Is a triple class character like a Qualinesti Elf Fighter/Red Mage/Thief worth taking over just a regular Fighter/Thief? My main concern is slow leveling but most resources I've seen always recommend the triple class. Why is this?

2nd question: How do you figure out hit points for a triple class character?

hp for multiclass (3 classes) is figured by 1/3 of each classes normal hp gains when that class levels
if multiclass (2 classes) its 1/3 each class on levelup

My math is terrible so would that be the HD+Con Bonus/3? So if I gained a level in fighter (18 Con) would it be 1d10+4/3? Would you round down or up in this case? So 5 HP or 4 HP assuming the maximum? Also would that same formula apply at fighter level 10 when I would only get 3 HP?

The leveling is slower, but the multiclasses come recommended for several reasons:

* Many of the best spell buffs are personal only, making it a significant asset to personally be a mage.

* There's actually plenty of XP to be had, as long as you do the sidequests and don't rush through the game.

* Being a little lower level as fighter or thief is fairly minor (access to mage spells more than makes up for reaching level 13 fighter more slowly), while in the Krynn series, the Moon bonus spells are a pretty strong counterbalance to being a little lower level as a mage - even more so in DKK and DQK, because you can automatically rememorise cast spells by simply resting (as opposed to Champions where you need to re-select them) and neither game removes bonus spells from this list even if the moon has waned.

* Fighter caps out at 14 for Qualinesti Elves (easy to miss, since the blanket cap for non-thieves in DKK is also 14), so only 1/3 instead of 1/2 of your XP goes to waste in DQK as a triple class rather than a double.

* Level caps in Krynn are much more liberal, making it a lot more sensible to be a multiclass demihuman (as opposed to the Realms games where rather few combinations work well at high levels). Moreover, single class Mages are a relatively weak choice, especially when you reach DQK where a lot of enemies are heavily resistant to magic, there are places where your best spells don't work at all, and the low HP really becomes a weakness.

As for the HP for multiclass, it's simple - you always determine that level up's HP normally, then divide by the number of classes you have (two or three) and round down (with the proviso that you never gain less than 1 HP per level up). So every class level up after name (i.e., when you go to the fixed gains) is going to be +1 HP regardless of the class.

Very informative man. I appreciate your response. I make use of backstab alot so I'm trying to figure out the best thief build to use whether it's a pure thief, fighter/thief or fighter/mage/thief. The adventurer's journal as well as many posts I've read suggest a kender cleric/thief. But I really hate that combo. It just rubs me the wrong way role playing wise. So I was thinking either a single class kender thief or an elf fighter/thief or fighter/mage/thief. Just not sure what to go with.
Yea I'm currently playing the forgotten realms series and the dragonlance series. I think I enjoy the dragonlance series more for various reasons that include more viable class combinations as you mentioned. Anyway, what type of thief build do you recommend? Thanks again.

For Death Knights of Krynn alone a fighter/thief is slightly preferable over fighter/mage/thief if you have two other mages in the party. You'll get more hitpoints and because of the faster fighter progression you'll hit better and can get the extra half attack at level 13 without excessive grinding.

If you are planning to import into Dark Queen of Krynn fighter/mage/thief is the far better choice however, magic is more useful there since you reach higher levels, there aren't so many death knights immune to magic and you keep on improving even after the fighter cap. I wouldn't create a new one at the start of DQoK, imported characters are far more powerful, if you play both in a row start with the triple class now.

Max hitpoints are the sum of what the single classes could have divided by 3 rounded down, assuming you have a Qualinesti F/M/T 7/6/8 with 18 con you can have (7*14 + 6*6 + 8*8) / 3 = 66 HP at maximum.
How the Max HP at level up have been implemented has to be tried out, I suspect (it could be totally different) it's a total of 8-9 you can have per level, 4 for fighter, 4 for thief, 1 as mage, it's possible that you end up with more HP if you mix the thief level ups with another class.
(I had a cleric fighter mage with 18 con who could get 4 as fighter, 1 as mage, 2 as cleric alone but 4 from cleric if mixed.)

After fighter 9, thief 10 and mage 11 you'll always get 1 point per level up no matter how many classes level up at once, so try to level up the classes separately then.

