How to be useful

[Joshobeb]

Hello everyone! I'm just getting serious about creating a character in detail, and I'd like to ask some advice from my more experienced friends here.

My ultimate goal is to be both useful and active in a party, but still be able to survive on my own at times, at least enough to get out alive. People who can beat things to death aren't necessarily uncommon to what I've seen, so I don't really feel that I'll have much success going along that route. Backpacking and straight support, however, doesn't appeal to me at the moment either, solely because of the need to have someone to backpack.

What I've come to is that I want to have a more Swiss-army-knife use as a character. A little bit of a variety of skills to help the adventure along, and then leave the smacking and the healing to the characters designed to do just that.

My first plan to accomplish this was something along the lines of going straight alchemist (for the most part), along with legerdemain and a few other staples (r+w, OHE, etc.). What are your thoughts on full alchemist characters? Are they useful in the field, or do they end up better suited as merchants or something of the like.

My other interest is a little bit more open ended. Going Adept, it would be a pretty even mix between useful spells, alchemy, and rogue abilities (waylay, disarm, etc). I feel the access to spells and weapon abilities opens up the situations I can help in, but of course the distribution of skills could make me feel underwhelming at times to those who can do these things better than I can in the individual fields. So what are your thoughts on Adepts. Are adepts useful, or just outshined by the more specialized classes?

Also just because it's easier for me to keep track of recommendations with this method, I'm adding a poll if you'd like to use it.

Thank you so much for your feedback and help!

 

[Fade]

I have found that a pure Alchemy character tends to end up as more of a merchant type. Alchemy, for as cool as it is, has a much lower yield from event to event as it is based off production. Sure you will make more and more as you get more experienced, but it will cost more as well. Early on, you will only produce a couple of useable gasses or coatings per game day, and you can and should stockpile these, but it can get expensive pretty quick.

I'd caution on being a one trick pony, specifically in regard to Alchemy. When you find something it effects, you're king of the battlefield. When you fight things with poison resistance or, seemingly more often, outright immunity (anything extra planar, undead, plants, vermin types, constructs.. the list goes on) you wont be getting a lot done. Immunity to poisons is actually a pretty common monster ability.

Of course, if you go rogue, Alchemy is cheap build-wise, as are the other skills that are in demand, such as Legerdemain. Adept may give you some added versatility, but as a hybrid, they tend to suffer from what I call the "Templar blues." (Where you end up going through a period of not being able to keep up build wise usually between 6th and 15th-ish level). After these levels the hybrids really come into their own, but some would say thats the price of admission.

Something to consider, would be going Rogue, picking up Alchemy and Legerdemain, a weapon skill and Read Magic. This will give you access to 1st - 4th level celestial magic via scrolls ( again throwing gold but hey its something). Then when the time and build worked out the way you want to, slide over to Adept.

Remember though, being a swiss-army knife type character means you may spread yourself too thin and never be really good at any one thing. It happens. There are lots of cool skills and you want to be able to perform all of them. Alliance at its core is a teamwork game. Being a Solo is possible, but man does it take some build and other resources to get there, and even then its almost always a dicey situation if you get outnumbered.

 

[B.Barber]

Ehh... best advice? dont try to swiss army knife right at the start. It will suuuuuuUUUuUuuck in the early levels because you wont be able to do anything well. Pick one thing, stat-up to specialize so you are a go-to for atleast ONE thing, then branch later. Plus it makes more sense to specialize early because its early-on that you need to work with a party the most to make up for what eachother lack. If you play smart, you wont have to rely on saving yourself.

Make freinds IC. Lots of them. And make them aware of whatyou specialize in so that they will go to you for that one specific thing- and thereby, be useful.

 

[Traceroo]

^^What B. Barber said.

Unlike table-top games, the Jack of All Trades is difficult to do successfully at LARP, particularly at low levels. Specialize. Specialize -- and learn the absolute ins and outs of all your skills and abilities fully on an out-of-character basis. Know the rules correctly and thoroughly. Practice the physical aspect of the craft: throwing packets, boffer weapon fighting, whatever. Be perceptive. Be alert in combat. Make friends in-character, lots of them.

A 15-Build starting level character who is smart, in the right place at the right time, and comes through when you really need them is 10 times more useful than a cap level character isn't nearly so dedicated to excellence in their craft, whatever that may be.

Trace

 

[Joshobeb]

Thank you guys so much for your replies! I forgot to mention that I plan on npcing till roughly 50-60 build, but you guys covered points up till and past that point, so I'll definitely keep all these things in mind when I math things out.

 

[Thorgrim]

While you are NPC'ing I would suggest trying to get an idea of what group you would want to go with and what niche you might be able to fill for that team. I won't beat a dead horse but trying to be a swiss army knife does not really become very feasible until you start getting to around 150ish build.

I suggest trying a lot of different classes while you NPC and find which one is the most fun for you to play, then creating a character of that class and finding a team in need of that class. Support classes tend to be in greater demand than fighters, but if you are good at what you do and easy to get along with, then you shouldn't have trouble finding a team.

I would definitely recommend against alchemy unless you already have a team chosen who is going to help finance your production. Alchemy is useful in certain situations but a lot of the things we fight like undead are immune to most alchemy. I would generally consider it to be a secondary skill that can provide some added utility, and not something to focus on as the primary thing you do, unless you just really have it in your heart to be an alchemist.

If you want to theorycraft or toss some builds around feel free to message me.