TOEE - ambushed!

One of the interesting things which I found myself doing while playing TOEE was to compare what was happening in the game with what might actually happen if this were a PnP campaign. Not sure what this says about my psychologically but I suspect that I've been doing this for a couple of reasons.

1. I started playing TOEE initially primarily because I had been listening to the Penny Arcade D&D podcasts and this was the most accessible cRPG using turn based initiative mechanics which I could find at the time.
2. The game itself is named after one of the most popular modules from D&D's glorious past which always makes me think back to PnP days.

But of course, the problem is that although the scenario is based on a PnP module, the game itself is being run by an AI and not by a real human. And occasionally, this creates a few problems.

The Ambush

After taking out Lareth the Beautiful, my party was in a pretty sorry state of affairs. Several characters were heavily injured and I had also exhausted my supply of arcane as well as divine spells. In short, time for an extended rest.

However, I was faced with a slight dilemma. Do I rest in the lair of the pirates and risk being attacked by wandering monsters (monsters which I could well have trouble defeating in my current weakened state)? Or do I travel back to Hommlet to rest in the Inn and trust that my druid's survival skill was high enough for me to evade any wildlife?

Considering that my druids survival skill had enabled me to pick and choose wildlife encounters quite well so far, I decided to take my tired party back to Hommlet.

Of course, if the DM were a dick, now would be the perfect time to introduce an ambush.

Oh look, the DM is a dick

With an injured party and no spells or scrolls left, this resulted, not surprisingly, in a TPK. After a reload, I let my injured party rest in the pirates lair and faced off against my ambushers once again - this time with a full strength party.

A full strength party also means sleep spells...

It wouldn't have been an exaggeration to say that I was looking to completely wipe these guys off the face of Greyhawk. Seeing as I was on my way back to Hommlet, where I would be able to rest again before heading out, I basically unleashed my full arsenal of spells.

>:)

...and more sleep spells...

In short, I unloaded my sorcerer's supply of sleep spells on the enemy (PS I love the fact that this game provides you with the exact radius of you AOE spells so you can make sure that your party doesn't get caught in the blast). This put most of the enemies to sleep and reduced the odds enough that I was able to take out the remaining bad guys without much trouble.

...and even more sleep spells.

And after taking out the bad guys which were still awake, it was a simple matter of wandering around the remaining enemies and slitting their throats before they woke up.

>:)

pwned

TOEE - the Master

Making my way through the bandits lair, we eventually found our way to the Master. And if you immediately thought of Doctor Who then give yourself 10 geek points!

The Master is actually a priest of Llolth going by the name of Lareth the Beautiful. And fitting for a bad guy with such an awesome name, this was one heck of a fight!

The fight actually starts off with our party in a corridor leading into a big room. I know that there is a fight coming as there was a guard in the corridor who tried to bar our entrance. I can guarantee that he won't be doing anything so foolish in the future.

Of course, with us in such a good defensive position, the key for us would be to bring the bad guys to us. With that in mind, time to launch a classic cRPG tactic - the lure.

In this case, the lure was my pet attack dog (summoned by Jaheira, my druid). By moving to the end of the corridor, he was able to see into the room and activate most of the guards in that room.

Check out the number of bad guys at the top of the screen!

Which kicks off one of my favourite tactics in this game. My wizard casts an Enlarge Person spell on Sir Galahad and I promptly use him to cover the entrance to the corridor. With the extra size, he can cover the entire corridor so anyone trying to run past is subject to opportunity attacks.

Judicious use of the Enchant Person spell also gives the bad guys some targets other than myself

Another favourite tactic is for my mage to cast True Strike which grants him +20 on his next attack roll. With a +20 attack bonus, this pretty much ensures that he will hit on his next attack. With an almost guaranteed hit, I then cast Ray of Enfeeblement which reduces the targets strength by d6. As a general rule, mages work best as support characters in this game until they hit high level and pick up some decent attack spells.

As you can see, I manage to hit (even on rolling a 2)

Just to give an indication of how many bad guys there are in this fight, here you can see that I have managed to fight my way into the room. However, by this time, my Enlarge Person spell has worn off and Sir Galahad has returned to his normal self (albeit with just 1hp left - time for a cure spell!).

