Author Topic: Character Help, again  (Read 3540 times)

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Amoren

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Character Help, again
« on: April 16, 2011, 08:58:31 PM »
Sorry for creating all these topics, but this one isn't for me!  This is, actually, for my mom who played an (ex)-paladin in a group on Fridays, and who unfortunately died in our last encounter (due to a variety of factors, such as me being new to clerics, forgetting to use healing wands to heal people up between the two game sessions, and forgetting I had a second level domain spell I could spontaneously convert to heal her.  That, and she didn't tell me she was at 1 HP).

But anyway, enough about that.  We're not sure if the paladin can be resurrected, or if she wants to continue playing her because she felt she was ineffectual and didn't have a real impact on the party or combat other than being a meat shield (she went the sword and board route).  So, I wanted to get some help to make her a kick ass character that she'd enjoy.

Rules are:
No psionics, no flaws, no base classes except for those in the PHB (except for a possible exception for classes that appeared in Neverwinter Nights 2, such as warlock).  ACF are iffy, as the DM doesn't like 'em.  Prestige classes, feats, and spells outside of PHB and DMG are subject to DM permission.

Current party is level nine and has a full progression fighter, cleric/church inquisitor/bone knight (me), and a warlock.

She enjoys playing smart agile characters, and she did portray some interests in playing a monk, but I think she'd be even less effective as a monk than she was as a paladin.  So far the best thing I can think up is a rogue monk with only one level of monk with the ascetic rogue feat, but I don't know how well that would play and if it would work for her.

She's also not to familiar with the DnD system, so I don't know how well she'd handle a spell caster (it would probably have to be a spontaneous caster like sorcerer for it to work), nor how well she'd enjoy playing it since it doesn't fit her typical mold.

Thanks in advance for any advice you guys can bestow, I really want to help her make a fun character she'd have a blast with.

CantripN

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #1 on: April 16, 2011, 09:20:17 PM »
For something none-too-complex, a Rogue 4 / Swashbuckler 16 or any other mix of those works, with Daring Outlaw. Just make sure to ask for the ACF that adds 1/2 SA damage vs. Immune targets.

Failing that, something like a Sorcerer / Rogue / Unseen Seer / Spellwarp Sniper?
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Solo

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #2 on: April 16, 2011, 09:22:24 PM »
Bard?

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Unbeliever

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #3 on: April 17, 2011, 03:52:52 PM »
From what you say, I second the Rogue Swashbuckler option.  Even better if you can get her Island of Blades for flanking (since there's a fair amount of melee in the party).  It sounds like it might be up her alley, though we don't have much information about that.

Personally, I hate that sneak attack is so gimped by the monsters in the game, so I've houseruled it away years ago.  Assuming that's not the case, you can still get around it even w/out ACFs, which the OP mentioned the DM frowned upon.  Get a couple of wands (wand chambers?) of Vine Strike or Grave Strike, w/ UMD she should be fine when it comes up.  Given that you're 9th level, she should reasonably have that in her equipment.

From what you tell me, and I admit I'm importing my sense of what people I know who are new to the system like, something that uses only 1 or 2 tactics at a time (as opposed to say, a full D&D spellcaster) would be appealing.  Bard is also a really good suggestion, but some people dislike the "charge up" that is involved w/ having to start bardic music, or the changing modifiers involved.  Although she might enjoy being a team player. 

The other possibility could be a barbarian, perhaps flavored to taste (viz. Conan, for someone who isn't a big dumb barbarian).  That could be a very fun, dynamic, combatant.  Although you'd really have to get your DM to let you use the Lion ACF b/c making her a mobile, pouncing combatant would really distinguish her from the fighter character.

Lycanthromancer

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #4 on: April 17, 2011, 07:56:43 PM »
Too bad you're restricted to Core. She would LOVE playing a factotum or swordsage, I think. Since she's your mother, ask the DM if he could make an exception?

Otherwise, have her play a druid with a laundry list of spells on flash cards?
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Amoren

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #5 on: April 24, 2011, 04:55:53 AM »
Alright, she's decided to go with a fey influenced/related character and most likely an arcane caster.  She doesn't want to prepare spells however, so we're going for a sorcerer build.  She wanted to go with Wild Soul, but doesn't think that the loss of caster level would really be worth it (that, and her summoning ability might be limited because of being in Ravenloft and the tricky rules with summoning it has).

So first off, how would one build a sorcerer with a fey influence?  So far she's thinking of just taking the heritage feats.

Second, she's shown an interest in being a sneaky caster, so I suggested a rogue/sorcerer/unseen seer combo.  How would you guys build this, and try to include a fey feel to it?

