Dragon Age: Tactics

[Volourn]

" I guess it was too much work and not enough payoff. "

 

More likely they felt the payoff wans't worth the work. I seirously doubt they somehow feared the 'work'.

 

Personally, the option should have been there to have him die then and you could could have an unnamed blood mage poison the earl, and he actually be killed therefoere you'd have a cosnequence of your choice. And, the other consequence would be the Templars being on your side when you return (more friendly, a discount at their store, etc.). You might even get the option to easily persaude them not to burn the tower to the ground and in fact they join you in the battle with the Big Boy Abom.

 

But, shrug, you cna't get everything.

[HoonDing]

In hindsight I regret giving my mage Earthquake & Petrify.

 

Earthquake looked cool, but it never seemed to do what it was supposed to do, i.e. stop enemies in their tracks. In the endgame, I discovered Grease always works when I gave it to Wynne. Combined with Fireball it's just silly powerful.

 

Imo it should've been possible to trade in a spell for another one each level up. This would've given the opportunity for the player to try out everything and discover what works and what doesn't.

[Volourn]

"Imo it should've been possible to trade in a spell for another one each level up. This would've given the opportunity for the player to try out everything and discover what works and what doesn't."

 

Horrible idea. It's as bad as all the silly respec mods that are out.

[Monte Carlo]

What's wrong with re-speccing The fact that you can break the game with them says more about the mechanics than the re-specc. My first re-specc of Morrigan was embarrassing, she was an artillery division. So I changed her back.

 

OTOH, I'm going to make a 2H warrior for my next game. I like Sten, but I want a sword and board tank. So Sten gets a re-spec. The sky didn't fall in.

[Aristes]

To get back to a discussion of approach and tactics, I decided early to focus on pots and abilities. So all my money went to potent health/mana pots and tomes of whatever. heh I had over 50 potent health potions by the end of the game. I think I had around 50 mana pots too. That's excessive, so think I'll maybe spring for some gear this time. That and my main will be a rogue, so I don't think I'll go through mana as quickly.

 

The other thing is, my mage only ended up with 54% of the overall damage. I had Alistair in virtually every battle. I had Wynne in the majority of them. I had Leliana in probably a tad more than half and Morrigan in a lot of them. My mage and Wynne did a lot of healing, though, so if you consider the fact that a lot of the PC's time was spent in healing mode, which steals damage output, that means she was doing damned good damage when she was concentrating on dps. As an aside, some of her time was spent in her own forcefield spell because she drew too much atttention.

 

Leliana, by the end game, dishes out some serious heat. You guys made the call on that. Of course, it also draws a lot of attention. She doesn't match the PC, but she does damned well for herself.

[Gromnir]

What's wrong with re-speccing The fact that you can break the game with them says more about the mechanics than the re-specc. My first re-specc of Morrigan was embarrassing, she was an artillery division. So I changed her back.

 

OTOH, I'm going to make a 2H warrior for my next game. I like Sten, but I want a sword and board tank. So Sten gets a re-spec. The sky didn't fall in.

 

vol is being self-contradictory... again. if spells and talents is not woeful unbalanced, then there should be no problem with re-spec right? is not as if you is Adding talents or ability points.

 

*chuckle*

 

 

the thing is, everybody not named vol is aware that respec (particularly with mages) significant impacts difficulty of game. change sten to sword and board is probably no biggie on subsequent plays of game. if you not play a sword & board or mage, then chances are you would be pretty dependent on morrigan and/or al, so their pivotal choice moments gots genuine game impact... may not have been great writing, but the biowarians clear wanted you to face hard choices regarding al and morrigan. respec so that sten is a tank and wynne is more than a poor d&d cleric wannabe? suddenly the loss o' al and morrigan is a bit less painful... is actually laughable.

 

"if Gromnir don't give you his seed so that you may resurrect a dead god, you is gonna leave us? you thought it were crazy when the french girl were talking to God, but now you wanna be the mother o' a god? okie dokie."

 

am mildly disappointed that we couldn't have the dog attack al and/or morrigan when they decided to make their ridiculous exeunt.

 

 

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Oner]

 

am mildly disappointed that we couldn't have the dog attack al and/or morrigan when they decided to make their ridiculous exeunt.

 

Good idea.

[Volourn]

The dog likes Morrigan. <>

 

And, grom is wrong a susual. Nothing contradictary about it. I believe games should be played as theyw ere intended. By 'respeccing' the npcs, you cheapen the experience. Morrigna's focus should be on shapechaging (even if its one of the two most useless talents) and cold spells (no matter how awesome they are), Wynne shoudl always be about helaing, and it ruins Sten's character if he isn't weilding a huge 2 handed sword. R00fles!

