Pls comment on my party.

[Bozos of Bones]

Nice picture for the black witch. What are your other parties?

[Magness]

Originally posted by Bozos of Bones: Nice picture for the black witch. What are your other parties?

Go to Defenders of the Dale and check out the "Adventuring Parties" section.

Parties #2, 3, 4 are parties with which I completed IWD2. Party #1 I never played. Parties #5 and 6 are parties that I've created fairly recently and played well into chapter 1, but got bored with.

I really liked and still do like the concept behind party #4, The Ravens, i.e. the incognito heroes that travel about the Ten Towns as a merchant caravan. I created Zatar, the spellsword, for a change of pace. I'd never played a fighter/mage sort of spellsword and wanted to give it a try. However, I got bored with him. It was tiring having to always buff him up before EVERY single battle. I also included a bard in the party for change of pace reasons. That was a mistake, because I just don't like bards.


Party #5, The Furies, was a concept party based on the Furies from Greek mythology, named Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megarea. The fighter/rogue, named "Tisifon", was very capable. And the Sorceress, Megara, was capable enough. But the Pally/Cleric, Alecta, was a real disappointment. She was a real damage magnet. If there was damage to be had, Alecta absorbed it. Besides, I got bored of having only 3 characters to use. Some people dislike "large" parties. I'm the reverse. I find small parties boring and have too much of an unrealistic feel to them.


On this current party, "Shara's Excellent Adventure", I actually created nearly 20 various characters each with a custom edit, before I could settle on which 6 to use. The Black Witch pic was the first that I created for this party, and I initially was building a party to fit around her. In fact, the Black Witch, the ranger Kurak, and the rogue Sharaz, were the the first 3 that I created and were the core of the party.

Sharaz was actually a character that I created a few months ago, but never played. Also, I had about 3 different versions of her. One was the current skills/archer/talker version. Another was just about the absolute opposite, a rogue/tank with uber high STR and DEX and low WIS and CHA, and only moderate skills. The third one was my normal middle of the road rogue with high DEX, medium STR and CON, and an INT of 12 or 14 and CHA lowered to match. I went with the talker version because (a) I wanted a change of pace and (b) I wanted a rogue to be my party's leader/talker, instead of my sorcerer. Obviouosly, if you look at her stats, Sharaz is clearly a very fragile character, but that's OK. Like I say in the back story, she's got friends.

I added the druid because I've never played a druid in one of my IWD2 parties, although I have played one in my last IWD1 party. The dwarven fighter was also a bit of a change of pace, racially.

And the Aasimar battle-cleric was a late addition. I originally had an elven or half-elven Lorekeeper named Kelthys in that slot (with a nice portrait edit), but I just couldn't see him in the role that I wanted him to fill, ie. a strong warrior-cleric. However, I had that nice edit of a woman in silvery plate and I *could* see HER filling the role I wanted for the 6th slot, particularly if she was either a Battleguard of Tempus or a watcher of Helm. I selected Helm because the domain description was a better fit for the character. I wanted a good battle cleric who cared about defending the Ten Towns aginst its enemies, not one that was looking for a good fight.


Sorry for going on so long.

[Starfire]

How on earth do you people create such great parties? lol I have tried so many different party combinations and races and the farthest I've gotten was finishing the prologue. After that none of my parties have been strong enough to survive any battles in chapter one. I must not be developing my characters properly because they have all been terrible and do more dying then killing! lol

I am getting so frustrated with this game, I have actually thought about uninstalling it and giving it away, but I really hate giving up on something so I keep trying lol

[Magness]

Originally posted by Starfire: How on earth do you people create such great parties? lol I have tried so many different party combinations and races and the farthest I've gotten was finishing the prologue. After that none of my parties have been strong enough to survive any battles in chapter one. I must not be developing my characters properly because they have all been terrible and do more dying then killing! lol I am getting so frustrated with this game, I have actually thought about uninstalling it and giving it away, but I really hate giving up on something so I keep trying lol

Starfire, do you have much or any experience playing D&D based CRPG's? Have you played BG2 or IWD1, for example?

All of these games are about party management and party tactics in battle. People who know what they're doing can usually take even a piece of crap party and make it work out, after a fashion.

