I've decided to try my hand at just what the title says: run throughs with all four party members being the same class. I've tried this before but now there is more to play with thanks to Co8 and Temple+. This is more fun than it sounds and it really teaches a lot about each class' potential. Has anyone else done this? I'd love to hear your feedback. I will keep adding to this thread as I complete more runs. Ground Rules: Four PCs. No NPCs. No multiclass. Any race. Avg HP/Level. Max level 12. Custom equipment from Shop Map. NOT Ironman - I want to get to Zuggtmoy with each group and cease the run after her defeat. UMD and Open Lock as cross-class skills if necessary. Completed Runs (in order) Barbarians: My inaugural team hit hard but got smashed a lot. Without the ability to craft, they relied heavily on their Rage to cut through their foes. They... struggled at times as it was tricky to keep their AC, and therefore their HP up. A tough run. Bards: I was worried for these guys before I started, but there was little need. Fascinate helped control earlier battles and their spells and crafting generally won through. Lack of plant-affecting spells was an issue in the final battle, but they had excellent UMD skills for a bit more arcane fire and lightning. Almost effortless run overall. Warmages: Thought I was in for a terrible smackdown with these guys, but boy was I wrong. Right from the start this bunch just roasted and missiled anything in their way. They absolutely dominated all the way to the end with no need for crafting. 6th level = 16 fireballs at your disposal! Final battle... not so good. They got a bit overwhelmed but were finally able to Magic Missile Zuggtmoy into submission. Swashbucklers: Being a new addition to the game (thanks, modders!) I was looking forward to this run. I made sure that they were high INT to maximise Insightful Strike as they really didn't have much else to fall back on. Made them aesthetically a gang of pirates. Not a great run as they seemed starved of ways to turn the tide of a battle. Lots of reloads. The weakest run of the lot at point of writing. Favoured Souls: I've been impressed with these guys in the past - they act like buffed up warriors. They did not disappoint. With the breadth of spells available across 4 of them, I covered all needs and crafted up the wazoo as well. They were awesome to behold and overwhelmed pretty much everything, even the last battle where True Seeing made its presence felt. Comfortable run - they weren't really ever in danger. Scouts: Wasn't really sure how this would go. I've tried scouts before then wondered why I didn't just get a rogue on the job. The Skirmish ability, though... oh boy! I stand corrected. I didn't realise it lasted a round. Working together, running all over the place, these guys were utter beasts. They would circle around their prey dishing out 30-40 a hit after 6th or so (Improved Skirmish helped). Not a good match for Whirlwind Attack I found out, but Combat Reflexes was a win. They did have a LOT of trouble in the final battle because Skirmish doesn't work on plants. I had to form a healing chain to keep my Scather-user going. Paladins. These holy rollers took a bit of warming up. I relied heavily on Smite Evil and Lay on Hands throughout the first several levels. After 6th level, crafting came on line, but I couldn't make anything decent until 8th (i.e Belts of Giant Strength). After that, it was smooth sailing with huge damage being meted out every hit. Very quick battles, reminiscent of 4 lawn mowers through long grass. I've never seen a quicker final battle - Old Fungus Face didn't even get a chance to pop out any minions except for a sheepish Glabrezu who probably would have told Her to "Put me back!" if it had a choice. Sorcerers. Starting with low hp was a shock. I actually went back and redesigned my sorcs with more CON and more evocations to start with as they struggled badly at first. After a certain point (around level 4th-5th), the sheer firepower they could pull out began to make each battle a foregone conclusion. Add in crafting (belts, amulets of health, cloaks of charisma) and they were basically unstoppable. Felt similar to the warmage run, with a much shakier start. Rogues. In a mixed class party, my rogue is usually my little super star, so I was looking forward to a whole team of them. They... had a hard time. They hit very hard and flounced around the battlefield with wild abandon, but they simply could not take the hits in return. Bugbears presented the biggest problem as they were just as Tumbly and Sneaky as the rogues. If a rogue got Tripped, it was nighty-night time. Upon reaching 10th level, the rogues really started to shine because they got their special feats: Two took Opportunist and two took Crippling Strike. I think Opportunist was better as it really made mincemeat of anyone stuck in the middle of a pair. Final battle went okay, though lots of guerrilla tactics required to stay healed up. Cont'd in another post below...
Rangers do well with a mix of races. A dwarf dual wielding with a dwarven waraxe and an elf archer make a good first 2 of the 4 with a half-orc melee and a human archer as the other 2. Mithril chain is a MUST tho. Clerics do VERY well. Half-orc of Kord with strength and good domain, Human Pelor with sun and good, Human Pelor with Healing and good, Half-elf Ehlonna with sun and good. Enlarge from strength domain is effective from the start, Sound burst(even tho skeletons are wrongfully immune to the DAMAGE) can be devastating in the moathouse, and once you get Holy Smite from good domain (crafted wands anyone) Do not forget HOLY weapons. Dismissal for pesky summons all around. Try 4 holy words, rippled off with spell penetration/greater penetration against the Balor
The first time I beat ToEE was with a party of all Wizards who spammed magic missile and fireball and who farmed low level areas to reach level 5 early.
If you do all clerics, don't forget one with the Law domain so those Holy weapons become Holy AXIOMATIC weapons!
A Cleric of Hieroneous can have the Law & Good domains. Remember, a CG Cleric of Pelor or Kord can wield the Swords of Answering!
