Third Character: What should I play?

[Eonir]

So I will be starting a campaign soon with myself and two of my good friends. We are all pretty good at optimizing, but we agree to stay away from all the silly stuff.

So for this campaign we will all be playing aasimars (LA buyoff allowed) and will all be good. So far we have a sorcerer who will most likely go incantrix (mailman) and a cleric/warlock/eldritch disciple.

As the third character, I was thinking Crusader. Grab a longsword and a shield and be the tank, however I figured I would ask the playground what they thought a good third character would be.

Rules: 28pt buy, race must be aasimar, good only, any books/web enhancement/dragon magazines are allowed, no early entry cheese, and if at all possible would like to stay away from cleric/fav soul and wiz/sorc (though if you have a particularly cool build in mind, go for it).

Thoughts and Ideas?

[HunterOfJello]

Whenever someone asks a question like this, I like to point out the classic group type that the game was built around. The game was designed for a 4 person group including:

1 Wizard
1 Fighter
1 Rogue
1 Cleric


Out of those roles you'll have Cleric and Wizard more than taken care of. That leaves you with Fighter and Rogue. There are much better ways to deal with filling up those roles nowadays than in Core, so I'll make some recommendations on that.

~~~~~~

Crusader is just plain awesomesauce. Have you played a Crusader before? They're great, but not as much fun to play as the other two ToB classes. You might enjoy it, but multiclassing could be highly helpful.

To fill up one or both of those roles I'd go with something from this list: Crusader, Bard, Swordsage, Binder , Duskblade, Factotum, Warblade, Psychic Warrior, Wildshape Ranger->MoMF.

Druid, Archivist, or Artificer would be impressive too, but I can understand your desire to avoid the casting T1-T2 classes. (Artificer is super awesome and worth your consideration. They can be great in melee and beyond amazing at working in groups.)

~~

It may also be worth mentioning that the Ruby Knight Vindicator is an amazing prestige class in ToB that mixes Cleric and Crusader. People usually pick to take more levels of one than the other so you could put it more crusader or more cleric before jumping into the PrC. Adding a RKV into your party would be awesome.

[Snowbluff]

cleric/warlock/eldritch disciple.

Thoughts and Ideas?

Well, there goes 90% of my suggestions with Cleric, and 5% with Warlock.

Alright this is good because 4% of my suggestions are Martial Adepts.
Crusader is good. I would suggest working towards a control/trip build. You team is probably weak on control as Mailmen simply don't carry the spells, Clerics aren't amazing at it, and Warlocks are rather limited, so control might not be an option.

[Bloodgruve]

I would either run a Crusader or Shapeshift Druid. Personally with your party makeup I would go Druid. You would be able to stay on par with the rest of the party. I like Shapeshift Druid for the simplicity, yea you don't have as many options and no Natural Spell but with the right feats you can be a pretty good tank/melee.

GL
Blood~

[Eonir]

Crusader is just plain awesomesauce. Have you played a Crusader before? They're great, but not as much fun to play as the other two ToB classes. You might enjoy it, but multiclassing could be highly helpful.

To fill up one or both of those roles I'd go with something from this list: Crusader, Bard, Swordsage, Binder , Duskblade, Factotum, Warblade, Psychic Warrior, Wildshape Ranger->MoMF.

Druid, Archivist, or Artificer would be impressive too, but I can understand your desire to avoid the casting T1-T2 classes. (Artificer is super awesome and worth your consideration. They can be great in melee and beyond amazing at working in groups.)

~~

It may also be worth mentioning that the Ruby Knight Vindicator is an amazing prestige class in ToB that mixes Cleric and Crusader. People usually pick to take more levels of one than the other so you could put it more crusader or more cleric before jumping into the PrC. Adding a RKV into your party would be awesome.

I haven't played the crusader, but I have played the other two and had a blast. And though I bow before the almighty artificer, we just got out of a campaign with one of those and I think we're not ready to do that again :smalltongue:

I have heard a great many things about the windicator, but I am a better optimizer than the eldritch disciple, and I don't want to ruin his clerical thunder.

Bard sounds fun maybe? Haven't played one of those in years...also, I have never actually played a binder or seen one played.....so...whats the big deal with them?


Well, there goes 90% of my suggestions with Cleric, and 5% with Warlock.

Alright this is good because 4% of my suggestions are Martial Adepts.
Crusader is good. I would suggest working towards a control/trip build. You team is probably weak on control as Mailmen simply don't carry the spells, Clerics aren't amazing at it, and Warlocks are rather limited, so control might not be an option.

Trip all the things? Sounds incredibly useful...but also kinda boring :smallfrown: yeah I know i'm weird.

P.S.- Your avatar is awesome snow.

Shapeshifter druids sound nice and easy. That could be fun as well.

[Snowbluff]

I have heard a great many things about the windicator, but I am a better optimizer than the eldritch disciple, and I don't want to ruin his clerical thunder.

Bard sounds fun maybe? Haven't played one of those in years...also, I have never actually played a binder or seen one played.....so...whats the big deal with them?

Trip all the things? Sounds incredibly useful...but also kinda boring :smallfrown: yeah I know i'm weird.

P.S.- Your avatar is awesome snow.

Shapeshifter druids sound nice and easy. That could be fun as well.

Yeah I would've suggested a Bardsader, but your party is pretty un-melee... so...

As for the Druid thing. Yeah I can see how a tripper can get boring. Druid is awesome, because you can do melee stuff, and you have enough battle field control spells.

Thanks about the avatar. Ceika did it after something I drew on my deviantArt. He's a RKV, a Cleric an a Martial Adept! 94%!!! :smalltongue:

[Waker]

The Sorcerer seems to have the damage aspect covered and I'm sure the Cleric can manage buffing and combat, I would suggest you play a utility character to fill in the gaps that they have. You don't want to play a wizard, so I would suggest Binder or Incarnate. They are both very flexible classes that wouldn't step on the toes of your party members. While they might lack the sheer might of the T1/2 classes, they nonetheless can fufill basically any party role.
Binder (Tome of Magic) can bind vestiges that grant a number of powers. You can think of them as all-day buffs. These vestiges can let them fight in melee, aid in skills, simulate being a mage and more.
Incarnate (Magic of Incarnum) using an ability called meldshaping, which functions as sort of a spell/equipment. They can be attached to you (on top of equipment) and provide some small bonuses or you can bind them to Chakras (in place of equipment) for a greater effect. At any time as a swift action, you can reallocate your essentia points to any of your melds.

[Soranar]

I'd go for a wildshape ranger 5 /master of many forms 10

May just be a tier 3 but it's a high tier 3 character with lots of skillpoints and plenty of options your companions lack

I'd take the urban companion ACF to get a scout (hawk gets +14 to spot, uses your skillranks and has flight, very hard to sneak up on your group with that thing over your head)

maybe take the trap expert ACF (if your DM uses traps)

Since healing is covered, you could also trade your spellcasting for an additional feat at level 4

You could also go straight Druid (would work well with a lesser Aasimar) if you prefer playing a tier 1 character

Other than those, as mentioned before, a bardblade is a strong option (bard 1/ warblade 19 with song of the white raven)

Or you could make a smite to song paladin (feat that lets you inspire courage as a bard for 1 smite evil) but those are more MAD (with a 28 pts buy that's harsh) than their bardblade equivalent. They also get less skillpoints. As with the ranger you can drop spellcasting altogether for feats (lets you dump Wisdom) and you can use the dragonborn template to get flight.