Ivan Bouldershoulder

[evil-frosty]

The Cleric Quintet is one of my favorite series of books by Salvatore, and in an upcoming game of Pathfinder I was thinking it would be fun to play Ivan Bouldershoulder from the series or possibly his brother Pikel. The only thing is I am wondering how to build him and have hit sorta of a mental block as I am unfamiliar with Pathfinder. So how would the playground build Ivan Bouldershoulder?

(His brother is easy to build just a druid that does not use his wildshape much or possibly a variant of some sort)

[Medic!]

I always saw Ivan as either a straight up fighter (with a horned helm) or maybe a Warblade. Pikel I would call a Druidic Avenger or just a druid who didn't get wildshape yet. The only reason I wouldn't say 100% druidic avenger is because at one point he had an animal companion (the tiny viper)...but you could also chock that up to an ad-hoc Summon Nature's Ally, so idk.

EDIT: of course Pikel could just be a normal druid but be constantly losing access to his druid tasties for wearing an iron pot on his head...

[juicycaboose]

ivan was always one of the few salvatore characters that i always thought was pretty cut-and-dry in terms of class, i'd call him a straight fighter

[Medic!]

Unrelated Funfact:


I really loved the Foreword in the collector's edition of the Cleric Quintet. The short side of it is (if you've never got to read it), R.A. Salvatore wanted to write the series about a monk b/c it was his favorite AD&D class, and TSR told him "Nope, you're doing a cleric."

His paraphrased response was "Cleric? That's what you get when the last guy shows up late to the table and says 'Hey what do we need?' and the group resonds 'Healing, you're the cleric, sit down and shut up."

From what he says, monk was nixed because it "went the way of devils and demons, now that we were into 2nd Edition."

[evil-frosty]

ivan was always one of the few salvatore characters that i always thought was pretty cut-and-dry in terms of class, i'd call him a straight fighter

Fighter is definitely a part of it, but that just seems sorta boring.

[docnessuno]

You could just mix up some Warblade and Fighter. Less 'wuxia' than a full Warblade, less boring than straight fighter.

To boot Warblade itself encourages some multiclassing, if you don't want to end up with a gimped stances advancement.

[Invader]

Fighter is definitely a part of it, but that just seems sorta boring.

To be honest, combat-wise Ivan was sorta boring. He never had any great powers or finesse or anything and he wasnt overly effective in any way. Sadly if you want something that really reflects him from the books, fighter is pretty much it.

[juicycaboose]

depending on how close to the character you want to get he should probably have exotic weapon proficiency: hand crossbow along with things like power attack/cleave/weapon focus/spec dwarven waraxe

e. as much as i like warblade as a sort-of fighter+, ivan really does not fit any of the things that almost all of the maneuvers and stances deal out, i guess there are a few that might fit i.e Iron Heart Surge, Punishing Stance, Stone Bones etc but i'm just not really seeing it

[herrhauptmann]

He never had any great powers or finesse or anything and he wasnt overly effective in any way.

That's sort of most dwarves in the salvatore books. Bruennor had moments where he was really bada**, and others where he was totally useless. (I'm remembering an ambush he set up, that had him half stuck in a box for the entire fight because the latch got covered in mud)
Sorry, Salvatore bothers me a bit. Anyway...

I vote that fighter would be most effective at portraying the elder bouldershoulder. If you want an effective warrior, you could probably multiclass and cherry pick some warblade maneuvers/stances that are closest to to how he fought. In that case, remember, even levels of fighter only.