2) I was playing the redundant fighter. Hey, at least the fighter is useful until the MUs can get their Fireshield and Tenser’s up and running. The thieves are redundant once the Clerics can Find Traps and the MU casts knock.

(2) Your inner munchkin is quite clearly still alive and well….

It is now some time since the parties I was in were staging contests for speed vampire slaying. The objective was quite simple – how many vampires could you slay (merely turning didn’t count) in one round. Well, actually it was less than one round because you had to assume their morale would fail during the pre-initiative phase and they would flee on their initiative rather than attack. The fighters never had any targets during the post-initiative phase.

The final result: you have to trick them into attcking the party as the number you can kill is limited only by the number of vampires you can get in one place.

The method: close packed concentric walls of fire. It is not obvious from outside how many the attacking vampires have to cross to reach the party. It works best if you can do it in a corridor as then you don’t have to worry about the roof, but if you have to you enchant half your team of casters so they can cast their walls lying down thus creating horizontal tubes which then intersect the vertical set.

Remember to have a Prayer and Chant running – not that you will get any extra damage out of them, but as you want them to attack you must assume they will have them running on their side.

Oh, and buy in some extra beer for the fighters. This is high level stuff: the spell casters are not going to let anything dangerous get close enough to get into hand to hand combat if they can help it. If something does get close then MUs have a buch better AC (bracers, prot ring, displacer cloak, flying, blured, improved invis) than a figher in +5 armour and +5 shield, and with a Tenser’s Transformation they do more damage.

(Yes, I do think the D&D system breaks down at high levels!)

Civ doesn’t really appeal to me; I find I don’t really enjoy boardgames that last more than three or four hours.

Still, you remind me just how long it is since I last played Advanced Civilisation. Perhaps a game could be organised…

Then again, I’m not in a position to offer that much in the way of over-night accomodation.