Completed Let's play Pool of Radiance with one character!

[Null Null]

Oh crap, I deleted my hard drive!

...not THAT Pool of Radiance.

This is the old SSI classic, first (and some say best) of the Gold Box Series of the late eighties/early nineties. For those of you who are unawares, this was a tactical RPG that came out in 1988 and was the first serious attempt to put Gygax-correct D&D on the computer. It ran on 384K of RAM, EGA graphics, and 8 floppy disks (I can still remember which parts of the game are on which disks).


Version used is the DosBOX download (I have legal 3.5 floppies and an actual honest-to-god codewheel from 30 years ago, but trying to mount the game from those is going to be a pain in the butt.)

Pool of Radiance had a couple of oddities, or 'First Installment Weirdness' as TVTropes likes to say. Apart from good things like being able to cast Animate Dead (removed in later games likely due to fear of Moral Guardians) and bad things like not having Paladins or Rangers, the enemies in many areas scaled with party strength. What this means is that many eccentric party builds become playable.

Party construction is a constant topic of debate among fans of these games, but basically you make six characters, with the official cluebook recommending four fighters, two mages, two clerics, and two thieves. This means multiclassing, and a common build is fighter, fighter/mage, cleric/fighter/mage, thief, cleric, and mage. There are countless others.

You don't have to have six, though, as the game manuals say, "A smaller party is weaker and more likely to be defeated by monsters." Using multiclassing, you can make viable parties of five or even four characters, though in later games this is much more difficult due to 1st edition D&D level limits.

What is Party Strength? Well, according to the incomparable Stephen S. Lee's GameFAQ on this game, it is:

A character's contribution to Party Strength is the sum of:
* 0.4 * cleric level
* 0.8 * magic-user level
* 0.5 * each point of AC below 0 (0 if AC is 0 or above)
* 0.5 * each point of THAC0 below 21 (0 if THAC0 is 21 or above)
* 0.1 * current hit points
rounded down to the nearest integer. The values used for AC and THAC0 are the ones shown on your character screen.

Party Strength is the above contributions for every character summed.

So...if many random encounters are a linear function of party strength, and party strength is a linear function of party size...then such encounters will be equally difficult for any size party, implying you can use three...or two...or one.

I don't recommend this for beginning players, for obvious reasons. The game is not supposed to be played this way (saved games in certain dungeons will crash on loading) and it's pretty easy to get a TPK (total party kill) with a party of one. This is for people who played the game way too many times and have nothing to show for it but the knowledge of where to find a Lucern Hammer +1 (Yarash's Pyramid, the first monster maze).

 

[Null Null]

New at this, so let's start with some character creation...

I've done this with an elvish fighter/mage/thief, but it's much much harder. You want clerical spells for defense and mage spells for offense, and fighter class so you can use all the weapons and get more hitpoints. It also has more upside as far as level advacement goes, as half-elf clerics are limited to 5 and all mages to 6 in this game. This character can reach level 5/8/6 as a cleric/fighter/mage.

Half-elves are the only race that can be cleric/fighter/mages, so that's what our fella is. As the grognards here may remember, female characters are severely limited as far as strength goes in 1st ed, and that will limit fighter levels as well under 1st edition D&D. So, we're making a guy.

Note that while abilities (STR, INT, etc.) are modifiable, gold is not. So we reroll for gold, not abilities. OK, 126 looks good.

 

[Null Null]

We all did this at 13 years of age, so I'd be remiss in not putting it here.

 

[Null Null]

But this is what our fella's looking like. Yeah, I made him Chaotic Evil...this is the last game you can get away with that without keeping paladins out of the party, and it made me feel really cool and 'edgy' at 13. So hey, for the nostalgia hit, why not.

 

[Null Null]

Beginning to modify. All abilities will be maxed out. STR goes to the racial maximum of 18(90), and all others to 18. We'll need INT for the mage XP bonuses, WIS for the cleric XP bonuses and bonus spells, DEX for the lower AC and bonuses to initiative (a big deal for a single character playthrough), CON for the HP, and CHA to let us talk our way out of stuff.

