Thoughts on my first PC build?

mguarino

mguarino

Artisan
Marshal
So I went to my first LARP event ever last month as an NPC and I've decided my first PC is gonna be an Elf Templar! I just have a few questions to see if I'm doing the calculations right, and I'd also like advice on my proposed build.

I NPCed a weekend, so I earned 15x2=30xp, which means I have 15 + (30/3) = 25 BP now with 0 xp left over, right? I'm also barely Level 2, yeah?

I was thinking I'd spend these thusly:

Archery (4)
Small Weapon (2)
Read and Write (3)
Read Magic (4)
First Aid (2)
Healing Arts (2)
Celestial Magic Level 1 (1)
Celestial Magic Level 1 (1)
Celestial Magic Level 2 (1)
Celestial Magic Level 1 (1)
Celestial Magic Level 2 (1)
Celestial Magic Level 3 (2)
Celestial Magic Level 1 (1)

and learn Disarm, Stone Bolt, Pin, and Ice Bolt as spells.

So what do you think? Is there anything I'm not buying that I should be for some reason (e.g. it's absurdly useful, all Elves should really have skill X, etc.)? On the other hand, is there anything I'm buying that's useless?

Any and all input appreciated,
Mike
 
IMO, small weapon is a turd of a skill. Fighting with dagger sized weapons is nearly impossible in the Alliance rules system and not be called on charging. It can be done by very experienced players or people who really want the skill thematically. Out of curiosity, why healing arts and first aid? That's earth magic stuff. It gives you something to do when you're out of spells and arrows but earth casters are going to be far more efficient at upping downed characters.
 
I think that's a perfectly fine build.

There's nothing wrong with small weapons. They can be difficult to use at times, so I would just advise extra caution and being aware of your own place in space in relation to your fellow players.

My only recommendation for you is to consider starting out as a "pure" class; that's fighter, rogue, or scholar.

Alliance has implemented a sliding class feature. What this means is that, if you start out at, say, a scholar, and after a while want to become a templar, you just start buying fighter skills. Once it becomes more build-efficient to be a templar, you just ask your home chapter's logistics staff to slide your character over to templar.

Basically, this will let you be more effective at lower levels while still progressing towards a split class at the higher levels. It can be very difficult and frustrating to play a split class below level 10 or so.
 
Regarding the healing arts question, both my characters have HA and FA. Granted, one will be a templar down the line, but the other's a cel adept, and last event she spent quite a bit of time getting people stabilized. Also, there's the "get it while the build comes quick" factor. Much less painful now then at 12th level.
 
there is nothing wrong with having a dagger,
it could be very helpful to get your friends/ally's out of entangles, i know a very powerful twilight elf earth caster would agree with me.....or not if hes being a jerk ;P anyway, it can be a helpful thing to have

i have a character that is a celestialist, now im dabbling in the earth, as i feel that i wasent helping my friends out much by just stopping thier bleeding. its important to get them up too because i cannot carry more than one to safety and choosing which is not a decision i like to make.

all but the archery, you have pretty much started where i did a few years ago
:thumbsup:
also, i can say is dont let other people tell you what to play, you play what you want,after all your the one playing it, so its your fun. :mer:
 
That build is very close to what I did as my celestial scholar, with a few exceptions. I took small weapons because he didn't want to be involved in combat but still wanted to have some protection, however if you have archery you can get a longbow which does more damage and has a greater blocking area. I would suggest dropping small weapons unless you really want to have a dagger or something. As per the discussion on healing arts and first aid, theres absolutely no reason you should not take them. As a low level, they can help you feel useful in combat without actively hitting things or using the few spells you have. Lastly, I might suggest memorizing bind for your third circle spell, rather than icebolt. I find it to be more useful, but its pretty much a matter of preference.
 
My thoughts right now:

Probably going to stay as a Templar, because Read and Write and Read Magic are just way too expensive as a Fighter, and given my current selection of skills, it's actually cheaper for me to be a Templar than a Scholar. I also don't want to be that squishy. I am going to drop the Small Weapon skill, though, and replace it with Craftsman: Gambler. Should be fun! Gonna keep Ice Bolt, as I have my Pins to hold off anything big that chases me. Even if they rip from it I get a three second head start. Conversely, it also makes them stationary targets for my arrows and spells.

