whats the least sucky way to build valerie

[SamsTheMan]

I've got her at level 8 tower shield right now

[Bamsmacked]

She sucks, but I continue to build her survivability (Armor Focus, Shield Focus) and I gave her weapon focus to help mitigate penalty from Tower Shield. At level 5 she might start to get decent, since she gets a passive in tower spec tree that eliminates attack penalty.

But yeah... Literally just run her in first and try to get as many to focus her as possible, but hell they can almost walk away with ease since her Attacks of Opportunity almost always miss which further increases her uselessness.

She's basically a meat shield and I don't see her doing anything else.

[Hobocop]

Feyspeaker Druid is the way to go, tbh. At least then she gets a bunch of useful spells and a pet that ends up being a better frontliner for far less investment.

[Arden]

Valerie is fine on unfair difficulty. All the enemies have 13-15+ attack from the moment you exit oleg's tradepost. So without a tank with all defensive feats and buffs including fighting defensively all of your dps get 1shotted instantly. Yes, her stats suck but on that difficulty it's fine to have higher con. She can't hit anything at all with defensive on so str doesn't particularly matter. And you can get her +6 buff to dex with vivisectionist and dex belt so that she can get the max dex bonuses.

[Sam Snowman]

Originally posted by dolby:

Originally posted by Sam Snowman:

I dont understand...does every single person here just power game? Min max Str Dex Con on every single fighter and such? Shes a pretty damn great warrior and soaks a ton of damage.

Send her in first. Enemies seem to aggro the first/closest target they see, so far for almost entire fights

I really hope you people dont get her stats changes. You have Amiri for a beat stick we dont need 2.

Try it on unfair all maxed out difficulty and let me know how it works out for you.:)
Enemies get +15 to 30 on there hit rolls... if not more...

So no i cant afford not to dump charisma if you dont need it...
If i want to keep her as a companion with a story then i just change her stats... its not cheating if you do it right...self-restraint... Its same as buying custom companions in the outpost...

You are the outlier, the very edges of concern for character adjustment. You want a hard time. This is completely my opinion, but for people that want to make the game hard for themselves, I think the merc's should be fixed so they can make a proper team to take on the content. But not the NPC's, they should be left as their characters.

I keep seeing people use the word 'decent' not sure if they understand what it means. She is incredibly 'decent' as a character. Shes not pro, shes not min/max, shes not perfect, but shes is very decent.

[Flip]

Originally posted by Sam Snowman:

Originally posted by dolby:

Try it on unfair all maxed out difficulty and let me know how it works out for you.:)
Enemies get +15 to 30 on there hit rolls... if not more...

So no i cant afford not to dump charisma if you dont need it...
If i want to keep her as a companion with a story then i just change her stats... its not cheating if you do it right...self-restraint... Its same as buying custom companions in the outpost...

You are the outlier, the very edges of concern for character adjustment. You want a hard time. This is completely my opinion, but for people that want to make the game hard for themselves, I think the merc's should be fixed so they can make a proper team to take on the content. But not the NPC's, they should be left as their characters.

I keep seeing people use the word 'decent' not sure if they understand what it means. She is incredibly 'decent' as a character. Shes not pro, shes not min/max, shes not perfect, but shes is very decent.

Agree with this. Also NPCs are perfectly fine and viable as is for the normal playthrough that many enjoy. For the harder difficulties then that is where min/maxed mercs come in.

My 2 cents

[Kith-Kanin]

My Valerie has 55 AC. She's 10 levels fighter, 3 levels Stalwart Defender. I walk her into a room alone, mobs can't hit her, and then I bring in the rest to clean up while she takes agro. Easy mode.

[Batailleuse]

Switch Valérie as a ranger or inquisitor huntmaster as soon as level 2.. Let the pet tank better than her.

She killed the paladin solo with her pet she was only lvl5.

If you keep going melee with her you're doing something wrong.

[Batailleuse]

Originally posted by Kith-Kanin:

My Valerie has 55 AC. She's 10 levels fighter, 3 levels Stalwart Defender. I walk her into a room alone, mobs can't hit her, and then I bring in the rest to clean up while she takes agro. Easy mode.

I have 5 pets that also have 55+ac... Including Valerie's pet haha.

Pets Don't even need gear to be that good

[Slunko]

I build her as a sorcerer. At level 1 she's got a fighter leve. A shame, but moving on. Next level you grab a level in scalefist monk. You then take 3 levels in sorcerer (level 4 increases her charisma to 16, you need to get 5 points in lore:arcana), and then 10 levels in Dragon Disciple and 5 levels in Arcane Knight or whatever that PRC is. She gets to be a capable fire-blaster sorc with still melee capabilities.

As the spec develops, she can be in cloth, without shield and self bufs, at higher AC that she could ever get as a stright up fighter, but she now also has all the sorc spells to blast with.

[dolby]

Originally posted by Flip:

Originally posted by Sam Snowman:

You are the outlier, the very edges of concern for character adjustment. You want a hard time. This is completely my opinion, but for people that want to make the game hard for themselves, I think the merc's should be fixed so they can make a proper team to take on the content. But not the NPC's, they should be left as their characters.

