Here are a couple combat tips:

1. If you get hit while casting a spell, you lose the spell, and it will no longer be memorized. If, instead, you wait and get hit, you won't be able to start casting the spell, but you will still have it memorized. Hence, if you don't want to risk wasting the spell, you can have your spellcaster wait; if you still haven't been hit, the enemies will not have a chance to hit you while you're casting the spell. Also, note that spellcasting items (such as wands) can't be disrupted the way spells can, but remember that they only have finitely many charges, so save them for non-trivial battles. (Or duplicate them and use them as your main attack, but I don't think that was the intent of the designers.)

2. When you move away from an enemy, the enemy gets an attack of opportunity. If the enemy has not yet acted, the attack counts as the enemy's action for the round. This, obviously, can be exploited for great effect if you get the initiative (one reason why DEX is so useful in these games); have a low AC character go near a spellcasting or fire-breathing enemy, then have the character retreat, and the enemy will not be able to cast a spell or breathe fire this round.

An Elf would be better as they get +1 THAC0 when using Longbows (and Longswords). They can also reach higher Fighter levels than Halflings.

POR is the only game to penalize you for high ability scores (by increasing the number of monsters), so you have to decide if you want to bring your characters onto later games. If you do, you should suck it up and fight the bigger battles--you will need DEX, as Petrus says, and CON to survive later battles.

If you are just playing POR to play POR, you can be a little more lax.

Thanks again. Okay an elf fighter/thief it is then. Seems to me if I can't backstab regularly then there's no real point in my thief being in melee. Yea I hear in the later games demi-humans can't be used due to level limts. So I'll probably just make a brand new party in Curse of the Azure Bonds.

P.S. Oh how is hitpoints per level calculated for multiclass characters?

Fine long bows are the best since they grant a strength bonus to damage, so a dwarf fighter/thief with 18/99 strength will do 2 more damage per hit than an elf with 18/75 using one so an elf wouldn't be necessarily better.

If you don't use your thief's backstab and only shoot from the distance you might as well take a triple-class fighter/mage/thief for extra mage spells.

Thief is the only class which allows non-humans to reach maximum level in later games, so dwarf fighter/thief, elf fighter/mage/thief or pure class thief (any race) are somewhat usable in Pools of Darkness if you max the HP at level ups in the earlier games.

Not exactly true for the Gold Box games.

In other games than PoR double class characters get a total of the average HP the single classes would get rounded down, triple class characters can get even less total.

In Pools of Radiance 19 con is treated just like 18 but multiclass characters usually can get more HP than should be possible.

How the hitpoints at partial level ups are distributed doesn't always look logical, it seems as it was written directly into the code how many HP they should get for partial level ups, just try out a little.


From my old PoR notes about max HP at level up:

fighter/thief with 17-19 con: 7 as fighter, 5 as thief
fighter/mage with 17-18 con: 7 as fighter, 4 as mage
cleric/mage with 16 con: 5 as cleric, 4 as mage
cleric/fighter/mage with 18 con: 5 as fighter, 4 as cleric, 3 as mage


In later games multiclasses get far less HP, my 18 con cleric/fighter/mages in CoK couldn't get more than a sum of 9 HP for a level up in all 3 classes combined, no matter how I split the level up.

I wonder if it varies depending on the OS? In my case I always play the C64 version of PoR, and there the multiclass HP work the way I stated (at least, based on my old notes).

One other note about HP:

I believe that, when you are level drained, the game rolls to see how much HP you lose, using the same rules as when you gain a level. However, the game does not remember how many HP you actually gained at the last level up, so you can lose a different amount of HP at level up.

This means that, you can get more HP by doing the following, provided that there is a level draining enemy around (or you are playing a game where the Energy Drain spell is player usable (which basically means just Pools of Darkness)):

1. Get level drained on purpose. After being level drained, check your HP: If you lost a lot, reload. If you lost only a little, continue on.
2. Regain the level by earning experience. (I don't know if Restoration will work here.) Save before leveling up, and reload until you gain more HP than you lost.

