The Totally NEW Team Corwin Thread

And you give us every reason to have something to talk about.

Here is just one tiny example of a typical playing night from the RPGWatch group.

Corwin: "Help……"

Peter: "Where did Corwin go? Is his sorcerer Reywind adventuring by himself again in this dangerous dungeon thinking my paladin will come to his rescue once again"?.

CM: "No, he lost his way in the dungeon again. Corwin, you have to take the RIGHT turn at the intersection. Nooooo, don't go to the left."

Corwin: "I can't see anything. Where are you? Hello. 3 trolls just showed up and they're attacking Reywind. I need healing. Uh oh, I got myself killed again"

Peter: "What!!! Did Corwin manage to get himself killed. Sigh, I'm tired of carrying his soul stone to the resurrection shrine every time. Joe can do it next time".

Joe: "Peter. Don't rush after Corwin. Do you see the trap just ahead of you….. Never mind you just set it off. Oh, sh**. Now Peter expects me to carry both their soul stones to the resurrection shrine".

CM: "Peeeeter. I nearly died when you set off the fire trap. Be more careful".

Peter: "Sorry. I'm just a paladin and I don't see any traps. You're the clever one, remember".

What can I say but…..

Hmmm. Maybe I should level my Rogue up to where she can run with us Then again, having extra healing has came in handy.

I did get a Sorc up to level 4 while not being able to sleep for 3 days. Solo Sorc = not fun to do.

Sorry for momentarily hijacking your thread, but there's something that must be shared:

Corwin = Legend

That is all.




@Corwin: Didn't want to take the chance of them not browsing the other thread. Let me know if the respect is given next session so that I don't have to release the lizards...

Or you could always join us; new players are MOST welcome!! Mind you, you need a sense of humour and like to laugh a lot!!


@az (alias Sushi) I play solo Sorc and Wiz. Both can be quite fun solo IF you can RUN fast. It's not my fault Peter releases spawns then leaves them for me to deal with!!!!

LOL Sushi. Poor Siusaidh. Or "Susan" as her name translates to in English. I wonder what Cairistine, Rachail, or Mureall would be called? Or if those are close enough to the English names that someone other than me can pronounce them.

I'm sure Mureall could be fun solo, but getting her to enough power to survive is the challenge. I have always disliked grinding (which is why I haven't beaten some classic RPGs like the earlier Wizardries (prior to 5). Which in DDO, is what I have to do; run the same quests over and over unless I find someone willing to take me on an elite run somewhere. Which is how I got to level 4, actually. Grouped together, finished Korthos, then ran elite, then ran some in the Harbor until we could run through elite.

I prefer arcane casters, though DDO's seem weaker than the other MMO's I've played. In most, it's not until level 20 or so that I run into trouble, and in most, that's because that was about the point that the free content run out. EUO was slightly better, but then they're not a traditional mmo.

Clerics, on the other hand, are just dominant for an easy early solo run. Way more than the comparable classes elsewhere, which are "healers" only.

I've got a solo cleric and bard as well who are fun to play, but the bard works better as a support char.

I still haven't tried a Bard. Been meaning to though. Cleric is just like an easy mode though. Healing, decent enough melee to solo when magic runs out, then cc and offensive magic to boot.

I'm playing a paladin (level 6 Peter Stauffenberg) and cleric (level 5 Peter Policus). I think playing the paladin is the easiest to do solo. My paladin has now 32 AC, 2 lay on hands which heals 60 hitpoints plus about 90 mana which gives me 9 cure light wounds. Monsters rarely hit my paladin and I can heal when things get rough. The only vulnerability for my paladin is enemy spellcasters. I don't have many buffs so fireballs, melf's acid arrow and other nasty spells can really hurt my paladin despite having excellent saving throw stats.

So I definitely recommend to play a paladin if you want to survive. You're excellent at melee and you can even heal. Early on the paladin is almost up to par with fighters. At higher levels you will see the paladin's role change from tank to off-tank. The paladin will be the supporting attacker, keeping the fighter's flank or going straight for the enemy spellcasters. But at low and mid level you can just engage any monster you like.

