You'll always regress to a Stealth Archer

[Gloves | 12,290]

We all know the trope from Skyrim - no matter how hard you try, your character's build will always end up veering back into "stealthy bowman" build. Heck, my wife recently played "as a Mage"; I look over and she's got a summoned bow and is stealthing around headshotting dudes. Come on!

This isn't so much about what the min-max builds are for games, but rather I'm curious - what do you personally tend to lean into? Are you a sneaky knife-wielding backstabber? A spell-wielding sorcerer? Do you spec into summons and let others do the work for you (Diablo 2 Necromancer let's goooo!)?

Me, I can't help it, I somehow always end up going with "Big weapon make high numbers appear". I first noticed this trend with the original Dragon Age, and it's sort of become a tradition that any new RPG I play I make a big buff sword or axe wielding dude whose only goal in life is to make the things that make him sad/mad be squished. Even just now, I'm playing Elden Ring's new DLC and I started a new character - I already had a few hundred hours into a big fuck-off hammer man, so I figured I'll try a Bleed/Dexterity (speed) build. After around 24 hours of successfully using a dagger and/or twinblade, I get into the DLC and suddenly there's a really great Bleed weapon... a "Colossal Hammer" called the "Bloodfiend's Blood Arm". How could I not shift over to that?

Suddenly I'm big slow swinging hammer man version 2.0. 

 

So... is there an archetype you tend to fall back into? Some comfortable zone when games give you enough choice that anything you like is viable? Any fun stories of character builds?

[Reed Rothchild | 9,971]

Sexy sword lady

Made it real fun with the super cereal WoW clan leader who hated anyone who rolled the opposite gender (or the obscene name I had the first time around) 

[The Count | 600]

I always liked the rogue/thief/assassin type characters. The idea of picking locks and being stealthy always piques my interest, not that I ever really master any of it anyway.

[Hammerfestus | 4,110]

I too prefer slower stronger physical attackers.  I don’t like having to rely on magic. I’m always concerned about running out.  It’s probably from all those early days playing Dragon Warrior.  But even when I play a Final Fantasy or something my magic users are still mostly physically attacking because what if I need that magic later?!

[Ferris Bueller | 508]

I don't think I've ever used a bow in any of the Elder Scroll games.

[Sumez | 3,170]

On 7/8/2024 at 11:30 PM, Gloves said:

We all know the trope from Skyrim - no matter how hard you try, your character's build will always end up veering back into "stealthy bowman" build.

What no. I've never heard of this, nor done it myself. Big given how the melee combat in Skyrim "works" I guess I can understand why people would want to.

[Aguy | 784]

When given the chance, I like necromancer/disease builds. But rogue/thief high dex/charisma builds are my go to. 

[fox | 1,778]

…till I took an arrow to the knee

(am I doing it right?)

[RH | 5,246]

It's not in all games as an option, but I very often prefer the pureness of a maxed out fighting "Monk" class.  Bare-fisted is the way to go.  Of course, I primarily play traditional JRPGs.  The few times I've gotten into more action style RPGs, I'd say the more interesting types are always the ones that can accumulate the most gold.  Whether it's a thief or someone with the highest form of charisma, or if it buffs the outputs of the enemies. 

For instance, In Octopath Traveler, I leaned heavily into Tressa (the Merchant class), followed by Therion (the Thief class).  I'm not really into thieving, I just like being able to walk into shops and 99x purchasing everything.  If I really love a game to a level of personal completion, I've not completed the game until I've bought every item and/or maxed out the inventory slot for a given item (so long as the maximums are reasonable like 99 rather than a big int value.)

Edited July 10 by RH

[twiztor | 923]

i only really play the Diablo series where this is an option. 

my default character is the Amazon, which is how i most enjoy these games. Finesse? nah. brute force. 
but after i've completed the game, i like to experiment with secondary characters. The Necromancer is a great time if i'm more laid back and along for the ride. The Assassin if i want to take a slower play style. i had a lot of fun as the Demon Hunter in D3. and there's always the Paladin if i want to have a Barbarian-lite kind of experience. Could never get into wizard/mage characters.

but really, my play style doesn't change too much. i don't spend a lot of time thinking about optimum builds, or finding/crafting the perfect armor/weapons, or even diving into the skills. I play all of them very basically. Find a weapon for close melee, a backup for range, and then a skill or two that correlates with the class (usually some sort of wide range attack or crowd control). Kill, Loot, Repeat.

[spacepup | 2,489]

I almost always go for a wizard / magic power user build.  In the old rogue games and Dungeon Crawlers I used to play, this almost always meant it was very very tough in the beginning, and I could die at any moment, but eventually I'd gain enough power to be ridiculous.  This type of character works better or worse in certain types of games, as some are a bit ruthless.

One of my favorite dungeon crawlers is an old dos game Moraff's Dungeons of the Unforgiven, and playing as a powerful wizard was extremely challenging, but very rewarding later in-game.

Whether it's a dungeon crawler, standard RPG, or game like Diablo, I tend to always fall into this character type or distance fighter.

[ikk | 575]

I used to do archery myself and also wanted to play the archer in games. So I went into Skyrim planning to be a stealth archer only to found out later that this was the meme build 

Nowadays I'm either a tank or an AoE mage.

[DefaultGen | 5,727]

Games never have significant death penalties and magic is always OP so I’m always making glass cannon wizards.

[DefaultGen | 5,727]

On 7/8/2024 at 5:30 PM, Gloves said:

Any fun stories of character builds?

I specifically went out of my way to try something novel in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. I dumped every possible point into Health Regeneration to see what having really high regen would be like. It was the absolute worst. I was weak AF the entire game and the regen wasn’t good enough to keep me alive. COMPLETELY useless. The skill should be removed from the game.

[Gloves | 12,290]

7 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

Games never have significant death penalties and magic is always OP so I’m always making glass cannon wizards.

That's something I've found in Elden Ring is if you're not a mage, you're melee using Bleed. Any other build I make it's like "yeah this is viable, but I'm not hitting 10k chunk damage". Demon's Souls was similar - I'd tend toward using a bow and the build where the lower your HP is the more damage you do; I could only take 1 hit but I'd just never get hit so it's ok and big numbers are fun.

[JamesRobot | 6,049]

47 minutes ago, Gloves said:

the build where the lower your HP is the more damage you do; I could only take 1 hit but I'd just never get hit so it's ok and big numbers are fun.

I use this mechanic whenever it's available.  It's always great for mowing down low level enemies and I'll at least commit for a couple boss fights.  Tunic has this too.

Symphony of the Night had the Ares Ring that way boosted your attack, but brought you defense down to zero.  I think that's the first time I came across that idea.

[JamesRobot | 6,049]

On 7/8/2024 at 3:30 PM, Gloves said:

We all know the trope from Skyrim

 

On 7/8/2024 at 3:32 PM, Reed Rothchild said:

super cereal WoW clan

 

On 7/9/2024 at 2:33 PM, Ferris Bueller said:

the Elder Scroll games.

 

10 hours ago, RH said:

Octopath Traveler

 

I should probably qualify that I haven't played any of the other games mentioned so far.