Race/Class combo

[koctyxa]

ADOM has two kinds of fight: melee and ranged. If you want to stay alive long enough, you should train both types, and don't be afraid of it. For ranged attack it's best to have one of: speed, Archery (for the sake of Lightning Shot) or Concentration. Speed comes to: Archer, Barbarian, Beastfighter, Monk, Ranger. Archery: Archer, Assassin, Farmer, Fighter, Healer, Ranger (and Hurthling). And these classes should be chosen by weakling races, because later in game they will be able to avoid hand-to-hand combat with baddies, and earlier they need better toughness, training in melee, better gear and so on.

Concentration comes to: Archer, Druid, Elementalist, Mindcrafter, Healer, Monk, Necromancer, Priest, Weaponsmith, Wizard (and with a Charged talent Dark Elf can be considered a mana battery) and these are classes to be chosen by stronger races, because they need firepower for the later stage of the game and in the beginning their HP is high enough to not be killed by a door.

So what I'm trying to say is that I strongly discourage playing elven magicians or orcish fighters.

[Dudley]

I disagree, you completely forget magic in this. A good magician will be able to survive solely on his spells. Acid balls fucks the world HARD.
Furthermore, the following classes do not NEED ranged attacks, as i recall doing them following the adley code of conduct :
-Healer
-Beastfighter
-Barbarians
-Fighter (although that one should use missile weapons if you're a coward)
-Wizards
-Paladins
-Assassins
-Monk
-Mindcrafter...

[zsomkovacs]

My only char who really used missiles (other's just a !ofBlindness on ACW or something like this) was my HE archer. But at Level 30 she easily cleared a giant greater vault in melee, so ranged attacks really don't neccessary. For example, you play a barbarian and got Vanquisher at the crowning. Will you still trying to hit sy with a (+0; 1d6) bow when you can put a stone on the left arrow and clear the whole dungeon level?

And for example elven magicians won't die in a door trap if you play them carefully. A bit of ID and you will have a lot of spells, including Knock, which solves that problem. Or you can go training to BUGWIL, you can advance to L12-14 in about 6-700 turns. Then go for CoC, and get those morgias from the Big Room!

[Dudley]

or do bugs then id.

[Silfir]

You can do everything with melee, but you should train both melee and ranged. There's tons of things you "should" do though, you don't have to do them all to win.

[Toan]

While you CAN have a balance, it's a whole lot cooler to have a GE Wiz. Also, early on, door traps are rarely the type which is "Do you want to open? BOOM" (Trap activate on trying to open.), so if it's locked, try again. Alternative is Elementalist's Earthquake. BugWil is scummy by some people's definitions, but it's easy and works. I guess what i'm saying is that you can't really make concrete statements about how "X should be played or Y shouldn't be".

[Irinka]

you also didn't take into account special class powers - mindcrafter doesn't have to be "strong races" as you said - they have confusion blast, which allows them to avoid most monsters that may be dangerous

I wouldn't say that monks should be played in ranged - they are very fast and they unarmed melee attack is devastating. I remember killing diamond golem in melee with my drakeling monk (that guy also finished the game without using ragned weapons even once, but I don't consider this a challenge, because that was waay to easy).

If you want to generalize, you have to take class powers into account too.
(and skillsets - priests can have better equipement early on because of detect item status, so instead of getting stuck at early game with cursed clothes +0 -3 they can choose uncursed robes +0 +2 and so on)

[Overheat]

Like others have said, magic can carry the day by itself, but only if it is spammble, aka elf/ gnome wizards.

You forgot that Drakelings get an awesome range attack for the entire game.

Training range may be better than just using melee, but using range takes more keystrokes than melee, which is the reason that I have not won with archer.

No enemy requires the use of range. I have taken down Keriax, EM, and CL down in melee in the same game. That DE barb had pretty much no range training at all.


Charged talent is not good at all, BTW.

[JellySlayer]

ADOM has two kinds of fight: melee and ranged. If you want to stay alive long enough, you should train both types, and don't be afraid of it. For ranged attack it's best to have one of: speed, Archery (for the sake of Lightning Shot) or Concentration. Speed comes to: Archer, Barbarian, Beastfighter, Monk, Ranger. Archery: Archer, Assassin, Farmer, Fighter, Healer, Ranger (and Hurthling). And these classes should be chosen by weakling races, because later in game they will be able to avoid hand-to-hand combat with baddies, and earlier they need better toughness, training in melee, better gear and so on.

Concentration comes to: Archer, Druid, Elementalist, Mindcrafter, Healer, Monk, Necromancer, Priest, Weaponsmith, Wizard (and with a Charged talent Dark Elf can be considered a mana battery) and these are classes to be chosen by stronger races, because they need firepower for the later stage of the game and in the beginning their HP is high enough to not be killed by a door.

So what I'm trying to say is that I strongly discourage playing elven magicians or orcish fighters.

I think you're oversimplifying too much to answer a rather complicated question. I also disagree with most of your conclusions.

When choosing race, there's several factors that need to be taken into account. These include: starting stats, starting equipment, skills, lifespan, and whether to play a troll. You also need to consider the synergy that each of these gives with your desired class. Class relevant factors include starting stats, starting equipment, class powers, skills, heir gift, and attack type.

Simple example: consider grey elf wizard versus troll wizard. Trolls have high starting To and St but low Le and Ma, good starting gear, add good skills, have short lifespan, slow levelling, high food consumption and take a penalty when trying to read books. Their synergy with wizard is pretty bad: between low Le and book penalty, they won't be able to read a lot of spellbooks into the midgame. Their nice starting toughness is still probably below the morgia barrier, so they lose the benefits of that by the early midgame, and actually will end up behind in HP of an equivalent elf (nevermind how far behind they'll be in PP) due to their lower level. Grey elf wizard, by comparison, adds basically no skills, has poor To, but has very high Le and Ma. They can learn basically any spell at the beginning of the game, and thanks to early bolt ability, can advance quickly (eg. via BUGWIL). GEWs, I would suspect, have probably won more games than any other R/C combo. The stat synergy is the dominant effect--wizards have all of the skills they need to survive.

On the other side of things, take orc barbarian versus grey elf barbarian. Orc barbie has stat synergy (high St, To), kickass starting gear (good weapon and >8 PV typical), skillset synergy (adds find weakness). They don't have archery or concentration, but they don't need much missile training because they're such melee powerhouses anyway. GE barbarian, by comparison has lowish St, To, below-average starting gear, and little skillset synergy (yes, they add literacy, but you can pick this up early enough that it isn't an issue). GEs are a comparatively poor choice.

At risk of getting flamed, these are the R/C choices that I would probably recommend:

Drakeling Fighter
Dark Elf Paladin
Troll Ranger
Hurthling Thief
Hurthling Assassin
Grey Elf Wizard
Dwarf Priest
Gnome Bard
Drakeling Monk
Troll Healer
Hurthling Weaponsmith
High Elf Archer
Dwarf Merchant
Dark Elf Farmer
Drakeling Mindcrafter
Orc Barbarian
Dwarf Druid
Grey Elf Necromancer
Grey Elf Elementalist
Orc Beastfighter

There's others that are about equivalent, of course...

[edit]As was stated earlier, charged is useless. It recovers ~2 PP every hundred turns. Concentration at 100 gives ~75 PP every hundred turns...

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Drakeling and gnome are also good races for a wizard. They both tend to have an easier early game than gray elves. Gray elves are better in the mid/late game but to tell the truth, who really cares much about that with a wizard?