Yet another run, this time starring a Necro, Max H2H Options

[pekkae]

I am personally quite charmed by a two weapon paladin, monks once into their magic resistance, and even the pure swashbuckler is a nice addition.

I've been tinkering with the composition again, after seeing the new kits & powers in more detail.

I've play tested the Swashbuckler a little bit and for a few days, I've been enraged about "WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME THE SWASHBUCKLER IS AMAZING?!?" and then I came back to this thread and yea, I was told.

[kilorew]

How do you play the Swashbuckler in terms if Improved Anvil, is his dps enough to carry his weight.

Always thought his thaco later in the game would be a problem with no grandmastery etc even though he does get some bonuses to it

[SparrowJacek]

I had one run with a Swashbuckler, using version 6.2. His name was Duke Nukem and believe me, he was a really good asset to the party, though he needed Water's Edge in his offhand to do real damage. Now we have an option of using Hexxat as a Swashbuckler, she has great basic stats and a cloak that gives additional APR, which is the most important stat for Swashies. Swashbucklers have a nice thaco progression due to their fast level ups and kit bonuses, they can get some Critical Strike HLAs and have a kit-specific HLA Acrobatic Combat, which increases AC and thaco for 5 rounds.

[pekkae]

How do you play the Swashbuckler in terms if Improved Anvil, is his dps enough to carry his weight.

Always thought his thaco later in the game would be a problem with no grandmastery etc even though he does get some bonuses to it

dps = damage per second?

Swshbuckler beats out all fighters in the game thac0 wise besides the Kensai. The other characters who can beat her Thac0 wise are a dual Kensai/Thief (with max buffs & equipment) and the Assassin/Fighter, dualled after UAI with max equipment.

For damage, I'm fairly confident that she only loses to a Kensai & RB. Though if they are not maxed, Swashbuckler comes out on top. Our version should be around 50-60pts of damage per hit (on average) with 9 APR late game. That's including the to-hit effects. That is better than what Kensai can get.

I had one run with a Swashbuckler, using version 6.2. His name was Duke Nukem and believe me, he hwas a really good asset to the party, though he needed Water's Edge in his offhand to do real damage. Now we have an option of using Hexxat as a Swashbuckler, she has great basic stats and a cloak that gives additional APR, which is the most important stat for Swashies. Swashbucklers have a nice thaco progression due to their fast level ups and kit bonuses, they can get some Critical Strike HLAs and have a kit-specific HLA Acrobatic Combat, which increases AC and thaco for 5 rounds.

This is my plan exactly .

This post has been edited by pekkae: Nov 26 2022, 07:25 PM

[pekkae]

We' had some glimpses of the new up & coming changes so this has turned our plans upside down. As we like our crews themed - the "theme" for the crew isn't to maximize H2H, it's actually to maximize new stuffs in the game. (there's new stuff in IA as well, right?) So we're going to try the new kits, new stuffs & some new adventures (for us at least).

We'll play version 6.6 Beta.

So we'll take all of the NPC's we don't usually use along with some new kits we haven't played in order to maximize "freshness" (to an extent). We'll also install the Tower of Deception - mod, as it's supposed to work fine with IA. So we have a bunch of new things to try out. We'll do ToD before moving to Spellhold.

Then again, as our most fun thing to do is to develop absurdly OP crews and characters, certain choices rule out other choices, as we don't want to have two characters competing for the same stuffs. They play such a big part in what makes a character useful. Unfortunately some choices will rule out the most OP characters (we think), but we're hoping that we can develop our crew to extremely OP levels nonetheless.

We'll most likely end up with the following:

PC Necro,

As it's still the most OP character. We'll see how OP we can make our PC, as we'll balance the stuffs a little bit. Having a Necro though rules out Cernd. Once you've played with the -5 Cernd, the -4 version is just not going to cut it. We promise to exploit the Necro superpowers to the fullest extent.


