AslanCross
2009-05-24, 04:57 PM
Not wanting to derail my campaign thread, I decided to start a new thread to ask for the Playground's help in helping a player build a new character.
If you've been following my Red Hand of Doom campaign journal, you'll know I only have 2 players with 4 PCs between them. One of the characters (the artificer) died recently and her player wanted to replace her with a cleric. As it turns out, I may be getting two more players, each of whom are going to handle a singe PC. The cleric might be going to one of these players instead.
She's not exactly a beginner, though she's the least experienced of my players. She joined my original campaign two years ago and wasn't able to stay long due to failing grades at the time. Despite her inexperience she's actually a pretty good roleplayer, so I want to indulge her rather strange character concept: a gun-toting cleric.
I'm running Eberron, and since the guns don't really fit a relatively technologically advanced setting (they'd have discovered them already) and I feel the guns in the DMG aren't worth their difficulty, I told her already that guns don't exist in the setting. So I said, "why not use a wand and make it look like a gun?"---to which she said "yay, sure!"
So how do I make a cleric an effective wand wielder? I'd suggest multiclassing artificer, but there's just way too much in the way of accounting for magic item creation and I don't want to push that on her. Furthermore, artificer doesn't really multiclass well.
Here are some ways that I've come up with:
1. Quick and dirty solution: Cleric with the Fire Domain, use a wand of produce flame. Not very strong, but doesn't require UMD. The spell itself is pretty efficient in terms of charge economy, but yeah, very little damage.
2. Slightly more difficult but potentially more rewarding: Cloistered cleric with Able Learner, take ranks in UMD. At least this way she can max her ranks in UMD and not really fear having the wand explode in her face, and she can also use wands that are not on the cleric list--most notably, scorching ray.
Any other ways of doing this?
What other projectile-type spells do you guys recommend? Rays and ranged touch attacks are preferred. I'm not so keen on the lesser orbs as they might not be as strong, while the 4th level orbs are too expensive to wand at her level.
She's going to start at 7th level and will meet the others at the start of chapter 2.
If you've been following my Red Hand of Doom campaign journal, you'll know I only have 2 players with 4 PCs between them. One of the characters (the artificer) died recently and her player wanted to replace her with a cleric. As it turns out, I may be getting two more players, each of whom are going to handle a singe PC. The cleric might be going to one of these players instead.
She's not exactly a beginner, though she's the least experienced of my players. She joined my original campaign two years ago and wasn't able to stay long due to failing grades at the time. Despite her inexperience she's actually a pretty good roleplayer, so I want to indulge her rather strange character concept: a gun-toting cleric.
I'm running Eberron, and since the guns don't really fit a relatively technologically advanced setting (they'd have discovered them already) and I feel the guns in the DMG aren't worth their difficulty, I told her already that guns don't exist in the setting. So I said, "why not use a wand and make it look like a gun?"---to which she said "yay, sure!"
So how do I make a cleric an effective wand wielder? I'd suggest multiclassing artificer, but there's just way too much in the way of accounting for magic item creation and I don't want to push that on her. Furthermore, artificer doesn't really multiclass well.
Here are some ways that I've come up with:
1. Quick and dirty solution: Cleric with the Fire Domain, use a wand of produce flame. Not very strong, but doesn't require UMD. The spell itself is pretty efficient in terms of charge economy, but yeah, very little damage.
2. Slightly more difficult but potentially more rewarding: Cloistered cleric with Able Learner, take ranks in UMD. At least this way she can max her ranks in UMD and not really fear having the wand explode in her face, and she can also use wands that are not on the cleric list--most notably, scorching ray.
Any other ways of doing this?
What other projectile-type spells do you guys recommend? Rays and ranged touch attacks are preferred. I'm not so keen on the lesser orbs as they might not be as strong, while the 4th level orbs are too expensive to wand at her level.
She's going to start at 7th level and will meet the others at the start of chapter 2.