Conjurers balancing spellcasting with fighting

[Radres]

I've played many a Deep Elf Conjurer, Wizard, and Fire Elementalist. I generally run into a problem about the time I get rocking and rolling with my main battle spells at 0 hunger, something comes along and knocks the crap out of my weak caster.

When playing this class is it important to focus on balancing out your superior spellcasting with fighting and weapons skills? It just seems that you have a real big advantage if you focus on spellcasting early thanks to your high INT.

I recently tried playing Tengu. It's interesting because they start with higher strength and dexterity at the cost of INT. They also get 3 free unarmed attacks. The ability to fly seems like a nice escape. However, I still run into the same problem that they're too fragile, just a bit later than when Deep Elves have that problem.

So, are my tactics for running away and avoiding fights sloppy, or am I building my characters wrong?

Also, for Sif Muna you gain piety by training specific spell schools. Is it worth holding out until you can find the Sif Muna altar before you start training spell schools? I could see how if I wanted to focus on fighting earlier that I could put off training conjurations, for example.

[KoboldLord]

You'll have to be more specific about what's killing your characters before anybody can give detailed advice for dealing with it, but you really shouldn't worry about spell hunger unless you're jumping WAY up the spell tree. Most monsters are literally made out of food, and you can get this food out of them by casting spells at them.

Your early-game objective should generally be to get your power spells online as soon as possible. Conjurors will want Mephitic Cloud as quickly as possible, followed by a rush for either Bolt of Cold or Lightning Bolt, followed by a rush for Freezing Cloud. Fire elementalists should rush for Sticky Flame, and in the case of deep elves you'll want to continue rushing for Fireball. You should only 'save' piety gain for after conversion to Sif Muna if you're entirely comfortable with dying before you ever see that altar.

Points into fighting, dodging, stealth, etc. are important too, but not urgent. Getting Freezing Cloud or Sticky Flame online radically changes the set of tactics available to you, while boosting your defenses just incrementally improves the set of tactics already available to you. The xp from mid- to late-Lair is often a good point of the game to work on these support skills.

[crate]

If you want to both cast conjurations and hit things you should probably play something like drfe or hofe instead of defe (or replace fire elementalist with whatever else you want). Personally I think dr is generally easier for conjurer-types than de is, actually, since you get nice defenses (+10% hp, +1 fighting, free AC, though you have mediocre dex and thus EV) and you're still plenty good at killing things with fire/ice/air/earth/poison. Deep elves are mostly for killing things with magic.

Anyway like KL says above me you should get the good spells in your starting book castable before you worry much about other means of offense. By all means pick up a weapon that is decent at 0 skill (trident, quarterstaff, lajatang, elec/venom weapons) and hit things with it when you can, but for fire elementalist for instance you don't want to worry about melee skills until you get sticky flame (or maybe fireball).

[nordetsa]

I think I usually go fighting mid-late lair as well, after training magic skills to make fireball cast manageable as well as raising some trap skills to avoid getting shafted by random spear traps. (I tried number of DeFe)

Though I think it only works when I'm playing deep elf. Other races I've played, their spellcasting aptitude is not so great and it takes longer to make fireball useful.

[sardonica]

Another fun way to play a bashy mage is try Ogre Wizards, they have low conjuration but its not a huge handicap, especially if you worship Vehumet. They really are a lot of fun.

[Radres]

Something like Ogre Mage just paralyzes me with indecision. Do I spend more XP on conjurations so I can have a better frost bolt, or spend it on axes which seem to be doing a ton of damage already?

[BlackSheep]

Axes? On an ogre?

[Radres]

Ogre clubs, whatever.

I gave Ogre Wizard a try, and you are right, it is pretty fun. A lot of the limitations of the Deep Elves have been resolved. Spell hunger is a lot easier to deal with since Ogres can eat rotten meat. You can take a few hits. Magic Missile comes with no food cost just like DE, which is awesome.

[Radres]

Something like Ogre Mage just paralyzes me with indecision.

I don't think that's indecision

Retardation, then?

[Galefury]

The joke is that monster ogre mages can paralyze you.