Builds!

[Kiaring]

Build doesn't come before role play.

Role play does not come before build.

They are both different aspects of the same thing. I sympathize with the OP wanting to grasp better concepts pertaining to one of these aspects (mechanics). However, if both these aspects are not married in everything you do in the game world, you'll either end up with a powerbuilt, uninteresting character, or an amazing character who can never get past level 2, because the Fat Rat always gets him.

Remember, your build is only about half of what mechanics in EfU are really about - knowing the setting (what sort of items you are likely to find, for example; what to use against what enemies, and so forth) and most of all, knowing actual combat mechanics, be they PVP or PVE, is also very important.

If you'd like some advice from me, feel free to send me a PM. Otherwise, I think ImpossibleDreams guidelines (stressing: GUIDELINES) are an excellent place to start.

[Seanzie]

Heh, alright, this is a lot of stuff to think about before playing EfU, especially for a 14 year old.. I always used to make chars that were naturally chaotic, because thats what I had fun with. But they NEVER lasted. and I thought I was good at making wiz's because I got two lvl 6 ones. But they are both perma dead. Its probably cause they dont do anything. theres no fighting for them... Im new to NWN. and I reallly like EfU. my friend got me into it and I LOVE IT! But its just so much stuff to take in accounting for. Im trying a Ilmater cleric. I have -8 dex. is that really bad? I just did Reccomended. So I didnt realy think much about it. but I hope its its not that bad? He just gets hit easily.

[The Ruins of Third Earth]

Play your weaknesses as well as your strengths - ie, avoid close combat, stick to healing.
Get and use potions of invisibility when things get dicey.
Avoid running in combat, or you'll suck down some brutal Attacks of Opportunity.
There is a big niche available for dedicated healers. Consider Craft Wand, and creating healing wands for yourself and for others.

Avoid frontline combat like the plague, and you may find yourself pretty successful.

[Mort]

Try to think of your role in your party. What will you contribute in an adventuring group purely in a mechanical fashion.

Well, my character isn't very strong, so he'll stick to the back but keep his allies healed during battle, pay attention to them and be a good support.

Support can encompasses lots of things. It can be:
 - Healing
 - Dispel/Disabling monsters
 - Taunting monsters...
 - etc.

All these abilities are generally not linked at all with your build, you can have the worst build ever, but:
 - if you heal your allies... they will like you and you will survive.
 - If you cast daze from a wand of daze (60GP) on low level monsters, low level parties will like you. You'll maybe save them a lot of trouble.
 - If you use all these items that people drop away with 1/charge or hoard and use them in battle at appropriate times, people will like you.
 - If you tanglefoot monsters and save your ally from a boss...
 - If you taunt a monster and then pull back.
 - If you summon little stuff. Even weak summons are amazing. A weak summon not only does damage but adds his HP to your HP pool... meaning that the hits he takes, you dont get them.. That's like 20-30 extra hp per level 1 summon. Pretty amazing spell!
 

Knowing all these little details, timings, when to do what is all learned through experience, but the more you know how to be 'useful' to your group. At that point, you can pretty much build your character as you want, and you'll still be useful.

Takes time to get there, and the only way is trial and error.

Just dont fall into the pitfall of building your characters to get max AB, max AC or in spellcasters' case to get max spell DC.

Tweak with what makes your character viable, i.e. having a lot of ways to deal with all situations, remaining useful to your group and so on. If you are capable of being useful, you'll be able to progress and so on.

A lot of unknown quirky thing can help you survive : One being the skill Taunt. This is often missed as useless by new players. It is amazing. If you are scared your AB is too low to be useful, and taunt fits your character, increase it. cross-class it. Just by pure luck, you'll be able to get +1-6ab from time to time.

Another newbie friendly feat is Expertise, Improved Expertise. If you aren't sure how to survive or be useful... these feats almost guarantee your survival in most situation so long as your allies remain alive. You require 13 Int for that one. This will help you frontline and so on. It's useful to try out in the beginning. To help you learn. There are more interesting feats later on once you feel you can survive without it.

Anyway, Taunt and Expertise are generally two ignored features of NWN and they are so so new player friendly (experise even more so). Taunt requires a bit more action per minute and tricks to handle... but nothing too dramatic.

[Cluckyx]

Another newbie friendly feat is Expertise, Improved Expertise. If you aren't sure how to survive or be useful... these feats almost guarantee your survival in most situation so long as your allies remain alive. You require 13 Int for that one. This will help you frontline and so on. It's useful to try out in the beginning. To help you learn. There are more interesting feats later on once you feel you can survive without it.

Anyway, Taunt and Expertise are generally two ignored features of NWN and they are so so new player friendly (experise even more so). Taunt requires a bit more action per minute and tricks to handle... but nothing too dramatic.

This is a great point. Expertise can turn a low con, dex fighter into a tank at the click of a button. Certainly something worth considering if you can't find your niche.

[Egon the Monkey]

Expertise is IMO the best feat for newbie rogues also. I often take it on ranged PCs and rogues as a panic button. If something gets past the fighters, whack that up and your AC  just got great. Keeps you alive until someone else kills the problem. I once played a rogue/bard who would use Expertise, Taunt and Sneak Attack to great effect.

