Fresh off of a play through of Wizardry 8 I have selected The Temple of Elemental Evil with Circle of 8 new content mod as the source of my next adventure! As I did with Wizardry 8 I will be posting a running progress through my game some just informative and some questions from time to time. The community involvement with my last thread was great and I'm hoping to connect with more like minded games with this classic RPG. Let the adventure begin!

Rolling my party I ended up with the following and have just entered the town of Hommlet.

Neutral Evil Party Alignment

Half-Orc Barbarian
Human Rogue
Ranger
Druid
Wizard

I cant remember the races on most so that will be included in my next update!

I am married have a active kid and a full time job so play time is limited but chat time is somewhat more available. I realize this game has been out for a long time so there are plenty of community resources. I don't plan to re-roll my party as it takes a lot of time just getting started! Input, story's and suggestions always welcome.

Looks like a fairly balanced party. Exactly how good it is depends on your rolls and how you built them.

Make sure you talk to the smithy to get the quest in Welkwood Bog (part of the "extra content" stuff) so you can avoid the tedious and time-consuming fetch quests in Hommlet required to level up.

Here's the party makeup and what stats/feats I ended up with.

Groth - Half-Orc Barbarian

Str 20, Dex 17, Con 18, Int 11, Wis 12, Cha 7

Iron Will Feat.

Seriana - Human Rogue

Str 17, Dex 18, Con 16, Int 15, Wis 15, Cha 12

Armor Proficiency (medium) and Shield Proficiency feats... I was going to make her my off tank and multi-class now I realize that any class I would have crossed her with would have these feats for free so I am stuck with a flawed character not sure what to do with her now as far as multi-class to help melee that wont make these feat choices redundant.

Elowin - Human Ranger

Str 16, Dex 18, Con 16, Int 15, Wis 15, Cha 14

Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot feats and Ranged specialty at level 2.

Tovin - Gnome Druid

Str 13, Dex 16, Con 18, Int 13, Wis 18, Cha 12

Nature Sense Feat

Canthazul the Red - Elf Wizard

Str 10, Dex 17, Con 13, Int 18, Wis 14, Cha 17

Combat Casting Feat... This is the party Diplomat/Talker and as such has taken levels in Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate At the moment he mentions getting the Head of a Giant but did not give me a map location for Welwood Bog. I will check again when next I play.

Very good! Pick up the Combat Reflexes, Power Attack, Cleave, and Great Cleave feats (in that order) as soon as you can. This gives you a huge number of free attacks on your opponent's turn and really makes your barbarian into a monster. You can easily multi-class a few levels of Fighter if that feels a bit too extreme for you. Have the wizard cast enlarge person on him for extra fun :-) It's even worse than that; your dexterity bonus to AC will be reduced by wearing medium armor, so you literally get zero benefit from wearing a heavier suit of armor (but you do get all the penalties!) You'll want to be using light armor on this character anyways.

The shield might be useful at low levels, but at higher levels it's less useful. Once you get mithral equipment shield proficiency is literally meaningless. The reason for this is that the penalty for equipping a shield that you're not proficient with is that it applies its armor check penalty to your attack rolls. A light or heavy shield made out of mithral has an armor check penalty of 0, hence once you can afford mithral equipment everyone has de-facto shield proficiency for free. Looks fine. Nature Sense is a Druid class feature, not a feat. In any case, even if you completely wasted your level 1 feat this character will be fine with stats like those. Combat Casting is kinda meh, but it's not a wasted feat. Spell Focus and Spell Penetration and their greater versions are the big ones you want, since they decrease the chances your spells will fail.

What specialization and opposition schools did you pick? I'm guessing you probably went generalist. That's doable, but it's going to mean you'll have more pressure to rest more often. It's been a while; I can't remember the exact sequence. You certainly want to avoid the tedious fetch quests if you can.

I don't really want to restart but this character seems messed up the more I think about it would it be worth a restart at this point based only on this character? I think the characters are saved as ones I can reuse and just trade this one out at party generation? I don't remember there being a chance to select a specialty I usually do in these games. If I reroll my party because of the Rogue I will see about switching this one out too.

That is correct; your characters should be saved so you can reuse them in future playthroughs. You can also go to the guest book in the inn in Hommlet to swap out party members in your existing playthrough. However, any party member added will be level 1 with no equipment so this will only work if you're not too far into the game as yet.

Here's my suggestion on a Rogue build:

Dex > Con > Str > Wis > Int > Cha

level 1 - Rogue - Combat Reflexes, Iron Will
level 2 - Fighter - Weapon Finesse
level 3 - Rogue - Weapon Proficiency (Spiked Chain)

Keep adding Rogue levels after this point. Most melee weapons require you to get in closer than you'd like, but ranged weapons are very difficult to get sneak attacks with. Reach weapons give you a happy medium, with double range on your melee attacks. The feat required to use the spiked chain is well spent to allow you to both have reach and be able to use weapon finesse. I ran an Elf with this build; it has a higher dexterity score, which is cool, but had the unfortunate side-effect of requiring me to keep my fighter and rogue levels balanced due to the favored class rule. Going with human means you can just take 1 level of fighter then never look back.

