stryx: Why should a cleric have armor limitations? They can wear anything. They are limited to blunt weapons.

Sarisio: Spell slots are taken by healing spells and Flame Blade. Don't forget that Paladins get much less spells than Clerics, and that they aren't Clerics, but a melee character. Also Shield of Keign provides Magic Resistance, while 2nd Flame Blade is tricky to click when you kite fast opponents. Flame Blade isn't the good weapon at all and it denies you the use of item in the hand which holds it (and makes identifying items impossible). It is only good for Living Mucks, because it doesn't get consumed.

Thing is, until D&D 3rd Ed., Paladins are much better than Fighters in all ways. I took it playing it as fighter, sword-n-board style, and holy symbol is there when things turn bad and fight demands some versatility from you (e.g., long sleep with healing spells after, Flame Blade to not have weapon consumed). But they aren't caster class.

Also apart from inconvenience of always having shield with you, no need to forget about caps as melee character. As Paladin you get access to many Cleric spells quite late, when they aren't needed. Aid, Prayer, Bless are useless and take valuable healing spell slots, as it isn't hard to get to -10 AC, you hit most of the time because of low THAC0 of your class and you have high enough HP pool, so that additional 1d8 HP won't make difference.

Cleric on other hand needs it, because he isn't made for melee (despite various opinions), and as such he can't equip most of armor and has quite high THAC0. Thus all Aid, Bless, Prayer and other spells are useful to Cleric to help him in fight, he also gets more spell slots and learns spells much earlier on.

Though I still need to confirm that AC is actually capped at -10 and it isn't just visual cap. Makes me also question if THAC0 is capped at 1...

dtgreene: Aid and Prayer don't take up healing spell slots. Furthermore, the bonuses, while small, last quite a while and the save bonus can save you from status ailments and instant death. Also, Prayer and Protection from Evil provide hidden AC bonuses that don't show up on the status screen at all.

dtgreene: Also, what do you put in your third level spell slots anyway?

stryx: Gwenno has finished her dungeon. The final boss this time was a Balor tanar'ri, that proved to be immune to lightning, so Drums of Distant Thunder were totally useless and it came down to hacking and slashing again.

Sarisio: I put Prayer, but I never use it. I didn't use holy symbol at all until Living Mucks. Thankfully casting spells while resting doesn't require symbol to be equipped.

In fact, I hate when game makes me change equipment for various gimmicks. I don't like constantly switching equipment depending on situation (I had to step over myself to use Flame Blade), so holy symbol collects dust. And rephrasing what I wrote before, even if monster has 9999 HP, -999 AC, -999 THAC0 and 100% chance of instant death, it is still killable as long as there is some place to kite. In fact, game engine heavily discourages you from taking direct hits even if you are melee.

Sarisio: Final boss is random too? I thought it was Elemental Lord, as it was the boss when I played DH first time.

Sarisio: Can those final bosses be met as normal enemies on the floor?

stryx: The elemental lord is one of the available final bosses. The game chooses one from a pool of bosses. So far I've seen the elemental lord, a balor tanar'ri, a lich and a dragon

stryx: No.

Sarisio: Considering there are 2 Liches in game files, one of them might be very well met as standard monster. There are 54 uniquely named monsters in DH (55 if to count 2 different Liches).

stryx: Gwenno has finished her dungeon. The final boss this time was a Balor tanar'ri, that proved to be immune to lightning, so Drums of Distant Thunder were totally useless and it came down to hacking and slashing again. Still, one of the easiest bosses, since all he could do was physical damage and he wasn't very good at that either (to identify the boss I always let my character be killed by him first and even though Gwenno wasn't wearing any armor he still needed almost half a minute to kill her.)

WingedKagouti: A Balor has a THAC0 of 7, and is supposed to wield a Vorpal Sword which will auto-kill a human sized target on a to-hit roll of 17+. That's a 20% chance. And every Balor is able to gate in another Balor (once per hour) or other True Tanar'ri.

I guess the devs felt like it would be an unwinnable fight if they implemented those two things.The basic stat line of the Balor is not amazingly threatening. It's the combination of the abilities, weapons and the stats that make the Balor one of the highest xp enemies in AD&D.

WingedKagouti: A Balor has a THAC0 of 7, and is supposed to wield a Vorpal Sword which will auto-kill a human sized target on a to-hit roll of 17+. That's a 20% chance. And every Balor is able to gate in another Balor (once per hour) or other True Tanar'ri.

I guess the devs felt like it would be an unwinnable fight if they implemented those two things.The basic stat line of the Balor is not amazingly threatening. It's the combination of the abilities, weapons and the stats that make the Balor one of the highest xp enemies in AD&D.

stryx: PS: Can the Balor, that has been gated in by the first Balor, also gate in another Balor? Because things can get out of hand quickly that way.

WingedKagouti: Yes, there's no special restrictions on the newly gated Balor.

But a Balor that only uses fists is really going to be a pushover compared to a lich casting spells or any kind of dragon.