Thanks for the advice, all, keep it coming! :D
 
As an experienced player, let me also chime in to suggest that it will be much to your advantage to drop a spell slot or two to take one-handed edged instead of small weapon. A short sword or longsword instead of a dagger is going to be much, much more useful to you than that one casting at low levels. It also quickly gives you the opportunity to take up dual-wielding shortsword/longbow, which is a very effective fighting style for a templar in the right hands.

Only having a dagger to fall back on when you use up your few arrows and half-dozen spells is okay in a mod day, but not very much fun in a weekend event. Unless you're planning on never getting a better melee skill (which isn't likely for a templar), that's also build you won't get back unless you buy all the way up to one-handed master or weapons master.
 
A small pro tip for you. Your starting money is 1.2 silver. Your craftsman skill will give you 1 silver when you check in. Spend 2 of that silver to charge a wand. It only gives you 7 shots at 1 damage a piece, but it allows you to hold extra aura (which looks threatening) and can be useful in niche situations.

-MS
 
mikestrauss said:
It only gives you 7 shots at 1 damage a piece, but it allows you to hold extra aura (which looks threatening) and can be useful in niche situations.
Click to expand...

Oh yes. Very useful. I have seen a "1 elemental stone" stop an obliterate in its tracks thanks to a well-timed hit. Distracted the dragon NPC just long enough to flub the incant.

Never underestimate the power of the wand.
 
First thing I noticed was that you said you NPC'd. If you NPC'd for your character's home chapter, you should have recieved Goblin Stamps, which you can use to buy your character Monthly Blankets. These blankets can be bought back for the last three months, plus the month you're in. You could use that to acquire a pretty nice chunk of extra build. Contact your local Logistics team. No reason for you to handicap yourself.
 
Draven said:
First thing I noticed was that you said you NPC'd. If you NPC'd for your character's home chapter, you should have recieved Goblin Stamps, which you can use to buy your character Monthly Blankets. These blankets can be bought back for the last three months, plus the month you're in. You could use that to acquire a pretty nice chunk of extra build. Contact your local Logistics team. No reason for you to handicap yourself.
Click to expand...

and submit that backstory...sometimes you get bonuses on that.
 
mguarino said:
My thoughts right now:

Probably going to stay as a Templar,it's actually cheaper for me to be a Templar than a Scholar. I also don't want to be that squishy. I am going to drop the Small Weapon skill, though, and replace it with Craftsman: Gambler. Should be fun! Gonna keep Ice Bolt, as I have my Pins to hold off anything big that chases me. Even if they rip from it I get a three second head start. Conversely, it also makes them stationary targets for my arrows and spells.

Thanks for the advice, all, keep it coming! :D
Click to expand...


if your going templar to not be squishy, which can be good as im 19 and my level is past my hp (17)DO drop dagger but pick up one handed edge and then you have the options of:
1) pick up two weapon fighting
2) pick up a shield but that + bow could make you end up carrrying to much gear

but still your character, do what u want
 
Wraith said:
As an experienced player, let me also chime in to suggest that it will be much to your advantage to drop a spell slot or two to take one-handed edged instead of small weapon. A short sword or longsword instead of a dagger is going to be much, much more useful to you than that one casting at low levels. It also quickly gives you the opportunity to take up dual-wielding shortsword/longbow, which is a very effective fighting style for a templar in the right hands.

Only having a dagger to fall back on when you use up your few arrows and half-dozen spells is okay in a mod day, but not very much fun in a weekend event. Unless you're planning on never getting a better melee skill (which isn't likely for a templar), that's also build you won't get back unless you buy all the way up to one-handed master or weapons master.
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I don't know about that. You can always "upgrade" to a longer weapon later if you want (2 build isn't much of a loss), and it sounds like the intention is mainly archery and spells. Small weapon should do just fine for that purpose - arrows are easy to get and the bow will probably be better both offensively and defensively than the sword, if you're wanting a ranged character. One-handed edged or blunt is a much bigger investment than small weapon, esp. at low levels. I'd say stick with small weapon if that's more in line with what you see as your character idea.
 
Go for OHE. I started my celestial caster with One Handed Edged, First Aid, Healing Arts, Read & Write, Read Magic, and spells (this was before wands). I've never regretted it. And you can always carry a dagger rep for cutting people out of Entangles, you don't need a skill to use.

And as for build cost, you can always fluid class between scholar, templar and fighter for whatever best suits your skill set.
 
Thanks for the advice!

