ADOM Archer vs Paladin

[Majora]

which of these classes should I choose for my first victory? I am a big noob.

And race?

[Shinae]

I could make my own list and it would be different from yours too. It's all about preferences and playstyles. Play what you like and enjoy. Some classes can be harder if you don't know the mechanics of the class. Also you can't really rank races, since they also depend on your playstyle and class choises.

This is the reason why I tried to vote for the paladin earlier too, I enjoy the class and I enjoy the melee. Try different classes and different playstyles. There is no the best.

[errantstar]

adom is definitely easy enough that you can win on literally everything with minmal effort, and yes you can't rank races because other than drake being 100% the best it doesn't matter

[LaserGuy]

Originally posted by ster:

Originally posted by JellySlayer:

snip

stopped reading when i saw barb and beastfighter above monk, let alone duelist

Monk is decent enough once you get to level 12 or so, but they have the among toughest starting game of almost any class. No PV, no true berserk, no money, poor gear. Stats are fairly average. Yeah skillset is good, but skillset is a very marginal factor in deciding whether or not you're going to win the game, and has particularly minimal impact in early game. Likewise, class powers don't really come online until midgame at earliest.

A barbarian can start with double digit PV and be able to hit for twice as much as a monk or duelist at level 1. Yeah, they'll catch up to you in power eventually, but in the parts of the game where it actually matters, Barbarian is much easier.

actually had to do a double take when i saw mindcrafter bottom tier, and posted it to the discord and a couple more guys pointed and laughed

I have to admit, I've never understood the love for mindcrafters among a certain segment of players. Just one of the classes I've never enjoyed playing.

[errantstar]

mindcrafter's pretty much elementalist+, you get infinite casts of some very strong abilities (confusion blast, mind shield, GTB, monster detection and mindblast through walls) being the main ones and the lack of melee penalty helps somewhat also. drake mindcrafter was one of my easiest wins though it was probably helped a lot by a threat room of greater molochs in DH which could be mindblasted to death behind a wall with no danger

i thought barbarian's starting pv was really bad for some reason (it's not if you go troll but troll has so many problems already) but it's still mediocre for a fighter type bc crowning gifts suck (at least they suck consistently)/only 2 decent class powers/absolutely requires going DE or drakeling so that negates the starting PV point

i've touched on why beastfighter is a god awful class but i double checked and it is seriously awful and worse in earlygame than monk: monk has more PV due to their heir gift (+8 +4 robes) if you choose to (gnome can take heir and TH so it's a very viable combo), and starts out with a weapon literally twice as good as bf's 1d4 starting fists. by level 10 bf's unarmed damage is 1d10+7 which is still barely competitive with halberds, let alone 2hs. and at level 16 monk will either have big punch and go raid darkforge for an E2HS or RCT. they can also use aotme but that's "win more" basically.

it seems also that you underrate duelist even though it starts with as much pv as barbarian, but doesn't require playing DE, is significantly faster and stronger, as well as having the best set of crowning gifts in the game (i could justify this properly but basically every single gift is useful, even trusted one because duelist hits so hard it can clear the game with a wet noodle) - it's better than paladin because you will consistently be able to kill everything in melee instead of hacking away with no FW/being a delf/getting justifier 33% of the time and winning.

I don't really care to debate the position of the generic melee class ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of the lower tiers, they all blend in together but imo weaponsmith,assassin, healer are the best of them due to skills, and smithing is stronger than herbs + ws has good skills/crowning/decent start (though drakeling weaponsmith annoyingly has 0 PV)

As for races, they were rated as drakeling alternatives, with the higher tiers having more combos where they'd be worthwhile. So DE/gnome were tier A because picking DE is feat tax for playing bad melees without FW or alertness, while gnome is the best monk race and that's pretty much it, though it might be as strong as ratling in some cases for the low xp penalty. ME was personal bias since their early game is weird (invincible to normal enemies, instadead to traps) but they have notably more EHP than every other character in melee which is all that matters when you get resistances and alertness anyway, Note that ME is complete garbage on any class that doesn't get PV from picking it.