By the way, she's playing an elf with the stats 18, 16, 16, 16, 13, 13, with them assigned (with racial modifiers) so far as: Str 13, Dex 18, Con 14, Int 16, Wis 13, Cha 20.  Starting at 9th level, she's thinking of using a long bow as an off-weapon.  With an Unseen Seer build, I was thinking of building her with the mind of using Greater Invisibility to grant easy sneak attacks with her longbow...  But there's not much room for feats to pick up bow feats and fey heritage feats.

X-Codes

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #6 on: April 24, 2011, 07:52:06 AM »
How about Bard?

Bard 7/Uncanny Trickster 3/Virtuoso 10
1) Darkstalker
3) Fey Heritage
6) Fey Presence
9) Fey Legacy
12) Obtain Familiar
15) Improved Familiar

Spend a couple of skill points each level picking up ranks in trained only skills so you can apply Bardic Knack (should be 5 effective ranks with this setup), and then optimize the sneaky skills.  The Spell-Likes given by Fey Presence and Fey Legacy are all more or less staple Bard fare anyway, so this opens up precious spells known for a wider array of abilities.  Of special note is Summon Nature's Ally V, which can summon a Jann.  Probably one of the niftiest utility summons in the game, thanks to it's ability to jump to the Ethereal plane and scout around for you or to Plane Shift you and the party to the Astral Plane.

It looks weak because of the complete lack of combat feats and the usual Inspire Courage insanity, and really it's not meant to be a melee monster, but given an appropriate wand to UMD and a few spells to control the battlefield, this character can still give the rest of the party a lot of extra punch in combat.  Out of combat, it can really shine with easily maxed face skills and high stealth capabilities.  What's more, Fascinate, Suggestion, and the various Virtuoso abilities are all really good.

CantripN

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #7 on: April 24, 2011, 09:30:16 AM »
You may be excused for making a Bard without IC-crazyness (although you need a GOOD reason), but not going for Sublime Chord? That's just crazy!
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Unbeliever

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #8 on: April 24, 2011, 03:57:56 PM »
If you're looking for an arcane, fey-related concept but also want to make it easy to play and not worry about preparing spells, how about a sneaky warlock? 

I notice you have one of those already (and really restrictive class rules), though.

In that case, I might second bard.  I might go the opposite way that X-Codes did and emphasize Bardic Music a lot.  Between its charming and its buffing, that can give you a lot of fey type feel, and the spells fill in the rest.

That being said, a Sorcerer is a fine idea, too.  It all comes down to what kinds of spells she's interested in.  It sounds like a little bit of illusion -- smart character, creative, sneaky, and fey all at once -- as well as maybe a bit of blasting and maybe nature-themed battlefield control would work well. 

SpellGen might be handy, too, or even just lists of when to use what spells, which is what I do to make my life easier.

Amoren

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #9 on: April 24, 2011, 04:26:10 PM »
Well, I suggested bard to her and she bit my head off for suggesting ANOTHER character concept for her to use, but I do think it's probably the best route for her if she wants to be a sneaky, spontaneous spell caster with her current concept (she does want to get a familar ASAP though, since she's wanting to get a monkey to use to disarm traps).

So I suppose I should research how to create her a pretty powerful bard so that she'd have a blast.  I guess I should start off with finding out if prestige bard or regular bard is better?  I'm guessing regular, since you need six levels of pure sorcerer just to qualify, and that's a lot of lost skill points when the spell casting can be made up with Sublime Cord...

Wait...  If she's fey related, she'd have a lot of relation to nature...  Druid, rogue stealthy... Maybe I should find a way to make her a bard/druid and get her into folc lyrist.  Eh, probably not worth it, and she'd hate managing that many spells. xD

Solo

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #10 on: April 24, 2011, 05:07:51 PM »
Bard/Virtuoso with the Obtain Familiar feat?

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Unbeliever

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #11 on: April 24, 2011, 05:42:24 PM »
Well, I suggested bard to her and she bit my head off for suggesting ANOTHER character concept for her to use, but I do think it's probably the best route for her if she wants to be a sneaky, spontaneous spell caster with her current concept (she does want to get a familar ASAP though, since she's wanting to get a monkey to use to disarm traps).
Start w/ the concept, the builds are just ways to realize that concept around the table.  The same "character" can be built many different ways.

From what you say, some means where the resources are easiest to manage sounds useful.  Sorcerer isn't bad b/c there's essentially 1 resource to manage -- spells -- and they an be relatively easy to set up.  I say go w/ that, then, and just try and find a rogue/caster prestige class that lets her do what she wants.  Even a dip into rogue and Able Learner wouldn't be too bad, as I'm assuming you're not playing an uber-optimized game.

