Character as leader with minimum personal combat

[Pedric]

Short version.  Please help me to set up a character that is almost entirely support with only enough combat skills to survive the occasional random fights.

Long version:

I would like my character to be king someday, but not have to personally fight.  I would appreciate suggestions on how to set up such a character.

The reason for the request is that Warband makes me sick in the literal sense.  It is simulator sickness.  Playing this game gives me motion sickness symptoms.  The biggest aggravation to the simulator sickness is having the attack and defense movements tied to the camera.  Every attack or block requires a quick change in the camera view because the mouse controls the camera and the attacks.  The camera angle itself causes me simulator sickness, but I could play with a fixed camera angle if I am not involved in combat.  (I would prefer the camera further behind my character, too.  But those in Hell are still waiting for their ice water.)

I have come to the conclusion that the only way I can play this game for more than a few minutes at a time is to have my character act as a leader, only, and not as a combatant.  I have not been playing long but built up a 100% mounted force of 36 with 7 heroes and 29 cavalry.  I am the bane of bandits everywhere, except desert bandits who are still too fast to catch.  My character is set up for combat and despite my being a spazz, the character does OK in combat, even winning a tournament (after a gazillion retries).  It is just that the more combat I am in, the sicker I feel.

I have some ideas that I should concentrate on the leadership skills like tactics and strategy and adding training, of course. 

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

(Regretably, the simulator sickness completely removes any possibility of playing multi-player.  I used to play Battlefield and Operaton Flashpoint multi-player and the thought of medieval multi-player excited me.  I can still enjoy the single player game once I am able to create a "leader" character)

 

[Dellivis]

Stack Intellect and Charisma
Work on just enough Strength and Agility to equip your character in decent/good armor and use a bow/xbow.

Leadership, Trainer, Tactics, Persuasion, even a few points in some of the other party skills would be helpful.

Set up your men in a good position and give commands from a safe spot.

Use your bow to attack the enemy at range. If your set up properly you shouldnt have to worry about any enemies attacking you except for the occasional cavalry.

 

[Blackfish]

Get a one-hander, a nice shield and a crossbow, while generally armoring yourself in the best armors. Getting a horse that doesn't die under you is more important than speed since you won't be fighting, so get a steppe charger, and then a regular charger if you get your riding skill to 4.

Get your strength to 10 (for siege crossbow) or 14 (masterwork siege crossbow requires this, I think, but for four extra strength points it's not a large improvement), get your agility to 6 (if you can find a steppe charger which only requires lvl 2 riding skill) or 12 (getting lvl 4 riding skill that will allow you to ride a warhorse), and then put the rest in charisma and intelligence.

Put points in leadership, persuasion, and trainer. Depending on which companion you take on you might want to take up surgery, engineer and/or tactics yourself too. Ironflesh helps you survive just a bit more, but concentrate on your other skills first.

 

[Dark Elf]

Str 10 -12
9 Plate
10 Siege Crossbow
12 Good 2 hander need 12.
Also you need some str to help yo win tournament for the gold and renown.

Agi 6  - 12
If you play woman char, you can have riding 4 from the start, so you don't need to raise agi.

Int 10-11
Get 10 int, learn +1 from the book.

Charm 27
Learn the last leadership with book.

Only put 2 or 4 point only in party skill point.
With 2 you get bonus +1
With 4 you get bonus +2
the next level quite far, you need to put 8 for +3
Boost str and agi first, after that int, last one charm

Usually i aim for 12,12,12,27. After reaching this, the rest i dump to str.

@Blackfish
use the latest patch, the riding req for steppe charger is 4 now

 

[Kawee]

I would invest very heavily in intelligence and charisma, but mostly on charisma. You need the intelligence for persuasion and training, but these are secondary to charisma. With charisma, invest them in trade, prisoner management, and leadership. Trade and prisoner management will be your main source of income until you open up quite a lot of business. Leadership you'll need more than ever because if you're not going to be turning the tide of battles, you better have big army.

The other important skills likes the medical ones, the tactics and training, etc have your companions learn them. You concentrate on leadership skills.

 

[Jormungar]

I would suggest modding your game so that battle does not end when you die; several mods have this available or you could do it manually. That way, you don't even need to participate in combat, just stand still and let your soldiers do the work. If you die, it's no problem.

Then, you can focus all your talent points on leader skills to make up for you not helping in combat.

