Wizardry VI Character Development

I have rerolled my characters for a third time. I think I understand the rules a bit better and my original builds on reflection weren't very good.

This time I've kept all of the characters to basic classes. I have three fighters, a cleric, a bard and a mage. My bard is going to learn skullduggery and carry out thief skills.

I think where I went wrong last time was that I dumped all of my stats into what I thought were the most important skills for each character - so the fighters got loads of strength and vitality for example, but little else. This meant that they were good at what they did but would be unlikely to be able to change classes later in the game to something better. You do get random stat increases (and decreases, I think) every level but that's not reliable.

So this time I've spread my points more widely with a view to later class changing. For example, one of my fighters is set up to change to a valkyerie later in the game, and another to a ninja (and possibly into a lord from there or maybe back to a fighter).

On the downside, no-one is has particularly high strength - which affects carrying capacity from the outset and apparently can't be improved later in the game.

Anyway, I'm now ready to go again! I'll be entering the castle tonight.

Yeah it sounds like you simply rerolled rather than running into problems when you switch professions later, which I know I got in trouble with on at least one or two characters, then really kept it in mind when I replayed the games later. You really do need to plot out your characters entire career quite early, at least in your head or on paper, so you can plan it all out correctly.

Yeah exactly! I hadn't realised how important that was going to be, and I'm hoping to take this party through parts vii and viii eventually so I thought it was worth getting it right.

I had to research it though. I spent time with my nose buried in the 100 page manual pdf working my way through how stuff works, and I really enjoyed doing it. Don't get me wrong, I think modern games have made massive improvements about how they provide information to players through tooltips and gradual introductions to new concepts etc. I don't want to have to read a manual before every game before I get going. But in this case the manual was great, well written and with some nice black and white ink drawings, and it has added to my enjoyment of the game. It also explained some of the weird UI icons that had been bugging me since I started playing!

I have always stuck to one class without mixing classes in the game, however, the main advantage of changing classes is that you maintain the skills of all your former classes, so you can make a super ninja class at the end which was what my late dad literally did. But you dont need to do that, it is just harder but less time consuming to complete the game without it.

There is some logic in keeping to a solo class as well, I always kept at least one or two in solo careers just to maintain a strong core in the group. They can pick up some slack while other adjusts to their new respective classes.

Yeah I read somewhere that resistance to certain late game status effects is based on character level, which gives single class characters an advantage in some circumstances. It's a real pleasure playing a game where the character development is so complicated and varied.