One way to go is to make her sneak attack oriented caster, which is pretty easy w/ Greater Invisibility, etc.  Although that's not even necessary, a reasonably well-built sorcerer, even one focused on blasting and a little else in addition, will probably work for you.

X-Codes

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #12 on: April 24, 2011, 06:00:07 PM »
You may be excused for making a Bard without IC-crazyness (although you need a GOOD reason), but not going for Sublime Chord? That's just crazy!
I'm not as wild on Sublime Chord as I used to be.  It gets you some nifty, higher-level tricks, but at some point it's just better to play a Sorcerer or Wizard instead of faking it.  Besides, I'm not inclined to go into the omni-splatting that IC crazyness requires given the DM's "I need to approve it first" rule.

Amoren

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #13 on: April 24, 2011, 06:49:59 PM »
So, we came up with a nasty little combo.  I've talked her into trying a wizard, because I think it'd be better for her to make a few fumbles with preparing her spells rather than her choosing to learn spells she might never use.  This also allows her to take Fey Mystery Initiate and add her intelligence to health instead of con, which would make up for her lower health due to being an elf.  It also gives her more skill points, which will fulfill the skill monkey part of her concept.

We did, however, came up with a brilliant idea.  I'm playing a DMM Persist cleric/bone knight, and I currently use it to persist three spells (Divine Power, Recitation, Mass Lesser Vigor).  I do have a Fortifying Bed Roll, which means I can sleep for an hour, regain my rebuke attempts, and persist three more spells.

The idea?  If she takes her first level as spellthief with master spellthief, she can steal a prepared casting of DMM: Persistent Divine Power - and gain it for the entire day.  This allows her to make full attacks with a composite long bow while invisible, and with hunter's eye, gain a healthy sneak attack while doing it.  I checked the spellthief excerpt online, and since I can't find anything saying they can steal ONLY arcane spells, I think this should work.

So, so far we've got: Spellthief 1/Wizard 4/Unseen Seer 4, with feats: Nymph's Kiss (bonus skills), Point Blank Shot (trade scribe scroll), Fey Mystery Initiate (3rd), Master Spellthief (6), Rapid Shot (9).  With Divine Power, this means she'd get +12/12/7 to hit with her composite long bow (more with enchantment and dexterity increasing items) and, with hunter's eye, deal 1d8+6d6+4 damage.  I want to work Craven into the build, but don't know if the bow feats would be more important.

So, is there any problems with this idea, or ways to improve/change it for the better?  I know Spellthief isn't a base class in PHB, but the DM has made exceptions (warlock) and has created NPCs using spellthief levels, so I think it should be allowed.

CrimsonDeath

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #14 on: April 24, 2011, 07:11:46 PM »
There are two main problems with that idea.  First, DMM applies metamagic to spells spontaneously as they are cast; they are not prepared as metamagic spells.  Consequently, though she could steal Divine Power, she could not steal a Persistent Divine Power (as you can't prepare such a spell).  Second, your Spellthief and Wizard levels will stack to determine what level spell she can steal, but not the number of stolen spell levels she can store.  By a strict reading, she'd steal your Divine Power and then immediately forget it.  (Personally, I think that may have been an editing error.)

Having said that...  If I'd known you could use the Spellthief base class and you could talk her into playing a Wizard, I would have suggested that build a week ago.  I want to play that character.  And it's much simpler than what I was about to suggest-- abusing the PHB2 retraining rules to build a Rogue 1/Sorcerer 4/Unseen Seer who only needs to buy maybe three cross-class skill ranks.  (You could still do that with Wizard, but it's not necessary.)

Amoren

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #15 on: April 24, 2011, 08:16:26 PM »
There are two main problems with that idea.  First, DMM applies metamagic to spells spontaneously as they are cast; they are not prepared as metamagic spells.  Consequently, though she could steal Divine Power, she could not steal a Persistent Divine Power (as you can't prepare such a spell).  Second, your Spellthief and Wizard levels will stack to determine what level spell she can steal, but not the number of stolen spell levels she can store.  By a strict reading, she'd steal your Divine Power and then immediately forget it.  (Personally, I think that may have been an editing error.)

Having said that...  If I'd known you could use the Spellthief base class and you could talk her into playing a Wizard, I would have suggested that build a week ago.  I want to play that character.  And it's much simpler than what I was about to suggest-- abusing the PHB2 retraining rules to build a Rogue 1/Sorcerer 4/Unseen Seer who only needs to buy maybe three cross-class skill ranks.  (You could still do that with Wizard, but it's not necessary.)

It's a really 'as we go' sort of thing with her, so sorry about that. ^^;  Spellthief isn't a 100% sure thing, but the DM has created NPCs with it in the past so I'm assuming he'll allow it (since his reasoning for limiting base classes was because he wasn't familiar with most classes outside of the PHB).  And yeah, I'm pretty sure he'll waive it as an editing error.