Ratlings are another race with very well spread stats, good life per level/xp penalty and somewhat useful utility skills so you pick them as another race that's good if you have every skill anyway.

Also, there's no reason to ever avoid picking drakeling for casters since none of them have alertness naturally and only necro has food pres, and acid spit makes up for your low spell knowledge early + eating the oracle makes up for it a bit later. So idk why you would ever pick elves and their bad life/level and toughness/str (which actually matter due to potential nerfs, meanwhile oracle goes up to 25 through potential so the difference is minor anyway).

Finally, care to explain why you like hurthling so much? Their godawful str really hurts, but i guess if you always play doomed you want a decent ranged option ASAP


e: this was meant to quote the other post

[LaserGuy]

Maybe I'll say from the outset, my ratings are largely based on "If I were to roll a single character of this class (with optimal race), how likely is this character going to win the game" and "How much scumming is likely needed to achieve this".

S/A class characters I would say I would have a very high chance of succeeding on a first attempt with minimal scumming. The ranks below I would expect probably to either need a couple rerolls, or need a lot of scumming to survive, with increasing amounts as you go lower in the ranks.

I think in general you rate Find Weakness and Alertness much, much higher than I do, which may attribute to a lot of the difference in our rankings.

Originally posted by ster:

mindcrafter's pretty much elementalist+, you get infinite casts of some very strong abilities (confusion blast, mind shield, GTB, monster detection and mindblast through walls)

I just find with mindcrafters that early game damage abilities aren't too powerful, and most of the enemies I'm really worried about in early-midgame it doesn't work on at all. Low level confusion ability is fine, but it's still a rough 0 PV/quarterstaff start, and you really need a reasonably high Ma race to get a lot of benefit, which means low To. You can play a tougher race--yeah, drake is decent--but then you're barely using any mindcraft and you aren't much better off than you would be playing a merchant or something.

GTB is good fun, but I usually am finished or nearly finished the game by level 32, so I've honestly basically never used it for any practical purpose.

thought barbarian's starting pv was really bad for some reason (it's not if you go troll but troll has so many problems already)

I'm apparently mostly thinking of orc barbarians--6 PV guaranteed, from three sources so decent chance of at least one upgrade, plus typical To is low 20s, so usually a few more points there. Big St/To, Find Weakness... insanely strong character. Most of the other races don't have nearly as strong of starts, yeah. Troll barbarians are hilarious in their own ways (you can roll 35+ St/To if you're patient enough), but, well, it's a troll.

absolutely requires going DE or drakeling so that negates the starting PV point

Nah, just skip Alertness. You don't need it.

i've touched on why beastfighter is a god awful class

Beastfighters should really only be played by high St races. If you're playing elven beastfighters, yeah, they're pretty terrible, especially in early game. I'd go with Orc or Dwarf here. Drake is fine too, as usual.

it seems also that you underrate duelist

They're definitely a strong class, though they only get decent PV from the squishy races it looks like. It could be I'm penalizing them overly for the lack of missiles and lack of shield DV--maybe my paranoia about paralysis seeping through.

I don't really care to debate the position of the generic melee class ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of the lower tiers, they all blend in together but imo weaponsmith,assassin, healer are the best of them due to skills, and smithing is stronger than herbs + ws has good skills/crowning/decent start (though drakeling weaponsmith annoyingly has 0 PV)

Healers have a really dreadful early game. Terrible weapon, terrible armor. To is good, at least, though not enough to really benefit the squishy races. They play basically the same as Paladins later in the game, though I don't think Healers find extra spellbooks. Weaponsmiths and Assassins are both okay.

Drake casters are fine if you're willing to tolerate a couple of rerolls. Otherwise you might get stuck with 10 Le on a wizard or some nonsense. Yeah, you can get by in the early game with acid spit, but then why bother playing a wizard at all? Admittedly, I don't play a lot of wizards or necros, so some of this might be residual 1.1.1 thinking. For Priests and Druids, elves are okay, though there's a lot of other great options (Dwarves) too.

