I did consider these as well. However, they both seem sub-par to me as compared to Mage.

The only real advantages I could think of are:
1) Heal Wounds. But I think I can manage until my Valk's get it (I will save scum resting if necessary).
2) Cannot be silenced (Alchemist). I'm hoping with three Faerie mages (high speed), I'll be able to take down most of these types of enemies before they can silence me!
3) Mindread (Psionic). As useful as it may be with NPCs, I don't think it's worth a whole character slot.
4) More variety of spells will target different immunities. Mages do have a variety of spells though, likely I could find at least one which works in most situations from their list. And with three mages, I could brute-force my way (three sub-optimal spells will still add up).

A lord would auto-allocate a sum of about 5-6 skill points into diplomacy during the whole game, so theology will be maxed out about 1 level later than with the Valkyries. This shouldn't matter much since there are many other divine spellcasters.
Those points in diplomacy aren't totally wasted since it helps to make some NPCs friendly enough to talk or even trade with you. Lord and Bishop also get their charisma added to the skill checks when negotiating.
The main Lord disadvantage is that you need a male Rawulf with a roll of 18 to get 15 pie for the mana regeneration bonus and it will take about until level 13 to get spd and dex up to 12. The lord's starting equipment is better than the Valkyrie's.

A hybrid gets about as much academic skillpoints in 5 levels as a pure caster in 3, so a Valkyrie will get the priest spells still fast enough for your needs. But a bishop is about as good as a mage in offensive casting (slightly slower regeneration rate for fire and water spells but more damaging earth and mental spells) and therefore still a good mage replacement.

If you want diversity and try out 6 different classes for comparing roll for 15-18 with your characters you could alter your party into Dwarf Valkyrie, Rawulf Lord, Felpurr (or Dracon, Gnome, Dwarf, Lizardman) Ninja, Faerie Monk, Faerie Bishop, Faerie Mage.
Access to all 4 spell schools and the ninja can also handle thievery. Will be weaker in early and middle game since the other classes won't get offensive power as fast as the mage.
Monks and Ninjas are great for me since they don't depend on weapons or armor at all, even naked they will reach better AC than any other class with the best armor and their hands and feet are extremely damaging dualwielded weapons.
The disadvantage is that they need a lot of training in combat until both their hiding and unarmed skill are maxed but the other classes don't start with super armor and weapons either. If trained properly they'll be better in combat than the 2nd and 3rd best equipped Valkyrie almost all time. If you take a monk/ninja you don't sacrifice a character slot for mindread/immunity to silence, you get an awesome warrior with the bonus on top.


But such a party will only be a mix and nothing special like 3 Valkyries and 3 Mages.

Just looked at the offensive spells in the spell list, and here are some observations:

Fire has Fireball and Fire Bomb, which are about the same, but Fireball is lower level and cheaper, and therefore superior. (If you plan on using lots of fire magic, make sure to pick a fire spell early so you can start gaining spell points sooner.) Psionic Fire, learned by the Psionic, is actually the strongest 2nd level attack spell; in other words, Psionics are better offensively than Mages early on (Psionic Fire is 1-8, Magic Missile only 1-7).

Water has Iceball, which is the strongest attack spell that targets a group. Mage spellbook only, but it means that anyone who wants to focus on offensive magic will want to take a water spell (like Frost) early.

Air spells do less damage, but there are some that cause Nausea while doing damage, which might come in handy. Stink Bomb hits only 3 enemies, but it does as much damage as Noxious Fumes (which is higher level and more expensive). Shrill Sound is useful early for its ability to hit an entire group at power 1, but at high levels you don't need that. Deadly Poison is an interesting spell that sadly didn't make it into Wizardry 8.

From Earth, Blades > Whipping Rocks, unless your level is low and hitting the entire group is more important than raw damage. That means that Priests are better off than Mages in terms of offensive damage from this realm.

Only Psionics get mental attack spells, but notably Psionic Blast causes both damage and insanity at the same time to potentially an entire group.

From Divine, two things of note: 1. Make Wounds is the strongest 1st level attack spell, which might not be what you'd expect. 2. Magic Missile isn't as good as Psionic Fire, and it is never capable of hitting the entire group (at power 7 it only hits 8 enemies). On the other hand, if you can find decent rechargeable spellcasting items, Recharge Item (available to both Mages and Priests at 90 Thaumaturgy/Theology) could be useful if you save first.

In conclusion:
Mages get the best raw damage, particularly from Fire and Water.
Priests get the best Earth attack spell, surprisingly, as do Psionics.
Alchemists are strong in Air, though their most damaging spell (level <7) is a Fire spell.
Psionics get a good 2nd level Fire spell, and their strongest attack spell is Blades, but they get the nice Psionic Blast spell (damage + insanity to group).

Note that this analysis excludes things like resistance, or the power of cloud spells which might be useful in longer combats, or instant death spells (are they useful in Wizardry 7?).

My experience is that they are not. They are very costly and rarely work. Moreover, offensive damaging magic is quite good in W7, which makes the instant death spells even more useless in comparison.

