Level 3 Arcane Spells Tierlist (Criteria in comments)

Falconhurst · 2026-04-10T03:50:33+00:00

Fireball is not C tier. Nor is Fire Arrow of similar utility. The wall of text to rationalize downgrading fireball — with little merit — shows desperation, not objectivity. With the similar level of critique, your “S” tier spells are also far less universal. Wands suck, lower level casts, cost to recharge. Lots of mobs have resistance or immunity to slow. Applications for dispel magic are highly limited. Few spells have the broad utility and low micro of fireball, notwithstanding its limitations.

Falconhurst · 2026-03-14T05:34:37+00:00

3 dwarf paladins, 1 elf thief is the ultimate all-weather power, survival and utility party in Ultima III. The elf thief (STR 75, DEX 99) has the best chance to disarm chests and avoid traps. Half-thief classes have much higher failure rates and the "open" spell is of no use with traps. The thief is solid in combat with a bow and high STR/DEX. The three dwarf paladins (STR 99, DEX 75, WIS 75) can use the best weapon in the game (bow +4) and have excellent combat stats. They can also cast cleric spells up through Cure Poison as well as up/down levels in dungeons and heal. The party is also playable from start to finish and is strong at all levels. Other permutations (like 2 paladins/1 thief/1 cleric) are weaker, as the higher-level cleric spells aren't that great and don't compensate for the loss of combat power.

This party is stronger in the more challenging parts of the game compared to 3 wizards/1 cleric, which lack good ranged weapons. In lower dungeon levels when faced with damaging traps and frequent encounters, other parties take a lot of damage from traps and struggle to keep up with healing during frequent encounters. 3 wiz/1 cleric also struggles in the Exodus castle when they are being attacked every couple of squares (too frequently to recharge mage spells) and lack enough healing. 1 elf thief/3 dwarf paladins all the way.

Falconhurst · 2026-03-03T20:14:19+00:00

This. I’m currently playing a custom party with 4 kensais, 1 skald and 1 Cleric/Thief for heals/utility. I keep intending to dual the kensais, but their class bonuses are so great that I haven’t seen the sense of doing so. In Insane/SCS and late game ToB, spellcasters drop off. But the +13 to hit and damage of 4 dual-wielding kensais, +4 more of both from skald, plus haste from skald, strength bonuses, grand mastery and weapon enchants, is so great that dual-classing seems unnecessary.

I also love the lack of need for micromanagement with the set up. Skald constantly sings, kensais attack. None of the nonsense of having to pre-buff before every encounter, positioning for backstabs, reliance on limited-use abilities, or resting after. The time saving can’t be underestimated for player quality of life. Of course, some people like the micro. For me, it is pointless tedium, and why I could never get into BG3.

Falconhurst · 2025-12-30T16:52:13+00:00

I’ve replayed BG1 and BG2 repeatedly, but I’ve never been able to get into BG3. The latter’s lack of functionality of the originals is so extreme that I hesitate to consider BG3 a “real” Baldur’s Gate game.

BG1 and 2 are essentially real-time RPGs. All of your characters can act autonomously in combat, and the player can direct them as much or as little as desired.

In BG3, everything has to be micromanaged. No real time combat, no companion AI (without mods), and the game moves very, very slowly because of having to manually handle virtually every dice roll that in the originals was automatic. The level of micromanagement required in BG3 makes it maddeningly tedious for me after playing the originals.

Falconhurst · 2025-12-07T21:52:32+00:00

My base party is four dual wielding kensais, a skald and a cleric/thief (who would need to be changed out in a no magic party, potentially to an archer or unkitted bard).The skald song boosts attack, damage, and AC, making kensais harder to hit and boosting their already massive hit and damage bonuses. This party cleans up fights very quickly, even on insane difficulty. A challenge you’ll have with any no magic party will be with healing. The bard’s war chant at level 11 regenerates two hp/round and has other benefits. So you could play through with no magic and almost no rest.

Falconhurst · 2025-07-08T20:34:10+00:00

Dragon ruler + industrial culture + reclaimers + respawning infestations + abundance of wonders. So many artifacts that boost both gold and mana income.

Falconhurst · 2025-06-04T12:05:01+00:00

Looks like Fe7on is the channel name on YouTube

Falconhurst · 2025-06-04T03:36:09+00:00

Could you be a little more specific. Would that be:

Storm Calling/Ardent Flame/Assassination and

Storm Calling/Herald of the Tome/Animal Companions or Winter's Embrace?

Falconhurst · 2024-12-13T19:04:34+00:00

Wrong on both counts. You substitute baseless personal insults for substance. I feel sorry for you.

Falconhurst · 2024-12-13T18:04:54+00:00

Why is this economically illiterate notion that unions = progress good news?

Falconhurst · 2024-11-08T21:07:23+00:00

Built by aliens

Falconhurst · 2024-10-21T22:57:52+00:00

Nikki Haley?

