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View Full Version : Non-casting party support - How to do it?



Kittenwolf
2011-04-24, 08:56 AM
So. I'm playing in a Gestalt campaign, Evil group, not likely to go above lvl 10. In the country we're mostly playing in both Arcane & Divine casters are cut off from their power, and Artificer has been relegated to NPCs only.

The party has an Ardent/Psycic Warrior who can take care of blasting, and a pile of melee damage dealers, plus a tank. With this in mind, I'm trying to mix together a Support character to take care of healing & miscellania.
Anyone have any advice? I understand Factotum should be able to cover some things, but I'm not sure that it's enough.
Also, Fast Healing + the Incarnate shirt that lets you suck the wounds out of people could also be viable for out of combat healing, unsure how to get the fast healing in this case though.

Lateral
2011-04-24, 11:02 AM
I think that an Ardent with the Life mantle can heal well. An Ardent would be able to cover party services, too. You could go Human Factotum 4/Ardent 16 and take Practiced Manifester and Able Learner, so you get plenty of skills and full manifesting. Take feats like Nymph's Kiss or Open Minded so you can have enough skill points to make it work.

Eldariel
2011-04-24, 11:08 AM
Crusader has some supportish abilities; ToB in general, though those are mostly based around combat (with few outliers). Of course, Ardent/Psion can also cover support with appropriate builds and Factotum has some such abilities. Though beware; Factotums get arcane casting of sorts and that's probably just as disrupted as arcanists'. They do, however, get a strange healing ability and obviously all the skills and the action multiplication and all that good stuff so that's probably not a dealbreaker.

Factotum/Psion could probably accomplish broadly what you want. Egoist, Nomad and Seer are all reasonable options; you'll probably want to Expanded Knowledge for Empathic Transfer if you don't go Egoist tho. Then just use Vigor + Psi Crystal to be durable so you can take it and act as a sort of a battery, combined with Factotum's healing and defensive capabilities and skillmonkery. Egoist gets a key ability in Psionic Revivify too, but that's also something you could EK for. Though only on the next level if you do go for Nomad (great positioning support and such) or Seer (Divinations have...obvious uses far as part coordination and survivability go).

Amphetryon
2011-04-24, 11:12 AM
Binder can theoretically choose the right vestiges to fulfill a support role. Ditto Incarnate.

Bang!
2011-04-24, 02:12 PM
White Raven and Devoted Spirit Disciplines give a chassis for ToB-based support characters.

Sangehirn (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040625c) is a support-focused Psionic PrC, most notable in its ability to share Vigor, Suspend Life, Body Adjustment and Body Purification. The only problem is it takes a bit of build-trickery if you want powers outside the Sangehirn's powers known list.

Dreamscarred Press has a lot of materials for psionic support characters, including a Psionic Bard-analog (http://dsp-d20-srd.wikidot.com/thoughtsinger), a group buff specialist (http://dsp-d20-srd.wikidot.com/society-mind), a group healing specialist (http://dsp-d20-srd.wikidot.com/worldthought-medic) and a melee warrior focused on minor group buffs (http://dsp-d20-srd.wikidot.com/halo-knight).