Luckily, by this stage, I have Cure Medium Wounds

Despite Sir Galahad's close brush with death, we manage to take out Lareth. After that, its just a case of mopping up. The remaining bad guys aren't much of a threat to Sir Galahad as I've been really pumping up his armor class.

Falgur, my cleric, with the killing blow

TOEE - the ogre

After taking out the zombies with relative ease, I have to admit that I was feeling pretty good about myself. I had been caught in an ambush but, with some quick thinking, had managed to deal with the situation quite handily.

Now, if I was a DM and felt that the players were starting to feel a bit cocky, then I would introduce something nasty to bring them back down to Earth. At least, I would if I were a dick. Considering that we've already established that this DM is a dick, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to find an ogre waiting for us behind the next door.

The ogre hasn't seen us yet

I tried to cast a sleep spell and get an easy kill. Alas, it was too high a level and the sleep spell had no effect. With no other option, I engaged in melee. In hindsight, considering that the ogre's strength gave it a +10 to its attack roll, this may not have been such a good idea.

A breakdown of the ogre's bonus to attack

Although it missed its first attack, it wasn't long before the ogre started to hit. And when it did, it hit hard!

24 damage on 1 hit!! Smeg me!!

With such massive damage output, I wasn't able to heal my fighter quickly enough. A couple of hits later and Sir Galahad fell. Permanently. :(

Alas, poor Galahad

Luckily for me, Sir Galahad had managed to hold out long enough for the my party to badly damage the ogre. Shortly after Sir Galahad fell, Jaheira was able to deal the killing blow and the ogre toppled to the ground next to my knight.

I have to admit that I seriously contemplated reloading. However, I had a scroll of raise dead and in the end, used the scroll to raise him instead. Ultimately, our party had done reasonably well and I decided to let the dice lay where they had fallen.

In a way, its lucky that Galahad is dead otherwise the ogre toppling on top of him would have really hurt...

TOEE - turning undead

The main benefit of having a cleric in the party is the healing spells. Without the clerics ability to cast healing spells, the progress of your delve effectively slows to a grind as you have to take a major rest between each combat.

The second benefit of having a cleric is the access to divine spells that the cleric gets - some of which are pretty awesome. Particularly as I have a good alignment cleric, I get to pick the divine spells as normal and just convert them to healing spells at the time of casting if I need to do some healing instead.

The third benefit of having a cleric is the ability to turn undead. Which, to be perfectly frank, isn't actually all that useful in most cases. All this ability does, in practice, is it extremely annoying for you to have to go hunt down any remaining undead who ran off in fear. With that said, there are times when having the ability to turn undead can be helpful.

Encounter with the dead
After taking care of the bandits on the top level of the old castle, our party decided to venture deeper into the depths of the castle. And it wasn't long (no, really - it wasn't long. In fact, you can still see the stairs in the screenshot.) before we encountered a group of zombies still feasting on the last party of adventurers to wander through their domain.


ewww - gross!

Bear in mind, TOEE uses 3.5e rules so the game is still modelling blunt vs slashing damage. Which basically means that my arrows really aren't doing much damage. I guess we will have to get up close and personal so I put my party into a defensive formation and start readying actions to deal with the zombies impending charge.


Despite rolling a decent 6 on my damage roll, the zombies slashing resistance means it only takes 1 damage

Alas, we are ambushed by two cleverly hidden slimes who drop down from the ceiling into the midst of our party! So much for my defensive formation.

I have to admit though - I really like this encounter. Up until this point, my tactics had been fairly standard. I would generally setup in a defensive formation with my fighters readying actions to attack anything entering our threaten zone. This way, I forced all the monsters to take on my tank while funneling them into a kill zone. The sudden introduction of the two slimes completely shook this up and forced a rapid tactical rethink.


eep! Where did those slimes come from!

With two slimes and five zombies in attack range, and more zombies charging in, I needed a bit of breathing space. This was the rare situation in which a turn undead would actually be useful.


