Poll: How powergamey/roleplaying are your CRPG parties?

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Party Make-up

My party is a mix of both worlds, powergaming and role-playing.....here is my party right now, has only just finished the prologue and chapter 1 as well, in the Ice Palace now:

Male Aasimaar Paladin 6/Fighter 4 (Tanker, and he kicks butt too)
Male Dwarf BattleCleric of Tempus level 10 (Back-up Tanker, front-line fighter)
Male Human Monk level 10 (Spell-caster killer)
Female Human Druid 9/Ranger 1 (Two-handed fighter and offensive caster)
Male Drow Elf Rogue 5/Wizard 5 (My main rogue with many offensive spells)
Male Tiefling Wizard level 10 (My pure spellcaster)

So far they are turning out to be quite a powerful, formidable party and haven't encountered any battle where any one of them has been close to death

 

Yes, for now. Wait a bit (say, beginning of HoF mode) and you'll notice *him* screaming for help from other teammates MUCH more often than you'd like.

 

The thing about that is that you can give him the Crom Faeyr and he is suddenly as strong as a dragon. Or in fact stronger than most dragons.

But yeah, I agree that BG2 classes have far fewer important stats, some like the sorcerer have none at all. Also, because of the random distribution of points, you can reroll until you get better than average stats.

 

It depends on the game. Frankly, if it's not a combat intensive game or just plain easy, I like to make fun, RP-centric parties. I tried that the first time I played IWD2 and got my butt handed to me very early on. That game almost demands you to power game 100%.

 

Here's my newest party, "Heaven's Fury" - All IE games are SO addictive... once you restart playing them, you have to play them all.

1 - Aasimar Paladin1/Cleric(Ilmater)X
2 - Aasimar Ranger1/DruidX
3 - Aasimar Paladin1/WizardX
4 - Aasimar Bard
5 - Aasimar Monk(Old Order)
6 - Aasimar Sorcerer

Some XP penalties, but it should make it more challenging...

 

The only thing that stops me from being a #6 is that there are some bugs that I won't exploit (bard song stacking, pre-patch Improved Invisibility, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere). I am totally cool with level-squatting, min-maxing attributes, and odd multiclass combinations--for me, the resource-management and constraint-solving parts of the game are the best part, and actually playing through the game is in a sense just a way to test your solutions.

I'm not entirely comfortable with Power Word: Reload (but I have used it), and I refuse to let anyone who isn't Evil kill Jemeliah for the Knucky. Those are my only concessions to roleplaying.

-Max

 

@spmdw45

Yeah, thats how I see it. Without hopefully sounding too geeky, its almost a mathematical question, like whats the most efficient/effective party that I can construct for a particular purpose?

I do follow some role playing guidelines, like my characters are never evil (chaotic neutral at worst), and thus dont perform any evil acts. Not that you have a lot of choice, but I dont kill the black raven monks for example.

 

Yep. And then after that, if you want you can use the same party to play the game of "how can I most effectively utilize party resources to beat as many maps as possible before resting?", or maybe "which of these characters can solo this map?" Because I'm not always planning on full-party gestalt, I'm planning on making my berserker a cleric of Helm instead of Ilmater or Lathander because I want to see if the Iron Body thing works for clerics, and I just love the idea of her soloing whole maps by herself with the Massive Halberd of Hate while everyone else waits at the entrance.

I also like planning uneven level squats, i.e. which of my characters should take a level when in order to have a fun midgame and still reach my optimal endgame configuration.

-Max

 

You can just cheat the cleric up to the appropriate level to try it out; no need to play the whole game through, if this is all you want to know.
As for the Massive Halberd... be careful you don't miss out on XP. Vampiric weapons are treacherous, because if your opponent dies from hitpoint draining, you won't get XP for the kill. I personally disregard all vampiric weapons for this reason.

 

It seems like that would be a minor issue. Vampiric drain is 1d4 if your opponent fails a fortitude save, compared to the 30+ HP per hit you'll be dishing out in physical damage. With the enhanced fortitude saves in HoF, you'd be generous to suppose you'll do vampiric damage on 10% of hits, which means less than 1% of your damage is vampiric. (Probably much, much less if you're using luck heavily and other damage boosters.) A 1% XP hit is not going to stop me from enjoying my battlecleric's being a one-woman army.

(Thanks for checking out the Iron Body thing in the other thread, but I think I'll still probably try letting the cleric solo some maps. I'll just give her a potion of invisibility or something in case it gets sticky.)

-Max

 

I wonder if you'll feel the same way after you lose ~100XP gain for a lousy 2 temporary hitpoints... There are many non-vampiric weapons that do loads of damage. Just hope you get the Massive Greataxe of Flame as a random drop, that'll solve your dilemma.

 

I love how, every time someone votes on this poll, it bumps the thread up to the top

 

Whatever is the opposite of power-gaming then that's my style. It's certainly not pure role-playing but I'm not out to make the game easier that's for sure. So for me it's either strong characters with limited skills and/or rubbish weapons, or pathetically weak characters who get to use the better equipment.

 

If I'm going through just the first time, then #4 is more for me.
I have been going through to HOF lately though, so chose #6. I read JUPP, UPP and other power game guides and came up with my own "elite" party that I wanted to run, and it hasn't dissapointed. I am actually not a fan of either JUPP parties personally, and hate the decoy character. There are some definite points that I took from the guides that have helped shape my party, but it doesn't look like the JUPP parties.
I tried using a party from a guide from Gamebanshee and although I think it would end up being great in HOF, it was terrible in Chapter one and two.

 

Ohh.. kudos to you! /bow

It ought to be obvious that the focus on the JUPP is not on the example parties, but how you can design parties that work for YOU. But you're the only one so far that has admitted to using it for just that. Nice to hear.

 

lol wuts roleplaying? 6 for me.

I just spent almost a week planning a new party, and have just started playing it this morning. my character creation and fighting are 110% pure powergaming, but that doesn't mean I don't care about the storyline. And I would care alot more about it if it wasn't basically a book with a fight between each page. I liked TOEE's take on roleplaying better. And don't get me wrong, the storyline was definitely interesting the first time through, but after that, its all about challenging fights and uber characters for me.

 

5, but I also like coming up with 6's. (Jukka's UPP might as well be throwing spitballs while naked compared to my UPP.)

Usually what I'll do is start the game, play for a 20 minutes or so to get a feel for the mechanics, then restart to optimize for those mechanics. Then play for a couple hours and restart again. Then play through. Then make a new party based on every thing I'd learned and play again. Then look online to find the extremes of optimization (specializing in particular skills and building towards weapons) at which point I can figure out a party that will absolutely rape the game. I play through like that, then I cheat like hell and fully deck out my party with the best items possible to find out what my UPP can really do.

Then the game is ruined for me.

 

DS, not sure if I'm to be flattered or offended by that comparison.. ?

But that's the curse of the powergamer - burn fast, die young. Wasteful on resources, but at times really fun.

 

LOL. I would probably do this too if it weren't for all the FedEx quests in Targos.

-Max

 

I am a 6 !!

I spend most of the time planning every thing so it's all optimized. Personally I find that it's is most of the fun. But once it's all planed I really enjoy plowing throug the story. That's why I love guides like JUPP !!!!