Just wanted to share my new party. It started out out of pure curiosity about how the four caster classes compare to each other. For example, I never had a fully develeoped Psionic, since my Monks never really maxed out their Psionic skills and focused on combat instead. Since there are only 4 specialized casters, the party also has only 4 characters. I originally played with the idea to keep it simple and add something like a Fighter and a Rogue as frontline guards, but that seemed too simple, obvious and not "clean" enough. :)


Here's the party in detail:

1. Male Dwarf Priest (front)
=> Max out VIT and PIE - then INT, STR, DEX
This one is my frontline "tank" (not really, but as close as it gets); he wears a shield, weapons will be Maces only (eventually Diamond Eyes for short and Mauler/Vampire Chain for extended range)
His first action is usually casting Bless, then maybe some buff on himself, followed by either combat or ranged magic.

2. Male Gnome Alchemist (flank)
=> Pump VIT to 80, max out INT and PIE - then SPD and DEX
Not really a flank guard, but still. Armed with some extended ranged staff (there are some good staffs in the game)
For a long time he is not the fastest character, so he will just focus on offensive magic.

3. Female Elf Psionic (flank)
=> Pump VIT to 80, max out INT and PIE - then SPD and SEN/DEX
Not quite as vital as the Alchemist (and with worse armor), but she has to do. Armed with a staff as well.
Due to her high initiative she will cast Soul Shield and/or Haste as the initial actions in combat.

4. Female Faerie Mage (center)
=> Pump VIT to 60, max out INT and PIE, then SPD and SEN/DEX
Of course her hitpoints are abysmal, but she is well protected from all sides, and Faeries are hard to hit and well resistant against most magical realms. She will also carry a staff.
She will be the first to cast Element Shield, followed by either Freeze Flesh/All or simple destruction.


Some differences to "normal" parties I noticed so far:

- Offensive magic is way more important. In normal parties you often incapacitate the monsters to make it easier for your Fighters and such to kill them. Here you have to do the work yourself.

- Protective buffs are more important. For example, I never really used "Guardian Angel" in my past games - here it is really nice to protect your frontline guard. On the other hand, buffs like Haste or Superman are bit less usefull (they are still great, but the benefit is mainly for initiative, not for combat).

- Also stuff like Hypnotic Lure becomes more usefull. You want the monsters at a distance and sort of close together - this is the way to achieve this.

- Huge numbers of weaker opponents are easier than single opponents with lots of hit points. It works great to take out dozens of Wasps with a couple of Fireball/Fire Bombs/Noxious Fumes etc., but a single strong golem is more of a challenge. However strong your single-opponent-spell is, it only hits once per round and will never reach the damage inflicted by a trained Fighter.

- You have to rest OFTEN, since your fuel (spell points) is limited. Alternatively you can carry along tons of Magic Nectar or Mana Stones, but that's limited as well.

One other tip: Against low level enemies with high HP, instant death effects (when you get them) are incredibly effective. Status ailments are also useful in that situation; paralyzing (or webbing) an elemental could buy enough time for you to finish the battle and the elemental to be unsummoned.

Speaking of which, against enemies that don't use status spells against you, Summon Elemental is handy.

One interesting variant on this party is to add a Bard and a Gadgeteer; this way you get both types of stamina casting, but your party still is focused on magic.

One other thing: I think you over-value vitality. The effects of Vitality on maximum HP are actually rather small; IMO getting Powercast sooner is more important.

I was wondering how you handle the group of hard enemies like juggernauts, rattkins and lastly rapax with only these spellcasters. Or did you include NPC as well??

Yeah, Instant Death stuff is nice (lower level provided), but you don't get it before mid-game (I think the Instant Death spell is the first one).

I thought about the Bard/Gadgie variant, and it hat its merits, but I wanted it to be clean and simple this time.

Regarding Vitality... I don't know. Usually I very much ignore Vitality - if I consider it at all it is during creation. However, this time I went with a bunch of rather fragile beings, and the extra HP do really come in handy. In small parties with only one frontline character, individual characters naturally get hit more often.
I know that the character class and level have a higher impact on the HP, but for the Priestit is still ca. 20% more HP (around level 10-20) if I bring it to 100 (plus the Iron Skin skill, which should be good for the frontline guy) compared to leaving it at creation level (which was roughly 70). Maybe it is negligable, maybe not.

And I still did focus on INT from the start for most characters (maybe this wasn't clearly stated above). So first pump VIT+INT (3 pts each) until VIT is at the desired level, then INT+PIE, then whatever.
Only for the Priest I focused on PIE first, which COULD have been suboptimal (could very well be INT would have been better even for the Priest), but at least now my "wannabe tank" has Iron Skin and Iron Will (now focusing on INT and SPD), with all the other having or aiming at Powercast.

