Talk:Fighter/@comment-81.104.204.181-20180303204027/@comment-34714448-20180306111717

Switch immediately if you want to primarily play a mage who has some fighter abilities. You will regain all your fighter abilities shortly after leaving Chateau Irenicus and will play the whole game as a mage. The reason why you would bother to do it if you want to primarily play a mage is clear. There is no reason ever to play a single class human non-specialist mage, dual classing is always better. Here's what you get:

7 levels of fighter HP and fighter CON bonus

6 as opposed to 2 proficiency points

better Thac0

The ability to achieve grand mastery

exceptional strength bonus

one extra half attack

access to fighter weapons and items

If you switch immediately you will never be a very good fighter but these advantages are still too good to pass up. They help your survivability a great deal and give you a ton of flexibility. And even if you play as a pure mage, you will want to hit something with a weapon from time to time, even if it's just whacking a lich over the head with the Staff of the Magi to dispell it's protections.

If you want to play as a fighter/mage who gets even more use out of their fighter side, it's best to wait until level 9 or even 13 before dual classing. 9 is easily achievable and will give you another proficiency point and max out your fighter HP. You'll hit it after you've done the bits in Atkathla (like circus tent, bridge murders, copper coronet) and maybe one of the main sidequests. After dualling you can get your fighter class back just by scribing scrolls. Just buy/steal all of the scrolls you can get, get a potion of genius at a temple and start scribing. Temporarily kick out all your party members so the XP doesn't get split and you'll have the 250000 XP you need in no time.

If that's too meta-gamey for you, just carry on adventuring. 250000 XP isn't much at this point, you'll have it after doing 2 more sidequests.

If you want to get all the good stuff you can from fighter, you'll have to wait until level 13 before dualling. That's a bit of a pain in the ass but it's also doable. You're gonna have to play as a fighter for quite a while and after dualling you absolutely have to do the kick out and scribe scrolls thing. You should also play with a smaller party until you get your fighter levels back if you do this. You can easily complete the whole dual-classing process before chapter 4 this way. You'll be seriously overpowered by then, though.

Lastly, I personally think that kensai is a actually a worse choice for dual classing to mage than a pure fighter. The extra to hit and damage isn't worth that much since you'll never reach very high levels as a kensai, and kai is mainly useful for kensai->thieves, not so much for mages. The inability to wear helmets and gauntlets will hurt you more than it's worth, imo. Berserker is probably the best choice, mechanics wise, but flavor wise it doesn't really sit well with me when dualling to mage. Pure fighter is fine.