Heh. As I say, I barely know anything beyond this thread (which I skimmed to skip all the DraQ Rage)
Your loss.
Q: With the bishops, what determines new spells that you are able to choose on level up? Weber is putting points in divinity, mental magic and divine magic, while Leibniz is doing so in arcane, water and fire, but weirdly, Weber seems to get more water magic spells to choose from, and Leibniz more divine? (Yes, I've already found a couple of spellbooks so I know about those.)
There are two kind of magic skills:
-schools (wizardry, divinity, alchemy and psionics) that correspond to the type of magic
-realms that correspond to element (they've been mixed up in this thread
)
Realms are generally subordinate to schools - what good is your deep understanding of, say, fire if you lack understanding of any actual spellcasting process? Schools are what primarily determines availability of spells.
More so single-school bishops are a complete and utter waste - in your case you're essentially developing a mage and priest, except sucky, and much more XP hungry. A better way would be to split remaining schools (alchemy and psionics) between your bishops and restrict each to only taking picks from those two schools. Ideally you should put 3 points into each of selected schools at level up and remaining three in the realm they need them the most or whatever skill you want your bishop to develop.
Also, since you have a faerie ninja I would use wand and staff as his melee option because you're likely to find something wonderful if you beat certain shady furry and even if you don't there are many powerful staves in game.
I don't see the point of 4-school bishops. Of course, once they beef up and gain enough experience to cast all those spells, they kick ass - but that comes in the last say 10% of the game, when all your team is overpowered to cheese and back. The rest 90% they suck, especially if you save all your spellpicks for those goodie 7th circle spells. Why give yourself a mostly useless hero? Two- or three-school bishops are much better IMHO, and with two bishops in a party (like
Tigranes), you can divide all four realms equally, thus getting two good spellcasting heroes right from the start.
I don't fully agree. Yeah, 4-school bishops are pain in the ass to develop, but you can still put 2.25 points into each school on average on level up (as opposed to 3) and even when you're saving your picks, you will expand your spell collection by buying and otherwise acquiring every book you come across, so it's not like you will be forever restricted to bashing stuff upside the head with a stick. The worst part is availability of some books and that your realm skills will stagnate, making your bishop versatile, but weak caster.
Still, you don't go with 4-school bishop if you have more than one slot for dedicated caster so you will likely have a powerful ranged/melee party, possibly with some auxiliary magic capability supplementing your polymath.
3-School bishop is more problematic, because of sharing main problems with 4-school one (you still have no points to spare on realms and you still have to conserve picks), but without full magic coverage. You either have to neglect one school, use a dedicated caster (in which case it would be better to go with 2 2-schoolers), use a hybrid and partially neglect said school (which seems like a worse deal than supplementing 4-schooler with hybrids) or drag Urq everywhere (troll option).
Easy. With two 2-school bishops you have all the spellpower you will ever need.
(...)
And having two 4schoolers is against the whole 4-realm purpose - why have two guys identical in power and function? That's redundant.
Basically this. You can use bishop as 2-school hybrid rather than 4-schoole elite and develop only slightly slower than pure caster. If you have two bishops there is no point going 4-school with any of them as it only slows them down and limits your available picks due to redundancy.
*sorry I meant Body of Stone instead of Iron Skin in previous post
I just went to the database to check, since your argument is convincing. Well, I figured:
1) Body of Stone is Alchemy-only. It's one of the best fighter buffs (next to Superman), and it's single target. Having 2 Alchemy experts casting it makes a big differerence.
2) Heal All is Divinity-only. That's a tremendously useful spell that you'll use often, having 2 casters helps as well.
3) Superman is Divinity-only. Again, single target like Body of Stone, so having multiple Divinity casters speeds up buffing 2x.
4) Guardian Angel same argument.
There could be more, but those should be sufficient for my argument. Yes, Priest + Divinity Bishop would cover a lot. But 2 Bishops specialising in different realms won't.
Heal-all affects entire party, so it doesn't really benefit from multiple casters (same with haste).
The rest is available in bottles, and, except body of stone, as gadgeteer items.
If you want to buff two frontliners with both body of stone and superman, it will take the same amount of turns whether you use 2- or 4-school bishops, except 4-school ones will cast their spells on lower level due to having no points to spare for realms. They will also pay price for redundancy in not having some other useful spells.
One of my fav combos is a Lizardman priest (to be made later to a dual wielding diamond star lord), a Samurai (Dracon, but any race is good), a Faerie Psionic (cheating I know but fuck it) and an Alchemist (gnome sometimes, something else other times). Four party, all spell casters, all badass.
It's very rough in the beginning usually, due to the fact that Dracon doesn't hit as hard as he would were he a straight fighter.
Dracons are cool and well rounded race, but there is one really good reason to use them that is often overlooked - they aren't particularly penalized by cursed weapons thanks to their acid breath. This makes them excellent choice for, for example bloodlust/thieves dagger combo rogues. Dracon caster with Staff of Doom may also be interesting, as they can make your one stop crowd control shop (run out of SP, start breathing) - you may even go crazy and try Dracon 4-schooler.
).
