Let's go on a Whale's Voyage! -- Blow it all up! -- Done!

[Crooked Bee]

CONTENTS:

update #0: Intro
update #1: Our party
update #2: Interface basics
update #3: Castra, a planet of trash, lost kinds, and fire hydrants
update #4: Castra, Part 2: Hearts! Compass! Shrinking!
update #5: Lapis: Of Hearts and Traitors
update #6: Inoid
update #7: Lapis to Nedax: Revolution, ho!
update #8: Nedax: Aqua and Necth
update #9: Back to Lapis: Oops
update #10: Sky Boulevard
update #11: Louis 17: Vibrators and Red Sardines
update #12: Mothership Zeta
update #13: Kill Them All and Blow It All Up

Yet another solid Amiga RPG that failed to make a splash on the PC, Whale's Voyage recounts the voyages of the Whale, a curiously-named spacecraft, as its crew make a frantic effort to return to Earth. The game puts a new twist on character creation, as you can not only adjust the statistics each of your 4 crew members, but also the "mutation rate" which enhance their abilities but make them more susceptible to diseases. It's a fun space trading / exploration RPG that recalls Planet's Edge but with more emphasis on trading than combat.

Hello again, my dear readers! I bet those of you who've been following either of my two other LPs -- 2400 A.D. or Dark Heart of Uukrul -- have been expecting me to instantly go back to Uukrul after beating 2400 A.D., and rest assured I will go back to it; in fact, the next update will be up in a couple of days. BUT. I've been feeling really bored in the last few days and didn't feel like doing the real-life assignments I really had to do, so now it's payback time -- I'll have to spend this weekend working my little ass off. To make that routine a bit more bearable, I've decided to start this thread. I hereby declare a mega-LP-project -- an LP of Whale's Voyage and, hopefully, Whale's Voyage II: Die Übermacht -- started, yay! As always, I make no promises regarding the update rate or general fate of this LP.



To me, the only reason to replay Whale's Voyage, a sci-fi space-trading sim/RPG hybrid, is nostalgia. I first played the game, if my memory isn't playing tricks on me, in 1996; it came on an "unofficial" CD containing also, among other things, the German version of Whale's Voyage 2: Die Übermacht. I played both games extensively back then and liked them a lot, even if, being too young, I most probably didn't beat them. Since then, I haven't replayed them -- in fact, I totally forgot about their existence until someone mentioned the game here on the Codex not long ago (was it Black Cat? or Fowyr?) -- and I'm not really sure the game holds up well gameplay-wise. And having now read a Home of the Underdogs user review of the game, I am in fact pretty sure it does not. Still, Whale's Voyage is certainly atmospheric, and the character generation mechanics is one of the most elegant (if wacky) I've ever encountered, so why not give the series a spin? A slow, really slow spin. To satisfy Fowyr, Azira, torpid, and other faithful followers of my Uukrul LP, I swear I'll be making two or more Uukrul updates for every single update of this new LP.

In Whale's Voyage, your goal is simple: to get back home. No epic Shepperds here, for better or for worse. There is a "galactic twist" to the story, but it's more of a side-thing, a means to your own, very personal end. To accomplish your goal, you need, first, to make money and, second, to battle enemy spaceships (yup, this game has space combat) as well as regular on-ground enemies in a familiar RPG fashion. Both space and land combat are turn-based, iirc, and the planet exploration is done in first-person view. (You can check out the screenshots on Mobygames if you want to.) There is some degree of complexity to the game: there are diseases, weapons need magazines, the Whale -- your spaceship -- consumes fuel, some goods need to be refrigerated in order to be preserved, and for that, you'll need to upgrade your ship with a refrigerator device, etc. Oh, and you start out poor, really short on money. Also, according to the manual, there are 6 planets in total -- not many, of course -- but different planets have different looks, which creates a nice atmosphere, and whenever you choose a planet to explore, you are given a planet description, in a manner which most of you will find familiar from the Mass Effect space action series.
Another nice twist on the beaten RPG exploration mechanics present in this game is, you must assign "duties" to each character in your party, to choose if that character will be a Leader, a Scout, a Closer, a Targeter, a Merchant, a Weigher, a Joker, or a User. More on that later, as we start exploring. Naturally, a character can end up dead, in which case he can be resurrected -- for a price.