Desperate times call for desperate measures

Amazingly, all five zombies cower before the might of Moradin (my dwarf's patron deity). The zombies run away in fear which gives me a little breathing room to deal with the slimes.


Result!

And with the slimes taken care of, mopping up the remaining zombies is easy work. Particularly as I have an awesome Holy Sword +1 (which I got for marrying Meleny - if you can recall that far back)


18 damage! Awesome sword is awesome!

TOEE - of the benefits of spears

If you recall from my initial party setup, I deliberately gave my Dwarven cleric a 10" great spear. Which allows me to setup situations such as the below.

While wandering around some bogs looking for bandits, my party came across an old and seemingly deserted castle. Upon wandering inside, we soon discovered that it was inhabited by bandits (as if any old castle in D&D wouldn't be inhabited by monsters).


Improved initiative allows most of my PCs to act first

Edwin, my mage, immediately casts a sleep spell into the room to thin out the number of attackers.

Although 5 bandits are in the spells range, the spell's power means that only 1 or 2 will fall under

My paladin and druid then move into position to block the door. Meanwhile, Falgur, my Dwarven cleric, moves up behind them. This means that the door is completely blocked which only allows 1 or 2 bandits through. And as soon as they come through, they are immediately hit with three readied actions.

:)

Setting up an unbreakable defensive position

With my team in place, the only real danger is going to come from the bandit leader who went berserk at the sight of us (you can identify him in the next screen shot as he is glowing red). However, a ray of enfeeblement promptly reduces his strength by six.

Haha!

At this point, all I need to do is hold position and slowly wipe out the bandits as they come through. I love it when a plan comes together!

You can already see the bodies piling up by the door

TOEE - The DM is a dick

With Meleny out of the way, my stalwart party of adventurers continued on their way and headed off into Welkwood Bog. Welkwood Bog is part of the new content introduced in the Circle of Eight mod and really shows the quality of work that the modders have managed to put into the game as it really doesn't feel like modded content.

After fighting my way through Welkwood Bog, we finally get to the "boss" monster - an undead lich who is guarding the catacombs. Luckily for us, its not a full powered lich otherwise this encounter would have resulted in a TPK.


Unfortunately, we don't do very well on our initiative rolls (you can see the initiative order in the top left corner of the screen). My thief, Sonora, gets to act first but then 3 of the bad guys go before Coryn, my elven mage, gets to act. The fact that I gave all of my PCs Improved Initiative (which gives +4 to initiative rolls) shows you just how badly my guys rolled.


Not wanting to send my thief charging into melee, I delay Sonora's actions so that she will act after Coryn acts. This is to setup one of my favourite tactics in this game. Naturally, the bad guys just come charging straight for my frontline fighters.


Coryn's turn to act and its time to implement my master plan. One Sleep spell later and one of the bad guys (to the left of the group) falls to the floor - fast asleep...


... whereupon Sonora, who initially delayed her turn till after Coryn, moves up next to the sleeping enemy.


One round later, and I execute a coup de grace attack. Instant kill - no matter how tough the bad guy or how many hit points he had left.
>:)


Unfortunately, despite this good start to the battle, things took a turn for the worse.


Being a low level mage, Coryn quickly ran out of spells. As this was still early game, I didn't have enough money to equip him with a bow. I figured, what the hell - lets send him into melee. The enemy lich promptly chops him down.

One of the differences of 3.5e from 2e is that dropping to zero hit points doesn't actually kill you. Instead, you drop unconscious and, if you fail your saving throws, keep losing hit points until you drop to -10 hp - at which point you die.


Or the bad guy could take another swing at you and kill you.

Bastard. This is actually a real dick move. I mean, my mage was on the ground and out of the fight. There were four other better alternatives (better in the sense that they were more likely to damage the lich) and what does he do? He attacks my downed mage.

Seriously, what a dick!

TOEE - Oh, Me-he-he-helany

So, armed with my Holy Longsword +1 and an NPC druid wife, its time to start acting like real adventurers i.e. time to kill something!

The local wood craftsman is highly skilled and can create masterwork equipment. Masterwork weapons give you a +1 on your attack roll and are a pre-requisite if you want to craft magical weapons (or armor). However, in order to craft masterwork equipment, he needs good quality wood.

