onthetown
2010-11-12, 09:29 PM
After my last thread on using ribbons as weapons, I ended up intriguing my DM enough to let me build a character who uses them as her main weapon.
I decided to have the character be from Shou Lung, keeping in the flavour of the Chinese ribbon dance that inspired the question about using ribbons as weapons in the first place. I did some research into Chinese battle tactics and found Sun Tzu's Art of War to be a great resource, and I learned that he more or less taught stealth and manipulation. ("All war is based on deception," and whatnot.) So, I'll be playing a Rogue... or something similar, anyway. (I could have chosen Oriental Adventures classes, but I wanted to try to translate the character into the western classes.)
The backstory (this has already been approved by the DM) is that the character was the youngest daughter of an important politician in Shou Lung. She appeared to be a typical young woman who blended in with noble society and really didn't have much to inherit since she had older siblings, but her father was secretly employing her to go out and perform as a ribbon dancer under a different alias and appearance. She did plenty of normal shows, but when his enemies were attending she was so quick that she was able to kill them with the ribbons during the dance without being seen.
Unfortunately, suspicions were starting to arise (since, you know, people were dying) and some of his enemies were starting to figure out that she was his daughter, so she cut all ties, erased all records of her ever existing, and exiled herself to Faerun to protect her family. She joins the party, and at some point stops being such a Mary Sue as I learn how to play her better.
I'm obviously thinking Rogue with either Dervish or Shadow Dancer, but some people have told me to avoid Rogue with Dervish. I don't play non-magicky classes very often and I'm not great at builds to begin with, so I need some help with this. I'm going more for flavour than for power -- there are plenty of other powerful characters in the party, and I'm content to simply play my own character to her backstory than to try to overpower everybody else.
She needs Two-Weapon Fighting for the ribbon dance, and I think Whirlwind Attack would be cool, but that's pretty much as far as I get.
And why not Rogue/Dervish?
I decided to have the character be from Shou Lung, keeping in the flavour of the Chinese ribbon dance that inspired the question about using ribbons as weapons in the first place. I did some research into Chinese battle tactics and found Sun Tzu's Art of War to be a great resource, and I learned that he more or less taught stealth and manipulation. ("All war is based on deception," and whatnot.) So, I'll be playing a Rogue... or something similar, anyway. (I could have chosen Oriental Adventures classes, but I wanted to try to translate the character into the western classes.)
The backstory (this has already been approved by the DM) is that the character was the youngest daughter of an important politician in Shou Lung. She appeared to be a typical young woman who blended in with noble society and really didn't have much to inherit since she had older siblings, but her father was secretly employing her to go out and perform as a ribbon dancer under a different alias and appearance. She did plenty of normal shows, but when his enemies were attending she was so quick that she was able to kill them with the ribbons during the dance without being seen.
Unfortunately, suspicions were starting to arise (since, you know, people were dying) and some of his enemies were starting to figure out that she was his daughter, so she cut all ties, erased all records of her ever existing, and exiled herself to Faerun to protect her family. She joins the party, and at some point stops being such a Mary Sue as I learn how to play her better.
I'm obviously thinking Rogue with either Dervish or Shadow Dancer, but some people have told me to avoid Rogue with Dervish. I don't play non-magicky classes very often and I'm not great at builds to begin with, so I need some help with this. I'm going more for flavour than for power -- there are plenty of other powerful characters in the party, and I'm content to simply play my own character to her backstory than to try to overpower everybody else.
She needs Two-Weapon Fighting for the ribbon dance, and I think Whirlwind Attack would be cool, but that's pretty much as far as I get.
And why not Rogue/Dervish?