Your background story is no less simple than your goal: it looks like you, a crew of four, have bought a new ship to get home to Earth on; but you've been cheated, the ship is falling apart and running out of fuel. So what do you do now? Trade and fight, fight and trade! Rinse and repeat.

Background Story:

"Hey, Mike! Look at this!" John shouted to his friend. "There's some sort of liquid running out of the wall!"
"This ship really is a pile of rust!" replied his chum in horror.
"Looks like machine oil, kids," announced Frank, dipping his finger in the viscous, dark-brown liquid and testing it against his tongue.
"Ugh! It's oil from the hyperdrives," he confirmed, spitting out the trial drop disgustedly.
"Keep out of the hold unless you want another nasty shock," came a voice from the aft end of the ship. It was Sven, the fourth in the party.

To understand why these four are so agitated, we need to look a little further into the past - when they scraped together what little money they had, to buy themselves an impressive but remarkably cheap second-hand spaceship, a freighter to be precise. But as they later realised, their purchase was not quite the bargain they thought.

And now the helpless crew are marooned in a ship which is falling apart, at the end of the galaxy in a distant star system far beyond Earth. They are drifting in orbit around the planet Castra, as they can't afford the price of fuel ...

Whale's Voyage is a sci-fi RPG, and no sci-fi game can do without a clichéd political background -- you know, to set the context and all that. So here it is.

Political Background:

After the Great Revolution on Irada in the year 2291 by the Terran calendar, the war between humans and Iradians came to an abrupt end. Freedom had a beneficial effect on all the races involved. After more than a century, the enslaved Sanxons were able to form their own government again. The Iradian military class and the dictatorship which existed with their support were completely eliminated. Within 3 years, the Iradian Empire evolved into a democracy on the model of the United Continents. With Earth supplying economic assistance and waiving claims to war reparation, it took less than a decade to establish a free market and working democracy.

In 2035 the newly-established Union of Democratic Economies (UDE) decided to unify interstellar trade and form a new organistaion which would combine all known races into a single huge market. This Cosmic League, as it became known, set out to help the poorer populations such as the Iradians and Rexantas, by means of a single currency and universal manufacturing standards. Each planetary system was assigned a Central Government responsible directly to the League. These centres were combined in a federal fashion so that each could pass laws which would be binding on all members while within the respective planetary system. These laws and the results of their application were reviewed annually by General Inspectors from the League and corrected where necessary.

As time went by, the Cosmic League gradually acquired more and more power, with the result that on 1/1/2371 the League amalgamated with the governments of the separate Empires with the aim of forming an overall union. In the framework of this organisation, the terrestrial solar system had lost its central position, as Sol was located at the edge of one of the spiral arms of the galaxy. The government and the League's headquarters moved to a planet which had hitherto been uninhabited and was known simply as Z-1.

Some years later an experiment was started on Earth to re-establish the natural cycles of atmospheric regeneration. Since 2087 work had been in progress to cleanse the air and correct the oxygen deficiency resulting from the imbalance of the biomass. By the application of a new process given the name Genesis II, it was envisaged that the natural proportions of oxygen and C02 breathers would be restored over a 50 years period.

There is no introductory cutscene in Whale's Voyage -- in contrast to Whale's Voyage 2 -- there are only credits. There is a brief cutscene-like intro on the CD version of the game; I'll post it later. After the intro you choose a New game...



...and proceed to a character creation screen. And it is here that you, dear readers, can come into play! But let's go through the process first as I explain things to you. The character creation is pretty fun in this game, even though your initial reaction will probably be WTF IS THIS SHIT or something not far removed from that.



So yeah. You think those above are male character portraits? Well, think again! The thing is, when you choose to Create a character, you are indeed requested to choose from among those portraits. But the quirk is, you choose not your character, but...



...his or her father!
Once you've chosen one, you then proceed to choose...



...yeah, you've got it right, his or her mother! Once you've done so -- well, a baby appears! And you are the baby.



The sex is, from what I've gathered, chosen randomly; or maybe it is fixed depending on the mother and the father you choose, I don't really know. The thing is, when you choose the parents, you don't yet know the sex of the child; oh those Germans Austrians, they really have a weird sense of humour.
Now you must choose a name for the baby; I choose "Test subject" as it is kinda appropriate given the circumstances. And now the real part begins.



