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Section I : Getting Started
Chapter 1 : Creating a party
After you have created your Strive for Power account, you are able to create your party and pick the five initial characters. Remember that you can always start over and recreate your party by deleting all party members. You will start again with five new characters and your starting amount of action points to spend. In this chapter we will deal with the different character classes and races, and will give you advice on the composition and balance of your party. If you suffer a tragedy and one of your character's dies bravely in combat you can return to a city and recruit new characters until your party reaches five. These replacements are cheap, the first five characters can be recruited for 100 gold. Characters beyond the initial five cost a lot more to recruit. This cost increases substantially as you strive to recruit your seventh, eight and additional characters.
Character Classes
Magus: The Magus uses magic for the good of your party. He casts spells that improve the skills of your characters and spells that hurt enemy units. A Magus in your party is very useful, a party without a Magus, is a party without style. His class skill is casting spells. He will start with a small selection of spells, these will normally include an offensive spell and at least one skill enhancement spell.
Modifiers: Magic +30, Agility +10 and Charisma +10.
Healer: The Healers primary job is to heal your injured characters. However he begins the game with significantly more spells than the Magus. Whilst he has offensive spells, these are limited in power and will rarely do as much damage as a Magus. Additionally he can also cast spells that enhance characteristics such as strength and charisma, and can also curse the characteristics of others. We would strongly recommend that you include at least one healer amongst you. Healing Spell is his class skill.
Modifiers: Divinity +30, Charisma +10, Agility +5 and Endurance +5.
Ranger: The Ranger has a wide range of skills: he is a decent fighter, great archer and is quite useful to your Magus as he starts with an increased skill in gathering the herbs your Magus needs. A Ranger can be a good addition to your party. His class skill is firing missiles.
Modifiers: Agility +20, Endurance + 20 and Strength +10.
Rogue: The Rogue is also very gifted. He is fair in combat, great in gathering rumors and a good haggler. The Rogue is a useful addition too, one that can sell of all your loot for a greater reward and locate new dungeons for you. His class skill is streetwise (gathering rumors).
Modifiers: Agility +30, Charisma +10 and Strength +10
Warrior: His main duty is protecting your weaker characters by dealing damage to your enemies in melee combat and being capable of suffering the damage your enemies deal out to you. They are essential to your party; with no warriors a party is vulnerable and will spend often rely on spells to defeat enemies that will often result in more AP's being spent. Their class skill is man-to-man combat.
Modifiers: Endurance +20, Strength +20 and Agility +10
Character Races
Elves are born with more affiliation with nature and magic than other races. They may be physically weaker then other races but Elves are more spiritual beings. From the Elven race are born the greatest Magi, Healers and Rangers. They cannot carry much and careful redistribution of treasure will enable them to keep up with the party's optimum move. They have pointy ears but this seems to give no advantage.
Modifiers: Magic +5, Agility +5, Strength -5, Endurance -5
Dwarves are strong and can carry heavy loads. They are less agile than other races, and are not known for being charming. Dwarven Warriors are solid and dependable, if a little short.
Modifiers: Strength +10, Endurance +10, Agility -10, Charisma -10
Hobbits are weak but swift beings. They are charming people and bring forth good Healers and excellent Rogues. Hobbit Magi are not disadvantaged but as with elves they suffer from not being able to carry much.
Modifiers: Agility +15, Charisma +5, Strength -10, Endurance -5
The Humans are the race in between. Not as strong as Dwarves, not as agile as Hobbits, not as skilled in magic as Elves. Humans do not excel in any class, but neither are they penalised, having a party of humans certainly gives no major disadvantage though subtle advantages can be gained from choosing races to fit the class, the player has to be aware of the weaknesses. Dwarven Warriors are better than Human Warriors; Elven Magi will be more powerful than Human Magi. However they also suffer none of the disadvantages, thus human Magi can carry more and will probably be better at fighting and have more hit points.
Modifiers: None
Your First Party
To create your first party, you must first open a Strive for Power account under your master plit.dk account. When this is done, you will have to create five characters: give them inspired names that sound great in songs of brave deeds, decide on their classes and races. That is an important point: this decision is the most influencing in the game. You need a party that can take care of monsters, gather booty, clear dungeons but also one that can prove itself at a higher level over time.
Let us give you some examples:
Picking five warriors will make you devastating against the small monsters and get you a lot of loot in the beginning. However, the absence of a healer and a mage will slow your progress and make your party no more then a town guard sent out to kill the evil monsters.
Composing, on the other hand, your party of 5 healers/mages will give you lots of casting abilities, but nobody to do the dirty work. Healers can fight but they are no warriors, and you'll find yourself killing kobolds and goblins until you can recruit two or three warriors(and that will take a lot of time).
You'll all understand what we mean by these two extreme examples: the composing of your party will determine your future in the world of Strive for Power. This decision is important, difficult and cannot be redone without starting all over from zero again (this can sometimes be the best option).
Before moving on we'll give you a solid starting party;
Elven Magus; Halfling Priest; Two Dwarven/Human Warriors; fifth free to choose.
These combination is, we feel, one of the best bases to start from: two chars to give you magic power, a healer and two warriors for melee combat. The fifth is not that crucial: another warrior will give you more backbone, another healer more healing power. A second mage could mean that you'll one day have two great sorcerers. Picking a Ranger or a Rogue would supply your party with more power in combat and would give your party some less important but useful skills.
Balance of your Party
Of course you may not want this combination, feel free to choose. One of the warriors could be substituted for a Ranger without the balance suffering too much. Whilst it would be possible to have a party of all healers, this will make the game harder, though not necessarily less enjoyable.
Remember that you can start your party again, or if you suffer losses replace with different classes to re-define the balance. Over time your party will grow, the more established and experienced parties have between seven and ten members and are completely different in terms of balance, having their own individual style. It is not to say that the above choices are the only ones, just a recommendation for you to get the most out of the game in a short time.
Healers start with a great number of spells, whilst Magus start with only a few spells. As you progress through the game, both may learn new spells but there are lots more of spells for Magi to learn than for Healers. It is useful to have a Magus from the start, as this will enable you to learn the new spells you find, not all of which will be combat related. The Magus is also the slowest at improving in most skills, therefore your starting Magus is the one that should be protected the most.
A party of thieves and rangers would work, but the game has little mechanism for stealth at present and though we hope that this will be developed in future there is no current advantage from having that balance.
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