What is the BEST character build?

[Giga Gilgamesh]

I usually pick Noble as my background, and various choices depending on what i feel like.

Is there any "best" build? If so, do tell.

[X-the Unknown]

Why wouldn't you want to play with tons of companions? I have NINE working on TEN. They are fun to level up and decide what skills they get. :))

[Tuidjy]

The best starting option depend on what type of character you are going for.

If you want a shining knight, a character that will be relatively skilled at using a lance and sword, and concentrate on being a leader, you'll do well to go with the first choice, every time.

If you want a character who will be able to solo sea raiders without spending real time hours in the arena, you better pick the steppe/poacher/hunter options.

By the way, Charisma is, in my opinion, completely and utterly useless, and there is no penalty for picking Intelligence on creation, you get the extra skill points anyway. If you believe that the horse archer is the most powerful character, and I do, then there is a single, best set of choices.

Gender: male
Father: hunter
Early life: steppe child
Profession: game poacher
Motivation: personal revenge

This starts you with 11/9/4/6 (30 as opposed to 28, and 20 in combat stats, as opposed to 17)

With the 4 stat points and 6 skill points you are given, you can start with Power Draw 4, 12/12 Strength/Agility, a horse, and an OK bow. You also get some furs to sell for cash which you can use to buy a better bow or more arrows. So you get an instant horse archer who can kill looters, sea raiders, etc... all day One long.

[X-the Unknown]

Yeah, horse archers are the WORST cowards in the book. Not only do they shoot from range at the poor AI but they can ride away from it also. lol

[whatdoesthisbuttondo?]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

By the way, Charisma is, in my opinion, completely and utterly useless

Depends on how you want to play your character.

For a hero style build, it certainly is useless, but if you want to weasel your way to domination by politics, the charisma skills are very important.

Also depends a bit on the mod, PoP for example gives +2 troops per charisma point, the prisoner management is an extremely important skill in that mod as well.

High persusasion allows you to get easier support from lords even with very low relations as long as you have good renown, 10 persuasion even allows you to keep companions in a stable party that hate each other (as long as the morale is good).

I'm actually playing a 10-persuasion build in PoP currently (you can start with one that has you at 12 charisma and 10 persuasion), and it makes it very easy to get exactly the fiefs I want to get me in a good starting position without actually sieging anything.

You will have it a little harder with fighting in the beginning, but once you reach level 20+ on your char, it will not make that much of a difference anymore.

[Tuidjy]

Originally posted by whatdoesthisbuttondo?:

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

By the way, Charisma is, in my opinion, completely and utterly useless

For a hero style build, it certainly is useless, but if you want to weasel your way to domination by politics, the charisma skills are very important.

Actually, while some mods, indeed, make persuasion a Charisma skill, in Native it is an Intelligence skill, and so Charisma only helps with things like prices, wages, morale, army size... i.e. things that are completely irrelevant to a character who is powerful enough to win his battles.

This thread is about Native starting options, so I stand by Charisma being a dump stat. Once you know what you are doing, you do not need it, at least in Native. Of course, once you know what you are doing, you should not be playing Native :-)


As a reminder:

Skills controlled by Charisma in Native:
- trade, prisoner management - only bring in cash, something looting does so much better
- leadership, in addition to decreasing wages it increases army size, which renown does better

So a character who is able to fight better through Strength and Agility, or has high Intelligence to support his army, will be fighting more, winning more, and looting more, getting cash and renown in the process.

Native Warband has many builds, but the successful ones are two types: Combat Beast (max Str/Agi) and Glorious Leader (max Int, average Str/Agi)

Charisma is for newbies to learn the ropes...

[Atomicbean]

Originally posted by whatdoesthisbuttondo?:

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

By the way, Charisma is, in my opinion, completely and utterly useless

Depends on how you want to play your character.

For a hero style build, it certainly is useless, but if you want to weasel your way to domination by politics, the charisma skills are very important.

Also depends a bit on the mod, PoP for example gives +2 troops per charisma point, the prisoner management is an extremely important skill in that mod as well.