Another point regarding differences to "usual" games (i.e. complete and balanced party): In this case after Arnika I went straight to Trynton. Usually I first retreat to the Monastery (with the Wheel Key), then get the Diamond from the Northern Wilderness and also enlist at the Umpani Camp (plus getting a Flag). That way it is more streamlined, and I focus almost entirely on the southern stuff.
In this very game, however, my characters were already quite high level at Arnika, with my Mage already getting to 95 INT (when he did I kept the level-up until Trynton to pump Powercast from the get-go) and my Alchemist being close, so the Fountain was top priority. Juggernauts: Insanity plus radius/cone Fire spells from various characters; of course using the terrain is essential here as well (to only expose the Priest to their hits); sometimes the Priest hast to cast Guardian Angel on himself to be able to take all the hits, but that's fine.

I actually managed to avoid the Rattkins until now (i.e. when I killed the Breeders), and I'm not in Rapax territory yet.

Also Summon Elemental works quite well to distract the opponents. Sometimes even Hypnotic Lure works surprisingly well.

O yeah, actually Dwarf Priest is already good for frontline as dwarf is already has physical resistance, also if you allocate the stat into Pie and Vit,, as both of this stat will give you 2 expert skills, Iron Will and Iron Skin,
Other than that, i think it is possible even without NPC.

Just a quick status update: My party is now level 20, and I have just defeated Nebdar (which was TOUGH). I have done everything except Baijin/Sea Caves, all Rapax stuff, and Ascension Peak, so there's still some ground to cover.

Up to now I have almost exclusively pumped magic skills for my party (also for the Priest), which will change from now on, simply because I cannot pump magic anymore on level-ups.

The party is also decently equiped - more or lest the best each one can have at that point (Priest and Alchemist wear Flak Jackets and Stud Chausses, the Psionic Robes of Enchant, the Mage the Zynaryx Plate; all of them have a Cloak of Many Colors, one Amulet of Healing, and one other Magic Item; Priest is armed with Diamond Eyes/Lithe Buckler, Alchemist with Bonebasher Staff, Psionic with Staff of Doom, Mage with Ebon Staff).

As I said, the fight against Nebdar was the toughtest up to now (the one against the Sorceress Queen I was already quite high level, so that was simple - and Hypnotic Lure is GREAT for that fight). The thing is that Nebdar is almost totally immue to all magic spells, and also the Vampiric Wraiths could only really be damaged with Banish to some extend. So I had to solve it physically, which my Party is not really great for. Summon Elemental usually is the solution in situations like that, but in those dungeones you can only cast it with power level 3.
So I used up almost all my Mana Stones to recharge my Divine Magic (for Banish), still summoned those puny Elementals, and luckily had 1 Canned Elemental potion, which worked wonders (potions still work on power level 6 or whatever the potion was, despite the dungeon).

But those tough single battles aside (also the Golems in the same dungeon were much tougher than with melee parties) the party works surprisingly well. It is also a nice experience because I use spells I usually never use, like Guardian Angel, Razor Cloak, Body of Stone, or Hypnotic Lure.

One thing that is quite obvious (it was obvious before, but even more so with this party) is that those shiny level 7 Fire spells are not really that great in this game. Nuclear Blast was amazing in earlier Wizardrys, but here it has the problem that in all later areas mosters are either especially resistant to Fire (Rapax), or you can't use Fire spells at all (underwater). This is also true for Prismic Chaos, which is more fun than it's really helpful due to its randomness (but yeah, it's great fun). On the other hand, stuff like Death Wish is WAY better than in earlier WIzardrys (I'm talking about W6 and W7 here, no idea about the games before those), since most monsters are least resistant against Divine magic. However, Death Wish has the issue that the Priest rarely has Power Cast if you focus on PIE instead of INT (which might be a mistake), which somewhat diminishes the usefulness of this spell.

If you exclude those specific situations you mentioned, Fire actually works better than other elements, as enemies tend not to resist it as much as the others. So while it won't work well against Rapax and fire creatures (and can't be cast underwater in the first place), it will work well the rest of the time (Bayjin is one place where it's quite useful, for example).

In Wizardry 5, Death Wish (called Bakadi) only targeted a group of enemies. It was most useful at higher levels when your status spells had a better chance of being successful. However, by the time you can cast the spell in the first place, the game is almost over. (With that said, I found that spell to be useful in Wizardry Gaiden 3, where status spells ignore enemy magic resistance for some reason.) On the other hand, Wizardry 5 had Labadi, which, if it gets past enemy magic resistance, would almost kill the target (even those trees with ~700 HP) and heal the caster at the same time.

Death Wish spell did not actually exist earlier in the series, but you still had Death (Badi). Also, Wizardry 1-4 have Makanito (instant death on enemies level 7 or lower, ignores magic resistance except in 4 (if you have actually played Wizardry 4, you know how it feels to be on the receiving end of the spell), targets all enemies) and Lakanito (instant death on a group, less likely to work on higher level enemies).

Wizardry 5 actually did have Prismic Chaos, which was the only status spell in that game that targeted all enemies.

With all this said, I really do miss Malor (the portal spells just aren't the same) and (Ma)Haman (Sacrifice a level to kill all enemies? Well, maybe, I'll have to think about that...) from the earlier games in the series. The Nebdar fight is actually a reference to the Werdna fight in the first Wizardry.

Boss's name an anagram of one of the developer's names? Check.
Boss accompanied by vampires? Check.
Boss nearly immune to all magic? Check.
Boss drops an amulet? Check.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what name Nebdar is an anagram of.