Shaman (Minsc)

it's amazingly effective in the early parts of the game. Has unique superpowers from the early game on. Gets spirit shift for casual late fight whacking. But there's a "but". Having a shaman rules out Jaheira though, as in one of the most powerful NPC's out there. That is because we want to make the most diverse & competitive Shaman so it needs to use the most OP equipment. Unfortunately for us, that equipment is normally reserved for Jaheira (/Cernd). We're not sure how useful a Shaman is towards the end of the game. Though it's "competing" for the sport on the team with Jaheira/Cernd, both of whom are not that great in the most difficult fights in the game.

Minsc works nicely for this as the dialogues are exceptional and he's quite nuts. And carries around a guiding spirit animal of his own.


Hexxat

From our tiny bits of playtesting she looks like she can be developed to "hilariously OP" - levels. Shall get Waters Edge +4 to maximize her potential. So that means we won't take a RB/Kensai with us, as they compete for the same equipment. Insanely effective and as a bonus she has what's like undispellable continuous berserking on steroids.

I can't believe I didn't figure this out before.

She'll get the Swashies special armour. We'll also cheat a little and get her the cloak from v 6.5.

We should be able to drop her effective AC to around -40 after midpoint of the game. She should be quite safe. Not CERND-safe, but safe.


(Kel-)Dorn

The undead hunter. Gets undispellable useful bonuses and gets to cast clerical spells. Especially access to remove paralysis is very welcome addition.

So we'll turn Dorn into an undead hunter and give him Keldorn's stuffs. Why? Keldorn's new stuffs are amazing and we've never played with Dorn. So in principle, we are playing Keldorn, but with an additional quest and perhaps a little more interesting dialogue. The reason we take a Pally is because we took Hexxat and they compliment each other very well. With this setup we can max our APR's quite effectively. Shall get JD for maximum OP strength later in the game. Pally is the only character that can reach 9 APR without Water's Edge (/Belm) or gauntlets of extraordinary specialization.

it's a little bit of a shame that there isn't an "off hander" weapon, that would compliment the main weapon extremely well. Oh, besides Water's Edge of course. And Belm. FoDW would be amazing, but we have forging restrictions in place. So there's an off-hander. Oh. Well. So. Never mind. But, like, besides those.


F/I

Custom made gnomish fighter/illusionist. We'll max the stats and use a NPC as a template. Might use Neera for this as we really like her quest in ToB. The one character that keeps us in the game in the early parts. Gets +1 spells per level. Gets fighter Thac0's. Gets fighter HLA's. Gets amazing equipment. Can prebuff & debuff. etc.

Amazing tank + damage disher. Has everything besides high hitpoints. Though we can probably circumvent that a little bit. Shall use the Hammer of Thor & Githzerai blade late game. Oh and most likely the 0.5APR gauntlets so shall have 8 APR under IH. And after midpoint in the game also has nice amount of Critical Strikes.


R/C Multiclss

We have calculated and balanced now that we get the actual descriptions, abilities, items & everything. Unfortunately we don't think we can fit a kitted Cleric here. We don't see how we can protect the character throughout the game.

So we'll take the R/C instead. We'll use the cheating version with full access to druidic spells. We'll probably use Rasaad here for we want his extended quest in ToB, as we've never done it.

Should hover around -26AC ... -29AC mid game with good combat utility.

***

So our frontline should be quite safe, at least from mid-game onwards. We should have enough APR's (We'll end up with 26 APR // 3 characters). We'll be lacking a little bit in Critical Strikes, though F/M & (kel-)Dorn will probably only focus on CS's. Hexxat has 3. It's a little low and R/C will have other nice HLA's as well. We could fix this easily by switching Shaman with Jaheira.

***

Changes:

- Hexxat's cloak is revered back to the 6.5 version (for the most op version)
- R/C gets access to druidic spells. Most notably we need Iron Skins.
- We'll get a club +5, which we otherwise wouldn't have

This post has been edited by pekkae: Dec 7 2022, 11:36 AM

[SparrowJacek]

Good luck with your run! It will be an interesting read for me, if you decide to share your thoughts and I hope it will be even more interesting playthrough for you!

