Some questions and praise for the game

by **sstraub73** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 8:42 pm

First off, I'm loving this game. Challenging but very fun. I wish there were more games that required thought and strategy like this does.

Does it matter who I choose to craft my wonderous items, arms and armor, etc? I know that 3.5 D&D had certain spells that were required for certain items (Fireball for Flaming weapon, Mage Armor for Bracers of Armor, etc)

Is it worth it to take the Forge Armor and Weapons feat?

Has anyone used Whirlwind attack to good effect? Is is worth taking the feats leading up to it?

My party consists of:

Dwarven Waraxe / Shield Knight
Longsword / Kukri Knight
Cleric - Craft wand and craft scroll
Wizard - Craft Wonderous Item and Craft Arms and Armor

I wondering if I should have split up my crafting better, maybe give the Cleric Craft Arms and Armor. I worried that my Wizard will lag behind everyone else.

Also, Is it better to use two knights with high damage (two weapon fighter and a two handed weapon user)? I figured there may be fights where I need a high AC on a tank.

Thanks for any advice that you can give.

by **VentilatorOfDoom** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:34 pm

sstraub73 wrote:Does it matter who I choose to craft my wonderous items, arms and armor, etc? I know that 3.5 D&D had certain spells that were required for certain items (Fireball for Flaming weapon, Mage Armor for Bracers of Armor, etc)

No, both Cleric & Wizard can do it, there are only certain lvl requirements.

sstraub73 wrote:Is it worth it to take the Forge Armor and Weapons feat?

Definitely, let a knight take it. Certain weapons/armor mithril, adamantine etc are easily made through this. Mithril Leather armor for instance with 0 ASF for your Wizard.

sstraub73 wrote:Has anyone used Whirlwind attack to good effect? Is is worth taking the feats leading up to it?

opinions differ, I think it's inferior to cleave/greate cleave especially considering the number of prereq-feats.

sstraub73 wrote:My party consists of:

Dwarven Waraxe / Shield Knight
Longsword / Kukri Knight
Cleric - Craft wand and craft scroll
Wizard - Craft Wonderous Item and Craft Arms and Armor

I prefer more casters, but anyway you would be happy late game if you had Forge Ring. Also your Wizard would be happy if he had Wands, I used mostly Fireball & Enervation wands. If you go with only 1 cleric you won't neccessarily need both Scribe Scroll & Enchant Wand, pick one of those feats. If you have e.g. 2 clerics Scribe Scroll is good because you can share the spells among you clerics so by picking different spells at levelup you can easily learn all spells. With only 1 cleric I'd pick enchant Wand.

Craft Arms and Armor is the biggest XP sink, so with only 1 cleric and 1 wizard doing all the crafting it's probably best to give it to both of them.

sstraub73 wrote:Also, Is it better to use two knights with high damage (two weapon fighter and a two handed weapon user)? I figured there may be fights where I need a high AC on a tank.

You will need high AC on all your characters, you better optimize the AC of your whole party, enemies are not dumb and will most likely make a beeline for your casters.

3 things:
greater spell penetration on ALL casters
greater focus enchantment on wizard
improved initiative

by **sstraub73** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 5:06 pm

Thanks for the advice.

Also, do the Precise Shot, Point Blank Shot feats work for Wizard Ranged Touch attacks?
I'm missing a lot when firing scorching rays into melee and accidentaly hitting my own knights with Acid Arrow.

by **VentilatorOfDoom** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 5:31 pm

don't know but there is Weapon Focus Ranged Touch

by **BlueSalamander** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 8:33 pm

sstraub73 wrote:do the Precise Shot, Point Blank Shot feats work for Wizard Ranged Touch attacks?

Yes, they do.

by **Noumenon** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 9:46 am

I figured there may be fights where I need a high AC on a tank.

Usually they target all of your guys every fight. If there is a fight where you can get everyone to target one guy, you're better off with a low AC and putting Ice Shield on him.

I worried that my Wizard will lag behind everyone else.

Let him lag. You get so much more XP for being lower level than the rest of the party that you can craft like crazy and not really get behind. I'd rather have the cleric lagging than the wizard though.

Is it worth it to take the Forge Armor and Weapons feat?

Two uses for this feat that I didn't figure out till I was around 18th level are crafting blank wands to enchant with spells, and crafting arrows when you run out (I thought you had to wait till you found a shop, and I also thought 99 arrows was your carrying capacity instead of merely the max your inventory displays).

Has anyone used Whirlwind attack to good effect? Is is worth taking the feats leading up to it?

I took this feat tree because it is purposely bad in D&D 3.5 (the designers confessed it) and it wasn't better -- worse in fact, because Spring Attack doesn't seem to do anything. I whirlwinded a good deal around 7th level but after that I got a lot of attacks and I started wanting to kill one guy at a time and I never whirlwinded again. Mobility should be good though because I take a lot of AoOs in this game, much more than in real life.

by **Archangel** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 12:34 pm

You fight much with swords and armor in real life?

by **Noumenon** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 2:33 pm

I play D&D in real life... but real life DMs would find it impossible to run as many monsters as Blue Salamander can control in a combat, so you'll get one monster with deadly AoOs instead of a cluttered field with nuisance AoOs.

I like it -- it makes for exciting battles and lots of slayage. Somehow whenever I try running more than 5 monsters in real life they all end up so low level that a single Fireball takes them all out... not sure how he avoids that.

by **Archangel** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 2:57 pm

If you check the combat log all the encounters are your ECL or higher. That is how he avoids it