 

[mrdang]

Since everyone above has given you plenty of good tips on build, here's a few tips to reduce simulator sickness:

• Play in a well lit room. Warm colored bulbs cause less strain on the eyes than white. The only time you should turn out the lights is when you encounter a fight at night and you can't see well with the lights on
• Invest in an LCD/LED monitor with a response time as low as you can afford or at least 8ms. Older CRT monitors flicker more even at 120Hz refresh rate and aren't ideal for high motion visuals
• Buy big brand names. I recommend Samsung monitors for the crisp details and correct colors they provide as it's crucial to my photo editing in addition to gaming. LG and others tend to have problems including: limited resolution size (screen only looks good at largest resolution), whites are too bright, blacks are too grey, text is fuzzy, screen ratio is too stretched, green tint appears across screen colors, etc. 
• Lower your LCD brightness. Your eyes will eventually adapt to whatever you set and it will always look brighter than expected anyway (pupils eventually dilate).
• Set your screen resolution as high as it needs to be for text to come out crisp and sharp. Don't tolerate fuzzy letters in game or browsing the internet. Turn down anti-aliasing if you want it sharper as its known for smoothing that out too.
• Pick a spot on the screen to follow. Maybe it's your weapon, or your character's head. If you can reduce how much your eyes have to go left and right, that means less strain for your eyes. But don't stare too long and remember to blink
• Look away during screen transitions. Like switching from a dark battle screen to a bright tan victory screen. A good example of poorly picked contrast: dpreview.com has a black background but white text. It's an eyesore ironically since they write reviews on photography stuff
• Know your limit. Take breaks and sleep more This applies to similar activities like reading or anything where you're staring at something for an extended amount of time.

 

[RalliX]

Honestly, for a character with any hope for the future, you'll need at least up to 12 in each of your attributes, and 18 is where you should stop for what attribute you want to specialize in, and then invest in another.

The best thing to do, I find, is to improve your combat and personal skills first, because you'll need them in that time or starting out. After that, is when you want to just focus on the other things. When spending skill points, keep in mind that unless you're investing in INT, you only get 3 skill points for every three attribute points, and therefore you can only invest in three skills of that section without having to borrow from another attribute.

So for example:

RalliX:
Level 15                          With Riding 3, Weapon Master 3, and Shield 3
STR: 12
AGI: 9
INT:12
CHA: 12

If I want to be, as is a good idea your case, a shield using cavalryman, I will need to spend three skill points into Riding, Weap. Master, and Shield once I level up three times and get 12 AGI. So I will have no points left for investing in Athletics or non-AGI skills.
So now it's this:

RalliX:
Level 18                          With Riding 4, Weapon Master 4, and Shield 4

STR: 12
AGI: 12
INT:12
CHA: 12

These are what your character will require to survive & thrive in Calradia once he reaches the proper level.
Everything beyond this minimum is what will determine how you play.

 

[Tabris_]

Short version.  Please help me to set up a character that is almost entirely support with only enough combat skills to survive the occasional random fights.

Long version:

I would like my character to be king someday, but not have to personally fight.  I would appreciate suggestions on how to set up such a character.

The reason for the request is that Warband makes me sick in the literal sense.  It is simulator sickness.  Playing this game gives me motion sickness symptoms.  The biggest aggravation to the simulator sickness is having the attack and defense movements tied to the camera.  Every attack or block requires a quick change in the camera view because the mouse controls the camera and the attacks.  The camera angle itself causes me simulator sickness, but I could play with a fixed camera angle if I am not involved in combat.  (I would prefer the camera further behind my character, too.  But those in Hell are still waiting for their ice water.)

I have come to the conclusion that the only way I can play this game for more than a few minutes at a time is to have my character act as a leader, only, and not as a combatant.  I have not been playing long but built up a 100% mounted force of 36 with 7 heroes and 29 cavalry.  I am the bane of bandits everywhere, except desert bandits who are still too fast to catch.  My character is set up for combat and despite my being a spazz, the character does OK in combat, even winning a tournament (after a gazillion retries).  It is just that the more combat I am in, the sicker I feel.

I have some ideas that I should concentrate on the leadership skills like tactics and strategy and adding training, of course. 

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

(Regretably, the simulator sickness completely removes any possibility of playing multi-player.  I used to play Battlefield and Operaton Flashpoint multi-player and the thought of medieval multi-player excited me.  I can still enjoy the single player game once I am able to create a "leader" character)

I did a quick read throught the topic and didn't saw people suggesting two obvious things

1 - Change the direction of attacks and blocks to be defined by movement keys instead of mouse movement, you can do that in the options
2 - Avoid playing in first person. Always use third person
3 - Don't play windowed. I had simulation sickness with minecraft while playing windowed and discovered that playing it fullscreen instead helped a lot.
4 - Lower the fps limit. The human eye can only perceive at about 60 fps, but M&B defaults to a 120 limit. Lowering it to 60 or a little more might help.