Also, are you using the computer AI to control your party in combat or have you turned it off and are you controlling every member of your party yourself. IMHO, most experienced players turn OFF the computer's party AI and control their party's actions in combat themself. This is what I do. I keep a tight reign on every party member and tell them exactly what I want them to do. My parties fight like a well-oiled machine. I run a tight ship!


What kind of tactics do you use in combat? Do you just charge at the enemy? Or do you try to maintain your party's defensive formation?

I'm a strong believer in maintaining a good defensive formation (most of the time) and letting the enemy come to me, not the reverse. This lets me get off a volley or 2 of ranged fire at the incoming enemies before they hit my "melee wall", i.e. my 2 tanks.

In a party of 6, I keep by 2 best tanks in the first 2 slots, so that they can form the melee wall to keep the enemy from trying to pass thru to the mage. I keep my cleric and mage in the #3 and #4 slots, and I keep my ranger and rogue in the back 2 slots. Of course, with varying party compositions, this order will change, but I like keeping my mage in the #4 slot so that he has a couple of party members covering his back. In many parties where I keep the cleric in the #4 slot, he will become the party's 3rd tank and will join the meat wall if needed.

Depending on your style of play/combat, the purpose of your party's tanks is either as the primary fighting force or the primary protection for the mage(s).
Either way, it is the job of the tanks to keep the enemy from penetrating the line and getting to your mage(s). Tanks should do their best to maintain their formation, their wall. Use additional characters from your party or summoned monsters in the wall, if necessary, to prevent any breaks in the wall. A well maintained meat wall will both protect the mage(s) and keep the enemy bunched up for more efficient killing.


Ohhhh, BTW, a KEY to efficient battle tactics in D&D combat, particularly for your tanks, is to focus on KILLING the each enemy, then moving to the next target. It's OK for your mage to chuck a fireball at the incoming enemy and wound a bunch of them. In fact, it's a good thing to use magic to thin out (like using a web or entangle spell) the number of monsters getting to you or using an area effect damaging spell to wound a bunch of approaching enemies. It's like a pre-battle bombardment to soften the enemy up.

A slightly more advanced tactic is what I call the "kill zone". Use immobilizing spells, like web, entangle, or grease *OR* stunning spells like horror, hold person, or Holy Word or Symbol of Hopelessness later in the game, to immobilize a large bunch of the enemy. They cast area effect damaging spells onto the immobilized enemies. They can't do a thing to evade the damage. A bit later in the game, there are some long duration, area effect damaging spells, like spike growth and spike stones (druid spells) or cloudkill, acid fog (arcane spells) that are awesome for dumping on a group of immobilized enemies. That's when you really start to appreaciate a truly deadly "kill zone". Have a couple of active immobilizing spells to keep'em pinned in place and a deadly fog slowly killing them. And all the while, your party sits back outside of the kill zone and laughs, firing their ranged weapons at just about any target in the kill zone. (The best targets are either the nearly dead or ones that have regained mobility.)

But once the melee begins, focus on killing 1 or 2 targets, then move on to the next. The reason is that a monster with even a single HP hits just as hard as a fully healthy one. If you have ten 100 HP enemies and you spread out 100 HP evenly across those 10 enemies, you still have ten enemies hitting just as hard. However, if you focus a good amount of damage on 1 enemy, and those same 100 HP of damage will kill 1 enemy and reduce the enemy force by 1.


It's all about tactics, tactics, tactics. This game is not that difficult with good tactics.

[Starfire]

Magness: The only RPG's I've played that possibly come close to this one is the old dungeon and dragons, such as pool of radiance series. I have also played daggerfall, so I would have to say that I am not very familiar with this type of game and I am not used to real time combat at all which is why I am having such a difficult time. This game was a gift from my husband who knows I like RPG's so he thought I'd have a lot of fun with this one.

