From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: Wizardry 7
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 16:58:37 GMT

In article <1992Oct15.155035.23677@netcon.smc.edu> pgeltner@netcon.smc.edu (Peter Geltner) writes:
)In article <1992Oct14.171052.3759@u.washington.edu> syrinx@stein.u.washington.edu (Syrinx) writes:
)>The highest Wizardry installment I've played has been Wizardry 5.  I've looked  
)>at Wizardry 7 a little bit and I'm wondering about some of those new character
)>classes.
)>
)>What are the Alchemist and the Psionic good for?  How about the Ranger?  Also,
)>how does the game handle switching character classes?  Do you get to keep your
)>old abilities when you change? 
)
)I don't understand your question.  What is it in the manual that you don't
)understand.  These questions are answered clearly in the manual.

I think those are reasonable questions - the manual does not really give
a lot of important details on class-changing from what I can recall.  It has
spell lists, etc, but that doesn't really describe what experience can tell
you about the usefulness of a class, and doesn't describe all the
consequences and details of class changing, though it describes some.

This is mostly from wiz6 Bane - it's possible that things have changed
slightly.

(Possible minor spoilers about game mechanics)

When you change class, your stats change to more or less 'base' stats for
your race and class as described in the manual.  You do keep all your old
abilities and skills.  However, you will only learn spells appropriate to
your new class.  So, if you are very skilled in thaumaturgy (magic), and
you change to an alchemist, you will get only alchemist spells.  If
you want to do something useful as an alchemist, this means
building up your alchemist skill (Actually, I noticed what appears to be a 1
time exception to this rule in wiz7 the first time you go up a level if you
import characters from wiz6, but that's a minor detail.) 

But if you know 'ninjutsu' from being a thief or monk, (the art of hiding in
shadows)  your valkyrie can get better at it by practicing it, even though
valkyrie's normally can't do that as a class.  I think she can also devote
points to learning it when she goes up a level.

Unlike old wizardry, spells can be cast at variable power levels.
The higher your level, the higher the power level of the spell you can cast.
So when you change levels, you will be able to cast all your old spells,
but at greatly reduced power levels.  It is not until you regain your
former level in your new class that you will be as effective a spell caster.

Changing classes was a useful technique for making characters more powerful.
When you get advanced in level, level boosts come very slowly, and this
means skill advances are slow.  You pay a high price in reduced statistics,
but you gain a big benifit in learned skills from changing class.  Your
character will be much less powerful right after a class change -
unsurprisingly.

As far as class/spell usefulenss goes, I didn't find the psionic all that
useful. Perhaps the 'read mind' spell will be more useful than it was in 6,
perhaps not.  I suspect not, since I'm fairly sure Sir Tech will not want the
game to *require* a psionic to win.  This implies that you can figure out
anything you really need to know without reading minds.  It was surprising
that such a powerful spell would have so little practical use :-(.  The other
psionic spells were also disapointing (IMO) - mage spells were much better
on the whole (IMO again).

Alchemists are *very* useful.  Their spells are very powerful - the 
spell 'blinding flash' is very useful, and so are poision, deadly poison,
and the posionous vapor cloud spell (don't recall it's name) that sticks
around.  They also can't be silenced.  Every party should have some sort
of alchemist if at all possible (IMO).

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