Since he is the perfect (half) human specimen, with all 18s, he is clearly the Übermensch , or Overman, because I can't get diaereses on my keyboard.

 

[Null Null]

All right, we arrive on the deck and Rolf greets us. I imagine you have all seen this countless times so I will skip over it.

 

[Null Null]

Time to go shopping! Chain mail is 70 gold, so it will use a lot of money (which is why I'm glad I rerolled for higher starting dough!). I bought the arrows, but not the bow--we'll pick it up later.

OK, why the bardiche? Well, I want a weapon that does a minimum of 2-8 damage because low rolls may mean I fail to one-hit kill the monsters in the beginning. The bardiche is cheaper than a bastard sword, does good larger-than-man-size damage too (3-12) unlike the broadsword, and, well, what's more old-school D&D than polearms with silly names?

 

[Null Null]

Introductory spell selection. I am not using Detect Magic because I've played this game so many #$%* times I know where the magic items are. It will be useful in later cases. CLW to keep from dying, Sleep to immobilize multiple enemies. Pretty standard stuff. OK, off to the Slums!

 

[Null Null]

Ah, our first bunch of enemies. We're opting for nonviolence here. At first level, orcs have a full 5 HP and do 1-8 damage versus the 1-6 of goblins or kobolds (the other occupants of the slums). We want to avoid fighting them if at all possible.

Also, at first level it is really easy to die.

 

[Null Null]

So we're on the run from orcs and hiding in the stable. Well, not really. As you probably all remember, there's a leather bag with a short bow +1 and 20 arrows +1 in here.

After securing the bag, I now have a ranged weapon and some magic arrows--and saved myself 15 gold on a short bow.

 

[Null Null]

As some of you may remember, there's a secret treasure room in the NW corner.

Now here's where single-character pays off. Experience is divided by the number of living characters. As a result, our Overman gets 6 times the expected experience from any one encounter. OK, it's divided by 3 because I'm triple-classed, but...

This means that, largely from marching into a room at the right time, our guy is almost ready for level 3 as a cleric. Remember that if a character has enough XP to advance 2 levels in any class, the game knocks him down to one XP below the XP to advance that second level. So I want to go when Overman gets as close to 3000 XP (3rd level cleric, the fastest-advancing of his 3 classes) as possible.

I also get another shortbow and 20 magic arrows for this.

 

[Null Null]

OK, time to go fight something. The fixed encounter with hobgoblins isn't too bad--there are just five of them, and they fall easily to a sleep spell. (I could have gone after the orcs with the piece of paper in the northeast corner too.)

Just one poor fellow left awake at the end. Sadly he didn't have the sense to run from the bardiche. I get a ring of protection +1 for my troubles, which since I don't have magic armor yet will lower my AC a little.

 

[Null Null]

All right, down to 0. Since we don't want an AC below 0 yet (remember, it boosts Party Strength), we'll refrain from grabbing a shield right now.

OK, we got the jump on some kobolds! Let's try that now.

Yup, only 2 of them. The computer sees a low Party Strength from my lonely Overman, and puts a lousy 2 kobolds against me. Even with a little knock from the Hobgoblins (dude nicked me with his long sword), I've still got 8 HP and AC 0 to the kobolds' HP 3 and AC 7. It's not really a fair fight--and remember, we don't want one. They only have to win once.

 

[Null Null]

OK, our Overman's gotten over 3000 XP...and he gets knocked down to 3000 xp as soon as he wants to train as a cleric.

You always want to train at the highest-requring-XP class level first (here 3rd C 3000 > 2nd M 2500 > 2nd M 2000)...that way if it knocks you down you still have XP high enough to train the other classes.

Wait, he learned Enlarge? There's a scroll with Magic Missile on it elsewhere in the Slums, and I won't need Magic Missile for a while. Since you can only learn spells from scrolls or going up a level, and most of the scrolls are fixed in this game, you have to know which spells aren't going to be on scrolls so you can learn them when you go up a level. There will be an even more counterintuitive pick later on.

 

[Null Null]

Das Ubermensch after training. He's now durable (18 HP) enough to go picking fights with Orcs in the Slums--it would take 4 average hits to take him down.

