Pre-made parties

Brynn · #1 (**permalink**) 08-08-2005, 06:49 AM

Has anybody played any of those pre-made parties? I wonder what they do, apart from saving you the time of character generating. Do those chars have special voices, actions, interactions with each other? Dialogues, monolgues, individual stories or anything?

myrophine · #2 (**permalink**) 08-08-2005, 07:15 AM

I recently played the evil default party, hands of fury.

No, there isn't any banter between the characters although some of the voice sets are fitting to the biography of the character...

The fun part is trying to make them into a team even though they have glaring weaknesses and starting feats/stats that make you wonder...

I had a lot of fun but have decided to try my hand in making a party (still trying to decide between a rogue/bard or a rogue/fighter)

myrophine

PS if your playing the default parties and you ARE hearing banter...try taking a break from gaming for a few hours...you could be hearing things do to video game overexposure

Brynn · #3 (**permalink**) 08-26-2005, 01:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by myrophine

PS if your playing the default parties and you ARE hearing banter...try taking a break from gaming for a few hours...you could be hearing things do to video game overexposure

Hehe

No, it's not that bad yet...

So it's basically much better to play your own party, right?

These parties might help absolute begginers but has no use for the average player, imho. I would never skip the character generation part, that's the biggest fun

Raven_Song · #4 (**permalink**) 08-26-2005, 03:14 AM

Actually no... absolute beginners would be better finding a character creation guide and reading that, as many of the pre-made parties feature characters with exceptionally poor class builds, inappropriate feat selections and a poor choice of skills. Were a beginner to use the model parties as a basis for their own parites they would likely struggle.

That being said not all of the parties are a total loss. I've played all of them at some point and actually found The Winter Rose to be surprisingly playable. Actually with some minor modifications that particular party is actually quite well balanced and actually works well from a role playing perspective. The Lady's Lament and Annals of Halgren could with modifcation be workable.

Sadly I found the Hands of Fury and Sisters of the Bloodmoon to be quite poor, the former was by far the worst in terms of inappropriate stat allocation, the latter suffers tremendously from the fact that there is no female paper doll for the "smaller raced" wizards and a ranger that can't really be made useful.

Ravager · #5 (**permalink**) 08-26-2005, 03:39 AM

I agree. Black Isle should have made the pre-generated parties more accessible especially considering someone new to the game or even genre would be far less intimidated by choosing a party rather than making a completely new one.

myrophine · #6 (**permalink**) 08-28-2005, 03:48 PM

The things I liked about the pre-existing parties were their LIMITATIONS!

Limitations presented a challenge in winning the battles and developing the party into a fighting unit.

Well thats my story anyways. Actually the best couple of characters (stats and class) DID make the most impact and carried me through the game.

Now I have made my own parties but I'm glad that I played the hands of fury as I learned a thing or two that I might not have learned if I stick to my own favorite character types and just hammer through the game.

myrophine

silverdragon72 · #7 (**permalink**) 08-29-2005, 03:58 AM

.

...never understand the why they added these premade parties

...most fun is to create his own party in D&D games...

...and for beginners (having problems to build a good party) these parties are to bugged and weak...

...at least they should have added 2 or 3 well-build easy to play beginner parties...

...as they are build now - they are just good for a challenge for an experienced player!

.

koz-ivan · #8 (**permalink**) 08-30-2005, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silverdragon72

....and for beginners (having problems to build a good party) these parties are to bugged and weak...

...at least they should have added 2 or 3 well-build easy to play beginner parties...

i always thought that was the point. they could well of made the default parties into something approaching the ultimate parties, but then a beginner would find it very hard to improve on them. from there the new player would be dissapointed as the goblins cut them to ribbons in targos again.

so instead the parties are made playable if not terribly powerful. it allows an early player to get the hang of what char's do what, some basic spells that sort of thing, and then they can create their own group and improve on them.

Psychohalfling · #9 (**permalink**) 08-31-2005, 03:35 PM

I liked playing the pre-made parties because of the challenge of having some characters without all the right skills and such, but I like making my own party better. I thought thatsome of the pre-made parties were actually good parties with good skill distribution, and I thought the winter rose was the best. Although I still liked my own parties better.

Raven_Song · #10 (**permalink**) 09-01-2005, 02:19 AM

Aah ... The Winter Rose, yes they are probably the best of the bunch.