My party sucks, no lie. The only real AD&D game I've played was Baldur's Gate II, and there I could rely on the other "pre-made" members of my party working to carry me if my main wasn't up to snuff.

I'm not at home right now, so I'll update this post with more info once I get home. I know that a lot of what I'm saying makes sense only after I post the stats.

My party has 4 characters, two of which are suppose to be primary frontline fighters and two of which are oriented more towards backline casting. In fact, my frontline fighters have strenghts of 16, due in large part to minimum Charisma class requirements. My backline peeps have strengths of 18. *shrug* :p

Anyway, here they are:

Human Paladin: My generally better tank. If only one is needed, he's my go-to guy. Just the typical pally stuff: Lay on Hands is great in a pinch, Smite Evil is nice, Protection from Evil makes my healers breathe a bit of a sigh of relief, and Cure Disease is REALLY handy (I can vendor some of those precious Mummy's Teas :p).

His specializations include crossbows, greatswords, and longswords. I have one of each for different situations: respectively, for when I'm going for completely long-range damage, when I need to tank but incoming damage will otherwise be low, and when I need a shield for maximum mitigation.


Half-Elf Druid/Fighter: Not quite as good of a tank as the paladin in most cases, but still a decent tank. Tanking, buffing/debuffing, and off-healing aside, his major contribution is Entangle and Barbed Roots (I think that's what the spell is called). The fomer helps keep enormous AoE groups in place, and the latter helps kill them off.

The weapon specializations are wonky, but then again druids don't get the best weapon classes: missile weapons (for darts), clubs, and daggers. Right now, along with his shield he wields a really good dagger that is as good or better than the other one-handed melee weapons my party has.


Half-Elf Cleric/Ranger: Possibly my favorite character out of the group. I suppose there was little need to multiclass him with ranger, since clerics have good martial potential anyway. But he's the main healer, a buffer/debuffer with Bless, Prayer, etc., a ranged damage dealer when he's not casting, and can tank very well when things get really out of control. His niche rolls include Summoning Undead to distract enemies while my druid/fighter casts Entangle and quickly firing off Commands to slow down enemies.

His most used weapon specilizations are Missile Weapons (for slings) and Maces. There seem to be a ton of +1 Morningstars and +1 Maces... for whatever reason.


GnomeThief/Mage (Illusionist): I LOVE mages, so I had to have one, and a theif is so handy for lock picking, taking care of traps, etc. He's mainly there to awkardly wear robes while firing his shortbow and laying down the pain with direct damage spells, mainly Fireball and Agamar's Scorcher for AoE, Magic Missiles for single target damage, Chromatic Orb for the stun (soon to be paralysis), and, when possible, Enslave Person for awesomeness and win.

The one major thing that annoys me about him is choosing a gnome for this position. I was tired of half-elves, so I figured I'd add some flavor to the races a bit. Gnome multiclass mages HAVE to be Illusionists, and it's no exaggeration to say that most of the extremely small number of mage spells I have found so far are NECROMANTIC, which is the school opposed to the Illusionist, and thus cannot be cast by my gnome.

His weapon specializations include Shortbows and quarterstaves. He basically never, ever uses his quarterstaff for melee, always sticking to range.