Best party for full run through?

[SpudByNight]

I'm going to run through all three games. I was wondering what people thought was the best party to do this with. I haven't played II and III since they originally came out. I vaguely remember needing a rogue and/or a hunter later on.

[Tyler Durden]

Mine was -

Paladin
Hunter
Bard
Rogue
Conjurer
Magician
Magician

They did pretty great through all 3 games. Promote the mages once they hit all spell levels asap.

[Garmorn]

I find the following is good for the first one. I have not started the others yet.

Paladin
Hunter
Monk
Warrior
Conjurer to Magician to Sorcerer to Wizard
Conjurer to Magician to Sorcerer to Wizard
Magician to Conjurer to Sorcerer to Wizard

Two conjurers give you more damage and trap zaps at start then more healing until 7th level spells. Magician spells are not used as often but are very good when needed.

The Bard is not needed to get pass the secret door. Just move to a wall and use phase door.

[SpudByNight]

Originally posted by Tyler Durden:

Mine was -

Paladin
Hunter
Bard
Rogue
Conjurer
Magician
Magician

They did pretty great through all 3 games. Promote the mages once they hit all spell levels asap.

I'm midway through the first game.

I have the following :

Paladin
Warrior
Bard
Hunter
MA > CA
CA > SO
7th Empty

Should I add a 7th caster, or do I need to stick a rogue in there in stead of one of them?

[Garmorn]

Rogues are not worth the trouble. There are three major options.

Keep the slot open for summoned/meet npc's. Lot of players do not think this as a viable option as the monsters placed there are week and die fast.

Added a combat type and move the Bard back to the back row (They are able to function like another caster with the right equipment). This is one seems to be the most common party type.

Add another spell caster. There are a lot of people (my self include) that think the first option is not very good. The second or third chose is personal preference/style dependent.

[kaypy]

Rogues are definitely a use-specific class. Most of the time they will be taking up space and not achieving much.

But every so often they can be really useful, as they can sneak up and murder nasty backline casters where no-one else can reach them. And not having any way to get chests open in antimagic areas kind of sucks.

Oh, also, they are mandatory for certain events in BT3. You can play without a rogue as long as you don't want to win the game or anything.

However

If you do want a rogue, it may not yet be the best time to create one.

First thing to know is that if you wait till you get a sorcerer, your ability to powerlevel a new character goes through the roof. A flock of wind dragons and one pc will get that pc XP at 7 times the rate a full party would (NPCs dont take a share of the combat rewards).

Second thing to know is that if you wait till the start of BT2, you could give you rogue a share in an early XP event reward and skip a bunch of early leveling.

Third thing to know is that if you wait till the start of BT3, you get an even bigger XP reward that will specifically bring all characters up to fixed minimum level. And for this reward, they don't even need to do any of the work- just go back to camp and grab them before you cash in the quest. There's actually a bunch of rewards like this in BT3 and you can get your rogue sufficiently high level to beat the game without actually having them in *any* fights until the end.

[phimseto]

I recommend going with just six characters to get the feel of the original game, saving one slot for wandering monsters to join your party and to have the full amount of fun with summons. It makes the game more of a challenge and, for my money, more fun.

My party was:

Paladin
Hunter
Bard
Rogue
Conjurer
Magician

[SpudByNight]

Originally posted by phimseto:

I recommend going with just six characters to get the feel of the original game, saving one slot for wandering monsters to join your party and to have the full amount of fun with summons. It makes the game more of a challenge and, for my money, more fun.

My party was:

Paladin
Hunter
Bard
Rogue
Conjurer
Magician

I did actually play the original game back in the 80s! I finished it first on the Amstrad CPC and played the DOS versions of II and III

[phimseto]

Nice! It was C64 for me the whole way. I do recommend generally having just a party of six. It keeps things lively. The other thing I'd suggest - don't worry about scum saving at the Review Board. Levels are easy to come by and eventually across the games your characters are all going to be god-tier. Just go with what you get stats-wise at a level. The only corollary that I would add to that is to make sure your characters starting stats are to your satisfaction so roll away in character creation. :-)

[VoidEngineer]

<Fighter>
Bard
Bard
Rogue
Archmage
Archmage
Archmage

Pick your favorite fighter. Paladins give spell resist to the party. Monks have super high AC and super high DPS until the later games. Warriors can use almost all gear. Hunters get critical hits but lack AC.

