Classic Games Revisited
Dark Sun: Shattered Lands Walkthrough
3. Party Consideration
You could jump into the game with a default party by clicking Start Game, but it is highly recommended that you create one of your own. While creating party members, you can opt to keep randomly generated stats for each character, to keep randomizing the stats until you like what you get, or to maximize all stats as far as they can go to make the game a little easier. The last option is strongly recommended if you are playing for the first time—there are some very dangerous enemies in Athas and although you may feel very strong with stats of 20 across the board, especially since most other games cap out at 18 for each attribute, you may find yourself dying once or twice.
One additional consideration when creating a party is to maximize some stats while minimizing others, in keeping with the usual D&D theme. To that effect, you can have stats randomly generated and then take away a point from (say) Charisma and put it into (say) Strength. This is also a viable strategy but for this guide I will be going with a max-all party.
Finally, as we get to discussing Classes, I will offer a lengthy exposition on Thieves. Something to note at this point is that in Shattered Lands, only a single level of Thief is required to use all your Thief abilities (Backstab, Climb, Pick Locks, Pick Pockets) effectively. That is not true in Wake of the Ravager, the sequel to this game. If you plan to export your party into Wake of the Ravager, the thief’s level does matter, especially in detecting and disarming traps on chests.
3.1. Classes
Each of your characters will have at least one class—kind of a profession they specialize in. Clerics and Druids will additionally have an elemental Sphere they draw their powers from. Plus, all characters, whether they are Psionicists or not, will have access to at least one school of psionics. Depending on the class and sphere, the character will have gear restrictions imposed on them. You can read about specific restrictions in the manual. My party choice will render the restrictions irrelevant to this guide.
3.1.1. Multiclassing
All non-human characters can have up to three simultaneous classes, though there are some restrictions on which race has access to which classes, and what combination of classes are allowed. The classes each race can choose are documented in the game’s manual.
A multiclass character earns as much XP as his or her peers, but that XP is divided equally among all their chosen classes. This means that they will level up slower than a single-class character. However, they bring different advantages to the table. For example, the ability to cast spells while still getting warrior THAC0 and near-warrior HP. Or the ability to equip all gear as a Cleric if the character is not a Thri-kreen.
3.1.2. Dual-classing
Dual class is slightly more complex to understand as it is a less common option in most D&D games. In reality, it is very straightforward because at any given time, you will be advancing only a particular chosen class and so for all intents and purposes it is no different from a single-class character. All XP you earn is pooled only into that chosen class.
In story terms, you could consider that the character was forced into a particular path (say Thief) as a teenager. As she grew up, she realized that thieving could only get her so far in life and thus decided to leave her mischievous ways behind and become a Preserver to earn the respect of her fellow citizens. Her rapid growth in powers earned her the disdain of the powers that be so she decided to leave this profession behind and become a Gladiator to better defend herself against their wrath. However, as a person grows, it’s not unusual to remember things they had been practicing for so long. Thus, this character will have the benefits of all three classes up to the point they advanced those classes.
In practical terms, this is how it works, using the same example cited above: all single-class characters start at level 3 in Dark Sun and humans can be dual-classed into something else at any point in the game (including during party creation). Let’s assume that we created a human Thief and dual-classed her into Preserver before starting the game. The Preserver will start at level 1 (not 3). That will halt the progression in Thief entirely and she can never go back. That will also disable her Thief class so you will not be able to use her to (say) pick pockets or pick locks, or even equip the same armor and weapons as the Thief. To re-enable the Thief class, the character must progress the second (Preserver) class to one level higher than the first (Thief) class, in this case Level 4. At this moment, the Thief class gets automatically re-activated and the character gets the abilities of both classes.
At any point during the game (but not during party creation), the character can further dual-class into a third class. This can only be done if the other two classes are at least level 2 (which is why it’s not possible during party creation because the Preserver is still at level 1 at that point). A very important aspect in the Dark Sun series is that the second class does not need to outclass the first one for dual-dual-classed characters. Once the third class outclasses each previous class, they will progressively become active. So if our Thief (3)/Preserver (2) duals into Gladiator, the Gladiator will start at level 1. That will halt the progression in Preserver entirely and she can never go back. When the Gladiator reaches level 3, it will enable the Preserver class, allowing her to cast spells of level 1 only (though she can learn higher level spells from scrolls but never cast them). When the Gladiator reaches level 4, it will also enable the Thief class, allowing her to pick locks as well.
