Is Pool of Radiance just unfair, or am I doing something wrong?

It's been a long time, but I didn't find it very hard back about 8 years ago.

Some of the advice given above rings true to me but I can't remember much else.

So I will mainly just reemphasize.

Avoid the tavern.
Use sleep spells all the time.
Have 2 fighters on the front line to tank while you pelt from the 2nd and 3rd row.

Also get the fancy expensive bows? Or was it swords?

Edit:

Some useful links:
http://www.gamebanshee.com/
I followed the character creation advice in the above.
http://www.the-spoiler.com/RPG/SSI/p…e.1/index.html
http://www.thecomputershow.com/compu…k.htm#creating

Good Luck!

Yeah, I am remembering more now.

Everyone should have a bow for ranged damage. That's why dual classing thieves, clerics, and mages is so important.

Also spend a lot of time rerollling characters so you get a few 17 and 18s each. In particular, 18/80 strength or above for your fighters makes a huge difference.

It's great fun once you figure out good tactics. One of my favorites.

In combat, Line your party up vertically and tell everyone to Guard, never End turn. You can't guard with a ranged weapon. This way they attack people who come into melee range and get the first strike. If you're lucky the enemy will attack the middle of the line and get attacked by 3 people, probably killing him.

Nuke their mages down first. To start, take only magic missile spells. Interrupting enemy spellcasting is important and those magic missile wands mean you always have a nuke to interrupt with.

You have to rest 8 hours to memorise your spells. Clerics can only use blunt weapons. Fireball and haste are good spells.

All the other gold box games have a difficulty setting available using ENCAMP - ALTER - LEVEL. This is not available in PoR which makes it a lot tougher for a first timer.

It assumes you will be using tactics i.e. party formation, terrain, casting spells before combat and having a fairly standard party.

For a first timer I would recommend 2 fighters, 1 fighter/thief, 1 cleric and 2 mages (and turn down the difficulty - if available). I would also edit your hit points to max and maybe attributes a little bit but don't go overboard or the game will be too easy.

I tried it again, cheated my way up to level 2, had a far more fighter heavy party, and the game is a lot more bearable now that I don't have to reload every time the game decides to spawn an unreasonably large group of enemies (except for the group of 36 orcs (yes, I counted)… Still not fond of those things).

Oh, and by the way, no need to re-roll any characters. Like in Eye of the Beholder, you can just set the stats manually in-game.

I assume the comments about Ruins of Myth Drannor are tongue-in-cheek. That game was quite boring - and of course the unpatched version originally released could wipe your hard drive (really).

First thing I thought when I saw the OP was "only one fighter?", but I think that's been cleared up by now [and I haven't even played PoR…]

C'mon Fnord, improve that AD&D exp and lore

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Yeah, I am remembering more now.

Everyone should have a bow for ranged damage. That's why dual classing thieve's, clerics, and mages is so important.

Also spend a lot of time rerollling characters so you get a few 17 and 18s each. In particular, 18/80 strength or above for your fighters makes a huge difference.

It's great fun once you figure out good tactics. One of my favorites.

No need to reroll. You can edit characters upon creation.

Maxing str (for THAC0 which is your chance to hit as well as damage), dex (for AC on all classes), con (for HP) and raw HP makes a huge difference on low levels, where the modifiers are very large compared to your class based stats. I also save scum upon level up to gain max HP since it makes a big difference. A lvl 1 fighter can have anything between 1 (lowest dice roll) and 14 (max dice roll of 10 + 4 con bonus) HP which obviously makes a huge difference in survivability. Clerics can have up to 10HP per level (1-8 from dice, 2 from con) and mages up to 6 (1-4 from dice, 2 from con). Thieves probably have 1-6+2 from con, I never used them in PoR.

EDIT: You'll want to keep an eye on the secondary stats THAC0 (your ability to hit things) and AC (armour class, makes it harder for the enemy to hit you). Those should be as low as possible. You will want your fighters and clerics to wear plate for maximum protection. You can test if armour and weapon is magical compared to vanilla versions by looking at the effect of equipping them compared to the nonmagical variety. There is also a detect magic spell. After a while you will learn which enemies carry magical equipment. Otherwise it's mostly found after boss fights and as treasure.

