After writing a previous post, I began thinking about how a true optimal starting party would play out. Because my current party started to drag with the level grinding, I decided to give a few parties a shot to see which one felt better at the start of the game. Unfortunately, the first party ended up having a few accidents and made me realize that I lacked understanding for how certain races (* cough * Faeries * cough *) behaved. As a result, I didn’t get far but the seeds were planted for revising that party. In this post, I will go through the thought experiment and talk about the revised party.
First, let me pull up the original party that I came up with from my previous blog post.
- Male Dracon Fighter
- Male Rawulf Monk
- Female Human Valkyrie
- Female Elf Valkyrie
- Female Elf Ranger
- Female Faerie Bard
So this was the original party. What ended up happening was that I accidentally added my Female Elf Monk from my main party (which I backed up). I figured the damage wasn’t bad until I looked closely at the Faerie Bard and realized the real mistake I made: Faeries barely can use anything in this game. Effectively, Faeries work well with Ninjas, Monks and spell casters because of their limited armor and weapon choices. While they have higher speeds and spell point rejuvenation, their penalties for carrying capacity (which is monstrous), low strength (which is even lower for a female) and vitality simply make anything but the aforementioned classes a liability.
I did manage to get this party to level 3 and they survived fine. However, along the way, I learned that Rangers are mostly useless in this scenario because they can’t Hide well and don’t gain good spells for a while. That means the party would be extremely vulnerable until at least level 3 where the two Valkyries gain some healing. But at that level, their spell prowess is quite weak and most of their focus would be out of combat healing. Though the Bard has low hit points and limited armor abilities, the Faerie version does gain some natural AC and would fire off her “free” Sleep spells just before anyone else could get make their attacks. The real vulnerable character though is the Monk. The Monk can survive early on but requires a healer in the early levels while they slowly improve their Ninjitsu. Having low hit points and being part of the first three slots (most likely the #2 position), the Monk becomes too vulnerable and feels fragile where every fight ends up being somewhat of a nail biter. Furthermore, the Psionic spell school just isn’t appealing enough early on to make it worth taking a Monk at that stage. In the end, I scrapped this party since I didn’t see a point progressing further than level 3.
With those lessons, I modified the party a bit which now looks like this:
- Male Dracon Fighter (hit a great roll of 18 bonus)
- Female Human Valkyrie #1
- Female Elf Valkyrie #2
- Female Elf Ranger
- Male Felpurr Bard
- Male Dwarf Priest
I think most of this party had at least a 16 bonus score in rolls. In a few cases (namely the Bard and Priest), I managed a 16 but rolled two more characters in the hope of landing an 18. I ended up getting 17 bonus rolls for both and compromised.
In terms of their ability thus far, here’s my assessment:
- Male Dracon Fighter – Actually, a decent choice early on because of the high hit points, high strength, Breath attack that can be useful early on especially without a solid group-wide damaging spell and very fast leveler. My hope was to try and push him towards a Bishop but I got a little sloppy in the leveling process and missed out on trying to obtain higher attribute points for Intelligence and Piety. So if I want to change his class to a Bishop, I’ll have to wait a little after level 10, which might hurt since that’s when the mid-game experience gap starts to really kick in. Hopefully, as a Fighter class, that gap won’t hurt too badly though.
- Female Human Valkyrie #1 – Very average attribute scores (I might’ve just used the one from my previous party) with a higher than average starting strength. I probably should have tried for an 17 or 18 roll, but I ran out of patience. Valkyries are great early on for the armor, easy Theology points and fast leveling. If there was a better Fighter class for what you get, I would have chosen that instead. I might switch her to a Monk around level 10 and not deal with the higher level Priest spells to gain Ninjitsu and Kirijitsu besides Psionic spells and later come back to Priest spells by changing her into a Bishop where she can focus more on Mage/Thaumaturgy and finish up her Priest spells.
- Female Elf Valkyrie #2 – This one hit a better bonus roll (maybe 18) for certain. The biggest issue is the starting strength penalty and low vitality which I put more points into. I could have used a better race but I see this Valkyrie finishing the game as a Ranger to make use of the Elven Bow. I’m not sure what to do with her during the mid-game. While it’s possible that I swap her to a Bard, the low attribute requirements make Bards less appealing for a class swap. I’ll probably just keep her as a Valkyrie to gain the higher end Priest spells then swap her to something else.
- Female Elf Ranger – The original thought process behind the Ranger was to be the one handling Skulduggery duty. Turns out that the game wants to automatically dump points into the useless Scouting skill as well as her Bow skill. That makes obtaining precious skill points for distribution early on a real pain and anything remaining has to go into Alchemy. That said, the nice thing about the Ranger I discovered is that she has pretty good hit points and can be a melee character. Her armor choices are pretty poor though so the only way to utilize a Ranger as a melee is when she builds up her Ninjitsu to an acceptable level for backstabbing. Otherwise, she’s too vulnerable compared to a Monk or Ninja as those classes at least gain AC bonuses when their Ninjitsu score improves. I don’t want to give up on the Ranger too quickly as I have no idea what I can use to immediately replace her. And no, I don’t want a 3rd Valkyrie. Lastly, the Ranger is the slowest leveling character in this party which isn’t bad all things considered.