Rogue/bard's a combination you can't go far wrong with and gives you practice with a lot of skills and tactics. Mine was more rogue than bard (3 rogue 2 bard at 5, 3/3 at 6, 5/4 at 9) . He had Expertise and Extra Music. Playing that I could wear medium armor and wield a shield for defence, shoot a shortbow, wield a rapier in melee, taunt down AC on the enemy and sneak attack them, and buff the AB of the entire party a good number of times. I also had stealth from both classes and rogue skills. Added to that, I had a few handy spells like Magic Weapon and Mage Armor. Probably the most versatile PC I played.

My first guy on EfU was a pure support PC. Healing Domain Cleric/Bard with curespells and good Heal, and both bardic music feats and high Lore for Alchemy. I'd sit at the back singing, buff people with basic spells before we went in, use Tumble or Invis to get close to heal, and throw Choking Dust at enemies (which I made by the ton). I'd also hand every melee PC a coupel of bottles of Alch fire as "Redneck Flame Weapon". As a build, stat-wise he was bloody awful. However just learning over the year I played him, I managed to turn him into a PC that accomplished quite a lot and was useful because he played to his strengths.

Feel free to PM me for any questions about bards and bard multiclasses.

[PlayaCharacter]

Tumble is a great skill for a support character, even if it's not a class skill for your PC. It will make it much, much easier for you to dash in to a fight, heal the fighter, and rush back out. You can find plenty of good items that boost your Tumble check, but you need to have spent at least a point or two in it for those items to do any good.

As I mentioned in another thread, it's a good idea to download a trainer module (Halls of Advanced Training or Pretty Good Character Creator are both good) and level your PC up to 10. Test out their skills and abilities and decide if that's the build you want before you ever log in with it. It may seem tedious, but trust me, you actually save yourself hours upon hours worth of headache.

[Drakill Tannan]

To understand how support characters are good, you need to play a main fighter, and see how much darn diference that support character does, and what exact things he does to be that damn awsome. You can try to the following:

Pure fighter, don't min/max it, but instead keep your stats at a decent level, say, 16 STR, 14 CON. Also make sure to give him 14 INT. Have a greatsword as a main weapon, and a warhammer/shield combo as a secondary weapon, get expertise, and always keep 100 or so darts handy.

This build is very simple, but it's an exelent all-round fighter. With the greatsword he can ditch some good damage, and if you're fighting undead, you can switch to the warhammer so you aren't useless. If there is another better thank, you can flank and be a damage dealer, if you have to be the tank, you can reach a very nice AC with IMP expertise and shield (in 6AC armor and tower shield you'd reach 30 AC) If you have to be a tank and damage dealer at the same time, you can do so with the hammer/shield combo, or regular expertise + greatsword, depending if you want to be more inclined to defence or offence. Also the darts allow you to ditch some decent damage at a distance, should the enemy be unreachable, or even better, should you not be too eager to rush and damage the enemy with 2 or 3 darts before going melee.

With that build you'll be able to do most quests even with a mediocre party, because you can take care of the damage and tanking. You'll come to see what spells, items, and abilities support classes do that make you awsome, so it's a great way to learn to play the game.

[Egon the Monkey]

I believe the best way to let new players see how builds, tactics and RP fit together is simply for it to be a convention that PC screenshot Dead Threads always carry a screenshot of the PC's character sheet for stats. Since we don't have the player list with character level info , any way for  less experience players to get an idea of usual EfU builds for a given concept would be good.

[Cerberus]

I tend to build from the ground up starting on this site.
First I think of a race and maybe class I might want to play and do a search on the linked site for say half-elf. Reading on them I see their heaviest population location and do a bit of reading on that...
 
For instance the PC I just made saturday night (Leoni). He's a half elf from a town called Blustich which is in Cormyr. Blustich is located on the Southeast of Hermit Woods, where Wyvernflow empties into the Dragonmere. Believe it or not that was easy to come up with by spending 10 minutes reading on the linked site. With that info you can breathe life into your PC as you have where he was born and raised history of him. From there I deside what a good class for this PC would be. For instance, (lets use Leoni again), I desided his mother collected hickory-nuts from the woods and can say she had a few year relationship with an elf druid she met there until he stopped showing up one day (after she found out she was pregnant) and Leoni was born. So raised by a human mother and not knowing his elf father, Leoni wouldn't know much about elvin ways but he wanted to learn so spent alot of time in the woods and became a ranger. This is where he was teleported to the island of Ymph. Honestly, I know this sounds like I spend way to much time on it and that I need to get a life, but really, it takes less than a half hour to come up with this history. And it gives you a strong starting point so you dont get caught off guard when you land on top of the Zig and somebody asks "Where ya from mate?"
 
With this info you can work on the mechanics part of building your PC and with this info you can make a build that would suite the character (not a powerbiuld). I find this works best for me anyway as creating a PC and then coming up with this stuff on the fly tends to make my head hurt and makes the PC's history confusing to other players.

[derfo]

i make up all histories as i go

don't worry too much about build until you're more capable with making your way around using consumables, initiative, and allies, which matter a lot more.

14~ in abilities that help your class, and whatever fits your dude is usually a good place to start. as you see what is and isn't effective move on as you are comfortable