Originally Posted by Jaguar
I assume the comments about Ruins of Myth Drannor are tongue-in-cheek. That game was quite boring - and of course the unpatched version originally released could wipe your hard drive (really).

No tongue in cheek. I loved the game, it wasn't boring to me at all. The setting, the story, the lore, the gameplay, tactical choices etc. Liked it all. It was pretty hard. That 'drive wiping bug' was patched out really quick and it was rare to begin with. Never had any issues.

Originally Posted by lackblogger
First thing I thought when I saw the OP was "only one fighter?", but I think that's been cleared up by now [and I haven't even played PoR…]

C'mon Fnord, improve that AD&D exp and lore

My AD&D experience is one edition ahead of this game My party was designed with 2nd edition AD&D in mind, and I also noticed some other quirks, like you can't equip spellcasters with slings in 1st edition AD&D. It's the subtle changes like that that are the hardest ones to catch, but it does have a big impact on how you should design your party, as now mages (or magic users as they're called here) can't safely deal damage to enemies without using spells. And clerics seem to make for worse secondary warriors (though that might just be down to this game, rather than any real rule change).

My experience with AD&D tells me that warriors scale poorly, that was why I only put one in the original party. They tend to start strong, but after a few levels, they lose a lot of what makes them useful, and almost every other class gets better.

Ruins of Myth Drannor shouldn't really be mentioned in the same sentence as the original classic to be honest.

That said, I did complete it here on the Watch and made a thread about it.
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/show…t=13001&page=2
It was a massive slog and a good feeling to finally beat. The speed mod is essential.

I'm glad you've gone back to continue on in PoR Fnord, even if I'm not fully won over by the means chosen in order to do so. Stick at it though!

Originally Posted by Fnord
My experience with AD&D tells me that warriors scale poorly, that was why I only put one in the original party. They tend to start strong, but after a few levels, they lose a lot of what makes them useful, and almost every other class gets better.

Mages only reach level 6 or so and are pretty weak until they get fireball. Low level warrior tactics (optimised sweep attacks against low level enemies that might get lucky and the like) will see you through the first third of the game.

Clerics are ok in terms of THAC0, AC, and HP for the first few levels, but they can't sweep, and they wont get extra attacks later.

I always run with two mages in Curse of the Azure Bonds and later games though. Fireball and Haste rule the entire series.

Been awhile, so the only thing I really remember about PoR is that I HATE that damned hedge maze at the end of the game. I am not fond of mazes in general as don't have the patience to wander through them and don't enjoy drawing out maps (so I also avoid all the classic dungeon crawlers that require this).

And so inevitably I would hack on through the poisonous briars (killing the first person in my party IIRC) and then just create a new party member for CoAB… Which is fine because paladins and rangers weren't available in the first game. But we would never forget the noble sacrifice of .. Fighter #2.

It's been awhile since I've played this game obviously, but the one important piece of advice I didn't see mentioned is to make sure you use the sleep spell. Sleep was ridiculously overpowered at first level in AD&D, taking out a huge number of low level targets with no save. It will win fights against big groups on it's own.

Multiclass spellcasters are the way to go. Also as you have found out the game is terribly brutal till you get to level 2. You'll find spellcasters very useful later though. Especially sleep, stinking cloud, and hold person can be used to wipe out enemies.

Also I think I'd use a multiclass thief.

This is the multiclass golden era. There is no reason not to multiclass and plenty of reasons to.

Yeah, multiclass is the right option here.

Not a huge fan of multi-classing, personally, but that's just me. I like the purity of a single class where possible. Character class experiments in general are fun with the gold box games though.

@ Zaleukos
I had a single mage and a cleric/mage in my very first Azure Bonds party. The always memorable Dracondras fight in Hap was one of the first I remember where this combination was just lethal.

Iirc the combat in the slums is perfectly bearable… provided that you don't edit your stats manually, because then the game really pumps up the difficulty!

And yes, as already mentioned, Sleep is what makes the difference at the beginning!