While single classes advance in levels the fastest, they are also the most difficult to play with because of gear restrictions, some of which are pretty severe. Notably, XP is not difficult to farm in this game so multiclass and dual- or dual-dual-class characters perform admirably. It goes without saying that one must choose combinations that minimize or eliminate gear restrictions (e.g., a Cleric/Thief will still have some gear restrictions but a Fighter/Cleric/Thief will have none).
Keep in mind that the game’s cap of 9 levels means that the first two classes can be at most advanced to level 8 if you want the third class to outclass and activate them. If you advance the Thief to level 9, the Preserver to level 9, and finally the Gladiator to level 9, the first two classes will only become active when the Gladiator reaches level 10 in Wake of the Ravager and you will at all points in this game be playing only as a single-class character with the last chosen class! Grinding to 8-8-9 is a viable strategy to create extremely powerful characters if you are of that bent (I do that sometimes and although it may seem boring, it is possible, though time-consuming, to do it entirely at the very start of the game), but for a carefully curated party that is not necessary.
3.1.3. Thief
Now I will make a highly unusual suggestion, which is what my party will be employing: create a party of mostly humans and dual-class or dual-dual-class them to have at least one point of Thief in all of them. I’ll explain how to do that in Party Creation, but here I’ll argue why. Thieves can backstab, dishing out a huge amount of damage with a better chance to actually hit. However, there are two primary impediments to this.
Firstly, you cannot control the order in which party members get their turn. You can Wait if the thief is forced to go first, but it is always better to attack when you can because a hit spellcaster (enemy or party member) cannot cast spells for one round. If you give them a chance by not attacking (initiative rolls are not shown on screen, so you never know whose turn is next), they can cause havoc.
Secondly, the way backstab works is: you have to hit (i.e., not just attack but actually hit) an enemy normally (which exhausts all the attacks of the aggressor in that round), then the thief has to hit the same enemy from the exact opposite side (assuming the creature didn’t already die). So with four thieves, at most you can do two backstabs per round, if the thief has enough movement points and an open path to reach the opposite side of the same creature.
A third, less common impediment, even if you get perfect initiative rolls, is that sometimes a lone thief might just be too far away to affect a backstab in that round.
This kind of a party will favor melee combat over spells because that is the only way to leverage the benefits of thieves. For this reason, the party and spell choices I will recommend will usually (especially after a few levels) do significantly more melee damage than spells ever can. However, do not underestimate the power of a well-placed Fireball. As stated above, a hit spellcaster cannot cast for one round, and spells like Magic Missile and Fireball are guaranteed to hit, so they will also be useful throughout the game. A measly 1 point of damage is enough to disable enemy (or your) spellcasting.
3.1.4. Preserver
Preservers are arcane mages, and are invaluable in any party. They can learn and cast very useful buffs as well as damaging spells. The most useful of these are Level 1 Enlarge, Level 2 Strength, Level 3 Haste, and (especially for the final battle) Level 3 Blink. Level 3 Fireball is also very useful and Level 4 Wall of Fire can wreak absolute havoc in the final battle. Level 1 Color Spray can disable a bunch of enemies in one go. In this game particularly, I tend to stay away from the usually favorite area-of-effect lingering spells like Web, Stinking Cloud or Glitterdust because no spells in Dark Sun are party-friendly. Web is also burnt away by fire spells so you will have to resort to missile damage which is not very high, especially when compared to an Enlarged, Strengthened and Hastened melee combatant.
Web is a great spell if you are able to cast the druid level 4 Free Action on every party member. Just don’t use any fire spells after casting it. But some party members not having Free Action (while the druid is not leveled up enough) doesn’t make Web a worthwhile spell because they will need to stand outside the web and do missile damage, which is infinitesimal.
My party will have two Preservers, but one of them will only go up to Level 3 (because that’s where he starts) to learn Level 1 Enlarge. There is one scroll of Enlarge in the game which he will learn from, and the other will pick the spell while advancing levels. This strategy affords two extra Level 1 slots for either mage to cast more Magic Missiles when I need them.
3.1.5. Warrior (Gladiator, not Fighter or Ranger)
There is no obvious benefit to Fighters and Rangers over Gladiators. Fighters do level up faster, but only slightly. Rangers can dual-wield without penalties, but that is negated by a very high Dexterity score. Thus, among these three warrior classes, Gladiators get the additional benefit of -1 AC at Level 5. It seems like a tiny amount, but since the Ranger is rendered useless by our high stats and Fighter Level 9 is only 50,000xp faster than Gladiator Level 9, I’ll take the tiny benefit. If you don’t feel this trade-off is worth it, by all means feel free to pick Fighter instead.
