Party Setup - (Needing General Advice)

[BobT36]

Hi guys, there's probably hundreds of these threads I gather, of which some I've read and got some basic approaches (such as str heavy rather than Dex on a ranged char due to Ranged not requiring accuracy).

Just have a few questions on the setup approach / Mentality I'm going for:

1 - Human Fighter (Tank, Vit > Dex > Str focus)
Str - 12
Dex - 13
Vit - 18
Wil - 10
Traits: Skilled / Healthy
Skills: Armours / Sword / Athletics (3:2:1 ratio? May put a few in Maces if I find a good one)

2 - Minotaur Fighter - (Melee Damage / Offtank, Str > Vit > Dex focus)
Str - 17
Dex - 12
Vit - 16
Wil - 8 (OCD won't let me leave it at 7 )
Traits: Skilled / Head Hunter
Skills: Axes / Athletics / Armours (3:2:1 ratio? Poss some in Maces if I find a good one)

3 - Human Mage - (Ranged PewPew, Wil focus (dabble of dex, ignore others?))
Str - 10
Dex - 12
Vit - 12
Wil - 19
Traits: Skilled / Strong Mind
Skills: Fire / Spellcraft / Ice (3:2:1 ratio? Will get 1st rank of Air / Earth too though.)

3 - Lizardman Rogue - (Melee / Ranged damage, Str focus, some dex)
Str - 17
Dex - 12
Vit - 12
Wil - 10
Traits: Skilled / Aggressive
Skills: Assassination / Daggers / Missile (3:2:1 ratio?)

Ok so that's the basic setup I was thinking of going for, I've listed the mentality behind them next to their race / class. Would this sort of thing be alright or totally stupid? Now bear in mind I'm not bothered about being 100% best setup here, just wondering if its a "good" one. (ok to play on Hard first time too? I'm generally alright at games and like a challenge).

Main Questions:

• Is it good to have the Skilled trait on everyone, or am I missing something major on a specific class if I do?
• Healthy vs Tough - Healthy is better, Gives more bonus in long term? Same for Strong Mind vs Aura?
  Willpower mainly for mage, only a dabble of vit / dex?
• Assassination Tree - This lets me use daggers at long range primarily yes? Or is it an activated / cooldown attack? Would like my Rogue to be stabbing rather than shooting for his primary attacks.
• Rogue - Heavy strength, some dex, taking into account what I mentioned above? Can switch to Missile if having trouble.
• Ratios mentioned above won't be exact, just a general approach. Or won't there be enough points for even a small amount in the 3rd tree, instead should I go into only one or two?
• Even if I'm not too bothered of Earth / Air, shall I put a couple of points in at least to get the first rank? Or are there specific spells which are "must have" regardless of focus? (Fire Mages = <3)

As mentioned its just some general guidelines and opinions on my approach I'm after here to check I've got the mentality right. I'd like to start off with a decent, strong approach, but also not care of having everything absolutely optimum.

[Neutronium Dragon]

The characters:

Generally speaking, you want to raise your secondary/support skill to whatever magic number is needed to unlock the needed perk - light armor or heavy armor in Armors, the reach attack in Assassination, the Willpower or casting speed perks in Spellcraft, etc. After that, there's very little benefit to continuing to raise that skill.

Likewise, it's almost never a good idea to spend a significant number of points in a third skill. Athletics, for example, is generally a very weak skill unless you just can't live without the carrying capacity or food consumption perks (and the second doesn't actually make much of a difference).

You might want to focus the human fighter on evasion gear (and light armor) while raising the minotaur's armor skill up to heavy armor, since they'll have an easier time getting appropriate gear than if they're both fighting over the same armor type. Dexterity is the go-to stat for both of them in either case; the human would probably benefit most from extra Vitality and the minotaur from extra Willpower (otherwise energy will be a problem later on). It probably isn't worth raising Athletics on either of them; Armors and their chosen weapon skill are really the only things that help them.

