Best Race\Class to play in Dragon Age : Origins?

Just got it off steam for 6 bucks and started up the game and their seems to be alot of different origin storys, just wondering what one has the best story and what class is the most fun to play?

@Bourbon_Warrior: They all have their benefits. What kind of style do you usually like to play?

My personal favorite was Dalish Elf Rogue.

@Demoskinos said:

@Bourbon_Warrior: They all have their benefits. What kind of style do you usually like to play?

My personal favorite was Dalish Elf Rogue.

In Skyrim I play a archer elf, try to avoid getting up close. Havent really ever played a game like this apart from Diablo 3, so would like to make it a bit easier. I'm more intrigued what character has the best story as they all seem to start in different places.

Dwarf Noble is a great origin, particularly if you go Warrior.

Human Noble if you plan on making any... large... moves in the late game. Particularly if you pick female.

City Elf Berserker!

Be a persecuted little elf and kill all things with big weapons!

That said, mage is by far the most powerful class. But you only get one origin for that.

In terms of plot development, the origin stories don't matter much after the first 45 minutes of gameplay, really. Some characters will react differently and you may find a couple of throwbacks to your origin story, but that's it. The overall plot of the game remains largely the same for every race/class combination.

The only significant difference between origins are that dwarves can't be mages and what options you get in terms of romance and "end game scenarios" (to avoid spoilers, I won't get into it). If it's the first time that you're playing Dragon Age: Origins, I'd suggest to just pick whatever class and origin looks more appealing to you and roll with it.

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@Demoskinos said:

@Bourbon_Warrior: They all have their benefits. What kind of style do you usually like to play?

My personal favorite was Dalish Elf Rogue.

In Skyrim I play a archer elf, try to avoid getting up close. Havent really ever played a game like this apart from Diablo 3, so would like to make it a bit easier. I'm more intrigued what character has the best story as they all seem to start in different places.

The origins all change something, but 3 of them change by far the most.

Dwarf Noble changes the entire Orzammar section of the game.

Human Noble allows you to make some rather bold political moves during the penultimate area.

Mage allows you to do things differently during anything related to magic.

Dwarf Commoner allows you to change whether or not a minor NPC lives or dies.

Never played any of the elf origins, but the City one probably minorly changes the penultimate area while the other I imagine would change the forest section quite a bit.

Played through as a Noble Human Warrior, enjoyed it fine.

Mages are pretty badass in this game. By that I mean they're kind of overpowered. Your class choice doesn't matter that much, tough, since it's a party based game.

@Terramagi said:

That said, mage is by far the most powerful class. But you only get one origin for that.

I would heartily dispute that. I ended up playing the Harvester DLC on Nightmare for the Achievement and ended up pretty much soloing the harvester with my Rogue. Built right the rogue is insane especially once you factor in all the abilities gotten in awakening. It gets down right stupid how much damage you can do.

Go Rogue. Race doesn't matter, but I enjoyed city elf. Playing as the underdog has it charms.

The reason why I think rogue is the best choice, is because the rogue class have so many useful skills. After 2/3 of the game, it's hard to find skills to sink your points into with the other classes. Not so much with the rogue. There's a ton of options and there's always something useful to put points into. You can mix and match every specialization for the rogue class as well, any combo will be useful.

The rogue class also have the most fun tasks in the game. Warriors are just tanks, which is boring as hell in a game like this. Mages have more options, but usually has to stay behind and manage healing and buffs for the rest of the party. Just let the AI manage healing and buffs instead. Sure you can use mages on the front lines, but I never found them as effective as warriors. Rogues have a nice variety of options in combat. You can be ranged, backstab fools or just go with speed and agility. Rogues are also used for detecting traps (which is super useful) and picking locks.

One last thing, the rogue class is the most suited class for doing conversations. When convincing NPCs in dialogues, the game often taps into your cunning stats. Cunning is one of the most important stats for the rogue, so you'll be spending a lot of points there anyway.

The Dwarven origins are the most interesting. I was bored to tears with the Mage origin, but mages are extremely powerful.

Female Dalish Elf Rouge. By far my favorite way to go. I feel like you get a lot out of being an elf, and being a female.

