Red Prince second 'class'

[chaosek]

I have been using the Red Prince as a 2-handed warrior which works fine enough, but because of his fire breath I also chose pryo after maxing warfare. However pyro requires int which a fighter basically doesn't have. Damage is decent, but I was wondering what would pair well with his high strenght stat as secundairy class. My 'tank' has polymorph so kind of want to avoid that one although it is a great combo.
Way I see it 2 other alternatives, either give him daggers for warfare/scoundrel or summoning. However I don't know if this works and if it might be better to stick to pyro and give him some intelligence.

Any advice? (want to keep him a front line fighter though as I dont want to change to whole party)

[Gregorovitch]

I played the Prince as a 2H warrior in my game too. I bascially forgot about his Fire breath after a while. As you say it scales with Pyro and INT so it never does that much. Not worth the AP when he can whack something over the head with his 2H weapon for a crap ton of damage instead.

2H warrior works fine as a straight up physical damage dealer. Just pump STR, Warfare and 2H. Every point you put into anything else subtracts 5% DPS from him, including Memory. That adds up to a whole lot of damage output mid-game onwards, especially with the Warfare special attacks. The job is a simple one bascially - hit like truck.

Of the adds I would consider:

I think a point in Scoundrel gives you Adrenaline and Cloak & Dagger. Both of these are going to frequently result in an enemy being dead one turn earlier than would otherwise be the case. I found a key issue with Prince was mobility and the requirement get to get in the face of an enemy before dispatching it often taking several AP in movement.

Taking Cloak & Dagger to supplement Pheonix Dive plus for example The Pawn talent (as opposed to Executioner) is going to massively increase Prince's ability to get in the face of the target of your choice instantly for the cost of a single AP or frequntly no AP cost at all. Very useful for weeding out those pesky archers on high ground.

The Pawn means he can move 1AP's worth of movement (and often get in the face of any nearby enemy melee) for free meaning he will very frequently get two attacks for the turn when he would otherwise only get one for moving at all.

I think the other two adds to look at I guess are Necromancy and Polymorphism.

Poly works very well with rogues becasue of the ever popular Rupture + Chicken Claw combo and Chamelion Cloak. I don't think Cjamelion Cloak is of that much use for a 2H Prince, but If you did give Prince the Scoundrel point then he could get Rupture too. I know many will swear by the efficacy of Medusa Head and Spider Legs too.

I'm no expert on Necromancy, or more accurately I know diddly squat about how to use it effectively.

[Drongo]

I've found in general you really want to keep you characters only focusing one damage type, so I would avoid magic on him if I were you. Asides from scoundrel there are two other great options and it really depends on what you want to achieve with the character.

The first is going necro, as most of the spells are physical damage and there are a lot of great heals. You can still do good damage, the character pretty self reliant and is tanky.

You can also go into hydrosophyist if you want more a more magicy build. Again there are a lot of good tanking buff spells, Frost Armor and such, and you have the option of putting mass heals on the character for your whole team. You can also throw in a few of the ice spells in that affect ground water so they have some extra CC. Stack as much armor on them as you can, buff your magic armor with spells and have aoe heals. Can still do excelent damage as well but you probably want to go 1 handed for the shield throw skill as you are stacking armor on them.

Necro - Tanky, life leach damage dealer
Hydro - Tanky, AOE heal, ground ice stuff damage dealer
Scoundrel - Less tanky, no heal super high damage dealer

Also I would avoid summoner as you kind of need to invest quite a lot of points into the stat if you are going it.

[Hobocop]

Lizard racial breath only scales off character level and Pyrokinetic, so it'll always do a decent chunk of damage even with no INT. Just don't waste time trying to use any of the spells that say they benefit from INT and get all the buff spells like Haste, Peace of Mind and the hybrid Warfare/Pyro skillbooks.

[Thicc Mittens]

One option if you want to keep Pyromancer - probably not the most minmaxed one mind you - is to switch weapon types to a (fire) staff and forget about Str entirely. You can still use all the Warfare skills with a staff, but they'll take on the staff's damage type and the skills will scale with Int instead of Str. That way you can focus entirely on Int instead of trying to split between that and Str, and still stay on the front line meleeing away.

Main things to note about this option:
1) Since you won't be doing physical damage with the Warfare skills or basic attacks anymore you'll need to rely on other options/characters to strip away physical armour to let the Warfare skills' status effects (especially the 2 Knockdowns) come into play.

2) Since you won't be doing physical damage with the Warfare skills or basic attacks anymore, you won't want/need to put any more points in Warfare than you need to unlock the skills you want to use from it - you won't be getting any damage boost from Warfare itself anymore.

3) Int gear gives limited physical armour, which makes you prone to knockdowns and cripples when you go into melee (and with a staff you can't use a shield to help with that). So some source of buffing physical armour will be useful, e.g. by side-speccing into Geomancer (which has the added benefit of producing flammable surfaces for Pyromancer skills to ignite).


I'm trying it in my current run through and it's working... ok? Getting the knockdowns to work is obviously a lot more hassle and it's probably less damage overall than a dedicated Str fighter would have, but it gives the character a few hard hitting Pyro ranged options for when closing the gap isn't feasible and adding in another magic school gives plenty of PBAoE damage to mess up enemy groups' magical armour, opening them up for things like the Medusa aura from Polymorph or the Blinding aura from Aero (which a ranged mage wouldn't be as well placed to use). Plus the enemy melee characters that are on the frontlines tend to have weaker magic armour - you're more vulnerable to their physical attacks but they're more vulnerable to your magical attacks in return.

Probably not as effective as a dedicated Str/Physical fighter, but I'm finding it to still be decent enough to be fun, and a quite varied/interesting.

[Revolucas]

Daggers are great for front line Warfare builds. There is no reason to stereotype a dagger user into some sneaky rogue playstyle. Since it's free crits on backstab you'll have the points to invest in something other than Wits. Though it's not optimal, you could just put the rest of your points after maxing Finesse into Intelligence. But I guess that would depend on the rest of your party. If you are half Physical and half Magic party, then it would probably work out for you. Other than the teleports there really isn't much reason to max Scoundrel if you want to place those points into Pyro instead. So Warfare, Duel-Wield, Pyro then Scoundrel from gear.

Min-max dagger build wrecks stuff late in the game anyway, so it's not like there isn't room to spread it out a bit for fun or utility.