Single Party Runs, Continued. Fighters. My specialist beefcakes were as follows: bastard sword & shield (eventually Scather), greathammer (then Soulhammer), TWF handaxes (then Sharp Cleavers), and a fairly dextrous dwarvish pikemaid with a ranseur (then, Holy Ranseur) - I think she ended up being the star of the show, to be honest, combat reflexes being her secret weapon. I focused on brutish feats: weapon focus, power attack, cleave, great cleave, combat reflexes, imp. crit, melee mastery, weapon spec, pow. charge. They started off pretty bad, though high hp got me through most encounters. By level 5, they were stomping much better, and level 6 was a huge boost. I'd say they performed better than the barbarians - better armour and lots of feats made them quite the powerhouse. By the end, they easily took care of The Lady and her Balor buddy. Clerics. These guys were always going to be fine. Healing, armour, buffs, crafting - they owned the game from the outset. Custom Holy Axiomatic weapons, Girdles of Giant Strength - they had excellent kit and perfect buffs that filled the gaps. Running around with Righteous Might on, they eclipsed the fighters run easily. Bit of a walkover by the holy gang - they smashed it. Beguilers. What I noticed when I played a P&P beguiler was that I needed to rethink my playstyle. These guys aren't about damage at all, but control and buff/debuff. TOEE isn't the kind of game where you can just walk away from every battle, so this was going to be...different. It was, but in an interesting way! I kept thinking was a trippy experience it must have been for this party's enemies. They would be set upon by dozens of clones (mirror images), moving really fast (expeditious retreat, haste), and all mildy blurry (blur). Then, before they had even pulled their weapons, the enemies were dazed, confused, blind, slowed, or in thick fog - real bad hangover material. This made for long, weird battles (the beguilers really didn't hit often - but neither were they often hit), but their magical onslaught always eventually paid off. Solid Fog was a winner here (4th level spell) as it allowed the beguilers to fight waves instead of hordes. Pretty successful end battle, no healing required (even the Fun-Gal had trouble hitting these guys). Strange, oddly successful - but required huge magical output to pull off. Rangers. I went with three TWF (longsword/cutlass, twin dwarf waraxes - eventually sharp cleavers - and a finesse fighter with twin wakizashis) and one archer. It took a while for the TWF to get up to scratch - they were pretty terrible to start with - but they were machines near the end. The archer was excellent with huge attack bonus due to crafting gloves of dex and upgrading his bow. The animal companions added much needed extra targets - it was a veritable zoo of wolves and bears - and the NPCs seemed to really hate them. Favoured Enemy was noticeable in play - probably helped that I meta-ed the choices, though. Good, strong end battle with only one smashing on Mushroom-Girl while the others did some gardening. Wizards. The first two levels were a challenge - let's just say that if I was playing Ironman, it would be over almost before it started. Like the Warmage run, these guys rarely faltered after 3rd level. The ability to alter spell lists and share spells was great, and the crafting potential made them super-warriors as well, with Belts of Giant Strength and customised weapons - not to mentioned enhanced Elvish Shields. An exponential run. Monks. First few levels went quite well, all things considered. They switched on Flurry around 3rd level - otherwise the -2 was just a bit much. Having two bonus feats by 2nd level (Combat Reflexes, Deflect Arrows) really made all the difference, especially Deflect Arrows as it is very easy to die from an overwhelming arrow barrage in some encounters. Not by the rulebooks, but a much needed boost, I think. The monks started to run into a bit of trouble in the Temple when facing foes like Ogre Chief, as they had no reliable way to debuff him. They really shined, however, when facing hordes of humanoids, even bugbears, and Flurry + Combat Reflexes + Great Cleave was a beautiful thing to watch. Originally, I planned out which monk weapons to use, but they all just ended up using Unarmed as there were no magical monk weapons anywhere (except Staff of Striking, but that came very late game). This was fine because Stunning Strike and Trip were my mainstays. End battle went quite well - one monk had Scather and the rest just took care of the hordes. Druids. As predicted, the druids were a powerhouse. They have quite a unique spell set and their idiosyncratic spells (produce flame, barkskin, call lightning, spike growth etc) really saved the day. Having 4 full strength animal companions was a bit OP near the beginning, especially those trippy wolves. I am pleased to report that Wild Shape works perfectly (thank you, modders!) with no speed bug in sight. I focused two of my tree-huggers on spell feats, one on melee feats, and the other on Wild Shape feats (I had to wait to 5th level to see if it would pay off). All benefitted from uber crafting skills, with ability scores easily into the 20s quite early with their wide range of transmutation buffs. As far as the nature (hehe) of their spells, I would categorise them as primarily control and blast. Spike Stones and Spike Growth trivialised many tough encounters as they simply couldn't get to me without being ripped to shreds. Final encounter was easy. Surrounded by polar bears and dire wolves, everything buffed to the max, and flame striking the crap out of minions, these druids had it all. Nice finale to this investigation. SUMMARY: Very fun experience, and it did not even seem repetitive because I was dealing with different parameters each time. I got to know the ins and outs of each class very well and noticed some trap options as I played (like feat investment in "monk weapons") I won't do a full ranking, but some things I noticed (in the bounds of this game): Crafting is a game changer. Spells are definitely an advantage over no spells. CoDzilla and Quadratic Wizards is true. Every class is fun in its own way. Spellcasters are even more powerful with others of their kind. Some of that is not news to anyone who has ever played 3.5e, but it was awesome to see it in action. Happy gaming!