The biggest advantage of dual-classing is the ability to have specific combinations of classes that are otherwise not allowed. For example, a Fighter/Thief is a valid multiclass but a Gladiator/Thief is not. If you are going to pick Fighter instead of Gladiator, consider multiclassing instead of dual-classing as this will make the initial grind easier.
My Level 3 Preserver will first dual into a Thief, and then at first opportunity dual into a Gladiator, continuing in that direction until the end to get both -1 AC and the warrior HP. As soon as the Gladiator hits Level 4 (not very difficult; needs only 9,000xp), both his Thief and Preserver classes will be activated and he will become a beast of a melee combatant. In one more level (at 18,000xp), he will get a reduction in AC (lower AC is better in D&D 2.0, which this game employs).
3.1.6. Cleric
A Cleric is primarily useful for Turn Undead, especially against undead creatures that require enchanted weapons to even damage them. In my opinion Clerics are just downgraded versions of Druids, but their Turn Undead alone makes up for this deficiency. I’ll explain who in my party will be a Cleric in just a bit.
3.1.7. Psionicist
I don’t have a particular inkling for Psionicists in my parties. That said, they can be useful, especially at the very start of the game, when they can use Biofeedback to improve AC by 1 and reduce incoming damage by 2, and use Graft Weapon to get +1 THAC0. They can learn Cell Adjustment to heal wounds and cure diseases when they level up. Ego Whip is also nice but doesn’t always work when you most want it to.
My priorities for learning new psionics on leveling up are: Cell Adjustment (healing), Biofeedback (protection; if I didn’t start with it), Enhanced Strength (24 strength), Id Insinuation (paralyze creature), Synaptic Static (prevent all psionics). There is a very expensive bracelet you can buy to learn Ego Whip (stun creature), and/or you can pick it while leveling up. Once I have learnt these I will upgrade them in the same order. Upgrading psionics does not improve their power. Instead, it improves their chance of being cast and renewed successfully. When hovering your mouse over a psionic, the number next to the tick indicates how likely it is to succeed. Each point represents a 5% chance of success, so for 100% success you’d need 20 points in a given psionic. Even if you manage to do that by investing all your level ups into the same psionic (including a level up or two in Wake of the Ravager), the psionic can still fail! That’s why I find spells to be more reliable than psionics.
Note that everyone will have access to some psionics (which is why I don’t usually include a dedicated one in my party). The only differences are that Psionicists can actually learn new psionics and upgrade their psionic powers as they level up or from bracelets that grant such power, and Psionicists have access to all types of psionics whereas others are restricted to a particular school (and which few psionics they start with).
Another peculiarity is that no matter what school you pick for non-Psionicists, everyone gets access to Mind Blank (protection from mind-affecting status), which actually falls under Telepathy. This is huge because it will be invaluable in a particular encounter in Wake of the Ravager, although not so much in Shattered Lands. Also, Mind Blank is the only psionic that does not cost any Psi points (and therefore does not potentially ‘expire’ every round) so feel free to always have it active. All other psionics expend a particular amount of Psi points each round in an attempt to keep them active (if they are the lingering kind), and if the attempt is unsuccessful, they simply expire and you no longer have the effect active. Psionics will also expire at the end of combat.
For this guide, I will start with a Half-Elf Cleric/Psionicist/Thief (at Level 2/2/2). The Thief component will remove all weapon restrictions of the Cleric and Psionicist, and the Cleric component will remove armor restrictions of the other two classes. I am taking a multiclass character here instead of a dual-dual-classed character because I will be exporting my party to Wake of the Ravager and will need at least one high-level thief throughout that game.
I would have preferred a Mul Fighter/Cleric/Thief but for this walkthrough I am including a Psionicist to show off everything the game is capable of.
3.1.8. Druid
A Druid is essentially a better Cleric. They get access to all the same spells if they choose the same sphere (Fire, Water, Air, Earth), but they also get access to all spells in the Cosmos sphere. Clerics are restricted to only Level 3 or lower Cosmos spells. This means they don’t have access to Cure Serious Wounds, Prayer, Protection from Evil 10’ Radius, Neutralize Poison, Cure Critical Wounds, Raise Dead, among others. Druids get them all.