- Male Felpurr Bard – First, I now know why the Bard is imperative for a starting party in Wizardry 6: the “free” Sleep spell. To really make use of the “free” Sleep spell though, you need a high speed character and both the Felpurr and Faerie do a great job. The difference though is that you do need to put at least 2 additional points into Speed to make the Felpurr competitive with a Faerie. However, I feel slightly safer with the Felpurr as now I can use more equipment. With that in mind, I can’t see the Felpurr Bard lasting longer than the mid-game. The main issue I’ve encountered with the Bard is very low hit points. Skulduggery would be another problem but I can eventually offset that if I stick with the Ranger. I think by levels 9-10 if the Bard turns out to be too squishy (since more mobs can attack back row party members), then I could easily swap the Bard to a Samurai and thereby start gaining the critical Kirijitsu ability and better hit points. Gear-wise, I can buy the basic gear from Queequeg or Smitty (except a Wakazashi). The transition from Bard to Samurai as a mid-game profession change works well because you should be spending your skill points on Thaumaturgy anyway so you’ll continue progressing that skill. And you’ll gain Ninjitsu for a Samurai. Finally, the attribute reset isn’t that bad for a Felpurr in moving to a Samurai. So there are some decent options in the mid-game that aren’t impossible to obtain.
- Male Dwarf Priest – Originally, I considered using a Gnome Priest as my race but it really depends on how the mid-game ends up. Right now, I’m finding the Priest to be a pretty decent melee fighter (actually doing better damage than my Ranger) but that’s mostly owed to spending more points in strength. Also, his hit points is fairly good for his level which again is owed to placing more points into Vitality. Because some of your skill points gained per level is automatically distributed into a favored skill (or skills), the Priest receives Theology for that which means you’ll quickly be able to get higher Theology fast. This is far better than my original Bishops as I intend to grab Cure Poison at the first chance.
That said, part of the reason I swapped the Gnome aspect to a Dwarf was the idea of doing a mid-game swap to a Lord. Dwarves have better strength and vitality so as long as I can get his Personality up higher, the swap becomes very doable. Then that frees up my Fighter for something else. In swapping to a Lord mid-game, I can finish up this character’s Priest/Theology spells/skills much faster as well as trade the Fighter in terms of equipment. For the end game, I’ll probably choose this character to become a Monk. He won’t have many fancy spells but he’ll be a hard hitter.
So the main issue is dealing with low level Skulduggery. I’m disappointed that neither the Bard nor Ranger receive enough points to make Skulduggery work better. It sucks that the early game has so many locked doors and trapped chests because there’s simply not enough opportunities to improve Skulduggery. Like with other games, generally after an encounter you would find a trapped chest. In those games, you don’t have to worry about your skill level since those games might use your character’s base level to determine your success. Also, many of the low level chests and doors are horribly unforgiving so your only chance of success is to save and retry until you get lucky. In a few cases, you can’t even do that.
The Ranger has been particularly frustrating, feeling almost completely useless in the early stages of the game. Bows just aren’t great starting weapons as the damage is quite low. I did buy more Elm Arrows which sucks because that means this is an issue I’ll be constantly dealing with. And I flat out refuse to put any points into Scouting; this skill is probably the best candidate to get rid of if the game could cut out one skill completely. I wish the Ranger had some mid tier armor that would allow encourage them to do some melee. There is a late game melee weapon for Rangers but I don’t see a point the way Rangers have been setup.
That said, I honestly don’t know what I’d replace the Ranger with. I could go back to a Ninja but you get the same problems as before. If I ended up doing that, I’d probably change the Fighter’s race to something that makes transitioning into a Bishop much easier as the Ninja would be the Dracon in the party. I think if there was a concept of a Barbarian class in this game (i.e. Fighter/Thief with Skulduggery, Ninjitsu, high hit points, Kirijitsu, no spells and limited armor) that would have been a better choice than a Ranger. Alas, the game has very limited classes, some of which just feel more like a bad Ultima 3 copy.
If I did try the Ninja concept out, the revised party would end up looking like this:
- Male Dwarf Fighter
- Female Human Valkyrie (would reroll to get better starting bonus)
- Male Dracon Ninja (repurposed from other party)
- Female Elf Valkyrie
- Male Felpurr Bard
- Male Rawulf Priest
By ditching the Ranger completely, you can focus more Skulduggery skills early on with the Ninja. The gear won’t change and the Ninja’s AC improves as long as you’re training it up constantly. You still receive Alchemy and have the Dracon’s breath attack which is decent early on. The downsides with the Ninja is that you will progress the game very slowly and their hit points won’t be as good compared with the Valkyrie in that slot. But you won’t have to waste time with Scouting nor deal with Bows and the concept of ammo in the early game.
I did end up switching the Fighter to a Dwarf because of how difficult it is to become a Bishop (without help) as a Dracon during the mid-game. Also, I swapped races from Rawulf to Priest. One idea is to make the Dwarf Fighter a Lord (as was the original plan in being a Priest) then have the Rawulf Priest become a Bishop. Dwarves have good starting Piety so the only attribute you’d need to work on is Personality. If you wanted the Dwarf Fighter to become the Bishop, then you’d need a strict regime of increasing his intelligence at every level which can be rough or put more bonus points into Intelligence early on. Then with the Rawulf, the mid-game swap to a Bishop would be easier since you would have developed enough Priest spells and Theology ahead of time.
I actually prefer the idea of the Dracon Fighter becoming a Bishop because of retaining more physical stats during the class change but you would require help. The only way that could work without “help” (i.e. cheating) is through strict discipline in controlling each stage of leveling for your Fighter in ensuring the Dracon’s Piety and Intelligence increase at each level. That can be very daunting and requires incredible patience. It is doable (you’ll need to hit +Piety at every level until 10) but you’ll be seeing many reloads.
I might end up rerolling the party again and see if I can hit better starting bonuses because I’m simply not feeling the Ranger right now. Perhaps, later on I could swap the Valkyrie into a Ranger but at this moment, I think the Ranger is my Achilles’ Heel. As much as I wanted to avoid prestige classes early on, I’m starting to feel that at least one is necessary to give this party a boost.