I've never gotten a character to level 25
What's killing you? Completing Dojo Destroyer should put you in that ballpark. Yawara is easily defeatable by level 16, and once you beat one instructor the gains from that fight should leverage you enough to defeat most of the others. Jacque, Charleton and Hatsumi are the only difficult fights. And Ballet, I guess. But the dialogue surrounding that battle is too buggy to do anyway.
Also, don't forget the tournament. The first few rounds past the black belt aren't usually too bad and some of those fights will award thousands of xp. Between that and the trainers, if you can make it to anywhere in the 16-18 range, you should be able to get to 25-30 within ten minutes.
usually play as a female
I think good arguments can be made either way, but in this particular version with its bugs and missing dialogue, women probably have it better overall. Though personally I find sumo to be a very good school regardless of build. The Oolong house is convenient, of course, but a sumo practitioner can generally carry around a dragonball without a speed penalty.
It's less critical in later versions where Bulma is available as a marriage partner. Marrying her does come with the disadvantage of making the dragon radar unavailable unless you're a technomancer...but in this version neither the dragon radar nor technomany work at all anyway.
willpower will probably be vital at higher levels, but since I've never gotten
a character to level 25, it usually doesn't bother me too much.
Yes, I don't think willpower helps against anything much before Muscle Tower. And even from that point on it doesn't come up often. Unless you're a chi practitioner willpower is a good dump stat.
The original "final" boss in the game was intended to be Majin Buu. In the show he had the ability to turn people into chocolate and eat them. That was going to be in the game. It was an instant game over. The original plan was that players would have two ways of avoiding this. First, willpower could be used to resist the effect. For example, let's say 5% chance to resist for every point of willpower. If you were a chi practitioner you'd probably start with 14 willpower and buying an extra 6 at some point would cost you 24 skillpoints and generally be helpful to you throughout the game. At 20 willpower, you'd have complete immunity to the effect. For non chi practitioners, you'd probably start with 6 willpower, and buying 14 points for immunity would cost 56 skillpoints, which is a lot, and those skillpoints wouldn't really give you very much benefit during the game but they'd be points you'd have to spend. The alternative to all this was to use a dragonball wish to gain immunity. Which is a fairly hefty price, since on average you could only really expect to get about 3 wishes per game.
However, Buu never made it into the game, even in the final release. So it was pretty much irrelevant. There are probably fewer than 5 monsters in the entire game who have abilities that involve willpower checks.
I usually reduce strength a bit
I generally use strength as a dump stat. Sure you'll sometimes do no damage, but that's not really a problem beyond the first 2-3 levels. Overall my starting stats usually look something like:
Str: 6 Wil: 6 Dex: 6
Con: 14: Chr: 14 Spd: 14
Int: 10
Occassionally I might take a few points out of charisma and put them into intelligence for the convenience factor. Technomancers pretty much need to start with 14 intelligence, but with technomancy not working in this version there's not much point in taking technology skill to 20.
I'll frequently reduce charisma by one point. I usually shy away from more than that because charisma at certain levels is necessary for certain quests, and the buy-sell rate modifier is nothing to sneeze at.
Yes, charisma is fairly important in DBT. I don't usually like to start with less than 12. If I remember correctly, 20 is the highest requirement for any dialogue option, and there are several very good things that open up at 16, but 14 will get you through the game and 12 is close enough to 14 that one can pick up a piece of charisma enhancing gear and never have to pay skillpoints to increase it. Charisma, intelligence and willpower are expensive to raise and you don't want to get stuck having to use dragonball wishes on stuff like that.
For non-technologist builds, I usually reduce intelligence a bit, since I can increase intelligence gradually from the library.
If I need points for other things, I sometimes reduce dexterity by one, simply because dexterity seems to be the easiest stat to increase by schools. I'm usually lerry to reduce it any further because it regulates to-hits and negates enemy hits.
Evaluating the value of dexterity is kind of complicated. Yes...it does regulate a lot, but as you say, it's one of the easier attributes to increase. Apart from the trap evasion bonus, everything dexterity gives you you can get from other skills. Also, if you're using run movement mode, while dexterity will give you a small speed boost, the AC bonus it gives you is reduced compared to normal movement mode. I personally find the convenience of starting with 10 intelligence greater than the numerical bonuses of starting with 10 dexterity, so I routinely use dex as a dump stat.
If my math is correct, it would look something like this:
10 int 6 dex
-4 AC
-4 to hit
6 int 10 dex
All identify requirements increased by 4
+1 speed while running
Again, it's a bit more complicated than that, but in general if I'm playing a character build that needs dexterity, it's cheaper to buy dexterity than it is to buy intelligence, and to get those extra 4 points from the library would take 20 character levels. That's a long time. Granted, not everybody needs intelligence. But it's a convenience thing. The game is just easier to play if you have it. Only a very few character builds can identify all item types, and it falls on intelligence to make up the difference.
As for dexterity, ultimately, there are two types of characters who care about dexterity:
* Characters who absolutely need dexterity for training unlocks. For example, kung fu fighters who need dex to unlock weapons training and judo fighters who need it to unlock speed.
* Characters who, for one reason or another, would prefer more armor over the convenience of easier identify. Notably, there's a specific build that when done properly, makes you completely unhittable by the vast majority of all melee attacks in the game. That particular build is dependent on (amongst other things) having a high dexterity. And by the middle game, even if you're not going for full hit immunity, having high armor adds a good deal of survivability and dexterity gives you a reasonable compromise alternative to having to invest in martial arts skill in order to get your hit bonus high enough to hit anything. You don't want to be a sumo barehanded fighter who didn't take kungfu or a fencing weapons fighter who didn't take ballet, and end up unable to hit anything because of it. So the choice is basically either martial arts for to hit and the convenience of easy armor identification, or dexterity for to hit and armor. It's possible to go no AC + high health, but no martial arts skill + no dexterity means that by the early middle part of the game most uniques will chew you to pieces because you can't hit them.
For characters who do invest in martial arts skill, I find that dexterity is nice to have...but there just aren't enough skillpoints to go around to invest very much in it.
I also get the strength and intelligence increases from these
facilities more often due to starting with memberships purchased
Library and gym training availability is based on total character levels, not when you started. One training is allowed per 5 character levels, with a freebie at level 1. If you sign up at level 1, you can study/workout once right away. Then at level 5 you can do it again. But if you sign up at level 5, you can study/workout twice right away. Sign up at level 100 and you can do all your study/workout sessions at once with no net loss.
male characters only have one item of +2 charisma that they can easily acquire.
Crocodile skin boots, mirrored shades, tuxedos, silk gloves and flight jackets all give charisma boosts of varying amounts and can be worn be men. All of those except the tux and flight jacket are common drops in Mr Satan's estate. Also, if you've applied the ego item workaround described elsewhere, most clothing types can pick up the designer type which gives them a charisma bonus. Though even with the fix I notice that sometimes ego types get applied in name only, but provide no show no actual bonus when you examine them.
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Topic: Lets Play Dragonball T, a module for ToME3 (Read 25397 times)