Fortunately for us, the local woodcutter informs us that there is a source of good quality wood in the nearby Deklo grove. Unfortunately, the grove is currently overrun with spiders. Hmm, not quite the easy "giant rat" fight that I'm used to getting as level 1 adventurers in D&D games but still, spiders should be easy to take out right?


Of course, they would be giant spiders...

Wow - two giant spiders for my first real fight. Granted, I outnumber the giant spiders by a factor of 3 but considering that my guys are level 1 and liable to go down in a single hit, lets just say I'm not exactly filled with confidence.

The other big threat from the spiders is that they can cast web which can really frak up your party. To counter this, and against the advice of Wizards of the Coast marketing campaign, I immediately split the party.

Sonora, my thief, goes straight for the top left spider while Meleny goes for the top right. By locking down the spiders in melee, we get an Attack of Opportunity if they cast the Web spell and a chance to disrupt their spellcasting. Jaheira, my druid, summons a wolf to help Meleny while the other PCs split up so that we wouldn't all get caught in a web just in case the spiders manage to successfully cast.


Two web spells later, both Coryn, my mage, and Meleny are locked down in webs.

My plan didn't work out exactly as I had hoped. Still, at least my melee fighter and cleric aren't locked down in web spells. Sir Galahad, my fighter, starts to head top right to help out Meleny. Unfortunately, the web spell also slows down movement so its slow going for him. Meanwhile, Falgur, my dwarven cleric, charges the top left spider.


Critical hit!

And wipes out the spider with 27 damage on a critical hit! What a start to my first real fight as adventurers! With one spider left, time to pile on and overrun him.


Or rather, pile on and get caught up in webs

Unfortunately, things don't go so well with the second spider. Due to its position, its in a natural bottleneck and only two melee characters can engage him at a time (three if you include Falgur who has long reach with his spear). Naturally, I found this out the hard way when I tried to send Sonora in to help out but found that she could only stand around helplessly. The web also gives me a -2 on my attack rolls so even hitting the spider is proving difficult.

Naturally, the spider doesn't have any trouble hitting us and as you can see, Meleny has already taken 8 damage (on one hit).


Poor Melany

I eventually manage to take out the spider but not before it hits Meleny one more time. For 10 damage.

Alas poor Meleny, I barely knew ye. But this does show you how lethal combat can be for 1st level adventurers in D&D.

TOEE - Arriving in Hommlet

First off, I should tell you not to worry too much by the header. Although I intend to do a series of posts on TOEE, I don't really intend to chronicle my passage through the game. What I plan is to capture screenshots of different combat situations I end up in as I go through the game and explain my approach to that encounter. Hopefully, it will serve as a series of posts which will illustrate the tactical diversity available in an RPG with turn based initiative mechanics and also provide some concrete reasons as to why its such a shame that more games like this aren't published.

With that said, watch as I now immediately deviate from the plan!

Early Origins
Its not much of a spoiler to tell you that TOEE is based on the classic D&D module released in 1985 and voted as one of the most popular D&D modules of all time. And just as with the original module, the meat of this game starts off in the village of Hommlet.

One of the interesting things that this game does though is start you off with an opening vignette which is based on your party alignment and which gives you a reason to travel to Hommlet in the first place. Although nowhere near as extensive as the origin stories in DAO, its quite cool that the game gives you this motivation to be in Hommlet instead of just plonking you down there and saying that you are looking for adventure.

The Neutral Good vignette starts you off in the capital city where, while wandering the streets at night, your party hears a scream in one of the side streets. Rushing over like the bunch of adventurers that you are, you come across a thief standing over the body of a woman. The thief is easily dispatched at which point you search the woman and find that she was the canoness of the church in Hommlet.


In the world of D&D, this should actually be - "if only my cleric was high enough level to cast raise dead..."

With a good alignment, your party decides that it should make the several day trek to a remote village to tell the church there that their canoness is dead. Yeaaah. I know we are 1st level adventurers and hence, poorer than spit, but still - couldn't we even afford to hire a messenger?


