Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[DaveO]

Ok, so I'll add in a Silvanesti Ranger/Cleric to get the best of both classes with no cap. I'll go with Kender Cleric/Thief. That means one more for the group...

 

[Ladonna]

The game isn't hard enough to warrant too much worry.

A Knight, Fighter or Ranger, Cleric, Magic User, and either another Cleric and Magic user, or a couple of combo characters. done.

 

[DaveO]

Gak! I was advised to avoid Ranger/Cleric so...

I'll go with Ranger/Mage instead. That means one more Cleric...

 

[Erebus]

Pick Mishakal when you have to decide which god your clerics worship. The bonus she grants to healing spells is very good.

 

[DaveO]

Ok. So the group will be Knight, Qualenesti Fighter/Cleric, Kender Cleric/Thief, Silvanesti Ranger/Mage and the other two mages mentioned. So mage heavy, but would possibly be of use once I hit the other games.

Wait a second...

So Fighter/Red Mage, Qualenesti Fighter/Cleric, Kender Cleric/Thief, Silvanesti Ranger/Mage and Knight. That leaves one to pick.

 

[DaveO]

Ok. So now that I've thought it over...

The final roster will be two Knights with the others mentioned. Both Knights won't be the same of course. This should be interesting.

 

[Ladonna]

Wow, no single class Mage or Cleric.

 

[Cael]

Pick Mishakal when you have to decide which god your clerics worship. The bonus she grants to healing spells is very good.

No. That bonus is useless because of the fact you get the Fix command. Even at low levels, you shouldn't need to cast healing spells in combat, which is the only place it would be marginally useful for. At high levels, you get Heal and that is the end of it.

For Clerics, get Kiri-Jolith, especially if you are multiclassing cleric (which you should). A Qualinesti elf Fighter/Cleric will have a +2 bonus to hit with long swords and bows.

For me, the most fun party is:
Knight
Fighter/Cleric Kiri-Jolith
Fighter/Red Mage
Fighter/Red Mage
White Mage
(either a second White Mage or another Fighter/Red Mage)


There is no Ranger/Mage. Never was. The only time you can get that is dual classing a human, but you don't get to dual class in Krynn. And for a Ranger multi, it is the Ranger component that is the problem.

 

[DaveO]

With Ranger/Mage out I'll go one Mage. The other will be fighter/mage. So no Ranger in the final roster.

That means final roster is:
Knight(x2)
Fighter/Mage(Silvanesti)
Mage
Cleric/Thief
Fighter/Cleric(Silvanesti again)

 

[octavius]

Spoiler

 

[ProphetSword]

As has been pointed out multiple times before, Kender are not useless (despite what Cael tells you). They get a taunt ability that works pretty well and are the only race that can use the hoopak, the only weapon that can be used as both a ranged and melee weapon. Kender are also immune to fear. They make excellent Fighter/Thieves and aren’t limited in their thief levels.

 

[Cael]

As has been pointed out multiple times before, Kender are not useless (despite what Cael tells you). They get a taunt ability that works pretty well and are the only race that can use the hoopak, the only weapon that can be used as both a ranged and melee weapon. Kender are also immune to fear. They make excellent Fighter/Thieves and aren’t limited in their thief levels.

Considering you don't need more than a few levels of thief, and that is only in Dave' Challenge, thieves are hardly even a consideration in a line up. And if you are talking Fighter/Thief, Qualinesti elves can go Fighter 14 as opposed to the Kender's 5, and both can go max level thief.

Kender is a waste of space.

 

[DaveO]

My Kender is the Cleric thief. Sure I'm limited to level 12 Cleric but I don't care there. My other mage will be White Mage to diversify and let the Red Mage do their thing.

I'm going to go with Half-Elf Fighter/Cleric. Sure Fighter caps quick at 9, but cleric is more important.

