons early unless they buy them. Spear and staff are just as bad. Granted that daggers are available earlier, but you do lose late-game power.

In my latest game, my fighter/druid is still using a non-magical scimitar in the Severed Hand. Understandably, he doesn't spend much time using it; shapechange is more effective when melee is necessary. I haven't bothered to outfit him with any magical weapons yet because I had a cash shortage and his primary role is not to be the primary tank... yet.

The Spider Crusher is decent to start, and can be bought.

I suppose the advantage to taking 5 PP in large sword with a dual class druid is that you can use any large sword before dualing over; by the time you regain the fighter class, you will have all the scimitars you want. However, you could use almost the same reasoning for 5 PP in club - if you are willing to buy the Spider Crusher or get lucky with Dazer or Peacemaker, you can afford to wait a while to get the +5 weapon. The only difference is slightly better weapon access in the early-mid game.

Druids and pureclass fighters don't make the best tanks in HoF anyway, until and unless they get a couple critical items and shapechanges for damage resistance; they miss out on a few key clerical or arcane spell buffs. Best tanks are Paladin, F/C or R/C, and F/M.

[ 12-07-2005, 01:20 AM: Message edited by: Aerich ]

[ister]

Originally posted by Aerich: That 2 damage per hit will make a difference in HoF; the more the better. I'm also not sold on the special effects of daggers available to druids (as opposed to mage daggers for a F/M combo). I'll take the 50% fire resistance from a scimitar or the blunt +5 damage of a club over pretty well all the daggers. Exceptions might be Fang of Gloomfrost, Dagger of Venom, and Lover.

The 2 extra damage assumes that your scimitar will have the same enchantment as your dagger. Given weapon availability, it's quite likely that the dagger will have 1 higher enchantment, at which point the difference is only 1 damage per hit, and even that difference is almost canceled out by the 5% better to hit roll with the dagger. But my point is really - why worry about doing 15% extra damage when other factors are far more important?

I would make the argument that dagger is a much better choice than spear for a DC druid. But I'd still lean towards club - the main disadvantage is that the scimtar fighter can use long swords until he DCs. When would you normally DC the druid in HOF? Start of DE?

[Aerich]

The weapon availability argument only stands until the druid gets Frostbrand. At that point it is even until either Fang of Gloomfrost or Lover. Um... although there is that +4 dagger in Conlan's. Ok, I concede the enchanted weapon availability argument of dagger vs. scimitar.

However, you will get to a point where the to hit roll won't matter much, in which case the higher damage of the scimitar is better. If it gets to the point where dagger only misses on a 1 and scimitar only misses on 1 or 2, I'd take the extra 2 damage over 18 hits (not counting criticals) as a good deal for the extra miss. In any event, 5 PP in any single-handed weapon of sufficient enchantment is deadly. One further point to bring up is that Valiant gives a scimitar wielder an extra attack per round, which can skew the numbers a little more. [img]smile.gif[/img]

The real kicker in the scimitar vs. dagger argument is secondary effects. I like Frostbrand for the 50% fire resistance. Add a Protection from Fire and you can drop Fireballs, Sunfire, Incendiary Cloud, etc on the druid and heal it. None of the daggers have comparable skills, IMO. The Dagger of Venom is "only" a +2 and it's special does nothing against undead and constructs; Reliance is +4 with no specials; Lover is a returning +4 throwing weapon and nothing else; Fang of Gloomfrost only has minor resistances constantly active and has once/day protective powers.

I haven't taken a dc druid yet in HoF. My gut feeling is that you might as well go for high fighter levels - at least 13 and probably more; I'd be comfortable with 15-17, so you'd be looking at either Upper Dorn's or Wyrm's Tooth. When you dual may also depend on the overall party composition and how much you need the summons and other spells of a druid. I'm not inclined to take a dc druid over a mc druid if starting from scratch because of how useful the druid spells are throughout the game.

[ 12-08-2005, 12:42 AM: Message edited by: Aerich ]

[ister]

Woops I forgot about the extra apr from valiant. But that is a huge point, if you're running a dc and mc druid it's much better to have the extra APr on the Dc with 5 stars. I put a lot of weight on THAT argument. And I still think that the chief shortcoming of the dagger as a proficiency is the piecing damage. With a late dc you can slightly alleviate that problem - by level 15 you can have 3 stars in clubs in addition to GM in daggers.

I'm still inclined to say clubs are better than scimitars, but the APR argument is a pretty compelling reason to take scimitars.

[Roboghost]

Ammo & HoF:
I've thrown in the towel when it comes to ammo. I've downloaded the Ease-of-use pack [you can load each mini-mod separately on this particular one]:

http://pageperso.aol.fr/Ipotemine/

I'm calling it fair since the HP on the monsters is up -- so, the ammo stacks should go up along with it. Now I can carry all the junk you come across and not worry about a click-fest by playing around with the ammo -- Carpel Tunnel Syndrome city.

My HoF team looks like this now:

Human Paladin {tank 1 / defensive priest 2}
[HoF will give you those cleric spells sooner]

Dwarf Fighter {tank 2 / archer 2}
[HoF gives you chance to build two ***** weapons and one *** range]

Elf Druid {offensive priest}
[having one single class druid is a must for HoF]

Gnome Cleric/Thief {defensive priest / scout & anti-trap}
[my agony with HoF is figuring out having an archer/thief/mage/cleric divided between two characters -- I almost always want the other four!]

Elf Fighter/Mage {archer 1 / offensive mage}
[my other archer/thief/mage/cleric team member]

Half-Elf Bard {songs / pick pocket / ID'er / defensive mage*}

*Bard: give bard most spells (besides duplicates) that relate to out-of-battle situations. Two VERY important spells to give bard [they last long enough to get you through a couple major battles]:

Emotion: Courage
Emotion: Hope

Pump up summons and yourself with these; I've seen an army of goblins go bug-eyed on me when they see me coming with these two spells alone glowing on my characters! Each alone is okay, but together...ouch. Also, give bard the spells that don't have level limits such as Acid Arrow. Hit the enemy spell casters with the bard's Acid Arrow at the start of a major battle and then start singing. You may get lucky with a disrupt ; )

[Aerich]

Whereabouts are you in the game, Roboghost?

You team looks fine, but I would still take a F/D over a pure druid. You don't lose much in the way of spells and gain a lot more in the melee and archery departments. Additionally, it allows you to wear better armor. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I'd have no qualms about installing the EoU pack either; I just haven't yet. This game is about small-unit strategy and tactics, not inventory management.