Dragon Age Tactics

[Monte Carlo]

Heaven forfend that when you play a game you might like to know the rules.

[Purkake]

I would love to see the rolls and stuff happening, it's fun.

 

As it is you're playing it by the ear, potentially doing everything wrong without knowing what or why.

[entrerix]

yeah its not a complaint about the combat or tactics, its a complaint about the manual being incomplete and leaving out important info

[Enoch]

Heaven forfend that when you play a game you might like to know the rules.

Yeah, it wouldn't be so much of an issue to me if it weren't for the fact that you have to pick your characters abilities in advance and are then stuck with them for the remainder of the game. So it's nice to talk about "adaptability," but when the design doesn't support adaptation, the players should really be given better information from the beginning.

[Purkake]

The thing is that there's no drawback to putting the rules in the manual(and having an optional combat dialog box), if you don't care you're not going to read them, if you do you'll have to run around a bunch of badly designed wikis to find stuff out.

[Monte Carlo]

Altho' i now know how the original BG players with no D&D experience felt - choosing armour and spells because they sounded good and wondering what THACO actually meant.

 

In fact, I reckon DA doesn't actually have a ruleset, it's just a joke by the developers. It's all random.

[alanschu]

[Purkake]

It would be worse if the enemies didn't actually follow any rules. That would be so Bioware...

[entrerix]

lol.

 

but baldurs gate DID have a manual didnt it? one that explained thaco?

[Purkake]

Or you could just the the Player's Handbook

[entrerix]

is cone of cold really that good or did everyone just take it because morrigan already had the first two in the ice line so people havent experimented enough with the other tier 3 spells?

[alanschu]

It's very useful for leading to shatters that come from spells like Stonefist and critical hits.

[Majek]

Altho' i now know how the original BG players with no D&D experience felt - choosing armour and spells because they sounded good and wondering what THACO actually meant.

I didn't feel anything like that. I learned from mistakes and experience in combat. And i loved every second or 6 of it.

 

Now i get insulted ( not here) because i don't understand and/or admit that the best thing about FRP combat is how i optimally use everything from the start, like flawlessly solving a mathematic equation.

[HoonDing]

I found a lot of use in this one:

 

IF Morrigan:snarky comment -> Wynne:Cast Stonefist on Morrigan

[entrerix]

I found a lot of use in this one:

 

IF Morrigan:snarky comment -> Wynne:Cast Stonefist on Morrigan

 

 

roflchairmanmao

[HoonDing]

I think the biggest Win spell of them all is Force Field.

 

I use it all the time to disable yellow/orange marked boss enemies, then clear out the mooks (I haven't come across anything yet that managed to resist it). It lasts for around half a minute, which is an eternity. It's also useful to send a tank into a horde, let the tank Taunt, then cast Force Field on the tank and unleash some arcane mayhem.

[alanschu]

Yeah Force Field is a very, very useful ability. There's a combo involving it too

Edited November 13, 2009 by alanschu

[entrerix]

what combo!?

Edited November 13, 2009 by entrerix

[HoonDing]

what combo!?

Force Field + Crushing Prison, most likely.

[alanschu]

I have never used it myself, but I heard that those two are involved in a combo in some way. I don't recall the order though.

[Tigranes]

Several points I picked up:

 

Mages;

1/ Every character should have 'least powerful health poultice' on Health < 25%.

2/ Every mage with Drain Life (e.g. Morrigan) should also cast it on Health < 50%.

3/ Wynne is probably the 'must-have' character for any difficult encounter just for all that healing. Set the tactics for heal, rejuvenation, etc., and watch her go.

4/ I haven't worked with this yet, but maybe train Wynne along the mana steal tree and that could be a quite competent self-maintaining healing machine; heal, heal, steal mana, heal.

5/ Cone of cold is the best mage spell, period. Use with 'target immobilised'; 'shield bash', 'mighty blow', 'stonefist', 'deadly strike' for 4x shatters within 5 seconds of most normal battles.

6/ blizzard and other area of effect spells can work BG-style, out of range and out of sight.

7/ having two mages cast rejuvenate on each other is pretty good when out of lyrium potions. Points into the first healing spell and the rejuvenate spell are probably worthwhile.

8/ shapechanger is absolutely useless and one should never even waste quickbar slots on it. Poor balancing.

 

Rogues;

1/ Archer rogues are viable but do not get good until at least level 10. maybe just use Leliana from then onwards?

2/ Dual wielding rogues are probably your best bet. Pump points into STR and CUN, not DEX - daggers are bugged so that you get strength modifier for damage, as opposed to half str and half dex. Next patch shoudl fix this, as it's been acknowledged by bio.

3/ Lockpicking isn't that crucial, since most chests don't contain anything that good. I'd think lockpick level 2 or 3 is enough, plus the cunning bonus, just enough to finish the thieving quests in Denerim (which have fantastic prizes).

4/ Dirty Fighting works. Often.

 

Fighters;

1/ Strength 42 is the magic number for wearing the best stuff.

2/ warriors are probably the ones we leave alone the most, so tacitcs coudl be set up for all their abilities, especially the disabling or group-hitting ones.

3/ I find that getting a lot of passive abilities and just a few active ones are probably the best - the stamina gets drained pretty quick with all the armour anyway, might as well make them just great at whacking.

[alanschu]

You'll still need dex with rogues, to get the abilities.

[Monte Carlo]

Revenants at low level, the most irritating and powerful pseudo-boss monster before level 9 or 10:

 

Cone of Cold (again) ... they will often fail their save against it. One mage and two warriors performing a variety of melee smackdowns can take a revenant if the mage has enough mana to keep hosing the revenant with ice. A mage can even keep this up whilst the warriors take out mook hordes that usually travel around with the revenant, buying valuable time.

 

While waiting for the cone of cold to recharge, hit the sucka with whatever damage dealing spells you have left to chip away at his hit points. Whatever you do, don't run away from the revenant, he has this magnetic ability to smack you on the floor and drag you to him - omb him straight away and get that ice spell trained on him!

 

Cheers

MC

[HoonDing]

^Wolves may be the most powerful enemies below level 10. They always come in hordes and have Overwhelm.

 

And I noticed some suckas (drakes) even manage to succesfully Overwhelm my PC tank even with Shield Wall + Shield Mastery (or whatever it is called, it is supposed to make you immune to knockdown).

Edited November 13, 2009 by virumor

[Monte Carlo]

True, there's only one mandatory low-level revenant battle, and it's a pain in the arse. I beat him with three party members dead, only Alistair left alive with about 8 health.