I'm not ready to play this game again, but the recent class change topic has got me thinking of some possible different strategies.

Here are two character slot ideas I have so far:

1. The early Mage

This is a character intended to help the early game to be eventually replaced with a Bishop. Thing is, Bishops are bad in the early game, and the hardest part of the game is the road to Arnika, so we're creating a character that is built with that trip in mind, and to get through enough of Trynton to purchase the Missile Shield spellbook.

Stats: We are not getting Powercast or other expert skills on this character. Therefore, my preference is to go Speed and Senses for better Initiative.

Skills: Aside from Wizardry, we want Air and Divine. Water might be good.

Spell Picks:
Level 1: Frost (to level up Water for Freeze Flesh) and Sleep (useful against some enemies, but we want Air).
Level 2: Save the spell pick.
Level 3: Missile Shield and Enchanted Blade (very important spells)
Level 4: Magic Missiles for Divine SP or save the spell pick
Level 5: Freeze Flesh (in case you encounter Rapax around Trynton). If a spell pick is saved, Noxious Fumes (nice status spell, plus Air SP)
Level 6: If you did not learn Noxious Fumes, learn it now.

Other: No spell books are used on this character; they are saved for her replacement. In Arnika, buy the Magic Screen spellbook; in Trynton, skip the riddle and buy the Missile Shield spellbook (I think Armorplate is also sold here; buy it).

After doing this, either replace her with a Bishop (and then solve the riddle for the Intelligence boost) or wait until returning to Arnika. This Bishop will want to reach 15 Wizardry as soon as possible in order to learn Enchanted Blade and Missile Shield from spellbooks. (Note that it will help to have the Guardian Angel spell available while your new Bishop is still weak.) This Bishop need only spend spell picks on Mind Stab, Holy Water, and 6+ level spells (excluding Banish), as you are now past the early game where other spells might be useful.

2. The Cleric/Lord.

Here we are creating a character to cover Cleric spells in the early game, and then class changing for better melee combat later on.

Stats: Max Strength and (I think) Dexterity for maximum combat effectiveness. However, it is also important to meet the stat requirements for a Lord.

Skills: Go with Maces. (There is a very nice mace that happens to work well as a secondary weapon.) Also, you will want Divinity and Divine Magic, of course, but other skills (like Earth for Armorplate) are also useful.

Spell Picks (minimum):
Level 1: Choose Heal Wounds. Of course, Paralyze is actually quite useful here.
Level 3: Identify Item is good to have. Also, Guardian Angel is good, but isn't crucial until we get a Bishop, and the spellbook can be bought in Arnika.
Level 5: Get Armorplate. Magic Screen is useful, but optional, as (IIRC) it can be bought in Arnika.

Class Change:
Before changing to Lord, make sure that someone (this can be this Cleric or someone else) can cast Armorplate and Magic Screen at level 7 at least some of the time (doesn't need to be reliable yet). The preferred level for the change can vary; cleric level 11 gets you Set/Return portal and cleric level 14 gets you Resurrection, but you might not want to wait that long to get better fighting ability.

After class change, for the next 4 levels the character's spellcasting ability will no longer improve. In the mean time, be sure to boost Dual Wielding. Note that this character can still fight well with Maces and improve the skill further, though you can start raising another weapon skill if you want. For these 4 levels, your Lord should only cast spells when necessary, as casting them won't improve magic-related skills.

After those 4 levels, spellcasting ability will pick up right where it left off, but the character no longer has the 25% Divinity bonus for being a cleric.

Any other ideas for characters for a party with these two characters? I happen to like Alchemist as a secondary spell caster (Toxic Cloud is a *really* nice spell), plus Alchemy will help with money issues.

Don't forget that unlike earlier Wizardries, this one has low Level Cap (50), and experience growth is exponential (without plateau, so it reaches 2 billions very fast). So Lv.4 Cleric / Lv.3 Lord counts as Lv.7 character. And as such multi-classing is extremely heavy penalized (you might multi-class at lv.2, I think there are cases, when this is beneficial, but not above that).

Insufficiently. I think the most you get is 1 mil per character from big monsters (which take quite a time to kill). It means killing 2000 of them, which isn't anywhere near remotely viable. 50 is still hard level cap, but you can multi-class for higher levels. I didn't play much of Wizardry 8 (because it was just not like Wizardry at all). I made Lv.50 characters, multi-classed them several times over, got upset that the only way I can kill big enemies is by relying on Instant Death procs, and extremely long fights made me very bored. Then I opened Madgod's world viewer and found out that there are no weapon/armor uprgades which could help making fights more smooth.

Btw, if you still didn't play Might and Magic VI, I'd strongly recommed you it. It can be played almost like Wizardry 8 if you like, but it is more dynamic and less restricting, and new game experience overall :) And MM VI is at very least 10 times bigger than Wizardry VIII (which is actually rather small, tediousness makes illusion of it being big).

The game seems to be balanced around an endgame level of around 25. 24 is when pure casters can reliably cast 7th level spells at power level 7.

Does anyone else have any ideas for the rest of the party? (I'm thinking I want an Alchemist and maybe a Fighter, but what else would work? Bard and Gadgeteer? (would leave only 2 front row characters))

Or does anyone else have interesting strategies involving class changing or character replacement?

How do you change out characters I'm new to the game and was unaware of the option!

I believe the option is on the stats screen. It's been a little while since I have played the game and I never actually used that option seriously.

The manual mentions it, and I actually recommend reading the manual. It's a good read.

I would go staff before mace on the Lord... they don't have the need for two hand weapons so a staff gives range attack + single skill to build but the special Lord advanage is they are the only class in the game that can use a cursed weapon without lossing health.

I'd also switch after two levels of Priest,,, maybe three at the most but thats more because I like my Lord to have good spells.

