Expecting possible death, need backup level 15 build ready.

[Lothmar]

The paranoid part of me thinks that since im the last original party member left alive that I may very well end up biting the bullet here in one of my next couple of sessions. Therefore i'd like to be able to pull out a mostly prebuilt sheet and start going over details with my GM before/after game night to figure out which of the ideas I have in my head works best for the campaign setting etc.

So the builds im interested in are as follows. *Note - Cut out previous request concepts due to other players bringing in something that made them pointless or receiving enough suggestions to work from myself.*


(c) - Reboot ; This concept will likely be my current character resurrected but rebooted in some manner as a past event kind of forced me to become a paladin but im honestly coming so close every session to F'ing up because I am not a lawful good character at heart and im at a dead end for my current character build with no inspiration on where to take it... (if interested it's 6 Ranger, 5 paladin, 4 scout with a majority of my feats dedicated to stacking abilities to a full level 15 strength.)

C1) Healer/Turner/divine Combatant (specialized in fighting undead/evil outsiders primarily)- ie - when I do heal I want it to be for impressive amounts or heal over time so that the party rarely needs me to heal because they're healing a bit every round ; when I turn I want it to destroy anything I could turn normally and would like to also be able to turn (or similar effect) against evil outsiders. When I don't have things to turn i'd like backup feats suggestions to use my turns in interesting ways. My gm allows me to worship broadly from my peoples pantheon so feel free to consider odd combos like Radiant servant of pelor / storm lord or whatever. In our world his nation is an equivalent mashup of France/Isreal and Sparta. Our peoples constant foes are equivalent to Urukai (Western border mountainous region) and lots of evil outsiders and chaos beasts from the blighted lands (East) and we've basically kept the paths north to the other nations safe for the last 2 ages. We keep all (all we can recover) our dead honored in a massive site called 'the mound' where we keep entombed an artifact of terrible power 'the horn of judgment day' which we are to guard until the apocalypse at which point we sound the trumpet and march out with all of our previously fallen brothers onto the fields of pandemonium etc or destroy it/return it to heaven so it does not fall into the hands of others should our country be about to fall.

C2) Combat leader of some sort as we have a small military force of 50 or so level 6 average expert sailors that hardly ever gets utilized and i'd like to on occasion. Maybe something like a Military bard prestige / A frenzy berserker with the effects others / or something like the martial class. (note - never played anything like a martial or used any resources related to style feats - etc. Just something to consider/avoid unless you have an awesome build for it.)

[Lightlawbliss]

with the enchanted anvils idea (which sounds real cool), artificer could be interesting.

also, since your not LG at heart, what are you? what alinements are the rest of your party?

[Lothmar]

Sorry about the delay, was house sitting all weekend and didn't have a connection.

In game while playing my personality seems to range somewhere between Neutral good and Chaotic Neutral dependent on my mood / sleep levels ; though if I 'FOCUS' I can stay in a particular mind set. It usually averages out to Chaotic good with the occasional insane sleep deprived binges of minor madness (not evil per-see but certainly madness) which are actually what caused my character to have to get exorcised like 3 time in the first two chapters of our story and what effectively got me turned into a paladin as there was an ultimatum of 'stop being crazy or we will kill you'. (so I started making sure I to take a nap before game.)

In fact it was because I didn't resist at all and volunteered to be bound by my party at this point in the campaign that they didn't just kill me and were like 'well ****' as they were looking for an excuse to 'handle me'. ~chuckle~ It was an awkward hour of gaming after that trying to fight a random encounter alongside my party while bound.

As for the rest of my party, currently due to us being cursed by a magical healing artifact that we keep abusing our alignment keeps getting changed to lawful good as a result. However we've considered 'going back' to our original alignments from time to time as it would make things 'so much easier' on occasion to just be able to slaughter half our problems instead of attempting to talk/negotiate/take prisoners/handle things honorably in general. ~chuckle~ Our elven archer was a CN mercenary before, our Artificer im not sure but his alignment was mostly 'for the greater good of science' in thought process and it seems like our replacement character is a good aligned positive energy modron druid wild shaper who deploys animal companions with a series of spells/magic items so that makes concept A less appealing now (ooc I made an awesome sound wave analogy that just killed him at game night.)... The NPC sailors we're relatively in charge of now are very 'for king and country' kind of personality and have served us well and loyally considering the whole trying to kill us/maroon us on an island incident but that's all water under the bridge now (long story but we trust them now relatively speaking after 2 story arcs).

[Sith_Happens]

Alternatively, what resurrection options does your party have? At 15th level the answer should be "at least a few."

