When you get to HOF, I've been reading that spellcasters are where the real power lies. How many do you have in your HOF games (assume 2/3 levels at least to be considered a real spellcaster)?

Depends how large your party is really. One sorcerer is enough in a one person party. One sorcerer and one cleric are enough in a two person party. One sorcerer, one cleric, and one wizard are enough in a 3 person party. One sorcerer, one cleric, one wizard, and one druid are enough in a 4 person party.

Party sizes larger than 4 are just a pain.

Why do you say larger than 4 is a pain? Maybe I should try narrowing my idea from a 6 person party down to 4. I might be more effective, and since I'm hooked on ECL "penalized" races, I might be in good shape.

I'll work on it and post a rough draft soon.

Again, I'm working on a party that will work in regular and HOF modes.

Harborboy has the right idea. The correct number of spellcasters is the same as your party size. (A party size of one seems very hard; anyone tried it?)

But... a wizard is just an inferior sorcerer with way more skill points then you will ever need. A druid is just a very inferior sorcerer with a good Fortitude save. You're better off replacing them both with sorcerers.

Oh, baloney.

I've gotten by just fine with a cleric and sorc in a 6 person party (with a little pally and ranger spellcasting support) in HOF.


Just let the cleric or sorc stun the mob of enemies and then let your tanks and your summons chew'em up with their swords and axes and arrows.


You can chew thru the mobs of HOF enemies without having to lower yourself to using one of those all-spellcasters atrocities.

Well I had a pure necromancer, a Silverstar of Selune/Evoker (13/17), and my drow ranger learned a bit druidic ways. (9 levels)

My top two casters were kicking the bad guys easily!

Crucis, it's well known that you don't need a full 6 man party to beat the game; in fact just 3 is plenty. So if you'll have more fun with some extra non-spellcasters to tag along, there's nothing wrong with that.

JT, my point is that you don't need a mob of spellcasters nuking everything in sight to take on HOF. You can do it with relatively few spellcasters, using more subtle spell choices, rather than nuking the living crap out of everything.

Sure. And my point was that non-spellcasters are fairly useless in HoF, and can be replaced by a summon, a spellcaster with a few utility levels, or nothing at all. Since Klorox seems to be asking where the "real power" is, the answer is that one character or six, they should all be primary spellcasters.

ALL primary spell-casters? If they are all mages they will have a hard time with finding scrolls, unless you make them all different specialists focused in different schools, so that, for example, Fireball goes to Evoker whilst Skull Trap to necromancer. Come to think of it, it sounds like a pretty cool party.

Though I must insist that some levels of fighter type are DEFINITELY needed at the very beginning, or mages will have to rely on their dart-throwing skills. And darts don't have 3 attacks/round like in 2E AFAIK!

Silverstar, you don't have to make them all wizards...

Fighter levels are definitely not needed at the start of HoF. A simple Summon Monster One will kick the crap out of a fighter, although at first it only lasts four rounds. But you level up pretty fast, and then the duration of summons increases.

Someone once claimed to have soloed a Bard in HoF so once again, the bottom line here is that just about anything is possible. But I would have thought that a Sorcerer and a Cleric would be sufficient to make it through HoF.

If you are going to finish a normal game and then take that party to HoF, melee fighting wont be completely useless for you. Atleast for the first couple of chapters. Specially if you have a high AC DG from JUPP to hide behind.

If you don't have decent tanks in your party, you will find yourself increasingly dependant on summons. Enemies have just too many attacks for even a Mirror Image + Stoneskin + Blur + Blink to save you if swarmed.

Once you get to HoF, XPwise it doesn't matter whether you have a 4 member party or 6. However you should already know how much of a task it is to control just 2 guys, let alone 6. And if they are spellcasters, then they might end-up simply standing around waiting for your instructions.

A Sorc and Cleric are important. After that it's your choice.

One high level arcane caster is everything you need to get through HOF, but a divine caster will make it much easier. I usually have all 6 chars with at least quite high caster levels since i love micromaneging my chars and placing them in different formations allowing them to cast long spellcombos in the right order. The hard fights end quickly - some chars cast debuffers and the rest blasts everything out. The easier fights takes a bit more time since i usually don't waste good spells against easy enemies.