My cleric has also done well in solo quests. You don't hit as often as a paladin, but you have lots of mana (350 at level 5) so you can heal yourself numerous times. You just have to be careful about engaging large groups of monsters.

I'm building my cleric for group play and not solo play. So I'm taking enhancements and feats that will benefit the group. E. g. I now have level 2 divine vitality which gives party spellcasters 5d4+10 mana per use of turn undead (I have 11 uses at the moment). I'm getting divine cleansing level which can heal poison, curse, disease and other conditions. At level 3 I can even heal petrification and level drain I think.

I played with my level 5 cleric in a group doing level 7 quests on elite and I performed very well there. I kept the wizard with extra mana and healed all the others. I didn't fight as much because my main task was to stay behind a heal the others before it got dangerous. Then I could join in with my mace when most of the monsters were killed.

So both the cleric and the paladin perform really well both as solo and as group characters. It's important to make a good character build so you can get valuable help with the character builder. It can be downloaded here:

http://www.rjcyberware.com/DDO/DDOCharGen.html

I've planned both my characters all the way up to level 20. That makes it easier to know which feats, skills and enhancements you should pick at each level.

Now wait ONE minute here. Peter the Pally gives a good visualization of Corwin in game, but he neglects to mention the fact that Peter is the one who runs off and leaves us to handle the spawns and traps he triggers and then starts yelling Uhh-------Ohhhh.......... when he finds the boss leaders and their 1000 guards and he is alone. :lol:

True, but I usually survive those encounters when I'm alone in the fight. It's when I'm with all of you I tend to die.

LOL. I know my Pally is another easy way to solo. 30-40 damage per hit tends to clear out large groups quickly; even on hard. And maybe one day I'll find a decent weapon too.

Though I wonder how you got so many sp; I have 25 right now at level 4. With an item giving me 10 (I haven't found anything better for that slot). I can cast CLW twice, and it's basically only good for topping up and saving my 100+ starter pots for later (I'll eventually start using the regular CLW/CMW pots). I don't know if I'd put her up above my Cleric (Protection from Energy FTW!) though. At least on par.

Divine Cleansing doesn't heal level drain. I think you need Restoration for that (Lesser Restoration only fixes stat drain). Divine Cleansing is cool though, since it's basically a free Cure Disease. I have it as well, even though I've yet to need it. My Cleric also has the sp boost and the healing boost. I just habitually charge forward with her, and heal others as needed (and noticed). My SP is about on par with yours, 380 or so. But I have some stuff from Korthos that gives a decent boost as well.

Well it is role-playing, ever consider that you are playing the same character over and over and over again? Of course have fun but when your style of play reaches the point of a mere caricature it gets sort of boring/annoying for the other players.
The main point is that you are in a party so why not act as one? More of an obvservation than a criticism though.

No, it's not "roleplaying". It's an MMO. Using a modified DnD3.5 ruleset doesn't make it a role playing game.

Now some people can roleplay; there are entire guilds dedicated to that. Most are there to have fun, and play a action game with RPG-elements. Me personally, my Cleric is a bit different than my Pally, but my Sorc is vastly different because she won't survive trying to rush anything. My 4th is still being decided.

We do stick mostly together, except Peter. But then he is a level or two ahead of everyone else.

You want a bad party though, I joined an insistent level 8 Monk with my Pally (level 4 at the time). We went into a level 6 dungeon. The first thing we encountered was two large earth elementals. I took one and he took the other. Mine I killed without issue, and without taking any real damage. Then I turned, and killed his. Then I had to heal him (and with only 45sp and CLW, he took everything I had basically). Then he got us trapped with several greater mephits and a fire trap. Despite this, and despite being 2 levels below what would be able to do that dungeon, I outlasted him in that cage.

And he blamed me for not being able to get far in there. How did he get to level 8? Probably mooching off parties of much better players. I went and soloed another level 6, just for fun. I died to 5 large earth elementals, a half dozen greater air mephits, and a large fire elemental. And if I could have hit my saves on the earth elementals' constant grabs, I probably could have squeaked by, and wand whipped to the first shrine.

I rarely go in solo as, for me, the fun is being part of a group. Guess I'm fussy; I only enjoy playing with people I know!!