The baby is (in part randomly, in part depending on the parents) given certain stats AND a "mutate ratio". The stats aren't explained in the manual, but they are supposed to be self-explanatory, I guess. There are, as you can see, six attributes: Strength, Intelligence, Speed, Mental Energy, Skillfulness, and Health. Our Test Subject is clearly a born "mental" character, with high Intelligence and Mental Energy, but her Strength isn't too bad either, really.

The trickiest part here is, however, the Actual Mutate Ratio, which is 8 for this character (this number also changes from character to character). You can add these 8 points to any of the character's initial stats to improve them, but there is a MAJOR drawback to spending all the mutate points! Let me quote the manual.

The screen will now show the child's most important character features. You can select these by moving up and down and introduce mutations into them by moving left and right.

The gene for each character feature in the DNA will be shifted as you cause it to mutate: the greater the mutation, the more it will shift. The number of mutations you can perform is shown in the top text field against the MUTATION RATE. The advantage of mutations is that the crew member becomes stronger in one or more sides of his character. However, there is a drawback which should not be taken lightly: the greater the mutations, the weaker the genes become, which makes the character more susceptible to diseases which crop up in the course of the game.

The more points you spend, the more will your character be susceptible to diseases. That is, strengthening the character in her attributes means weakening her in another very important aspect.

That done, you proceed to the next screen, in which you must choose a Primary School the character will attend:



For every character, you are given a story of her childhood (see the top part of the screenshot), which imposes certain limitations on or, on the contrary, opens up new perspectives for the character's education. In this case our dear Test Subject certainly had a pretty bad and unhappy childhood; she's poor and low-class, and so can't enter the two greyed-out primary schools.

After this you can choose an education for your character. You can select one of six schools and one of six colleges. However, not every character is automatically admitted to every school or college: this depends on certain qualifying values, which can be seen as a sort of "entrance examination".

The available primary schools are as follows:

GENERAL PRIMARY SCHOOL: In this school the character is given a general all-round education and taught a broad range of subjects.

SPACE EDUCATION CAMP: This camp gives the child and education oriented towards space travel.

BASIC MILITARY TRAINING: In this school, military training comes first: the child will be taught to be a soldier and warrior.

STREETKID CHILDHOOD: The School of Life is not really a school at all: the child simply spends its youth roaming the city streets, gets to know life in the gutter, and becomes "streetwise".

CYBERTECH MENTAL SCHOOL: This offers the child the chance to develop his mind and advance his mental powers.

NAGIKAMURA GAKKO: This Japanese school provides a basic education centred on chemistry.

The important thing here is that every school improves certain stats of the character; the exact outcome for each school isn't described in the manual, so you must simply rely on common sense depending on the direction you want the character development to take.
Then you must choose a high school/university:



Here, some options are again greyed out depending on your stats, childhood, as well as the primary school you chose to go to earlier. Choosing a high school means choosing the character's profession, which is the most important thing as it determines his or her character class.

MILITARY ACADEMY (or BATTLE ACADEMY): On Completing his course at this college, the character will be a fully trained soldier and will have developed special combat abilities.
Class: SOLDIER

HOODSON MEDICINE SCHOOL: This college trains its students to become doctors and also teaches them to handle mental energy.
Class: MEDIC

ARANIAN MONASTIC SCHOOL: Graduates from this establishment are warrior monks, not only capable of using weapons to excellent effect, especially in hand-to-hand fighting, but also the ability to use special mental powers.
Class: MONK

PSI SCIENCE INSTITUTE: This college gives its students complete control over the mind. Students learn how to use their mental energy and graduate as psionic initiates.
Class: PSIONICIAN

CHEMISTRY UNIVERSITY: Here, students are trained as biochemists, with a wide knowledge of the elements and composition of different planets and systems.
Class: BIOCHEMIST

BOUNTY HUNTERS' GUILD: The last college is run by the Bounty Hunters' Guild, and only accepts the best-qualified candidates, as the students are trained as rugged fighters.
Class: BOUNTY HUNTER

Meaning there are six available classes in total: Soldier, Medic, Monk, Psionician, Biochemist, and Bounty Hunter. The party only has four characters, however, meaning you can't have everything at once.

I've chosen the Cybertech Mental School and then the Psi Science Institute for our Test Subject, and she has turned out to be a pretty capable psionician:



Her speed, however, is very low, as are her skilfullness and health; her health is in fact a little too low, I'd say. That would probably have been different had we chosen a different primary school for her, say, the General Primary School or even a streetkid childhood.

