Who's pulling their weight?

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I've just completed the Undead Vale quest, and out of interests sake decided to monitor the effectiveness of each NPC:

Fighter/Cleric: Total XP value in party = 40%

Fighter: 22%

Fighter/Mage: 20%

Fighter/Thief: 13%

Mage: 2%


So, uh, yeah, I think it's obvious who's lagging behind. What do you expect I suppose, the mage can only cast about five poor damage spells per day. The Fighter/Mage is also rather frail simply because of her high AC. It should be interesting to see whether the discrepancies between characters dwindles as the single-class mage gains fireballs, and the mage/fighter utilises mirror image, ghost armour and ghoul touch.

 

Oddly enough, I'm very curious to see how this turns out and I'm not even sure I could find my Icewind Dale discs anymore.

 

The Total XP portion of the information sheet is a pretty poor way to gauge the effectiveness of anyone that isn't a Fighter. And even with Fighters, that can be a bit iffy since it only records XP for the person who got in the last hit. Although that doesn't become much of an issue over huge numbers unless the player is purposely letting one of their characters get the final blow on most enemies.

Back in one of my playthroughs, my pure Mages rarely had more than a single digit in terms of how much of the percentage of total party XP they earned. But they were by far the most invaluable.

Chromatic Orb, Web, Haste were the staples of my early game Mage spell book and they were immensely useful. Almost any kind of Hold Person effect gives you a 100% Hit Rate, given an average of Hit Rate of 75% (just pulling numbers out of thin air here) that means a Mage can indirectly increase the entire party's Hit Rate by somewhere around a little less than third (seeing you also lose the ability to make Critical Hits)

Even more with Haste + Web, giving you an effective ~166% extra damage per character using the same 75% base average hit rate. With a party of 5 characters with competent melee/missile ability and 1 Mage, even if the Mage just stood still and just casted Web/Stinking Cloud and Haste his damage contribution would total more than any character, although it will never show in the Information Screen except as "Web" as a Favourite Spell.

In my current Level 1 Start Insane/HoF playthrough of IWD, my Bard has earned a grand total of 0 XP. Yet she compromised half of the core of my entire team thanks to Chromatic Orb (the Fighter/Cleric being the other half with Hold Person) for the entire Prologue, in Chapter One her Web/Stinking Cloud and Haste make battles so much easier.

God knows how much War Chant of the Sith has helped me and the Information Screen will never display that kind of info.

Take away any of my main Fighters even if they "earned" 20+% of the party's total XP and the effectiveness of my party would only take a small hit if by any at all. But if you were to take away the Bard who doesn't even have a Favourite Weapon seeing as she has never attacked even once, then I'd guess that the rate I'd saving and reloading would sky rocket 10-20 times.

 

I was wondering how long it would take to make that (valid) point. You're quite right that XP percentage isn't the best judge of a character's 'usefulness'. Apart from what you mentioned, there is also the issue of whether each character has been optimised correctly, the equipment they are using, and whether I am employing them in battle so that they are used to maximum efficacy.

% XP earnt needs to be looked at in context (ergo. in regards to my gaming experience). As such, it does help reinforce my suspicions regarding the efficacy of certain characters. For the first chapter of the game, my mage was next to useless. Several low level spells against hordes of undead was *not* optimal, and his chromatic orb wasn't of a high enough level to exert the stun effect. After expending his memorised spellbooks, my wizard would resort to slinging stones, something which pretty much every other character can do far better.

That my wizard sat around like a fat useless turd is borne out by the fact that he only earnt 2% of the XP.

True. But it is more probable that your hardest and surest hitting warrior will score the last hit. That my cleric/fighter earnt the largest proportion of XP is no surprise, since she was hitting about as often as the fighter (probably more), but also had spell stones to fire at the undead.

Spellcasters really seem to stink early on in the game though. Not only do they have few spells at their disposal, their buffs have an atrociously short duration. For example, bless takes a round to cast, and only lasts 6 rounds. Are you kidding me? By the time I've engaged the enemy, the effect would have worn off.

Chromatic Orb and Web are pretty damn good, but you get what, three castings a day? And haste is great up until the fatigue kicks in, upon which you *need* to rest your party. You're better off dual or multiclassing.

