Co8 Mod - I'm a noob, I need help staying alive in this game

I've seen posts from people who claimed a party of 5 clerics is the easiest way to dominate this game. I could see it working, but you'd need to know exactly what each cleric's role is going to be and build them accordingly.

 

I was thinking about the fun of having a melee focused cleric and a healer cleric in the same group. I've always been a fan of the combat cleric.

My current party is

1: half-orc Warrior
2: Halfling Rogue
3: Sorcerer (forget race)
4: Human Cleric
5: Bard (forget race)

I kind of had the thought of using the bard as a 2nd melee fighter, backup for the warrior.

I haven't played enough to see if this is really going to work out or not though.

 

My party is:

Human Rogue/Fighter with "face" skills (diplo, bluff, etc)
Human Rogue/Fighter with rogue skills (trap, lock, etc)
Human Bard
Elven Cleric
Elven Wizard
Elven Sorcerer

(I used the frontend to set it to 6 players, since I really wanted another caster but didn't want to recruit the evil scroll hogging npc)

It's late game now and everyone is using belts of +6 strength and gloves of +6 dex. The Wizard and Sorcerer started with 12 str and are running with +3 composite bows with 18 str req (bought and enchanted from woodworker in Hommlet). The Rogue/fighters are using Glaives with enchanted Darkwood bucklers, with warhammers for backup on things that need blunt. The Bard and Cleric are using longspears. The cleric is a Sun/Plant domain setup, so I can make natural armor necklaces.

The party is very effective even without using offensive magic. The wizard and sorcerer can pincushion foes with their bows, especially when hasted. The other four all have combat reflex and can really nail people with opportunity attacks due to their long reach. The rogue/fighters and bard all have really high strength (focused strength instead of dex) and improved trip. Pretty much anything approaching them gets knocked down and everyone takes shots at them when they try to stand up.

The fun part is everyone has good stealth skill, so I can sneak up on things and position myself however I want before battle. I surrounded the bear while the giant was away and killed it at level 2, then killed the giant with several uses of hideous laughter, a well placed entangle from the cleric, and a generous amount of stabbing. The bard saved the day first with the laughter and then by getting a critical hit at the last second to finish off the giant and then healing up the pancaked cleric with a scroll.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is bards are great backup fighters. Just get them some elven chain (or mithril chain shirt) and give them good strength. A longspear can help them get hits in while still staying behind the meatshield (if you have one). My warbard is a very effective. He keeps the group hasted in big battles and heals when the cleric isn't keeping up.


I also have a crazy game where I'm soloing with a chaotic neutral evocation specialist wizard. The first couple of levels were murder, with me reloading on several occasions due to a lucky crit taking me out. I had to rest constantly. As soon as he got level 3 spells things got much easier though. Right now hes just barely into the temple and already level 15(!) from all the experience due to soloing everything (much of it from fireballing encounters while trying to rest in the temple), as well as having a ridiculous AC due to a high dex and a bunch of crafted items (including a +3 defending bow). Maximized empowered scorching ray is fun, as are empowered cones of cold. Those poor fire temple guys didn't know what hit 'em.

 

I think I'm going to like my bard in a couple levels.

One thing that would help me play smarter is if the game tooltips/help gave more info about the skills, feats, etc.

For instance, when you look up a feat it says something along the lines of "classes x, y, and z can have this feat, it's the abc feat", but doesn't tell me what the details of the feat are. Such as, proficient in basic weapons, but it doesn't tell me which weapons are part of that set..and the weapon descriptions don't tell you what set they are a part of, so for someone like me with not a whole lot of DnD knowledge, I have to take a best guess at what some of them mean.

 

You can download the official system reference documents here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35

Or a online version that's easily searchable here: http://www.d20srd.org/

There are several others out there too.

It has information about things that didn't make it into the game too, but most of the stuff that did make it in made it in pretty much as laid out in the SRD. I've been looking up feats and spells and such constantly.

I played AD&D way back in the day, and my only exposure to the recent versions are through games - so I've had to look up a lot of things too

 

Also, the folder that you installed your game into should have a .pdf of the manual (if you don't have the hard copy) and there is a lot of basic information there.

 

Some of the manual info is wrong. Like staves don't act as double weapons, and wands have less than 50 charges (some wands only start with 10!). It's mostly good, though.