And now it's ----

 

[Crooked Bee]

RECRUITING TIME!!

Anyone can participate!

The crew should be put together very carefully so that you have a strong team later in the game. As you only have four characters, but there are six different professions, the right selection can be very important. Each of the professions has its own strong points, so it is important to build up four different characters with four different professions. Furthermore it is not a bad idea, as a rule, to include one character who is physically strong and one who is superior to the others in mental terms.

One position is reserved for Black Cat, as I promised that to her, and I hope she will indeed want to join our adventures. Which means there are three vacant positions in the party which YOU can fill! (I'm not participating myself, as that would mean reducing the number of recruits to two, which is meh; however, if anyone wants to pick a father and a mother for a character named Bee, I certainly wouldn't mind. ) Overall, I will need two "mental" characters and two "physical" ones for my party -- which means I'll chose the three best ones from among all the recruits, and provided some recruits will be equally good, I'll choose among the equal ones randomly. This way even those who are late get a chance to join our space adventures.

If there are those who want to participate, of course. So yeah, folks, sign up!

--------------------------------------------------

Given that the character generation procedure is very choice-driven, things aren't really simple. So here's how you should proceed when volunteering:

Step 1. Choose a father and a mother
You can, uhm, breed together an alien and a human, but that means producing monstrous half-breeds, really awfully-looking ones to boot, so I advise you against that. Knowing this is the Codex, however...

Step 2. Choose two names for a character: name if a boy and name if a girl
The two names must be no more than 12 characters each.

Step 3. Choose if you want to spend mutation points or not, and if yes, then how many and whether on general attributes like Health and Skilfullness, or on class-specific attributes
Remember that the more mutation points you spend, the more susceptible to diseases your character is. You can choose to spend a specific number of points (say, 2) or give a vague indication, like "none", "less than half", "more than half", or "spend them ALL! I wanna be a mutie!". You can be as specific as you want here. Naturally, if you choose to invest mutation points in class-specific attributes, which those will be depends on the initial stats and the class of your character.

Step 4. Choose 3 primary schools and 3 corresponding high schools, in order of priority -- in other words, choose THREE PAIRS of primary school/high school
Why three? Because 1. your character may be a "mental" or a "physical" one, so you must choose a primary school and a secondary school for both cases, plus 2. there's always the option of, say, being poor and thus not being able to enter the university of your choice, so there must be an option to fall back on. Choosing a high school means choosing your class, so read the school descriptions carefully! Nothing else is explained in the manual, so there's no further info I can give you. The choice of both a primary and a high school IMPROVES YOUR STATS in a certain way -- depending on the schools you've chosen; that's why not only the high school, but also the primary school is very important. Bear that in mind!
You can be as specific as you want here; if you aren't specific enough, I'll tweak your choices depending on the circumstances.

I'm not in a hurry, and will wait for volunteers for a few days. Then I will choose among the volunteers -- there will be randomness involved, of course -- and post the resulting party! If there are no volunteers, I will create the party myself, of course.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Now with added soundtrack!

Let's listen to Whale's Voyage:
A Child is Born
The Whale's Scream
Boot Music
Fantasy
Painful Emptiness
It's Battle Time!
Space Battle
NEO Title Remix
Lost Spaceship
Castra
Lapis
Arboris
Nedax
Inoid
Louis 17
Sky Boulevard
The Bomb is Started

 

[Crooked Bee]

Reserved for whatever

 

[dextermorgan]

Wohoo, me first!

Dad: Second from left
Mom: First from left

I'm unsure how to choose from there because I don't know the stats of the resulting child.

Halp?

 

[Azira]

I'll play along!

Father:  #2 from left
Mother:  #3 from right

Boy: Pariah
Girl: Azira (seeing as it's actually a girls name, only learnt this several years after I started using it as my nick..)

Mutation points: Yes, spend a few. Less than half. Use it to improve skilfulness/mental energy.

Primary schools:
Cybertech Mental
Space Education
Basic Military

High schools:
Hoodson Medicine
Aranian Monastic
Bounty Hunter

 

[Crooked Bee]

Wohoo, me first!

Dad: Second from left
Mom: First from left

I'm unsure how to choose from there because I don't know the stats of the resulting child.

Halp?

