Party make up conjectures

[Panpiper]

What rock have I been hiding under to only discover this project now?  Pre-ordered,  rectified.

So with no multi-classing and a limited selection of classes, we are to a large degree back to the typical basics of old school, 1980's party make up. I am wondering what my party will consist of, which leads me too to wonder what others will do.

Absolutely I will take a paladin, likely human, mostly for aura effects. I like my front line to be highly defensive, so I'll probably sword and board him. Side by side will be a dwarf shield and axe fighter, and also likely on the front will be yet another dwarf with a shield, this one a cleric. In the rear will be a rogue with a bow, unless I can finagle a ranger to still handle traps. If so, that archer might change. 

Now the other two is where it gets trickier. Normally I would take a sorcerer for magical offence and a wizard for crowd control. However there is no sorcerer in Realms Beyond, so do I go with two wizards, or maybe try out a bard for once in my life?

[Sapistas]

@Panpiper wizards work like sorcerers in RB, as devs have mentioned here and there.

As for party composition, since we'll have to deal with generic DnD claasses/races, there's not much to think here. A couple of frontliners, a couple of casters and a couple of ranged attack/sneaky people I guess.

[daveyd]

So with no multi-classing and a limited selection of classes, we are to a large degree back to the typical basics of old school, 1980's party make up. I am wondering what my party will consist of, which leads me too to wonder what others will do.

Hey Welcome.

While it's true there won't be any multi-classing of base classes (e.g. Fighter / Rogue), there will be prestige classes your party members can advance to.

With that in mind, I think my party make up will depend on what prestige classes make it into the game, and also what feats and skills are implemented.  For ex: If wizards have the choice to become an "Eldritch Knight", "Arcane Archer", or "Archmage", then I could definitely see myself having two wizards in the party. 

1. Like you, I tend to like having a sword & shield wielding human knight leading the party. But whether I opt for a paladin or fighter depends on what feats make it into the game.  In unmodded ToEE, there weren't really many good feats for them, such as Divine Might, so it made being a paladin less interesting to me  (The Temple+ and Co8 mods add some).  In that case, I'd lean towards fighter.      I know Ceres wants to add many feats and spells into the game (hopefully almost every non-psionic feat listed on SRD for starters. 

2. If the Dwarven Defender prestige class is in the game I'll probably want a dwarven fighter with a dwarven waraxe as well.  Otherwise maybe a second wizard who will become an Eldritch Knight. 

3. I also will likely have a cleric (or maybe a druid if I take a paladin). 

4. I almost definitely want an Elven ranger with a longbow. Again it depends on what feats make it into the game; (vanilla ToEE was missing some useful ranged weapon feats).

5.  I will most likely want an Elven or Halfling rogue. 

6.  And of course have to have at least one wizard (probably human for the extra feat). 

Typically with CRPGs that let you create your own party I find that I restart the game with many different combinations. I'm really going to try not to do that with RB though. 

Btw, it's not yet confirmed that bards will be in the game (actually from the sound of things they will likely only be added in an expansion pack), though I'm sure a modder will attempt to unofficially put them into the game before then.  From the sound of things creating custom classes and feats should be pretty easy.. they just won't have unique animations, gear, visual /sound effects, etc. that the official classes will (unless a modder decides to really put in a lot of work). 

[purpleblob]

I would love to have Eldritch Knight and Arcane Archer in my group as well, providing I can build EK as my tank. I will probably also take cleric and mage.

One question - can anyone other than rogue de-trap in RB?

[rjshae]

A long time ago I made a point-buy system for building your own D&D-style characters however you want, and I thought it worked fairly well (with a bit of tweaking). Major abilities like spell casting were expensive, of course, and it needed caps on things like BaB, spell levels, saves, and skills. A system like that would be nice to have... some day. 

[Panpiper]

A long time ago I made a point-buy system for building your own D&D-style characters however you want, and I thought it worked fairly well (with a bit of tweaking). Major abilities like spell casting were expensive, of course, and it needed caps on things like BaB, spell levels, saves, and skills. A system like that would be nice to have... some day. 

Oh, I would have liked to have seen that. I am a HUGE fan of point build systems. My favorite game system of all time is Hero System which is totally about spending  character points to build quite literally  anything you can imagine. Perhaps when the modding tools are out, you might be able to create a character creation mod that allows player to point build their party?

