JONNIN

1h vs 2h ... until or unless you have specialized, you can try both out... so skip that for now and play 3-4 levels of content trying both types to see what YOU think. 2h are nice late game or on extra hard difficulty to bypass the DR on the tougher enemy, while well-enchanted 1h weapons are more efficient at killing hordes of weak things faster. Or wear a set of each and swap depending on the enemy. If focused on attack speed, with a high dex and a low armor, you should use weapons that *drain* to offset the damage he takes. Splash damage is better 2h. It is fairly weak early in the game either way, by level 5 or 6 it might begin to show some teeth, so keep that in mind if you are trying both types in the early game. Int helps aoe -- it helps your "watcher" aoe abilities (the most useful being the healing one that you get first) and I am not 100% sure (its hard to tell because the radius is already small) but I think it increases the splash damage radius, slightly. However, it is perfectly playable to cut your into to 2 or 3 or whatever so long as you reduce the penalty to will some (take perception and resolve to beef up your defenses). Splash damage did not impress me enough to invest in int, so my barb has very high might, con, and dex and a 2 intellect. Unfortunately they did not include the "dumb guy" voice over and "me kill you now" chat options for the ... erm.. "challenged" player. Mog still talk too good. Frenzy is NOT a problem. The barbarian gets a self heal ability that you can activate at the same time if you are concerned, and as I said, attack speed barbs should use drain weapons. You can get 2 good drain fast attack weapons early on, the flail in the first town's dungeon (temple) and the dagger off the giant spider just past 'the old watcher'. Frenzy good. Might = damage, attack speed = damage, frenzy = damage!! It does not last too long, though. The barbarian, for real, has enough health that for the short duration of frenzy, if you are playing somewhat intelligently, you should not get a KO from 'hidden health surprise" very often, if ever. The toughest fights, maybe. You can also apply various regens to him during the frenzy if you are concerned about it, lay on hands after say 10 seconds into frenzy or something similar if in a boss fight etc.

I am not real keen on POTD & TOI, but here is my take on it so far (doing it very, very slowly and carefully) -- almost everything that is per/rest is garbage. The single exceptions to this are healing -- bandage talents and healing spells are critical to many boss fights and so you conserve them against trash and use them when you must, rest when you are getting low or before a boss. Lets take for example hauling in 2 paladin moonlikes to tank. They heal from racial, they can lay on hands per encounter, aura gives DR, second aura gives accuracy. Bandage avoids camping for 1-2 more fights. If you can arrange for most trash fights to mostly beat on these 2 characters, you can avoid resting for ages, often for an entire map or more. In the back, a cipher never runs out of spells, and a chanter can summon stuff that can pseudo-tank or provides dps. The priest just uses a bow or wand until you get to boss fights, might use the per encounter heal big aoe but not actual spells most of the time -- he is your trump card and if you actually use the priest's spells on trash fights that is your red light that the area you are in is too hard for you. Using ideas along these lines, you do not need to rest until your health gets knocked down to about 50% or so -- because you have so few per-rest abilities that need to be reset. Basically -- when the tank's health bar goes red, time to go to the inn. That said, the per-rest classes are poorly designed, the wizard is the worst of the lot. Priest is almost as bad. Neither priest nor mage do anything in trash fights at all, so that is 2 useless characters 90% of the time..! Druid is better -- it can at least animal form and kill a few things each fight, though it is a little squishy for doing that late-game. I would love to see them give these classes just a few, say 2-3, per encounter or even spammable things to do in each fight.

The cipher has his own debuffs, many of them, including a large aoe flank for 30 seconds, a small aoe blind, a single target paralysis, and a number of others. The cipher performs well as a debuffer that enables the melee to wipe the floor with the mobs, and once debuffed, his own damage spells come into play... as I said above, the cipher is more than a replacement for the wizard, and never has to sleep.

