Character Optimization Guide

[Rocmistro]

I'd be interested in getting everyone's thoughts if there's any sort of LFQW problem in TOR... what background/build benefits the most from advancement?

And thinking about that question...

I'm starting to think that the Woodman Archer is a beast at high level. With high bow skill and a Great Shepherds Bow, he's got two things going for him:
1) On regular attacks he's going to get a lot of Tengwars, with +8 (or even 9!) for each one. Expect to see 15 to 25 damage almost every round.
2) This isn't limited to Woodmen, but the Great Bow makes an awesome Pierce fishing rod if you have lots of dice. Especially if it's Fell.

Bardings with Fierce Shot can achieve similar results. Although they can have equivalent damage ratings, though, their Parry scores are lower. (2 to 4 compared to 5 to 7 for the Woodman, plus another 3 in the Woods) On the other hand, they can take Fierce Shot and Dalish Longbow, increasing effective Injury in some cases.

Another possible contender, for a similar reason, is Mirkwood Elves with Bitter Spear and Shadow Bane. Although the extra success die becomes irrelevant at Skill: 6, before that point it's extremely valuable. Again, with all those dice he'll get tons of Tengwars (and Mirkwood Elves have solid body scores), called shots will be reliable, and he'll have an even higher Injury (and, like the Dalish archer, sometimes a ridiculous Injury). The weakness, relative to the Woodman, is that he'll be much easier to hit.

So those are my three candidates for being overpowered at high levels.

Note that in none of my games am I playing one of those builds. (Yet...)

how about this:

Character "Level": Mid: (Valour 4, Wisdom 3, Primary Weapon: 4)

High Elf:
Heir of Gondolin
Body Stat: 7

Great Spear: 4

Rewards:
-Spear of the Last Alliance
-Lesser Ring of Power
-Grievous

Virtues:
-Fell Handed
-Fell Handed

Damage on Successful Hit: 11
Damage on Great Success: 21+second attack
Damage on Extraordinary Success: 31+second attack

EDIT: Modified build after EC pointed out that cultural weapons cannot have enchanted qualities.

[bluejay]

Nice build there Roc! Personally I think a High Elf with a Great Spear is a very powerful combat build. Also as their cultural weapon includes (Spears) you can take a second (non-great) Spear to use for opening volleys without having to pay for a second weapon skill.

[Glorelendil]

According to RAW you can't have an enchanted quality on a cultural weapon.

The High Elf is going to rock against multiple opponents, but be less effective against single opponent with high Armour.

Here's a 36 XP build, although it really benefits from getting Bow to 5.

Barding
Bow: 4
Valour: 4
Wisdom: 3
Body: 6(9)
Dalish Longbow, Fell, Grievous
Fierce Shot, Dour-handed (I misunderstood this feat; I thought it added 1 to weapon damage, not to damage rating)

Regular Hit: 9
Great Success: 19
Extraordinary Success: 29
Called Shot Success: ~50% (which makes it a tossup between Called and Prepared)
Injury: 18, on a Gandalf opponent takes worse of two Feat rolls

But if we're including enchanted qualities, I'd trade the Dalish Longbow for an Elven longbow with Biting Dart, Superior Grievous, and (normal) Fell. That would make a maximum hit of 60. Yes, six-zero. You could potentially kill a Great Orc with a single shot.

EDIT: I modeled it. The above archer killed a Great Orc in the opening volley about 0.3% of the time.
EDIT 2: WHOOPS! I forgot to account for Weary in the Protection roll. Make that 1.8%. With skill 6 it's a whopping 4.6%.
EDIT 3: Switched out Superior Grievous for Superior Keen (which I probably wouldn't do because it's wasted on Called and Prepared Shots) and fought Radgul the Orc-Chief from Rivendell Book with Skill 6: One-shot him in the opening volley nearly 20% of the time. At skill 4 it was still 6.5%.
EDIT 4: Ok....now that I think about it more I would take Superior Keen rather than Superior Grievous. Combined with Biting Dart that gives a 2/3 chance of a Pierce on every hit, and a 17% chance of two Pierces. Totally sick. I'd probably never use Called or Prepared shot.

I'm quickly concluding that Biting Dart on a Greatbow is the winner for the "ridiculous scaling" prize.

Although in practice I'd take a Woodman. I'd happily give up the 1 damage rating for 4 (or 7) Parry, and the Hound of Mirkwood.

[Rue]

Roc, I think you put it really well for why I like the idea of a guide like this so much: for someone like me (who is new to RPGs in general and isn't overly familiar with using stats and math to figure this stuff out), it is really helpful to have a guide to implementing the character vision I start with. I have spent a fair amount of time bothering my PBP LMs about how to go back and "fix" something I did at character build that just didn't make sense for how I wanted the character to be, or asking endless questions about how best to build a PC.