I tried a bit solo in DDO and it's possible for some early quests, but later you need a group to have a chance to succeed.

I've tried a little bit playing as a group with random people inviting me to the group. The experiences are mixed. Some people are devoted and careful, but many are too reckless to play with. They wander off in all directions and get themselves killed. The devoted ones seem to know the quests well and turbo through the quests. I rarely have time to keep up with them. They tend to play on Elite to get better loot and XP. This is more fun because we succeed and the quests get solved. But I don't think this is optimal because I don't play with friends, just people I meet for a short while.

I guess many elite DDO players would criticise how we play in Team Corwin, but we have a lot of fun because we talk to each other on Skype, play at a pace everyone can follow and perform pretty well despite the jokes about the opposite.

RPG's are originally intended to be played by a group of friends with the same characters meeting week after week. It's the interaction between the players and DM that's most of the fun.

Unfortunately it's not possible to get a lot of role playing in MMORPG's like DDO. The quests are too shallow for any real role playing. The game is based upon doing quests to get XP and loot to improve you character. You interact with others to solve the quests. It's certainly possible to hang out in a tavern role playing, but instead we hang out in the tavern with our avatars talking about REAL life instead. That's just as fun.

So if ffbj feels we don't role play much then he's partly right, but online computer games aren't very well suited to true role playing like pnp games like AD&D. I think we play DDO like most others do, but we have more fun because we use Skype to communicate instead of typing lots of messages to the group. We stick together for week after week so we get a group of friends playing instead of meeting just random people. We can also do the latter between our Friday sessions if we like to get XP faster. So I think we get the most out of the computer RPG medium.

Not even Bioware games have true role playing. You have some kind of role playing with the other computer controlled PC's, but not other real life people. You could do some real role playing in NWN if you played with a DM, but we ran out of good modules to play so we switched to DDO. I have to admit I don't miss NWN much and won't install it again on my computer. DDO is probably not the best MMORPG out there, but it's cheap and you don't have to pay a monthly fee just to play. I don't like the MMORPG's where you pay 10-15$ per month just to have an account. I can accept to pay for quests like in DDO, but not for just playing. Then I feel cheated when I can't play very often (like every day). So I think DDO works well for Team Corwin as a replacement for NWN.

Yeah I wasn't really suggesting that people should role-play more in this specific instance. Totally different sort of animal playing in these online games. I just thought it would be interesting to have different PC's with different personalities. Playing them alternately like one week play the goody two shoes sort of group, then the next week the evil group. Sort of like the Mirror/Mirror Star Trek episode.
I bet Nimoy really loved playing evil Spock.

Yes, that could be fun except for one thing; I really have problems playing evil characters. I've tried it a few times, most especially with the KoTOR games and I've never found it enjoyable. Cm is ALWAYS evil!!

DDO doesn't allow the option of actually playing "evil" characters, in alignment or in choice during the quests. You don't even get much of a "neutral" choice in your options during dialogue. So even if we wanted to, we're stuck playing the good guys.

ffbj said:

Yeah I wasn't really suggesting that people should role-play more in this specific instance. Totally different sort of animal playing in these online games. I just thought it would be interesting to have different PC's with different personalities. Playing them alternately like one week play the goody two shoes sort of group, then the next week the evil group. Sort of like the Mirror/Mirror Star Trek episode.
I bet Nimoy really loved playing evil Spock.

Click to expand...

How do you know that we're not playing differently with out different characters? My paladin behaves differently from the cleric. My cleric likes more to bash barrels and get the gold before the rogue can get there. He's also more careful in combat and tries to keep people alive by healing. My paladin is not very interested in gold and goes directly against the most powerful monsters instead of looking for barrels and chests. He's not afraid of traps so he doesn't let a trap delay him from rushing towards the big baddies.

Both are good aligned and I try to play accordingly. I've never played an evil character in my life and will never ever do that. What's the fun in that? If I end up in a group where PC's kill each other then I find something else to do instead. I can accept rogues who are a bit selfish and hide some loot for themselves. That's in the rogue's nature. You don't have to be evil to be selfish and a cheat.

Remember that Peter the Paladin you see in DDO is the same as Peter the Paladin in NWN. He has just sailed to a new world.