Hey mate, 3 of my chars are still only level 9 which means you can run most of yours with them. Just give me a holler on Skype; I always have it ON!!
Exactly. That's what's got Wouldii in a bind these days.Level 10 (give or take a level) is hard to find quests to run at. They seem to start the "challenging and requires a balanced party, hirelings may not work" stuff on most of them.
Phuury ends up as a bit of a resource hog, but (as you say) that's sorta the way it's supposed to work. That boxes him in a little in that he can't solo well since hirelings don't supply those resources efficiently, if at all. It also scares me off of PUGs a little since I envision more than a few comments about " *sigh* f'in barbarian needs healed again", particularly given my rather...ummm... blunt strategy of jumping into the crowd and hitting great cleave until my finger bleeds.Actually Dte, Phurry is easier to heal than either of Peter's Paladins. While you take a ton of damage, thats the basic barbarian design: soak damage with high hp and a bit of dr. Thing is I never need to worry about seeing out of range or blocked on you. Whereas Peter is usually hollering for a heal and is off out of range, around a corner, or is wandering by himself again.
I have a bard at 7 who has done nothing but play "The Watchwood Melody" over and over for 6 months.
I think boosting our healing amp is really necessary to not be a sponge. Humans and Half Elves both have racial amp, while Monks and Paladins can get more from enhancements.
This is exactly what I'm talking about that makes PUGs a scary proposition, but makes the group work so well. We know that Peter is utterly incapable of staying with the group and he'll tend toward zerging since he'll have the map in front of him. We know that Az will wander off on occasion because Peter's zerging leaves bits of the map black and that's just completely unacceptable. We know that we'll have to backtrack at least twice in every quest because Corwin can't jump over a paperclip. We know we'll get at least one green dungeon alert because the stupid barbarian is overly optimistic about the party's killing power and couldn't resist taking a couple extra steps down the hallway before everyone was ready. We know jm will already have the map memorized and be terribly frustrated when the stupid barbarian and wandering paladin don't take advantage of her knowledge. We know cm will be stuck being the glue...again, doing her best to keep all the lunatics pulling in the same direction.My paladins can self heal so they can dare running through the enemy lines to get at the spellcasters. It's only when they're out of lay on hands they have to stay close to the cleric. This is one of the advantages of a paladin. You can actually dare to run after a spellcaster trying to get distance to the battle and finish him off before he gets his nasty spells out.
My paladins usually focus in battles on harming the most dangerous foes and looking where the cleric is gets second priority unless the monsters inflict so much damage so it's not possible surviving the melee for long.