Re: Setup Questions

From: cedman@princeton.edu (Carl Edman)

Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1993 19:48:07 +0000

In article <1993Apr16.124754.5492@ifi.unizh.ch> aiko@avalon.physik.unizh.ch (aiko gieskens) writes:
   (this is NOT Aiko speaking ..But Vinnie :) Vinnie is unable to
   mail in this newsgroup (even the anonymous server doesn't work anymore :(
   SO I asked Aiko if he could post this for me. He really is Great ! :-)

Well I've very recently (two days ago) received the manuals for
   Legends. Luckily I'm familiar with Fantasy Roleplaying and with pbm
   a bit. But I still have rather few time to put things together
   (they'll be starting Legends ROI here any moment (1 week hopefully
   2 but might be less ) and thus I've to hurry.. So I want to ask you
   some help about putting my character together. (this list really
   seems like a gold mine (that's why I started playing legends..I saw
   loadsa mail about that here and that seems rather useful :) Many
   Praises to Aiko Jim Dani and others who write a lot in this news
   group !!!

Absolutely.  People who post here are second in my esteem only to
those who mail useful information to me privately. :-)

Well to the point !  Here are my Neophete thinkings on a possible
   hero position...  Please let me know what you think of it and what
   you should change...

I'm starting a Hero position (wanted a party but that will even
   take more time I guess so I'll do a hero :) and I'm with some
   friends who are building two parties and one overlord position.

With parties, I take it you are refering to the adventuring party
setup option ?  If so, I'd advise you very much against it.  An
adventuring party setup is a mercenary setup plus one so-so and one
weak character minus a castle, an army and a population base.  I can
think of few situations in which you'd ever want to make a trade-off
like that.  A hero in combination with a mercenary/overlord is so much
more powerful than even two adventuring parties would be.

I'm thinking of investing a load of points in INFluence because
   that seems the key to the system :) I read the FAQ and a whole
   bunch of other messages floating around here and come to the
   conclusion that a SEER is very helpfull as is a BLESS spell :) So I
   want a Hero position with loadsa influence, scrying ability and a
   Bless spell.

A good choice.

And in the somewhat longer run I'll be working with my friend the
   overlord ofcourse We'll probably take halfelves because they seem
   rather well (Okay the Drakken seem overly powerfull but I heard
   they're bad with influence so...)

If you want to do a lot of influencing you are probably best off with
a human or an elf, not a half-elf.  While half-elfs do reasonably well
with either humans or elfs, you may just as well chose a human or an
elf starting in a major city with the same population type and do a
lot better.

I also saw that taking the Knight skill is very interesting. It
   gives you a nice bonus and will help me ofcourse to train my
   overlord friendand his troops.  Well putting together a SEER and a
   Knight seems like no problem Reading on I saw that an E character
   knows other Disciplines Too !!  So I can take the Bless spell with
   my SEER skill from my HERO :)

All main characters (type D and E) get spells in other disciplines.
Type Es also get one second level spell in other disciplines, so if
you want to start up with Bless, you need to be either a druid or a
hero.

So till here I'm thinking of Taking a hero with loadsa Influence
   (level 10 or maybe even level 13..costing me 30-39 Points...)
   (what do you thing about this ?)

Make sure to get 13 Influence, not 10.  Training up your influence for
those three levels would take you a month or two full-time.  And if
you are blessed to 100% (as you should plan to be) the effective
difference is 6 points.

A Seer Skill....10 points + 1 / Level (I have no idea on what Level
   I should start with this..Please Suggestions !!! Also what are the
   most important spells to take in the beginning ? Ofcourse I'll take
   BLESS. Dream also seems usefull. Create Seers Crystal and Read
   Spells seem to be the only rating 3 spells so I do need to take
   both these (or can I take something else instead ?)  And the I
   guess I need the Scry Force and Scry Character ?  What about other
   spells ?

The point about Seers spells is that they are few and mostly spells
which you wouldn't waste main character actions casting.  The one big
advantage of being a Seer are seers crystals.  With two of them, a
staff and maybe a status you quickly reach the point where you can
cast almost all spells for free.  That's nice but you pay for it by
having to buy or research most of the spells you'd actually cast (ie.
non-seer spells).

As for the skill level to chose, basically you have two options.
Spend 40 points and buy skill level 31 to become just about as
powerful a spell caster as any beginning character can hope to be, or
spend ten points and start at level 1 which still gives you a large
number of spells (though, regretablly most will be seer spells).
Everything in between is a waste of points.

The knight skill will cost 8 points and I guess this is a must :)

Don't.  For 8 points you can buy abilities which would cost you 8 or
more character actions to gain in the game (like 8 levels of arcance
skill).  Knight on the other hand you can learn for a single character
action from someone else or in a guild.  If you have to have it, have
you sidekick buy it and learn it from him in the first turn.  Even
better have one of the A characters of your overlord friends buy it
and teach it to you.

In the Faq I saw a Knight/seer/Assasin I guess I won't have enough
   points if I want to do the influence. Should I stay with
   Seer/Knigh/ or should I take a 3th Skill and if Which Skill and
   what level ?

Don't buy Knight with your main.  Instead buy a few levels of Assassin
if you have the points.

SKill should be covered with your help but then there's still
    points to be spend on Tactics & combat. I REALLY have no idea on
    what to spend on those. But I guess I need some on this because
    how Else would I be able to bash the Living Daylights out of my
    opponents :) As with the STR DEX CON BTY scores..  Should I invest
    in those...It seems to me that that's merely a waste of points.
    Those points seem better investment in Tactics & Combat

Are you going to lead armies ?  Then get Tactics (though it will be
hard to buy useful levels with the points which remain after buying
the arcane skill and 13 Influence), otherwise don't.  You can never
have too much PC.

An elf with 13 Influence, Seer 30, Assassin 1 with a sidekick with
Knight setup in a major elven city sounds interesting.  If you are
lucky you either start with two cinderoak and two precious gems or you
can buy them right away.  Use them to create two Seers crystals and
equip them, bless yourself at strength 20 and learn Knight from your
sidekick. Before the first month is over you should have picked up a
handful of other elven characters via your effective influence of 26.
That's a good start.

I hope (*QUICK*) help will come to the group from the many people
   who do a great job writing here. I know I have a load of questions.
   In Return I will post (and or put on a ftp site) a whole bunch of
   articles from this list put together... (yep I screen captured a
   load of Messages from this list and I think it's great to put some
   of this in neat files for later use :) A girl which is also playin
   along with us (yep they PBM too :) is already busy putting the
   ASCII in a somewhat nicer form :)

Don't bother.  I've kept an archive of everything post to this and
other lists about Legends in the past year and so have other people.
Editing screen dumps sounds too painful to be worthwhile.

Carl Edman

References

Setup Questions
aiko@avalon.physik.unizh.ch (aiko gieskens)
Fri, 16 Apr 1993 12:47:54 +0000