 

I normally play on Insane difficulty from scratch, and lately I'm trying my hand at an Insane/HoF playthrough so my experience may differ yours. Not even counting the mod I installed that makes enemies have max HP, which has a significant effect in anything with a lot of hit dice, which is pretty much anything in HoF Mode.

In any case...

I agree Bless isn't that useful, even at it's peak efficiency when you need a 19 + your total to hit bonus + 1 to hit (effectively increasing your damage output by 50%.) I just can't imagine myself using it in that kind of situation.

But a few things Clerics do have are the "Chant"-line of buffs. With Fighter-types the damage this adds is well worth the round you spend casting it. Not to mention synthesizes well with the Arcane disablers.

As for the effectiveness of Arcane and Divine spells, Vale isn't that good of a place to start gauging caster effectiveness. Enemy HP (I think) and ThAC0 isn't punching through the stratosphere. Turn Undead is a pretty good disabler even from a multi X/Cleric in a non-HoF playthrough.

But you'll start to appreciate it in the next few areas, when you face stuff like Sword Spiders which have 4 Attacks per round and a ThAC0 of 10(?)

In HoF they're practically insane, dropped my Fighter with -9 AC from 160 HP to 10 HP in a matter of seconds seconds before I realized what was going, he was saved when the auto-pause finally kicked in.

Insane/HoF threw like 6 of those at me with Phase Spiders which had poison that could kill your characters before you even got a chance to down an Antidote if you don't pause or have it on your quick item slot. Not counting the Bombardier Beetles and Trolls the game decided to throw into the mix.

As the game starts getting more difficult you'll learn to appreciate casters, maybe it won't be until very late in the game depending on the difficulty you're in. But if you're planning to go into HoF mode, spells are going to be a core part of your combat strategy.

Regarding Dual/Multi classing,

Normally, I really don't like multi-classing my spellcasters as it really slows them down. Dual-classing only inflicts an extra 2000XP "penalty" for a 2 Fighter/X Caster dual class Level 1 gives you that .5 extra attack or even waiting until Level 7 Fighter for 64k XP for another .5 extra attack.

Multi classing only gives you slightly more HP and the last .5 extra attack at Level 13 and proficiencies on more weapon types you'll probably not be using all at the cost of doubling the XP you need.

For Clerics this really slows them down as starting from Level 10 the XP they need isn't anymore double of the previous level. At around that level Wizards get their "sweet spot" in their XP tables when they gain levels faster than all the other classes other than Rogues/Bards.

Those levels are pretty important as it's when non-Evil Clerics get Heal (11). The difference between a Pure/Dual Cleric and Multiclass Cleric getting to this point is around 4 million XP for a 6 man party.

The Wizard sweet point is from level 7-13 (or 60k XP to 1M IIRC) that's also when they stop having to earn their current total XP to reach the next level. It's during those levels that Wizards open up their Level 4-6 Slots, and a huge chunk of Level 3-6 Slots)

You should also try Bards if Wizards aren't your cup of tea. Bards, while having less spell slots than Wizards late game have a good chunk of Songs and their fast level progression makes up for their lower number of spell slots during the early levels. Three Heroes adds 1 Damage per Attack to your entire party. So with a decent number of Fighters, it delivers an incredible amount of damage. And War Chant of the Sith is just plain out of this world.

 

Hmm, don't even know if I'm on topic, but a thing to consider with all cleric variants (paladin included) is the turn undead when considering contribution to killing speed (dunno if the % counter counts that as well). Only because of this I would consider putting a pure cleric in the party. I mean, did you know those guard dudes in the Trials of the Luremaster Keep are undead? I tried killing them the normal way, on insane. Can't even imagine what they do in HoF. And considering all the undead in the game, clerics are killing machines. A 4 member party with one pure cleric and insane mode XP, that would rock. I think

 

It's only natural that fighters (and archers) make more kills than the others, but it does also depend on your playing style. I once role-played a party of 3 married couples - the guys did all the fighting and shared out the kills pretty equally between them, while the girls collected jewelry and went shopping! I'm pretty sure I completed the basic game without the 3 'helpers' making a single kill, but they did provide a bit of support along the way.

 

Just whacked Yxumonia (sp?).

