Ok, so I’ve done a ton of reading to try and squish as much into my brain as possible and have come up with a character idea. I’m looking to get advice really to better hone my character’s play style to my own gaming desires whilst also fitting in with the game’s world.
Basics:
Name: Rhain (I bet this is overused like hell!)
Nation: Navarr
Archetype: Thorn
Lineage: Human
Virtue: Vigilance
Character type:
So basically the type of character I want to play is a war priest of vigilance. I’m looking to find a strong warrior with good leadership qualities to support and help rise to leadership. A political manipulator, with a bloodthirsty side. Believing that Navarr needs to be strong in these times of peril. Maybe even sometimes not abiding laws or manipulating the person I’m supporting in order to get the things done that I believe should be done.
Any pointers or additions, hints, tips, etc would be appreciated, thanks!
You’ll want to hail from a Striding or a Steading, or at least pick a surname for yourself based on your position in the Dance.
The combat skills look reasonable - I have a hate-on for ambidex versus weaponmaster, but that’s my own irrational prejudices rather than a statement about game balance. That said - you might consider taking hero points and some variety of the skills that give you or your friends hit points back rather than endurance and fortitude, because hero points give you more bang for your skill point and can always be used for things like resisting auras if you have to. But as I said, your build is absolutely fine and will work as expected.
Hallow is a bit of an odd choice for your only priest rite other than Dedicate - I’m a fan of Exorcism, Insight, Anoint and Testimony, but if you know for certain you’re going to be running across enough people with magic items that you’re going to want to hallow a lot of them then it’s a reasonable enough choice. (I assume you’re taking a congregation as your personal resource?)
Unless you are actually trained (ie more than one year’s weekly tuition and training) in two-weapon fighting, you will be more effective taking weapon master, or spending the points elsewhere.
That said, combat effectiveness is not neccessarily required in order to enjoy yourself.
I have done weapon training before but not extensively. Could be something for me to consider changing my mind on. Are there any videos you know of that show combat for Empire? (been searching on youtube and all there seems to be is cinematic voice over trailer type videos).
Good idea on the hero points. I had overlooked their uses.
I didn’t realise hallow only affected magical weapons. Definitely will drop that then. Need to do some more reading on religious skills to find one that best suits my goals. Also, yes on congregation being my resource.
With the name, I think I will find a less common name that also sounds nice on the tongue. My understanding of Stridings and Steadings is quite limited. From what I gather, a Striding is a group of people who travel, a Steading is group who live in a settlement?
I struggled to understand the Dance myself. Might need more time reading on it though since there is a lot of information to try and absorb in a couple of sittings.
The limitation on hallow is basically that you can only hallow an item with a ribbon, so can only hallow magic items.
This is mostly for multiple administrative reasons.
I also don’t hugely rate Ambidex at Empire. Shield and weapon master are both excellent, while if you don’t want to buy either, bucklers are generally as good as an offhand sword (remember there’s a one second rule, so you can’t do damage faster with two weapons). Take it only if you have strong characterisation reasons.
Unlike Iulian, I do rate Endurance quite well. Most forms of healing in Empire are full heals, so extra hits get very good very quick. Endurance plus e.g. Warrior’s plate (the basic crafted heavy armour) gives you 8 hits, which is excellent.
If you want a priestly rite which is used on the battlefield I’d go for exorcism, many of the empire’s enemies use aura’s and RP effects as weapons, and there is still demand for priests to combat these
The other good choice would be anointing (Since it doesn’t require magic items), it’s an out of battle activity that supports the role you seem to be going down. If you use the skill pro-actively it could help advance certain political agendas.
I’d second have another look at hero points, I’ve always found heroic healing in particular to be really fun, I’m almost certain you could find some inspiring religious statement that fitted the character.
youtube.com/watch?v=LAw-12RVwnw isn’t Empire, but this is absolutely what Empire looks like, please excuse the electric guitar
[quote]My understanding of Stridings and Steadings is quite limited. From what I gather, a Striding is a group of people who travel, a Steading is group who live in a settlement?
I struggled to understand the Dance myself. Might need more time reading on it though since there is a lot of information to try and absorb in a couple of sittings.[/quote]
Right. So the Stridings walk the Trods, which are basically a magical highway network, and the Steadings are wayhouses that Stridings stop at. The Navarri are like the Imperial postal service, messengers, scouts, beaters of the bounds, foresters et cetera - anybody in a Striding will have been around not just their home forest but likely half the rest of the Empire as well. The Trods span every single Imperial territory. From the wiki: Steadings and Stridings are named for the event that founded them but these are commonly abbreviated or inferred from a much longer descriptive. The oldest communities have names founded in the myths of the Nation while those more recently founded may seem more mundane by comparison.
The Great Dance is the Navarri concept of the story of your life and everyone else’s lives, all woven together like the patterns that form Navarri hearth magic. A string on its own snaps: braided into cord it’s far stronger, and so it is with people’s lives. Reincarnation is part of this - everyone in the Empire believes in reincarnation - you step out of the Dance for a bit, come back in somewhere else. It’s worth noting that I’m not Navarri, but I play a scholar - best to talk to people in your nation about this OOC if you’re playing a priest, because IC of course this is what you’ve been teaching people for most of your life.
