Useful and useless things

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Useless:

Craft wondrous items. Useless crap. Not worthy of the XP spent, unless you get in in excess later in the game, eventually hitting the limit way earlier than the end of it.

Disarming traps: no one in my party has disarmed any traps so far and I have a fulltime elven female rogue who looks like a barbarian but is a rogue and not even a fighter/rogue because I keep thinking having a rogue might actually start being useful at some point in the game (character level 5, Temple dungeons now).

Bluff: one successful use and only because there was no other way of completing that quest (that spy amongst the castle site workers in Hommlet) and made it off my secondary speaker's CHA bonus of +2.

Exotic proficiencies, rapier, scimitar and the like: you aren't getting even masterwork items of that kind, let alone magical. I wasted a feat on Dwarven Axe proficiency for my dwarven fighter.

I'm also getting a feeling that all dialogue skills are useless and dialogues in ToEE are an excuse. Fifteen successful uses of diplomacy look fine on my paladin, but it's not like they've really changed anything. And I took the Negotiatior feat

Power Attack: required for Cleave, but useless on its own. Low level characters shouldn't use Power Attack, period. Starts making sense when you have insane DEX, Finesse and are using some crappy light weapon. But I suppose that's not the intended use of this feat.

Useful:

Cleave. Would do without it, but it comes very handy.

Great Cleave: Same. And I actually happen to use it. Even with my fwarven fighter using a one-handed axe.

Two-handed melee weapons. I don't use any, but as I see Cleave and Great Cleave being so handy, then two weapons are greatly useful. Especially given the 1.5 STR bonus with a strong character.

Turning Undead: greatly useful. Even with my paladin. He manages to make the undead flee, and the cleric can destroy whatever undead I meet even with plain turning, not the Greater Turning he has.

Archery feats: my archers own. And they're better in it than the warriors despite one is a rogue and the other is a wizard. The wizard has only wizard levels and fights alongside the paladin with sword in hand. She will probably get one fighter level for RP reasons and for the elven armour stuff that doesn't impede casting.

Web: owns.

Sleep: owns. When web won't make it (high DEX enemies), sleep will. High WIS and DEX? Oh well, I'll think of something.

Read magic: nice.

Identify: have to pay like in the shop But don't have to go there, at least.

Also, I'm pretty much prone to conclude that sorcerers are better than wizards casting-wise in this game. I hardly get scrolls. If my wizard were a sorceress, she wouldn't know much less spells. A bit less, but not much. And would be able to cast more, and without previous preparation. But I wanted that character to be a wizard, anyway.

I'm thinking about giving at least one level in the fighter class to my rogue. She would then lose the opportunity for improved evasion or slippery mind, but she would be able to wield better weapons and get a free feat etc. She already looks like a semi-barbarian warrior: green elven chain, darker green elven cloak, barbarian helmet, leather boots and gloves... No RP justification for ranger or barbarian levels, though barbarian would match her looks and ranger would match her style. Archery feats, I guess. Or finesse and dual-wielding. That elven chainmail is probably light armour, though I wouldn't bet my last money on it.

And the wizard has used a grand total of 6 different spells so far: Identify, Read Magic, Sleep (one battle), Web (two battles), Mage Armour (two battles), Shield (one battle). She has archery feats and jumps into the melee with a longsword. Don't know if I haven't had her charge as well... Given her STR is 14 while her DEX is 22, I bet Finesse might not be a bad idea. Only with rapier, though. Makes two feats and means a fighter level is the good way. Plus, she was made to be a battle mage from the beginning (she has Tumble as well, and Healing, some listening or spotting).

[ July 17, 2004, 04:25: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Craft Wondrous Items: Gloves of Dexterity +6, Gauntlets of Giant Strength +6, Cloak of Resistance +3. There are many items that were crucial to my endgame, all of which I had to make myself. Try sleeping a bit on the "random encounter" areas while traveling the world map. You'll get numerous extra enemies to battle this way. Even if not, you should still reach top level before the elemental nodes in the game.

