Approaching my next playthrough as I run out of quests for my current party (just about ready to see if I can tackle the slavers...never an easy fight!) There are a few threads on the forum about the most effective classes, feats, etc., but I wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts on the most fun characters they've played in TOEE. In short, were there classes, races, feats, items, etc., that you found really enjoyable to play/use, even if they weren't necessarily the most hard-hitting? My idle musings on next party iteration: Thinking about playing a bard as the party mouthpiece. Any thoughts on bards? Dual-wielding fighter. Up til now, I've only used dual-wielding as a way to increase the firepower of rogues. Need to try out a halfling or gnome for once. A dedicated archer - I've never bothered with this in the past. Any thoughts?
I think the funniest if not most usable character I have ever used was my dual wielding, weapon finesse rouge wearing only a kilt and magical tattoos. What a sight. :hahano: Now I am using a crusader theme group of three paladins and a cleric. Wielding only longswords and shields or longspears. Next time I am going to try three barbarians and a bard. :rock: 1. I think bards are underrated. They are great spokepersons, good lockpickers and archers with shortbows and medicore casters/crafters. 2. Dual wielding fighters are better than rogues. Rogues are far more deadly with composite longbows. 3. Never tried any other race than human. 4. Rogue with high strength and dex can be very deadly with a composite longbow. Bard with a composite shortbow is also a good backup.
Although I like the small races in P&P, they really suck in this game. Due to their small size, they are slower than the bigger races, so I alway seem to be waiting for them to catch up on the outdoor maps. When you think you could overcome some of their downfalls, it doesn't work. Small druids shapeshift into small animals. A small polar bear really sucks. They can't use many weapons effectively, and their are only a few small weapons in the game, so unless you really like rapiers, you don't have much choice. Halflings should be good, but since the game doesn't implement their bonus to thrown weapons, it really hurts them. Gnomes should make a decent bard and could use a shortbow well enough, if you don't mind waiting on them to walk across the map.
Sneak attacking rogue with a (composite) longbow is a great sniper, with high dex and improved initiative you get to shoot down those nasty enemy casters before they can do anything.
A stupid charismatic talker. Currently using a Human Fighter 4 / Thief with 7 intelligence. I like the dialog options. Sadly sometimes it reverts to the same lines as for a person of average intelligence. Question: Do you get extra high-strung dialog options if you use a talker of intelligence 18 or higher? That would be fun to.
Thanks for the ideas, guys. Sounds like I'll want to try the archer/bard as spokesman. I had no idea that low intelligence changed the dialogue! That's great! I'll skip the small races - thanks for the tip on that. And yeah, I like the idea of setting up a specific look for the party (following the kilt + tats idea); I'm thinking they'll all wear a bunch of red robes and monk boots, go for a kind of D+D cult/paramilitary look. :] Oh, and I'm also thinking about a kind of grim reaper barbarian as the tank: half-orc with a scythe. Haven't done that before!
Looks are everything. Everyone in my crusader team wears mithral shirts (better than chainmail but still looks good), chain boots and red cloaks (those with charisma). Frontliners have large (triangular) metal shields and longsword or warhammer and tower helmets. Backliners have chain helmets and longspears. So team looks a lot like two questing knights with their squires. With banded armor, tower shields, shortswords and plumed helmets they would look like roman legionaries. I like that grim reaper idea. Be sure to remember to give him black monk robe or maybe the helm and robe of midnight, which ever looks better. :yes:
I like to use an Elven Bard, that way he gets longbow profeciency. i usually use him as my party speaker and lock/trap smith
I actually decided to throw a level of fighter in with the bard so that she could use the whole gamut of martial weapons. The grim reaper thing works really well - just use a full helm, a black wizard's robe, and some monk boots (and the scythe, of course) and you're good to go! I've got the dual-wielder setup with katana and wakizashi, for obvious reasons, and then a pretty standard cleric + sorcerer rounding out the party. It's too bad you can't zoom in slightly in TOEE, since even after carefully putting together the "look" for the party, they're so small on screen they get a little lost. C'est la jeu, I suppose.
That and the specials you pick up from a certain agent after you sell some boots. Though if you want criticals, you may want to try a scimitar and kukri.
a fighter with a shortspear has always been fun for me. before the javelins turned into throw-only weapons i enjoyed a melee javelin fighter alot as well. and also fighters using weapons with high critical chances are always fun, like sabers or falcions. i once played trough half of the game with only 3 fighters. was fun also.
In addition to the critical bonuses with the katana + wakizashi combo, there's just beaucoup style points there. I forgot to make the fighter using them look like a samurai when I created the character, unfortunately. :roll: I guess a lot of the pure-fun factor with different characters really revolves around the use of random weapons - I remember seeing in another thread that someone was playing a dual-wielding ranger with shovels, for instance. It would be pretty funny to take down the Temple with a mighty band of warriors wielding rakes, shovels, and fans. Regarding my "reaper" barbarian with the scythe, I'm pretty sure that Troika did translate the big selling point of the scythe as a melee weapon from 3.5 D+D: it gets x4 crits!