Don't have much of an opinion on class, but City Elf has been my favorite origin.

@Zlimness said:

Just let the AI manage healing and buffs instead.

Don´t listen to this. If you want to have a good experience, do everything yourself. Unless you don´t enjoy micro managing your party.. in that case you will probably hate the combat.

I liked the Mage origin story. And maybe Dwarf Noble would make the dwarf political stuff in the main story a bit more tolerable. Mages rock in this game, but you can make every class pretty much into a demigod.

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@Demoskinos said:

@Bourbon_Warrior: They all have their benefits. What kind of style do you usually like to play?

My personal favorite was Dalish Elf Rogue.

In Skyrim I play a archer elf, try to avoid getting up close. Havent really ever played a game like this apart from Diablo 3, so would like to make it a bit easier. I'm more intrigued what character has the best story as they all seem to start in different places.

Dude, be a dwarf. There is absolutely NO doubt that the royal dwarf origin is the absolute best. Seriously, so goddamn good. Both Dwarven Origins are great really. I'd suggest going though all of the origins though, or at least the major ones, at some point. They are pretty quick, and after that the rest of the game will be pretty much exactly the same. I found the dwarven part of the game was far more enhanced by experiencing the dwarven origin than anything else was by the other origins, so that's another benefit. They just make a really fascinating society out of the dwarves, and the writing is excellent for the royal dwarf origin in particular.

If you want it to be easy, and you want to have the option of keeping your distance, be a rogue, though I should suggest not going with a ranged character. I didn't find them terribly effective or interesting. Having a rogue is also useful for avoiding traps, being able to get every bit of loot possible (lock picking), and generally mercing fools. I really liked the class. Duel Wielding is pretty enjoyable. You're so damn fast.

I played my Rogue up to level 30 or whatever the cap is with DC.

@MariachiMacabre said:

The Dwarven origins are the most interesting. I was bored to tears with the Mage origin, but mages are extremely powerful.

Just use the mages you can recruit into your party. It's true, the mage Origin is pretty dull (the first time is interesting if you dig around for lore, but after that, it's awful). I'd suggest making the Mage tower your first priority once you have freedom to go pick where to go. You get your healer there, it makes the game so much more enjoyable. It's also a very cool sequence. You meet like 40 mages throughout your travels, so you'll be able to play plenty with the mage abilities, which are quite fun.

Here's the thing about Dragon Age's classes. It doesn't really matter what you want to play. Really, it doesn't. Because if you're playing right, you'll have a balanced party anyway, and you can play with all of the major roles, because if you are playing right, you'll be switching characters a lot and making sure they aren't being stupid. Don't be afraid to switch characters, pause the action, etc. The game isn't super easy (it's a delightful carnage on the hardest difficulty), so you will need to make sure your dumb AI isn't running a guy into the fire constantly or something silly like that.

So I'd suggest making a Rogue, because fuck the rogues you meet in the game. They are the worst characters, hands down. Even if you don't like how evil Morrigon is, at least she's a bad ass party member and at least an interesting dark side character. Alistar is potentially my favorite character in any game ever, and Wynn is a needed member if you don't make your own healing mage.

@Demoskinos said:

@Terramagi said:

That said, mage is by far the most powerful class. But you only get one origin for that.

I would heartily dispute that. I ended up playing the Harvester DLC on Nightmare for the Achievement and ended up pretty much soloing the harvester with my Rogue. Built right the rogue is insane especially once you factor in all the abilities gotten in awakening. It gets down right stupid how much damage you can do.

Overall, mages are more useful because you rarely have a lot of one on one fights. They can do a lot of damage, they have a lot of control over the field, and on top of that, can heal. It makes them paramount to the experience. However, a rogue will absolutely rip and shred the really tough fuckers like no one else. Their only limitation is the amount of flexibility they have. They aren't quite as useful as a whole to the party, but they are pretty freakin' awesome.

But again, this is the game where your character class should really be based on who of the recruit-able party members you don't like. In my experience, it's mostly the rogues that no one likes. Unless you like vaguely insulting Russian twink stereotypes or really bland characters, you should just be a rogue.