Before I know it, we have arrived in Hommlet

Believe it or not, the first thing to happen to my group after we arrive is that we get shaken down by the game's equivalent of the local mafia. We had headed straight for the church to tell them of the bad news whereupon we came across Calmert. Calmert is the administrator of the church and if we wanted to see Canon Terjon, we would have to pay 10gp as a "donation" to the family church.


Luckily, I had pumped some points into my intimidate skill

Seriously? I'm here to do you a favour and deliver some bad news and you ask for a donation? Well, guess what, I got two pieces of bad news for you then cos you ain't getting even a copper piece out of me!


The Raise Dead spell, while great in gameplay terms, is a real drama killer

Hommlet quests
The quests in the opening village of Hommlet are some of the best I've seen in a cRPG. Unfortunately, the very same quests are also some of the worst I've ever seen as well. How? Let me tell you what happened when I first arrived in Hommlet.

When I first arrived in Hommlet, I found my party on a dirt track leading into the heart of the village. The first house I wandered past had a bevy of kids as well as a relatively young grandmother who tells me that she felt it was a shame that two brothers, both of whom are farmers, are feuding over the limited space they have in their barn. A family feud - me senses the potential for some xp!

Walking across the street, I enter the house of Percy, one of the feuding brothers, who promptly complains about how his brother, Filliken, is taking up more than his fair share of space in the barn. Oh, if only someone could talk some sense into Filliken! The wife though, who seems eminently more sensible, has a great idea - why don't they build another barn!

So, I start heading towards the carpenter and along the way, come across Filliken. Who is immediately belligerent toward me as he believes that I am there at the request of his brother, Percy. Which, to be fair, was true. So, no luck in talking some sense into Filliken. I guess that leaves the carpenter.

I look up the local carpenter and ask him if he can build a new barn for the brothers. Unfortunately, the carpenter is busy and isn't willing to help the brothers out by building their barn first. Current estimate is for the barn to be built in around a years time. By now, I should have seen sense and left them to their devices but the munchkin in me wanted the quest xp.

Anyway, the carpenter has a brother called Marek who tells me that he is in love with Althea, the eldest daughter of Filliken. Unfortunately, the carpenters were new in town and members of the Church. Filliken, being old blood, was a member of the Old Faith and before the two young lovers could be wed, Marek would need to convert to the Old Faith. Alas for poor Marek, Jaroo (the local druid) wasn't willing to perform the conversion on Marek.

Ah - true love. How could any hopeless romantic like myself not help out? So, off to see Jaroo to find out why he wasn't willing to help out these young lovers.

It turns out that Jaroo would love to perform the conversion of Marek to Old Faith. The problem is that he is trying to maintain a neutral relationship with the local Church so he won't actually perform the conversion unless he has the blessing of the local Church. At this point, its worth mentioning that this is the same Church that tried to shake me down when I was doing them a favour. Yeah - I'm sure they would be willing to do a good deed.

The Church was not willing to sanction the conversion of Marek to Old Faith (quelle surprise). Unless I could get someone else to convert to the Church and maintain the balance of power in Hommlet. To this end, the Church tells me that Jakk Borton, a local leather merchant, would be a good choice as they have been trying to get him to convert for a while without any success.

So, after quickly changing into my Jehovah's witness shirt, we trek across the village once more as we head out to find Jakk Borton and convince him to join the Church. Naturally, things aren't that easy. After finding Jakko, he tells us that he will only convert to the Church if the Church's God can perform a miracle. Not just any miracle though but a healing miracle on his brother-in-law, Bing, who used to help him in the shop.

Alas, the Canon Terjon is not willing to perform this miracle. The canon actually says that he doesn't have the ability to cast a Heal spell but this is a blatant lie as I find a scroll of Heal in his belongings. Some quick thievery later and I am armed with a Heal spell with which I can cure Bing's sickness! Finally, some progress in resolving this family feud (you do remember that all this is so that I can resolve the family feud right?).

After Bing is healed, Jakko declares his undying loyalty to the Church. The Church then approves the conversion of Marek to Old Faith. Jaroo then completes the conversion and Marek and Althea start planning their wedding. As Filliken is now family, the carpenter is willing to build the barn first. Awesome! Suddenly, everything is falling into place and the feuding brothers will soon have a barn each!

