Tanks as always.
Oh man, I intentionally have avoided NPCs up till now because of the...less than stellar AI in the games. I will see if I can put up with her though if like Alias and Dragonbait she makes comments or observations that add to the story (in their case, I took the walkthrough's advice of booting them via the alter menu so I didn't actually have to babysit a couple of 40 hp melee fighters against the 6-8 shambling mounds that assault you constantly in that dungeon). If the trend of crazy tough last boss fights continues, I may need the extra help...I have come down to 2 melee fighters holding on by the skin of their teeth in both endgame fights so far.
BTW, that is something that has been bugging me a bit - say I do lose almost everyone in the last fight and it comes down to an epic struggle between one of my characters and whoever is trying to take over the world this time - can I still import the dead part members into the next game without incident? I notice CotAB kindly resurrected my party for me after the ending cutscene without constitution penalty, so perhaps it just does that again, but Pool of Radiance was not so nice.
Curse of the Azure Bonds party advice
I read somewhere that some game has a bug: transferred dead characters act as if they were alive, but their status is "dead" and it can't be changed. I don't remember the name of the game - GoldBox series are big. You can try it yourself and see their status. If something is wrong, you can transfer characters from the previous savegame where they all were alive.
Congratulations for winning the final battle, it's quite hard without using the dust of disappearance (which casts the level 3 mage spell blink on all party members).
May I ask what your glorious party was at the end of the game (classes , levels, hitpoints) ?
The bug with resurrected but still dead characters appears after the final battle in GttSF and not in CotAB so your resurrected characters should be fine for the sequel.
Don't worry about the NPC in SotSB, she'll do fine. I guess you already noticed that you can equip NPCs, if you want to take things away just let them get unconscious first. Equipping them with ranged weapons keeps them in the back if desired but I didn't have trouble letting them do melee, characters only die if their hitpoints fall below -9 HP.
May I ask what your glorious party was at the end of the game (classes , levels, hitpoints) ?
The bug with resurrected but still dead characters appears after the final battle in GttSF and not in CotAB so your resurrected characters should be fine for the sequel.
Don't worry about the NPC in SotSB, she'll do fine. I guess you already noticed that you can equip NPCs, if you want to take things away just let them get unconscious first. Equipping them with ranged weapons keeps them in the back if desired but I didn't have trouble letting them do melee, characters only die if their hitpoints fall below -9 HP.
I had a paladin, ranger, fighter, two elven fighter/mages, and a pure cleric. The multiclasses only reached level 9 in magic user, so my arcane power could have been stronger, but I don't regret the decision due to the number of apparently magic and/or fire immune enemies in the game.
The paladin, ranger, fighter, and cleric were all level 10, while the two fighter/mages were 7/9, IIRC. The game won't let me view my characters because "you have already defeated Tyranthraxus", so I'm going by memory and a save from just prior to taking out the Beholder Corps.
The fighters each had about 124-6 hp, the cleric had 90, and the fighter/mages had around 74 and 73. I did not reload for perfect hp but neither did I accept very bad rolls e.g. less than 10 hp for the fighters. The F/Ms I was particularly lenient with in this regard, and IIRC never reloaded for them.
For SotSB I'm not quite 100% sure about party composition yet. The near-restriction on any race besides human is limiting, but I still have to decide which characters will dual to what and when. I've always avoided dual classing up till now so I'm not too sure of what I'm doing
. Two Paladin 13/Clerics, three Ranger 15/MUs, and a Fighter 13/Thief?
The paladin, ranger, fighter, and cleric were all level 10, while the two fighter/mages were 7/9, IIRC. The game won't let me view my characters because "you have already defeated Tyranthraxus", so I'm going by memory and a save from just prior to taking out the Beholder Corps.
The fighters each had about 124-6 hp, the cleric had 90, and the fighter/mages had around 74 and 73. I did not reload for perfect hp but neither did I accept very bad rolls e.g. less than 10 hp for the fighters. The F/Ms I was particularly lenient with in this regard, and IIRC never reloaded for them.
For SotSB I'm not quite 100% sure about party composition yet. The near-restriction on any race besides human is limiting, but I still have to decide which characters will dual to what and when. I've always avoided dual classing up till now so I'm not too sure of what I'm doing
. Two Paladin 13/Clerics, three Ranger 15/MUs, and a Fighter 13/Thief?Unless you are going to grind a lot it's not worth waiting with dualing to magic-user too long. Ranger15/MU might get +5 to hit (which won't matter too much since barely any monster has negative AC) and an extra half melee attack per round (the number of ranged attacks per round is unaffected by class and levels) compared to ranger10/MU but if your fireballs fail to wipe out the enemies because you're 4-5 mage levels lower (that's also 4-5 less HP) because of the additional 1,625,000 XP spent for ranger it will make a difference, both in SotSB and PoD.
