SneakAttack&my party

[JrKASperov]

First question: what is the general idea on Sneak Attack here? Is it worth the lower damage to be able to do extra damage every back attack? I find my thief running away everytime he attacks a fiend from behind, because they have a nack to turn towards the highest AC close to them. Which is my thief. This makes the sneak attack potential wasted. It sometimes works on casters. The problem with backstab to me is you can do it only once, and since my thief sucks at bowying and doing anything else except watching for traps, his use is wasted. So I turn SneakAttack on, but he gets chased everywhere now. What is the general preferance here?

Next, my party:
Fighter
Fighter(3)->Cleric
Thief
Necromancer

I'm having some trouble with this party; the fighters get hammered and there is not enough healing for them. My spellcasters aid magnificently because of my strategic intellect [img]graemlins/cool.gif[/img] but I find myself resting in every area twice because I have to use them. Any ideas?

[NobleNick]

JrKASperov,

I'll have to pass on the first question, excepting that my answer to your second should help out a bit.

You might not be having any special problem that the rest of us haven't faced. Some of these fights are tough. I remember sleeping for days on end, even with two Clerics in the party. Assuming that you want to edge a little closer to power gaming, here are some suggestions for your party....

Not enough healing: Do you have HoW installed? If not, get it. If you do have HoW, adding a Bard will take care of healing as soon as she reaches CLVL 11 and gets War Chant of the Sith.

Are your Fighter mixes all STR=DEX=CON=18 (or the max allowed by race)? Have you turned on the "Max HP per level" option in your game settings? High STR gives your character bonus damage per melee hit. High DEX gives your character a bonus to AC (very important). High CON gives your character bonus HP per CLVL. "Max HP/level" gives you the MAXIMUM that an excellent dice roll would allow for additional HP when your character levels, instead of giving you the actual (and not necessarily excellent) dice roll.

Are you stacking PP? Since your F/C is constrained to blunt weapons, your SC Fighter should strive to be 5 PP in an edged weapon, 3 PP in Bows, and anything left over in Mace. Possibly put one point in Mace before going to 3 PP in Bow; but don't do anything that doesn't get you to exactly 5 PP in a melee weapon at exactly CLVL 9.

Are you doing the quests? Are you taking advantage of opportunites to camp and do extra fights? Both of these pack on the HP and slow your progression through the game, making your party tougher with respect to the difficulties they face.

Build a tank: Buy, butcher and steal to get the best armor, and put it all on ONE guy. Then use tactics to make sure he is the only one that gets beat on. Make absolutely sure that this guy's DEX is maxed out when you roll him. You'll lose a lot less HP with two trolls beating on one guy with AC = -12 than you will with two trolls, one beating on each of your two fighters with AC = -8.

Use Prayer, Chant, Recitation, Cat's Grace, War Chant, and other buffs to lower AC. Remember that Prayer, Recitation, War Chant and more than a few other buffs stack. One Recitation/Prayer combo can easily be worth more than a dozen Heals against some opponents. And the War Chant makes the Heal spell almost useless.

Your Fighter(3)/Cleric is an excellent idea, but (from a power gaming perspective) could be executed better. Even if you are only doing just IWD, you have plenty of room to build and enjoy a DC F(7)/C. This latter character will have a 5 point THAC0, 1 point damage, and 0.5 ApR advantage over the F(3)/C (assuming you stacked PP correctly for both characters). If you are taking the party into HoW, then an F(9)/C is the bare minimum I would do. The F(9) will have about a 5 point THAC0, 2 point damage, and 1.5 ApR advantage over his F(3)/C brother for much of the game, with very little impact to Cleric abilities in the mid to late game.

The Thief could easily be an MC F/T; losing barely anything on the Thief side and gaining a whole lot of punch and durability from the Fighter. A really cheesy thing you can do with the F/T mixes is to sneak around in studded leather, then when the fight breaks loose, pause game and change into your plate mail +3 and helmet. Yeah, really cheesy, but it works.

A Necro is not the best of choices for specialist Mage in a single Mage party. An Illusionist is about the only good choice. (Again, I am assuming you have HoW installed.) If you get the Bard, though, you can make it work: The Bard can pick up the valuable spells that you would otherwise miss. While we are on this character: Making him a DC F(6)/Necro with CON=DEX=18 would give him high HP, better AC, 3 PP in Bows, and 3 PP in a melee weapon. All this would allow him to competently wield the best bows in the game (as opposed to using darts, ugh!) and lower the need for the rest of your team to constantly be protecting him. All this for 32K XP, which is less than 5% of the total XP your character will collect in even an IWD-only game.

Hope this helps.

--------------------
What's a party,
without a song?
Bards ROCK!
Party On!!


[ 06-03-2005, 11:41 AM: Message edited by: NobleNick ]

[JrKASperov]

Perhaps I should have been more specific.

I am not interested in alterations in these current characters. The ideas are nice and they work. The problem is the high AC on all of my chars, paired with the low amount of spells to strategically implement. All the choices you offer, while working, don't appeal to me; they distract me from playing the game.

I was searching for something more item-wise. I'm in Dragon's Eye right now, lvl 2, and those bombardier beetles.... There are just too many of them. With the last party, my ranged team worked wonders, but here, they get acid striked all the time. The F/T might have been a good idea though, perhaps I should look in changing that afterall. I find the lack of use tedious.

[Aerich]

You will find yourself resting more often with a smaller party. Get used to it. [img]smile.gif[/img] You can't toss out as much damage or rotate your tanks, so you will take more hits and the hits will be more noticeable (not spread out over 6 characters).

At DE lvl 2, I wouldn't advise having your thief be the "point" character. It's worth having sneak attack turned on (you get about half of backstab damage, without having to be stealthed), but only use your thief as the third melee option. To use sneak in the backstab style, be more selective in using it - make sure you scout out the areas before stabbing the first available enemy, and don't do it if there's too many around you.

With your small party and poor AC, you will have to fall back on a few party-saving spells/tactics. Your necromancer should use every second level spell slot for Web. With a free action ring on your thief, you can wander around sneak-attacking all the held creatures (immobilized creatures are vulnerable to sneak attack). In tough fights, you can cast multiple Webs on the same area, to increase the chance of catching all the enemies. It will give you added time to kill everything, even with poor ranged weapon capabilities. This was how my priest-heavy party managed the beetles, and actually how they managed most fights until the Severed Hand. Casting Skull Trap into the middle of the Web is fun, too.

As a variation on this tactic, summon some monsters or undead between your party and the web trap, and only use your thief as an archer, after using it to draw the enemies into your trap. They will attack the (hopefully) stuck beetles and get trapped, but any enemy that saves successfully will go after the nearest thing (the summons) first. If your summons actually kill something, that's an unexpected bonus.

I would give serious thought to trading in your thief for a fighter/thief. A F/T is a far superior archer and fighter, will eventually have more HP, and can wear heavy armour. I took a single-class thief in my first IWD game, and told myself "never again". I had the same problems you're having. A single-class thief is a mediocre archer, poor melee character, has no spells, and is disproportionately targeted.

[JrKASperov]

Well I've managed some more since I found a defending axe. It greatly increased the living time for my fighter. I've found some use in my excessive amounts of animate dead, using them to be the frontline while the necromancers casts his detrimental spells like slow and horror, one of his favourites. Level 2 was actually quite a lot easier than anything encountered yet, with the right spell usage even the big fight in the lower part was relatively easy.

Also, I've changed the T into F/T. And wow...
He suddenly hits twice as often, does way more damage, and his sneak attack abilities have not even decreased!