Except not. Naturally, things aren't quite that easy. Although the carpenter is willing to prioritise the building of the barn, he still requires someone to pay for it. Unfortunately, Filliken, who is a stubborn old fool isn't willing to pay for the barn as he thinks that Percy should pay for it. And no, Percy isn't willing to pay for it either. But again, Percy's wife comes to the rescue!

She tells me that Mathilde, the old grandmother I first met, is actually in love with Filliken. Furthermore, Mathilde is loaded so she could easily pay for the barn. Once more unto the breach as we brave the streets of the village looking for Mathilde.

We find Mathilde and sure enough, she would be willing to pay for the barn. Huzzah! Alas, she tells me that Filliken has rejected her advances. Boo!!

Off to Filliken to find out why. Turns out that, although Filliken also likes Mathilde, the stupid old sod believes that he is still in a period of mourning for his dead wife. His wife died over a year ago and Filliken can't remarry under the rules of Old Faith.

Even to my simple eyes, that sounded like a bullshit excuse. But what I needed was proof. So off to Jaroo again to confirm the rules of marriage under Old Faith. Jaroo clarifies that the period of mourning need only last one year at which point people are free (nay, encouraged!) to remarry and have children. In other words, Filliken is free to remarry and has no more excuses.

And with that last obstacle out of the way, Filliken agrees to marry Mathilde. Mathilde in turn, is willing to pay for a new barn and I finally manage to solve the feuding brothers quest. Huzzah!!

Wow - what a quest.

On one hand, this is an awesome quest in that it is so involved. In addition, the solution to the quest is not a simple one and considering the hoops you have to jump through, its no surprise that the villagers themselves never actually managed to resolve it themselves. Which is part of why I love this quest.

So many cRPGs have you doing simple fedex quests where you walk across the street, talk to an NPC and then bam - quest solved. At the end of it, you just sit there and wonder why these morons couldn't have resolved the quest themselves. I mean, all they had to do was walk across the street!

On the other hand, this quests involves you running back and forth across Hommlet numerous times which is really time consuming and soul destroying when you just want to get into combat and kick some ass. Never mind the fact that my party of adventurers, who go around killing monsters to help protect civilisation from the evil cults that value anarchy, ends up spending their time playing Cupid. Really? Geez, I really hope the evil cult doesn't complete their plan for world domination while I'm running around plinking love arrows into people...

Awesome Sword is awesome
Anyway, with all of that running around Hommlet, I actually spent a fair amount of time in Fillikens home. Filliken actually has two daughters in this game. The first is Althea who is in love with Marek. The second is Meleny who became very friendly after I talked to her a couple of times. And when I say very friendly, I mean "farmer's daughter" friendly...

Alas for me, I cannot consummate until Althea is married. Basically, Filliken is old school and won't even consider any hijinks with Meleny until his older daughter is married. Of course, this problem is resolved as part of the feuding brother quest as Althea is free to shack up with Marek. This in turn, leaves me free to shack up with Meleny (who is a level 1 druid).

But shacking up with Meleny is really just icing and is not my main objective. What I really want is the awesome family heirloom that I get for marrying Meleny. Filliken has a Holy Longsword +1 which he gives to me after my agreement to marry his daughter.

Naturally, he makes me promise to look after her.


After all the trouble I went through with his family feud, I can guarantee you that she will get what she deserves...

Temple of Elemental Evil

Well, despite what I said in my Fallout 3 review, I haven't been able to resist the lure of Temple of Elemental Evil and as such, Hitman: Blood Money continues to sit on my shelf waiting for its chance to shine. The thing is, although I enjoyed playing Fallout 3, I've always preferred party based RPGs where you have different PCs taking on different roles. Add in the fact that I've recently been re-listening to the D&D podcasts created by Penny Arcade, PvP and Wil Wheaton and you can probably understand why I've been itching to get back to a very traditional swords and sorcery style RPG.

