Just bought this and loving it, I own both class of heroes 1 and 2 so I was aware of what i was getting. I have some questions though:

1) is the "Cruelty" EX Skill useful? Does attack power decrease the lower the HP?

2) I'm making a human brawler, but I was wondering if it is good as starter class, or if should I focus on making him learn some spells and ultimately go for brawler?

3) Is there a way to gain EX Skills?

4) Is Chi-wave a good choice for a brawler?

Well, that's it, for now at least. I'll thank anyone who'll be kind enough to answer my question :)

Hi, and thanks for replying, dtgreene!

About Mark of Ruin, WOW, 50%? That's crazy (and it's only 10% hp each turn? man, the descriptions in game are so vagues...and the english wkia doesn't help that much either :/ ). If I get it right, Mark of Ruin is a passive right? So whenever I attack the hp subtraction activates. What about the other commands? Does MoR activates even while (for example) guarding? Nonetheless I could think about it over cruelty.

As for Chi-wave, what does dictate its attack power between strength, intelligence, and piety? (Although from your comment about the cleric I'd say either piety or strength)

New question: Is there a way to control summoned monsters? Or the only way to let me choice their action is trough making them permament party members through spirit pact? Also, still can't get much information about Master Therion, but considering that you can't interact with your party for 3 whole turns...meh.

Mark of Ruin activates after every action, unfortunately. (Either that, or it's at the end of every round.) It also doesn't affect healing magic either. The thing about treatment not working is just that; a servant (or summoned pixie/herbalist) will not automatically heal a character with Mark of Ruin. All other healing methods work normally (including Song of Healing).

Chi Wave determines damage like a normal attack; the formula is (weapon damage) x (number of attacks) x 1.5. The differences are that it never misses, does not trigger swallow return, and is unaffected by other modifiers, like Physical Attack Power Up or the weapon's effectiveness against any given creature type. The reason I recommend it on a cleric is that clerics do not get Physical Attack Power Up, but still get extra attacks (at half the rate of fighters, but with the same cap) and can use decent weapons notably hammers).

Summoned monsters can't be controlled during battle. You can, however, instruct a monster to inspect or disarm a trap on a chest, or to open a chest. This is useful if you know that the chest has a trap that only affects the opener (allowing you to get the trap to affect the monster instead of one of your characters), or if the summoned monster has thief skills (check the bestiary).

I have written about Spirit Pact in other topics, but the thing to note is that the monster becomes a regular level 1 party member, losing things like multiple attacks, breath attacks (unless it becomes a Dragonewt), and other characteristics. It retains resistances, special attack effects (like sleep or beheading), and some other related things, but those are lost if you change class. Race and class are always the same for any given creature, but the EX skill is chosen randomly (so it might be worth reloading until you get one you want).

Ok, MoR drawback got me by surprise. And what about summoned monsters with healing magic? Will they heal a person with MoR? (I haven't explored dungeons yet, so I don't know if pixies act as herbalists or if you were referring to healing magic). Aside this, I just need to pay more attention, but for the beginning, I suppose that Song of Healing would do the trick.

Yes, I read your threads, and I don't feel too interested in spirit pact (not for the beginning, at least). One thing I'm curious about though: What about their sprites? do they retain their original one?
Also, is there a limited number of summons you can keep? Ando what happens if they die in battle or by a trap? Are they lost forever?

Pixies act as herbalists (servants). Each one comes with 1 full heal and 3 minor heals, which are used automatically at the end of the round as needed, as well as some status curing items. This inventory is replenished whenever you load a mid-dungeon save or summon a new one. (Note that you can't use the summon that is currently out, but you can use a different one, even if it happens to be the same monster, or you could cancel the summon (which does not cost a spell point).

Summoned monsters with healing magic will have no problem healing characters with MoR. However, such healing is unreliable, though it is more likely when characters actually need it. (In the later part of the game, there is an easy to contract monster that has the 7th (IIRC) level healing spell and can act twice per round.) Also, note that healing magic counts as one of the monster's actions, though summons at least have infinte MP.

Spirit Pact characters do retain their original sprites. Note, however, that later in the post-game, you eventually gain the ability to give any character any sprite (though you have to scroll through a long menu to do so).

Each character can have one summon per spell level. If the summon dies, you can just summon another one, as long as you still have MP for that spell level. (That's one nice thing about summons.) Spirit Pact will cause you to lose the summon, however. The only difference between different spell levels for summoners is that each level is a different slot; a successful Contract will give you the summon in that spell level without affecting the ones in other spell levels.

I see, thanks for the clarification. So i must check which monsters are better to keep, even though I don't think there is much choice with lv 1 summons. Is there a way to break a contract (in order to free that level slot) with a summoned mosnter?

Aside this, thanks for tacking your time on answering my questions, you are a godsend, sir :)

To break a contract, you can either:
1. Make another contract with the same spell level. The new one will replace the old. (In other words, you don't need the slot to be empty to make a new contract.)
2. Use Spirit Pact. The spell level will now be freed.

Also, there's nothing preventing you from contracting something powerful (like an Archer Polete) in a level 1 slot. (Of course, actually doing so is not going to be easy, and will likely require multiple casts of Miracle and plenty of reloading.)

(Also, I'd prefer not to be called "sir".)

Now this is quite unexpected, thanks for letting me know this, thanks indeed.

About my manners, my humblest apologies, I didn't mean to offend you in any way, I' m very sorry.

That's OK.

Anyway, a few other things to note involving servant healing:

First, Mark of Ruin, as I mentioned, prevents the automatic use of healing items on the character. It does not prevent the manual use, so if you put a Potion (for example) in your Servant's inventory, you can manually use it on a Mark of Ruin character, no problems. (This also has the advantage that it ignores Tackle and Unclean Earth.)

Second, Servants get a bonus to the healing provided by Potions based off their level. I believe that when I hacked one to max level, it was healing over 1,000 hit points.

Third, in all other respects (except anti-magic zones), Potion use behaves exactly like the Feria spell. Having high Piety increases the amount healed, as do Holy attack bonuses and (at high levels) the bounses that Priests and Bishops get to Priest spells. I suspect that if you hacked the game to give a Servant the Priest's bonus to Priest spells and then gave her a good Holy attack bonus, you could get her to consistently heal 5 digit amounts at high enough levels. (Of course, there's no point in doing so, since your HP is capped at 9999, and you can use Feireed Full Health Potions (or whatever they're called) to fully heal your characters anyway.)

Also, Mark of Ruin doesn't block Turn Recovery. (By the way, using the Alchemy Warehouse to give everyone Turn Recovery makes the early game *much* easier.)

By the way, there are a few instances I am aware of where Japanese text shows up in the English version:
1. When fighting an enemy with Unclean Earth, if one of your characters has Treatment, it will fail with a Japanese message.
2. When using Master Therion, the summoned monster's name will be in Japanese.

Wow, so much in game mechanic involved, thank you so mich for clarifying all of this, very useful. I must really take a good look at alchemy if I want to have painless playthrough.

Funny about the japanese in game text, but that means that the game didn't receive other official support after release. Hope there aren't many game breaking bugs.

All these headsup are much appreciated :)