The mage probably wants Vit more than he wants Dex as a secondary. Again, Spellcraft as the support stat (you want to get to 8 ASAP for the Willpower increases and eventual access to the 25% casting speed perk at 10 points, or to 15 ASAP if you're aiming for the 50% cast reduction perk because of the Willpower boost at 15). You can stop 2 points below your desired perk because there'll be an item in the game that raises his Spellcraft by 2 points. The primary problem with a split-spell focus is as with weapon skills - splitting your focus between two or more means being much less effective at each one of them. You certainly don't want to be spreading points around into every magic type because those low level attacks won't be very effective (and will largely be redundant since two magic types are already enough to work around any given immunity).

The rogue runs into a bigger problem because melee/daggers demands Dex (and has little use for Str), while missile weapons demand Str (and have no use for Dex). Assassination's reach attack simply allows all of your melee attacks to strike from the back row; you don't need to be in the front row or wielding a reach weapon (spears). It does not enable any missile attacks. You're probably best off giving him a Dex / Vit split and putting all of his skill points into Daggers after getting the reach attack perk; the small number of points you'd be putting into missile weapons won't make that much of a difference; he can still toss things at enemies with almost as much effect as a no-skill / low Str character.


Specific questions:

1) Skilled is definitely a good trait to give to everyone.

2) The choice between +2 to the base stat and +15 to the derived stat is mainly one of preference. Given that the game ends around level 13, the former will leave you with less of the derived stat throughout most of the game and only pull ahead by a couple of points toward the end. This assumes that the base stat doesn't do anything else, of course - Vitality does slightly increase a couple of resistances, and we don't know whether Willpower modifies spell damage, or whether either of these things affect other variables.

The mage generally wants as much Willpower as he can get and Vitality after that. (High Willpower is especially important if you're focusing on Air or Fire, since they're very mana-hungry.)

3 & 4) Covered above.

5) Covered above. There usually won't be enough points floating around for a third tree to be much help (although if you're willing to dump every skill book you find onto a single character, this MIGHT be different.)

6) It's unlikely to be worth your while to split between two schools, nevermind four. Again, you might get away with an effective and powerful dual-school split if you de-emphasize spellcraft (raise it to 8 and stop) and throw every skill book you find at the mage, but that comes at the expense of other characters' development opportunities.



That said, you can still have an effective group if they dabble in less effective combinations or abilities, although doing too much of that will make the game unnecessarily difficult (especially if you're playing on Hard the first time).

[Merethif]

My general comments:

Fighters (I've led out of Grimrock only two fighters so far)
Don't invest in two weapon skills. There's no point in it. Every skill will get eventually best weapon in its category. Those 4 or 6 points in Maces if you already have 36 points in Swords are a real waste. Remember that rogues are also efficient tanks because Evasion is as "tankish" as Protection. You can make succesful tank with unarmed or dagger rogue.

Mages (I've led out of Grimrock three mages so far)
Forget about having three or four magic schools. You won't have enough skill points to make those third and forth school useful. Focusing on one or two schools is enough.
Generally there are only two attack spells in each school and usually you use first one for half a game and the second for the other half

Rogues (I've led out of Grimrock seven rogues so far)
Frankly speaking mixing dagger and ranged rogue is horrible idea. Forget about swapping weapons during combat. You either play as melee rogue or ranged rogue. The best solution is to make more then one rogue because it's the most versatile class and three rogues and mage is my favorite party build. But then again I'm very biased As mentioned before melee rogue should have high Dexterity, which is not the case with ranged rogues. Also note that skill Assassination doesn't provide you with Accuracy and Attack Power as skill Daggers does. Also personally I think that relying on backstabbing is only possible if you can efficiently freeze monsters with mage.

[*]Is it good to have the Skilled trait on everyone, or am I missing something major on a specific class if I do?

Some consider it optimal trait, but it is not a must-have to finish a game. I have never used it on more then two characters in a party

[*]Healthy vs Tough - Healthy is better, Gives more bonus in long term? Same for Strong Mind vs Aura? Willpower mainly for mage, only a dabble of vit / dex?

It is somewhat a matter of personal preference. Healthy gives you just several more points during last level. But do you really need those several points in the last level?! Or do you actually benefit more from those additional 15 points during whole gameplay?

