IMO, the more mages the better, since mages are ridiculously overpowered. I think Wynne’s special story-unlocked ability is extremely good and can help with tough fights. I always beeline to the mage circle for her, no matter what class my PC is – the earlier you get her, the more you can tailor her to your group’s needs. If you really want to heal with your PC then you can give Wynne more CC/DPS options, but I always found it more fun personally to have my character as a CC/DPS mage and keep Wynne backing me up and throwing the occasional CoC/Stonefist shatter combo to help out in a pinch.
But, I do have a soft spot for grandmotherly types, so maybe I’m just biased
It’s up to you, really. I’m a micro fanatic who’s obsessed about optimizing everything, so letting people follow a dumb script is anathema to me. Then again, once you’ve figured out how the game, aggro and more importantly, the scripts themselves work, you can let the thing play on autopilot and win most fights.
I’ve never tried playing without at least one character in the group as a dedicated healer. Big mobs and boss fights just drain the life out of you, and potions don’t cut it - in fact, potions+healer sometimes don’t cut it either. Besides, potions are expensive, scripted characters will gobble them up like candy, and they share the same timer so you can’t even double up on them like you can with heal spells.
Besides, if your PC is a mage, you should get at least the basic heal ASAP on general principle alone. It costs nothing, and it will save your bacon time and again.
Whether or not you go beyond that as a healer is a toss-up. On the one hand, crowd control is absurdly powerful in this game, as is the Taunt+Telekynetic Bubble combo. So if you’re good at keeping every critter in line, healing will be secondary to not needed.
On the other hand, the undead and most bosses are immune to most crowd control options, and the latter *will fuck you up. In those situations, doubling up on healers might be advisable, and Wynne’s special ability lets her do her job for frickin’ ever, giving you ample time to lay the smackdown.
On the gripping hand, Wynne is a damn boring character. Gimme Morrigan any day.
*Morrigan disapproves of this comment (-5)
I never messed with the tactics menu and micormanaged the team through the whole game every time I played it. I like to use a lot of ambushes, where I set up traps and leave the majority of the party behind them while my rogue character sneaks up on the boss (or mage), hits him in the back and then runs runs runs back to the party and through the traps. I don’t know why I find this tactic satisfying, but I love a good ambush.
Funny how these things go. I’d struggled for ages getting through this particular bunch of spiders and eventually given up. Now the revival of this thread prompted me to have another go and I breezed through first try, I’m really not sure what was so difficult before.
I LOVE Dragon Age: Origins. I’m playing on the 360 so micromanaging isn’t as easy as it is for you PC players. I make heavy use of tactics slots. For one of the characters I’ve beaten the game with, I used a party of my main character (a warrior), Wynne, Alistair and Leliana. I sort of treated my main character like the quarterback- the party’s tactics are based on his behavior. He’s set to target the enemies with the highest health while everyone else is set to target enemies who are attacking him. But I’ve also got high-priority tactics for Leliana and Wynne in case they take heat (nothing is more hilarious than Wynne using Stone Fist to knock down a hurlock who’s charging at her).
In every game I play every single person has [Self: Health <50% - Use Health Poultice: least powerful] set. It’s also a useful tip to have people’s modes set as the very first on the list (example: Wynne always has [Self: Any - Activate mode: Frost Weapons] set). With the way that party was set up, I only ever had to control the main character and everyone else would do their job on their own.
Edit: Also, about mages. A mage PC + Wynne + Morrigan + Alistair/Oghren/Sten = Easy Button
Too easy. I’m firmly dedicated to the “one mage to a party” proposition, partly for that reason, partly because it offends my sense of party aesthetics ;).
I also don’t think a dedicated healer/Wynne is necessary at all. It does make things easier and I usually go that route if I’m playing a non-mage. But if I’m playing the mage myself I usually go with a full-time nuker, secondary healer.
