My personnal thoughts on NS4 characters

[sep caldessian]

excellent advice in that post. thanks!

[TC-GTRF]

Excellent advice. I've been doing both party play and solo, and I have to say that the difficulty of the game drops *drastically* with even a party of three.

For those of you who are having trouble getting into parties, here are some options that you might consider:

With the number of Mages out there that take advantage of Fighter-types' low saves, consider billing yourself as a counterspelling sorcerer. With a very high CHA and Dispels in your Spells-known slot, you can counter whatever the enemy mage is tossing so that your Melee partners can knock them down.

Since healing potions are now 5 times what they cost a few days ago, it is very hard to buy enough to supply you with enough to explore new areas successfully. The Cleric with Healing Domain is now *incredibly* useful. Take another suitable Domain and hang around town looking for folks who come in to sell their booty. If I'm in town and see a Cleric hanging around, they're hired.

Bards/Bard multiclass can buff an entire party, and even melee a bit when they have to. Very valuable. If paired with a melee fighter, rogues can flank and sneak, just like in the old days. A Rogue/SD combo becomes very, very valuable, and can own a Mage if they don't have True Sight up.

And last but not least, one Druid is an asset, two Druids are a regiment, four Druids are an Army.

Pick Leatherworking as a craft. You can make and sell Bandages, Belts of CON, Gloves of STR, as well as Hide Armor.

Often, if I'm exploring, I'll check a person I meet with the radial menu. If a person soloing is not already in a party, and they show up as better than Easy and lower than Impossible, I ask them into my party and most of the time, they accept.

This is not NS_3. You can't solo it. If you succeed in soloing it, it means that the designers didn't anticipate what you did, and my bet is that they'll fix how you did it so no one can do it again.

One thing about losing XP. If you are soloing, and get to an area above your level, you're going to get killed and lose your level X 500. If you are partied, you won't get as much as if you *successfully* soloed it, but you will get more than killing rats and won't die. Net gain.

TC

Ariel DeVane of the Northern Coalition
Fragg the Barbarian, Mercenary Rules Lawyer

[AndrewCarr]

at roughly lvl10-12 the ogres near avendell are great solo xp. I'd hate to go thru there with a party. On the other hand, if you have a party you can go kill giants for the same xp, usually about the same speed, and better items. So it seems to balance out.

[Chimaira]

Radpro, i have just channeled all of my negative energy into a creative solution and discovered how to build a char that counters all other chars.
Yes Im quite proud of it myself, its a pure NS4 build, gone is the old gimped min/max 28 pally/2 bard/10 RDD that solod G1 with a YDB.
Ok is everyone ready?
just 1 sec....
almost....
yes....
just another sec....
Phanta the bigby lover! An auto still/quicken spell sorcerer.
at lvl 40 this little build will feature mad abilities never shown before: DC 45 wail, 70+ AC, 680 HP.
*coff*
Now dont tell me Im being negative.
Im merely being realistic.
YES Im being realistic in a fantasy DnD game, god im a nerd.
Every half decent PvPer knows that min/max chars are the key to winning in PvP, that mage build is one of them after all. You wont start out with biowares leet suggestion of 10 strength, 14 con, 16 charisma, 14 dex, 12 int and 10 wisdom if you know how to make a PvP build mage. My solution for all problems you stated an average fighter runs into is: Be a spellcaster.
Everyone can be stubborn and say its the builds that are weak. Pretty funny how every single spellcaster pretty much knows what a good build is and that everyone playing a fighter is a newbie. Not to mention the coincidence(god I hate spelling that word)
Im a die hard solo player, as long as I play a cleric, bard, paladin, sorcerer, wizard or druid I can have fun the way I want. But if I want to have my fun soloing as a fighter then I guess the decision has been made by a higher power that I shall not have fun alone as a fighter, because I have been subjected to the will of the gods which means I must party with a spellcaster in order to survive.

[TC-GTRF]

In an ideal situation, even the Spellcasters will have to party in order to survive.

I'm pretty sure I can make a melee mage-killer, even with the current situation. It'll be a great deal easier with the summonses reduced in power and the removal of the "protective armor-type spells" stacking.