 

It doesn't matter hwo easy/hard the game, those characters got those set ups for a reason even if YOu dislike them. And, they are all useful as is. If you have trouble with sten, it's YOU that sucks NOT him.

 

Then again, Grom is the guy who believes rogues are useless in DA. And, truly belives that npcs should eb dumbed down and agree with the PC 100% of the time. LMAO

[Monte Carlo]

Vol, * Sten Disapproves - 20*

 

That Bio need to make certain NPCs virtually unavoidable, like Morrigan and Alistair is their key weakness as a developer when it comes to plot. I say either (a) make the NPC mandatory or (b) make a mechanic outside of deus ex machina game design to propel the story forward. (a) isn't may favourite but at least you can make good plot-related reasons for it and it's more... honest.

 

Alistair is so vanilla, so... meh, that I find myself totally unconcerned about anything to do with him. Yet he's, for some reason, the Bio pin-up boy for Dragon Age. It's unfair on all the Bio forum chicks who like romances, the guys get foxy Morrigan and the girls get... the guy next door with the lame haircut. Maybe the Bio devs hate CRPG romances as much as I do. then again, Bio forumites have, orgasmically, discovered how to make elves have really big ears and weird eye tints... they are as happy as larry and deeply scary.

 

--- Back to Tactics ---

 

My 2H-warrior is in the Korcari Wilds. Am playing on Hard, which is good fun. The 2H-guy is a bit like the rogue - needs lots of micro-managing in combat to get the best out of him. Also, timing is important - at low level I spam Pommel Strike > normal attack > Sunder Arms and do really well. it takes a while to get your head around no action queue, what you see is what you get in combat and spamming a new ability mid-swing ruins that attack. Oh, and Sunder seems to me to be two attacks. Am stat-dumping STR with the odd point of willpower now and then.

 

Cheers

MC

[Volourn]

"That Bio need to make certain NPCs virtually unavoidable, like Morrigan and Alistair is their key weakness as a developer when it comes to plot. I say either (a) make the NPC mandatory or (b) make a mechanic outside of deus ex machina game design to propel the story forward. (a) isn't may favourite but at least you can make good plot-related reasons for it and it's more... honest."

 

Disagree. First off, you can pretty avoid Morrigan rather easily. You pretty much can give her the boot right away, and Allistarir cna be ignored. The fact they cna have npcs important to the plot yet still allow the PC the freedom to basically ignore them is one of their key strengths. Making npcs mandatory is lame. In fact, I find the fact you can't kick Alistair out of the party is lame. It's one of the main reasons why I find KOTOR as BIO weakest game because it's where BIO decided to go the JRPG way and force npcs on the player which of course Obsidian has had to copy.

 

 

"Alistair is so vanilla, so... meh, that I find myself totally unconcerned about anything to do with him. Yet he's, for some reason, the Bio pin-up boy for Dragon Age. It's unfair on all the Bio forum chicks who like romances, the guys get foxy Morrigan and the girls get... the guy next door with the lame haircut. Maybe the Bio devs hate CRPG romances as much as I do. then again, Bio forumites have, orgasmically, discovered how to make elves have really big ears and weird eye tints... they are as happy as larry and deeply scary."

 

I'm no Alistair fnaboy, but your assessment of him is illogical, becuase you are making it out like the BIO forum 'chick's dislike him which is ludicrous since theys seem to be more than happy with Alistarir. And, oh, Allistair is many things but 'vanilla' isn't one of them. Yeah, guys get 'foxy' Morrigan... you know the gal who will refuse to stop sleeping with you, and then literally runs away from you at the end of the game. LMAO Also, don't forget that guys also get the most boring DA character in Lilianna (or whatever her dumb name is) while the girls get the fraky elf. Of course, the last two are bisexual so *shrug*.

 

 

It says a lot the two characters you hate on are the two most popular characters espicially Morrigan. And, when I say popualr I don't neccessarily mean 'most liked' as they - espicially Morrigan - have their share of detractors. That's fantastic writing.

 

Sten, on the other hand, is a piece of crap. He's one note, boring, and a scumbag.

 

 

 

"The 2H-guy is a bit like the rogue - needs lots of micro-managing in combat to get the best out of him"

 

*shrug* I have Sten in my part whose 2 handed, and I simply don't have to babysit him minus the very rare poultrice useage. With tatics ai he gets to use all his special abilities and cna be left alone. He's also one of teh more sueful npcs with his 100ish damage hits striaght up which means he can kill most opponents in 2-3 hits unwatched.

Edited December 16, 2009 by Volourn

[HoonDing]

When a two-hander attacks I always have the feeling one could read through War & Peace before the attack lands.

[Volourn]

Hehe. So true.

[Gromnir]

Then again, Grom is the guy who believes rogues are useless in DA. And, truly belives that npcs should eb dumbed down and agree with the PC 100% of the time. LMAO

 

 

no doubt that is the imaginary "Grom" you speak of, 'cause as you know, we has said the opposite many times.