You might find more Navarr-specific advice on the Navarr facebook page. Also at the top of the page (under ‘Navarri Roll Call’) is a list of players with their IC names - you’ll notice that we have a Rhain already, and quite a few close variations, so I’d suggest either picking a name that isn’t on there, or making sure you have a distinctive nickname (‘Rhain with the red hat’ or something will do). There’s a lot of lists of ‘Celtic’ names around on baby-naming sites. I decided I didn’t want something that was already a name 'cos Welsh and Scots Gaelic names mostly already have too many associations for me (I’m Welsh and work in Aberdeen), so I just picked a word that sounded right for my character (Uisce ~ flowing water) then used the Roman spelling 'cos nobody could pronounce it otherwise.
If you want to join a Striding or Steading ahead of time, ask in the Navarr FB group, people will be very keen to recruit you!
My Striding probably wouldn’t be a good fit as we’re largely non-combatant, but do drop by Bronwen’s Rest for flapjacks and a certain amount of more-or-less scurrilous gossip.
It’s worth knowing as a newbie that soon after time-in the Navarr have a ‘Standing’, which is where everyone stands around in a circle and makes announcements. At the first Standing of an event, there’s a chance for new people to introduce themselves, so have a couple of sentences prepared - tell people why you are awesome & they should talk to you!
There’s plans to have weapons training in the Navarr camp for the next event - it’s probably worth doing that before you go to battle if you’ve not done anything similar before.
If you are planning something sneaky, don’t tell everyone about it OC first but going in for a bit of dodgy manipulation is fine as long as you don’t mind getting into IC trouble if caught at it!
If you want to be in some sort of leadership role in Navarr, you pretty much have to be a Brand, or people will look at you funny. You don’t have to start as a Brand, it might be a good idea to start in someone else’s Striding or Steading, and then take the Brand oath later on.
Also from the sounds of your character, you might find Hercynia a good place to set your background. Seems to be where most of the particularly bloodthirsty types hail from.
Sadly there don’t seem to be any that capture some of the moments of more organised lines clashing, but it’s still quite fun to see the battle from that point of view
One thing to remember if you want to use your priest skills (whatever they end up being) you’ll need Liao to use them. You get that either by taking the Congregation resource or trading for it. If you’ve got a congregation you also get votes in the Synod so that’s something you could get involved with when you’re not on the battlefield. That’s something important to think about as that’ll be about 75% of your time at the game. Other stuff to do often revolves around the resource you pick, if you fancy trading pick a mine, forest or fleet and then hit the streets to see what you can get for them. Military units also give you stuff but they also give you a reason to get involved with the military side of the game.
Standard advice for anyone making a character: remember you don’t have to spend all your points at once.
For this character, it might be good to keep one unspent, ready to buy whichever religious skill seems most valuable once you’ve started play and you have better knowledge of what the character will want to do.
Perhaps also for the choice of hero-points (and a skill or two that uses them) vs. endurance and fortitude.
You could even leave your choice of weapon-use skills (ambidex, shield, weaponmaster, nothing) until after trying some sparring with different combinations; you could do this OC before time in, if you want your character to have been fighting that way for years when you start play.
A point I’d put against Ambidex is it is spending 1 XP in order to not use your free skill of “Use Buckler”, which is a pretty poor deal IMO. Weapons Master means you can’t use a buckler with your main weapon, but can get something with a bit of reach. Exception there is 1h spear, but that’s an OC expensive combo and a bit awkward for someone new.
OC, you can get a 36" weapon or a buckler for about the same price as each other. Bucklers can stop arrows and give you a fighting chance against polearms. It’s good because it works as a weapons set for any future Empire character you play.
Oh the other hand, Hero Points give you the ability to go NOPE, responding THIS way" to RP effects and fuel magic items. Then after your first event, you can pick up Cleave to Vigilantly remove threats, or Stay With Me/Get It Together to exhort the faithful back into the fight.
Lines begin to clash at 1.21
1.36 demonstrates that it’s not the person you’re opposite that is the most dangerous. Earl Novarian attacks the orc to Thargs right exposing his left side for tharg to hit.
2.15 Warrior from house DeGauvan (sorry dont know the name) moves in to shatter. Tharg notices this and backs up not wanting to loose his shield. Colin (to thargs right) gets his polearm shattered and is forced to withdraw. good use of heroic skill to take out reach weapons.
6.00 attempting to goad Earl L’Oreal out of the ranks but the line retreats before he comes out at 6.46 he then realises that Tharg is in full heavy armour and would not be an easy take down
7:15 Dawnish line continues to back up to the point they are connecting with other forces and risk becoming a blob and getting surrounded.
8:11 Dawn does what it does best and charges the enemy. Early face off with Rigel of house martell is broken up by Sir Uther and Sanguineus and tharg is forced to back off.
8:34 in backing off he catches Rigel out on his own and manages to take him down (8:38)
8:40 Earl DeRondel makes an aggressive attack against Tharg forcing him back then at 8:41 Tharg makes the mistake of not being situationally aware and backs over the corpse of another orc tripping him up with legs flying up 8:42
This is as far as I’m aware one of the few combat films of empire. I’m hoping to get a few more in future as it gives a good insight on how different groups fight.
but going in for a bit of dodgy manipulation is fine as long as you don’t mind getting into IC trouble if caught at it!