Had a situation last night in Daeron where a mid-level mage got into the Merchant's area. He appeared Impossible to my 7th level melee character. Did I rush in and get nailed? No. While the Daeron guards engaged him, I moved to the other side of the square, outside of AoE range of most spells and started shooting him with arrows. Even though the arrows were only doing minimal damage with his DR, every time one hit him for a point or more, he had to make a Concentration check, and he had spell failure. If he targeted me with a damage spell, the guards would be striking him for damage. The only reason that he survived as long as he did was that he had a half-dozen Heal potions with him.

NS_3 was dependent on equipment. NS_4 is going to be dependent on INT, mostly on the player, but also in the characters.

[Chimaira]

Well reducing elemental shield and mestils so they do like 8 damage and last 6 seconds isnt gonna create that "Ideal" situation.

[TC-GTRF]

Well reducing elemental shield and mestils so they do like 8 damage and last 6 seconds isnt gonna create that "Ideal" situation.

Good start.

[Æ]

All I can say is the Dev;s are really overlooking one big thing in their new philosophy...

Some classes, mainly fighters and barbarians, still depend on having the right gear available to them, and, even in the original single player game, have to have certain equipment advantages to keep their characters in the running.

You can say character builds shouldn't depend on items as much as you want, and I don't disagree, but some classes cannot help but to depend on those things and shouldn't have to multiclass just to make up for the right gear not being provided to them.

Which is another reason that mages and other classes that don't need physically defensive gear because of their buff spells and other abilities shouldn't have the same defensive gear as the warrior classes. If you sent an e-mail to the blackisle developers and asked about this, I guarantee that they would tell you that the fighter and barbarian classes are classes that depend on class specific gear and they designed the game to provide better armor and weapons and things to those classes.

And no I'm not looking to have one character to rule them all, just that it the warrior classes shouldn't be useless and there should be real advantages to remaining pure class as well (not just no xp penalty) or everyone is going to be a bunch of hodge-podge mixed-up multiclass characters that can do everything and who knows what they are?

And, I repeat, it's just a matter of time before there's nothing but solo-playing mages like Axon running around and then you won't have the party-based, rich multi-class world you dev's are trying to make. I think you're losing sight of the goal. If you want people to play different classes and have a varied world, you have to provide equal incentives for playing each class. And you can say that the game was designed to give the casting classes more power as much as you want, but the game wasn't designed mainly for PvP, if it was, it would be more balanced. And if the dev's want to creat a fair PvP environment, they are going to have to make changes to balance the classes like every other PvP or arena server.

I would suggest to every player, DM and Dev in Neversummer to go play a few rounds in Ancient Rage or NWTactics arena servers, and get more of a feel for all-out PvP team-play and how it tends to work. It would also do two other things for the players... get them used to thinking fast and using strategy with weaker characters than they may be used to... and get them used to being killed by other players and being a good sport sometimes (like maybe saying "good fight" even if you lose) [a side point about this: there is almost always special gear available for pure class warriors in PvP servers... everyone knows they need an advantage in the item department to make up for having less abilities than other classes... which is why I still can't believe that people deny the need for fighters and barbs to have better gear... melee is the strength of the class and they should be equipped for it, with better armor and weapons than the characters who aren't always on the FRONT LINE]

[TC-GTRF]

All I can say is the Dev;s are really overlooking one big thing in their new philosophy...

Some classes, mainly fighters and barbarians, still depend on having the right gear available to them, and, even in the original single player game, have to have certain equipment advantages to keep their characters in the running.

You can say character builds shouldn't depend on items as much as you want, and I don't disagree, but some classes cannot help but to depend on those things and shouldn't have to multiclass just to make up for the right gear not being provided to them.

Which is another reason that mages and other classes that don't need physically defensive gear because of their buff spells and other abilities shouldn't have the same defensive gear as the warrior classes. If you sent an e-mail to the blackisle developers and asked about this, I guarantee that they would tell you that the fighter and barbarian classes are classes that depend on class specific gear and they designed the game to provide better armor and weapons and things to those classes.

No, no, no. Fighters are *not* designed to be equipment dependent. Fighters are designed to be *Feat* dependent. It is their versatility that is supposed to keep them alive, not any armor or weapon.

By the same token, Barbarians are designed to be high-hitpoint raging tanks. When they're provided Uber-gear like in the HoTU campaign they can't use some of their Rage feats because there's a cap of +12 on STAT increases. They're designed to raise their STATs *without* Uber items.

