So you’ve decided to give Dungeons and Dragons Online a try, and maybe you’ve even decided to buy some Turbine Points. In this post I will describe the races, and classes that are available with Turbine Points, and why they might (or might not) be worth buying; in future posts I’ll talk about account options and adventure packs I’ve tried.
A quick note about pricing: if you buy points in the largest batch possible, they cost about a penny each. You get comparatively fewer points for your dollar with smaller bundles; conversely, sometimes they’re on sale. Keep this in mind when considering prices.
First, races. DDO comes with the standard races available automatically — this includes humans, dwarves, halflings, and elves. There are two races available in the store: Drow and Warforged.
Drow are probably quite familiar if you’ve played any D&D-based game before. The Drow in DDO aren’t alignment-restricted so you can, for example, play a Drow Monk or Paladin if you like. From a rules perspective, Drow start with +2 to Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma, and -2 to Constitution. They are also immune to sleep and have higher saves against spell effects, innate spell resistance, and enhanced abilities with rapiers, shortswords, and shurikens. This makes them a natural choice for classes such as rogue, wizard, and bard, finesse-based dual wielders, and the like.
Drow cost 795 points, but can also be unlocked on a per-server basis by getting 400 favor with any other character. You can easily do this solo by level 7 or so, so unless you are desperate to start with a Drow as your first character, there is no need to buy this race right away.
Warforged are unique to the Eberron setting. They are a living construct made of metal and wood. As such they are quite tough and are immune to a lot of inconvenient effects. They can’t wear armor, but their body can be augmented to be just as strong, with added damage resistance besides. The biggest disadvantages of Warforged are that their Wisdom and Charisma suck, and that healing spells don’t work very well on them; instead, you need to use items and spells of Repair. But since the Repair spells are learned by arcane casters, this means that Warforged make very survivable Wizards and Sorcerers, as they can heal themselves just like a Cleric of any other race could.
Warforged are unlocked only by purchase or by subscribing to the game. They cost 595 points and are well worth it for Wizard and Sorcerer builds, and are not bad for any other tough build that doesn’t rely on Wisdom or Charisma.
Now, to the classes. As with races, there are plenty of options without buying anything — you automatically get most of the D&D standards, with the conspicuous exception of Druids, who aren’t in DDO at all yet. The classes available for purchase are the Monk and Favored Soul.
The Monk is a self-sufficient martial artist with many special abilities. They are uniquely potent at unarmed combat and gain bonuses to attack and movement speed, damage, and defense as they level up, but in return they cannot wear armor or use most weapons.
Monks in DDO have a lot of active combat skills. They use a resource called Ki which is gained by attacking and spent on special attacks, combos, and finishing moves that do extra damage, buff the party, or debuff the enemy. They can choose to follow either a light or dark path; the dark path gives more damage and debuffs, while the light path allows for self and party healing. If you like fast moving, mobile, clicky combat the Monk is a lot of fun, and quite hardy.
Monks are only available by subscribing or by buying them for 795 points. If you like their style of combat and plan to play a pure monk they are worth the buy (mine is my favorite character so far), but if you only want them to splash a level or two into a multiclass, wait for them to be on sale.
Favored Souls are to the Cleric what the Sorcerer is to the Wizard. That is, while Clerics learn every divine spell and can select which ones they have prepared every time they rest, Favored Souls learn only a small set but can cast them much more often. Because DDO uses a spell point system instead of spells-per-day this is somewhat less of a difference than it is in pencil-and-paper D&D or in NWN2; here, the best reason to pick a Favored Soul or Sorcerer is because you know what spells you need and want a much larger spell point pool to cast them with. I’m not a big fan of the spontaneous caster classes so I don’t have much else to say on this point.
Favored Soul is unlocked on a per-server basis for 2500 favor on a single character; this is not likely to happen until you have another character at endgame already, so if you really want to play a Favored Soul, buying it for 795 points is probably worth doing.
Next post: account options, and whether 4 extra build points are worth $15.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I wondered what happens if one subscribes and creates a Favored Soul, a Drow and a Warforged and then does not stay subbed – guess the chars get locked?
Yep, that’s exactly what happens. Any Warforged or Monk character gets locked when you stop subscribing, unless you buy the option from the store. (Drow and Favored Souls will stay unlocked because the only ways to get them are either by favor or buying them, and favor unlocks are permanent per server once achieved.)
Character slots and shared banks work basically the same way. If you stop paying and you have more than four characters per server, you can pick which four are available and the rest are locked until you subscribe again or buy more slots. If you have stuff in the shared bank, you can withdraw it but no longer make deposits unless you buy the option to use it again.