[HobGoblin42]

Realms Beyond will initially offer two different point systems for attributes:

• Roll the dice and freely assign the results
• Point Buy with increasing costs the higher the attribute

Our approach is very much inspired by ToEE obviously 

[Sapistas]

Realms Beyond will initially offer two different point systems for attributes:

• Roll the dice and freely assign the results
• Point Buy with increasing costs the higher the attribute

Our approach is very much inspired by ToEE obviously 

The rolling the dice system, will it have unlimited rolls (as most games) or you roll once or twice and then you have to pick? Tbh, I never liked infinite rolling (or rolling in general) 'cause it makes the whole character creation process pointless. Point-buy, or at least limited rolling, gives you the interesting choices of how to distribute scores but if I can roll forever why not just click a few times and get the best scores possible? 

[Panpiper]

The rolling the dice system, will it have unlimited rolls (as most games) or you roll once or twice and then you have to pick? Tbh, I never liked infinite rolling (or rolling in general) 'cause it makes the whole character creation process pointless. Point-buy, or at least limited rolling, gives you the interesting choices of how to distribute scores but if I can roll forever why not just click a few times and get the best scores possible?

If doing limited dice rolls for stats, have an option both to save a roll so as to recall it when you run out of rolls, 'and' have the option at that point, after rolling, to default to point buy. This way you cannot wind up with an absolute crap set of stats, which 'can' happen if you have limited dice rolls.

[kanisatha]

It's a single player game. If I want to spend hours rerolling, how does that affect anyone else? If you want to limit your rolls, you're always free to do so.

[HobGoblin42]

There is no algorithm or technology that allows us to limit the number of re-rolls technically. The player can always restart the whole game and restart the process.
Therefore we won't invest time and energy to enable such a limitation, but we will store the number of re-rolls and use it later somehow.

[schlobb]

Talking of dice rolls, are there any plans to have positive and negative traits like Daggerfall?

[rjshae]

There is no algorithm or technology that allows us to limit the number of re-rolls technically. The player can always restart the whole game and restart the process.
Therefore we won't invest time and energy to enable such a limitation, but we will store the number of re-rolls and use it later somehow.

One method that works is to use a fixed pool of dice outcomes, then randomly assign the rolls to different attributes. I.e. six attributes means 18 rolls, so, for example,  you could have a pool consisting of: six rolls of 6, three rolls of 5 and 4, and two rolls of 3, 2, and 1 => 6+3+3+2+2+2 = 18 rolls, giving an average attribute of (36 + 18 + 12 + 6 + 4 + 2)/6 = 13. You'd get a different result every time, but the rolls are always balanced.

[Panpiper]

One method that works is to use a fixed pool of dice outcomes, then randomly assign the rolls to different attributes. I.e. six attributes means 18 rolls, so, for example,  you could have a pool consisting of: six rolls of 6, three rolls of 5 and 4, and two rolls of 3, 2, and 1 => 6+3+3+2+2+2 = 18 rolls, giving an average attribute of (36 + 18 + 12 + 6 + 4 + 2)/6 = 13. You'd get a different result every time, but the rolls are always balanced.

If the total is always the same, then a player is better off using point buy so they can get what they actually want without the bother. The primary reason for dice rolling in a single player game (I would think) is to give the player the option of playing 'that' dice rolling game for a little while in the hopes of getting a set of stats that would be 'better' than what they could get with point buy. For some characters that require several stats to be high in order to be viable, that chance of getting significantly better than average rolls is absolutely necessary. Personally I want to be able to spend the time necessary (for instance) to give my paladin 18s in three stats (or close to) and still not have 8's or 10's everywhere else. To me that is actually part of the fun. I feel rewarded for the effort and can now have the 'face' of my group also be a serious powerhouse, my 'main'. For the rest I'd probably be content with one eighteen, a sixteen and a couple not bad.

[Sapistas]

It's a single player game. If I want to spend hours rerolling, how does that affect anyone else? If you want to limit your rolls, you're always free to do so.

Because it's a boring and uninteresting procedure. What does it have to do with it being single-player?

I get it - character creation will be meh, as was always used to be in pc DnD games. Pity.