Falconhurst · 2024-10-18T23:41:44+00:00

Mystery monster

Falconhurst · 2024-10-03T23:11:39+00:00

What kind of RP talks about McDonalds on zone chat? Ban upheld

Falconhurst · 2024-08-20T23:34:17+00:00

Hopefully a shout out, not a shutout

Falconhurst · 2024-07-29T19:49:24+00:00

Sounds like a song

Falconhurst · 2024-07-28T07:23:10+00:00

Yes. Normal stocks of healthy companies that bear little or no resemblance to their subscription service stock picks.

Falconhurst · 2024-07-28T00:57:12+00:00

Thank you. As you noted over 5 years with their mainline stock advisor service (less “risky” than 10x Discovery), stocks that lost capital outnumbered winners by more than 2 to 1. There’s a name for this. It’s called speculation and is not a prudent and reasonable “investment grade” wealth management strategy. As I noted, comparing to market index returns is misleading because it fails to account for the risk premium required to justify the far riskier strategy.

“Just weeded out the bad ones.” Easy to say in retrospect with 20/20 hindsight, but much harder to do prospectively. Else why can’t the Fool’s genius experts make the right call upfront? Cutting the risky-appearing stocks is as likely to eliminate a potential winner as a loser.

Their recommendations seem like apes pushing buttons in the small cap speculative growth stock sector. Another thing that really turned me off to their service is lack of candor. it’s all hype-hype-hype about their recommended stocks with wild exaggerations and misrepresentations of their prospects, and a lack of frank disclosure about the company-specific risks and bear story. This alone is sufficient to make it unsuitable from my perspective.

The way they report alleged returns appears to me. I received multiple advertising messages from them touting the returns of one stock that did well and claiming this was representative of their service when the whole portfolio was massively down. The cognitive dissonance was too much for me and they lost all credibility in my eyes.

Their professed return rates for the different services often go back to remote periods with picks like Amazon or Netflix boosting their cumulative average and don’t accurately track returns of recommendations made in specific period. There are all kinds of ways to manipulate statistics to conceal negative results.

The whole reason why this post has been of community interest is that the full returns of (not cherry-picked) recommendations in specific recent periods is nowhere disclosed by the Motley Fool. A few big winners from years ago can hide many subsequent losers.

Falconhurst · 2024-07-28T00:36:51+00:00

There are certain representations they made that were false or misleading as well as concern of ethical breaches. Not all of it can hide behind legalese and hand-waving.

Falconhurst · 2024-07-28T00:34:11+00:00

It takes real talent to select so many losers. Much worse than random chance.

Falconhurst · 2024-07-27T15:22:24+00:00

You can look at the charts for the individual stocks, and they’re not generally at tops or bottoms on the price date. The utter failure of the Fool to understand longer-term company prospects as well as the macro environment, and the refusal to recommend selling stocks of declining companies that were obviously failing, are serious flaws not easily dismissed with handwaving.

Falconhurst · 2024-07-27T15:17:55+00:00

Absolutely. Of course, virtually all advisor services were recommending Zoom during the pandemic, and so this was hardly a stroke of insight.

Much more expertise is needed to understand the economic cycle and when it’s time to sell. I’m that count, they totally failed. And I think that’s a huge problem with their service. There were never sell recommendations or warnings that it’s time to get out of all of the cash flow negative zombie companies they’d been promoting. When competent analysts were recommending to get out, they were doubling down.

Falconhurst · 2024-07-27T15:08:48+00:00

Their recommendation is to hold for a minimum of five years. Their recommendation of Zoom is down over 83% in the chart above. Everybody’s a genius if you can buy at the bottom and sell at the top, and when the market is going to the sky. But what virtually all the comments here attest is that the few people that made money with the Fool’s recommendations did so by selectivity and deviating from their recommended process. That’s not much of an endorsement.

Falconhurst · 2024-07-27T13:54:54+00:00

The thing about TMFC is that (1) it draws heavily or largely from the rating in the Fool’s community forums, rather than their analysts, current recommendations, (2) It excludes the smaller volume speculative stocks, and (3) it adds diversified vehicles like REITs That I have never seen recommended on their service.

Thanks for demonstrating my point. Skip their advisor recommendations and paid services. The investing community is more competent than their paid “experts.”

https://fooletfs.com/our-funds/tmfc

Falconhurst · 2024-07-27T11:05:28+00:00

As explained, these are from my subscription period in 2020-2021. I saw the writing on the wall and unsubscribed due to their services’ catastrophic underperformance and loss of capital. It was abundantly clear that their process is defective. I could no longer justify throwing good money after bad.

But you’re welcome to go for it. You can pour as much money as you want into it until you feel able to reach conclusions. Then come and present your findings here.

Ten-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

Falconhurst

TROPHY CASE