That's the idea: the process is kinda supposed to be random, for variety's sake.

Just indicate your general priorities. You can say, for instance: if my character is a girl, I'll name her X; if a boy, Y. If she has high Intelligence, she should go to General Primary School and then Medical School; if she has high Strength, blah blah. You can be, or not be, as specific as you want. Unfortunately, since there's randomness involved, I can't really guide you step-by-step as I can't save the game mid-way through the character creation.

So just follow the indicated steps, and make any comments on your priorities if you feel like it. (And if nothing good comes out of it, I'll apply some tweaks.)

EDIT. See Azira's post above for a possible example.

 

[grotsnik]

C'est charmant!

I'll take the mysterious father, shrouded in shadow, on the far right and the Hillary Clinton lookalike fourth from the left.

Boy: Grotley
Girl: Grotsnetta

A mutation or two, please. This falling-apart ship's got to have some serious radiation problems.

Streetkid Childhood
Cybertech Mental School
Nagikamura Gakko

Bounty Hunter's Guild
PSI Science Institute
Chemistry University (those chemists really could do with a better name.)

 

[dextermorgan]

That's the idea: the process is kinda supposed to be random, for variety's sake. ...

Gotcha. Was in a rush to reserve a spot so I guess I kind of skimmed through your post

Taking a cue from Azira.

Dad: #2 from left
Mom: #1 from left

Boy: Dex
Girl: Dax

Mutation: Barely human if boy, perfect human if girl

Career: Depending on stats, either Military (Military Training - Battle Academy), Chemistry (Nagikamura Gakko - Chemistry University) or Psi (Street Kid - Psi Science)

Feel free to modify if you see fit though.

 

[Mrowak]

Hope I'm gonna make it:

Father: 1st from left (that alien thingie)
Mother: 3rd from right

Boy: Mrowaksu
Girl: Alais

Mutation points: spend a few to make up for any weakness, or to make the char the best medic possible. Spend no more than 6 points - 3 points for balancing out, 3 points for specialisation. I don't know which stats are optimal for Medic so it's your call.

Primary school:
NAGIKAMURA GAKKO - for chemistry. I hope it is relevant for medic class.
SPACE EDUCATION CAMP
STREETKID CHILDHOOD

College:
HOODSON MEDICINE SCHOOL
CHEMISTRY UNIVERSITY
PSI SCIENCE INSTITUTE

Prefered class: MEDIC

 

[Kz3r0]

Alien with alien.
Diamanda if a girl, Deimos if a boy.
Cybertech or Nagikamura as primary school.
Psi Science or Chemistry university.
All mutation point, 2 intelligence, 2 mental energy, 3 health, 1 speed.

 

[Orgasm]

Holy shit! Downloading right now. Fucking alien basterds crew!
I hope its not a completely shit game.



Girl: Orgasm (can you reroll to make it a girl?)

Father: right most daddy
Mother: right most alien mommy

Mutation points: Spend all to make it a sickly and powergamy (you should know what stats matter) killing machine!

Primary schools:
Basic Military
Streetkid Childhood
Cybertech Mental School

High schools:
Military Academy
Bounty Hunters Guild
Psi Science Institute

 

[Orgasm]

Can someone point me to the german iso of the first game?
Found the second part on Undergroun Gaymer with 1 seed...

eidt

Found it as part of Gold Games 1 compilation. Sweet.

 

[Trash]

Man, I played this one for ages back in the 90's. Loved the whole sci-fi angle. Looking forward to the LP. I distinctly remember not getting that far into it back then.

EDIT: Damn, there was a sequel?

 

[Cassidy]

Father: rightmost
Mother: Second one at the left, the blonde with an officer's cap or something.

Boy: Kingcomrade
Girl: Kaiserin

Mutation points: three quarters of them. Easy to get sick but not that much

Primary School:

Space Education
Basic Military Education
Streetkid Childhood

High School:

Bounty Hunters' Guild
Military Academy
Aranian Monastic School

 

[Crooked Bee]

I hope its not a completely shit game.

Well, I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.

Whale's Voyage II is usually said to be better than the first part, so you may want to skip the first and get straight to the second game, which you can download here (Win3.1 version, German): http://www.lauppert.ws/files/win16/256/wv2win.zip

EDIT.

EDIT: Damn, there was a sequel?