High persusasion allows you to get easier support from lords even with very low relations as long as you have good renown, 10 persuasion even allows you to keep companions in a stable party that hate each other (as long as the morale is good).

I'm actually playing a 10-persuasion build in PoP currently (you can start with one that has you at 12 charisma and 10 persuasion), and it makes it very easy to get exactly the fiefs I want to get me in a good starting position without actually sieging anything.

You will have it a little harder with fighting in the beginning, but once you reach level 20+ on your char, it will not make that much of a difference anymore.

But why do you want more troops? It just ends up lowering your movement speed, increases your weekly costs, increases the amount of time you have to spend to get AND level troops, (thus increasing the amount of cities/villages you have to build relations with) while not really.... helping at all. The ONLY mods/dlc/w/e that I'd go for a chr build in is L'aigle and WF&S, because gunpowder generally doesn't care about troop quality as much and it's much harder to beat a 800 man army with 80 troops in them.

Sure, prisoner management may be good, but in the mods where prisoners are extremely important, you get + prisoner capacity just from having troops, and will usually end up with so much money after a few hours of mid-game play that you'll be able to buy anything you want, with or without more than 1 point in it.

Again, Persuasion may seem good initially, but in the time it takes to grind out the 30 int/chr to max it, you could've gotten your personal character to the power level to essentially solo capture anything you want by going with str or agi instead.

There's very little reason to go for a chr build for anything other than: Role play, or lack of combat skills. Even INT is generally more worthwhile, because things like Trainer are broken on a PC or inv management being controlled by INT, or mods like floris, etc. adding a exp boost to it.

Yes, some people enjoy playing as a "general" type character. But it doesn't make the build remotely close to "the best". You wanna min-max? go agi until you have enough horse archery to have consistent accuracy at max speed on horse-back then put everything into str until power draw is the max effective level for w/e module you're playing. (which isn't always 10 - TLD doesn't have a single bow that uses 10 PD, and has an item that gives +1 PD, for example.)

Also, @Slayah, Horse archers are the #1 most broken player build in the game, almost no matter what mod you're playing. Sure, it may be "cowardly" but it's still the most powerful build in the game. No other build can take on a group of 40+ bandits by itself at the very start of the game, or solo a 800+ man army. (you technically could as a foot archer, by retreating about 800 times, but....)

[whatdoesthisbuttondo?]

Originally posted by Atomicbean:

Sure, prisoner management may be good, but in the mods where prisoners are extremely important, you get + prisoner capacity just from having troops, and will usually end up with so much money after a few hours of mid-game play that you'll be able to buy anything you want, with or without more than 1 point in it.

In PoP prisoner management not only gives +10 prisoners per level (you get none from troops), it also gives +5% chance to capture npc lords (either ransom or build your honor) or unique spawns per level, especially capturing the uniques is very important, you need to make fighting those 1200+ armies count when you take them on.

Besides, while you do get easily enough income from your fiefs (or from merc payments) to support large armies of elite troops, equipping and training your custom knighthood order troops is a huge money sink (think along the lines of 1mill denars and up), you'll need all the extra money you can get.

As I said, there is no need to grind up chr to max, since you can roll a char with 10 persuasion and 6 leadership starting skills but only 12 chr.

Keep in mind the army sizes are quite different, shaping your kingdoms strategic position before you even start it gives you a huge advantage when you are confronted with 2500+ strong armies sieging your fiefs as soon as you rebel.

Way more of an advantage than +15-20 damage output on your char, as with the proper equipment most troops you take from the fields are one-shot anyway as you reach level 30.

[Tuidjy]

Hell, if we are going to be talking about PoP, lets not forget that with the bloody elixirs, having 40-50 Intelligence and 30 is every other stat is not unheard of... at least in the last version I played. I had a character that was very close to having maxed every single skill that had any use.

And yes, when prisoner management has extra perks, like increase the chance of capture and recruiting, the skill is less than useless. But money? Money in Prophecy of Pendor was a joke... I think it was the mod that taught me the value of the Looting skill.

