Other good AD&D CRPGs?

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I'm 100% convinced about no hit penalty to the main hand. I've triple-checked that in the code (SL only). Everything else is a mix of unsubstantiated speculation and interpretation (including the next paragraph).

Not sure I'm clear on the concept of reaction adjustment modifier (in the SL context): if the penalty ultimately affects your to-hit, it can be said to be (detrimentally) affecting your THAC0 at the time of swinging your weapon. AFAIK, there is no bonus to melee swings to be had from Dex so having an overall positive reaction modifier (after penalties) will not give you a better THAC0, but having a negative overall modifier will reduce THAC0. To be clear, I am not referring to base THAC0, I am referring to your calculated THAC0 for each hand vs each monster. -- is this a decent (even if not entirely accurate) way to interpret the penalty or have I completely missed the mark?

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I understand and accept your arguments about high HP, high damage and round wasting. But that is exactly the style of gameplay I wish to avoid in WotR, if that is at all possible. That's why in multiple posts I have expressed my worry about WotR turning into another hack-n-slash. I understand now that SL is a low-level campaign and is therefore destined to be more hack-n-slash but in sooth I was expecting more from WotR. E.g., trapping Ravagers on burning, thorny, spiky grounds behind two or three walls of stone/ice. Or (theoretically) Power Word Stunning/Id Insinuating a Lord Warrior before disintegrating him.

If you are telling me that WotR is also significantly more favorable to melee-oriented parties than casting parties with only a few (or no) opportunities to win battles with spells only (i.e., nobody even gets in melee range of enemies), that is disappointing. Then I have to rethink my basic philosophy for the party composition and give higher priority to survivability.

What is the value of Psi10 in your Human Fig9/Psi10/Pre15? Is my strategy of having min levels of Psi (to get access to all circles) and then learning psionics only from bracelets flawed?

• E.g., how is Fig9/Psi10/Pre15 better than Psi3/Fig9/Pre15 apart from 18 less HP due to initial Psi levels?
• If it is indeed better, how is Psi10 better than Psi9? +1 HP and +1 ability for 200,000 xp?
• Or is Psi10 required before you can dual-class into Pre? You cannot dual-class earlier and let Pre10 reactivate all previous classes?
• If you can dual-class earlier, is Fig9/Psi2/Pre15 good? I could hoard bracelets until it's time to learn them all.

I'm okay with my characters being a little flawed just so that they are more magic-oriented. I'll reduce the difficulty in WotR to cover for their flaws if need be.
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PS: ignore my earlier flawed idea of taking warriors to level 10 before dual-classing. Just rechecked the manual and only Preservers and Thieves get die-rolled XP at L10 (cap at L10). Everyone else caps out at L9.

 

Update: I have just tested this and it is possible to take the second dual without completing the first dual class. With this knowledge, do I need Psi10 as you have suggested or is Psi2 good enough? Eagerly awaiting your view on this.

Discovered a bug/exploit: create a human Psi. Dual him into something (I did Thief). You will still have access to all Psi disciplines without first regaining your Psi class! Effectively you have a multiclass human Psi/T Now grind for a level (or hit T to cheat) and dual him into Gladiator. You will now have a multiclass Psi/G until you complete the dual class (G3). When you do, you will have (imo) an awesome Psi/T/G that keeps gaining warrior HP every level up.
With Enhanced Strength, he'd be as good as a half-giant in dishing out damage but with backstabbing capabilities. I'm seriously wondering whether even unbuffed (20 Str) his backstabs would do more damage than a pure-class half-giant gladiator.
Admittedly, he won't have a half-giant's Con bonus so the final HP difference could be large assuming you'd get the same die rolls for both.

Also tested with a Pre3/D2/G4 to be absolutely sure when each class is reactivated. Everything works as expected. G3 reactivates the priest spells, G4 reactivates the mage spells. Obviously, you miss out on 2 levels of warrior HP (+3 HP is granted upon dualing into warrior in both tests so it compensates for one level of one of the weaker classes) so this kind of build will not be to everyone's liking. <-- This creature was only for purposes of testing, I have no intention of dual-classing low-level priests or mages.

 

Psi or Pre significantly bring down HP of warriors (fighters/rangers). Their 1D6/1D4 HP is averaged with 1D10 of warriors. F/D, F/C multiclasses do much better in terms of HP because priests get max 8 HP, which is very close to the warrior's 10. Nothing can compare to a half-giant pure-class warrior's HP but that is not the point.

I find that if you are willing to grind, dual-classing has a much better chance to net you better HP than multiclassing. If you are willing to save scum through all warrior levels to get near-max HP, you will end up with a huge health pool for your psionics and preservers.
HP = 1D10+5 (from 20 Con). Max HP=15*8=120 + 1 level of your final class. The last time I played, my multiclass R/C/Pre ended around 80HP (without save/reloads). F/D/Psi was 90+.

Some two-class multis may end up with more HP than duals, especially for half-giants. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking F/C F/D (not tested).

