I've been toying with this build for a while now and wouldn't mind having opinions/comments/advices from this board. The general ideas revolves around whips, intimidate, damage dealing and debuffs. I basically wanted to have more versatility out of a melee build. The 5 levels dip into fighter are accelerating the BAB progression for whip feats but also bring other goodies (medium armor & shield, armor/weapon training, extra feats). Half-Orc
Ability score
Levels
2. Thug 2 (Weapon Training (Whip), Evasion)
3. Figther 1 (Power Attack, Whip Mastery, lots of proficiencies)
4. Fighter 2 (Enforcer)
5. Fighter 3 (Dazzling Display, Armor Training)
6. Fighter 4 (Improved Whip Mastery)
7. Fighter 5 (Shatter Defenses, Weapon Training (Flails))
8. Thug 3 (Brutal Beating)
9. Thug 4 (Combat Reflexes, Strong Impression, Uncanny Dodge)
10+. All Thug levels, improving sneak attack and critical feats for more damage/debuff. At level 13, BAB is +11/+6/+1 so the combo becomes (provided everything hits): Enforcer + Shaken / Flat-footed / Sicken + Sneak Attack. Eventually Sneaking Precision can also apply one critical feat effect (Tiring/Exhausting Critical) when target is hit twice by sneak attack in a round.
Anyone else like me is still looking for a home? Write up a description of what you are looking for and let the settlement recruiters sway you :) So here goes:
I'd like to focus my Ranger into exploration, resource gathering and PvP. Basically roaming the wild, looking for goodies and skirmishing whenever necessary. The caster will focus on turning those resources into crafted goods, play the market and probably help defend the settlement with buff spells. Alignment-wise, I see my ranger going True Neutral and my Caster more on the Lawful side. It's not a hard requirement though, I can easily fit whatever alignment the settlement requires (not CE though). I'm really not into "roleplaying", so settlements with fancy backstories and all do not appeal to me. Also, I'll be a casual player (having kids does that to your gaming schedule), on EST time zone.
If you're into crafting and logistics, being a merchant will probably be a lot of fun. If you're more into PvP, banditry also seems like a good option. But I wonder what's in it for guards? They'll be constantly under pressure to lower their price (merchants are greedy) and they'll either walk alongside a caravan and be bored out of their mind OR be outnumbered by bandits (who always have the initiative). I seriously doubt it will be a fun job...
Without a class able to cast continuous heals, will there be any way for a group of smaller players to sustain fighting, let's say, a zerg of enemies? If so, how? Let's not forget that healing works both ways. If you have a dedicated healer on your side, the zerg probably has a few of their own. So the odds of beating them is much worse than if you had limited healing on both sides.
Like anything, the balance between threaded gear vs crafting market will probably evolve through crowdforging. I'm assuming that threading items is a good compromise to have at first, to attract people from other MMOs. Once the population reached critical mass and players get used to the idea of:
Then I think the threading mechanism could be slowly throttled down, to increase market opportunities (if need be).
This totally falls into the "nice to have" bin but I'd like to see different governance styles for settlements. An obvious one would be total dictatorship. The settlement leader can set any law/rule/tax/war he wants, whenever he wants. He may of course appoint people below him with specific roles but overall, the membership has nothing to say on anything. It would also be nice to have a failsafe mechanism for members to challenge the dictator and possibly dethrone him (in direct 1v1 combat or maybe XvX). Another system would be direct democracy. Giving a single vote to each member and passing every law/rule/tax/war under vote. This would involve each and every member but would cause long delays (I wouldn't expect votes to happen at a precise instant but having like a 24h window where people can cast their vote). The last idea I had was to manage settlements like a business. Any player (member of the settlement or not) could buy equities. They could then vote for a board of administrator that would lead the settlement. The board would be elected but they would have to appoint any "executive" to do the day to day management. As a side note, I wouldn't bind any of those systems to a specific alignment. As see a LG paladin organization setting a dictatorship system so they act with a military chain of command just as much as I see a CE settlement setting a direct democracy so anyone can decide to add/remove laws whenever they feel like it. I believe such systems wouldn't be too hard to implement (mostly iterations over the basics) and could add a lot of meaningful interactions. Like crafters in a democracy organizing a lobby to lower taxes, minions in a dictatorship preparing a revolution in secret, two big neighboring settlements investing money to finance a 3rd "trade" settlement they could then control remotely.
I might be wrong but I remember something about having enough staminna for 3-4 actions per round. Since a round is 6 sec., that gives you plenty of time to click buttons with your mouse instead of the keyboard. As to why we need more than 12-14 active buttons, well I guess it's both a matter of preference and situation. I'm sure we'll have out of combat actions like long term buffs or gathering skills. Those are buttons you don't need in combat.
There are 2 things to consider: First, Stamina will limit the number of buttons you can click per round. So extra buttons will be circumstantial at best.Second, to get all the buttons active, you'll need to be fully equipped, making you a tempting target. Players will have to ponder if an extra button is really worth the risk of losing the associated equipment when dying. I'm expecting hardcore PvPers focusing on a limited set of buttons that synergize well together while limiting the equipment they put at risk.
A lot of people want to play a solo experience in a multiplayer world and when the solo content ends, they quit. And surprisingly, other people want a multiplayer experience and can't have it until cap level so they quit even earlier. That's pretty much my story with TOR.
Please oh please no mini-games! In most games, they are just distracting players from the fact that crafting sucks. To make crafting not suck, it has to be more involving. Crafters need to study markets, manage production, secure material supplies, organize logistics for both supplies and crafted products. You can do it by yourself, with guildies, with contractors. You can do it safely in a trade hub or be more opportunist by risking going to remote places where demand and prices are higher. You can specialize into high-end products with low volume and high profits or generalize into mundane stuff with high volume and low profit. The possibilities are numerous and doing all that requires a lot more than clicking on a "craft" button.
Just cross-posting as it's been said in another thread. I think that the "capstone" thing is way over-discussed at this point. Since there's no design for them and we have nothing other than a vague idea to have them, I'm not going to be able to tell you much about any capstone.
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