My thoughts on party composition are discussed here. They change and I edit this page on occasion. As noted, there is a lot of room for experimentation and alternatives. These comments, along with the speedrun posts, should give you some insight into my more recent thinking.
First Position – Dwarf/Elf Paladin
The first position is best filled by a Paladin. This is basically dictated by their saving throw bonus which at levels 10-17 is two points (four levels) higher than Warriors/Hunters/Monks. This is discussed with respect to Saving Throws. The ability to flee (discussed at length on the Fleeing page) from unfavorable fights is critical to speed both in the city (to avoid time wasting fights with low level creatures that dump useless items into your inventory), to avoid team wipes during farming (8 Blue Dragons), to avoid most fights in Mangar 1/2/3, and to avoid essentially all fights in Mangar 4/5.
With respect race, my current preference is a dwarf or elf Paladin. A good argument can be made for either, and I waver a bit on this point. My current fastest times are with an elf Paladin, but this may change. Sometimes I prefer the early HP that only the dwarf starting 17 CON can provide over the early luck/dex bonus.
I solo farm the Paladin at the very beginning of the speed run and target +con/+luck/+dex for early levels. Bad RNG for level gains makes me more aggressive with leveling the Hunters to try to make up an advantage.
Elf Paladins early points in luck and dex are important for farming Catacombs and Harkyn 1 and in some measure to compensate for low hp. But dwarves with good RNG can be equal or far superior to elves. Humans are the only other available race, and represent some middle ground between dwarfs and elves. They’re not an unreasonable option, and I may test them in the future.
Second and Third Positions – Half-Orc Hunters
The second and third positions are (probably) best filled by Hunters. The obvious reason for the Hunters is their critical hit chance. This has a few particular advantages. They do well in the early, mid, and late game with easily obtained weapons like Halberd and Kael’s Axe. That reduces time spent sorting inventory and seeking for high damage items (Arc’s Hammer, more than 1 Crystal Sword, etc.). Most importantly, in the end game they reliably one hit the higher level creatures like Demonlords (14-270 HP), Mangar (14-270 HP), Greater Demons (12-140 HP), and Vampire Lords (6-134 HP).
Even so, using Paladins or Warriors may be a reasonable option in light of some Hunter weaknesses. Early farming with Hunters is frustrating because they do not consistently kill their targets, but by level 13, they have a very reliable critical hit chance.
That hit chance must be compared to Warriors who farm faster in the early game with harder hits. But ultimately, a Warrior with Arc Hammers (4-32+1) at level 16 get 5 attacks (+1 attack at levels 4/8/12/16… up to 8). This means that their maximum possible damage roll is (5*32 [sword roll])+(5*1 [sword bonus])+(5*2 [18 str bonus]) = 175. Their average roll (funny numbers due to buggy rolls in BT1) is (5*17.3 [sword roll]) + (5*1 [sword bonus]) + (5*2 [18 str bonus]) = 101.5. By level 20 their max damage still does not exceed the max hp roll of the larger monsters.
Paladins are no better than Warriors for raw damage output. Monks are somewhat better as shown in this monk damage table and get a large first strike bonus, but suffer a huge HP penalty and are still RNG dependent to kill the biggest of the creatures at relevant character levels. In the end, I prefer Hunters because of the sure hit on high-hp creatures, particularly in the Mangar 4/5 encounters when they will have 100% crit chance.
With respect to the critical damage chance, it seems that in the MSDOS version of BT1, the Hunter critical chance is a number between 1 and 255 where 1 represents a very small chance to critical hit and 255 represents a 100% chance to critical hit. The Hunter starts at 0, and with each level advancement they get somewhere between +1 and +32 points (average of 16.5 points/level), such that by level 16 they are, on average, at the 100% critical hit rate. It can potentially be maxed at level 8, but that would require exceptional luck. Level 13 averages 84%. See this page on the critical chance: https://bardstale.brotherhood.de/talefiles/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1058
Having written all this, it’s possible that Warriors and/or Paladins may farm slightly faster, and be within a reasonable RNG range for the final battle, offsetting the advantage of Hunters. It’s a subtle point that future work will have to play out, but my strong current bias is for Hunters.
With respect to race, Half-Orc is the dominant choice with 18 Con, 15 Dex, and 18 Str. The race is hands down the easiest choice for Hunters, who have a substantial HP advantage at the maximum relevant HP ranges. Luck is helpful but not critical for the 2nd and 3rd positions, and the 18 con helps make up for early weakness. Half-Orc would probably be the best choice for Warrior also.
