I'm now trying to focus on building up a Marrulurk as a viable combatant for this situation, and require the ability to gain more attacks with more bonus damage (adding to the Marrulurk's innate sneak attack damage, boosting strength bonus to thrown weapons, or whatever I can get). Being invisible or hidden as much as possible will also help.
So, BowenSilverclaw is going to be running an Eberron-adapted 'Red Hand of Doom' campaign on the PbP boards soon. The most I know about this is that I'll be up against a ton of Hobgoblins, some giants, and dragon(s), and that there is at least one massive army encounter.
Character creation rules are as follows:
Basic rules:
-I would prefer a non-evil party, makes things a lot easier for me and fits the campaign better IMHO
-5-man party maximum (haven't decided on how I decide who's in yet, will get back to that later if there's enough interest)
-Starting ECL 5 (campaign will most likely end around level 11 or 12)
-36 PB
-Standard WBL
-2 Flaws allowed
-2 Traits allowed
-Pretty much all 3.5 and unupdated 3.0 material allowed (if I don't have it, I would appreciate it if you could post/PM/e-mail the relevant text)
-Gentleman's agreement: if you use it, the enemy can use it as well.
-There won't be much downtime available for stuff like crafting and whatnot, so if you want to play an Artificer or something, make sure you've got a Dedicated Wright and a portable laboratory or something
-The party will start out somewhere in (Eastern) Breland, probably away from any major cities.
Some basics about the NPCs/changes:
-Basic non-monstrous opponents will be mostly goblinoids.
-NPCs will be rebuilt from the ground up (classes, feats, skills, equipment etc.), because frankly, WotC's standard NPCs suck.
Furthermore, so far it seems like Dragon material is allowed, and that homebrew content is banned. Bloodlines are allowed, but the bloodline levels must still be accounted for as normal. Class adaptations however are fair game.
LA-buyoff is also allowed.
So, my first thought was to start with a base of Binder (I figured being a Binder with at least access to 3rd level vestiges could mean Lesser Mechanatrix bound to Focalor for unlimited out-of-combat self-healing.
), since most of their abilities can go all day, and they can switch each day if need-be. I then figured maybe Anima Mage could be good, giving a caster some much-needed staying power since long days and little rest is expected, and having those binder powers on top of spellcasting would do that well.
I went with Beguiler as a base for the skills/hp/flavor, as well as for sheer number of spells/day. Wizard will probably be best now.
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However, now I'm not so sure. The beguiler has a few good self-buffs and a couple of party-buffs, and a bunch of enemy debuffs, but most of their spells affect single targets. I know I'm going to be going up against large quantities of enemies, so that's not optimal. I also tried figuring out how to pull off an Ardent/Binder/Psionic Anima Mage, but couldn't quite seem to get it going.
So I'm in the dark as to how best to proceed. Whatever I go with needs to have staying power, and be fun to play. I think I still want to go with Binder as a base (I might even be open to just going full Binder/KoSS), but I'm not locked into it. Mostly I'd like to try something I haven't played before, though that's an entirely too-broad spectrum.
[/spoiler]
So far, the rest of the party consists of a Crusader, a Dragonfire Adept (BFC via entangling and slow breath), a Conjurer going for Malconvoker, and a Warblade.
Any suggestions on what would make me viable, and capable of withstanding several encounters per day without rest, and also fill any needed party roles? The consensus seems to be that we need high damage output, though I think multi-target damage is important as well.