Marlowe
2012-03-15, 07:13 AM
For my current campaign, I've decided to have a quartet of NPC recurring villains who will wander in and out of the campaign providing an occasional threat/concern to the heroes, sort of like the Linear Guild. I'm so devastatingly original. Unlike the Linear Guild I'm not going to have them actively oppose the heroes for quite some time yet, just appear at cross-purposes every now and then to mess things up. For this reason they can be a few levels higher than the PCs, who are currently on the verge of level 7.
For added geek value, I based three of them on Sawyer, Shenhua, and Rotton the Wizard from Black Lagoon. For those who haven't seen the show; Rotton is a longcoated poser of a gunman who never gets to open fire because he spends to much time making speeches, Sawyer is an expressionless Goth girl with severe throat damage and a large chainsaw, and Shenhua is an accomplished twin-knife fighter who dresses like a high-class speciality escort. All fairly normal.
D & D stuff.
The fourth member of the group, "Grog the Environmentalist", is a Barbarian 2/Cleric 7 (TN). Grog talk like Thog, but has adequate Wis. Grog left his tribe to pursue Clerical career, worshiping elemental forces of existence proven by empirical observation. His domain are Fire and Weather.
Sawyer is a Rogue 3/Barbarian 7, since she has that whole axe-murderer vibe going. She has a boatload of flaws (for starters, an ugly jagged scar where her vocal cords used to be) and bonus feats, but is essentially a simple Greataxe-wielding killer. An easy build to make.
Rotton is a Swashbuckler 1/Sorceror 7 (because making him an actual wizard would be too easy). Fairly straightforward except that he has to make saves against speechifying.
Shenhua is bothering me a little. I've given myself 11 levels to play with here, and so far I've got her at fighter 6/tempest 5. She fights with +1 returning throwing axes (supposed to be Kukris, but the game version of Kukris can't be thrown). Thanks to considerable strength and weapons specialisation she gets +9 damage on each hand. And has next to no skill points.
That's what's bothering me. She's supposed to be a sneaky, stealthy, acrobatic killer using two-weapon fighting, but as a Fighter, she just doesn't get the skills to be this. She could do it as a Ranger, but then she loses weapon specialization and becomes less of an actual threat (and one of her Tempest class abilities becomes useless). As a Rogue or Scout (who would lose Weapons Spec but gain Sneak attack/skirmish), she loses too much BAB and can't get the full Tempest benefits within the level allowance (it was the 2-weapon spring attack I needed). As a Barbarian (which wouldn't fit the concept anyway) she wouldn't get enough feats and still would miss out on +2 damage.
I'm not too unhappy with what I've got, but I kept thinking that she'd do a lot better given her stats if she'd just stay away from 2-weapon fighting and picked up a longaxe or something.
So, given that 18, 16, 16, 14, 10, 10 are the stats, and given I just have the core books plus CArcane, CDivine, Cadventurer, and CWarrior, and given that I'm stuck with using throwing axes as main armament, can anyone suggest a better?
For added geek value, I based three of them on Sawyer, Shenhua, and Rotton the Wizard from Black Lagoon. For those who haven't seen the show; Rotton is a longcoated poser of a gunman who never gets to open fire because he spends to much time making speeches, Sawyer is an expressionless Goth girl with severe throat damage and a large chainsaw, and Shenhua is an accomplished twin-knife fighter who dresses like a high-class speciality escort. All fairly normal.
D & D stuff.
The fourth member of the group, "Grog the Environmentalist", is a Barbarian 2/Cleric 7 (TN). Grog talk like Thog, but has adequate Wis. Grog left his tribe to pursue Clerical career, worshiping elemental forces of existence proven by empirical observation. His domain are Fire and Weather.
Sawyer is a Rogue 3/Barbarian 7, since she has that whole axe-murderer vibe going. She has a boatload of flaws (for starters, an ugly jagged scar where her vocal cords used to be) and bonus feats, but is essentially a simple Greataxe-wielding killer. An easy build to make.
Rotton is a Swashbuckler 1/Sorceror 7 (because making him an actual wizard would be too easy). Fairly straightforward except that he has to make saves against speechifying.
Shenhua is bothering me a little. I've given myself 11 levels to play with here, and so far I've got her at fighter 6/tempest 5. She fights with +1 returning throwing axes (supposed to be Kukris, but the game version of Kukris can't be thrown). Thanks to considerable strength and weapons specialisation she gets +9 damage on each hand. And has next to no skill points.
That's what's bothering me. She's supposed to be a sneaky, stealthy, acrobatic killer using two-weapon fighting, but as a Fighter, she just doesn't get the skills to be this. She could do it as a Ranger, but then she loses weapon specialization and becomes less of an actual threat (and one of her Tempest class abilities becomes useless). As a Rogue or Scout (who would lose Weapons Spec but gain Sneak attack/skirmish), she loses too much BAB and can't get the full Tempest benefits within the level allowance (it was the 2-weapon spring attack I needed). As a Barbarian (which wouldn't fit the concept anyway) she wouldn't get enough feats and still would miss out on +2 damage.
I'm not too unhappy with what I've got, but I kept thinking that she'd do a lot better given her stats if she'd just stay away from 2-weapon fighting and picked up a longaxe or something.
So, given that 18, 16, 16, 14, 10, 10 are the stats, and given I just have the core books plus CArcane, CDivine, Cadventurer, and CWarrior, and given that I'm stuck with using throwing axes as main armament, can anyone suggest a better?