Yup, but it remains untranslated into English. There is an English-language patch for the Amiga version though, provided you can be arsed to bother with all that emulation business.

 

[lightbane]

Hm, sounds like fun, lemme try:

Name: Gesitch (if male) ; Nyx (if tra... Eer, female)

Father: The 3rd one, starting counting from the left
Mother: The one with a hat

Use half of mutation points, use these to maximize his/her strengths

Primary education:

Space education
Basic military school training
Cybertech mental school

Secondary education:

Aranian monastic school
Bounty hunter's guild
Military academy

 

[MMXI]

Name
Dr. KillCrazy

Father
Number 2

Mother
Number 4

Attributes
2+ Strength
2+ Intelligence
2+ Speed
2+ Mental Energy
2+ Skilfulness
2+ Health

If there are more than 2 mutation points remaining after getting each attribute to at least 2, put points into intelligence until there are 2 mutation points left.

Primary School
1) General Primary School
2) Nagikamura Gakko
3) Streetkid Childhood

High School
1) Chemistry University
2) Aranian Monastic School
3) Bounty Hunter Society

 

[Cenobyte]

Father: #2
Mother: #3

Names:
Male: Codexer
Female: Tranny

Use up to 1/2 of available mutation points

Primary eduction:
1) General Primary School
2) Basic Military Training
3) Space Eduction Camp
Secondary education:
1) Battle Academy
2) Bounty Hunter Society
3) Aranian Monastic School

Never heard of this game before, no idea if my choices are viable or not. I'll try to follow this LP

 

[Crooked Bee]

Cool, 10 volunteers!

Recruitment will remain open for one more day, and then I'll post the results. So if someone still wants to jump on the space adventuring wagon and enter the competition for a place in our Codexian party, by all means go ahead! The rules are explained in the second post of this thread.

EDIT. After messing around with DosBox, I was finally able to get the CD version of the game running today, which has a short intro (of a sort) which I'll post next time alongside the character creation.

 

[Johannes]

Rightmost dad, 3rd from left mama.

Name's Johannes for a boy, Johanna for girl

Spend 6 mutations if available, 2 skillfulness, 2 intelligence, 1 health, 1 to mental. If less are available, 1 to each of those stats.

Space Education camp > Nagikamura Gakko > General Primary

Hoodson Medicine > Chemistry University > Monastic School.

 

[spekkio]

Father: 2nd from the left
Mother: 3rd from the left

Name: Darryl
Woman: Carrie



Mutation points: spend 50% on Mental Energy and Skilfulness

PS:

Cybertech Mental School
Streetkid Childhood
General Primary School

HS:

Psi Science Institute
Bounty Hunters' Guild
Aranian Monastic School

 

[korenzel]

Here's another recruit :

Name : Korenzel (male)/ Lezka (female)

Father : Third from left
Mother : First from left

Pure human breed (no mutation at all).

Nagikamura Gakkou -> Chemistry University
Basic Military Training -> Aranian Monastic School
CyberTech Mental School -> Psi Science Institute

 

[Fowyr]

Every time I wanted to play this game, something happened. Corrupted archive, badly ripped version, death of HDD...

Looks like interesting game.

To satisfy Fowyr, Azira, torpid, and other faithful followers of my Uukrul LP, I swear I'll be making two or more Uukrul updates for every single update of this new LP.

You better to! ;-) BTW, your progress in DHoU is very impressive, especially compared to my snail's pace.

 

[Crooked Bee]

---- RECRUITMENT CLOSED

Oh-kay, I have a couple of hours free now, so I guess I'll start fiddling with character creation. Given that there are only 4 places in the party and 13 volunteers already willing to fill those places (Black Cat is MIA, so we'll have to start without her), I guess it's reasonable to declare the recruitment closed.

The process of choosing the party will be as follows:
1. First I'll randomly choose two physical and two intelligent professions for our party, say A, B, C and D.
2. Then I'll create a list of those who have volunteered for profession A and randomly choose three of them; among those three, I'll see who he is fit for the profession and who is not given the inborn stats. If there's more than one fit, I'll again choose randomly.
3. Repeat for professions B, C, D.
4. Profit.

Stay tuned for the results!

UPDATE 1. And the professions for our party are: Bounty Hunter / Monk / Biochemist / Psionician.
I'm slightly worried we don't have a Medic or a Soldier in the party, but oh well, whatever.

Now onto rolling...