As for races

For my choices (ignoring Drake and DE, which we agree on).

Hurthling is my favorite non-drake race for classes with weak starts: Thieves, Merchants, Weaponsmiths, Bards, Healers, even Mindcrafters and Monks and Farmers*. Early missile strength helps with a lot of the early trouble. Aside from low St, stats are otherwise quite decent (well, hurthling casters are kinda bad/pointless). Extra talent opens up possible Heir gifts in Healers/Fighters/Thieves/Monks. Skillset is pretty good... Food Pres is great; Archery is decent (mostly for talent unlocking); Gardening is decent; Stealth is good. Even Cooking on them isn't bad since you get bonus piety for sacrificing cooked food. If you have a really low St roll, it can be quite a nuisance, but it's not a hurdle I find particularly troubling--my characters usually travel fairly light anyway.

*Hurthling farmer actually makes no sense as far as skillset is concerned, but I like them anyway more for style than anything else.

Dwarf is IMHO the most underrated race by far. Yeah, skillset is bad. But they have arguably one of the best stat distributions of any race--high St/To/Le/Wi and a 400+ year lifespan--Dx is the only stat that they really suffer in. Their equipment is usually exceptional. They get big discount on piety thanks to gold being favored gift, and have a guaranteed racially friendly shopkeeper. They have the worst skillset of any race, but in pretty much every other way, they're really quite amazing.

Orcs are great survivor races. Usually great starting gear, huge St/To, Find Weakness. Only real problem is the lifespan.

Gnomes I just find don't really fit optimally with any class, other than maybe Bard or Elementalist, I guess. The extra talent is nice, but I'd rather a hurthling if I can get away with it (granted, gnomes have enough Ma that sometimes you can get two extra talents). Skills are obscure ones, but mostly pretty poor or at least specialized usage. Stats are average and nothing really exceptional besides Ma. Gear is usually quite poor. Meh.

Ratlings are basically Hurthlings with moderately better St, a much worse skillset, and one less talent.

Humans are just not really that good at anything.

[Soirana]

Originally posted by JellySlayer:

A more sensible order is something like:
S: Drakeling
A: Hurthling, Dwarf, DE
B: GE/HE, Orc
C: Human, Ratling, Gnome
X: Mist Elf, Troll

I can't imagine why dark elves are so high (especially given you criteria).
Troll is not the worst honestly - you trade easy start for some lack of levels later on, late game you can compensate for anything with stuff.

my ratings would be:
S: drake
A: Orc, hobbit, dwarf, troll
B: Ratling, gnome, some DE classes (mostly the ones which add To on start)
C: Human, rest of elves except mist
X: mist elevs

Not sure why Necros are ranked so high. I'd put Priest above them for sure. Maybe even Druid.


This is how I would rank characters overall:

S: Wizard, Priest, Archer
A: Druid, Necro, Paladin, Barbarian
B: Beastfighter, Duelist, Elemental, Monk
C: Farmer, Ranger, Healer
D: Assassin, Weaponsmith, Fighter,
E: Mindcrafter, Thief, Merchant, Bard
X: Chaos Knight

I'd rate necros over priests, but mostly due to the changes to starting book. In 1.2.x necros basically start with frost bolt and likely another offensive book, priest might take some time to find anything good to cast. Also necros typically find ton of frost bolt which can be easily brought up in efficiency. There is not so much stuff in game which is resistant to cold.

Farmers are better than assassins in non-scumming games? O_o

my ratings:
S: wizard, archer (non troll, cause cfro archer class powers is important), barbarian (mostly due to cowning gifts)
A: rest of caster stuff (necro, druid, priest, elementalist, paladin - likely in this order not sure about elementalits in 1.2.x)
B: decent fighting classes (duelist, assassin, ranger, mindcrafter (play like fighter with confusion stuff), monk)
C: meh fighting classes (fighter, weaponsmith, farmer, beastfighters)
D: no real reason to play them: healer (unless you plan finding bookshop early), bard (esoecially with 7lb nerf), thief (move one level up if start with heir), thief
W as wildcard: chaos knight - random one is likely to be dreadful, if you use rolelr might have vereything you want, still likely would need conversion in the middle of the game which is extremely boring.

