Thanks dteowner!
I just realized that I can't have everything in a single party. So, I'll just keep replaying this awesome game.
Almost. I spend some days figuring out a party in which every character was planned to change his class later in the game, having a party that works in the beginning and which profits from the learned skills it when "upgrading" to another class later on. So I ended up with a party which gained most special abilities from 12 different classes. The party was quite good, however there was not much replayability value left afterwards, because I've seen most special skills by then already.
Tried a run with a single character recently but this isn't fun at all, because you are running away from monsters all the time. This would be nice, if the monsters wouldn't level with you, because you'd gain 6x times the experience levelling up like lightning.
Though writing about it, you could add in lots of RPCs. Actually that could be kinda funny too if you have a party with 7 RPCs
. Must be a really f**cked up party though, because many of them won't go into certain locations with you, which would mess up the experience gained. Still… the idea has something to it…
I didn't do it. Tried another party configuration lately:
2 fighters: reptile men (axe+shield, sword+shield)
2 valkyries: dwarves (polearms)
2 wizards: faeries (psionic, bishop)
The fighters on the front and valkyries in the middle with their extended weapon rock in any closed combat, as there are 4 closed combat attacks. In my opinion the ranged weapons hit not often enough and not strong enough, therefore one is faster to run to the enemy and attack with closed combat. The wizards on the back.
I went to Rapax Castle first and became Templar at Level 10 (after killing almost every Umpani in the Umpani Base), and then I went into the Trynton. The Rapax in the Trynton Tree were actually friendly to me. However they just stood in the room and greeted me, nothing more to it. The Rapax in the Mountain Wilderness who were about to kill some of the Arnikas Brotherhood were also friendly towards me. Unfortunately once I appeared they didn't attack the Arnika Brotherhood member at all… (usually they do if you are not a Rapax Templar yet, so you "should help the Brotherhood") that was kinda boring. Maybe it would have worked if I had attacked the Brotherhood in Arnika first.
What I want to add is: it's quite ok to be a Rapax and walking around with the curse which reduces your abilities. If it is your fighter, he will regenerate each -1 Healthpoint within a few seconds. Some stats are also less than normal, but you can live with it. It would be worth to play the game to end this way, and not killing Al Sedexus, and (maybe not freeing the Rapax Queen). If I recall correctly and you kill Al-Sedexus then you suddenly have Rapax enemies in the Rapax Rift again. Only the Templars will be friendly to you, but other Rapax Patrols will again attack you. So in order to stay friendly with all Rapax types one should suck it up and remain with the "curse". Also from my first walkthrough I remember that later in the game you will meet much more often and random Rapax patrols in different parts of the map. This can be annoying if you are enemy to them and don't like to get into new fights all the time.
Final tips:
In my first game I had a hard time killing Don Barlone, the chief Rattkin (because I almost never hit him), however after a hint which said "put the experience points into "Dexterity" my characters almost always hit. And as someone else said: you don't need to develop "Speed" at all. Better put the remaining points into "Senses". If you have the "Haste" spell you gain +50 points or more in "Speed" which I recently discovered (my fighter had 50 Speed, and after "Haste" he had something about 120+).
I won't end this game though, these turn based fights are quite annoying in their length. Despite the wizfast-mod it always seems there is a 1-5 seconds "waiting time" before an opponent actually makes his movement.
If I would start again I'd try a party where the characters use weapons like mace, flail, bullwhip, throwing star, morning star, warhammer etc. as weapons. I think these weapons are less used/liked? from all available, but I have seen that many of these have very very cool status effects, e.g. "Blind", "K.O", "Stun", higher kill ratio, etc… And if you paralyze or K.O. the opponent, the fight is always won, because he suffers double damage each time.
Or starting with a solo character. After having read the guide I understand how this works now and it sounds really interesting...).
This game really offers amazing replayability value. A masterpiece with no successor. A pity. Dragon Age never provoked enough motivation to try out different parties/approaches to play (maybe due to the 0815 races... human, dwarf, elf).