Bay 12 Games Forum

Stats: I drop everything to Very Low except str, agil, toughness, endurance, recup.  I drop focus to Below avg.  I think this gives 55 points to spend in total.  Agil to Superior and then share remainder out amongst the remainder.

Skills: I dump my skills into a single offensive skill.  Basically, I do not buy this swimming skill thing.  My adventurers generally die via a hammer to the head, a drowning here or there (for the most part avoidable) is not worth the skill for a peasant.  I generally will put my skill into a single sharp weapon, axe or sword.

Combat: The idea behind spending all skill points into a single offensive skill is basically that if you are going into a combat as a peasant expecting to survive many rounds you are likely to already be dead.  I would say the average peasant has approx 5 rounds to seriously dent an opponent and the amount of skill points you have to start out just wont buy you a life saving defense.  Ie. my approach is a good offense is the best defense.

When in combat, try to avoid undirected attacks.  Use 'A' instead of walking into your opponent.  Look at your opponent first and look for an easy or easier target on a weapon hand.  If the strength of the attack is too low, or the weapon limb is too hard to hit, retreat and look for a better attack in the next round.  The approach is basically to dis-arm your opponent first.  An alternate approach would be to dis-leg your opponent.  I personally lean towards cutting arms off first as any armed opponent still has a chance to do some mutilating damage.  Although dearmed opponents can still damage you, i.e. bites / kicks etc the pressure is off a little.

Movement / quick travel: Basically, be patient.  If there is a town that you can reach by nightfall, go to it rather than your target campsite.  If you do get caught out at night, with a high enough speed, and in the absence of rivers between you and nearast town, it can be possible to outrun the bogies.

Optional skill buffing tactic^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hexploit?  Once you've cut an opponents arms off or otherwise disabled limbs use A to put some wrestling moves onto them. Grab the throat and place a strangle hold onto your opponent.  You do not need to spend any points on wrestling.  Make sure you have disarmed your opponent before trying to strangle.  Once you have placed the strangle you can walk into your opponent to repeat the strangle hold, eventually they will die from suffocation and you will have practiced your fighting and wrestling skills in the meantime.  It relatively quickly increases willpower and str also.  If there are lots of opponents around and you have strangled an opponent you can either let them be for a bit or hit them with a killing blow to avoid embarrassment later.