[*]Assassination Tree - This lets me use daggers at long range primarily yes? Or is it an activated / cooldown attack? Would like my Rogue to be stabbing rather than shooting for his primary attacks.

As I mentioned before there's no such think as primary and secondary attacks. Assassination lets you do backstab (double/triple damage) if you attack monster from the back. As far as I know Assassination allow you to backstab with any melee weapon, not only daggers. Also Assassination do not increase your accuracy or attack power when fighting with dagger. It's Daggers skill which increase your accuracy or attack power with dagger.

[*]Rogue - Heavy strength, some dex, taking into account what I mentioned above? Can switch to Missile if having trouble.

You won't find yourself in situation where switching would be necessary. Either chose missile or throwing or daggers.

[*]Ratios mentioned above won't be exact, just a general approach. Or won't there be enough points for even a small amount in the 3rd tree, instead should I go into only one or two?

Go for a two. You could put some points in third skill but only to get certain bonus (for example 2 points in Dodge will give you some Evasion bonus).

[*]Even if I'm not too bothered of Earth / Air, shall I put a couple of points in at least to get the first rank? Or are there specific spells which are "must have" regardless of focus? (Fire Mages = <3)

Nope. First rank in most skills (such like Earth/Air Magic) won't provide you with any useful spell/ability. Also there are not "must have" spells, because you can finish game without mage.

[BobT36]

Thanks a lot for the advice guys, exactly what I needed.

The thing with the missile / daggers on the rogue was because I wasn't sure if the "Reach" was an activated ability with a cooldown sorta-thing (in which case I'd have possibly needed a bow for backup), or whether it was a passive which just meant ALL his normal attacks hit from the back row. Since they do, I'll go daggers, and pour dex on him.

Same with the rest, I'll drop any bothering with a 3rd skill, besides 2 points here and there if I feel like it, and no more.

Fine with the mage then if the early spells arn't worth bothering with as there arn't enough points. I'll primarily go fire, with a dabble of ice support (for any immune mobs), and just wham all the willpower (with some vit) on him I can.

Going to notch it down to Normal for my first playthrough too while I learn the ropes. I usually like to play things on Hard but I believe Grimrock is quite challenging by default anyway? I do love a challenge, but don't want to feel as if I'm min/maxing my play constantly for my first go heh. As long as I won't just cut straight through everything on normal (which I'm guessing I shouldn't since I'm not using the most "optimum" builds like 4x rogue ) then all's good.

As to the fighters, dex / vit will be great, (I'll make the Tank guy have craploads of dex and light armour then, makes sense if gear isn't plentiful), but what about strength? I'm guessing put a bit in for attack power and so I can carry things, but prioritise dex.

Also in combat, is there any point dual wielding melee weapons? Currently have the Tank with Dagger / Shield, Melee DPS with Cudgel / Dagger, Mage with Wand / Torch, Rogue with Spear / Shuriken / Rocks / whatever. I'm guessing non-stat based weapons (ones that just up attack power and nothing else) don't give any benefit if you're not hitting with that hand? Still trying to figure out a good weapon setup that maximises my stats and hitting ability. I'm presuming the best would be to give the melee DPS my Throwing Knife so he can get an early hit in? And maybe keep a Spear handy for the mage if he runs out of Energy.

I also presumed you could up the stat points (not skill points) on level ups? However that doesn't seem to be the case. When creating my party, did that just set the initial stats, and then any gains from there are from items / skillpoint ranks? May have to go back and have a re-think if so.

[Neutronium Dragon]

Strength's effect on attack power is negligible. The only use it really has is in providing extra carrying capacity, but a light-armor fighter shouldn't have any problem with that (unless you insist on hauling around every piece of junk you find), and the heavy-armor minotaur already has a high Str due to his race.

The only use for dual-wielding melee weapons is if one of them has some special enchant that you occasionally want to use. Using any melee weapon puts both hands on cooldown, so there's no offensive benefit. Melee/missile gives you a ranged option, although someone will need to carry a torch unless your mage is using Light (which he should have the ability to cast with Spellcraft 5+) and melee/shield is preferred for front-liners.

