If you have a level 8 party and your best AC after +3 bracers is 24, something must not be right.

What armor are your people wearing?

Paladin has Mithral Plate and a +1 Steel Shield giving +3 AC for 23 AC
Fighter/Cleric has Purple Elven Chainmail and a +1 ring of protection for 22 AC
Druid has Troll Bone armor and a +1 Steel Shield giving +3 AC for 22 AC
Rogue/Druid has Moon-Ivy Armor for 20 AC
Monk has +3 Bracers of Defense for 24 AC
Sorcerer has +3 Bracers of Defense for 13 AC
Meleny has Masterwork Studded Leather Armor for 16 AC

Don't do that! You'd likely end up with Sorcerer8/Wizard2, or maybe wizard 3. Barely (maybe) able to cast 2nd level spells. Much less effective than 10th level sorcerer.

Congrats on getting the rogue/druid up and running. Probably a bit weak character, but should be fine for opening/disarming everything and healing + fire support.

AC's seem to be in line of what I had near the end. Only... Mithral Plate, Moon-Ivy armor? Where'd you get those? Also, see if you can find an elven wooden shield for the druid, that steel one hinders his spellcasting, or doesn't, not sure of druid things really.

The monk is working out fine for you? Now (again) knowing what's to come, I'd guess he'll be just fine.

I think I bought both, but the Mithral might have been something I found doing NC stuff. The Moon-Ivy was in that exotic weapon store in Nulb. Not the best armor, but it has a huge dex modifier to it. For the Rogue with her +6 dex modifer, it works out well. I was walking around with an obscene amount of Platinum with nothing to spend it on, so I splurged.

I did that AC post and now I've gotten AC upgrades. Found a Ring of Protection +2, and just got the Hero's Shield from the Arena NC quest. Both the Monk & Paladin are walking around at 25 AC, and Fighter/Cleric at 23.

As for the Monk, I still go back and forth with him. He can now heal himself slightly, which is handy. He's not a front line attacker despite what the class would lead you to believe. His DMG and hit % are nowhere near the Paladin or Fighter/Cleric. He also can't keep aggro for anything, so he's not good for saving spell casters. But in a big battle, with 25 AC, you can plunk him in the middle and he'll do fine. His deflect/catch arrow class feats makes archery almost impossible on him, and he can dart around the battlefield never taking AoO due to his tumble skill and feats like Dodge you can pick up.

But if I were to play another game would I make a Monk? No, I don't think so. He's not useless, and can be exceptionally useful in situations, but if I had less party members it'd either be the Monk or Meleny I'd cut first. He doesn't bring much to the table that better classes haven't already.

There's an exotic weapons store in Nulb!? o____O

I think Jarmo just played the game for the 2nd or 3rd time on Vanilla settings :)

Hawk52 - Sounds like you're kicking butt and having it handed to you in the appropriate places. The Water Temple Juggernaut is properly named.

Congrats on getting this far. To be fair, TOEE is extremely rough in the onset, and doesn't get much easier afterwards. I imagine the added content of the Co8 mod would relieve this a bit (especially since the default level cap then is 20 instead of 10), but I also imagine that fighting the Balor or attempting to kill everyone in the water temple would be rather hard regardless of how you spec your party. I cannot admit to doing either in my initial playthrough and in fact took the pansy way out by taking the gems in the endgame area.

And yes, like you I found out the hard way that Monks are never really that good, and are generally considered by most standards to be one of the worst classes in the core 3.5 player's handbook, if not the worst. Same goes for them in IWD2, NWN and NWN2.

The game hasn't been that difficult once I got past level one/two. I got through the first two levels through quests around Hommlett and sleep grinding. The difficulty is just resigning yourself that every battle you have could result in total party wipeout. Save after every battle and it should be okay. Unless the game is a complete ass and throws two Giant Crayfishes in Deklo Grove at you.

The whole "every time you rest you have a 90% chance being attacked" thing drove me absolutely nuts the first few times I played. Still does to an extent (I understand how to minimize it now). It's not so much that you get attacked, but it's that the game decides they should appear in the middle of your formation and have five enemies surrounding your spell caster. Or when the game randomly spawns enemies much tougher then the area itself, like trolls or giant grayfish in Deklo Grove. It's bad enough being attacked but it's even worse when the game gives you the big ole middle finger, spawns tough enemies and then gives all the enemies high initiative so half the party is dead before your first turn.

I still don't think the Monk is useless. Underpowered? Yeah, but he still has his uses. Against high DR or SR enemies, the Monk is actually pretty useful. He hits and does some damage in those situations where I've seen the Fighter/Cleric do 0. When I killed the Juggernaut, it was the Monk doing most of the work.

I just wish TOEE was more then it is. The combat is the best D&D combat I've ever played, but if I wasn't doing Co8 content the game would have turned into just a gigantic dungeon crawl. If you could marry the scope and complexity of say Baldur's Gate with the combat of TOEE you'd have the perfect game.

You are not alone in your opinions. The tactical combat in ToEE is pretty darn good, though quite time consuming. Could you imagine IceWind Dale 1 or 2 (pure dungeon crawls) using this type of combat. They would take about 300 hours to complete apiece!

So Say We All!

You could definitely do it in IWD 1. The only classes you'd be barred from are Paladin and Bard. No reason you couldn't get through with a couple or three pure classed Elves and a couple or three multiclassed characters as well.

IWD 2 would be another that you could go all Elf. No real restrictions there other than if you're worried about XP penalties for multiclassing.

Can't you just set up a Multiplayer game in BG1 or 2 and set all the characters in the party to be PC's?

I've done that before and gone through the game with 3-4 PC's, picking up NPC's as I went.

Yep, good point, you can easily do that as well.

Well, here's the sad final update of this saga.

About three days ago, my PC was taken over by a hack/trojan. I fought it as well as I could, but I ended up being forced to format my HD and reinstall Windows. I hadn't played TOEE as of late due to sickness from infected teeth, so thus ends the tale.

On the bright side, I've started giving thought on reinstalling and making a new, better party. Using actual tactics and roleplay instead of heal spamming my way through the game. If I do, I'll update this thread with my progress.