Zenrath
2013-04-17, 01:30 PM
Hello everyone, this is my first post here.
I will be starting a new campaign. It will be just myself, with a friend DM'ing. In this campaign, rather than me playing all 4 characters in a full party, I will be playing a single, solo character. The campaign will be around levels 8-13. Mostly all DnD books are available.
I have two main questions:
Q1) I'd like some advice on a solo stealth melee character build. Something like the main character in Assassin's Creed. Ideally, my primary weapons would be the famous twin-hidden arm blades, but I'd probably be happy with a single sword if needs be.
The primary goal of this character is variety, over power. So I'm looking for lots of interesting and varied abilities, spells, powers etc...
Given that this will be a solo character, then he's likely to need some kind of self-healing capabilty.
The character's name is Rortak, and he will ideally be a human, pure-neutral alignment. His ambition is the personal aquisition of wealth, as well as the advancement of his skills.
He's likely to try and talk his way into/out-off many situations. But, when discussions start to go bad, and combat is luming, then he'll want to disappear into the shadows, and start using stealth as his main combat tactic.
Some Illusion magic would be great! Bows with varying arrow effects would also be nice. Ability to place traps, trip-wires etc, would be very cool.
With him being solo, flanking isn't going to be easy, so standard thief/assassin builds aren't neccessarily perfect, plus they lack any kind of self-healing.
My intial investigations have found these classes from the Tome of Battle (ToB):
Swordsage 15 / Crusader 5
Swordsage 17 / Eternal Blade 3
The ToB is attractive because all the excellent Maneuvers add a huge amount of variety, with cool spell-like effects!
Swordsage (http://dndtools.eu/classes/swordsage/) because of all Shadow/Stealth abilities.
Crusader or Eternal Blade specifically to gain access to the level 1 & 3 Devoted Spirit Discipline self-healing Maneuvers. e.g. Crusader's Strike (1), and Revitalizing Strike (3).
Having to spash 5 whole levels into Crusader (http://dndtools.eu/classes/crusader/) for the self-healing, kind of breaks my primary stealth-style more than I would like.
The Eternal Blade (http://dndtools.eu/classes/eternal-blade/) splash is less costly in terms of levels, but then having a "Blade Guide" floating around with me as I'm zipping in and out of shadows, seems wrong somehow!
Q2) How many levels lower should the adventure be than my solo character, for the encounters to still be balanced? i.e. there would normally be four characters in the party, but there will now just be one. I was thinking perhaps that the adventure should be 2-3 levels lower than my character level?
I will be starting a new campaign. It will be just myself, with a friend DM'ing. In this campaign, rather than me playing all 4 characters in a full party, I will be playing a single, solo character. The campaign will be around levels 8-13. Mostly all DnD books are available.
I have two main questions:
Q1) I'd like some advice on a solo stealth melee character build. Something like the main character in Assassin's Creed. Ideally, my primary weapons would be the famous twin-hidden arm blades, but I'd probably be happy with a single sword if needs be.
The primary goal of this character is variety, over power. So I'm looking for lots of interesting and varied abilities, spells, powers etc...
Given that this will be a solo character, then he's likely to need some kind of self-healing capabilty.
The character's name is Rortak, and he will ideally be a human, pure-neutral alignment. His ambition is the personal aquisition of wealth, as well as the advancement of his skills.
He's likely to try and talk his way into/out-off many situations. But, when discussions start to go bad, and combat is luming, then he'll want to disappear into the shadows, and start using stealth as his main combat tactic.
Some Illusion magic would be great! Bows with varying arrow effects would also be nice. Ability to place traps, trip-wires etc, would be very cool.
With him being solo, flanking isn't going to be easy, so standard thief/assassin builds aren't neccessarily perfect, plus they lack any kind of self-healing.
My intial investigations have found these classes from the Tome of Battle (ToB):
Swordsage 15 / Crusader 5
Swordsage 17 / Eternal Blade 3
The ToB is attractive because all the excellent Maneuvers add a huge amount of variety, with cool spell-like effects!
Swordsage (http://dndtools.eu/classes/swordsage/) because of all Shadow/Stealth abilities.
Crusader or Eternal Blade specifically to gain access to the level 1 & 3 Devoted Spirit Discipline self-healing Maneuvers. e.g. Crusader's Strike (1), and Revitalizing Strike (3).
Having to spash 5 whole levels into Crusader (http://dndtools.eu/classes/crusader/) for the self-healing, kind of breaks my primary stealth-style more than I would like.
The Eternal Blade (http://dndtools.eu/classes/eternal-blade/) splash is less costly in terms of levels, but then having a "Blade Guide" floating around with me as I'm zipping in and out of shadows, seems wrong somehow!
Q2) How many levels lower should the adventure be than my solo character, for the encounters to still be balanced? i.e. there would normally be four characters in the party, but there will now just be one. I was thinking perhaps that the adventure should be 2-3 levels lower than my character level?