Hey all,

Just about to start these games, and I was wondering what party setup everyone went with.

Basically, I was thinking about the following myself:

Dwarf - focused on fighting power and locks
Magician - General spell support, nuking, crowd control.
Two warriors - I think you know.
Two Elves - focusing on magic (especially healing, but not just healing), and ranged attacks.

In theory it seems like a balanced party with a good mix of melee, ranged, and magic power.

Any opinions or advice would be appreciated, and feel free to post whatever party you may have gone with - or wished you had gone with.

Warrior, magician, elf and dwarf are almost essential to get the best from the game.
I added a second elf and a rogue, but a second warrior instead of the rogue is even better because of the heavier armor (s)he can wear.
Make your second elf an ice elf, they're quite different from the other elves.

Thank you. Sounds like good advice. Did you have any favorite spells during the course of the adventure?

I didn't use spells in combat often. With high AC you can survive most battles unharmed, spellpoints don't regenerate faster than hitpoints. Always trade the 10 spell raises for the 3-8 magic points.
Most important for a magician is enchanting his wand to the final level as soon a possible, so casting costs less SP. In early combat I make sure that the badly armored magician is never the first in a round to attack a monster so he can attack with lower risk to be targeted next. Spells are saved for the really hard battles.

The magic armor spell which improves AC is very useful in combat. So is the spell which doubles the attacks per round, it helps even versus bosses immune to magic. Very powerful is the horror spell which lets monsters flee, you still get XP for fleeing monsters. Every caster should be able to cast at least one of the two direct damage spells effectively for encounters with monsters immune to normal weapons.

Outside combat the teleport spell can be extremely useful, I'd have the mage raise it to -4 fast. In RoA2 it's nice if your elves can disguise themselves. The healing spells is obviously useful. I also maxed the door opener spell in case lockpicks don't work.
Generally I'd try to raise the non-combat spells which might be useful at some situation I don't know to -4 so they are castable with a few reloads. For most of those spells it's enough if one character knows them, a few should be raised by all casters.
Some often used spells and combat spells which don't have a difficulty modifier (buffs like magic armor for example) are raised to 7 for 100 percent success chance if the character attributes are 13 and some spells (like horror or the door opener spell) I try to get as high as possible to overcome the target's difficulty modifier.

Great info. Thanks again.

I've played this game a bunch of times because I like number-heavy roleplaying games. I'm right now trying to get the min/max-iest party I can, but I can tell you that for early game, the best setup I've found is this:
Dwarf, Warrior, Rogue, Elf, Druid, Magician

If you spend all of the first day in town just stealing and cheating people, you can have upwards of 150D by the time late afternoon comes on the second day. You can buy out all the armor and weapons your party needs, making the rest of the game *much* easier.

If you go from there right to the Dwarven Pit with minimal delays, and do a good, thorough exploring, then the rest of the game should be pretty easy for you.


That said, I'm right now playing Dwarf, 3x Elf, druid, magician and it's beastly. Though the armor is reduced significantly for the elves, you can still wear enough that low-damage creatures won't hit you for much, and you have magic as a backup (blind and spell damage from range is enormously helpful, especially against foes like War Ogres which hit like trucks). The druid is the absolute best with Evil Eye, which is a charm-like spell, compelling a creature to fight for you, and also packs a spell to pacify animals - which does not suffer from the "blindness bug" and thus gives you two creatures out of commission if you're attacked by a pack of lions.

And you will be attacked by a pack of lions :/

The dwarf is handy for the Dwarven Pit (imagine that) and in my experience tends to get a few more health points than the warrior; the magician is just an all-around asskicking monstrosity.

And a maybe not so obvious benefit to replacing your rogues (dwarf will handle the lockpicks, and money is no issue after the first day, so make a rogue, do the stealing, and then drop the rogue forever before you leave the starting city and you never miss the rogue) and warriors with elves is that you get a *lot* more health. A lot. My melee elves have over 50 health at level 4, and still pack 25 mana to get off a few lightnings or Fulminictus spells when it counts. If you modify your melee settings to be weighted heavily toward hitting instead of parrying and are careful with the tactics to make sure your tank of a dwarf gets surrounded by four enemies and your elves and magician (who should be fully defensive and has an unbreakable weapon - yay) have one apiece, then there should only be three fights in the whole game that give you real trouble, and I won't spoil them for you.

Also, if you're interested in maxing out your party and don't care if it's cheesy, you'll get no better results than you can get with automatic class picking as a sylvan elf, and rerolling until you get great scores, then modifying as needed. I only did that this most recent time, but four of my characters have all 13s but one stat - and, as you'll find out, with the exception of Superstition, none of your negative factors have any effect if they're 5 or lower.