Okay just finished DKK along with Dave's challenge. Wow, what a great game! Alright my main issue is I have no idea how to transfer my characters from DKK to DQK. Is that a simple process? Do the items I had during DKK carry over? I hope so. :)

It's easy enough, you just need to make sure your DKK save files are in the directory DQK is configured to look for them in, and then tell DQK you want to load a DKK save game (as I bought the Gold Box games pre-GoG, I'm not 100% sure how this distribution has the directories set up, especially as configuring DQK when using the old WizardWorks CD was somewhat problematic as there was a serious bug in the provided DQK configuration tool on that CD).

As with COK to DKK, character inventories do transfer (you don't even lose any items this time around!), but the Vault does not (not that I really recommend using the vault in DKK for items anyway due to a nasty bug that can occur with overland random encounters ...). In fact, this is pretty much how you're going to get most of your good gear in DQK, as there's a severe paucity of good magic item drops in the next game. (Speaking of this, I recommend you cash out all your gems and jewelry and your vault money and purchase as many +2 Arrows as you can at the magic shop in Cekos, as the magic arrows shop in DQK doesn't appear till quite late in the game and there are VERY few magic arrows obtainable there other than that; I wouldn't worry about not having money in DQK early game as you don't really get a chance to buy anything notable for quite some time ...)

So I need to copy my save files from my DKK directory to my DQK directory? Which files would those be?

SAVGAM?.DAT (where ? is a letter from A to J depending on which save game you want to transfer)
CHRDAT?#.* (there should be two files for each character, one is the character data and the other is their items, ? is the same letter as for the save game, the #'s are anywhere from 1 to 6 per the character roster slots)

And not directly into the DQK directory itself, but rather the directory DQK expects to find DKK save games in. (In olden DOS times or if you used the WizWorks CD from 1994, the installation directories were such that you didn't need to transfer any files at all; however, GOG uses a separate instance of Dosbox for each game, which means games in a series don't normally "see" each other so series transfers require putting the save files into the proper folder for the sequel).

I'm curious: What does the bug do, and what triggers it?

In my case I returned to Gargath Outpost to retrieve some items from the vault and found that they were all gone and replaced with 10 +2 Arrows and a Dart of the Hornet's Nest. Cash in the vault was unaffected.

As far as I can tell, it's tied to encountering one of the overland random encounters that sells items; one of these merchants offers these two items as their stock, and I definitely recall I had encountered that merchant in between depositing my previous items and encountering the replaced stock.

Sounds nasty, but if you know about the bug, it sounds like it might be exploitable for minor benefit:

1. Don't put anything in the vault (or at least nothing you wouldn't just discard anyway).
2. Travel overland until you get an encounter that sells items.
3. Return to the vault, and then retrieve the items that were being sold for free.

Of course, from what I hear, you get so much money in the Gold Box games that it's easy enough to just buy the items, hence this exploit is likely not worth it, but it's there.

By the way, are there any plot critical items that can be put in the warehouse? If so, then losing them to this bug would be *really* bad, as it might make the game unwinnable without New Game +.

Yeah, exploiting it profitably would be pretty difficult (the merchant is also a rather rare encounter, I'm pretty sure I only found them once; the only other random merchant I've seen IIRC sells the same garbage nonmagical stuff that's for sale in the central shop in the Kalaman bazaar).

And yes, you do get huge gobs of money in Gold Box games; especially so in Death Knights actually as it's the only one of the three where generic human enemies drop magical gear (+1 weapons and Bracers AC 6, the latter selling for 3000 steel apiece). Dark Queen actually reverts to the Champions style of only special enemies dropping magical loot (yes, those Dark Wizards get AC -1 purely through Dexterity and spells with no assistance from gear, it appears).

The Gold Box games rarely put plot vital items into your standard inventory (I'm pretty sure the only games that did were Pool of Radiance and a brief sequence in Sir Dargaard's Tomb in Champions), but rather handle their possession through the quest variables system, so I don't think it's possible to lose any to the vault (with the exception that the final battle does feature Iron Golems, so if you managed to lose all available +3 or better weapons, you'd be screwed ... of course, there are much more expedient ways to do that to yourself if you were so inclined).

Hey what is the Kender's Hoopak bonus and is that bonus reflected on the character sheet?