Party Composition?

[Reldio]

Do any Avernum experts have any recommendations for a good balanced party? I was thinking of playing on hard after beating Avernum 2 on normal but I don't know what makes for a good party

In Crystal Souls, I had two melee frontline guys, an archer/priest and a mage, but I felt like I was leaving out bows because my priest was usually casting and having two melee-only guys felt redundant, but I don't know how to handle hybrid builds in this game.

[Daredeviler_21]

I usually find myself having 2 fighters, a mage and a priest. If you really want archery you can whack it on your priest or one of your fighters, and I often have one of my fighters be a dual wield thief type of guy

[MightyFox]

Through you can technically beat the game with any party composition, most player will recomend at least 1 dedicated fighter and 1 dedicated magic user.

Best dedicated fighters in my opinion are sword and board soldiers (for defense) or polearm berserkers (for offense).

Magic can go either way, and you can do just fine with either a didicated mage or preist. You can also hybridze them, having 1 spellcaster do both, but that's putting a lot of eggs in one basket.

Across all the Avernum games, I've always found archers to be high DPS, but ultimately lackluster. They require fighting from a distance to be effective, can't tank, can't heal, and usually just end up being scroll slaves or damage tick support. They aren't bad, or "a waste of a slot" as some would say, but having 2 melees is arguably better.

Rouges and Rebels I usually see as "support classes" good for lore and tools, not much good in a fight. They can be made to fight well, but at that point you might as well just take a soldier or a mage and dedicate some of thier points to tools and lore. My advice is, if you take rouges and rebels, go all the way with their support roll, give them lots of points in the support options so your other characters can focus on thier fighting abilities. That will make them good specialists that properly support the party.

Sadly, there aren't really many hybrid builds that are feasible on hard. However, those already built into the game can be quite effective.

The Paladin is a shaman with heavy armor and sword use, though not as bulky as a berserker they still make excellent tanks and can heal and buff without penalty.

The Archmage is a hedgewizard that studies both prest and sorcery in equal amounts, making for a very powerful and adaptive, if not a bit fragile, spellcaster.

This game I am going to try and see if I can get a melee/sorcery build to work, as I would really like to experiment with those armor perks for spellcasters.

[Daredeviler_21]

Originally posted by MightyFox:

Rouges and Rebels I usually see as "support classes" good for lore and tools, not much good in a fight. They can be made to fight well, but at that point you might as well just take a soldier or a mage and dedicate some of thier points to tools and lore. My advice is, if you take rouges and rebels, go all the way with their support roll, give them lots of points in the support options so your other characters can focus on thier fighting abilities. That will make them good specialists that properly support the party.

My thief character would like a word with you, haha. Dual wield that can outdamage my fighting specialist and even though he is a lot less armoured doesn't quite go down as easily as you might expect, and could open most locks with relative ease since the start of the game.

Naturally he had a lot more going for him, but thats just what I remember.

[[Brizby]]

I always go one Duel Swords, one Polearm, one Mage and one Priest.

Archery is for scrubs. :P

[Reldio]

Dual wielding is so tempting but there's some super neat shields in lategame ;-;

[Spiderweb]

On Normal difficulty, there is a huge variety of builds that can win the game. On higher difficulties, it gets a lot tougher, but there's still a fair bit of freedom.

A tank warrior, a healer, a spell damage dealer, and a dps warrior are what I usually use. The old boring reliable.

A good deep dive into strategy and options is here:

http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/24073-a3-rw-how-not-to-suck-playing/

[Reldio]

The dev himself! Thanks for all the replies & thanks for the videogame dev :D Love it!

[casualmomgamer]

I'm playing on torment right now, with a melee tank, an archer dps, a priest, and a mage (all custom builds). The mage spells "call beast" and "daze" are super duper early game. Try to position your party so that the summoned creature created via "call beast" initially draws aggro in a fight. A well-placed "daze" can completely turn the tide of a battle against many enemies.