Help with an Eladrin

[Raine_Sage]

Hi I'm a relatively new player and I was wondering about possible magic user builds for the Eladrin race. Wizard seems like the obvious choice, but her back story contradicts pretty much everything a wizard is (power through rigorous study).

Basically she was stolen from her parents at a young age, drow were probably involved, but the kidnapping was botched and instead of taking her to their hideout she was dropped in the mountains and more or less left to fend for herself. She grew up as a wild child and when she meets the party she can't speak clearly because of the years she spent in isolation (can't wait for when the DM inevitably makes me try and mime important info to the other players).

Growing up alone and surviving pretty much on the grace of god rules out some of the more academic classes. But the more, er, feral I guess classes don't really fit with the eladrin race except maybe the rogue. I'd like her to have some kind of magic using class but can't find anything that fits the theme I want to use with her. Which is that she's kind of a wintery little thing.

So the tl;dr version is I'm looking for a class that: can have an affinity for ice magic, doesn't require interaction with other humans to make sense, makes use of the racial bonuses to either int. or dex.

Barring those, maybe a way I could bs having her be a wizard despite growing up alone. If all of the above are impossible I'll probably bite and just have her be a rogue. Oh, I would do warlock but my primary character is already one of those and I don't want to get repetitive. All in all thanks in advance for any help.

[Yora]

What game are you playing?

[Eldan]

Sounds like a high elf Eladrin, not a heavenly Gandalf Eladrin, so I'm guessing fourth edition?

[Madfellow]

Well, you can still play the wizard class but refluff it as perhaps a sorcerer or warlock. Talk to your GM about that.

[Omegonthesane]

You're playing 4th Ed, yes?

The nicest thing I have to say about 4th is that the flavour is completely mutable, due to how similar the classes are. If the Wizard class is the one that best represents the power set you want your character to have, then play a Wizard and make up some nonsense about how it's some other form of magic really. If it's such a big stumbling block just say she found a plot MacGuffin that crossed the gap from magic-using NPC to Wizard.

[Raine_Sage]

Hah yeah I should probably have clarified we're doing 4th edition. Our group is literally brand new. DM just getting into DMing, and half of our players have never played before this campaign. I've only played two other campaigns before this but they weren't with a 4e ruleset (one was 3.5 and one was actually GURPS).

I'll see about talking to the DM about using the wizard class but playing it off more like a sorcerer in the story part of the game. I don't think it should be a problem considering our last encounter saw a dragonborn, a kobold, a halfling, and two humans sliding down a chute on top of a heavy shield while our bard played 'dashing through the woods' on his flute.

[VeliciaL]

IF we're talking 4th edition, Eladrin actually make decent spear-wielding barbarians, since that class gets quite a lot out of dexterity and Eladrin get good spear support.

It's also worth noting that in 4th edition it's far easier to make a decent character even with sub-optimal race/class matchups.

[Raine_Sage]

IF we're talking 4th edition, Eladrin actually make decent spear-wielding barbarians, since that class gets quite a lot out of dexterity and Eladrin get good spear support.

It's also worth noting that in 4th edition it's far easier to make a decent character even with sub-optimal race/class matchups.

Spear Barbarian could be fun, I've been playing with hybrid builds too and yeah I've been noticing 4th is pretty flexible in some ways when it comes to building characters. I think I might try a rogue/wizard build since there's not as much focus on magical implements or spell books and the spells can take a backseat to stealth play while still giving me some useful debuffs. In theory anyway, we'll see how this goes.

[Komatik]

Don't Eladrin have an optional Cha bonus? Fey Warlock, ahoy?

[VeliciaL]

Don't Eladrin have an optional Cha bonus? Fey Warlock, ahoy?

Indeed they do! They can get stats in Int/Cha, which is pretty ideal for a feylock.

[theNater]

So the tl;dr version is I'm looking for a class that: can have an affinity for ice magic, doesn't require interaction with other humans to make sense, makes use of the racial bonuses to either int. or dex.
Sorcerer seems to meet all of your requirements. Wild magic sorcerers use dex as a secondary stat, and there are a good number of ice powers available. Also note Eladrin are permitted to swap their dex bonus for a cha bonus; if you do that, any sorcerer build would be solid.

[fireinthedust]

What if she was born eladrin but her time in the forests made her change stats to elf? The int bonus is cultural, which she now lacks. Elves make amazing Druids who are nature controllers, plus animal form. Phb2.

If fey step is your thing, ask the gm to swap out the aim ability, or mc with a teleporting class like fey warlock, using the dual/multicast rules in phb3.

If your whole group is mostly new, tho, keep it simple and go Druid. Then get wintertouched as they come up and go from there.

[fireinthedust]

Btw, back in my day we had one race of elves, not two. I don't see why being infused with the forest rather than the feywild wouldn't make her more elf than eladrin, despite her birth.

[Raine_Sage]

Don't Eladrin have an optional Cha bonus? Fey Warlock, ahoy?

Huh, it might be the books we're using (along with the online free version of the character builder because we're cheap bastards) but eladrin only come listed as having Int and Dex bonuses with no optional bonuses in other stats. Also Warlocks were mostly governed by constitution, I thought Char was for sorcerers?

[VeliciaL]

I was going to ask what books you're using. Basically, a Dragon article gave every race released the floating-stats that the PHB3 races received. Essentials material has kept up the tradition.

The Dragon article can be found here (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.aspx?x=dnd/drag/201103abilities).

EDIT: Warlocks come in two flavors: Con-based and Cha-based. It largely depends on pact; Feylocks are Cha-based.