Both classes are designed to be Vulnerable to Will saves.

If Melee characters were designed to be Equipment dependent, the majority of items found in drops in the Bioware campaigns would be designed for Fighters to use instead of evenly distributed across the classes.

And, by the way, I have no intention of ever playing a solo-class Mage in NS_4, and I imagine I am going to do JUST fine.

[Chimaira]

Billy the Fighter: "Well now im going to get my feat of immune to all magic, so i wont die when Fred wiz points his finger at me."

Nice try at making sense, even tho that leet feat of +2 fort saves isnt gonna do much. How do fighters put feats to use? By chosing weapon specialization for instance. When a fighters +2 damage from weapon specialization is absorbed by damage resistance and immunity, then you would think people would understand. *sigh*

[Æ]

I must be the only one who played the single player game, who played alot of real D&D, who has played other fantasy games... or maybe Neversummer exists in a different reality than I do, I don't know... but why do I continue to argue common sense to those who don't get it... nevermind believe what you want.

Feats aren't worth anything to a fighter if he's not wearing the proper equipment to support those feats... he'll still dye before he can use them if he's not protected enough... Pretty much every epic warrior throughout fantasy history, has had some great magical gear to support him, and has needed it to compete with dragons and mages and bears oh my }: P

Thanks Chim, you seem to be the most unbiased in this argument, because you seem to have a cleric and a fighter, or just a cleric, and you're arguing for the fighters..... and that should tell people something... some people don't want the advantage, they want it to be more fair because it's more fun to defeat a worthy opponent than one with a disadvantage

Furthermore, unless a DM plans to delevel my character so I can rebuild him to fit the "standard, approved, IKD neversummer fighter build" (and not have anything different or interesting) I really do't have time to be starting a new character every time it turns out that the Dev's didn't look at the Bioware-created game for guidance on character class balancing or left something out of their universal "no character should depend on gear" idea which is biased against warriors...

[TC-GTRF]

I must be the only one who played the single player game, who played alot of real D&D, who has played other fantasy games... or maybe Neversummer exists in a different reality than I do, I don't know... but why do I continue to argue common sense to those who don't get it... nevermind believe what you want.

Feats aren't worth anything to a fighter if he's not wearing the proper equipment to support those feats... he'll still dye before he can use them if he's not protected enough... Pretty much every epic warrior throughout fantasy history, has had some great magical gear to support him, and has needed it to compete with dragons and mages and bears oh my }: P

You been playing D&D since 1975? If so, you may insult me freely.

if you have been playing D&D for any length of time, you must know that it is designed as a "team" game, with the "party" matching wits against the DM. It was not, is not and never will be meant to solo with a character, which is what you are demanding. Period.

If necessary, nerf any class that allows soloing of the module. Do *not* increase the powers of individual classes. That way lies NS_3 and madness.

[dond]

fighters are really good solo in pvm........i took out the queen bettle (lvl 18 cr mob) at lvl 5, and clear arachnids lair at lvl 7(5 dire spiders and the black widow at the same time!) by just rushing in and using healing kits.

i still can't see how grouping is hard. every char i've made has been grouped as soon as i stepped out the starting zone lol

as for pvp, i haven't pvped with a fighter, but ive seen fighter/wm tear thru some caster types rather quickly

besides, a fighter buffed up with mage/cleric spells is rather daunting. (greater magic weapon, flame weapon, stoneskin, keen edge, bulls str, endurance, etc etc)

[RunarSterk]

By the same token, Barbarians are designed to be high-hitpoint raging tanks. When they're provided Uber-gear like in the HoTU campaign they can't use some of their Rage feats because there's a cap of +12 on STAT increases. They're designed to raise their STATs *without* Uber items.

Personally, I like this idea. Just the way I like to think of my character; I don't want to have to depend on a super-duper axe of smooshing, or potions of mage-repellent up the wazoo. Rage into battle and smash things.. oh yeah!

I'm starting to worry, however, that my attack/damage bonuses due to STR won't be too effective. We'll have to wait and see, but from all the reports here it sounds like there's not much work involved in getting a character's AC and damage resistance high enough to make my bonuses kinda woonsey. I guess I'll find out.