I keep seeing people use the word 'decent' not sure if they understand what it means. She is incredibly 'decent' as a character. Shes not pro, shes not min/max, shes not perfect, but shes is very decent.

Agree with this. Also NPCs are perfectly fine and viable as is for the normal playthrough that many enjoy. For the harder difficulties then that is where min/maxed mercs come in.

My 2 cents

Yea, I agree Npcs are fine they do the job... Shes best set for unfair mode as is... a part from charisma...:)
On the other hand Mercs are great but they dont get the story - flavour...
And this is my point, I changed her stats so I get a merc with her story... and i dont get why thats bad...:)

[dolby]

Originally posted by Slunko:

I build her as a sorcerer. At level 1 she's got a fighter leve. A shame, but moving on. Next level you grab a level in scalefist monk. You then take 3 levels in sorcerer (level 4 increases her charisma to 16, you need to get 5 points in lore:arcana), and then 10 levels in Dragon Disciple and 5 levels in Arcane Knight or whatever that PRC is. She gets to be a capable fire-blaster sorc with still melee capabilities.

As the spec develops, she can be in cloth, without shield and self bufs, at higher AC that she could ever get as a stright up fighter, but she now also has all the sorc spells to blast with.

Im doing this with Regongar! You can use spells in mele!!!!!! And his an Orc who doesn't like Orcs?! For the Horde!:)

[Carsomyr +6]

Essentially no tabletop player would ever put their point buy points the way Valerie has hers.

If you randomly rolled stats, you wouldn't put that 17 in Con. Con is a secondary stat - yes, it IS a very important secondary stat for any front line character, but if you can't hit enemies or carry your own gear, you're pretty useless. She has encumbrance issues and her to-hit makes her attacks of opportunity weak, which you *do not want* on a tank.

Like as a point buy, a few points off Con would give her a chance to have Combat Expertise which she sorely needs for a max AC build. And better strength. And fighters also have higher max dex on their armor, so they need high dex, too. Her point buy would make sense if and only if she was one of those now-nerfed Orc Witch archetypes whose spellcasting was based off of Con.

Okay so let's see, to be fair, there is the Gygaxian method of just roll stats - wasn't used on her, she has a 25 point buy, but in that method you don't pick where your rolls go.

And I have played in a second campaign once where we played the kids of our prior adventurers... and in THAT we didn't use point buy, we used house rules for genetic stat distribution.

Obviously real living things don't get to assign their own stats, so we can say this lady was just born a bit strong, modestly quicker than average, but with an incredible pain threshold and never got sick. But the devs didn't roll her, they did a point buy... and they chose a frustrating point buy that makes the beginning of the game much harder if you choose to use her.

[dolby]

Originally posted by Carsomyr +6:

Essentially no tabletop player would ever put their point buy points the way Valerie has hers.

If you randomly rolled stats, you wouldn't put that 17 in Con. Con is a secondary stat - yes, it IS a very important secondary stat for any front line character, but if you can't hit enemies or carry your own gear, you're pretty useless. She has encumbrance issues and her to-hit makes her attacks of opportunity weak, which you *do not want* on a tank.

Like as a point buy, a few points off Con would give her a chance to have Combat Expertise which she sorely needs for a max AC build. And better strength. And fighters also have higher max dex on their armor, so they need high dex, too. Her point buy would make sense if and only if she was one of those now-nerfed Orc Witch archetypes whose spellcasting was based off of Con.

Okay so let's see, to be fair, there is the Gygaxian method of just roll stats - wasn't used on her, she has a 25 point buy, but in that method you don't pick where your rolls go.

And I have played in a second campaign once where we played the kids of our prior adventurers... and in THAT we didn't use point buy, we used house rules for genetic stat distribution.

Obviously real living things don't get to assign their own stats, so we can say this lady was just born a bit strong, modestly quicker than average, but with an incredible pain threshold and never got sick. But the devs didn't roll her, they did a point buy... and they chose a frustrating point buy that makes the beginning of the game much harder if you choose to use her.

Yea, True her con is a bit high...but one can always use more hp:)... so shes viable..

Now then there is her charisma AKA EX Paladin failure hehe! The funny part....
You can't even make a Player character with stats like hers she gets 2 points in charisma for Free!! And she doesn't even have long hair! :)

[mogwen]

If you want to take Valerie in your party you need to make her useful besides tanking since there's no way to efficently draw the aggro.
For the moment I have seen 2 builds that manage to upgrade her usefulness:
-The verdant knight: Fighter (tower shield specialist)1/ Druid (feyspeaker)19 with asmilodon for tanking and lots of summons and buff spells to control the battlefield;
-The captain of the guard: Fighter (tower shield specialist)1/ Ranger(freebooter)9/ Stalwart Defender10, A tank/ buffer that uses the menacing style to debuff enemies.
With those 2 builds you can make a perfectly viable Valerie, I tend to prefer the second one because it's more in touch with her personnality!
The worst part of Valerie for me is not her stats, though. It's her stupid infuriating and irrational rants against art.
But that's what makes her so unique in my eyes! You have in your party a perfect moron! :)

[Mauman]

I'm running her as a Thundercaller in my current game of weirdo builds.

It's surprisingly effective.