Neverwinter Nights builds

If you're an RPG fan and haven't been hiding under a rock in, you've most certainly heard, and probably even played, the best RPG game of 2009 (reader's choice) called Dragon Age: Origins.

If you haven't played it yet, drop whatever you're doing and get it. It ranks up there with the classics like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. Even if you've finished it once, there's no excuse not to play it again while waiting for Dragon Age 2 to come out, especially with all the awesome DLC out there, the Awakening expansion, and not to mention the MODs.

Enough about that, let's get to my top five Dragon Age builds!

Before Starting Dragon Age: A Few Notes

Before we begin, a few things to note:

1. Besides your main class that you choose at start-up, you get to choose two specializations in the Origins Campaign and an additional one in the Awakening Expansion.
2. Each main class has a total of six specializations you can choose from making. Also, each specialization gives you four extra skills you can learn.
3. There are four specializations available in the original game for each class, and two more get added in the Awakening campaign.
4. The game is relatively easy! That being said you can pretty much choose whatever you want and still eventually win, at least on normal difficulty.

The Top Five Dragon Age Builds

Below, you'll find my top five Dragon Age builds, listed in no particular order.

1. Mage / Arcane Warrior / Blood Mage / Battlemage

This is the cookie cutter, end-it-all build for the power gamer out there. You can:

• Equip any armor, sword, or shield
• Deal huge melee damage and take very little
• Use any spell in the game—though not as often as a real mage without draining your HP.

Blood mage spells are overpowered and Battlemage spells are overpowered—it is boring! Also you can't really hold aggro either, which can lead to some really nice wipes especially when fighting against those nasty High Dragons.

Your physical resistance, being a mage, will be also be quite low unless you turn on a special constant mana draining ability. So expect to get knocked down pretty often by regular enemies.

3. Warrior / Campion / Berseker / Spirit Warrior

This is a two-handed weapon build, centered around wearing heavy armor and dealing lots of damage.

• You won't be such a great tank since you have only a few tools to hold aggro, except your high damage. But it sure is fun!
• You can buff your allies and yourself, and Spirit Warrior turns all your melee damage into spirit damage, which makes damage numbers over 100 a frequent sight.
• You also have great AOE capability, enough even to be able to skip having a mage.

4. Rogue / Bard / Ranger / Legionnaire Scout

This is the ranged support build.

• You only really need the first spell from the bard specialization since that is the best, and feel free to go into the ranger tree as deep as you want.
• Obviously rogue will focus mostly on archery skills and the Legionnaire Scout offers some nice survival tricks and a hefty bonus to hit points and stamina.
• Support means splitting stats between dexterity and cunning for that very useful disable trap and open locks skill.
• Great damage comes later on at the price of stamina when you're using skills that automatically score a critical hit. There's even some AOE capability and disables in there.

5. Rogue / Assassin / Duelist / Shadow

This is the melee DPS backstab build.

• All your stat points need to go into dexterity and talents will focus mainly on the dual wield, as well as the specialization talents you have.
• Be sure to learn to use poisons effectively and you will be a DPS powerhouse that's also hard to hit.