Base stats will not increase except for skill-based improvements and item bonuses. The effects of any such increases are NOT retroactive, which is the main reason why mages want to crank Spellcraft out of the starting gate for the early improvements to Willpower.

[BobT36]

Very interesting with the stat points not being retroactive, I see what you mean about Spellpower now.

Should I notch this up to the 25% casting Speed perk, or 50%, or even higher?

And yeah I think I'll go back and re-do my stat allocations then, I'd presumed I could control how they were distributed at each level up, as well as the skillpoints heh.

I'll not bother much with Strength then, then Minataur can haul most of the crap around.

Hmm will probs have Melee + Shield for frontliners then (once I get two shields) and Staff + Torch, and Dagger + Missile for my back liners. I see that any attack bonus stat for having two melee weps only applies to the one hand so its pointless plonking extra gear on for the sake of it if it isn't used.

Thanks for the explanations!

[Neutronium Dragon]

The mage should be able to keep a Light spell active, so there'll be less need for a torch. Once you acquire a certain mage item about halfway through the dungeon, it provides an ongoing Light effect.

WRT Dagger + Missile, just remember that thrown weapons are the only ones usable one-handed. Bows/crossbows/slings require two hands (one for the weapon, one for the ammo).

As for the Spellcraft perks, it's pretty standard to get the 25% casting speed one (get Spellcraft 8 - the last two points will come from a book around the same time as you find that other item), but 50% is generally better (get Spellcraft to 16, then gain the +2 later). In either case, getting Spellcraft up to the target number ASAP is the ideal approach, even if it means that the mage is only good for casting Light for a few levels (he can toss things at enemies in the meantime).

[BobT36]

Ahh I see, yeah that will free up a slot then for the Mage, I can give him something to throw or a spear in his other hand for when he's out of energy.
Had presumed the light spell would be hard on mana.

Tis very wierd how it doesn't apply the stats retroactively, sort of turns it into a race to get certain stat points ASAP, rather than building upon them later, as with most such games.
Bit silly having a Mage that can't really cast anything though hehe, may just get him the first fire spell (only 2 points) so he can do something at least other than lobbing rocks. XD Then pour everything else in Spellcraft up to whichever level I go for.

I'll have another look at the perks, and then go back and re-do my party with a new mentality of being a bit more precise with the stat points hehe, I had the image of being able to choose which ones to up later on, but I see now its not like that.

Great advice, cheers guys! Just needed a better understanding of the mechanics so I could get the right mentality in place.

[Thels]

the last two points will come from a book

What book are you talking about?

I can't recall such a book, and neither is it listed here: http://www.gamebanshee.com/cgi-bin/sear ... egory=Tome



@Bob: You gain 10 attribute points and 2 traits at startup. That's it. You won't get any as you level up (though skills/items will boost your attribute scores).

You gain 1-7 skillpoints at level 1, depending on race and the skilled trait. After that, you get 4 skillpoints per level. Imagine reaching around level 13, so that's a total of 53-59 skillpoints per character. If you want to get the 50 pointer, notice that you only have 3-9 skill points remaining to dabble into other skills, except...

SpoilerShow

There are three tomes that each give one of your characters 5 additional skillpoints to spend.
There is one tome that raises the fire magic skill of one of your character by 3 skillpoints.

[BobT36]

Yup I understand now hehe. Most other games where you can choose stat allocation also let you then choose how they're distributed upon level ups too, however I see its different with this one, so I've gone back and made them something less silly, (as much will as possible, and otherwise vit on mage, vit / dex for fighters / dex / vit for rogues, etc..).

Caught me off a bit that with it being different in Grimrock hehe.

And yeah I've took enough points for Fireburst, and now I'm pouring everything else into spellpower until I get 25% or 50% cast speed (undecided yet), I'll then get the first frost spell (for anything immune), then pour the rest into fire. With the rogue, getting Assassination up to Reach so he can dagger from the rear and so on.

Like I said thanks for the advice everyone, tis exactly what I was needing to get an understanding of the core mechanics, I've not got my mentality set in place for progressing with the rest of the game. Won't be fully min / maxing, but I've a better approach now at least.