[LaserGuy]

Originally posted by Soirana:

I can't imagine why dark elves are so high (especially given you criteria).
Troll is not the worst honestly - you trade easy start for some lack of levels later on, late game you can compensate for anything with stuff.

DE has some very strong starts in some specific classes, though yeah, they're probably a bit squishy to be rank A.

Trolls I don't like ranking with the others because they play very differently. Hard to do a good comparison. You're right though, they probably shouldn't be bottom tier.

I'd rate necros over priests, but mostly due to the changes to starting book. In 1.2.x necros basically start with frost bolt and likely another offensive book, priest might take some time to find anything good to cast. Also necros typically find ton of frost bolt which can be easily brought up in efficiency. There is not so much stuff in game which is resistant to cold.

Priests just feel to me to be a much better all-arounder. Yeah, they don't usually start with an offensive spell (though they have a decent chance of starting with CLW or something, which is almost as good), but they usually are pretty tanky equipment-wise, skillset is good and they have great rolls on all of their important skills--you can get 100 in Healing, Concentration, Detect Stats, Literacy, etc. within a few levels. Necros (and Mindcrafters) have pretty much the worst skill dice of any class on their essential skills, IIRC. Can take many levels to get Concentration/Literacy up to 100... and necromancy is pretty poor until quite a bit later in the game (and pets are no fun to play anyway).

Farmers are better than assassins in non-scumming games? O_o

No, but Farmers have a very high chance of winning without needing a reroll.

[McChild Soldier™]

Originally posted by vysionier:

All true, but there's a definite bonus to never switching weapons, and that's an almost guaranteed grand mastery. So you can add a bonus 12 DV from that, and the energy cost of 600 plus the spd from class bonus. I am not about to say they are the strongest class, it's just the easiest. No weapon switching, decent damage, no armor restrictions. Only need at least 60 DV anyways.
Try a ME beastfighter sometime. It was pretty fun for me at least, mine took out 2 GUV's pretty easily and had a decent spell selection. Btw, melee isn't the best way to slay things anyways, slaying ammo is the best, no stat drains plus crit dmg range of 2-5

Interesting. So a bit of background, I've been playing for a few years on and off but haven't beaten the game. I just lost my furthest in character, died because of a series of small mistakes. Long story short, couldn't get RoHK and therefore couldn't pass Eternal Guardian. (Also out of teleports) One issue I noticed is just not having the right ammo I needed most of the time. The only time I did was for the ACW and as soon as I took out my bow it was shattered, same with my backup bow. (I was wearing a ring of ice) so I just punched him. So what tips would you have for me? Also in general my ranged was just really wimpy against all the bosses I fought, ESPECIALLY the chaos diplomat, I just had to punch him too, it was really scary. Do I just need to spend my ammo more training up ranged? I had 5 bows, 5 slings, and 4 crossbows by the time I died. My fists were like at 14 or something

[errantstar]

Originally posted by Lord of War:

Originally posted by vysionier:

All true, but there's a definite bonus to never switching weapons, and that's an almost guaranteed grand mastery. So you can add a bonus 12 DV from that, and the energy cost of 600 plus the spd from class bonus. I am not about to say they are the strongest class, it's just the easiest. No weapon switching, decent damage, no armor restrictions. Only need at least 60 DV anyways.
Try a ME beastfighter sometime. It was pretty fun for me at least, mine took out 2 GUV's pretty easily and had a decent spell selection. Btw, melee isn't the best way to slay things anyways, slaying ammo is the best, no stat drains plus crit dmg range of 2-5