Downsides are:

• Unless you are building for the sequel, you probably won't take the last fighter level. Or you will be playing all of SL as a pure-class Psi or Pre albeit with massive HP.
• Ideally you should do all your grinding in the arena/pits: you are guaranteed a continuous flow of monsters, and when you dual after G8 (really, why would you take F when you can get -1AC for a little more grinding?), you might want to grind a little more to get them to at least Psi4 (L9 at 200000) or Pre2 (L9 at 135000). You will want to complete the dualing around 3/4ths of the game through otherwise you can't enjoy many of the items with them.
• Both Psi and Pre are significantly restricted in the items they can equip. The health pool becomes their best defense but with the item restrictions they might not be able to contribute to melee much until the dualing is completed.

More than 1 level of thief is never required in these games so instead of dualing from warrior to caster, there's value in throwing in a thief in the middle for 1-2 party members -- F/T/Pre, F/T/Psi. I'll never be multiclassing a thief in these games again. (If you do this, remember that you might want at least 1 thief class active in the sewers. Plan accordingly.)

Finally, I really don't know the value of a high-level Psi. Unless there are specific abilities that you want to massively upgrade (Disintegrate?) to me a multiclass F/Psi just seems like a waste. Take that statement with a pinch of salt -- I don't know psionic abilities very well. I haven't found too many good psionics which regularly fail at first level. The buffing/protective type work quite well and I'm quite pathetic at coming up with proper uses for the other psionics. The damaging ones just seem too weak.

Dualing half-giants would really take any challenge out of the game imo. You'd have such a massive health pool on all four players, you might be able to swim through Hideous difficulty (speculation only).

 

If you want to use the Id Insinuation + Disintegrate combo, a multi-class Psi remains the way to go. Disintegrate by itself requires a whopping 40 points to use per shot.

Another one I forgot to mention is Synaptic Static, which completely takes psionics out of the equation for both allies and enemies. Really comes in handy during some fights. I found it obligatory against the Elder Brain and his Illithid minions in the sequel.

 

Reduced cost? Maybe, I myself don't remember.

 

No, cost doesn't go down. Only their chance to fail goes down.

Human gladiator (20-20-20-20-20-20) starts with 40 PP (enough to disintegrate once) at L3. At L8 (when you might choose to dual) he has 72 PP without items.
Human psi (L3) starts with 70 PP.

If your primary concern is upgrading 1-2 specific abilities to minimize their chance of failure, then a high-level Psi makes sense. Otherwise spreading Kinetics, Metabolics and Telepathy across your characters is just as good and you don't really need a (low level) Psi in your party at all. You will have access to many more abilities that way (all with a decent chance of failing). Just make sure you give Kinetics to someone who has 40+ PP (or very close to it).

 

Yea, I tested with Disintegrate (among others). Download my cheat table, it makes testing super quick. You can change values and watch their effects on the fly.
Shattered Lands: https://fearlessrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?t=23768
Wake of the Ravager: https://fearlessrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?t=23944

You can also change your psychic powers to 'pick' what you like E.g., reduce Life Draining to 0 and set Disintegrate to 8 instead at the start of the game.

Upgrading certain abilities is useful to reduce their failure chance but they can still fail even if the calculated chance-to-work is 100+%.

Of course, any kind of Psi (multi, dual) will be able to make use of bracelets. Others will not.

 

https://cheatengine.org/
It doesn't install any adware/malware. Both cheat engine itself and the forum which hosts my tables have been developed by two different people pretty much like Taluntain, for the good of the community. I haven't used the 'lite' version, don't know if my tables will face problems with it.

 

Here is a full list of how items transfer from SL to WotR.
? indicates a spell as seen in the Inventory, but is not yet confirmed -- spells have a tendency to change upon actual use. I forgot to acquire the +3 Gythka but I think that will transfer correctly since it doesn't have any special properties on it.
Green = okay (identical or almost identical transfer)
Brown = money
Red = worse (downgrade or loss of properties)
Blue = better (upgrade, only Silk Armor upgrades but its type changes so some pure-class characters may not be able to equip it)
*I don't think there's any way for me to post a table so I had to upload it as an image.

Darksun Item Transfer

 

On the create character screen, Human G (20 across the board) is supposed to start with 40pp. However, on actually starting the game, it shows he has 52pp! At L8: 72pp.
On dualing into Psi, pp remained at 72 until L4. At L4, it became 85. 100. 115. 130. 145. L9 = 160pp.

Basically if the pp of a particular class/level surpasses your previous pp, you get the higher value and it has nothing to do with completing the dual class. I think even in multiclass you will get the max pp of all classes.

 

My recollection is that your PP accumulation will be just fine, but it will be your martial class that becomes inert and has to wait until the Psionicist pass by the warrior levels in order to regain better THAC0 and multiple attacks.

 

You don't intend to do this, but just recording it for posterity: this is not a good dual plan, unless you create a character like mine (Psi3/T2/G15) because with Psi8 you will miss out on almost all warrior HP. You will get 8xD6 + 1xD10 + 6x3 HP. Unless you are able to Ironskin your way through most of the game, this will end up being a very squishy party member.

If you are like me and enjoy grinding, G8/Psi* will get you more HP but I would recommend completing your dual- or triple-classing in SL. If you are taking this person into WotR, you will want all the APR and no item restrictions. If you're not taking them into WotR, you will still want to enjoy SL items with them at some point.

If you are not taking them into WotR, I think a multiclass W/Psi or W/Psi/Something is sufficient, especially if Something is a priest (D8) or thief (D6). If Something is a preserver (D4), that will further bring down your HP. The priest can be an additional source of Ironskin. Such a Thri-Kreen will do just fine.