Thursday 25 April 2002

Pic of the day: Porcupette, Champion of the downtrodden and the one girl who thinks size doesn't matter. Yes, this is all about Dark Age of Camelot. The rest of you are welcome back another day, or graze at the varied menu of my monthly index.

A SMALL experiment

I had read in "Shao's guide to the shield champion" that Dexterity was documented as the main attribute for damage-takers. Actually it's all about *not* taking damage. Evade, parry and block keep those pesky weapons away; and dex supposedly boosts these skills. I suspect it also increases your own chance to hit the enemy, but I haven't actually read that.

So while I was playing my elf enchanter, I suddenly got this ridiculous idea. I saw the small lurikeen run like hyperactive preschoolers across the lawn. Lurikeen are kind of like elves, but much smaller, even weaker, and extremely quick and agile. And then I remembered dex as the primary attribute, and this wild idea sprouted in my brain. In the deep of night, I created Porcupette II, pint-sized champion!

Lurikeen are already insanely dextrous at 80 points, and I added 10 more. Then 10 points to constitution, which is really the problem with a lurikeen fighter. Up from 40 to 50 points, the poor character is still doomed too a life of comparative frailty. That, of course, is a problem ... if you get hit. My gamble is that the extra dexterity will more than offset the lost HP. But that requires specializing heavily in the defensive skills, to the exclusion of the fancy attack styles that are the pride of fighters in all three realms.

The last ten points I put into strength. Hibernians don't have plate mail, but I suppose scale can get pretty heavy too. Besides, you want to be able to carry some loot. Doing slightly more damage surely cannot hurt a fighter type either. I considered putting those 10 points too into constitution, but it would only take me to 55. (Diminishing returns after 10 points.)

***

I was lucky, i guess, to team up with a naturalist early on. This is primarily a healer type, though they specialize into different subclasses leaning more toward magic or armed combat. Anyway, having a healer at hand really cuts the downtime between battles, which you'd normally spend resting to recover from your wounds. I guess I wasn't the ultimate warrior, dexterity or no. I was saving my training points, except for getting the simplest sword move at level 2. But I wanted to save those points for my special class skills.

After serial killing countless critters our own level, we finally reached level 5 and got our subclass. Porcupette became a champion, and used those training points to get the 4 basic magic shouts of that class: Hurt, weaken, make clumsy, and slow down. (The actual names are of course fancier. And you can upgrade these spell shouts to progressively stronger versions later.) Sadly, getting these 4 took almost all my training points, so I had nothing left for shield and parry. Luckily, the healer stayed with me almost all the way to level 6.

At level 6 I got a more powerful damage shout that actually makes a difference (for a few levels). And I still had enough training points to get a couple skill levels in shield, finally. Including the seriously nifty "numb" attack style, in which you use your shield as a heavy weapon. It takes a lot of endurance, but it also does a lot of damage.

***

Now at level 6, Porcupette can hunt blue-cons critters safely with the blitz approach: (Start a bit away, but within shouting range,) damage shout, weakness shout, (critter arrives,) numb, numb, damage shout, numb, finish off with next sword stroke. After that, my character needs to sit a while to catch her breath, but she takes no damage above scratches. She could certainly survive yellow critters (her own level), but that would mean much more downtime without a healer so is not worth it.

My plan for the next few levels is to raise shield and parry. Raising a skill is cheaper at first, then more and more expensive. But that is for each skill. For the price of raising a skill from 9 to 10, you can raise two skills from 4 to 5, or five skills from 1 to 2. So it makes sense to develop both of my defensive skills at first, even though shield is clearly better than parry and can do things that parry cannot, especially in groups. (Parry is however a goodsend for people who use both their hands for weapons, and so cannot hold a shield.)

I am not sure how long I am going to play this character. It is not my favorite class, not nearly. On the other hand, it is kind of funny to play a fearsome warrior peeking over the top of the flowers. And I'd even be tempted to take this one as far as to level 20, where you can take part in the realm wars. Just to see the reaction of a big hulking troll when a pint-sized elf comes bearing down on it ... bearing up on it, whatever. "Go for the eyes, Boo!" And at the very least, there's the satisfaction of saying to team-mates several times my size: "Don't worry, your Champion is here! I WILL PROTECT YOU ALL!"