Dalish Elf is my favorite because you get a shit ton a racism from everyone. If you compare an Elf playthough to a human playthough its amazing how much differently people treat you. BioWare really went the extra mile with that stuff.

Between multiple playthroughs as different races and classes, I found my time with my elf mage the most enjoyable. Not only was her place in the world more interesting, but she also became obscenely overpowered as the game progressed.

I think Dwarf Noble is the best, followed by Human Noble.

In reality, playing a mage is certainly the best choice when it comes to the combat, since you only have two other mages and both lean separate ways (healer vs damage, roughly good vs roughly evil) but I think the mage origin is the worst in the game by a far margin. I play these games for story though.

@Superfriend said:

@Zlimness said:

Just let the AI manage healing and buffs instead.

Don´t listen to this. If you want to have a good experience, do everything yourself. Unless you don´t enjoy micro managing your party.. in that case you will probably hate the combat.

I liked the Mage origin story. And maybe Dwarf Noble would make the dwarf political stuff in the main story a bit more tolerable. Mages rock in this game, but you can make every class pretty much into a demigod.

I disagree. I think it gets incredibly boring to play as a mage in DA:O after a while. 95% of the enemies are fodder and don't require much strategy, so it's not worth the effort to spend points on offensive spells to micro. So you go with buffs instead and at that point, there's isn't much left to do for a mage when 3-4 buffs have been activated and most of your mana has been tapped. While the combat in DA:O is perfectly decent, it's a far cry from BG2 with it's different layers of spells and counter-spells that actually required a lot of thinking and strategy for mage players. As it stands, the best class to micro in DA:O is the rogue, since the AI can't make full use of it's dynamic abilities, but the AI can be setup to handle the majority of the mage's work. When you do run into bosses, you can always switch over to the mage. But those moments are far and few between.

I played a noble human female rogue. Rogue is so much fun, and you have so many options for powers. I had two sets of powers, one purely ranged and then the close range duel wielding for when the bad guys got up close. Worked great. I rarely have any problems with handling people, especially later in the game and into the expansion and dlc. Rogues just become beasts, at least that is what I found, as long as you play smart.

@MordeaniisChaos: Went with the Dwarf Noble, being an evil bastard so far and loving it. Hope the combat gets more interesting for the warrior though.

Rogue all the way. Easily the most fun, and you can get hella powerful.

@Demoskinos said:

@Terramagi said:

That said, mage is by far the most powerful class. But you only get one origin for that.

I would heartily dispute that. I ended up playing the Harvester DLC on Nightmare for the Achievement and ended up pretty much soloing the harvester with my Rogue. Built right the rogue is insane especially once you factor in all the abilities gotten in awakening. It gets down right stupid how much damage you can do.

Especially how much enemies will miss you.

Played Dwarf peasant (I think it's called) and it was great!

But honestly I think you'll love the game no matter what, it's fucking fantastic.

Should've been a pole, but my personal favorite is human/warrior but really enjoyed wood elf/rogue too. The main character certainly feels like they should be a human especially with the one story beat about the main antagonists side kick.

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

@MordeaniisChaos: Went with the Dwarf Noble, being an evil bastard so far and loving it. Hope the combat gets more interesting for the warrior though.

Most classes start out slow. It's a pretty active class, I'd suggest going the shield and sword route if you want to keep busy. They get a lot of knockdown and stun stuff, so you'll have to keep track of what enemy is being a problem and use your warrior to control them. I like warriors, my last character was a Dwarven Noble warrior, and I liked him.

Glad you are enjoying Dwarf Noble. Dragon Age: Origins is my favorite game, and all writing that has anything to do with dwarves is a pretty big part of it. You'll like coming back to Orzammar if you like that origin.

Mages are absurdly broken relative to every other class and the hardest fights in the game are high level random encounters consisting of several mages.

Dwarf Noble has the best origin story by far.

Rogue is pretty good, it has a lot of options. Mage also has a lot of variety.

Warrior is the only class that can get a little boring.

I feel dalish elf plays into the overarching narrative the most, because in the origin part, the beginning, you find a certain object that keeps coming up in the Dragon Age games.

And Rogues are freaking overpowered as fuck. Game becomes a cakewalk.