Edit: Actually, reading over Divine Metamagic again, it never says that the metamagic effect is applied spontaneously.  It merely says as a free action you apply a metamagic effect to a spell you know...  It kinda doesn't say anything about when this is done (at spell preparation or at any other time).  I don't see why the rebuke attempts could be spent when preparing spells and just prepare it with a metamagic...  But that's kinda iffy.  Still should probably talk to the DM about it.
« Last Edit: April 24, 2011, 08:29:03 PM by Amoren »

Mixster

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #16 on: April 24, 2011, 08:34:06 PM »
You are almost at a master spellthief build. Consider instead, Spellthief 1/Bard 1/Wizard 3/Unseen Seer 3/Ultimate Magus 1/Sublime Chord 2/Ultimate Magus +8
With master spellthief this build goes crazy with caster level.

Yeah it isn't that good at the early levels, but at 9th level she'd work pretty much like a rogue that can do battlefield control with 4th level spells, with a possible caster level of 17 (with practiced spellcaster for both bard and wizard), black tentacles have a grapple check of +25 which is enough to grapple most things. Sing a song that adds + a few to hit and damage, and steal your spells. With Arcane Disciple War, she could cast it herself though.
Monks are pretty much the best designed class ever.

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CrimsonDeath

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #17 on: April 24, 2011, 09:26:21 PM »
You are almost at a master spellthief build. Consider instead, Spellthief 1/Bard 1/Wizard 3/Unseen Seer 3/Ultimate Magus 1/Sublime Chord 2/Ultimate Magus +8
With master spellthief this build goes crazy with caster level.

Yeah it isn't that good at the early levels, but at 9th level she'd work pretty much like a rogue that can do battlefield control with 4th level spells, with a possible caster level of 17 (with practiced spellcaster for both bard and wizard), black tentacles have a grapple check of +25 which is enough to grapple most things. Sing a song that adds + a few to hit and damage, and steal your spells. With Arcane Disciple War, she could cast it herself though.
It looks to me like you'd only have level 3 Wizard spells at level 9 with that build, unless you use an early entry trick, as a level 1 Bard can't cast level 1 spells and consequently doesn't qualify for Ultimate Magus.  However, as all your levels are either Spellthief or arcane casting classes, you don't need Practiced Spellcaster because you can just take Master Spellthief-- which also solves the caster level loss from Ultimate Magus, as all your arcane spellcasting classes have the same caster level so you can stack the 10/10 advancement wherever you want.  You also need another level somewhere in there prior to Sublime Chord, as you can't enter until level 11.  (On a related note, that's a 19-level build.)

Having said that, I don't think we want to hand a triple-caster to someone who, only a week ago, thought Monk was a good idea.

Amoren

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #18 on: April 24, 2011, 10:44:31 PM »
Having said that, I don't think we want to hand a triple-caster to someone who, only a week ago, thought Monk was a good idea.

Careful, she's watching this topic now! xD

But anyway, I think she's settled on the idea of being an Unseen Seer/Arcane Trickster, with a spellthief or rogue base (depending on DM allowance, with Practiced Caster or Master Spellthief depending).  What we have to work out though is what spells should she start with/prepare, should she specialize and in what schools (I'm thinking either Divination for more Hunter's Eye or Transmutation since she's a fan of a lot of those spells), should she focus on doing damage with a composite longbow or spells and the feats to support them (Rapid Shot for longbow?  Acidic Splatter for spell?).

Feats are another problem...  Fey Mystery Initiate and Nymph's Kiss give her concept the fey background she'll need, and I think they're a bit more useful than fey heritage (since she's already got spells).  However, we also found out that Able Learner would probably be needed in the build (DM allowed it for nonhumans, gotta love him being used to NWN2), and with Master Spellthief that doesn't leave any room for Craven or Rapid Shot.

Equipment we need to worry about down the road and would likely depend on what combat style she goes with.  Archery, I think an Eternal Wand of Arrow Splitting would be lovely for her, a nice berserk button twice per day at the cost of 10,000gp though...

Amoren

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Re: Character Help, again
« Reply #19 on: April 28, 2011, 05:03:22 PM »
Anyway, DM said no to spellthief (after all this time, sheesh he should check his email more, but I suppose busy with studying for finals had something to do with it).  So since she can't steal a divine power from me at all now, and she's a long, long way away from being able to persist divine power herself (it would become a ninth level spell, unless I'm mistaken), I think it might be best to go with rogue/sorcerer and focus on using her spells to deal sneak attack damage.  Of course, could also just go rogue/wizard and take Acidic Splatter to use whenever she wants to attack...  Decisions, decisions.