My crusader has weak melee attacks compared to my Blade Dancer and is a weak buffer/healer compared to my casters. His taunting skill doesn't work against bosses making hos high health and armor a bit useless; I suppose I'm just not sure on how to utilize him in boss fights properly.
This is weird if you have been focusing on his melee, his hits should be damn consisstants. By now you should be master swordman or close, and if you have decent-ish perception (attack value boost) he should always hit.
Checking two things: do you hit first with your blade-dancer so that your crusader is never blocked and always manages his taunt, and did you make sure not to put an armor whose attack penalty value you cannot yet counteract? It's better to have a worse armor statwise earlier on because the attack value penalty can be really high.
Also, while right now his light isn't too strong, it will come in time. I suggest you master light with Crusader quickly (for Heal, Party Heal, and Resurrection), as he is the perfect one to do it.
my freemage has been sticking spells in Air (nice low cost but gets resisted a lot) primordial and dark magic. She has a few points in light, but not enough for expert. The idea was to get her to cast damage and utility spells.
Don't give her light, you already have two other characters that can have it. In fact, don't give the runepriest more than expert light before a loooong time.
Your Freemage should hit like a truck with his air spells against the earth elementa bossl- mine did a quarter/third of his life per hit. Wait, you are not still suck with novice air magic right? You have Thunderbolt (expert magic blast single-target spell)?
My biggest problem is leaving all the healing a buffing magic to my rune priest, I should have spread it out over multiple characters. A shame I can't grind out another level or two to rectify that mistake. Then again, I really like the idea of a three caster party so starting over might not be all bad!
Runepriest should do a lot of healing/buffing, but very fast the crusader should pick up the slack with his light magic. While his Celestial Armor won't be as good as the runepriest' for a looong time, it should get quite decent as you level up light magic, and what you want the crusader for is the heals/Resurect, as those are powerful and make sure your party can't die.
Basically, with that party this boss should be one of the easiest of the game, because that boss is weak against air, and because you should have Burning Determination with your runepriest.
This basically means that you can whack him down stupidly fast.
Your battle should go something like:
Runepriest buff while the boss is coming to you (you have two turn, so earth armor spell and burning determination)
Fremage does the shadow clack at that time
Crusader does Celestial Armor just before boss is next to you
In the fight proper:
Bladedancer hit with shatter (if he doesn't have it, have freemage cast Sunder)
Crusader hit with challenge (only AFTER the blade dancer hit, as it will mean it can't be blocked)
Freemage blast with thunderbolt
Runepriest blast with firebolt
Rince and repeat, though in second turn runepriest will probably cast Celestial armor and in the third regen.