When creating the main magic-users for a new party in SotSB I'd go ranger9-10/MU, fighter9/MU, paladin9/MU or cleric9/MU, secondary magic-users can be dualclassed later.
Cleric spells don't depend on levels that much and thanks to the fix command and free healing in temples you can bear waiting for the last extra half attack per round but fighter9/cleric, paladin9/cleric or ranger10/cleric already offer extra hitpoints, weapon choices and half an extra attack per round.
For the thief role fighter13-15/thief will work best on the long run, just don't worry too much about a few exploding chests in midgame (including lost treasure) you can't disarm as fighter, if you can't bear this fighter9/thief will be lacking half a melee attack per round but get a few extra HP, still better than the multiclass fighter/thieves in the pregenerated SotSB and PoD parties, fighter/mage/thief is also bearable.
If you want to import your 4 humans from CotAB you could dual your cleric at level 12+ (after getting the second level 6 spell per day, depending on when you start dualing another character to cleric you can wait longer) to mage, your fighter will reach level 13+ for dualing to thief faster than a freshly created one.
You don't have to build the perfect party, take a look at the pregenerated parties in SotSB and PoD and the sample parties in the manuals, you can afford to make many suboptimal decisions, you don't have to grind heavily and dual everyone at level 15, just be aware that you'll want at least 2 high level mages and a cleric at the end of PoD.
My party consisted of paladin, paladin15/ranger, cleric9/thief, fighter10/cleric, ranger10/mage, fighter15/mage and was powerful enough to beat the games without too much trouble.
There are so many options, just create the party you think you'll have the most fun with.
When creating the main magic-users for a new party in SotSB I'd go ranger9-10/MU, fighter9/MU, paladin9/MU or cleric9/MU, secondary magic-users can be dualclassed later.
Cleric spells don't depend on levels that much and thanks to the fix command and free healing in temples you can bear waiting for the last extra half attack per round but fighter9/cleric, paladin9/cleric or ranger10/cleric already offer extra hitpoints, weapon choices and half an extra attack per round.
For the thief role fighter13-15/thief will work best on the long run, just don't worry too much about a few exploding chests in midgame (including lost treasure) you can't disarm as fighter, if you can't bear this fighter9/thief will be lacking half a melee attack per round but get a few extra HP, still better than the multiclass fighter/thieves in the pregenerated SotSB and PoD parties, fighter/mage/thief is also bearable.
If you want to import your 4 humans from CotAB you could dual your cleric at level 12+ (after getting the second level 6 spell per day, depending on when you start dualing another character to cleric you can wait longer) to mage, your fighter will reach level 13+ for dualing to thief faster than a freshly created one.
You don't have to build the perfect party, take a look at the pregenerated parties in SotSB and PoD and the sample parties in the manuals, you can afford to make many suboptimal decisions, you don't have to grind heavily and dual everyone at level 15, just be aware that you'll want at least 2 high level mages and a cleric at the end of PoD.
My party consisted of paladin, paladin15/ranger, cleric9/thief, fighter10/cleric, ranger10/mage, fighter15/mage and was powerful enough to beat the games without too much trouble.
There are so many options, just create the party you think you'll have the most fun with.
That is a relief to hear, honestly. I was dreading the idea of grinding to 3 more levels than I ended CotAB with on ogres in the wilderness XI. I would much prefer the melee9-10/caster idea with at most 1 or 2 guys with more.
Ranger/cleric sounds fun for the novelty of getting 3 different schools of spells, even if two of them will never go beyond level 1. Pal9/Cleric, Ran10/Cleric, 2x Ran10/Mage, Fight15/Thief (or 13 depending on how long it takes to get there in fighter), and maybe one more character besides the last who focuses a bit more on melee power e.g. Fighter13/Mage sounds fun. Too bad druids aren't in this game, though I suppose the rules involving them were just too awkward and difficult to implement - it would have been cool if they had just cut corners a bit and made them level mostly as clerics do rather than just leave them out altogether.
Ranger/cleric sounds fun for the novelty of getting 3 different schools of spells, even if two of them will never go beyond level 1. Pal9/Cleric, Ran10/Cleric, 2x Ran10/Mage, Fight15/Thief (or 13 depending on how long it takes to get there in fighter), and maybe one more character besides the last who focuses a bit more on melee power e.g. Fighter13/Mage sounds fun. Too bad druids aren't in this game, though I suppose the rules involving them were just too awkward and difficult to implement - it would have been cool if they had just cut corners a bit and made them level mostly as clerics do rather than just leave them out altogether.
If you're going to dual 2 warriors to cleric I recommend dualing the paladin later at level 13 or so. You just don't need two clerics that early. If the main cleric gets unconscious even a level 1 paladin can bring him/her back and if (s)he dies you'll have to reload anyway since level 7 spells like resurrection can't be cast before reaching level 16 in PoD.
This way you can also avoid having more than 3 characters weak in their dualing period at the same time.
This way you can also avoid having more than 3 characters weak in their dualing period at the same time.