Ruledigging

[weckar]

My DM wanted me to come up with a very different character for our next campaign. Allowed me to pick any class or race. Now, I've been looking into combining the favored soul and the doppelganger, but I'm not quite sure how that would work out attribute or allignment wise for a medium power campaign.

Also, even if this all works out, the DM has this house rule that multiclassing has to happen by 10th level. I know this is a ways off, but I like to plan my characters a bit. I've been looking into both sorcerer or rogue, but I don't know at what level I should pick them up. That is, it can be any level before 10th.

Any insights making my decisions easier would help, I can tell there are plenty players more experienced than me around here!

EDIT: Small note: though normally a lv 1 class doppelganger would start off at character lv 9, because all players will be playing similar monstrous characters, they will be treated as being lvs 1, 2 or 3, with challenges adjusted.

[Darrin]

Now, I've been looking into combining the favored soul and the doppelganger, but I'm not quite sure how that would work out attribute or allignment wise for a medium power campaign.


There is a monster class progression for Doppelganger in Races of Destiny. The tough part is it's 8 levels long (4 racial hit dice + 4 LA), so you'd spend a significant portion of your career without any class levels. This means by the time you get 1st level spells, the other players are tossing around 5th level spells, such as flame strike, cloudkill, teleport, magic jar, etc. And with the hit points of only 4 racial HD, most of your adventuring career is going to consist of: "Uh... I pretend to be a coat rack in the corner. Pleasedontnoticeme!PleasedontnoticemePleasedontnot iceme!"

If you want the same flavor as a doppelganger but not all the RHD+LA, then I'd start with a Changeling. Normally this is an Eberron race, but they were printed in MMIII, and thus can now be found in any campaign world. Changelings are humanoids who interbred with doppelgangers and now have a minor change shape ability that lets them use a limited form of disguise self at will.

Now Favored Soul is a perfectly decent class (sort of a more well-balanced cleric), but much trickier to multiclass with. First, you're a full caster but your spellcasting is delayed a level (similar to a sorcerer) so any multiclassing that doesn't advance your caster levels hurts doubly worse. Second, you don't have Turn Undead, so most of the cleric-friendly PrCs you could go into are not immediately available to you without blowing a bunch of feats to get Turn Undead (in which case... why aren't you playing a cleric?). And third, there are hardly any good cleric PrCs anyway, so even if you could multiclass into them, you generally don't *want* to. Straight-up Favored Soul 20 is a fairly strong build, and adding any kind of multiclassing generally weakens it.

If you really *have* to multiclass, the favorite go-to for changelings would be rogue, probably worshipping Olidammara. Unfortunately, the cleric spell list is pretty thin on illusions and "social engineering" stuff. Normally a cleric can fix this somewhat by picking up the Trickery domain, but Favored Souls don't get that. There's also no official divine version of "Arcane Trickster", although the Giant himself provided a very good stab at it on this very website (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9623145&postcount=7). You can also kitbash a very good version of a "Divine Trickster" by flipping the Unseen Seer (Complete Mage) to a divine PrC. A 1-level dip into rogue gets you a good chunk of skill points and sneak attack, which then qualifies you to pick up Craven, Staggering Strike, and a few other sneak-attack related feats. A 2-level dip gets you evasion, which can be pretty nifty, but you're still probably better off not losing any caster levels. A 3-level dip I can't really recommend... it completely horks up your spell progression, and while you get access to the Penetrating Strike ACF (Dungeonscape or Expedition to Castle Ravenloft), you don't really need it unless you have a lot of sneak attack dice... which you probably don't. If you can talk your DM into it, see if he'd allow something similar to Sacred Outlaw (Dragon Magazine #357) to let you stack Favored Soul with Rogue for determining sneak attack dice.

The other big headache with multiclassing Favored Souls is any PrC you might conceivably be interested in is probably going to require ranks in Knowledge: Religion, which the Favored Soul inexplicably doesn't have as a class skill (no errata, either!). This article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cwc/20070227x) may fix that, by allowing you to swap Knowledge: Arcane for Knowledge: Religion. Or just ask your DM to add it to your class skills, mostly because trying to explain why a Favored Soul *doesn't* have it generally involves above-average levels of deliberate stupidity. Assuming you can get that fixed, this opens up Contemplative (CDiv) and Divine Disciple (PGtF). Pious Templar (CDiv) is also worth a look... there's an annoying one-feat tax to get in and it doesn't progress your caster levels, but it does get you Mettle, which is extremely nifty for casters who like to wade into melee and get their hands dirty.

My recommendation would be...

Rogue 1/Favored Soul 8/Divine Disciple 4/Favored Soul +7
Feats: Craven (1st), Trickery Devotion (3rd), Cloak Dance (9th), Staggering Strike (9th), Extra Spell (12th, hopefully glibness), Undo Resistance (15th), Extra Spell (18th)

[weckar]

For the sake of discussion, assume that the Doppelganger status does not add character levels. The DM has a balanced Gestalt-like system to make it work with monster classes.

From your opinions I can tell you understand that I'm going for a more social-oriented yet still versatile character. I hadn't looked into divine disciple yet. If I'm not completely mistaken, it would allow me to pick up the trickery domain. To use it effectively, however, I would have to pick up quite some levels in it, and I don't see any additional major benefits. Divine Emissary is interesting, but too limited in use.

The lack of a Knowledge (religion) is a definite problem, though I'm sure I can get it houseruled in. A bigger problem is that while most PrCs allow for more spells per day, none seem to increase the number of spells known. Even the Divine Disciple carries this problem, allowing access to the extra domain but having no in-text way to receive spells from it other than levelling in a class that could normally gain domain spells. This growth problem kills most otherwise viable combinations.

While the Divine Trickster does sound fun, and doesn't seem to have balance issues, it also relies on domain spells for its reqs, making it very tricky to pull off.

Ideally, I'd want to make a purely spontaneous-casting variety of the Mystic Theurge, which is why I offered sorcerer as a multiclass option. The fact that you don't actually gain new spells kills this vanilla option though.

That reminds me (slight tangent), is there a divine version of the Archmage available? One could get very creative with that.

In typing this, I'm really starting to drift away from the rogue ideas. Though not exactly as versatile, Bard may complement the existing combination of Favored Soul and Doppelganger better?