Hi there. The past week has been full of discoveries for me, after I started tinkering with the Forgotten Realms Collection #2.

At first I thought I would only play Secret of Silver Blades, not wanting to mess with older button layouts. But then I tried Azure Bonds and fell in love with the freshness of it. And then I tried Pool of Radiance for nostalgia, and it was just obvious I wanted to start at the beginning. And then I *finally* learned how I could fix classes with GBC.

So now I am making a party that I can play with my brother over Discord video casting. We're 44 and 48 and he showed me Pool of Radiance in 1988 on this machine: https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ibmpc_5988.jpg

Just trying char creation gave very strong feelings of nostalgia, especially when jumping between heads and bodies. :)

Now I think I have a good idea of a good party, so here is my current plan for a PoC legacy party (using the Goldbox Companion class conversion tool):

Male Human Paladin
Male Human Ranger (dual to mage the second they get access to mage spells)
Male Human Ranger (ditto)
Male Dwarf Fighter-Thief
Male Human Cleric
Female Human Magic-User

Do you have any pointers or suggestions, concerning both viability in PoR and any later game? Anything regarding the cleric and mage?

I wouldn't be sure that Paladin and Ranger would work properly in PoR.

I would make the Cleric female to help with the gender balance and because you're not penalized for doing so (unlike with all those fighter-types).

Also, as a personal preference, I generally don't like repeating builds, so I'd consider having one of the Rangers do something different, like delaying the dual class to level 15, or going Cleric rather than Mage. (Then again, in my current play of Stranger of Sword City Revisited, there's one setup that I've duplicated, but at least doing the classes in a different order helps.)

I could definitely have one of the rangers, played by my brother, hold off on dualing. Unless he wants to.

Goldbox Companion with class-changing capability has been out since April 15th 2022, so exactly two years. I think they would make it known that the conversion has severe bugs if it's been out for two years. I've seen the Radiance-Pally recommended in four separate places.

I'm with dtgreene. It's a strong party that starts mostly warrior that becomes mostly magical, but always has strong melee damage.

On viability per game:

PoD: Quite apart from having only one Cleric making it important he does not go down, your party's weak point is that while you have five characters with good accuracy and four with multiple melee attacks and bows, only one has maximum accuracy and two melee attacks per round. You only need one. One Hasted warrior can delete anything in Melee (and Missile isn't much more difficult), but the trouble is lots of enemies can 1HKO. Paladin at least has the best saving throws in the game.

This weakness doesn't come into play often (mob AC rarely goes below 0 in PoD) and when it does, there's ways around it. Have a plan for bosses that are immune to Destruction.

PoR: This game benefits fron having more than one Hold Person usee... but it's hardly needed.

CoTAB and SoSB: Honestly I think almost all traditional parties have the flexibility to prosper in these games. I think you're going to find you might want some Mage Hold Person spells. The Fighter/Thief will be very strong.

I'd say you could probably use another Cleric in there, but you won't need it early on. So perhaps in late SotSS or early PoD, dual class the Paladin into a Cleric. Warrior type classes stop gaining Thac0 at level 17, so you would be losing very little in dual classing out somewhere between 14-17.

And I suppose your Ranger/Mage strategy may change depending if you're only going to take one spin through each game. There's not quite enough XP in the first three games to get a Ranger all the way up to 15 (for maximum attacks) and also get mage fully leveled - though you can come close. If you just want them with extra HP and armor and semi-decent attack, you can swap out around level 9. If you're willing to take a second spin through Secret of the Silver Blades, you'll be able to easily max out character levels before moving on.

Because make no mistake about it, the later stages of Pools of Darkness can get very, very hard.

Very good stuff, I really feel that I can do no wrong at this point. The big importance with this project is that I get to play with my brother. He's got a family now and works in politics but I don't need him to come over, I can videocast over Discord and even give him control over the mouse with Teamviewer, from his own home in a different town. We've never played online before, for some godforsaken reason.

As long as we are okay out of the gates partywise, the big win is just having fun, seeing all the gorgeous enemy-card animations and the fun dialogue writing, corny lines, all the good stuff of SSI.

Here is my first proper party lineup, for you guys (attached image): One Tolkien reference, two "Robin of Sherwood" (1986) references, one Adam Sandler reference and one comedy legend. And Elanois is a name my brother invented for his main PoR guy in 1988, it doesn't exist in real-life (Elanios is close but is greek).

By the way, regarding party placement: was the popular sentiment to order your troops this way?

Paladin (strongest)
Ranger (strong)
Ranger (strong)
Magic-User (weak)
Cleric (medium)
Thief (nimble)

Or do you prefer your thief in other places, for backstab potential? Flip the last two?

I think that's the best party ordering you can get.

(Personally, I like having four male and two female characters in my gold box parties, but that's a strictly personal preference. That's my only concession to "role-playing" concerns in gold box. As far as I'm concerned, with games where your characters have little to no personality, functionality is the only consideration in party design. This is a far cry from how I approach Baldur's Gate party design.)

Personally I don't see much difference between Jahiera's selection and battle voices in BG on one hand, and the satisfying staccato of multiple attacks landing in the Gold Box games. I might think differently if Black Robe Mage and the Drow didn't break out with such outstanding performances as recurring villains in the Krynn and this Forgotten Realms series.

I think we're talking about different things. Also, perhaps I should have specified BG2.

Ehhh, she talks more in combat in 2. I just find it amusing we see character individuality so differently.

The other point I am trying to make is the reason I don't notice the pcs are one-dimensional in the Gold Box games is because the generic mobs are very compelling.

Question regarding fighting with this party in Pool of Radiance: I have seen from very old screenshots of old that I might be running into Displacer Beasts at some point. How does one approach them? Just run-and-gun or is a more subtle approach needed?

Also, general question to you all regarding the whole Goldbox series: do any of the games feature Slaad Beasts? They are my favorite monster and I would be giddy if I could meet them in this year's run.

There are displacer beasts in numerous gold box games. However, in Pool and Curse at least, actual displacement was never implemented for them. So, they are simply low-mid level melee monsters with two attacks per round. Treat them like you would any other monsters. (Phase spiders, on the other hand, are truly difficult and dangerous monsters to deal with. In Pool, you might want to avoid them altogether (they only appear as random encounters in the east wilderness in that game).)

Sorry, no slaad in gold box. However, there are some slaad in the first of SSI's post-gold box Dark Sun games.

Now I have a sacred quest to disintegrate all Phase Spiders. They made life miserable for my multiplayer BG2 party, I have scores to settle.

Another question: my Magic-User is trying to cast "Enlarge" but even though the target is not standing near an enemy they always remain "unaffected" by the spell. I cast on the three frontliners. It used to work when I tried out Silver Blades, but my Azure Bonds test-party has a Magic-User that is level 5 and max-stats, and he can't land one Enlarge after four tries?

Enlarge doesn't increase Strength si much as it sets it to a certain level. Its effect is stronger at higher levels.

It's having no effect because your characters already have 18(00) Strength Try it on your Mage and Cleric.