Vajrapani wrote:Plain warriors tend to get boring after a while, and I suck at getting pure casters off of the ground, so playing a hybrid sounds like a good idea but I have no idea what the gameplan for one is, or what is most important for one.
For example, would a a Gl^Veh or Sif be stronger and more survivable than starting as a book class and min delaying the first decent weapon?
Basically, how would you play a character that you want to hybridize from the start?
Fi^Veh or Gl^Veh in my experience can be a fun start and it's better than it sounds. That doesn't make it a really good option, though, just one that is surprisingly less bad than it seems. In particular, this start gambles somewhat on Vehemut giving you spells early that have good synergy with melee and/or give you options otherwise, such as Conjure Flame, Sticky Flame, MephCloud, F/P Cloud. If she doesn't, then you're essentially playing godless in the early game.
Starting with a book and branching into melee is a better way to go. I think it's wrong, though, to think in categories like 'hybrid' or 'pure caster'. It's more a sliding scale: The better you develop your melee, the more monsters fall into the 'popcorn' or 'can melee safely' categories. So, the better you develop melee, the more you preserve mana, but also the weaker your spells are. How far to optimally slide on that scale depends on the equipment you find. As for gods: Good ones are essentially the ones that are good in general. Aside from the obvious exception of Trog, you also don't want a god that demands a lot of investment in invocations: With both decent melee and decent spells, you tend to be somewhat thin in your skills. For this reason, Okawaru and probably (haven't played him in a long time) Ash stand out as, let's say, convenient choices. I do like Vehumet, but rather because she doesn't get on my nerves.
You don't necessarily have to get your whole starting book castable before you branch into melee. Some of the book starts have breakpoints where getting a spell castable provides a jump in your damage output, giving you the wriggle room to develop melee. E.g. for FE that would be either Conjure Flame (if you find a really good polearm) or Sticky Flame. I play AE exactly like ThreeInvisibleDucks. For Wz I like to rush to get MephCloud to ~25%, casting Imps only from starting Int and spellcasting, then I develop melee. For that I also like to develop Slow, which is a great melee enhancer if used right. With other book starts I either lack the experience or I find it more difficult to branch melee before I have the starting book online. For instane IE: Freeze fits the bill of 'providing enough wriggle room', but Ice Beasts are just too good to postpone.
Tactically, on chars with strong melee and conjurations, I use the conjurations to debuff the damage output of enemy monsters (via decreasing their HP) and then finish them with melee. Freezing Cloud (and PCloud) is naturally the spell that I want most, but Bolt spells and even single target spells have their niche, once the opportunity cost isn't prohibitive.