However, by far the biggest draw for me is that Temple of Elemental Evil features a party going into combat using turn based initiative mechanics. I honestly cannot remember the last time I played such a game. Even the famed infinity engine, which was the basis of my all time favourite cRPG Baldur's Gate 2, wasn't able to scratch this itch as it wasn't a turn based engine (although it was able to capture the feel of D&D game mechanics extremely well).

As a result, after the payment of a mere USD6 to gog.com, I am now the proud owner of TOEE. Naturally, the first thing I did was to download and install the Circle of Eight modpack which fixes many of the bugs in the original game as well as tweaking the rules to make them even more compliant with 3.5e rules. Oh yeah, it also includes a ton of new content (gotta love mod communities!).

I've spent the last week mucking around with the game to get a feel for how the game plays (I even briefly recreated Acquisitions Incorporated ingame for kicks). Bear in mind that I've never played a 3.5e game before so it was important to get a feel for some of the differences (such as clerics being allowed to use bladed weapons!). I'm now ready to start the game properly and you can find the party I intend to use below.

Sir Galahad
Sir Galahad is my sword and board tank. I intend to start him off as a fighter to grab some extra feats and then multi-class him to Paladin to get the Paladin bonuses. I've been a huge fan of the Paladin class since the BG days so having a Paladin in my group was pretty much a no-brainer.


Granted, I had to reroll 81 times but check out those stats!

As you can see from the stats, Sir Galahad is a king among men. As a general rule, I did take the extra time to reroll stats until I managed to get some good ones but even with this in mind, the stats that I managed to get for Sir Galahad are beyond belief. Its probably a good thing I created him last otherwise I would have spent way too much time trying to get similar stats for my other PCs! Anyway, with stats like these, I naturally named him Sir Galahad (who, if you know your Arthurian legends, was the knight who found the Holy Grail).

Falgur Nalbek
Falgur is my backup melee fighter and main healer. I have armed him with a great spear which has 10" reach so that he can stand safely behind my tank during combat. This will allow him to still attack the same target as Sir Galahad while being close enough to heal Sir Galahad if the need arises.


With a Con score of 20, Falgur could have as much hp as Sir Galahad!

One of the nice things about 3.5e clerics is that they don't actually need to select any healing spells. Good aligned clerics can spontaneously change any existing memorised spell to an equivalent level healing spell at the time of casting. This is pretty awesome as it allows you to memorise and play around with other spells without fear of not having enough healing.

Jaheira
Jaheira will act as a backup divine spellcaster. I didn't initially plan on having a druid but in my initial muck-around, I found that all of my clerics spells were spent on healing. The druid will help alleviate this problem and hopefully allow me to cast some of the other divine spells in this game (I did consider having 2 clerics but felt that would be a bit boring).


I admit it - I just couldn't resist naming her after one of my fav NPCs in BG

One of the cool things in this game is that they have partially recreated the crafting system in 3.5e. Unfortunately, crafting magical items, scrolls and potions generally requires an XP cost. Having Jaheira in the group will allow me to create scrolls and potions based on divine spells without my main cleric taking the XP hit.

Coryn
Coryn is my artillery. His role is to stand back and blast enemies from afar. Sorceror is the preferred class for this as he doesn't need to memorise spells hence he can cast as many of the right type of spells as he needs. I also made him an elf so that I could get the free longbow proficiency for cases where I don't want to waste a spell.


With a face like that, I was soooo tempted to call him Edwin...

Of course, the difficulty for me will be in making sure that I pick the right spells. As sorcerors can only learn limited spells, picking the right spell at level up is critical. This wasn't as big an issue in BG2 as, by the time I played a sorceror in BG2, I was already intimately familiar with the game.

Sonora Lothiriel
A rogue to round out the party and to deal with traps and act as the face man for the party. As with the sorceror, Sonora is an elf in order to benefit from the free longbow proficiency as well as the +2 dexterity bonus.



I also intend to multiclass to a wizard after getting several rogue levels. I understand that traps aren't a huge deal in this game so 2-3 rogue levels will hopefully be enough to see me through. Meanwhile, the additional wizard levels will allow Sonora to act as a backup artillery caster as well as taking the xp hit for crafting items and scrolls.