In which game did you have the most fun just thinking about character builds

[Freelance Henchman]

I suspect everyone here has had that happening at some point, where you obsess about getting some character concept JUST RIGHT in some way by allocating the stats and attributes optimally. For me the games where I got that the most was the Neverwinter Nights, especially the second one in a multiplayer context. Probably no coincidence since both of those use the convoluted DnD 3 rules that leave you so many ways to make a character. DISCUSS!!!!111

 

[Computer Gamer Refugee]

I also do the NWN characters.

Bard -> arcane archer
Bard (1 level), fighter (4 levels) -> dragon desciple bard over sorcerer because you won't use either class much, but the former gives more class skills
Rogue/barb for skill monkey/2h damage
If you cannot rest easily
Cleric (Healing/Sun)
If you can rest easily
Sorcerer or Wizard for maximum item creation

 

[Haraldur]

Arcanum, probably. Morrowind took a lot of time as well, though that may have been more compulsion than enjoyment: the somewhat convoluted nature of its system annoyed the minmaxer in me.

 

[Phelot]

I recently got back into the Realms of Arkania trilogy.

I've been enjoying just making characters in Realms of Arkania 3. Well, all of them, but I also enjoy making a new character in 3 since you level up so much and get to spend an hour just distributing skill and spell points. I also had a few rage moments when failing 3 in a row for several skills It is pretty fun crafting a whole party, determining who will fill what roll. The fact that you can fail an increase makes it a bit more fun, too. Dare I say, minigame like? I also think it is a fairly realistic way to distribute points. I look at each point as time spent on training a skill. Sometimes it takes just 1 time period to raise it, sometimes up to 3 while at other times after 3 time periods, your character is just too dumb dumb to get it this time around.

I also thought Arcanum had some fun builds. That's one game that really felt great each level up. Dem attributes.

Now, to go a bit off topic and say which game I hated with building? I'd say TOEE. Oh yeah that's right. It seemed boring each level up since each class has their designated skills they can learn, so you just dump your skill points into those skills i.e. anything marked white rather than yellow. It made leveling kind of lackluster, the build simply grows in a linear way, every level up, 4 more Intimidate points. Yawn. Granted, I don't normally multiclass or anything, so maybe it gets more entertaining then. I did enjoy deciding which spells to grab if playing as sorcerer, though.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

Building fighter/mage "gishes" of various kinds is a fun challenge in DnD (especially since generally pure warriors are kinda boring to play due to lack of interesting options). With multiclassing you can open up some skills for the skill-starved melee classes and with feats like Able Learner you can then get them somewhat competent in those. Well, in NWN it was mostly good for the exploity bonus-to-saves from Spellcraft and such to increase the warrior type's resistance for their weak Will save.

 

[octavius]

Wizardy 6 and 7, I guess. Especially 7 since it's easy to get gimped characters with low magic skills if you don't know what you are doing.

Morrowind, to build a character that does not level up to 20 just by running around and having his Block skill go up by fending off endless swarms of cliff racers. Morrowind was for me actually most fun with a gimped character.

Darklands, because it has the most fun character generation.

 

[SinVraal]

Darklands, Realms of Arkania, Arcanum (How many games I have started just to test characters), Wasteland

 

[Kahlis]

Realms of Arkania. Especially Blade of Destiny, with its incredibly catchy chargen music.

 

[J1M]

Neverwinter Nights 2 (+expansions)

 

[ManjuShri]

Phelot is there a reason why you didn't port your previous characters over?

 

[OSK]

Pokemon! :D

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Arcanum. In fact, I barely played much of the actual game, creating characters was more fun than playing.

Pokemon! :D

Suddenly, serious business

 

[moraes]

Wizardry 8

 

[Cynic]

ToEE, Final Fantasy Tactics. ToEE is such an excellent rendition of 3E rules, you can do a LOT with so many different variations of single/dual/multi classes. Sadly, it's all over once you get a Wiz that can fireball.

FFT - amazingly fun because of the quasi dual classing aspect of it and the sheer number of jobs, all of which are potentially viable.

 

[Serious_Business]

Cynic
Now playing: Diablo 3
On hold: NWN2

What are you Cynical about exactly, I wish to know, share me your secrets

Anyway, your sig reminded me how much time I spent fucking around thinking of builds in NWN2. It was all for naught because the game is bad, but yeah, that character system was pretty extensive. Do I derp a derp a Berserker or Dragon Derper? All very important questions, worth spending an afternoon or 7 over

 

[Regvard]

Neverwinter Nights 1-2. Invulnerable dwarven defenders and dual kama wielding cleric/fighter/monks with 276382768273 attacks per turn. Fun!

 

[laclongquan]

NWN2. Especially the MotB campaign. BG2 also.

But IWD2 is good too. It's fun to design a whole group from ground up.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Well, I have probably spent the most time just thinking about builds for NWN2 + expansions/mods, sketching stuff out in a notebook, etc. It brought back great memories of screwing around with tabletop characters and ideas for them in tabletop D&D.

I also spent a lot of time thinking about it for Arcanum, even though I basically can't stand playing the actual game. The skills and world for Arcanum always seem so cool in the manual but then I fire it up and that's it. So the most fun I ever had with Arcanum was spent thinking about character builds. That's not the point of the topic but it's what the thread title brought to mind. Probably overdue to once again try to will my way through the stupid thing.

 

[Phelot]

Phelot is there a reason why you didn't port your previous characters over?

First, I like to try different classes and second I've heard that imported characters make the game a breeze. When I originally played it, I remember playing with the same characters.

 

[Tigranes]

IWD1/2 & NWN2, for the ruleset reasons; Arcanum also.

 

[Phelot]

I didn't really think that IWD1 had all that much to its character creation, though I admit to spending quite a bit of time rolling for attributes.

 

[LeStryfe79]

SoZ was damn fun. It sported magnificent character and party building, especially with the game's expanded use of skills. I think something like that or ToEE combined with Shin Megami Tensei demon fusing would be the best ever.

 

[felipepepe]

Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis... getting the medals was interesting and I could create a motherfucking LICH!

 

[Quetzacoatl]

Daggerfall had a really great character creation screen. I remember starting a few other games to experiment with different builds.

 

[913]

Nwn 2 - too bad gameplay did not match up