I know this is heavily cheesy, but I *did* start off saying I'm trying to mi/max the hell out of these games ^_^ A man has to have his hobbies.


EDIT: I should point out some useful skills. Two elves should top off Survival, or one elf and your druid. Then have either an elf or your druid (if you have one) get a lot of Herb Lore. When you camp outside, your two survivalists will keep you set on food and water (by late game I was throwing food away all the time because I had so much it encumbered my party greatly) and herbs are a lifesaver. Keep Four-Leaf Loneberries at the top slot of your disease-curing party-member's inventory so it doesn't choose something much better, like whirlweeds, to cure the cases of Numbskull you'll get a lot of. Have two characters with a high Cure Wounds, two with a high Cure Disease, and one with a decent Cure Poison (as long as your magician gets Pure and clear above -3 you don't need to worry about much else, honestly). You need at least one character with a high Physical Control *and* Self Control skill, one with a good Track skill, and for Shadows over Riva, one with a good Bind skill. Having Hide or Stealth on several characters will also help out a lot in Riva. For spells, treat them like spices - only use just enough, never overdo it. Acceleratus, Eagle Eye, Lightning, Magic Armor, and Fulminictus for Elves. Lightning, Evil Eye, Master of Animals, Conjure Elemental (it won't be of any use until level 7 but when you get it, it's worth it), and maybe Astral Theft for Druids. Lightning, Ignifaxus, Heptagon, Duplication, and maybe Skeletarius, Darkness' Power, and Paralyze for Magicians. Noncombat spells as you can get them - especially conjure/banish spirits (druids) and freeze/melt solid (magician). If you have someone good with lockpicks, Foramen is less useful. And teleport is awesome but I somehow never use it. :/

From my own point of view, you can also play the game just for fun, and not have to worry about making the best party. I'd say just keep it varied with fighters, a rogue, and some magic users. If you know the game rules and how things work, you'll be fine in the game.

When I first played them, I was so young, I had no idea what I was doing in them. I barely knew what the game rules meant, but I loved playing through the stories and such. I had party members that I made that did absolutely nothing through the whole games, they couldn't fight, had no useful skills... it was so sad! I was lucky, because I had some good fighters and magic users that helped save the day.

So you can have some fun with your characters too, the games are not as hard as I've seen people say they are. So personally, I'd say, once you know the rules, make what you want for fun :). But balanced parties in these games are definitely the best for a first time play(in my opinion).

With all the said, I hope you enjoy the Realms games :). Still the top of my list of favourite games to date.

But what are good fighters with high strength or courage? I seem to get in battles and miss a lot while the bandits hit me more.

For hitting more often you have to attack the same opponent with several party members so he doesn't get a parry chance on all attacks.
It doesn't matter if you get hit, it's only bad if you take damage.

that will happen since the equipment isnt very good at the start :)

This can be changed easily. There are a lot of shops for buying equipment in town. The first thing to do is searching the leader and get the quest to find the BoD, you'll be allowed to get equipped in a special location then.
And there are also ways to make money without fighting.

ive taken t he quest dit a bit of exploit by selling the gear from the starting party created a party bought 4 chain sets i got 2 warriors 1 dwarf and forgot the name that barbarian like 1 magician and an ice elf and now i have it easier. I just surround the brigands and slash the light of them but i see the start dungeon that 1 in town are the melee classes more then enough mostly my magician and ice elf are on guard while my meleers do all the work oh yeah the magician is the light bearer of the party :)

I decided to go with the included pre-gen party because I wanted to make sure that I could finish the game. I didn't want to be in the middle of a game and get stuck because I didn't have a certain type of character.

bah :-) 2warriors, 2 elves, 2 magicians (combat+domination),

one warrior can be replaced by dwarf. I played the game (star trail) for maybe 12 times and I played with different spellcasters. But 2 magicians I found the best. Maybe 1 druid and 1 magician because druid has astral theft spell. So I stay out of temple of tsa and do meditation and astral theft and then praying :-). Cheap mana repleshing :). Elves were specialist at getting food + water. Magicians were specialist in herbology. This combination shall work for everyone. Be sure to play on advanced mode because there are a few things that should be mastered during playthrough... make your life a lot easier. (transversalis, foramen, summon elemental, evil eye, horriphobus, paralyse... ) :-)
i think that you can always replace character in temple and then replace it back in time of need...without loosing skilled character... :-/

and I remember that characters with praios deity gain +1 to courage :-D (good for low superstition)