[X-the Unknown]

Don't listen to Trudy he just makes up lies and boasts ever since I told him I had NINE stable companions. :)) He's the jealous type and needs to feel like he knows something but he really doesn't know anything an until you can watch him do what he says he can do over his shoulder I'd take everything with a grain of salt and just IGNORE him. ;))

Even a YouTube video he would just edit to make it seem the truth.

[Hocus-Boogus]

best !

[Vanta]

Ok, look mate, there isn't necesariy a "Best Character Build". Although some ARE better than others, in the end it all depends on your personal preferences. There are many combinations that I find to be equaly effective, it all depends on how you want to play. And YES, I know this is old.

[Sol]

i tend to lean towards cha while having an okay combat core for stats, but i am only average at personal combat, i can win an average tourney bout almost all of the time unless i have bad luck with my team getting sandwiched and i screw up on too many blocks, or its native tourneys with funky weapons i dont use much like throwing spears (i played VC more recently so im more accustomed to VC tourneys)

however i am not proficent enough to solo domminate battlefields, although i can still get a decent number of kills and help push towards victory, so having a powerful army from CHA is useful, especialy moreso in Viking conquest where things are balanced differently. and you cannot power level base stats in VC, most of your stat distribution will be determined by your creation choices.

[Gness Erquint]

Originally posted by SKELETOR:

Originally posted by fishhooks:

http://mountandblade.wikia.com/wiki/Character_creation
This gives details about the impact each choice has on your final character stats.

I'm aware, but I don't trust Wikia after a few malware scares.

Well go ♥♥♥♥ yourself then. I can't believe ♥♥♥♥♥ like you exist!
1. THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE EVER INFECTED THEIR COMPUTER WITH A VIRUS ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR IT.
False network security concepts broadcasted by mass media are to blame for that.
You, YES YOU don't know ♥♥♥♥ about virii and you WILL get a virus at some point exactly because you fall to the false netsec paranoia and disregard the opportunities to actually learn a thing or two or choose the absolute worst information channels to learn from.
2. If you don't trust people who actually have gone and tested this ♥♥♥♥ for you to know — why even ask anyone, you ungrateful ♥♥♥♥? Be a proper coward and hide under your bed until bad trojans go away, crybaby.
Sickos like you is why Internet is going to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
Threads like this give me the worst kind of cancer.

What about this link then? http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Mount%26Blade/Character_creation
"Oh noes, it's on da Intrawebz — there're malware all over da Intrawebz!!!", ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

I don't like lashing out at people like this but burning this cancer is worth a couple of weeks of being banned.

[KalkiKrosah]

Was going to say something about how old this thread is and then I read your username. Nevermind.

[Christopher]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

By the way, Charisma is, in my opinion, completely and utterly useless, and there is no penalty for picking Intelligence on creation, you get the extra skill points anyway. If you believe that the horse archer is the most powerful character, and I do, then there is a single, best set of choices.

I didn't know that, but it's true
Starting Skillpoints = Starting Intelligence

True, Charisma can be totally neglected for the longest runs.

Wow, I just realized that becoming Horse Archer is indeed OP, if you DO retreat. Because arrows replenish. I was thinking of replenishing arrows via baggage, but that's even better.
Though you need to be pretty hardcore to not loose much health.
You do keep health you lost after retreat right?

Very good comments, thanks! :)

Myself, I now went

Female (for Achievements)
Thief
Page
Troubadour
Personal Revenge

I went like this to avoid Party skills, and take more Personal and Leader skills.

It's pretty nice, but with me going for 9 Char so far, my build is far from going god of war.

@SKELETOR Regarding companions, you should have two people for Intelligent perks and Charismatic perks (xd). I thought of Artimenner and Rolf, but I realized they have high levels. It'd be best to pick two people with low levels and preferably high Int/Char, depending on Hero builds.
Also, you probably know, but just in case - do recruit every hero on the map, even if you disband him immediately after. That allows you to ask a Traveller for that heroe's location. And each hero can give you some right to rule. Just watch out for objections (check Wikia).