 

[Null Null]

So, finally I get my account unlocked. Coupla things worth discussing:

White and Red Mages have different spells. This is actually tabletop-accurate but means you should probably have one of each. White Mages get Minor Globe of Invulnerability, Confusion, Hold Monster, and Globe of Invulnerability, among others; Red Mages get Mirror Image, Haste, Fire Touch, and Mind Blank, among others. (There's no clear buff/debuff theme to the split, and it has to do with schools of magic in D&D.) TRADEOFF: Red Mage gets fireball at 4th level, which is an advantage if you don't multiclass as you can start throwing fireballs considerably earlier in the game, but if you do the Mirror Image spell is self-only and useful in combat.

Two clerics is adequate for Champions and Queen but may make Death Knights a little tougher because of all the undead (you may have to actually deal with all the level-draining wights running around and may get drained). God choice bears some thought; there are seven, and they each have subtle differences, but the big difference is neutral vs good. The best are Mishakal, which gives healing bonuses (thanks Erebus), Kiri-Jolith which gives you a +1 THAC0, and Majere which turns undead as a cleric two levels higher. TRADEOFF: All these are gods of good; gods of good don't get seventh level spells in Death Knights (can't restore levels lost without a temple)-and remember those wights? So if you're doing a three-party game you may want to invest in a neutral cleric. Sirrion gets burning hands, Shinare gets charm person. Charm Person's a little more useful I think. Reorx will give you a +1 THAC0 if you're a dwarf, so if you make a dwarf fighter/cleric that's a bit of a bonus. (They're limited to 10th level as clerics though.)

I used to be a big ranger/cleric advocate, but enough people pointed out to me that slows down your advancement I'm going to say fighter/cleric is fine...as long as you're a Qualinesti (see below). Ranger is mostly helpful for extra damage against giants (not a big part of the game until the end of Dark Queen of Krynn, when you've got lots of other resources) and one particular druid spell (Protection from Fire) that you can do without. In the Forgotten Realms games, human rangers who get to 9th level and then change class to mages can cast spells in armor, but you can't change classes in Krynn games. Elves can also reach 40th as rangers, which they can't as fighters. But 14th gets you most of your hitpoints and full two attacks.

Qualinesti is better than Silvanesti, especially for fighter/mages. Qualinesti gets to 14th level rather than 10th as fighters (nod to Cael), letting them get a full 2 attacks per round. The Silvanesti can become a 12th level paladin, but who cares? (Qualinesti can also be thieves.)

You can't make a Paladin in Champions, only in Death Knights and Dark Queen. TRADEOFF: They're semi-useful in Death Knights because they can turn undead as a cleric two levels lower (unlike knights), but the knights have better clerical spell ability.

Kender--this is controversial. A lot of people really didn't like the kender in the Dragonlance books; others did. But--for gaming purposes they can be cleric/thieves, though only to 12th level, but have max WIS 16, which prevents use of 6th and 7th level cleric spells. (They will actually get them in Death Knights and lose them in Dark Queen when the programmers figure out the bug.) A small note is that 12th level with the 2-level bump from Majere gets you maximum undead turning ability, so if you want to have a kender Majere may be your best shot. On the other hand using that for a neutral god slot will let you use higher-level spells on your kender in Death Knights. The fear immunity didn't seem to work on Death Knights, but the taunt remains tactically useful through Dark Queen.

(Character creation is full of all these weird traps, where a flavor choice in game 1 screws you over in game 3. This is all covered in the manual for Death Knights and Dark Queen, which of course you didn't read yet. Remember these games were marketed to Dragonlance nerds in the early 90s, who couldn't search the Internet on account of it hadn't been invented but had the manuals memorized and would be happy to write the game company letters (on dead trees!) if they gave an enemy too many hitpoints.)

 

[pjs]

Well, 166 pages does not lend itself to being easily searchable. I'll figure out the party, but some input and advice would be helpful.

Well, the latest discussion on this very topic was on the same (and previous) page:

For what it's worth, I replayed the whole Krynn series again with Human Knight (switched to sword when I could keep L14, so around Lunitari tower) and 5 elves (1 F/C, 2 F/Red mages, 2 white mages). As I suspected, having only one healer was somewhat painful at times and maybe I should have switched the knight earlier to get the spells (but I wanted two attacks quickly). All dual-class fighters obtained their L14 nicely around Lunitari tower, so the rest of the game was much smoother. Two full mages was certainly also a huge (and maybe a bigger) asset, especially at the end part when the levels were already past 25 and DBFs and similar spells were so much deadlier than for example L14-L16 mages.