Having two bards is EXTREMELY nice as they can stand up combat buffs very quickly. In BT3 they get a song that damages enemies very well so firing that off twice a round is helpful.

[Spocks Toupee]

When I played this back when it originally came out, I had two Monks in the front row.

I started with Bard's Tale 2 first, because that was the only Bard's tale game Caldor's had at the time.

Starting out it was difficult with the Monks, but once they started to level they got ridiculously strong.
Their armor class was super low if they didn't wear ANY armor, and they could hit A LOT.
I used to joke to my sister that I should've named one of them "Cuisinart" because he was like a food processor, just non-stop hit after hit.

I'm hoping they weren't nerfed in the Remastered Trilogy, because the Monk was a heck of a lot of fun.
Yea, they COULD wear the super cool armor, but you'd suffer an AC penalty for putting armor on them.
They had the lowest armor class of my entire party while wearing NOTHING.

[GandGolf]

After recently buying the games on sale from the humble bundle I decided to create one character of each class, plus an additional warrior to become a geomancer and a mage to become a chronomancer. Trying to keep them close to the same levels is kind of tricky, so far my highest character is at lvl 11.

[jemym]

Finished the game with;

Paladin>Geomancer
Warrior (would use Hunter if replaying)
Bard
Rogue
Conjurer>Sorcerer>Wizard>Magician>Archmage
Magician>Sorcerer>Wizard>Conjurer>Archmage
Magician>Sorcerer>Wizard>Conjurer>Archmage>Chronomancer

I was very satisfied with my party all the way through. If I would replace any I would probaby go with a Hunter instead of a Warrior. The Warrior's extra attacks cap at 8, and there are no melee weapons with high enough damage to make up for this. But you can equip almost any damage-dealer with an insta-death melee weapon like the Stoneblade or Death Dagger, which means that the Hunter can be as effective as the Warrior at melee range, while having the ranged attacks as a bonus.

I added my last Magician in BT2 before Dargoth's Tower but looking back at it I could have had her earlier. There's just around 3-4 places in BT2 you need to reduce your party size temporarily but you can do that just when you need to for 10-20 minutes and then re-recruit your character without hazzle.

The Monk and Hunter are going to be nice in the first games, but once you reach the latter part of BT2 they are going to be increasingly useless.

The Rogue is consintently useful through all three games. It will be clunky very early on, but it will keep amazing you that it can handle 'impossible' fights over and over again all the way through all three games.

The "Loss" of my Paladin wasn't. Since I was using a Stoneblade with accuracy bonus items, the Geomancer was 100% as effective in melee range and could dish out nukes at the end of BT3.

Neither was the Chronomancer a real loss. After just one 'world' she had replaced Mangar's Mallet with Fatal Fist making her my most damaging mage, and the recovery of "Identify" was nice too. And her ability to ressurect+heal in one spell was nice as well.

[kaypy]

If you have use-from-inventory running, you can also have the option of a Geomancer with a conjurstaff using the Strifespear's activation for "melee"

[Gold Dragon]

My party is:
Summoned/Special (think Hawkslayer or Winged Creature)
Paladin
Warrior/Geomancer
Bard
Rogue
Magician/Sorcerer/Conjurer/Wizard/Archmage/Destiny Knight
Conjurer/Magician/Sorcerer/Wizard/archmage/Chronomancer

Even used this same setup back in the old days of Commodore-64.

[DrMonro]

Originally posted by SpudByNight:

I have the following :

Paladin
Warrior
Bard
Hunter
MA > CA
CA > SO
7th Empty

Hi, what class you mean in CA?
Try to understand that lines:

MA (Magician?) > CA (?)
CA (Conjurer? Then why CA?) > SO (Sorcerer?)