A long time coming - party questions

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Wow - thanks for the replies. I turned of HOF mode.

I spent a lot of thought on the party composition but now I think Kmonster has persuaded me to make some changes to it - going to go back to an earlier save and revise mage dual class to illusionist.

I always like the idea of getting the maximum hitpoints for mages by taking the 9 fighter levels, but how often is the mage going to be taking damage really - on the other hand the Bard seems to be covering spell casting duty fairly well. Mostly only consisting of magic missile, invisibility on the thief for trap clearing/exploring the level and the rare haste when in a tough fight.

I have to rest alot to regain healing spells because the druid has a hard time keeping everyone topped off - maybe playing without a cleric through to the bottom of dragon's eye dungeon isn't the best plan but I don't know where/how to get exp to level up unless I use cheese like resting in yeti cave or such.

 

I didn't intend to persuade you to reload, it's not neccessary replaying just because of some unimportant adjustments, your party is good enough even without changing and you'll hardly feel a difference.
Don't worry about healing, you can rest as much as you want (there's no time limit in the game), your cleric will gain levels very fast after dualing and once your bard reaches level 11 healing won't be a problem anymore.

Transmuters need 15 dex, illusionists 16, so you can expect to get slightly better rolls at creation for them, so there are situations when illusionists are better, but no opposite ones. So you can't do wrong when choosing an illusionist instead.

 

Which error, where? Can you be more specific on what entry in the table is wrong in the manual, and what it's value should be?

And how do you know that it's true? Hearsay? Tests?

Here's something I read by Aeric in another forum that is specific and to the point. He also says you only get another half attack, not a full attack extra for grandmaster specialization.

"Melee: base 1 ApR.
Ranged: bows - 2; crossbows - 1; daggers - 2; darts - 3; sling - 1; throwing axe - 1

You get an extra .5 ApR for specialization (2 PP). Warriors get an extra .5 ApR at lvl 7 and lvl 13. Fighters get an extra .5 ApR for grandmastery (5 PP).

Only warriors can go beyond the base ApR of a weapon, as they are the only classes that get specialization and advances for level. Only pureclass fighters (or high lvl fighter/X dualclasses) can get grandmastery. The ApR (and Thac0) is the primary reason to take multiclassed warriors."

 

The only error I mentioned about the specialisation table was the missing half attack for GM. The 2 has to be replaced with 5/2.
I know it because I played the game with 2 GM characters. I remember it so clearly because this was one of 2 manual errors which made me create a paladin instead of a pure fighter.

It's not my job to do speculations about your other source.
PS: The throwing dagger I used in IWD only gave 1 base APR

 

So are you saying you get an extra attack going from **** to *****? Have you actually counted the number of attacks per round, or do you just believe the character sheet or ....

I also don't understand your paladin explanation. My paladin can only get a max of ** weapon specialization, nothing near grandmastery...

 

Your already know the answer to your first question.
If you don't believe me it doesn't take more than a few minutes to test it yourself.

Never said something different. Don't know how one could conclude that the manual errors I mentioned were about paladin specialisation.

 

Here you said the extra 1/2 attack led you to create a paladin. But paladin's can't specialize beyond **, only fighters. Right?

 

I think he meant the lack of an extra 1/2 attack like it is in the manual made him think that a fighter is not that good, so he's better off playing with a paladin without bothering with grandmastery.

 

OK, clear now.

 

Ingame test and reading of the AD&D sourcebooks all agree that you get a full extra attack from 4 to 5 stars. Let it rest allready. Manual error that many (myself included) wrongly belived in.

Just go look through the 2da files if you doubt.

 

How does one read the .2DA files. They look like goobleygook in notepad.

 

Infinity Explorer or NearInfinity are the ones I use. First one is simplest to use, download it in the download section.

 

Hmm, I don't really have a desire to learn a toolset right now. Is there a simple .2DA file viewer?

If I can turn on autopause at the end of each round (like Baldur's Gate), I can count attacks. I don't trust ambiguous character sheets.

 

That is what Infinity Explorer is, as oppossed to NearInfinity, which is why I recomended the first one.

 

You can view them in Excel if you import the data.

At the moment I'm using Edit Pad pro - its not a BG2 editor, but it lays them out nicely so you can read them easily. But then again I dont do much modding, so you might want a better .2da editor.

 

Well the character sheet definitely shows an extra full attack when you go from **** to ***** in a melee weapon.

Whether that's actually reflected in the gameplay is hard to check.

 

This party has done well. The bard has been very useful - except I seem to put all my lvl 5 spells on my illusionist and now I have none for the bard to cast - oh well. One nice thing with the bard is that I don't have to memorize any weak healing spells. Only a few of the big ones to handle in-combat healing.

Each of my front 3 - dwarf fighter, half elf fighter-druid, human ranger dualed to cleric have armor class down around -10 to -12 so they are pretty good in a fight - only bosses have THACO low enough to cause in-combat healing to be needed.

 

Bards don't have healing spells. Are you using any mods?

 

With HoW installed bards learn a healing song at level 11.

 

Of course, but he mentioned bard memorizing healing spells at high level.