From: Ivan Godard MIME-Version: 1.0 To: b l a d e s@ spiderwebsoftware . com (Note spaces added to thwart spammers. Remove spaces for valid email address.) Subject:Instructions for creating and maintaining a 1 PC Party. I start with the default party and discard everyone but the nephil. I then reduce all stats to minimum, giving a PC with 77 skill points, instead of the 60 you get if you start up a party from scratch. I then change the species to Slith and the traits to have every good and no bad traits. This produces an XP penalty of 142%. I then set skills: mage 5, priest 5, str 10, int 5. All other skills are minimum. Because you get three free spell points per level, the resulting PC has 30 SP. It has the minimal HP of 6. I start this character in all Low and Medium scenarios and most High or Very High. The very first level is often _very_ tricky to get, because with only 6 HP you can't take a hit from anything. But you can get off 6 Fireballs (only an average 7 damage each though) before running away, so you can knock off one or two in a crowd of wandering monsters before fleeing. Eventually you make second level and 12-13 HP. The big advantage of that first level gain is that your Haste/Bless lasts more than one round. However, with the high strength you go up in HP very quickly. By the time you're 3rd level and 20HP or so you can stand up to a hit, and with studded, leather helm and boots you are hard to hit when you have a Bless running, again because of all the strength. You also gain levels fast, even with the XP penalty, because you are not splitting the XP six ways. With the penalty, you gain roughly 2.5 times as many levels as a six-party without any penalty and so you will catch up in level to a Medium regular party by the middle of a scenario. I put the first two levels (10 skill points) into dex 3 bladed 2, and from there on fight if possible as a fighter, using the magic to have Haste and Bless running all the time, with the occasional special situation calling for Fireball, Poison, etc. Note that the PC has the ambidextrous skill and fights two-weapon. The next 4 levels (20 points) go into spell points, giving me a level 7 fighter with 50 SP. That lets me cast Identify (and Ritual if needed), partly solving the biggest problem of single-PC parties: only 24 inventory slots. With periodic Identifies you can weed out the junk loot and bring back the bulk of the cash value. Thereafter I put skill points into fighter skills, adding priest or mage levels only when level 6 spells become available, and mage lore only when I hit something that needs it. When I'm 20 on str, int, dex, and blades, and 7 on priest and mage (about level 25 or so) I put any more into Assassination or (eventually) Luck. I never buy archery, thrown missle, poison, locks, alchemy, or traps. Distance magic substitutes for archery (there are contrived situations where it won't, but Summoning will get you archers or equivalent eventually); thrown is universally derided as a waste; poison is too much trouble and takes to long for effect, and you could Envenom if ever needed; locks yield to high strength or magic; alchemy is unnecessary unless it's built into the plot line as in Exile (II?), where you'd get it when needed; with heavy-fighter level HP you simply shrug off traps and Cure or Heal if needed. With fighter HP (roughly 7X level) and all the Heal/Cure you want with 50SP, there's no need for potions. I do carry a Potion of Clarity (Restore Mind) for emergencies, but have never actually needed it in play. I will carry an Antimagic or Paralysis Wand if I find one before I get the spells, but almost never use them. But in practice, in High games the spells are readily available and in the others the wands are not needed. One other factor: with only one PC, you get to keep the rare really good items and so the one PC is equipped with the very best stuff that would be scattered across a 6-party. After 10-15 levels of play, a party will have found stuff like an Onyx Charm, Gold Ring Prot, Helm of Alertness, Magic Studded, 2xMagic Broad or Wave, Boots (or Ring) of Speed, Giantish Gauntlets, etc. Scatter that around a party and it helps a little. Put it all on one PC and he rocks. A single PC calls for somewhat different strategy than a six-party. To begin with, you explore in combat mode, already Hasted and Blessed and with the lights _off_. That means you hit the monsters one at a time, and get in four (two-weapon, remember) hits before they get a turn. If that doesn't do them, play the 'now you see me now you don't' game: step in one square, hit X 2, step back out of sight (lights off) in one turn. On their turn they can't find you and never enter combat mode. When lights are on you play it similarly, except that you snipe with magic (good old Wound works on _anything_) from around a corner instead of up close with blades. You don't have a six-party getting in each other's way and impossible to hide. What _doesn't_ work with a 1-party are big-room situations with no place to hide and lots of casting monsters. One Slow and your 1-party is easy meat. Fortunately this is only a problem at the middle levels; once you get Fire (or Force) Barrier you can build your own hiding place on the fly. Lacking that, Antimagic on you will block casters, but not breathers unless the room is small enough that you can blanket all of it. I usually play those using mobs of Weak Summons as distractions and simply fight through, healing as needed. The toughest fight this party has had lately was the Scorpion encounter in Tatterdemalion. Not the scorpions, of course. Those couldn't hit this party once I got Blessed. But those Fire-immune spiders took a lot of restarts from save. Once they webbed me I was stuck, especially in Bodyguard mode where you don't get Cleanse. I never got a turn, but they couldn't hit me on their turns, so I never could get to the menu for a restart. Eventually I had to shut off the machine to get out. The working strategy was to step toward an edge and behind a cactus and Haste on the first move; move to the edge and throw Wound at the nearest spider on the next move; Wound X 2 (kills) on the next (picking up a web or two); exit combat and leave encounter. By the third repeat you eliminate the close spiders, so you have time to Haste and Bless before they are all over you. Then simply run in a big circle around the encounter, with the monsters strung out in a line behind you, and pick them off one by one with exits if you get hit by a web. Nasty. There are rare situations in scenarios which cannot be done by a one-party becuse the author did not anticipate the possibility. One Doom Moon puzzle requires the party to enter combat mode and have different party members stand on three runes to trigger a lock. Fortunately the code also unlocked if a single PC ran across all three runes in one combat mode turn. In another case, Nephil's Gambit requires that the party volunteer for a death mission one at a time, and the code assumes that six volunteers are available. However, the plot can also handle it if the party refuses to volunteer at all. I encourge authors to be aware of the possibility that their scenario may be played by parties with fewer than six PCs.