Yeah, this character's almost entirely an archer and caster. The short sword/dagger was more for self-defense, but now I'm seeing I can just use my bow. I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty fast, and my battle plan was to shoot lots of arrows (I'm probably going to carry 2, eventually even 3 quivers) and cast spells, and then if anything charges me, run away. Also, hence the Pin spells.

Maybe I should just be a Scholar who happened to learn Archery?

Also, re: gobbies, I have about 200 from NPCing that weekend and from donating cash for food and props. Can someone explain how much BP this translates into? I only worked out the XP for the one event I NPCed at (and it costs 60 gobbies to do this, right?). I know that for my home chapter (HQ), the April event was the opener, so there wouldn't be any events in the three months prior.

Hopefully some of that makes sense.
Thanks!
 
If you really intend to do archery full bore, stick with templar. Without templar, your archery damage will be limited to 3 (because profs will cost too much) and that is pretty pitiful at higher levels.

You can't convert goblin stamps to build points directly. It is more complicated than that. You can spend goblin stamps to get blankets for your character, but there is a limit to how often and I don't no if you can post-date to before you were a member.

-MS
 
If you're going templar, then you're doing it to buy profs so your archery is useful at higher levels. However you'll be making your celestial magic much less useful at higher levels because you have to spend a fair bit of build on profs - even 2 profs (so your archery does 6 damage) will be 36 build. Plus your spells will be a bit more expensive build wise. I think you'll find that you're trading a lot of spells and a lot of wand damage to be a part-time archer.

Now that's cool if it's character flavor. If you just think it's fun to chuck stuff and run, you may find that it's not so cool to give up all that magic.

The other thing to consider is defense. Once you have those 2 profs you should buy your parry automatically. That's good for your survival.

But consider if you went adept. Your archery damage drops from 6 to 5. But instead of parry you can buy dodge - for the backline archer/caster dodge seems a lot more useful. And you could pick up an evade or two as well. I don't know your concept exactly but if you're about escaping danger then dodge/evade seems like better flavor than parry to me.

And yeah, if you buy small weapon, don't expect to fight with it. But it could be useful for cutting entangles and such. If you plan to fight with a weapon, bow / short sword / 2 weapons makes sense - but that's a lot of build so fewer spells.
 
scholar with a bow isnt bad, but then
if your going to stay scholar, in the higher levels and not even that high, just enough for a four collumn is only 107 build just in read write/ read magic and the four collumn puts you at lvl 10 which will come up on you fast, wands will do more damage at 5 damage more if you start dabbling in the high magic with the elemental burst pool, so its more than a bow unless you took profs as a scholar, which um, will diminish your spell slots significantly.


if i were you, id try to determine if your are going to stay a scholar with a bow

or go templar
 
mguarino said:
Thanks for the advice!

Yeah, this character's almost entirely an archer and caster. The short sword/dagger was more for self-defense, but now I'm seeing I can just use my bow. I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty fast, and my battle plan was to shoot lots of arrows (I'm probably going to carry 2, eventually even 3 quivers) and cast spells, and then if anything charges me, run away. Also, hence the Pin spells.

Maybe I should just be a Scholar who happened to learn Archery?

Also, re: gobbies, I have about 200 from NPCing that weekend and from donating cash for food and props. Can someone explain how much BP this translates into? I only worked out the XP for the one event I NPCed at (and it costs 60 gobbies to do this, right?). I know that for my home chapter (HQ), the April event was the opener, so there wouldn't be any events in the three months prior.

Hopefully some of that makes sense.
Thanks!
Click to expand...

Advice about your build: Build your character out 150 build. Determine what you want your character to be capable of. Beyond that point, you can look for a spirit forge rit if you really don't like it or your interests change.

Re: Gobbies. So, here's the rules.

Gobbies are set to the chapter you earned them in. Whether you need a membership to spend them in that chapter is at that chapter is at their discretion. Some chapters require memberships for all buybacks, some require it for just monthly blankets, and some might not require it for anything at all.

I'm assuming that HQ is the chapter you also NPC'd for. If you spend 150 gobbies for feb, march and April monthly blankets (30 each, so 90 so far), plus one in May and June, then you'd have a 42 BP character with 50 gobbies left over, which you could spend 30 of in july. Alternatively, you could buyback any game days that occurred, or mod days. Buybacks cost 30 Gobbies per blanket, so a game day is equal to a monthly blanket. A normal two dayevent is 60, etc.
 
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