I think I like DKK best. While the plot is nice, the characters in COK are so weak until you have dealt with Throtl and Gargath that you have play it slowly and carefully (and/or reload often especially if the cleric gets struck down). In DKK the plot is also ok and there are a nice bunch of small side quests, also useful rewards. The play is much faster, but you still seem to get killed regularly by poisonous spiders etc. (for some reason, periapt vs poison does not make you immune either) so you can't just toggle on autoplay. DQK is way too sluggish and the mazes of lunitari, tombs of kristophan and hawbluff keep are ridiculous if you don't have the maps; the way how the "game length" was designed was not very optimal.

But getting back to to the suggestions:

With Ranger/Mage out I'll go one Mage. The other will be fighter/mage. So no Ranger in the final roster.

That means final roster is:
Knight(x2)
Fighter/Mage(Silvanesti)
Mage
Cleric/Thief
Fighter/Cleric(Silvanesti again)

My Kender is the Cleric thief. Sure I'm limited to level 12 Cleric but I don't care there. My other mage will be White Mage to diversify and let the Red Mage do their thing.

I'm going to go with Half-Elf Fighter/Cleric. Sure Fighter caps quick at 9, but cleric is more important.

If you want to figure this out on your own, you really need to look at Dark Queen of Krynn adverturer's journal for race and class limitations and max statistics for each race (and gender: forget female characters, unless you do a human full mage).

As was already stated, Silvanesti Elf is inferior to Q-Elf with fighter, because S-Elf can't get to level 14 (two attacks per round). S-Elf is as useful as Q-Elf only as a pure mage (dex 19). Half-Elf is also inferior to Q-Elf in almost any aspect due to lower level caps. Forget it as well.

One knight (or pure fighter class) is enough. Just add fighter/mages, they advance quick enough as fighters and provide spellcasting capability.

For an optimal setup (bearing DQK in mind in particular), as previously stated, you should have at least 1 full mage (human or elf), 1 human knight, at least 2 q-elf fighter/mages, one q-elf fighter/cleric and as the final option a) full mage, b) mage/thief or c) fighter/mage/thief. Thief is needed only for optional end-game feature Dave's Challenge in DKK so you can skip thief completely unless you want to do that.

Obviously, if you want more challenge, variety or roleplay, you can create a suboptimal party as well.

 

[DaveO]

Ok, thanks for the tips!

I'm still doing Cleric/Thief for the Kender. Fighter/Cleric(highest fighter level to attain), Fighter/Red Mage, White Mage and one Knight. So with Ranger open again, I wonder if this is a good last choice.

I decided on 1 knight, 1 figther/ranger(qualenesti), 1 fighter/cleric(again qualenesti), one fighter/Red Mage(qualenesti), one White Mage(human) and the previously mentioned kender cleric/thief.

 

[Erebus]

Pick Mishakal when you have to decide which god your clerics worship. The bonus she grants to healing spells is very good.

No. That bonus is useless because of the fact you get the Fix command. Even at low levels, you shouldn't need to cast healing spells in combat, which is the only place it would be marginally useful for. At high levels, you get Heal and that is the end of it.

What FIX does is automatically cast all the healing spells you need in order to fully heal your wounded PCs (or all the healing spells you have, if you don't have enough of them to heal your entire party) and then memorize all of them again. But memorizing the spells takes several hours and, unless I'm very wrong, it can be interrupted by random encounters.

 

[Null Null]

Ok, thanks for the tips!

I'm still doing Cleric/Thief for the Kender. Fighter/Cleric(highest fighter level to attain), Fighter/Red Mage, White Mage and one Knight. So with Ranger open again, I wonder if this is a good last choice.

I decided on 1 knight, 1 figther/ranger(qualenesti), 1 fighter/cleric(again qualenesti), one fighter/Red Mage(qualenesti), one White Mage(human) and the previously mentioned kender cleric/thief.

