Once I started putting a tanky dude or two in the front box things got a lot easier. You can learn to manage the Move to your advantage, as well as the terrain. The thing about Move tho is that after a Move characters act in party order (top left then top right, etc) according to the order in which you added them to the party regardless of initiative. That means RPCs always go first so good idea to let the RPCs handle the short range melee, and if you're going to bring a Sword and Board Fighter also train him up on a Bow because his melee targets are going to get stolen by the RPCs.
Yeah, parts of it are very wonky. Tanking doesn't work in this game as a teamwork concept, because class mechanics don't really support it, but also because the engine has some weird ideas (like the fact that enemies can block los, but you never can, like you've already noticed). The idea is to use terrain as much as possible and have magic screen on at all times (p. much mandatory imo) and preferably armorplate, too (not strictly necessary, but very very nice). In-game buffs are dependent on what you're fighting, but having someone capable of elemental shielding your party at a decent die is a very good idea when fighting something like faeries.
You clearly just have bad karma because you brought Sparkle along. If you get her killed and deposit her cold dead corpse out of your party you'll get nothing but good mojo from then on, trust me.
I don't get this. You can still fireball them right back, can't you? You're also protecting your own spellcasters in the same way with your formation. It's true that enemies don't play by the same rules as the party does, but I can't relate to some of these problems.
Extended reach weapons exist, and some enemies have them. They're as handy for your party as they are for them, though. Lets your dudes on the flanks or in the middle hit the same targets as the front line, or lets your front line hit those pesky spellcasters. You'll generally have to take at least one move action towards the beginning of combat to orient your party correctly anyway, so if that's enough to ruin you, you might be underleveled for the place you're in.
Mage lvl really helps Sam get his Realms going, especially since he can’t afford much Piety. Best way I’ve found to work it in is to hold Sam at lvl four until exiting Monastery then taking a Mage level at lvl five and back to Sam at six. That way you’ve got a chance to get your weapon skill up 1-4 so you can reliably hit things (to keep skills going up naturally).
The reason behind that is that lightning strike can only trigger if the previous action was a melee attack.
Second-best is another way of saying third worst, since non-divine hybrid is just a bad idea period. The monk is much better at casting than the samurai, though, since he has a piety requirement and psionics scales off of a useful combat attribute instead of intelligence, and psionics focuses very heavily on a single realm that's easy to raise up to acceptable levels. The samurai will never cast any spell to effect in combat without absurd grind sessions - which, hey, if that's your bag I'm not going to dispute it, wiz 8 is very freeform and being able to grind up useless classes is part of its appeal.
Monk is not going to be a better caster without going out of your way to make it so precisely because he has nothing to practice on both when it comes to viability and usefulness. For wizardry you just pump a couple of level ups to get e. blade, m. shield and group freeze and that's it. You're done. You have perfect spells to raise your skills on that, at the same time, individually bring more value than entirety what psionics and alchemy have to offer in early to mid game for a hybrid. Not to mention not being replicated anywhere else (except for freeze, but that's much later on).
Complete moron, there's no tanking in wizardry 6, 7 or 8, there are enough enemies in the game that can reach your backline to the point where putting a meatslab in front has little to no use. Doubly true in 8, since at times enemies can just get around your supposed tank. This is why you take only hard hitting classes and focus on damage. Your bard is supposed to be the only weak point in your blob, if even that.
Which is the most skippable school (literally ONE essential spell, cucked out of it hard by bard) that brings p. much nothing to the table for a hybrid, unless someone sees shift-q'ing for a single dice heal as value.
Oh no, it's one of them insanity memers. It's overrated and unreliable, mass freeze just blows it out of the water. Plus, of course, cucked out of it early and hard by bard.
Oh god, please tell me stories on how are you keeping detect secrets on at most times with a monk (while getting "all the work" from gems like identify at the same time). Not to mention that if you want this spell reliably you go gadgie, of course.
Literally like a post or two ago you were saying about stupid grinding with useless spells or something to that effect. Not to mention that, yeah, you guessed it - cucked out of it early and hard.