Fourth Position – Conjurer to Sorcerer to Wizard
The fourth position must (in my view) start with a Conjurer. Trap Zap is a necessity to reduce time spent disarming traps (increasing your experience per minute or XPM). Manually disarming is prone to frequent failures that pause farming, force a healing session, and reduce both XPM and GPM (gold per minute). There is no reliable substitute. Moreover, the early poison heal of FLRE allows the party to farm the bigger spiders and keeps their GPM/XPM high. APAR is also critical for farming deeper levels of the Catacombs and Harkyn 2/3, and becomes available at a time when the party should be ready to take that next step if it has only 1 caster.
A Magician’s contributions with PHDO, MYSH, and REST are substantial, but there are significant drawbacks. The loss of Trap Zap and complete lack of healing until level 13 slow things down a lot.
Elf is my preferred caster choice because of the high IQ, high Luck, and reasonable CON. H-Elf is also a reasonable choice, essentially swapping 1 IQ for 1 CON, in addition to the 1 STR bonus. But the early spellpoints are important for TrapZap, and the 4th position does not really need the small hp advantage. Luck also translates directly to spell damage, giving Elf and H-Elf a meaningful early and mid game advantage over other races.
In terms of team progression, I solo farm the Conjurer on Samurai until he has at least WAST, sometimes FLRE. Then he joins the Paladin/Hunter/Hunter in farming until he’s a Sorcerer with MIBL. This course seems necessary to for the party to hit good timings. Once MIBL is available, then I add the position 5 and 6 heroes and the party stays with six members for the rest of the game. Sometimes I wait until WIDR or Wiz 1 before adding the position 5 and 6 members. I’m still trying to figure out the ideal timing.
Once level 13, transitioning to a Sorcerer seems to be the correct route. MIBL is the dominant farming tool in the game. WIDR boosts things a lot, and provides a first strike against 90% of the creatures outside of Mangar 3/4/5. WIGI guarantees a first strike against almost everything else outside of all but the very highest level creatures. However, I suspect that time may be saved by transitioning a Sorcerer to a Wizard at level 11.
In that light, I’m also considering whether a transition to Wizard is strictly necessary. It is probably the appropriate next step if the Party has a level 11+ Sorcerer but all its members are not yet ready for Mangar’s highest levels due to lack of levels and/or items. A Wizard generally should not need to go past Level 9, as by that time the party should be completely ready (or over-prepared) to take on Mangar. Wizards get a 3 point class bonus to throwing saves, which boosts their spell damage from level 1. Even at level 1, REDE is generally more effective than MIBL to farm the wraiths in Catacombs (but not ghouls just yet). ANDE and DISP (or Exorwands) also substantially reduce the penalty in terms of gold and time to recover from a deaths or teamwipes.
Fifth and Sixth Positions – Magicians
The fifth and sixth positions are probably best filled by Magicians. I add them to the party together, late in the game, when they can be power leveled to 13. REST and DEST are mission critical for Mangar adventure. PHDO and STSI reduce the mana burden on the 4th position. MYSH/YMCA is very helpful for the WIDR, for when a party member is withered, for when one or two items are still missing, and for the Mangar Tower fights when the melee heroes die and the back-lines must tank.
As with the position 4, the race selection is between Elf and H-Elf. And again, my current belief is that the few extra spellpoints are more valuable than the few extra hp.
In terms of progression, the position 5 and 6 hp gain is so awful that I generally just leave them as level 1 until they have enough experience to jump straight to level 10. This makes it cheap to resurrect them, particularly if you get unlucky with a certain Grey Dragon.
Their major contribution is to keep the party healed up during their time in Mangar. REST is expensive and they struggle with their low spellpoints, so sometimes a conjurer staff is necessary. A mage staff is moderately useful, but only in situations where you have time (in a speedrun….) to let them regenerate. Their contribution to the final encounter is to use 2x DEST on the Vampire Lords to (hopefully) take them out in the first round. In the second round they use either REST or DEST as needed.
One open question I have is the relative effectiveness of STTO vs DEST. Since DEST is the higher level spell, I assume that it’s superior in some way, or it would be rather redundant in light of STTO. However, one subtle distinction is that stoned party members are restored to their current HP when healed at a temple. Dead party members are healed to only 1 hp, no matter their current HP. I’ll have to check on stone vs dead healing prices. See Binary Spells for more information.