Templar worthless?

[Fleshbits]

So, I bought the game, made a party, which included a tanky templar. The templar comes with a holy symbol which does nothing in combat. I assume it is for turning undead, but the fact that he cant do dmg, pretty much gets my party killed every fight...

I must have save scummed 70 times on normal difficulty, and I haven't even had the opportunity to make any decisions yet, aside from creating a party.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Templar is not a good 1st class.

Templar is good as either a final class, or as a transitionary class, for example cleric => templar => warrior. If the mage starting classes want to pursue the melee line of classes, they need to use Templar as a bridge to reach them.

Given with how the multi-class system in this game works, it's not a good idea to start characters in a premium class. Pirate and Assassin are both OK, if you're doing a run with no class changes.

Templar is good in a few scenarios, such as using it as a bridge class, or another scenario would be if you want to put a mage into a final class that has higher HP gains, and can wear heavier armor. For example, Mage => Thaumaturge => Necro => Sage => Cleric => Templar, or some combination of these that leads to Templar. It just all depends on how much grinding you want to do. But moving mages into the Templar class (eventually) is one way to make them less squishy.

What you do is level up to 6 or 8, bank all your bonus points, and only use the minimum points required to meet the minimum to change to the next class. Repeat this several times while leveling and banking your bonus points, and once you get to your final class, you can dump them all into main stats, and probably hit 100 on 2 or 3 of them (depending on how many classes you leveled up), and possibly 100 on a 4th after you level up your final class. You keep all HP/MP gains from the previous classes, and if your final class is Templar, your Templar is Chad Templar - destroyer of worlds, vs Virgin Templar (like the one you made) who started as a Templar and can't do any damage to mobs. That's the difference.

If you start as a class, get your class to level 10 and just haphazardly dump all your bonus points into stats, and then decide you want to class change, you done goofed, because your stats will be the new classes' minimum, and you wasted all your bonus points, congrats. This is why you bank your bonus points if you plan on class changing at all.

[undergrounddave]

THIS....(above)...much better than my comment in the other thread.....

[boho]

I started with a Durendil Templar and for a while she was pretty bad (though to be fair that came more from Durendil's limited gear selection than anything extremely wrong with Templar). At this point (leaving the superdemo, about level 8) she's actually just as useful as my other three melee, though different. As a hybrid a Templar never going to be as good as a pure melee, and as single class they're never going to be as good as a multiclass, but hand them a good weapon and they'll connect with it as much as any other melee. They do lack Lethal Blow which means you won't get those helpful executes, but with my Templar's current weapon (high damage and an on-hit status effect) she's taking targets out of the fight and setting up Lethal Blows from the Berserker and Metalsmith.

The Templar's biggest problem, and why I wouldn't really recommend starting with one, is the fact that starting as one means your character can ever only go into melee OR magic, but not both. Templar is the "link" between the melee and magic classes, and since you can't take the same class twice, you will have to decide to stay in melee and melee hybrids, or go into pure casters, but not do both. It's still not a game killer to have one - the game can easily be completed with single-class characters - but it does cut off a massive source of power.

[TZODnmr2K5]

Originally posted by crimsonedge11:

Templar is not a good 1st class.
If you start as a class, get your class to level 10 and just haphazardly dump all your bonus points into stats, and then decide you want to class change, you done goofed, because your stats will be the new classes' minimum, and you wasted all your bonus points, congrats. This is why you bank your bonus points if you plan on class changing at all.

This should be shouted from the rooftops as this is great advice for ALL RPGs, even traditional CRPGs; hell, I end up making the game extra difficult by banking all my points as I hate spending them too soon!