Notably, newer games like Baldur’s Gate don’t allow Druids to get any kind of Raise Dead ability because Druids follow the course of nature—if some being was supposed to die then so be it. A ‘modern’ Druid is strictly opposed to altering the course of nature, although even within the Baldur’s Gate series there is one Druid who can raise dead!
In my party, this role will be filled by a Thief (starts at Level 3) dualed into a Gladiator who will quickly grind up to Level 5 (18,000xp) to get -1 AC. At that point I will dual him to a Water Druid and grind levels as much as my patience allows to get the double-dual out of the way. Grinding is not necessary though; the Druid himself can contribute quite a bit to the party even while the other classes are inactive.
Critical: While alignment is inconsequential throughout the game, it does matter when dual-classing. Druids can only be True Neutral, so if your character chose to change alignment upon creation, the Druid option will not be available when you attempt to dual class. This is not pointed out in the manual so bear that in mind. Everyone in my party will be True Neutral, mostly because that is default and otherwise doesn’t matter.
Starting stats also matter as each class has certain minimum requirements, but since we are starting with 20 across the board, we will not have any nasty surprises during our party progression.
The Gladiator level in the middle is not entirely necessary. You can directly dual from Thief to Druid if you want to skip the grinding, but you will not get the extra Warrior THAC0 and attacks-per-round, or the ability to wear heavy armor. By the by, my primary mage will also do the same: Thief to Gladiator Level 5 to Preserver, and will grind along with my Druid.
A point to note is that because of my peculiar choices during party creation, none of my characters will have any restrictions on what they can don or wield, either from the very start or quite soon. As an illustration, a Cleric is quite restricted in what they can use and a Thief is somewhat restricted.
3.2. Scrolls in the Game
A completionist will find or can buy a scroll each of Armor, Color Spray, Dispel Magic, Enlarge, Fire Shield, Flame Arrow, Hold Monster, Hold Undead, Minor Globe of Invulnerability, Minute Meteors, Mirror Image, Monster Summoning III, Rainbow Pattern, Spirit Armor, Stone Skin, Summon Shadow, Turn Pebble to Boulder, Wall of Fog, and Web. Refer to this list when deciding which spells to learn on leveling up a Preserver.
3.3. Bracelets in the Game
A completionist will find or can buy a bracelet each of Animal Affinity, Ego Whip, Energy Containment, Graft Weapon, Intellect Fortress, Life Draining, Mind Bar, Psionic Blast, Share Strength, and Synaptic Static.
4. Party Creation
Let’s get into party creation. Click Create Characters, right-click one of the four empty squares, and click New.
Click or right-click on the large or small portraits to cycle through the male and female genders of all races. A lot of players like to have a half-giant to dish out maximum normal damage, as they can have starting strength of 24. However, we will achieve the same (or sometimes almost the same) by casting the Strength and Enlarge spells from our Preservers or by using the Enhanced Strength metabolic psionic later.
Sources on the internet seem to favor Thri-kreens for their five attacks per round (APR): four limbs and a poison bite. My primary consideration in any D&D game is APR so it should be a no-brainer, right?
Though it is useful in the initial phases of the game, the moment you equip a Thri-kreen with a weapon (as suggested by those same sources), the ‘extra’ attacks are taken away. The extra poison bite remains, but the 4 limb attacks adopt the APR of the wielded weapons. Metabolics can upgrade the Thri-kreen’s unarmed attacks to +1 at most and there are enemies in the game that require +2 to damage them, so you will have to equip your Thri-kreen with a good weapon at some point to be even vaguely useful to the party. Additionally, Thri-kreens cannot equip any gear except weapons, making them that much harder to play with. For a single extra APR, I dislike this trade-off.
Stats are randomly generated as you cycle through the races, and also when you click the die in the center. Left-click a stat to increase it (it will cycle to the minimum allowed if it is already at the maximum) and right-click to decrease it. My humans will have 20 across the board. My Half-Elf will have 21 Dexterity and 19 Constitution.
Don’t forget to do the same to your HP (shown below AC) to max it out.
By default the game chooses Fighter no matter what race you pick. Click it to uncheck it and make other options available. Same for Psionics and elemental Spheres.
