newbie need some suggestions

[Sythe]

Wait a moment did you just say strength increaces the chance to hit I thought it was dex.

[ZFR]

Originally posted by Sythe: Wait a moment did you just say strength increaces the chance to hit I thought it was dex.

its trength for all mellee and hand thrown weapons... dexterety is for missile

[Shakesphere]

A bard as is may not be very useful. But I did get to Drg Eye using my bard. In the massacre fights, I found the bards song of regeneration and lingering song feat, along with his knife throwing, to be very useful. He is also the group leader with very high carisma (chaotic good), which along with Eagle splendor ensures very low price and great deal of cooperation. At high levels, his summoning ability and group healing spells may make a lot of difference. And his songs are all wonderous. He is a single class, level 15, bard high on char and str.

PS. He now has very powerful summoning spells (level 17).

[Shakesphere]

Forgot something. I did add some XP to my bard by reading a book.

[Borg]

This may be against the norm, but my suggestion is to consider not adding a sorc. The Bard's spells are treated the same way as a sorcerer in that they are allocated a certain number of spells that they can "memorize" per level and then can cast any one of those up to a certain number per day. So, you have that effect already.

Plus, you are low on intelligent characters and therefore are going to be hurting when it comes abilities (or whatever things like Hide in Shadows are called). Sorcerers aren't usually set up to have high intelligence, so they won't help with the abilities.

Other thoughts:

-- It's very nice to have a character that can hide in shadows and move silently in order to scout ahead. Your monk is going to be weak at that because of it's int. Consider beefing that up and sacrifice str and con. Or, change the monk to a rogue. The monk is an interesting character, but I find her to be the least powerful of my team so far (currently around lvl 11). I know she will be one of the more powerful later, but that will be in HOF. If you are planning on going to HOF, I'd go ahead and keep the monk. If not, I'd change.

-- I love the Bard. Although I gave the Bard one level of Rogue so that I can max out some abilities (I don't have a rogue in the party, so a rogue's capabilities are spread between my Bard and Wizard), that is probably the one class I can't really imagine multi-classing.

-- Perhaps make the wizard a wizard/cleric (mostly cleric) and add the sorc. in place of the cleric. The Bard can cast healing spells too.

#&#&%!%, that turned into a book...


ADD] I just saw that the original post was from 3 months ago. Who dug this up? Well SnowKing has probably already moved on with the party and my post isn't helpful to them. Hopefully it will help others.

[ 08-06-2003, 03:46 PM: Message edited by: Borg ]

[Bozos of Bones]

I personally don't like full parties of six because level-ups are too slow. The best party is one of for with these characters:

1. Aasimar Paladin
Pure class, concentrated on Constitution to play a tank role. Equip him with bastard swords, but have great sword feat at 2 because of the... mean sword you'll see later in the game. He should have the boots of speed when you find them, so he will allways be the first one in the fray.

2. Half-Orc Barbarian
The guy who smashes things with a two-handed axe. I like the poison blood feat.

3. Thiefling Rogue
Hide in shadows before fight, backstab strongest enemy. Go for very high Dexterity(16-22). Should have a mean bastard sword and a small shield.

4. Drow Sorcerer
Sorcerer is the meanest muthafu*a ever, have Intelligence and Constitution high. I recommend crossbows as his weapon of choice, especially Hell Bolter with +3 bolts. Have small sword feat and weapon at 1 later in the game and then focus more on constitution.

You see that this party has many weak points, but you must capitalize the strong aspects of the group. They level up fast, they are easy to manipulate so the game will be faster and they make up for each other's weaknesses good. Consider having the Rogue a bard with the same tactics.
The weak points are: no priest so you will spend a fortune on potions; the game will be harder at the begining, but gets easier beause of the level difference later. These are not all the weakneses of the party, if you should play them you'll find them out yourself. They also have some good things that are not here.