The reason for going mace is that there is a powerful mace that can be used as a secondary weapon and the Lord's primary skill (the one that gets a 25% bonus) is dual wielding.

Also, the problem with switching so soon is that this character will be the only character with Priest spells and I want to get Armorplate before Arnika. The level at which class change happens does not affect the chracter's spell casting ability in the long run; it only affects when you go for 4 levels without learning new spells. I think the change will likely come once someone can cast Armorplate and Magic Screen (either this Lord or the Bishop) at max power, not necessarily reliably.

(Remember, Arnika Road is the hardest part of the game, so I want to make it as easy as possible.)

By the way, does anyone remember if the Trynton fountain gave any experience points in addition to the Intelligence boost?

1,000 exp each

Another thought I had: Create the temporary Mage as a Bishop, then change at level 3.

The idea is that we can get more hit points at level 1, at the expense of speed. This helps with the Mage's biggest weakness, and allows Heal Wounds to be learned. Then, at level 3, we free the character of the Bishop's slow leveling and get the mastery bonus to Wizardry.

Note that we may need to give up a spell when doing this, and it may very well be Frost. To compensate, level up points can be spent on Water to hopefully make Freeze Flesh usable.

Of note, a Mage can level up Divine Magic, but not Divinity, by casting Heal Wounds. With 2 levels of Bishop, the spell can be safely cast at power level 2, provided the character has enough Divine Magic (which we need anyway for Enchanted Blade). Heal Wounds level 2 heals an average of 20 points, which is decent in the early game (and we are not keeping this character for the whole game anyway).

(Also of note, but not relevant to this setup, an Alchemist who knows at least one Mental Magic spell can improve her Mental Magic skill, despite the fact that there are no such Alchemist spells.)

I am actually tempted to actually start this playthrough with a party setup like the following:

1. Samurai: Critical Hits + Wizardry. Having Wizardry means that she can cast Enchanted Blade and Missile Shield at level 7, allowing me to possibly get my Bishop a bit sooner without losing access to the spell. Will focus on STR and DEX (I think those are the best stats for melee).

2. Priest: Good for learning Armorplate/Magic Screen early. Will focus on maces initially and dual-wielding eventually (or maybe staff use?). Will change to Lord at level 12, I think. (This gets me Set/Return to Portal before the change.) STR and DEX due to being used as a battle priest. Likely a Dwarf, I think.

3. Bard, because I find their instruments to be quite useful.

4. Gadgeteer, because the class is fun and gets useful gadgets.

5. Alchemist. My favorite of the pure casters because their high level spells are more useful than the Mage's. Plus Alchemy is a good way to earn money.

6. Mage, for early Missile Shield/Enchanted Blade. Likely a fairy for the AC and mana regen boosts. Once the Samurai gets Missile Shield/Enchanted Blade, or when I reach Trynton, will be retired and replaced with a Bishop.

6a. Bishop: A late comer. Human with INT/SPD focus. Human gives her more HP while only delaying the expert skills by one level (compared to elf), and neither would come before level 11 anyway.

I have started with this party, and here are some early game thoughts.

My Priest has more Strength than a character who started out as a Lord would have, and seems to be my best physical damage dealer at the moment.

I decided to make my Gadgeteer a dwarf, giving her more stamina and carrying capacity at the start, but giving her only -10 bonus stat points to start. (By comparison, my dwarf priest started with 50 points; that's 60 points more than my dwarf.) Of note, at level 3, I could put both my gadgeteer's stat points into the same stat.

Lightning Rod is, as always, useful for a Gadgeteer early game.

In the Lower Monastery, Gregor took a few tries to kill without casualties.

My short-term faerie mage is proving to be very useful, especially since I am ignoring Intelligence with her and focusing on Speed and Senses. This allows her to disable the enemies with Freeze Flesh (a spell I will miss when I replace her) or Noxious Fumes before the enemies get to act. With that said, some enemies (particularly Higardi) still act before her.

By the time I reached Arnika, my alchemist already had over 50 Alchemy. Unfortunately, my Priest did not have enough SP to identify Renewal Potions, but I fixed that by buying her a Divine Trap spellbook and practicing her Identify spell a bit.

I have so far lowered the difficulty twice. Once was late in Arnika Road, when I was getting tired of all the encounters. The second time was in Arnika, when the game decided to throw some level 10 enemies at my level 6/7 party, which I don't think is reasonable for a random encounter. It's especially annoying early in the game when I don't have many combat options. I am otherwise trying to play on Normal difficulty this time around.

A few updates:

Cleared out Arnika. I replaced my Mage with my Bishop immediately before talking to Vi, which gave me 7000 experience, allowing my Bishop to reach level 4 immediately. My Samurai learned Missile Shield not long afterward, though I will miss Freeze Flesh. Right now my Bishop is level 6 when the rest of my party is 8. My Bishop can safely cast Insanity at level 1.

Next step is to head to Trynton, perhaps stopping at the graveyard for the Insanity instrument. I have some Magic Nectar in case I am unable to rest safely, and I do have Magic Screen handy on my Priest in case a spellcasting enemy shows up. I have decided not to go to the Umpani Base Camp early this time.
My Bishop has level 3 Psionic magic, and my next goal is to get her skills high enough for level 3 Priest and Mage magic. Make Wounds and Guardian Angel are good for Divinity practice regardless of your other skills.

In Trynton now, and I was slaughtered by enemy sprites.

Casting Magic Screen Level 7 (I am not strong enough to cast it reliably, but that's not necessary for non-combat spells) made the fight *much* easier. I know I will need Element/Soul Shield later, so I took those spells for my Priest and Alchemist.

My Alchemist now has Power Cast and Snake Speed.