Interesting. So a bit of background, I've been playing for a few years on and off but haven't beaten the game. I just lost my furthest in character, died because of a series of small mistakes. Long story short, couldn't get RoHK and therefore couldn't pass Eternal Guardian. (Also out of teleports) One issue I noticed is just not having the right ammo I needed most of the time. The only time I did was for the ACW and as soon as I took out my bow it was shattered, same with my backup bow. (I was wearing a ring of ice) so I just punched him. So what tips would you have for me? Also in general my ranged was just really wimpy against all the bosses I fought, ESPECIALLY the chaos diplomat, I just had to punch him too, it was really scary. Do I just need to spend my ammo more training up ranged? I had 5 bows, 5 slings, and 4 crossbows by the time I died. My fists were like at 14 or something

your problem is that you're playing a beastfighter

[vysionier]

Originally posted by Lord of War:

Originally posted by vysionier:

All true, but there's a definite bonus to never switching weapons, and that's an almost guaranteed grand mastery. So you can add a bonus 12 DV from that, and the energy cost of 600 plus the spd from class bonus. I am not about to say they are the strongest class, it's just the easiest. No weapon switching, decent damage, no armor restrictions. Only need at least 60 DV anyways.
Try a ME beastfighter sometime. It was pretty fun for me at least, mine took out 2 GUV's pretty easily and had a decent spell selection. Btw, melee isn't the best way to slay things anyways, slaying ammo is the best, no stat drains plus crit dmg range of 2-5

Interesting. So a bit of background, I've been playing for a few years on and off but haven't beaten the game. I just lost my furthest in character, died because of a series of small mistakes. Long story short, couldn't get RoHK and therefore couldn't pass Eternal Guardian. (Also out of teleports) One issue I noticed is just not having the right ammo I needed most of the time. The only time I did was for the ACW and as soon as I took out my bow it was shattered, same with my backup bow. (I was wearing a ring of ice) so I just punched him. So what tips would you have for me? Also in general my ranged was just really wimpy against all the bosses I fought, ESPECIALLY the chaos diplomat, I just had to punch him too, it was really scary. Do I just need to spend my ammo more training up ranged? I had 5 bows, 5 slings, and 4 crossbows by the time I died. My fists were like at 14 or something

Ignore staer. Melee classes need missle support. Try to get the big 3 up to 6 skill at least (crossbow, bow, slings) that way you can get extra slaying ammo from all categories. To train them up just remember to actually use them time to time. As for ammo, crossbow is hard, but for bows just let a barbarian horde in the wilderness shoot you a lot. For slings... there's tons of rocks, you can use nothing but rocks all game easily.

Don't forget to go berserk when shooting things, they can't hit back if they aren't next to you :)

[errantstar]

The only melee class that needs constant missile support is beastfighter because it is woefully incompetent in melee. Every other class can win just fine with the RCT for lategame liches+ Fistinarius and wands of magic missile for karmics.

[vysionier]

All melee classes need missle support because liches drain, and shooting karmics is far far easier than using wands of magic missle to kill them. Fisty is easy with melee anyways, especially with a beastfighter. RCT is overrated unless you want to bother with polearm specialization. Yes it gets demon and undead slaying but an arrow of undead slaying gets a larger critical damage range and you don't need to stand next to a creature that can wipe out your stats every round.

[errantstar]

Originally posted by vysionier:

All melee classes need missle support because liches drain, and shooting karmics is far far easier than using wands of magic missle to kill them. Fisty is easy with melee anyways, especially with a beastfighter. RCT is overrated unless you want to bother with polearm specialization. Yes it gets demon and undead slaying but an arrow of undead slaying gets a larger critical damage range and you don't need to stand next to a creature that can wipe out your stats every round.

I don't think you understand the point of the rune covered trident.

[errantstar]

everything except karmics and dorn beasts without -para are meleeable anyway, and it's not like a single lich is going to wreck your stats that hard. hell, if it wasn't ridiculously tedious i would melee karmic wyrms too.

[vysionier]

Yes I understand that you can throw the RCT, but chances are your skill won't be very high in thrown spears and your range will suck as a result, pretty much defeating the purpose of a ranged weapon. Just equip an arrow of slaying instead, and liches/dragons/etc. go away.

A lich can indeed wreck your stats that hard in melee. All it takes is a lucky summon and a few unlucky misses. I'd rather not leave it up to chance when it is so very much easier to shoot it with an arrow/quarrel/bullet.