Thank you for all the suggestions, especially about turning the AI off, I had no idea you could do that lol In fact I discovered quite by accident that I could actually pause the game during combat to issue orders. I really do not want to give up on this game. I managed to get a party all the way to the goblin fortress the other day and I was actually starting to have a lot of fun with it. Basically I guess I just need to keep playing and practising until I am familiar with it and become more experienced with the real time combat. I've mostly been playing RPG's like Wizardry 8 over the last few years, which is turn based combat and much easier for me lol

One of the things I truly enjoy about this game is it has true potential for role playing. I had a party theme in mind based on a series of novels I've read and I discovered a lot of the weapons that were used by the characters in the novels are actually in this game.

I will take all of your suggestions to heart and keep playing, I'm sure given some time and patience I will get better at this lol

Thank you so much for posting back and offering suggestions [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Magness]

Ah, yes, pausing. I didn't even think of that. It's totally 2nd nature to me. Pause a lot to issue orders, when you've turned the AI off. It doesn't take long to issue simple attack orders. Sometimes you don't need to bother pausing for simple melee-ing attack orders. However, if you are going to cast a spell and need to look thru your mage's spell menu, you might want to consider pausing. Right now, with the number of spells in your mage's spell book so few, it's not an issue. But later in the game, when you have a LOT of spells, looking for just the right one, can take 2-3 precious seconds and a pause is really useful.

Also, I wouldn't think of this as true "real time combat". The existance of a pause, combined with the ability to issue orders during a pause, tends to make IWD2 (like all IE games) fairly similar to a turn based game. You can pause as often as you like.

[Bozos of Bones]

The space bar is my favourite control in IWD2. Sometimes in real life, when things happen too fast, I think for a fraction of a second 'Where's teh space bar!?'. Be carefull with spells, though. If you for any reason doubt an enemy is resistant to an attack, like cold, first throw a dagger of cold before casting a freezing sphere or something like that. It helps to conserve spells ALOT. Just one more hint for me: lower resistance is INVALUABLE!

[ZFR]

Originally posted by Bozos of Bones: The space bar is my favourite control in IWD2. Sometimes in real life, when things happen too fast, I think for a fraction of a second 'Where's teh space bar!?'.

LOL... for me the favourite control is 'Q'. Sometimes in real life before making important decisions I think for a fraction of second "Time to quicksave now."

[motub]

Originally posted by Magness: Also, are you using the computer AI to control your party in combat or have you turned it off and are you controlling every member of your party yourself. IMHO, most experienced players turn OFF the computer's party AI and control their party's actions in combat themself.

The biggest problem is remembering to turn it off when you've just reloaded a game after a battle *cough* didn't go as well as planned *cough* , because the AI is turned on by default when a game is loaded. I can't count how many times I reloaded, sent my hidden scout back into the battle area and got trashed because the AI was on, and she started shooting ranged weapons before the rest of the party was correctly placed.

Turning off AI is essential (the scripts are OK, but not very deep or detailed strategically), as long as you remember to pay attention to whether it's on or off. And of course, if you don't have the AI on, you have to pause a lot to issue orders manually-- especially when things go south. For instance, the Neo-Orog gets out of the Entangle with a lucky saving throw and comes after the Wizard who just hit it with a Magic Missile....yes, you're going to have to pause and give that Wizard instructions to RUN!!!! instead of cast whatever you had planned, and possibly instruct a tank to block and attack the Neo-Orog until it gets p.o.'d and gives up chasing the Wiz (who is running in circles around the party trying to get behind the tank) in order to beat up the Pally who is smacking it with a sword/mace/axe/spear/etc-- at which point the Wiz can go back to spellcasting. That sort of thing. It's a huge amount of fun, really, no joke.

One thing I like about IWD2 is that it is (mostly) very good about indicating who is attacking who (on both sides), so you do have the opportunity to save a character who has wandered into harm's way.

[ 11-05-2003, 06:13 AM: Message edited by: motub ]

[Bozos of Bones]

It's also not a bad idea to turn the unit circles to maximum. Helps count enemies faster and when view is obscured by a building or a spell. And about party AI, you can always leave it on, like me, but go with no AI in the character settings. That way the party won't attack anyone untill an attack order is directed, and once it has, they'll kill the target and then find new ones without your intervention. You can issue single orders to certain units and leave other ones killing next closest strongest enemy. A move order will cancel attack and the characters will stand down.