I'm surprised this question hasn't come up yet but I started rolling up my characters and figured I should get some input. I've decided to play the game vanilla so I can replay it with the CO8 patches.

My question is what kind of party should I run. My current inclination is to run the party as Chaotic Good for role-playing purposes. Anyway, I was thinking about this for my party:
Half Orc Barbarian - front line fighter
Half Elf Ranger - ranged attacks and secondary fighter
Elf Cleric - healing
Human Sorcerer - offensive spells
Gnome Bard - buffs
Elf Wizard - more offensive spells

My worry is about only having one front line fighter. but maybe with a ranger to provide backup and acting as a striker and a bard to cast buffs it will work. My general preference in RPGs is to sit back and throw fireballs at things. Does this sound workable for this game?

I'm pretty sure you can only generate a five character party at first, right? You can recruit NPCs later, though. Also, I'm not sure you can have an evil character in a good party, period. I know you can't create an evil character for a good party, at least.

My party is a human paladin, human fighter, dwarf cleric, human rogue, and a half-elf evoker with long bow proficiency. That gives me three potential front liners. I doubt that is necessary, though.


As for workability, haven't played it long. The combat seems pretty vicious though (at low levels). And my party is more tuned for melee, with the wizard providing both primary forms of ranged engagement (archery, and magery).

With the way the dungeons are structed in ToEE, you're better off sticking with two frontliners and then going heavy on DPS (sorcerers, wizards, etc.) for ranged support. And you're totally correct FlameWhip, magic users are essential for crowd control, especially if your main melee guys get a string of bad rolls.

With the CO8 you are able to generate a party of Eight - Mine:

1) Male Human Paladin - Halbarad
2) Male Half-Orc Barbarian - Wulfgar
3) Male Dwarven Cleric - Frumgar
4) Male Elven Rogue - Azaghail-Kain
5) Female Dwarven Monk - Azil Urdugan
6) Male Half-Elf Druid/Ranger - Kaylis
7) Female Half-Elf Bard/Sorceress - Brianna
8) Female Elven Wizard - Azabeth-Kain

Personally, I'd say that you need only a front-line fighter, a rogue, a wizard/sorcerer and a cleric/druid. The fifth slot can be anything, really, though bard probably works best, since their songs stack with cleric and wizard buffs, they're good for negociating with NPCs and there is no easily available NPC one.
You can fill any gaps with henchmen, though Elmo is probably the cheapest and most useful one (he doesn't look like much but he's a 4th level fighter).

If you don't mind a challenge, I'd even say that only the cleric and a fighter (possibly multiclassed to rogue) are really necessary, though you'll have to rely on NPCs.

I run as:

Dwarf Barbarian focusing on 2-handers
Human Monk
Human Rogue
Half-Orc Druid using Longspears
Gnome Necromancer

Neutral Evil party.

As you can see, this is geared towards buffs and debuffs, with little magic DPS. Having a heavy tank (dwarf Barb using 2-handers + Rage/Great Cleave) with 2 mobile skirmishers (Rogue flanking with Monk or Barb for Sneak Attack, Monk burning the enemy's Attacks of Opportunities to allow party mobility on melee + Stunning Strike) provide solid DPS.

The Druid provides some healing and, most importantly, CC. The Longspear + high Strength guarantee solid hits from a safe distance.

Finally, Gnome provides Displacement for front liners (making them more durable and less dependent on healing) and heavy Necro debuffs, such as Ray of Enfeeblement (which can make some fights that much easier, if you double specialize in Necromancy + Spell Penetration, to guarantee that you will land it when needed).

Uh, don't run it vanilla unless you want a bugfest...

I think my CO8 is messed up. I installed the very latest version and activated it, I'm using the front end launcher thing, and I can still only have five characters.

All the CO8 options can be done through the front end launcher. There's a little tab above the Module Names. It's the one that says Options.

Thanks!

I was wondering about that myself. Thanks, Papa.

Keep in mind, though, that some of th quests in the game are about saving NPCs, which involves taking them into your group back to safety.
If you go with the 8 PCs, 0 NPCs option, then you won't be able to do those quests, so I'd keep at least 1NPC slot free.

There actually is another thread related to this. The "Party Pooper" thread can be found at this link.


-Khalaq