So I’m getting ready to start playing Dragon Age again- I got about 5 hours into it before, had to reformat my harddrive, and this is the first chance I’ve gotten to try it again, so I was hoping I could ask a few questions, just please don’t spoil me! ^^
Now, I’m trying to decide how to design my PC, and here’s my conundrum: last time my PC was a mage, and she freakin’ murdered everybody. Crowd control plus Blizzard, and I hadn’t had much trouble at all with basically anyone we encountered.
Now I thought it might be nice to try something different. It might be fun to make the PC the party tank, so I don’t always have to be changing characters and pausing when I need to micro-manage aggro.
DPS sounds like a lot of fun, but I’ve heard that bows are underpowered and thus far at least, it seems like I’m going to have ample sources of DPS from other party members.
So my main question to everyone is, what kind of general build should I favor for my PC?
Second, is it fallacy to make Morrigan an essential member of my party? She is massively awesome, and stops whole hordes of enemies in their tracks, but I’ve heard that it’s impossible to take her all the way to the end. Is she likely to gut my crew if I make her my controller?
As you noted mages are overpowered to the point of insanity. If you’re looking for something a bit different Rogues are DPS monsters and offer you a little different gameplay from mages. Build advice would be dual wield daggers get your STR to 20 early game (very minor spoiler if you’re min/maxing do the mages tower first as it has stat boosts so you only need your STR to 18 or so and get the rest from that level). After that though pump cunning and dex with a few points into willpower. Ignore Con. Make sure you pick up lethality which switches your STR stat for Cunning for damage consideration. With 20 STR you’ll have enough STR for the best rogue armors in the game and with everything else into damage and Willpower for abilities you’ll have a creature that can solo the entire game.
Archery is a bit underpowered. About mid game a well built archer can be quite powerful and if you plan on using the same character for DA:Awakenings archers get some more abilities that make them the most destructive class in the game. I’m not even joking they can crush endbosses in 6 hits. BUT that requires a lot of time playing a boring character.
Two handed sword bearers are in the same boat. If you spend enough time about mid game they become strong but are SO weak and useless for so long you’ll probably lose interest.
Sword and Board are a nice build. They get a lot of abilities early that can crowd control and they never feel underpowered. Pretty obvious builds in tons of STR.
For all characters the best skills are the crowd control ones are the most important. Always look at the prerequisites for your abilities on each level up. For instance if something that will be useful requires 20 Dex and level 7 if you make sure you have 20 Dex on level 7 to unlock it you’ll have a much easier time.
Hard to say without spoilers. Morrigan WILL leave if you don’t do something she asks endgame. But she will stay if you go along with it. I don’t know who told you she always leaves it’s a moral choice you may or may not be willing to go for.
Perhaps I misspoke when I said moral choice. More like a choice that sounds like it’s a very very bad idea unless you wholly trust her.
Amoral characters might go for it because it offers a loophole and probably even if it is a bad idea it probably won’t splash back on them anytime soon. Moral characters might go for it if they trust Morrigan is being truthful about her motives and the consequences.
Both moral and amoral characters might turn her down if they don’t trust her and she has lied/manipulated you in the past.
So less a moral choice then a choice based off trust and perhaps a certain distaste for what she is asking.
Okay, that’s what I was looking for- thanks! I’ll probably try making my main guy a tank, simply because mages are far, far too broken for a lot of the game.
Oh yes, one clarification: there was one boss who utterly slaughtered our guys, I think it was a minotaur that we ran into when we went up to light the signal fire. Is he intended to be so lethal, or would my having a lot of trouble with him point to a need for some fairly fundamental changes in my party and battle strategy?
The ogre at the tower just requires keeping him busy and away from your Mage/healer. Make sure you use aggro abilities from you warriors as well as any stun inducing powers/spells/consumables.
There’s a nice archer mod, couple actually that playing one much more effective and fun.
They’re not actually far, far too broken - maybe just one far or something :p. But really if you’re using Morrigan because she can be a powerhouse, what difference does it make? You’re trading one overpowered mage for another that will require you spend more time micro-managing your non-player character ( because mages inherently need more micro-managing ). You should play whatever character is most fun of course, but whether you’re the mage or Morrigan is, you still have the same issue of a bulked up mage.
I do generally adhere to a strict “one mage per party” rule, just to keep the cheese at a reasonable level. And you could always go the “no mage” route ( but I like the sparkly spells myself - it’s half the reason for playing a fantasy game from my viewpoint ).
All that aside, I really like dual-wielding rogue characters in this game. They’re a blast to play. Have fun :).
Moriggan is a good character to have in your party. If only she wasn’t so annoyingly evil.
Typical scenario:
A cute puppy is stuck in a cage and if you don’t stop for two seconds and unlock it, he’ll die of starvation.
Me: I saved a cute puppy, yay for me!
Morrigan: Why did you waste time to save that puppy? It was weak and it deserved to die. Tis this and tis that, blah blah blah. (Morrigan disapproves -10)
Me: FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- !!!
