You can pick between Bonecrusher and BladeMaster in Knighthood. I believe. come on warriors help us out!

same guild, different skillsets

I like the celestine/paladin
jeweler/forger
merian/some strong dude for paladin (or both merians)

I am a celestine and we work very well in groups especially if you have high healing and good healing triggers. 1 person can fight and the other can keep them alive forever. The jeweler/forger also works well, i do it with one of my friends. In general, just pick something that fits you. Virtually anything you pick CAN be worked out, its usually just a matter of personal style.

how might influence play into this equation?

My Bud is going Tae'Dae Bonecrusher, would building an influencial rogue be of any use? I don't know much about influence other than what I read in the help files...would dumping all lessons in influence/crafting be a good assistance char? Obviousy I could craft some great weapons or armor for him, but how, if at all, would influence help?

Thanks! Great suggestions here, and a great community, glad to be a part of it and I can't stop learning more about Lusternia, it's an addiction!

All guilds based on the knight archetype let you choose either of the two skillsets. This would be Ur'Gard, Paladins, and Serenguard.

Edited for pedantic accuracy Sorry - my current pet peeve of the moment is the whole Warrior/Knight thing.

Don't worry Asarnil I do it too...I spank any of the Guards that call us knights...knight is a rank, not only that its a city *spit* rank.

There really is no rogue archetype yet. So you could not go 100% pure rogue. If you want to craft weapons and stuff, you have to be a knight, which your buddy could do himself. You could be a jeweler to supply him with gems, though; those are needed for making fancier items.

Influence is an non-violent way to "fight" NPCs. You engage in various tactics, like begging and wheedling, to get a specific outcome, like persuading the NPCs to give you alms (gold or sometimes a quest item). There are five different outcomes: alms, boost the NPCs strength, weaken its strength, make it semi-loyal to you so it will auto-attack your enemies, or make it paranoid so that it will not respond to anything (ideal if you want to break a quest).

There is an additional form of influence based on city rank which lets you persude the NPC to swear loyalty to your city if the village is not already loyal to any city. If a city does enough persuasion, the village will become loyal to that city and tithe some of its commodities and power to that city. The city security also gains the ability to place in the village guards to protect it from invaders. (Killing NPCs in a village makes them less satisfied with the city's protection and more prone to revolt, so guarding is important.)

When you defeat an NPC through influence, you gain experience points as though you killed it. If you lose (ie- the NPC decides 100% against you and becomes stubbornly opposed to any more discussion) then you lose experience just as though you died. Also note that unlike physical combat, it can degenerate to a situation where no one can win, like a tie. (It was not meant to clone combat in terms of how it works.)

The type of influence you use can vary depending on your goals. If you want to gain wealth, beg. If the begging ends up in that tie situation, kill the NPCs and see if he drops any. So you greatly increase you chance of getting gold since not all NPCs drop gold when slain. Or if you want to gain XP, influence to weaken it. You gain experience when you win. Then, since it is weakened and thus easier to fight, slay it for more experience. (A rather rogueish underhanded way to fight.) If it is a village you want to protect from invaders, influence to strengthen the denizens to make them harder to slay. If you want to sabatage an enemy village and don't have a large enough team to do a raid, make NPCs paranoid that are needed for its city to do commodity quests so that the quests cannot be completed, which also is a somewhat rogue-like thing to do. (Note that NPCs do not call for help on the city channel when being influenced!)

Also note that the prestigiousness of your clothing impacts your ability to infuence. High prestige means more influence. Though it is inverted for begging: rags are better than riches.

Faeling blademaster with rapiers, Tae'dae bonecrusher with the max damage weapons?

::shrugs::

Roark, much appreciated friend...great info.

So a true guildless rogue could craft gems for fancy items, good to know.

Do you think I could make a significant impact on the mobs my bud takes on? and if speccing in influence/jewels, would I be able to fight or defend myself at all from mobs? PvP?

Thanks again!

With only influence you couldnt PvP. Thats what the Guild Skills are for. Influence is designed entirely for dealing with Mobs.

You know, I can't help but recall that all of the ur'Guard sentries posted throughout Magnagora declare themselves 'Ur'Guard Death Knights'. Is this just a hold-over from when the organization was centered around Urlachmar?

What is the whole Warrior/Knight thing?

16 dex faeling with poison weapons? Woe be us indeed... Just don't get hit eh?

Faeling(s?) have 17 dex

The prefix Death is for a specific type of Ur'Guard (the ones with Lichdom), and Knight is a specific rank within the guild only available after you have gone through a seriously huge amount of work and useless formalities.

And the Warrior/Knight thing is when people refer to the Warrior archetype as Knights or the Knight archetype (which doesn't exist and is just people slipping into IRE syndrome). By forcing people to refer to the archetype as Warriors, with any luck it will drum it through their heads that we shouldn't be compared to the knights on the other muds.