 

when we actually post links to where vol claimed there were no da balance problems he simply ignores.

 

"It doesn't matter hwo easy/hard the game, those characters got those set ups for a reason even if YOu dislike them."

 

yeah, and the reason is to makes you feel likes you need morrigan and al... 'cause wynne, your other mage option, is a half-arsed heal-bot and al is the only sword and board 'til you hit landsmeet. heck, if you don't have stone prisoner dlc, al is your only traditional jnpc tank option. the "reason" for the characters being designed so strange is to make al and morrigan more necessary. sten's character and personality doesn't change 'cause he has a shield during combats and lord knows that wynne didn't get any different dialogues 'cause we bought three arcane talent boosting books just to get her some offensive firepower. explain the important character development value of having 4 tiers of combat tactics skill for wynne.

 

if the rules weren't wacky unbalanced, then respec wouldn't make much difference... but vol has tried to have both ways in past. anybody surprised?

 

*shrug*

 

'least vol,is making incremental progress... admitting the efficacy o' cold spells and the relative uselessness o' other spells.

 

 

and if morrigan and the dog gets along so well, then perhaps she shoulda' instead tried to convince dog to sleep with her to creates a god-spawn. at least that woulda' provided some comic value and woulda' been no more silly.

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited December 16, 2009 by Gromnir

[Monte Carlo]

JNPCs... hmm have not played Mass Effect but my understanding is that you are a military officer. Is a fact that in the military you often don't get much choice who you work with - so mandatory NPCs in that context is sorta explainable (like every war movie with the basic training scene... look at Gromnir's avatar for example ).

 

In DA the NPCs are designed deliberately so you take them. Wynne is... crap. When I say that, I mean tactically. Now I know the game I can get round it, but on a vanilla run? No way. Hey, I thought a heavily armoured dude with a 2H axe and high CON could tank in DA, and I've been playing these types of games forever.

 

A warrior with a sword and a shield is, as I've posted previously, the tactical lynchpin of DA combat. If you ain't playing one there's only one JNPC who fits the description.

 

Cheers

MC

[Aristes]

Okay, I'm tired of all the Wynne hate. I did very well with Wynne on my run. I would argue that my healsgalore setup is very very effective. Granted, the battles take slightly less than eternity, but you can outlast some pretty ugly stuff with Wynne in there. She is definitely not crap. Of course, you will still need folks to put the baddies out of commission because she is an extremely weak dpser. I'll grant that. Still, I love Wynne. For someone so old, she's kind of sexy and keeps the fighting men on their feet.

[Monte Carlo]

^ I don't hate her, I just expect my mages to sort of blow stuff up. Wynne is a cleric in a game without clerics. A five or six character party in DA would have made her essential.

[Volourn]

"JNPCs... hmm have not played Mass Effect but my understanding is that you are a military officer. Is a fact that in the military you often don't get much choice who you work with - so mandatory NPCs in that context is sorta explainable (like every war movie with the basic training scene... look at Gromnir's avatar for example )."

 

Doesn't work in ME since some of the joinables have nothing to do with the military.

 

 

 

"Wynne is a cleric in a game without clerics."

 

Wynne is not a cleric. Not in any way, shape, or form. OMG She has heal spells. Big deal. So does Morrigan. Not a cleric. Lilianna was almost a cleric. D&D is dead. LONG LIVE DA!

 

 

 

"A five or six character party in DA would have made her essential."

 

Nope. No character or character type is essential.

Edited December 16, 2009 by Volourn

[Gromnir]

Okay, I'm tired of all the Wynne hate. I did very well with Wynne on my run. I would argue that my healsgalore setup is very very effective. Granted, the battles take slightly less than eternity, but you can outlast some pretty ugly stuff with Wynne in there. She is definitely not crap. Of course, you will still need folks to put the baddies out of commission because she is an extremely weak dpser. I'll grant that. Still, I love Wynne. For someone so old, she's kind of sexy and keeps the fighting men on their feet.

 

am recalling that you played as a mage. as Gromnir noted above, if your pc were sword & board or mage, then either morrigan or al would be far less essential, but try to imagine if wynne were your only mage and if you continued with her heal-bot development. if you don't want morrigan, then your other option is wynne.

 

and Gromnir thinks it is creepy-weird that wynne is "old" given the fact that her body is... not. only her voice and attitude is middle-aged, 'cause the face has a few lines and the body is belonging to a comic book super heroine.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited December 16, 2009 by Gromnir

[Monte Carlo]

The DA difficulty slider could, of course, simply increased / decreased the size of your party. Easy = 6.

