Nurot

That's a bit creepy. Those were the exact same character concepts I chose between, assuming hunter=ranger. I chose the wild orlan ranger after playing through the prologue with several versions of the two (different animal companions/shapes/stats). Back on topic: I used to be a perfectionist too. Reading all the forums and walkthroughs for the best character stats and keeping a walkthrough close at all times to not make "a mistake" while playing. But it got really restrictive. I couldn't even play when the internet connection went down. But after reading through most of the discussions on the DragonAge Origins forum, I saw how people roleplayed their character as a different role than "yourself". That way, they didn't really have to worry about making mistakes. The character acted acoording to his/her personality and the player got to see a lot of different reactions by chosing answers that they personally wouldn't choose. Now I always choose a role/personality for my character and enjoy seeing how certain choices turn out. I don't feel bad because any mistakes are made by the character, not me. I also stopped min-maxing when I realised that most games are easy enough that you can do fine with sub-optimal stats, so why fret over every stat-point?

Same issue here. Anyway, my class is ranger, with the antelope. I chose between druid and ranger, mostly because of shape****ing and the animal companion. I especially liked how you were supposed to coordinate attacks with your animal companion. I haven't really seen anything of this yet (lv5), but it is still a fun class. I don't care about powergaming, so the fact that other classes are more powerful doesn't bother me. It is good enough for me, which is all I care about.

The builds in this topic are so much more helpful than the builds in the strategy guide. The guide is just super min-max builds. I don't mind if other players are min-maxing, but I had expected to also find tips for more balanced builds in the guide. I would post my first character, but I am still trying out different builds and classes. It will probably be a Wild Orlan Ranger, based on speed and interrupts.

I was wondering about this myself. Thank you so much for clearing this up!