Advice needed for my reckless son....

[the_laughing_god]

We're both fairly new (1 month). His main toon is a WF FTR 8.

He's fairly reckless in his solo play. I know, long term, he's just going to have to quit running ahead and triggering every trap in the dungeon, but that message hasn't yet sunk in for him.

So, until it does, would multiclassing a bit help him in terms of survivability? I was thinking either a few levels of rogue for Refl. saves, trap sense, and evasion, or a few levels of sorceror for self-healing.

I know, either way, his stats will probably be an issue, but that, I suppose, is what reincarnation is for.

Anyway, would a particular splash of something be useful, or should I just encourage him to re-roll a barbarian, since he's going to rush into all the traps anyhow.... :-)

[unbongwah]

While Evasion would help, you need a pretty good Reflex save for it to pay off. If he's playing, say, a THF build which dump-stated DEX, Evasion plus a few rogue levels won't really make a difference, IMHO.

You could load him up on repair and elemental resistance potions. A wizard or sorcerer splash would let him use arcane wands, inc. Repair and Resist Energy. A warrior-mage (or any multiclass build) is something which should be planned in advance, not added ad-hoc.

If he started over, he could play a DPS trapmonkey, like rogue 1 / ranger 18; then he could disable the traps and stop getting himself killed.

[Fedora]

If he took adamantine body feat then rogue/evasion won't help at all. I already made that mistake.

[GhoulsTouch]

Barbarian has trap sense.

[aldan]

Let him play his fighter and teach him why its not acceptable to run ahead of the party because pretty soon, he will be playing solo for his career in DDO.

Must learn patience. In raids later on, he will want to join and if he does what he does now and doesnt listen, bad times my friend.

I play with new toons all the time in shroud, Hound etc. What makes a good new player is that they listen and do what is expected of them. Its not that we are telling him how to play his toon, more so to control the fights in a coordinated manner using resources to the best of the teams ability.

I really hope your son gets it, cause he will really love this game if he does.

[katana_one]

Will multiclassing his character change the way he plays?

Maybe you should wait to multiclass him until *after* he learns not to be so reckless?

Just a thought - you know him better than we do after all.

[Syntax42]

First of all, soloing dungeons should be reserved for experienced, well geared, and well-built characters.

My advice: just let him. He will learn after he dies a lot. Giving his build more survivability from recklessness only encourages him to be more reckless because he will learn there are no consequences.

[itsameabob]

I find that sometimes a trip through the dungeon in a backpack is exactly what the careless player needs.

In all seriousness though, multiclassing should be planned out ahead of time to avoid issues... There are a multitude of problems with trying to ad hoc a multiclass in there, or trying to squeeze something in for a temporary fix. My suggestion is that he just stays fighter, and plays with either a healing capable character (be it divine or arcane), and carries a sufficient amount of repair serious potions (see hundreds) to help offset his reckless nature.

In normal quests, particularly lower and middle level quests recklessness isn't too bad, and doesn't really hurt overall group or individual success in a mission, but on some of the higher end content and raids, it only takes one or two knuckleheads to mess it up for everyone, leading to angry shouting, and upset people all around. The ability to listen and follow basic instructions is the skill I value most when I lead groups. Later on things will get harder, if you can't restrain yourself at times.

On a side note, I think that fighters are a good first class for people to play. They have good survivability, and they get a lot of feats. That allows people to try things out and see options. It also doesn't hurt you if you chose a feat that isn't so good later on, unlike a lot of other classes *cough* barbarian *cough*.

Hope that was somewhat helpful!

[the_laughing_god]

Thanks for the advice. He's learning, faster than I thought he would, to settle down. He's still not 100% there, but on the bright side, he at least realizes what the problem is and that, eventually, no one (including family) is going to want to play with him if he doesn't learn from mistakes.


That being said, we ended up giving him one level of sorceror; he ended up having to lay out most of the cash his toon had in order to get there, and that may have been part of what made him see the light. That and the points--we're both on VIP, and he burned through all his points on potions, and then burned through all the potions. Meanwhile, I've lots of points left over, and can buy shared bank expansions or +2 tomes or whatever, and he's left with nothing. That helped sober him up, too.

So now his brand new shiny level of sorceror is doing him well--he's becoming more self-sufficient/self-healing, and at the same time learning not to need self-healing quite so much. :-) Worked out much better than a level of rogue.