By doing this, you can get your HP up arbitrarily high, but not that, for whatever reason, the games only use one byte to store your HP. This means that if your maximum HP goes above 255, it will overflow and become rather small (like 1 or *maybe* 2).

Incidentally, Unlimited Adventures has a different HP overflow bug: If an enemy's HP is set to 171 or higher in the editor, and the player sets the difficulty to the highest setting, the enemy's HP will overflow and it will have very little HP. (This probably happens in the other Gold Box games with difficulty settinge, but only if you find a way to modify the game, or if the developers made a mistake somewhere.)

I would love to use backstab if I could figure out how to make it work. Honestly I wish someone would post a video showing how works and how to set it up consistently. Anyhow, I picked elf because I figured the 19 dex and bonus to longbows would benefit my THACO. I also purchased a rare fine long bow from one of the shops. Looking forward to trying it out so my thief will be more productive. But I see what you're saying concerning damage. I must say I'm not as use to 1st edition rules as I am 2nd edition though I know there are some similarities.

Restoration seems to remember how much HP you had previously, or at least that's always been my recollectable experience. The only permanent change I've ever seen it do is that in at least the case of Dark Queen, it causes spellcasters without maxed casting stats (most noticeable with Kender, due to C/T being the optimal multi and the race having a 16 WIS cap; otherwise in practise the casting stat virtually always is maxed by the player unless playing a "must use rolled stats" challenge run) to lose their top level spell slots (which is actually correcting the mistake of Death Knights of having awarded those spell slots in the first place)

Mind you, I could be wrong, especially due to the limited number of games (excluding FRUA mods) that actually feature level draining enemies; except for Pool, Treasures, and early on in Death Knights, level drain always is a mechanic that strikes high level characters (where HP is no longer random roll). And in Pool in particular, it's easy to forget the exact HP values involved (as a drained character always is injured in the process, and Pool's character sheets do not show maximum HP alongside current; therefore, if, as is likely, you restore the character immediately from the scrolls but must go elsewhere to rest to restore HP one can easily lose track).

The UA overflow bug actually appears to be a UA specific bug, and in fact I can think of no actual reason for it to even be the case; DQK's 5 headed dragon battle features a dragon body with 255 HP, and I've never recalled it to overflow, which makes UA especially peculiar given that it so heavily shares engine logic with DQK ...

I won't post a video, but this is how it works in PoR:
Enter an easy combat and have three of your characters, including your Thief, Delay their actions untill you are sure they are the only remaining characters with actions that round.
Have character A attack an enemy, then have character B attack from a different ange (but not directly opposite). The enemy should now face towards character B. Now have the Thief attack from opposite of character B, and you'll get a Backstab.


But it will take a long time before you get that Fine Longbow. In the early game, which is the most difficult part (especially the tossers at the Ropers Guild), an Elf with 19 Dex and equipped with a Longbow will be very effective due to very good THAC0.

That's probably the reason. I played on PC.

Okay I just had a rather large fight with the hope I could figure out the initiative order so that I could perhaps set up backstabs in the future. So I basically just wrote down the order the party acted throughout the fight.

1. Trinity
2. Garreth
3. Lithariel
4. Elric
5. Valen
6. Selina
7. Dirten NPC

8. Elric
9 Lithariel
10. Trinity
11. Selina
12. Garreth
13. Valen
14. Dirten NPC

15. Selina
16. Garreth
17. Valen
18. Elric
19. Lithariel
20. Selina
21. Elric

22. Garreth
23. Valen
24. Trinitiy
25. Lithariel
26. Garreth
27. Trinity

Sorry for the rather long list. But I don't see any initiative order. It all looks random to me. Can anyone decipher this for me? I have 7 party members. Does the initiative order change every round or something? Because I figured each list would be identical.

Okay so I finally had an opportunity to really test out this backstab thing. My party is in the Podal Plaza. Well there's a shrine with a lone orc dressed in a robe. As I'm sure many of you know when you attack the orc he's the only enemy in the fight. So it was a perfect opportunity to see if I could set up a backstab. Well guess what? I was able to pull if off only once out of the many many times I reloaded. I simply don't get it at all.