Game finally here, a few ?s

[Raistilyn]

About my party ill be makin tonight after classes,

Fighter
Farie Ninja, how do i develope the ninja as a front line melee, i plan on gettin CoC as soon as i can at 9 or 10. What weapon should i develop in the other hand, and also should i ever put points into throwin or?

Bard...what weapon should i use? I was thinking about having him fight with dagger alot since i wanted to make him a rog at 18, but should i just concetrate on his bow skill and leave him be?

Ranger...should i worry about melee with him, or just pump everything into bow skills etc and not even equipt a close camobat weapon?

Bishops, any advice on developing these chars would be nice, i am going to have 2 and let each one study in 2 books mainly, and then let them work on the 3rd when they are excelling.

For the first time thru i think ill use Vi to give my somewhat weak front line some meat, and not sure who else, maybe that gadget dude, anyway if you want to give me any general tips about starting up and stuff id appreciate it, ive researched alot about this game, and cant wait to finally play it, i ordered it on march 4th, and got it 2 day deleviery from amazon.com but i am now just getting the fookin game Thanks for the info

[sloucho]

Others will doubtless have different recommendations, but here's my input:

1) Ninja: Develop only the staff and wand weapon skill. Since the CoC is cursed, it's not realistic for you to think that you'll be doing any throwing. There are plenty of really good off-hand wands in the game. The winterwand is available early, and the Rod of Sprites (an EXCELLENT secondary weapon) is available from crag sprites/cliff sprites on Ascension Peak.

2) Bard: Skills climb so quickly in the game that I would heartily recommend developing dagger and bow for your bard. He'll spend most of his time casting buff spells from instruments, but he can certainly be effective with both melee and ranged weapons.

3) Ranger: I really only use bows (Eagle Eye bow/tripleshot crossbow) for my rangers, but I still find it useful to equip a sword and shield. One sword for rangers (the Estoc de Olivia--a drop from some critter on AP) is good to carry around just for the stat increases it confers. And a shield can be helpful (particularly if it comes with magic resistances). But I've never pumped any points into sword or shield for a ranger until he's maxed out in other, more important categories (eagle eye, ranged weapons, bows, and even searching if you need it).

4) Bishops: I develop all 4 schools just because it's so easy to do. If you think it's cheating to practice a skill outside of combat (or you lack the limited patience needed), then I guess you should just go with 2 books for one and 2 for the other. But it's really not very time-consuming to use charm to pump divinity, mindread to pump psionics, knock knock to pump wizardry, and potion-mixing to pump alchemy. (Just be sure to keep wizardry ahead of alchemy and divinity ahead of psionics.) Never put any points in the realms, which all climb very quickly. Dump everything into schools.

5) The Trynnie gadgeteer is fun to play if you like gadgeteers, but it takes a while to develop them. Like most of the others on the board, the only NPC I really like is RFS-81 because he will go almost anywhere with you and stay where you leave him. He's also a heck of a good open-handed fighter. And since he's a monk without access to magic, there's no temptation to dump points into intelligence or piety. Give his strength, dex, speed, and senses, and watch him slice and dice. (I've always given him a wrist rocket and been pleased with his ability to deliver ranged damage with impaling stones, but most people seem to think he's extremely poor as a ranged fighter.)

Good luck.

Enjoy.