Shaman (Minsc) - Shamans should be the ultimate "stayin' alive" characters, I hope this will be visible. They should be able to wear most "druid-exclusive" items and at some point some items for Shamans will be introduced probably.

Swashbuckler (Hexxat) - with unnerfed cloak she will be insane! Late game she will be even better at dealing damage than Kensai and have far better protections. I don't remember, why do you need to cheat Swash armor? I think the only condition is that you have a Swashie in your party, though it might be restricted to a "good alligned" character...

(Kel-)Dorn - how can he get 9APR? He can't get Grandmastery and don't forget that evil characters can't use those Paladin bracers. Anyway Keldorn's new armor should be a nice addition for both survivability and packing a punch.

R/C Multiclss - it's a shame that there's no place for a pure Cleric kit in your team. Most kits should be able to survive and add survivability to the rest of the party, plus you have a Shaman when things get dire. At some point I hope I will add improved holy symbols to the kits to make their distinctive features even more apparent.

This post has been edited by SparrowJacek: Dec 7 2022, 10:22 AM

[pekkae]

Good luck with your run! It will be an interesting read for me, if you decide to share your thoughts and I hope it will be even more interesting playthrough for you!

Shaman (Minsc) - Shamans should be the ultimate "stayin' alive" characters, I hope this will be visible. They should be able to wear most "druid-exclusive" items and at some point some items for Shamans will be introduced probably.

Swashbuckler (Hexxat) - with unnerfed cloak she will be insane! Late game she will be even better at dealing damage than Kensai and have far better protections. I don't remember, why do you need to cheat Swash armor? I think the only condition is that you have a Swashie in your party, though it might be restricted to a "good alligned" character...

(Kel-)Dorn - how can he get 9APR? He can't get Grandmastery and don't forget that evil characters can't use those Paladin bracers. Anyway Keldorn's new armor should be a nice addition for both survivability and packing a punch.

R/C Multiclss - it's a shame that there's no place for a pure Cleric kit in your team. Most kits should be able to survive and add survivability to the rest of the party, plus you have a Shaman when things get dire. At some point I hope I will add improved holy symbols to the kits to make their distinctive features even more apparent.

Thanks! We'll see how it turns out. We're not looking that much facing the mundane stuff in the game (we'll skip some spider fights for example ), but we're mostly looking into developing the new & introduced equipment & spells & stuffs. I'll share thoughts as much as I can!

From my playtesting the Shaman is really nice & works very well. We'll use the spirit fire extensively in the early parts of the game but I have no idea how those abilities will work at 6MExp(+) levels. It's sort of a shame that we can't fit both Avenger & Shaman in the group. We'll give paws of the furious cat to the Shaman for him to be able to participate in the fights as well. And the Shaman will get the circlet of the woods/golden flowers.

I thought the Swashbuckler armour was a PC only - drop. But at least the description at readme/items doesn't say so. So maybe we don't have to cheat Nice! (just playtested and yes the armour it's usable by an evil character as well).

We'll change Dorn's alignment to good in order to get the blessed bracers. And we'll also fix his stats to match Keldorn. So we'll be playing a character that is 1:1 Keldorn fights-wise. Though we've never played with Dorn so we're hoping to make the dialogue a little bit more interesting and we're looking to do Dorn's quests, as we've never done em.

According to my calculations and tiny bits of playtesting, we're not sure if a kitted cleric has enough to protect itself in the fights. And since we have a Pally, who'll get the bracers, we're restricted in APR's without access to Critical Strikes. Those are the two major reasons we're inclined to take R/C instead. There's though oodles of nice new stuff to try out though - and it'll leave the kiteed Cleric's abilities for us to try out in possible future runs as well.

This post has been edited by pekkae: Dec 7 2022, 11:26 AM