3. You died. Could you have helped it?

You died. Could you have helped it?


  • Healing Potions

    This is tricky. They are necessary, but they are also very expensive, and require a lot of time investment. A single heal potion can easily be an hour's worth of real time adventuring; this isn't feasible for every player.

    The worth of a cure or heal potion is generally dependent on who's using it. At level 2, a cure moderate wounds potion is effectively the same as a heal potion. For a mid level mage, the same is generally true for cure critical wounds and heal.

    The best value on Narfell currently is the cure serious wounds potion. You can get a stack of 10 of them for a relatively small time investment, perhaps an hour or so for an upper mid-level character.

    For big events, you'll want to keep no less than the ten. 30-40 is a safe number.

    For higher level characters (12+), I consider 2-5 a good start for heal potions.

    When do you use them?

    This is tricky and takes some experience. Heals are expensive enough that you'll only want to drink them if you hit badly wounded. If you're a dwarf with a ton of hit points, the threshold might be in the near dead range for you to drink a heal.

    Lower impact potions like cure light wounds should generally be used outside of combat, when the action economy doesn't matter so much.


  • Armor Class

    If you're going into melee, you need this, and as much of it as you can muster. Hit points are good, but without a high armor class they'll disappear so fast that they won't be any real value.

    Magic Items

    Narfell effectively has a cap on how high this score can go. On permanent magical items, you will typically be capped at +2 deflection, +2 armor, +2 natural, and +2 dodge. On armor, you have a cap of +2 armor and +2 shield, on top of their base armor class bonus (2 for leather, 8 for full plate, 3 for tower shield, etc).

    Typically, only bonuses with different types stack; wearing two rings of protection +1 (deflection type) won't be any more effective than wearing one.

    Armor types typically only come on certain items:

    Armor: This is the +x you see on magical armor. This type also appears on magical bracers with an ac bonus.

    Deflection: Rings, belt, gloves, and belts have the deflection type.

    Natural Armor: Only amulets have this bonus.

    Dodge: Only boots have this bonus.

    Getting a +2 bonus from each of these times will take time, and is expensive. But they are indispensable for high level melee combatants.

    Skills/Feats

    Beyond items, there are certain skills and feats that can drastically improve your armor class.

    Tumble: Every five ranks you take in the tumble skill improves your armor class by 1. This only counts ranks; increasing the score through bonuses from spells, feats, or items won't influence your tumble AC bonus.

    Rogues, monks, and bards have Tumble as a class skill; through the narfell system override available in the downloads section, Ranger gains access to tumble as a class skill as well. A character like this who maxes out his tumble ranks can have a +3 bonus to armor class by level 12. This is substantial.

    You can take Tumble as a cross class skill, but to reach +1 ac, you'll need to invest 10 skill points. I consider this worthwhile.

    Expertise/Improved Expertise: These are big on narfell. This allows a character to "tank", to dive into the thick of combat and be relatively well protected from harm. They require an intelligence score of 13.


  • Beyond field tactics and spell list preparations, which are usually very idiosyncratic to individual playstyles, there are two points that come to mind that are Narfell specific and apply across the board.

    Action Economy

    Dnd is a game of action economy. In general, you get one action/attack sequence/spell per round, and there's very little that can change that. In this regard, a 1st level rogue is the same as a 20th level fighter. A few spells break this rule (haste and time stop), but they are few and far between.

    What is the best action for that round? You could chug cure light wounds potions in the middle of melee, but your opponents also get their one action a round, and will be using it to beat on you with swords (and getting attacks of opportunity). Better to go with the cure critical wounds, or the heal potion, or cast the heal spell.

    This also means being realistic about what to expect from clerics; a cure spell cast on one pc means that that cleric will not be able to cast on another pc that round.

    Endurance

    The most important point. Narfell is not a 5-minute-workday server, where you can cast all your spells and use all your consumables early on, and then run home to rest until tomorrow. In higher level events, resting is at a premium.

    Carefully choose spells for impact. Consider spellcasting like budgeting; how far can you make them stretch? The big spells are generally for emergencies.

    Carefully choose how you fight. Diving in may be heroic, but unless you've got the ac to prevent attacks, you're just going to suck up resources.

    This also means extend spell is your best friend.

  • G

    @2390ea3c68=Dorakhan:

    And Gonnar - I suggest keeping the actual tips in another thread that is "stickied" as information.

    Yes, great idea, Dora. I expect this thread to be too chaotic to have the actual tips being seen in a clear manner!

    @2390ea3c68:

    metagod said something about spells and duration and rushing.

    When I get started with spells, it'll be like an unending list of things to say. Seriously >_>


  • And to further expand on Emerwyn's point… sometimes characters should be better in combat than they are being played, just by nature of who they are and what experience they have - so in some situations, think of it as another aspect of roleplay.

    For example, if you're a high level caster with 15-20 or so points invested in spellcraft and another 10 points on top of that in items, your character SHOULD know plenty about spell mechanics, what works, and what doesn't - and accidentally fireballing your friends really isn't an IC thing to do (unless your character would intentionally fireball their friends… but that's another thing entirely).

    And Gonnar - I suggest keeping the actual tips in another thread that is "stickied" as information.


  • The way I see it, there are three main points when it comes to improving your chances to survive:

    1. Knowledge of the game mechanics. What does each stat, feat, skill and spell exactly do for your character, and how to counter them when encountered in monsters.

    2. Knowledge of Narfell as a setting. Knowing an approximation of each monster's stats, what they are capable of, and their modus operandi (knowledge of the AI)

    3. Payer's mechanical skills. This includes reaction speed, timing of skills and spells, positioning during encounters and a series of "tricks of the trade" that allow you to be at an advantage when facing any combat situation.

    Narfell is a RP focused server, so nobody is required to be an expert or "pro" in any of those three points. But while improving point 3 can take some practice and dedication, improving points 1 and 2 is at the reach of anyone who cares to at least read and pay some attention to the world their character lives in.

    I'm pretty sure Gonnar's tricks and advices will help the average Narfeller to understand better some of the rules that apply to the game, but really, the knowledge is there for everyone to reach. Surviving is your own responsibility. 😉


  • I'm going to jump in and say that i notice pcs in a rush to kill the next obstacle. Being that almost everyone i see in game nowadays is a caster of some sort or relies heavily on a caster or consumables.
    Spell duration means ppl are in a rush and thus mistakes are made.