Perhaps to augment the other challanges you must start your character stats really low, rather then rolling all 14s, you must have all of your stats below say 9. Basically rather then having this as a challenge on its own, you do this additionaly to one of the others.

So if you choose to do pauper, you can augment the difficulty by +1 - if you have all stats below 9 (and im sure more bragging rights).

Could be abit nuts, but i guess thats what challenges are for

or use your points to make every stat 14 at the most.

Hmmm, this is very interesting. Here are some proposals:

Modifiers to Challenge Games:
You may take the following modifiers to challenge games, which increase or decrease the difficulty level (on the emoticon scale).

Arrived on the Short Bus: All starting attributes must be 9 or less (+1 difficulty)
Idiot Savant: All starting attribute points must be placed in 1 value only (+1 difficulty)

...and so forth. Thoughts?

As long as it isn't Perception. A common strategy is to get Perception up as far as possible to the start for Mage types. It decreases difficulty, if anything.

I haven't heard anyone talk about doing the same with Endurance, but I would similarly disqualify Endurance for this challenge nonetheless.

I agree. Also, on the endurance point, if you want to try and beat the game as 'pauper', my opinion is that the best build may well be a warrior (to get the swords 1 by default) with maximised endurance at level 1 and then a focus on pumping it up to around 40 quite quickly. HP, unlike MP, don't need any skills to maximise their effectiveness.

Is a Pauper allowed to use skill trainers? The description doesn't seem to disallow them, but they would make the challenge significantly easier.

Survivorman is realitively easy, too. After all you have to do is run to Blackwater while first/second level. AT least the way it is written. I think maybe this should be clarified to state while following the story path. Because then you would not get there until after Lilith.

When I did this (running to Blackwater first thing) I needed a potion of Haste to make it through one particular group of thugs / mercenaries. I would be pretty impressed if you could make it without a similar purchased boost, excepting getting lucky and finding one.

that is easy. Run to border town, or darkford, let the towns people do most of the killing. That is how I did it getting over there at low level.

There is no town (and hence no villagers) in the map which I am referring to. I certainly made full advantage of this when stopping in Bordertown, but the Barrea Mercenary and his group are much harder to avoid.

oh I know you cannot avoid them. You just have to keep a head of them after that first hit you get. It is sometimes easier to move one square at a time to avoid too much damage when manuvering in close by them.

Magic without weapons was pretty easy.

Just to keep it a challenge I only learned meditation and elemental (through trains - I learned other skills with gold).

I never touched a weapon or had any weapon training. And once again Destroyer was pretty simple to achieve.

I wonder if its actually possible to 'max' the skills? - My highest skill so far is sword - 30 something last time I checked..

In "The Shadow" challenge, does 'cats eyes' count as a light source?
And i only used that in the Gloomful Obi-whatever. Since it was pitch black.

My Ranger slept during the day and hunted at night, since he had high
'hide in shadows' and 'move silently'

On my fifth attempt at the game (I play roguelike - I dies, I starts again), without even meaning to. Specialised everything into being a mana-battery:

Stats just prior to "good" ending, as druidic magick user, level 17:

str 10 int 30
dex 10 wis 27
end 11 perc 28
spd 10 conc 26

skills of notice:

alch 7 (up to 13 with two romb; not that this was needed much since imbuing and potions weren't necessary given character could suck in air and breath fire)
div 12 [eq. buffed]
ele 41 (!) [eq. buffed]
med 39 (!) [eq. buffed]

Character was a mana-battery, was able to fireball / atmosphere compress / deep freeze mods as necessary without having to take much of a rest, especially outside. Never (dared) use a weapon when magick skills were so good in comparison. Enemy resistance against elemental, whilst occasionally annoying, was no major setback. In addition, resistance against magick at 79% and against elements at 81% sure made those eyeballs think again, as well as those ghosty thingies.

Anyway, no melee used there. Job done.

Best,

S.

[edit: -- Oops, just noticed similar post just one above mine! D'oh! Oh well, guess this proves how easy it is!]