Fighter/Cleric: Total XP value in party = 20%

Fighter: 26%

Fighter/Mage: 29%

Fighter/Thief: 18%

Mage: 5%

 

I started a new game and decided that it would be interesting to see what percentage each member would get in the "toatal XP/kill-department". I have a dwarven fighter (16%/16%), a gnome fighter (26%/25%), an elven fighter (25%/28%), a dwarven cleric (4%/8%), a elven mage/thief (16%/10 %) and a bard (11%/10%). This is after I got back from Dragon's Eye.

The dwarven fighter is the only one who doesn't use a missile weapon so it isn't surprising that he's not in the lead. After all, he ties up a lot of enemies while the others shoots arrows and bullets. The elven fighter has the best bow and *** in bows so I expected that she would get the most kills. The gnome is probably too small for enemies to see before they have a sword in their chest...

But while the three fighters has the best percentage, the other three members are the most important. The cleric can either heal, turn undead or cast things like dispel magic. The bard has her songs, can use a bow or a sword and cast spells. And the M/T is scout, magic-user and archer so he is very versatile. After all, fighters have their use but it is a limited one.

 

So I just finished ToTL with my HoF Mode + Max Enemy HP Mod from scratch party and will probably finish the game in a day or 2, the percentages are as follows

1. Pure Fighter 30%
2. Pure Fighter 28%
3. Pure Fighter 25%
4. Dual Fighter/Mage 10% (Favourite Spell: Web)
5. Dual Fighter/Cleric 7% (Favourite Spell: Righteous Wrath of the Faithful)
6. Bard 0% (Favourite Spell: Web, Favourite Weapon: None)

That's right I'm about to finish the game and my Bard has yet to attack even once. Although I'd estimate the Bard has indirectly dealt the most damage with Haste, the Emotion Buffs, all the this that should have missed without Web. She probably also healed the most HP with War Chant of the Sith, all the attacks enemies should have made without Web.

 

Tharlok, I'm not sure that I'd say that fighters' use is "limited". Maybe a bit "narrow", but still highly important, given that IWD1 is basically a hack&slash game.

Regardless, your point that the other three members of your party are highly important is entirely true. Clerics, bards, or mages may not rack up high kill #'s, but the value they bring to any party simply isn't quantified by the kill #'s. And even if the Infinity Engine tracked numbers of HP's of damage inflicted by each character, which might help out wizards, since their area effect attacks may inflict a lot of damage on many characters but not necessarily kill them, such a stat still would account for the value of healing, or bard songs, or things like web spells.

 

Bad choice of words I guess... The fighters ARE important since there ara a lot a monsters that they have to deal with. But it is, as you said, a narrow way to earn XP. It is also not as fun as using a bard, cleric, thief or wizard. But that's just my opinion...

 

Yeah, I'll concede that. I'm not much of a fan of pure fighters myself. Oh, they have their uses, but I tend to prefer pallies and rangers. I'm not exactly a fan of wizards either. They have their uses, of course. But regardless of whether it's BG1/2 or IWD1/2, I've never been a big fan of arcane-centric combat tactics. It's just not my style. I prefer a more "physical" style of combat, with a very strong element of stealth (hence my liking of rangers and thiefs/rogues), and tend to see arcane magic as a fire support to be called upon in critical situations, rather than a primary offensive weapon to be used at every possible opportunity.

 

There's a slight misconception about Fighters and Mages here.

Fighters and Mages are not "separate" entities. This game, especially in HoF mode will not be decided by pure Fighter damage nor by pure Magic Damage (actually Magic Damage starts to lag behind) Actually you still can get through HoF that way, making Fighters and Mages work together though makes it a lot, lot, lot, lot easier

This isn't Baldur's Gate 2. Granted in BGII Fighters and Mages aren't always "separate" either and the best combinations involve mixing those two together, but BG2 is also a game where a Pure Mage or Sorcerer is a box of cheese all by himself unloading 20 Skulltraps 20 Horrid Wiltings 20 Cloudkills even before 1 turn passes and still have a full spell book after that. In IWD, Mages and Clerics throw Hasted, Wrathed, Emotioned Fighters with 10 attacks, +20 to their THAC0 and Damage to helpless webbed/sleeping/unconscious enemies. Throwing Fireballs is nice but once HoF turns around, even a goblin can take a full blast of Horrid Wilting and come out swinging.