Oh god, you’re making me flash back to that girl from Neverwinter Nights 2, the sorceress. She was easily the best offensive caster in the game (unless the PC made a sorceress too), but she also happened to be Chaotic Neutral. She would inevitably get pissed off unless you took the most destructive possible option at every juncture. Case in point, I remember there was some choice that went as such:
“We’re trying to sneak into that storehouse over there, but there are too many guards outside it! What should we do?”
Sneak past - 4
Find another way in - 2
<sorceress>, I want you to burn every single one of them alive, and set the district on fire too just for kicks. +10
The real kicker was that unless her allegiance was insanely high by the end of the game, she would always betray your ass in the final battle. >_<
Actually she would only betray you if her loyalty was lower than Sand’s. One of them would always betray you no matter what. The choice was just who you wanted to screw you over. It was very phony when Sand betrayed you considering he didn’t really have any compelling reason to.
Like hell he didn’t. There are lots of hints that Qara has much, much more potential than just chucking fireballs around and that she’s actually holding back. And if you have lots of influence with her, it means you’ve been going along with her Chaotic nature and nurturing her antisocial tendencies.
From Sand’s point of view, you’re like a child playing with a nuclear bomb. You gotta be stopped. He doesn’t stand a chance to do it on his own, but with the King of Shadows, he might just be able to (except you’ve got the power of save game on your side ;)).
If the KoS wins, then at worst the Mere extends to the old frontiers of Merdelain. A dark noxious kingdom means little, even in the context of this one world. An antisocial, quasi omnipotent being bent on blowing shit up just because she can, with a twinked save scumming sidekick in tow ? That’s sort of worse, for the entire multiverse.
Now, Neeshka turning, that’s some grade A bullshit. Ammon’s the one with the demonology knowledge, not Garius.
Oh, and back on topic (sort of), I found Sten to be more annoying than Morrigan, happy wise. Morrigan you can count on being a raging bitch at all times, but Sten is so… erratic. One day he thinks taking time to save a village is a waste of time, the next he’ll nag at you for not being honourable enough. WTF, big guy ?
Iunno, I never found Morrigan to be evil so much as practical, though this does trend towards evil a lot. I’d actually say she’s closer to “dark side of the force” (help yourself before others) than a raging harpy. I do recall one point in the mage tower where I think I gained influence with her because I picked an option that, though good, was tactically more wise. I can’t remember what choice it was for the life of me though.
In addition, Morrigan never struck me as the “slaughter them all” type. It seems like she would rather avoid prolonged violent conflict so long as it streamlined the objective. It just happens that MOST of the good options require going out of your way (going across town to talk to someone) rather than lying your ass off or unleashing the wrath of The Maker on a peasant for half a second. I’d also suspect that she follows more of a neutral feeling with regards to, say, saving civilians if the enemy uses civilians as fodder/empowerment spell stuff/etc to fight you. You should, of course, try and “save” them in that it will weaken the enemy, but shed no tears if you fail.
I guess maybe she is evil, but she’s the less prevalent (in fiction) type of evil. She doesn’t want to go out of her way to cause mayhem, and she doesn’t have a vampire-to-garlic like aversion to good, it’s just that the first and foremost priority is meeting your current objective and everybody else is a pawn that you either use to further your goal or shove out of your way. If that means “doing the right thing” then you do the right thing, if it means sowing chaos and discord, well, why the hell not?
I think that while evil (or at best, neutral) the lack of a strict alignment system let her shine. If you were to try to play that sort of character in NWN or KOTOR you’d probably end up looking fairly schizophrenic as far as your alignment shifts go.
A good rule of thumb to Sten is to tell him to sit down and shut up. He appreciates strong leadership not explaining your actions. It’s an easy thing to overlook considering RPGs train you to kiss everyone’s ass. Sten’s biggest problem is that he thinks you should just charge straight at the blight with no side trips. It’s no wonder his people are so feared yet never conquered everyone like they should have.
Right, the two things to remember with Sten are 1) be blunt, and 2) end every conversation at the first sign that he’s become annoyed (usually he’ll say something like “Can we end this pointless conversation now?”). On my first playthrough I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to keep Sten happy. On my second game he was the easiest party member I had.
I just recently started playing, and so far she comes across to me as “somewhat evil, definitely amoral, raised out in the woods - and it shows”. My less-moral character wants to tell her, “Look Morrigan, ruthlessness is a useful trait but any capable amoral schemer needs to learn when to play to the masses. It makes them ever so much more ripe for exploitation. That’s why I don’t murder innocent people in front of Alistair; keep the meat shield blind and happy and he stays useful.”
The lack of a strict alignment system does seem to lend itself to a manipulative schemer attitude more.
Currently I’m replaying it (something about the cooler weather makes me want to play Dragon Age) and I’m going for a stabby rogue. We’re level twelve or so and I’m backstabbing people for between 45 and 52 damage, which is pretty good – especially when I stealth behind them and throw the triple-stab. My combat more or less consists of finding whoever Alistair is hitting and flank with him.
I might go archer at some point if I play my amoral elf or dwarf concept. I think my next playthrough after this one will be the hyper-moral mage.