Can a fighter/mage be your only mage?

wildernesswoodelf

Basically the question in the title. If your main character is a fighter/mage, can they potentially be your one and only mage?
And, if so, what would be the ideal setup? Fighter dual to mage at level 7 or 9? FIghter/mage multiclass?

Dharius

As mentioned in a recent post elsewhere, I've done a run of SoA and ToB with no arcane spellcasters whatsoever, and it was fine, so why not?

I'm not a power gamer, so can't really comment on the best statistics for dual classing. Imho I'd probably dual as early as possible to recover your classes asap. If you want the easiest option just go for multiclass

wildernesswoodelf

I meant, without being severely gimped or doing an insane amount of metagaming.

I'm not looking for a challenge run or anything, it's my first playthrough and I don't plan on studying guides in detail to know every single encounter before it happens. But I will probably play on hard difficulty

Dharius

IIRC I don't think I did those things either on my run through (it was the first time i got through ToB in fact)...there are enough spells of all types in the libraries of clerics and druids to get by without a mage, whether you know the game or not, so I still don't think that arcane spellcasters are that essential. The party can get by with divine spellcasters alone without much trouble.
Yes you might miss out on certain spells, but so what? You can't have a party containing all class types anyway (at least, not easily).

So what I'm saying basically therefore is having a single multi or dual class mage in a party would be just fine. No problem.

BTW playing on hard difficulty is of course a challenge in itself. Not sure I'd recommend it on a first playthrough, but if you want to and if it makes you happy, then go for it.

Khyron

Mages arent the end all, be all. They are the most powerfull class by quite some margin, but are still expendable.

Look at it this way, what you mostly need mages for are taking down magical defenses of liches, dragons, demons, other mages etc.. they are very good at that, and crowd controll (slow, hold person, etc)

But you don't -need- any of this.. yes, Breach is nice, as is Spell Thrust.. two of my absolute favorite spells in mid-saga progress.. but there are several ways to go forward without a dedicated mage.

In other words, a F/M protagonist and no other mages will -not- be a problem.. you will have all the utility you need and a F/M is probably the class that has the easiest time soloing the entire saga at higher difficulties.. possibly FMT is even better if you mod out the level cap.

Quite often the only mage in my party is Aerie, and she's a C/M.. which is about the about the same in Arcane terms.
I am no meta or powergamer.. I know many things, but truth be known I scarcely know what half the mage spells above lvl 6 even do.. especially 7th level spells, those are just really never used by me.. horrid wilting and timestop is pretty much all i use above 6th level spells, and those i usually avoid using because.. they're boring and takes too much fiddling about.
In other words, I could use only a Bard for my only mage.. and I have, several times.
F/M will be fine, my dude

Michelle

Short answer, yep. Long answer, no problemo. The first solo run I did was an Undead Hunter, that is solo though which is mostly what I have done so I will defer to others wisdom. Honestly though, when I did play a party, I always found micromanaging mage duals to be annoyingly intensive. Gotta love the Planetars though. Not that Planetars matter really in this discussion, just that I rarely play mages and I do miss them. I am more of a, “Look, there is a monster.”, proceed to bash monster type of player.

Anyhoo, for a long time being a lonely geek I played a lot, probably 200 or more runs all the way to either spank or be spanked by Melissan. Maybe 50-60 of those were party runs. Of those I would guess 5 times max I had a dedicated mage. They just really bug me in a party and every time I ended up underutilizing them. That is just me though but no, a dedicated mage is not needed. Being your first playthrough, have fun. Getting your butt kicked is part of the experience right, builds character. Any character combination won’t change the pain of the learning curve, so maybe just play what you want to play. Won’t take long to figure out how to kill that dragon that is dripping flame boogers on you while he is laughing at your insignificant party.

Have fun storming the castle.

Dharius

@Khyron I agree about the spells above level six…most I can’t be bothered to work out what they do, they look boring and can easily be ignored.

For example I only use TimeStop on a couple of occasions when I really think I need to (I think Abazigal, Draconis and Amelyssan are the occasions). Most of the time I don’t.

Also I have NEVER, ever used Contingency in any game. Don’t understand it, don’t need it. Haste works better for me.

The best spell available is Reloading…

Zaxares

Dharius wrote: »

Also I have NEVER, ever used Contingency in any game. Don’t understand it, don’t need it. Haste works better for me.

The best spell available is Reloading…

I'll do you one better! My Mage has Contingency and Chain Contingency spells set up, but if a battle plays out where I actually DO need them, I'll reload the game thinking "I can do better than that!"