I’ve now finished the other game I was playing, so time to really dive into this one! After much consideration (thank you to everyone for your help and suggestions) … I decided to go with my original party idea! I decided that adding balance and variety was going against the spirit of what I wanted, if my goal was to create a diverse/balanced party then I would do so, no half-ways.

So, I present to you my party:

The Dwarf Valkyries: RED, MOKEY, and WEMBLEY;
and the Faerie Mages: COTTER[pin], WINGNUT, and GRANNY [Cantilever].

(My W6 party were named after characters from “The Muppet Show”, so I decided to go for something a little different this time :D)

I also didn’t take my own advice on rerolls, I figured since I spent so much time researching I may as well spend some time rolling too, so rerolled until I got a 16+ bonus for all characters so I could get pie+pie+vit to 42+ for everyone (vit 16+ for the Valkyries).

Nice party :-)
Keep us informed about their progress.


Some starting advice (only game mechanics, no spoilers):

Make sure your Faeries don't attack from the back and throw away their sticks.
You can send them to the front line for six physical attacks per round when their spells are used up or you want to retreat an injured Valkyrie.
I'd put all academic skill points into theology or thaumaturgy. If you find and want to use an journey map kit for the automap 10 mapping skill is enough to use it effectively. Give this skill to a mage and don't raise it above 10 before thaumaturgy is maxed.
Try to get swimming skill up to 10 quickly for everyone, afterwards you can increase it by simply entering and leaving the water when stamina is full. Don't bother with oratory, it will raise on its own by casting spells in combat.
Climbing should be around 30 when you need it but this will be late in the game so it's worth having a Valkyrie invest heavily into scouting.
When you find an unidentified stack of wands in a chest don't identify them, have a mage use them from inventory in combat to get a free rise of the artifacts skill.

Thanks for the tips.

So far I've just been wandering around the forest a bit, haven't got anywhere yet. Also, after a flash of inspiration I renamed "COTTER[pin]" to "COTRPIN" :).

I wasn't planning on using mapping skill, I actually like to hand-draw my own maps for these types of games :). Having said that, I took a peek at the forest map and wow, I won't be drawing that one out by hand, I'll use an online version. I'm already regretting not taking Direction as a starting spell, I've been lost a few times so far!!

I was thinking of increasing Scout for all my characters, there isn't anything else for them to spend physical points on after I've increased Swim and Climb if I don't need to bother with Oratory. If I have multiple characters with Scout, does that increase my chances of finding stuff or does the game just check the character with the highest score?

Regarding Artifacts skill, just using wands is enough to get this skill high enough, so I don't need to put any points into it at all?

Is it worth sacrificing some Theology or Thaumaturgy to put some points in Diplomacy for one character?

You don't need artifacts skill, you can cast identify instead. But when your mages are maxed out in thaumaturgy around level 15 it won't hurt having one raising it, another specializing in mapping and one in diplomacy. There are only very few unidentified stacks of wands in the game (unlike in W6 it won't work with identified ones), not enough to max the skill for one character.

Neither Mages nor Valkyries start with the Diplomacy skill, if one of your characters has this skill he has already negotiated successfully without it. I would max the casting skills first, just reload if you fail and get attacked.

Also, don't forget that, if you are playing the DOS version, the Charm spell works.

If you are playing Wizardry Gold, Diplomacy and Charm are, from what I have read, broken in the sense that they don't work at all.

Thanks.

I'm playing the DOS version. I'm on Mac, and Boxer (Dos emulator) >>> WINE (Windows emulator).

Play update: I was having some trouble with the Alliphoots in the forest, so I went in a different direction and found a pit/dungeon. I cleared out both levels with no problems, then returned back and smashed the alliphoots to guacamole. My characters are all level 4 now.

I've now been exploring the city. I hadn't found any leads, until I just now rescued a Gorn from prison and he gave me a message to deliver to Orkogre caste. My characters have just reached level 7.

I've been busy the last couple of weeks without a lot of free time to play, but I finally finished exploring the city. There were a number of doors I couldn't get through but I decided to leave them until after I've leveled up a bit.

So I left New City, following the directions I was given... and promptly got lost. I just could not find Orkogre castle! I got to the border of the Gorn lands without a problem, but after that, nothing. I even consulted a walkthrough, but by that point I couldn't even figure out which map I was on because the forest is so large!

At this point I'm wandering around getting constantly pestered by annoying random encounters (normally random encounters don't bother me so much, but in this case because I just wanted to get to the fucking castle, every encounter was simply one frustrating delay after another).

So now I ask myself: "Am I enjoying this game right now? Do I want to go through this every time I travel from A to B?" Answer: No. No I am not enjoying this, nor do I want to go through this again.

So I decided to quit. I'm going to try Wizardry 8 instead and hopefully have better luck :)!

Yeah, Wiz 7 would have been a much better game if the random encounter frequency had been halved.
Also, after New City I don't think there are any "easy" areas to explore. Orkogre and Munkarama (sp?) are natural destionations (depending on where you start, though), but still quite difficult.

I don't think the random encounter is a problem though if you get ready, level up and prepare fully before going out from New City. My problem in Wiz7 is getting lost out of nowhere and get ambushed without getting ready. Fortunately, Guardia's map is totally helpful for me to go where i want to go. i could share with you all part of map of Wiz7.