You will probably not see 40-50 and higher damage with all 6 characters in a typical party. Damage is tricky, but here are some basics: - damage characters need maxed out might. That is 21 for the +2 might race... and that will get you 40+ hits on rogues in the early/mid game, without maxed enchanted uberweapons. - damage should not be something the enemy is strong against. That guy in +20 pierce resisting armor is not going to die from a rapier, try a club or something. - Buffs and debuffs matter. Accuracy is rolled over into crit. If your caster can paralyze the enemy, you need significantly less accuracy to hit it and will crit more often and hit more often and kill faster. Buffing your own accuracy is also potent (paladin aura, spells, enchanted weapons, talents, so many things buff accuracy..) - weapon enchants matter. A 'fine' weapon with nothing else does a lot less damage than a fully improved and enchanted weapon. A fully loaded weapon will do double or more damage compared to a commonplace item (same type, say compare a fully loaded sword and a plain sword... ) - other weapons have enchants for DR penetration besides the ones with innate DR penetration. But yes, DR penetration or using a weapon the enemy is not strongly DR against will gib things fast. - there are debuffs that lower enemy DR. These become vital in higher level boss fights. - chanters don't have to do 50 damage per weapon swing. Chanters can summon a dragon or other things that do damage. The chanter is possibly one of the top three damage dealers at mid levels -- 3 wyrms will keep pace with a dps character at the mid levels easily... and can hit 3 different targets or focus fire. Late game, a well built character is better than these allies, but your chanter added to the allies?? It would take a very, very well made damage dealer to outdps a well made chanter AND his dragon -- by the time another class is outperforming the chanter, the game is nearly over.

The default characters are not 'max/min' built and are significantly weaker than a full party of inn-rolled characters. That said, they have side quests and personality that makes for gameplay, but once you go to 'hard+' difficulty, they sort of stink. This is just a FYI if you are on a harder difficulty and trying to use ONLY the provided characters. If you did not know you can roll your own companions at any inn and they can be max/min crafted to perform significantly better. Your specific party: First, aloth is just weak. He is poorly rolled to begin with and he has to rest to regain spells. Your cipher can do 90% of what he can and does not have to camp to do it. Also, the cipher and wizard are redundant, filling the same role. And that begs mentioning that a major role of casters is simply to debuff for the rogue (which you do not have!). Palli is poorly rolled, her constitution is very low for a tank and she sure can't damaage anything much. Some ideas: Go to the nearest inn and replace aloth with a hand-rolled rogue. Depends on what you need but I like the +2 might race ... 21 might, 18 con, and more or less 10 in everything else. You can drop int to 3 and use those points to beef up per to get higher net defenses. You can shuffle some points into dex for attack speed but I can't tell that this is effective, the difference between 10 and 18 is barely noticeable to me, no matter what the game engine says about it. You might also do well to toss palli over for a hand-crafted moon godlike pally with 19 or so con and high defenses -- properly made, that gives you a nearly immortal second tank AND a per encounter heal AND other heals can be found in the talents/class abilities later on. The hand-made pally is optional, though -- the rogue alone will do wonders for your game experience (and it can get the tougher traps and locks to boot if you focus on mech). Now, if you really, really, really want a magic heavy party, roll your own mage. It should have 19+ might, 17+ int and round out the rest as best as you can. Its not amiss to tank up your healer and mage with strong armor. Yes, armor slows down casting, but having to cast heals makes you need to camp too often and a magic heavy group that loses its mage does not have any damage left! Protect those guys -- later on, several scripted fights suck the party into the middle of a room and surround you and kill your casters in seconds if they are not armored. As for "the best armor you can get" --- full plate enchanted for +crush gives I think 15 in all nonmagical DR. Or you can carry several types of armor and swap depending on the damage type being used most often against you in an area. One last option: replace aloth with the druid. He can pop animal form and kill 3, maybe 4 enemy with melee attacks if you need some physical damage, and he can cast decent aoe mage-like spells, and he can heal a little bit. This avoids rolling your own character (if that bothers you) but here again, the druid is not well rolled (he isnt terrible, though, just "OK"). If you have the rogue in your party, use your cipher aoe debuffs to enable sneak attacks and watch your rogue do 30-50 and more damage per swing to mow down the trash. Give the rogue weapons that leech health and it will be near immortal if you avoid doing anything foolish (running up the middle with it, or getting hit by a boss a lot, or the like). Kana is probably the best of the provided allies. His ability to summon nasty things cannot be over-stated. Skeletons stink but phantom can tank and dps at that level, 3 wyrms are 10x better than aloth will ever be at ranged "magical" damage, and the higher level summons are insanely poweful. That is not to mention that he heals the group a little all the time. I really like his ranged attack chant phrase -- I typically have 3 characters in the back with ranged weapons (healer, chanter, and one other) and it helps a group like that.