[Nettlekid]

Hmm, if you're willing to be a bit Evil, and your DM allows 3.0 material, might I suggest Thrall of Juiblex to scratch that shapeshifter itch? Starting with three different base classes that have good Fort saves, and at least one with Escape Artist as a class skill (I might suggest something like Barbarian 1/Cleric 1/Monk 1, for Pounce, Devotion feats, and other bonus feats respectively, but to each their own. I see Monk and Swashbuckler as fitting the Escape Artist and Good Fort Save requirement, maybe there are more) followed by 8 levels of Thrall of Juiblex and then four levels of Warshaper. As a result, you get to be a slime lord who summons infinite numbers of (well, 8 before the duration on the first expires) slimes and puddings and the like, including the caustic Green Slime from the DMG. But the beauty is having Polymorph (self) as an at will SLA, which means you can shift form as much as you like. And following that, even if you don't abuse the Warshaper's theoretically infinite natural weapons, you'll still nab a lovely +4 Str and Con, Fast Healing 2, and an extra 5 ft of reach. So basically, you take the shape of anything you want, trap your foes between slowly moving walls of gooey hell, and if they pummel you then you'll just reform. A fun dose of shapechanging, a fun use of oozes (which I think get less love than they deserve), and you'll have enough BAB to pummel foes with your myriad of bodies.

[Lothmar]

@ sith - As long as our artificer is alive I suppose we have 'some options' since he is a good crafter though our party has gotten by on simply either bringing in new characters if needed or using our magical keeps healing cots. I was and pretty much am the primary healer with my shield of mercy giving me 3 uses of lay on hands a day and a small assortment of daily charge healing items (I never need to use smite it seems but healing is always useful). Unfortunately putting a dead person in one of the cots breaks it but it casts the equivalent of a true rez so that's nice, we've used 2 of the 3 in this manner so far but as long as we don't break them the cot can pretty much solve most injuries/conditions after a 5 minute nap - at the cost of having to face all your sins/etc and thus alignment shifting to lawful good.

Effectively if I was going to stay the same character but come back different it would be by using the cot as our Gm is somewhat lax if he likes what you're doing or it fits with his story.

So long answer short, we have an artificer to craft potential solutions and a 1 charge true resurrection artifact as our possible rez solutions at the moment.

--------

@ Nettle - We run a 3.25 kind of game, ie the best of both. Our Gm probably wouldn't have a problem with it and our group is party of a larger adventuring guild called 'the pride' so admittedly some of our number can be seen as dark hero's etc.

What book is the Thrall of Jubilex from, I might take a gander - my group could use our insider table joke/meme of me wearing my "puddin' eatin' Kaiser helmet." ~chuckle~

[Nettlekid]

Thrall of Juiblex is from Book of Vile Darkness. Prereqs are a base Fort save of +6, 5 ranks in Escape Artist (obtainable by a single level dip at level 2 or 3 if you have an Int of 12+), you must have been the target of some sort of Polymorph spell or other shapechanging effect (backstory fluff, you were Baleful Polymorphed into a frog for a year or something) and you must take part in an evil ritual involving the slaughter of an intelligent creature in the presence of several oozes. So mainly some easy stuff and fluff. And Warshaper is in Complete Warrior, in case you wanted to see that too, and you'll qualify at ToJ 8.

I have to ask about the origin of that inside joke.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

For a shapechanger, go Wild Shape Ranger (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#ranger) 5/ Master of Many Forms 7/ Warshaper 3, plan on getting one more Warshaper, one more Ranger or one Nature's Warrior, and then the last three of Master of Many Forms. You need to let MoMF 9-10 wait until character levels 19-20 so you'll have the BAB to get Defensive Sweep at level 18.

Your feats should be Power Attack, Combat Reflexes, Alertness, Leap Attack, Frozen Wild Shape, and Robilar's Gambit. Frozen Wild Shape allows you to take the form of a 12-headed Cryohydra, and with Robilar's Gambit you get to make a 12-bite AoO every time someone attacks you. MoMF gives you its Fast Healing, and Warshaper extends your reach and gives you more buffs including better bite damage. You can also use the form of a War Troll and you'll gain all of its special qualities, considering SR, Regeneration, and even DR/Adamantine are all Extraordinary abilities. Use a large two-handed weapon and charge with Power Attack + Leap Attack and even cast Rhino's Rush with your 1st level Ranger spell slots. Keep a bunch of 1st level Pearls of Power to recover that between fights even.

Put Wilding Clasps (MIC) on your gear so it still works when you wild shape. Get a Monk's Belt to add your Wis bonus to AC and get unarmed strike attacks. Get Armbands of Might (MIC) with +Str added (MIC p234). Note that when you power attack for at least -2 those increase your bonus damage by +2, and with Leap Attack that gets increased with all the rest of your Power Attack bonus. The errata made Leap Attack to not be a multiplier, so if you Leap Attack as a Cryohydra and Power Attack for -2 your +4 damage is increased to +8 for every bite, which ends up being 96 damage in twelve bites.

[Sith_Happens]

So long answer short, we have an artificer to craft potential solutions and a 1 charge true resurrection artifact as our possible rez solutions at the moment.

One word: Scrolls.

[Lothmar]

@ Sith - Cant remember but we may have one or two of those in reserve of our 'white tower', thankfully we have a way of generating any amount of diamond dust we need as long as we have time so we can easily afford any of the spells and their associated components.

Regardless this is more about figuring out ways to make a new sheet for myself rather then figuring out ways of coming back to life as im fairly certain such things will work themselves out with our various types of preparations etc.

@ Biff - Hmm, sounds like an interesting combo. I'll certainly look into it when I have time.

[Lothmar]

Ok, edited what im looking for now due to excellent responses and in game activity.