You can't multi fighter and ranger, ranger only multiclasses with cleric in these games. I guess you mean cleric/ranger?

K, C/R, C/F, F/RM, WM, C/T sounds reasonable enough to me...

 

[DaveO]

With Fighter/Ranger out I do see that Ranger/Mage is an option. So I'll take that one and use Silvanesti to get the best benefits. This means it will be mage heavy with the White Mage, the Fighter/Red Mage, I'll probably go Ranger/White Mage or possibly just change the White Mage to Red. Then you have two whites multiclassing and the Red Mage being your nuker. That makes more sense.

Cleric/Ranger is an option but I figure two clerics is fine. Three mages is better long term.

 

[Cael]

My Kender is the Cleric thief. Sure I'm limited to level 12 Cleric but I don't care there. My other mage will be White Mage to diversify and let the Red Mage do their thing.

I'm going to go with Half-Elf Fighter/Cleric. Sure Fighter caps quick at 9, but cleric is more important.

Err... Qualinesti Ftr/Cle gets you level 14 Ftr, which is where 2x attacks/round kicks in.

Also, you want a single class White Mage as it levels slower than Red, and it gets the all important Power Word Kill. You WANT that spell by the time you get to the serious part of the third game.

 

[Cael]

With Fighter/Ranger out I do see that Ranger/Mage is an option. So I'll take that one and use Silvanesti to get the best benefits. This means it will be mage heavy with the White Mage, the Fighter/Red Mage, I'll probably go Ranger/White Mage or possibly just change the White Mage to Red. Then you have two whites multiclassing and the Red Mage being your nuker. That makes more sense.

Cleric/Ranger is an option but I figure two clerics is fine. Three mages is better long term.

You can't get Ranger/Mage. It is hard coded in.

 

[DaveO]

I keep getting locked out for that last slot. Every thing I come up with is not allowed apparently. Let me see what my options are. Thanks for telling me about White Mages. I'll make one as a single class.

 

[Cael]

Pick Mishakal when you have to decide which god your clerics worship. The bonus she grants to healing spells is very good.

No. That bonus is useless because of the fact you get the Fix command. Even at low levels, you shouldn't need to cast healing spells in combat, which is the only place it would be marginally useful for. At high levels, you get Heal and that is the end of it.

What FIX does is automatically cast all the healing spells you need in order to fully heal your wounded PCs (or all the healing spells you have, if you don't have enough of them to heal your entire party) and then memorize all of them again. But memorizing the spells takes several hours and, unless I'm very wrong, it can be interrupted by random encounters.

It doesn't matter. You will be using the Fix command throughout the series, and you will eventually get so many healing spells that the 1 extra die won't matter. And that is before you hit level 6 spells, when you get Heal, which basically overrides everything.

 

[DaveO]

I FINALLY came up with the end roster. So my group is made.

DaveO - Human Knight
Sylvan - Cleric/Mage(Silvanesti)
Tark Starswift - Fighter/Red Mage(Qualenesti)
Ssur - Human White Mage
Taarna - Fighter/Cleric(Qualenesti)
Chop Suey - Cleric/Thief(Kender)

 

[ProphetSword]

In this topic over the years I've seen so much hand-wringing over the most optimized party for each game, what you should and should not play, what races you should take, what classes you should take, etc. But, I'm here to tell you it's all bullshit. These games aren't that hard. A lot of people (myself included) beat them in the days before these Internet experts tried to tell us how we should be playing them and we did fine. We took sub-optimal choices that we considered fun and we had a blast beating the game.

So, I'm sure this won't be the last time I exhaust myself trying to explain this to people, but for fuck's sake...if you have even an inkling of how tactics or D&D works, you can beat these games without breaking a sweat. You don't have to use any lame tricks like constantly spamming fireballs or taking certain class combinations. There's no set number of clerics or mages or thieves or fighters that you need to succeed. Nothing is a trap. You don't even need external tools (and while Gold-Box Companion is nice, I tend to skip it to get a pure experience).

Roll up your party, have some fucking fun, and stop thinking you need to have the best and most optimal choices; because you really don't.