[Aristes]

I will say that taking Wynne as the only mage would seriously hamper AoE spells, which was also vital to my overall plan. I mean, you have to damage the bad guys in one way or another. You can do it melee, ranged, or magic, but you have to put down bad guys. My healing heavy party wouldn't work if there were only one healer at any rate. I did what I would think was very well, but it wasn't always pretty. In tough battles, I might cast three revivals. That's simply not feasible with one healer who can't deal significant damage out of the gate. That's one of the reasons that Oghren wasn't very useful for me. I didn't need another melee dpser and he was completely packed out by the time I found him. He didn't have a single sword and shield talent, if I remember it right.

 

In this current party, I'll have a rogue and Alistair. I'll keep Morrigan simply because she's my only chance to customize her spell list. I agree with Vol that shapeshifting didn't play any role my former run, but I don't know that it's useless. I might be able to find a way to exploit it, but I don't really need it as long as I can stack Morrigan with some decent AoE and decent targetted spells. Sadly, I have to agree with Grom and MC. It's always better to be able to decide what folks do. I will effectively play it the way that Vol thinks is best, though, because I can't imagine I'll mod out and respec. At any rate, I don't give a crap how others play the game even if I did consider it cheating, which I don't. It's modding a game that was designed with modding in mind.

 

I mean, hell, if I did put in a respec mod, I would probably respec my main all the time to try different approaches. Especially after my second run when I'm mostly trying to discover new or interesting things.

[Gromnir]

we has not used respec.

'course, we had a bad feeling 'bout morrigan from the time we started playing, so we did buy all three arcane talent boosting books for wynne... gave her some offensive firepower by mid/late in game. morrigan leaving didn't result in any emotional impact from a a well-crafted story creating drama. nope, morrigan leaving were annoying 'cause even with 3 fewer spells than wynne she were our most effective mage, and she had our best mage 1007 when she ran.

without respec, playing on hard difficulty with wynne as your sole mage is not impossible. we did it that way... twice. lack o' transparency o' rules made first time much more difficult, but Gromnir prefers the challenge. we not use respec 'cause playing on nightmare with a respec party would no doubt be easier than playing on normal with an unaltered party. while some borderline insane folks has argued that da has no balance problems, clearly the popularity o' respec suggests that there is superior talents and skills and builds. wynne? wynne as your sole mage makes the game much more difficult... 'less you respec.

 

 

but again, a less than ideal wynne-build is a cccchhhheeeesssssseeeee method for making morrigan's choice meaningful. biowarian's didn't make choice noteworthy save for purely practical considerations.... and some lolz. "without morrigan, i am stuck with wynne." sux. again, Gromnir ain't bothered that morrigan left as that is consistent with her character, but the god-spawn nonsense were silly, and purposeful making wynne less combat efficacious to up the ante on your choice were unnecessary.

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited December 17, 2009 by Gromnir

[Aristes]

I don't think it's impossible to use Wynne as your sole mage. Running my heavy handed healing party wouldn't work with only one mage stacked solely with healing. Now, I think you could keep Wynne healing heavy and try to branch out, especially if you get her early and pack levels on her. You could probably use her as healer almost exclusively, but that means you're going to need to spread all that damage out between three other people. I think it's cool to try different things, but I don't know if that's going to be a motive for the majority of players. From what I understand of the 'average gamer,' mostly based on things developers have said, the majority of folks will play once with at least either Morrigan and Alistair or maybe even both. I guess it really doesn't matter to me. I didn't take Morrigan with me most of the time, but I think I will this time. She has that massive magic thing going and I'll probably woo her. I might try to take the dog instead of Alistair, though. I think that could prove tough. I simply don't see how you can, without making life hard on yourself, go without Alistair. You can replace Morrigan easier with Wynne than you can replace Alistair with any of the others. I guess you could get to Sten ASAP and then invest him in sword and shield.

 

Anyhow, I don't look down on folks for respeccing. Someone buys the game, why not try different stuff? Some folks probably want to refit folks in ways that make sense to them personally. Others probably just want to try different approaches. For my purposes, I can defintely see doing it in order to go through as much dialogue as possible with different members. You know, maybe take a party without a fighter or mage. Doing that would seriously require some gymnastics, I'm sure.

[~Di]

^ At least both options involved a little bit of fighting in tunnels. And we learn that Di is a snitch.

 

[Volourn]

" I simply don't see how you can, without making life hard on yourself, go without Alistair."

 

I'm not using Morrigan or Alistair in my current main party. I have myself (Blood Healer), Zevran, Sten, and Shale. And, with Shale, I alternate between offensive and defensive modes. Party is good except Zevran dies too easily unless I watch him. Sten, like I said, cna wahck attack well, and Shale is the very defintion of a tank.

[Pidesco]

Shale is a much, much better tank than Alistair and my PC deals a lot more damage than Alistair.