Disarming Traps: Seems to be automatic. I never spotted any use for this either. Then when I had a druid take a thief's place with mere cross-class skills selected for thief abilities, I got stopped by a chest with a trap in it that she couldn't disarm (didn't happen in the previous game). Blame the manual for the confusion with this one. Anyway, unless you're going hardcore, a mage can handle these very rare traps as well.

Bluff: Well I never used these alone on any character. But I did notice a remarkable, even crucial difference with playing the game with no diplomatics in my party, and another with a bard who had full diplomatic skills on every ability (bluff, intimidate, gather information, etc). The dialogue was completely different when it mattered. A lot of people I would've had to pay to, or kill, were a lot more understanding this time (one actually requires 10 000 gold so it's not that useless an ability).

Exotic Proficiencies: My 2 mage 2 sorcerer group had a ranger doing the frontline fighting. With Weapon Finesse and Gloves of Dexterity +6, she dualwielded 2 rapiers most excellently. But I must admit, I freely used the bug to enchant a normal weapon to +1 magical, and proceed with the crafting from there. Without that rapiers would indeed be useless.

Power Attack: Actually the damage resistance works in such a fashion that power attack may in fact become useful. If you have magical weapons that can penetrate the damage resistance anyway, then there's not much difference. But my evil group encountered many gargoyles without magical weapons. That's where I noticed I had to use power attack to raise the damage so high the raw power would penetrate the damage resistance. Also, later with other critters I found you sometimes need to balance with wether you want to take the risk of hitting a thing twice (you might not have time for this), or will you go for the extra power and hope to kill him with one. This means especially much in low-save games (I don't play hardcore thanks to the bugs and luck involved). Otherwise I agree. Without those special circumstances, power attack is +-0.

Wizards are definitely more proficient as crafters thanks to their extra feats. Also, they can afford getting more meta-magical abilities (which are useless in the game, as previously concluded in other posts). But believe me, one wizard will get so many scrolls to read even early on, that there will be a difference. Especially if you know the scrolls so you can opt to go for the unacquirable spells while leveling. Battle-wise, they're roughly the same. While a sorcerer can make most combat ridiculous with her 5-6 fireballs, magic missiles and whatnot, a mage can sometimes be quite handy when you need to get prepared for a special type of enemy. Besides, when doing low-save games, keeping a mage with a bit of everything memorized as a backup reserve is a huge advantage when something unexpected happens.

 

If you have Fragarach, which always hit, you can put power attack to the maximum whithout any penalties. This is very "cheesy" however.

 

Craft Wondrous Items is essential. Give this to a druid who has the whole range of ability-boosting spells - Cat's Grace, Bear's Endurance, etc. I usually have one druid in the party and then suck the poor NPC dry of XP to subsidize the rest of the party. But then because the druid is so low-level compared to the others, he gets more XP per battle, and doesn't stay behind for long. Only craft the maximum level items to make it worth your while - it's worth the 75K for the best monk amulet.

Wizards can be de facto sorcerers in ToEE, because of the Scribe Scroll feat. The XP and gold costs are very low, so the easiest course is to have a wizard fill his spell book with everything you find, and then scribe dozens of copies of each spell you think you might use. You don't need a sorcerer if your wizard is carrying around a few dozen Fireball scrolls.

By the same token, you can scribe a dozen Knock scrolls and then skip the Open Lock skill entirely. A bonus with using Knock is that it automatically destroys the trap. So Disarm Traps is only useful if you have a rogue using Open Lock. So skip the Disarm Traps skill, too.

That may make rogues seem useless, but their Sneak Attack makes them great if you have several rogues in your party. I tried a game with four low-dexterity, high-strength rogues, each with a different two-handed weapon. With that many rogues attacking a target, there's no way you won't sneak attack. Combine that with Cleaves for each rogue, and you'll tear the place apart.

 

I've mentioned this a couple of times, in other threads.

The craft wonderous is, in and of itself, utterly worth having for the Circlet of Intelligence +6. Strictly for the ability to assign a hotkey to an infinite identify item. No more need to memorize identify and read magic. And if you have a lot of items in everyone's inventory, you can just change the CoI6 between party members and use the same hotkey.

You can do without it. But it's a convience that will LET you enjoy the game. The identify game is fun to play, every once in a while.

But, in this game, it is simply a chore. Hire a robot and do something else with your time...