4.1. Arcturus
My first character starts as a Male Human Preserver. He chooses Metabolics and starts with 18 HP. After clicking Done, right-click the same box (which will now have a portrait) and click Dual. Choose Thief. After gaining a level (1,250xp), Arcturus will repeat the process on the View Characters screen to dual into Gladiator.
Arcturus starts with a Bone Long Sword, a Sling, and Leather Chest Armor. He will acquire a second Bone Long Sword very soon.
4.2. Bellatrix
My second character starts as a Female Half-Elf Cleric/Psionicist/Thief with the Fire Sphere and 17 HP. As stated, she will perform crucial thieving functions in Wake of the Ravager, so get into the habit of assigning all thievery to her in this game even though at some point all four party members will be able to do equally well at climbing and lockpicking in Shattered Lands.
The only other race that can choose all three classes simultaneously is Elf, but elves get -1 Wisdom, which is not beneficial to a Cleric. No matter which race I choose, I will have to take extra care of Bellatrix. The game’s manual states that dead elves cannot be resurrected, but it doesn’t tell you that the same applies to half-elves too. My druid, Castor, will be able to cast Raise Dead about half way through the game, but will not be able to revive Bellatrix. If she dies, I will have to reload.
Again, contradicting the manual, there are three places in the game where dead elves and half-elves can be resurrected. One is in the Upper Castle: asking the Druid of the Howling Wind for help will revive all dead party members irrespective of race. The second is in the Wyrm Temple after Tanelyv gives you permission to use the healing room. Finally, the genie’s healing before or during the final War does the same.
In my route, the first two will appear quite late in the game and the final War is obviously the endgame.
Bellatrix starts with a Wooden Club, Leather Arm Armor, Leather Chest Armor, and a Leather Shield. Like Arcturus, she will also acquire a Bone Long Sword very soon and replace the Leather Shield with it.
4.3. Castor
My third character starts as a Female Human Thief with 24 HP and Metabolics.
Here’s a trick: Dual-classing will take away some gear that Castor starts with. So after clicking Done, press I to open the inventory and transfer her Bone Long Sword, Sling, and Leather Chest Armor to Arcturus. Press V to return to character creation and right-click to dual-class her into Gladiator. That already raises her maximum HP to 27, and gives her another Bone Long Sword, a Wooden Club, and Leather Arm Armor. (Arcturus as a Preserver only started with a Quarterstaff and a Sling, so we were not too bothered about the gear being changed).
Here’s another trick: You’ll notice that only the maximum HP went up, not the current HP. Before doing anything else, right-click to Edit, DO NOT touch the HP or it will be reduced, click Done, and your current HP will be raised as well. If you do anything else before doing this, you won’t have the option to edit the character.
You can transfer the Leather Chest Armor and Sling back to Castor. Arcturus will equip the Bone Long Sword in his off-hand.
At Gladiator Level 5, Castor will dual into a Druid with the sphere of Water. I’m primarily looking for a little variety between my divine casters; it is perfectly okay to give them both the same sphere, especially since we have eliminated all sphere-imposed gear restrictions and our only consideration now is what spells we get access to. The Water sphere gives me access to Level 4 Blood Flow, increasing my sources of healing (other sources being Metabolics, Cosmos spells, and certain fruits). One consideration is to choose Earth for Ironskin—a fantastic spell—but the other Earth spells are quite low-value.
Castor starts with a Bone Long Sword, a Wooden Club, a Sling, Leather Arm Armor, and Leather Chest Armor because of the trick we employed.
4.4. Dubhe
My final character mimics Castor: starts as a Male Human Thief with 24 HP and Metabolics, performs the same inventory trick, and immediately duals into Gladiator, increasing his HP to 27. His extra Bone Long Sword goes to Bellatrix, who equips it in place of her Leather Shield. At Gladiator Level 5 Dubhe will dual into Preserver.
Dubhe starts with the same equipment as Castor.
This party composition will involve a little painful grinding at the start, especially for Castor and Dubhe. The Gladiator levels they have taken will give them a small amount of extra HP (a little bit more for Dubhe), -1 AC, better THAC0, better APR, and no gear restrictions. You can directly dual them into Druid and Preserver if you wish or, better still, multiclass them with a Fighter to still get most of these benefits.
Once you’ve created all four characters, click on the bottom-right Sun icon, then click Start Game.
5. Saving
Both Dark Sun games allow you up to 10 save slots so that you can save various points of progress separately. However, you can engineer more than 10 slots. After all your slots are filled up, copy all the Save*.sav files and the Darkrun.gff file from your game folder to another location.
