This topic is all about how to make your char right, TECH wise. What I mean is how to plan which merits to take, skills and everything.
It is meant so when playing your char you will not have useless skills, feats, and most important - that you will not get stuck with not enough CP CAP for your feats and skills you wish to have.
That sucks. BIG time.

First of all, read this post about merits and flaws:
http://www.khaeros.com/forums/yaf_postst1235_Merits-and-Flaws-detailed.aspx
And this post about CP: (ALL CREDIT ON THAT ONE GOES TO GIGAS, WHEREVER HE IS)

http://www.khaeros.com/forums/yaf_postst71_Time-some-CPs-and-a-bit-of-culture-to-spice-it-up.aspx
.

Note that this post will NOT be about each class in particular, and will NOT be about advices on which merits\flaws\skills\feats to take or not to take, but simply help you adjust your char's mechanics to fit your char's rp the best, without regretting it later.

The key for planning your char is to plan ahead, thinking "alright. Now my char is level 50, it has all the feats I want, they are ALL level 3, because lower levels of feats is always a waste, and they have every skill they need maxed, not less, because that will be a waste as well. What do I REALLY want?"
The second thing to do is to read your char's feats and paying GOOD attention to each feat and what it does, so you will know for sure which feats you want your char to have and which feats are useless.
For example, when making a fighter, one player will rather use one handed weapons, and choose to go with the "Shield mastery" feat, and another player would go for two handed weapons, taking the "Greatsweapon fighting" feat.
Another example, is one player choosing the "Flurry of blows" feat, and another player will choose "Focused attack" feat. They are both stances, so cannot be used simultaneously, and since we don't really want to start switching stances every five minutes, we will take only one stance feat, to save the CP for a better usage.

As for skills, most people would love to have every fighting skills on their char, and I will use the example of the fighter again.
Anyone would love to have 100% mace fighting, 100% swordsmanship, 100% polearms and 100% archery, because each is good for a different situation.
GET REAL:
Will you really carry 10 different weapons in your backpack everytime? Do you really want to spend around 10,000 CPs on each skill?
The answer is no. What you REALLY need to do, is think of your char. Is he a person that would rather use a bow? If so he will have 100% archery. Now you know you need to save him 100% archery when making it.

Now that we know what our char is like, we need to adjust each FEAT and SKILL we want it to have, so we will know how much CP CAP we will need to have without getting stuck.
Open a notepad file, and start writing down what skills you want your char to have. For a fighting char: Remember to get real and take 3 fighting skills most, because you won't really use more than that. For a crafter: Be sure to have lumberjacking and mining even if you are not a woodworker or a metalworker, because those two skills can help you make your own tools, and some items require them.

Count each skill you want as if you have it maxed (100%, 75%, or whatever your Class cap is for that skill).
Do the same for the feats.
Why? Because having a skill lower than the max is useless, same goes for feats.


Note that when starting the char, before taking the merits and flaws, you will have 150K CP cap, which is a lot for most people.


Write a list of the skills you want
Write a list of the feats you want
Count all together the total CP you will need to have all those skills and feats, remember that each skill that will be 100% will require 10,500, 75% will require 7,500 CP and each feat is 6,000 CP.


If the result is greater than 150,000 - it's good. You can have lots of merits that will help you.
If the result is less than 150,000 - It's usualy bad. You will not be able to take merits in most cases, and you will have to take flaws to increase your CP CAP to be able to get those feats and skills.
When you get the total CP CAP you need, proceed to the merits&flaws section.
Count down how much CP cap you lose when taking merits and count how much CP CAP you gain from the flaws.

Here is an example of planning a charecter step by step:

STEP 1)
Thinking of the char (in short):
I want my char to be a good looking, strong yet agile, and master with the sword and bow! I want him to be a leader, that will always be surrounded by bodyguards! He will be a terrible horse rider too... He will wear a shiny chainmail that will keep him both safe and agile!
STEP 2) Choosing the class
Chosen class for that matter: Fighter.
STEP 3) Choosing feats and skills and counting the required CP
Skills I want it to have:
75%:
Anatomy
Healing
100%:
Tactics
Parrying
Swordsmanship
Archery
Leadership
CP count so far: 85,000 CP

Feats I want it to have:
Shield bash
Medium armor
Armor focus
Flurry of blows
Crippling blow
Critical strike
Brute strength
Quick reflexes
Shield mastery
CP count so far: 54,000 CP

The total count of CP required for feats and skills:139,000
The result is less CP required than the CP CAP you start with- GOOD! Now I can have some merits to help me on my way!

STEP 4) Choosing merits and flaws
Merits I want:
Strong
Quick
Fit
Life saving
Resilient
Great leader
The CP CAP you lose: 26,000CP- OH NO! Now my CP Cap is 124,000CP! What to do?! Let's take some flaws to even it up. I need 139,000!

FLAWS I will take:
Feebleminded
Indept rider
Poor listener
The CP CAP I earn is 15,000 - PERFECT! Now my total CP Cap is 139,000!! I WIN, CHAR CREATION IS COMPLETED!

It is all the same for crafter, rouges, and whatever you choose to.
Always keep in mind- THINK AHEAD, and not on what you will use 10 minutes from now! BE PREPARED so you will not get stuck with feats or skills you don't need, or not enough CP cap to get what you want.

Keep in mind that some feats require certain, useless skills (Relevant for crafters really) so make sure you count those skills too!

Also, you might not always want your skills to be 100%, because 95% is GREAT too, and you save a whole 1k CP that way.

I strongly recommend to spare at least 5-10k CP in case you will want something you haven't thought about, or in case a new feat or skill comes up to the shard. It's still the beta...


It's a confusing post, I know, but if you read it well, you will make your char more effective and fun to play!

Is one of these suppose to be greater, not less?

Thanks. Those litle mistakes are killing the thread X_X

minor mistakes though, wish I'd read something like this when I was creating my chars. Still, hard to know what you do/don't want if you've never played with a specific shard's rules though.