Obviously I will improve at this over time whether such a guide exists or not (and reading all the threads here is a great way to get a lot of the information), but I really appreciate having it laid out in an 'if-then" way, and having it by culture would be even better. I don't really care about building the "perfect" character (what's a crit monkey, anyway?), but I care deeply about making a PC who reflects who I wanted them to be... warts and all. Just because we're trying to be heroes in our game doesn't mean we have to be built like Galahad (not that that's what I think any of you were saying).

In fact, one reason I think a guide like this would be useful to me (and I agree with Zed that in the wrong hands it could be a tool for evil), is that once I have a good idea of what the optimal choices are within a culture, I can deliberately make choices that perhaps don't maximize the benefit to my PC but which fit within the story I've created for them. Was it on this forum or elsewhere that an LM said that he likes his players to know more than their characters because then they are usually *more* willing to take risks with them, to be bold, to try something new even at the risk of their characters? I see a guide like this as enabling that with character creation, for those of us who don't already understand all the pros and cons of each choice in the process (or even remember all the choices available...).

Anyhow, keep the information coming, and I'm excited to read the finished document. And then I'll probably have to go play with creating some new PCs just for funsies.

[Glorelendil]

Well said, Rue. Like I mentioned earlier, I often intentionally build sub-optimal characters. But when I'm playing a new game I really hate suddenly realizing that I didn't understand a mechanic and unknowingly made "bad" choices: meaning they aren't really part of my character concept and they're sub-optimal mechanically.

I think even this exercise Roc and I have done the last few posts, designing overpowered characters we'll never play, is useful in terms of understanding the mechanics.

[Rue]

Well said, Rue. Like I mentioned earlier, I often intentionally build sub-optimal characters. But when I'm playing a new game I really hate suddenly realizing that I didn't understand a mechanic and unknowingly made "bad" choices: meaning they aren't really part of my character concept and they're sub-optimal mechanically.

I think even this exercise Roc and I have done the last few posts, designing overpowered characters we'll never play, is useful in terms of understanding the mechanics.

I think you're just tired of me pestering you to change Aerendar's favored skills again.

[Glorelendil]

Well said, Rue. Like I mentioned earlier, I often intentionally build sub-optimal characters. But when I'm playing a new game I really hate suddenly realizing that I didn't understand a mechanic and unknowingly made "bad" choices: meaning they aren't really part of my character concept and they're sub-optimal mechanically.

I think even this exercise Roc and I have done the last few posts, designing overpowered characters we'll never play, is useful in terms of understanding the mechanics.

I think you're just tired of me pestering you to change Aerendar's favored skills again.

Don't worry. Once these spiders eat all of you you'll get a chance to start over.

[Glorelendil]

2. Elfcrush: (sorry I just can't say that other name). In a vaccuum, I agree with you. I think what you're just not realizing about my argument is how few the number of choices you get to make in this game are. If you had unlimited build selections (or let's even just say "a lot"), I think I'd be more inclined to agree with you. But you only get five...5 gear selections. That's it. So spending an extra 1 of your 5 selections to pimp out your main gun along a different damage path is committing 20% to what may amount to overlap. That just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I'm not saying it's useless to do so, or even bad...but it presents measurable redundancy. And I just don't think, when you're talking about 5 selections, that overlap can be so casually disregarded. It's not as if you're NOT doing damage if you don't take grievous, or as if you're NEVER going to score a pierce if you don't take Keen, etc. And I'd like to add I don't think that my advice applies to every hero build out there. I'm sure I could come up with some examples of builds where I would commit all 3 qualities to an effective weapon.

Sorry, I never responded to this. I'm not saying you don't have to optimize, I'm saying the best way to optimize is to balance all the stats. Yes, you only get 5 gear rewards, so don't pour them all into one thing because you'll get diminishing returns. You're mathematically best off bolstering your weak stats rather than jacking up your strongest one. Even the edge cases, like Snow Trolls, follow the underlying math: if you could actually get an Injury rating at the peak of their ridiculously high Protection curve, even a Snow-Troll specialist would want to stop stacking Injury once that point was reached.

3. I think a better optimization guide for TOR could include 2 components: 1) an analysis and breakdown by culture and 2) not just a "take this", but rather a "take these things in this order"

I've been considering tagging the virtues and rewards this way. Sort of. Maybe not the specific order, but by high/medium/low priority. Except in a few cases, I don't think you can say there's a specific order. Beornings should take Great Strength and Honey Cakes. Does the order matter? I don't think so. I'd rather help people understand what all the options do, how they work and what the trade-offs are, and then leave it to them to decide what's important to them.

[zedturtle]

Hmmm. If I every overcome my fatigue, I've been thinking about writing up some counter-points for the Virtues/Rewards.

And I'll probably build some high-XP characters just to see what kind of fun I can have.

[Glorelendil]

Hmmm. If I every overcome my fatigue, I've been thinking about writing up some counter-points for the Virtues/Rewards.

Oh please do! I'm sure I got some of them wrong, and others I've changed from terrible to great, or great to terrible, in the course of writing this.