If you wish, you can name them according to the labels you assigned to your save slots, but if you do that you will need to rename them back to the correct SaveXX.sav when you want to load them.
To revert to your old saves, copy the files back to the game folder (maybe after backing up your current saves). Thus, you can have an unlimited number of save slots.
6. A Note on XP
While writing and testing this walkthrough, I’ve discovered two things about XP distribution. First is that at various points, the game informs you that a particular player gained a certain amount of XP. Several games do that, so I assumed it wouldn’t be necessary to open the lid and find out what’s actually going on. Turns out, it is not personalized XP at all. Even though one party member earns it, the XP is divided equally among all. As I’ve written a very large part of the walkthrough with tactics involving allocation of XP to certain party members, I will not rewrite those parts (all the more so because that’s what the game claims it does), but you can ignore those peculiarities in my walkthrough while keeping this new-found wisdom in mind.
The second thing about XP is that when dividing across multiclasses, the XP each class gets is never rounded up, always down. That means that whenever Bellatrix will get 500xp, each of her classes will receive only 166xp, totaling to 498xp. It’s not much, but I feel shortchanged.
7. Grinding
As mentioned before, this particular party will benefit from a certain amount of grinding for XP before it can become a steamroller. Of course, it is possible to progress your adventure without grinding at all, especially with different party compositions (say, all multiclassed characters), but the world out there is dangerous and potentially more painful than grinding now.
You start the game in a gladiatorial arena, where you have no choice but to fight monsters of various kinds and capabilities. After you defeat a group of monsters, if you linger around in the arena, more monsters will be thrown at you. Each successive group is usually of increasing difficulty.
Another way to invite trouble is to speak to the Announcer and throw out insults; if you insult him he will send in the next group of monsters, but if you insult the king he will send in the most difficult set of monsters. At initial levels the latter will almost certainly result in death, possibly of the entire party.
You could opt to keep fighting an increasing difficulty of monsters, but a better strategy is to buff up, fight a group or two, go rest in the slave pens, and return to fight another group or two. That way you will mostly get easier groups to fight and have enough buffs to go around, although the XP gain won’t be very quick. When you are more confident in your abilities you can fight for longer in the arena or even opt to insult the announcer and/or king repeatedly—that is not a recommendation though, only an option.
If you manage to kill a mob ‘too quickly’, the announcer will send in a second group of monsters without any provocation. The amount of time you take to kill monsters also influences the amount of gold the spectators throw your way, if any.
The very start of the game will be particularly difficult because you will have access to minimal buffs. The only spellcaster at this point in the game is the Cleric (Bless and Protection from Evil can help) unless you multiclassed all your characters. You will have to depend on psionics mostly (if the game gave you any good ones), and there is always a chance that a particular psionic will not renew in any given round (or even fail to activate when you first cast it). Do use them though, as that could mean a difference between survival and death with no means to revive dead characters. To see what a spell or psionic actually does, right-click its icon. There are some good ones. Ego Whip and Id Insinuation (once you are able to learn them) are particularly good against spellcasters and mountain stalkers. Most party members should have Biofeedback, which will improve your protection and reduce incoming damage.
Details on enemies are in the manual, and I suggest referring to it. Always go for the spellcasters first if you can reach them, either to eliminate them or at least to disable their spellcasting for that round.
I suggest taking all humans to at least level 4 in the last class, and the Cleric/Psionicist/Thief to 5/5/5. Note that this will mean that Castor’s and Dubhe’s Gladiator levels will still be inactive and they will not be able to use some gear; if you want them to be active before leaving the arena and slave pens you will need to grind them to level 6 in Druid and Preserver, respectively.
To selectively grind levels for a particular character without the others because they have reached your intended goal (for example, if the Half-Elf is still behind the others), you can choose to drop the others from the party. On the View Characters or Inventory screen, right-click the portrait and click Drop. Fighting even a small mob with a single character is usually suicide, especially when confronted with a spellcaster or two, so you could create one or two new temporary characters to help you grind, and drop them when you are done.
You can add your original characters back to your party when you are done by right-clicking an empty spot on the View Characters screen and clicking Add. They will return to the party with all their gear, as they were when you dropped them, sans any magical effects (like Bless) that they may have had.
Of course, there is no harm in grinding extra levels for the original party, but if some characters become too powerful (is there such a thing?) you may not feel the full force and tension of the dangers out in the world.