Except that, unlike in, say, Wizardry 8, your new character will gain experience faster due to being lower level than the rest of your party. Hence, the new character can catch up and even surpass the longer term party members in experience. (One thing to note: the game won't let you get enough experience to gain 2 levels at once, so you will want to level up the character once the character would be close to gaining the second level.)

One thing you can do is create a mage, have her create a bunch of scrolls, then replace her with a new mage who chooses different spells and scribes the old mage's scrolls into her spellbook.

Decided to reroll the Rogue and the Wizard.

Seriana will leave the party at the Hommlet Inn and..

Bella Black - Human Rogue

Str 16
Dex 18
con 16
Int 15
Wis 15
Cha 11

Combat Reflexes and Dodge Feats

Open Locks, Sleight of Hand, Tumble, use Magic Item, Spot, Listen, Hide, Appraise, Move silently and Disable Device Skills. I took 4 points of Perform and have since found that that is only a bard skill so I'm not sure if its worth a reroll just to change perform to Search,


Canthazul the Red will run off with Seriana and...

Dreavia - Elf Mage (Divination Specialty with No Illusion School)

Str 11
Dex 18
Con 13
Int 18
wis 14
Cha 17

Spell Penetration Feat.

Spellcraft and Concentration skills as well as Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, sense Motive and Gather Info skills to be the party diplomat. rogue seems like the best choice for a diplomat with so many social skills being class skills. Thanks for the info! that saves me a big headache. Even Thou I am not very far I already had to restart once due to turning off the auto save on screen load with Circle of 8 mod per there suggestion.

Thanks for the info! Is that weapon proficiency something a fighter would get automatically? or is it more a specialization like bastard sword? I was considering one level of fighter as a human rogue.

A spiked chain is an exotic weapon, so no, the fighter doesn't get proficiency with it automatically.

Edit:
Caveat: I haven't played this particular D&D based game, though I've played BG1/2, IWD, and NWN. YMMV a little.

Even if that feat were Fighter automatic, you shouldn't be able to select it at 3rd level if you took Fighter for level 2 (you'd already have it by level 3). Darvin has shown to be pretty knowledgeable in other of the D&D games, so I'm confident he won't steer you wrong here (not knowingly, anyway).

There are generally 3 categories of weapons in 3rd ed D&D: simple, martial, and exotic. Most characters get Simple Prof, fighter types (fighter, paladin, ranger, etc.) also get Martial, and no one starts with any Exotic proficiencies. Spiked Chain is exotic, so anyone that wants to use it effectively will need to spend a feat. I seem to recall that sorcerers are the odd class out, with a selection of weapon proficiencies but not all simple weapons.

From what I have read, glaive is better than spiked chain in this game, as it has the same advantages, including the ability to strike adjacent foes. (The d20 SRD mentions not being able to hit adjacent foes with that weapon, but that doesn't match how it actually implemented in this game.)

Remember, games based on Pencil and Paper games don't always implement the rules correctly. (Another example is in Unlimited Adventures, where Power Word, Kill checks maximum, not current, HP.)

Technically speaking unarmed attacks and natural attacks are in a separate category, but those aren't relevant to most characters.

Barbarian/Fighter/Paladin/Ranger - all martial weapons
Rogue/Bard - all simple weapons plus a limited list of martial weapons
Cleric/Sorcerer - all simple weapons
Druid/Monk/Wizard - proficient with a specific list of weapons only

Yes, in ToEE all reach weapons can strike adjacent foes, so the primary advantage of spiked chain from pen and paper is lost here. It's still the only finessable reach weapon, though, which is very useful for a Rogue that's going to be getting most damage from sneak attacks.

None of them are perfect, but ToEE is probably the most faithful of the bunch.

Thanks for all the info
Thanks for your input.
Thanks for the Info.

On the Topic of Wizards:

I re-rolled the wizard and just realizes specialization does not work the same here as it did in Icewind dale 1& 2 the bonus spell I get per level is school specific! thinking Divination is a bad choice then maybe I want to go for Evocation or Conjuration. That would mean another re-roll...

Check the spells available at each level before making your choice (I don't know what they are, so I can't help you here). If you're going to be keeping an Identify, etc. ready anyway, you might consider keeping that school.

Conjuration and Transmutation are the safest picks, simply because they have a greater variety of spells to pick from than other schools.

Here is a very useful chart showing a wizard's spell availability, and color-coding which spells are available to other classes to help you see what other party members can cover. I ran a Conjurer Wizard with an Enchantment/Evocation opposition on my playthrough. I think I'd have done Necromancy/Evocation opposition in hindsight, as I never ended up using any Necromancy but would have liked some of those enchantment spells.