He doesn't need 2 short bows, he's not a mutant sahuagin. After selling his stuff, he's got 704 platinum and is still not so weighted down he can't run after the monsters.

We're still fighting humanoids, how about a second Sleep spell.

 

[Null Null]

The city watch eyes him suspiciously as he strolls back into the monster-crawling slums of Phlan...and what's this? Kobolds got the jump on him?

Notice the algorithm now puts four kobolds up against our Overman! Clerical level, mage level, and HP have doubled! However, here's where another obscure rule that never made it out of 1st ed comes through--a fighter can 'sweep' one sub-1-HD enemy (such as goblins and kobolds) per level. This means he gets to attack two at a time. Notice that, again, not true of Orcs. We want to avoid those guys.

Bloody but unbowed, he goes to see some orcs about a piece of paper.

 

[Null Null]

The orcs respond to Sleep (or rather, stop responding). While clerical scrolls are pretty redundant for 16 slots on one guy, a scroll with two free healing spells might come in handy, so I grab it.

Now for the rest of the wimpy fixed encounters. The goblins in the north are a bit on the numerous side for a first try, but now that Overman has 18 HP we can give it a shot. And don't forget, now we have two Sleep spells, not one.

A sleep spell is supposed to put to sleep 4-16 HD of monsters (but not anyone over 4 HD). As a result, it's really useful at the beginning and useless in the midgame and end. Here, careful attention should be paid to sleep spell targeting. The spell will affect the target monster, and monsters one square away; that means that if you cast it on a monster adjacent to you, you may fall asleep (and in a single-character game, that is the end). In the second case here I threw the spell at the area behind the two goblins.

 

[Null Null]

All right, Overman's ready to go for that 3rd cleric level. But...we're not going to do that yet.

Why not? Well, a higher level means a higher Party Strength. Encounters in the Slums and the adjacent Kuto's Well (as well as Podol Plaza), all of which are common areas we have to pass through to get to other places, scale to Party Strength. The higher Overman's level, the more monsters he will face. (This leads to the much-feared situation known to people familiar with this game of waiting for 30 monsters to take their turn doing nothing.) I don't want to be here all day, so I'm going to clean out the Slums and Kuto's Well at level 2, and hope this doesn't put me way too far over 6000 XP (when I would wind up wasting XP after the trainer knocks me down to just below the threshold for Cleric Level 4).

 

[Null Null]

OK, let's go find some orcs. There are only 4--if I'd gone for that third level there might be 5 or 6. I'm lazy.

Look, some seedy-looking goblins...

 

[Null Null]

Another fixed encounter, this one with some bracers (which are a good store of value due to the way Gygax set up the item values). There's a bit of an XP bump, but still under 6000.

 

[Null Null]

Off to fight more random encounters. (I need to clear 15 to clear the slums and stop the encounters.) Took a beating from the orcs, so now that I'm down to 12 HP...I'm only up against 2 kobolds! (Remember, HP is a component of Party Strength.) This could be further exploited, but of course fewer HP means Our Antihero can take fewer hits before dying, so I prefer not to.

 

[Null Null]

The easiest way to clear encounters quickly and relatively safety is to set up camp just before the entrance to a safe area and try to rest. That way, as long as you survive, you can take one step back to safety and not worry about being waylaid on your way back to town. Arguably this is the ancestor of the 'camping near spawning points' strategy known on MMORPGs (though I am told this is not done anymore).

 

[Null Null]

The Slums are cleared! (You know when you can sleep a day without being interrupted...) Let's move to Kuto's Well...

 

[baud]

Since he is the perfect (half) human specimen, with all 18s, he is clearly the Übermensch , or Overman, because I can't get diaereses on my keyboard.

You can get one with Alt + 129. Not sure if it work with this game thought.

 

[Null Null]

Since he is the perfect (half) human specimen, with all 18s, he is clearly the Übermensch , or Overman, because I can't get diaereses on my keyboard.

You can get one with Alt + 129. Not sure if it work with this game thought.

Thanks! The first 8 letters of the character's name go into the filename, so I didn't want to mess around; it's crashed when I tried to load saved games from inside Yarash's pyramid with one character.