Your favourite classes for fluff?

[Sajiri]

I love looking through different class descriptions and getting ideas for characters. I love basing (non D&D, just story) characters off the ideas I get from classes.

Entirely ignoring mechanics, I'd like to know your favourite classes, base or prestige. I've always loved the sound of Fochlucan Lyrists, but never really been in a situation where I could make one and not have it be such a pain, but the description and idea of nature cross with bard is awfully fun.

[Sith_Happens]

Binders = maximum coolness.

[erikun]

Wizard/Bard/Ultimate Magus has always been a fun idea. A lore-seeking spellcaster who goes around, telling stories of their adventures and the legends that they find along the way, and hiding that they are actually spellcasting while performing. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineAbilitiesFeats.htm#disguiseSpell)

Another one I like is the Wizard/Druid/Arcane Hierophant. Something like of like the adventuring scholar, well-learned but knowledgeable about survival in the wild, and who uses their magic to help them survive that much easier. When now doesn't seem like a good time to fight, turn yourself invisible to become a mouse and sneak away.

I'm also a fan of psionics, and the Pyrokineticist and Cryokineticist are fun ideas. Being so in tune with heating up matter with your mind, you can ignite an aura of flame around any object you hold and even form solid ectoplasmic fire to wield as a weapon.

[Beleron]

Malconvoker. Great concept.

[Maginomicon]

It might seem a little lame, but I love the 3.5 sorcerer as a whole for fluff. There's a few dozen things you can add to a sorcerer to give him more flavor through races, heritage feats, etc. that you can have a million-and-one ways to flavor it. The PF sorcerer has even more flavor.

[Psyren]

The ToM classes have my favorite fluff in D&D; Binder, Shadowcaster, and especially Truenamer.

I also like Wilders; I always thought Sorcerers should get a similar mechanic to Wild Surge.

[Shining Wrath]

Bard is a pretty cool idea.
Sorcerer is also pretty cool - "I can do this, but I have no idea how".

The Master of Nine from Tome of Battle is the classic "Old Man of the Mountain" weapons master.

And there's something very ... kinky? ... about Master of Chains.

[Eldan]

Wizard. So much. Vancian casting is awesome for fluff. As is magic in general.

It's followed by the Binder, which is followed by artificers and archivists. I like scientists.

[erikun]

Ah, I forgot to mention it, but I do like the idea behind the Shadowcaster/Shadowcraft Mage. The illusionist who taps into shadowstuff to give their illusions a semisolid substance, and may (in the case of the Shadowcaster) do so freely and limited to their imagination.

[Feytalist]

Spirit Shaman. Conversing with nature and spirits is a very old idea, but one I've always loved.

Plus it allows you to be a Minotaur and say "the spirits are restless" to everyone.

[asnys]

I'm very fond of illusionists and paladins. And I've always liked the aesthetics of the Initiate of the Seven-Fold Veil.

[Auramis]

In terms of base classes, Druids, Rangers, Knights, Crusaders, and Good Paladins all struck me as fun classes from a standpoint of story. I've mained paladin in a lot of campaigns we play, despite their flaws, simply because I enjoy the idea of a knight in shining armor. Crusader is a new class for us, and I get the feeling it'll become that new knight in shining armor for me.

In prestige classes (aside from ranger and paladin again), Swift Wings, Knights of the Chalice, and Vassals of Bahamut all struck me as fun, because they're all divine knights of some form or another that specialize in different major evils (undead, outsider, and dragons respectively).

That's all goody good characters, though. Bad guys are a whole new matter entirely. Blackguard and Necromancer BBEGs are amazing.

[Kymme]

Truenamers. Full stop. Say what you want about the mechanics, but nobody can argue that actually telling the universe to sit down and shut up isn't awesome.

That, and they have the single most awesome capstone of any class in 3.5, aside from the Knight. Maybe.

[Telonius]

Truenamer tops the list. (Which makes its mechanical awfulness all the more heartbreaking). Binder, Warlock, and Shadowcaster are close behind.

[Amphetryon]

Jade Phoenix Mage is fascinating to me.

[Norin]

Binder fluff is amazing.

I like factotum (or rogue), bladesinger, sorcerer, (dread) necromancer, red wizard, master of the unseen hand too.

Ah, so many cool classes it's too hard to pick.

[Venger]

Chameleon.

You've figured out what it is that all the other archetypes in the game can do and say "yeah sure, I'll just do that today"

Factotum for the same reasons. "If I throw some guano and move my hand like this and say this then fireballs. Sweet." They're the only classes that have figured out the basic scientific method on Oerth, harry potter and the methods of rationality style. That's very appealing to me.

[Fyermind]

Warlocks, Sorcerers and Hexblades can basically all share the same fluff. Something is wrong and I really don't get it but hey I can blast now?

My favorites though are the martial artist types. I wish soulknife got Wisdom based class features like Wis to AC and Damage as well as a small maneuver progression. You know, to make up for the fact that it's class features as of now are basically a few thousand extra GP for a weapon you can't enhance that is basically always below par. I love soulknives.

[Lord Haart]

I generally perceive classes purely as sets of mechanics through which i can mechanically approximate the fluff desired, and therefore i'm all too often guilty of not reading the associated fluff at all (in 3.5 moreso than in 4e). Still, there is a little something that comes to mind. While i am very much into Dragonfire Adept for its mechanics, it is also associated with this little piece of fluff that strikes some old chords within me:

"Tatiana is effective, devoted, and loyal, but she's disturbing.
Dedicating yourself wholeheartedly to becoming something better,
that I understand. Dedicating yourself to becoming something
inhuman—that I don't."
—Ember, human monk

[Urpriest]

Unlike many people on this forum, I find nothing impressive about the Truenamer's fluff whatsoever. I already think of verbal components as the "language of the universe", so all the Truenamer adds is the idea of a caster who knows the truename of every minor enemy they fight, which just seems silly given how truenames are treated in other fiction.

I really like the fluff of the Blighter and Talontar Blightlord. Something about a Druid who gives in to a an infection of the natural order, becoming corrupted as the forest is corrupted...

[FatherMalkav]

One more vote for Binder. With so much of gaming cosmologies mapped out, this is a calss that found one last 'final frontier' to experience.

Archivists - D&D for the player that REALLY wanted to play CoC instead.

[karkus]

Factotum/Chameleon is usually a horrible build, no matter what you do. But, it's a really cool idea, being every character at any given time :smallcool:

A Dragonwrought Kobold Paragon (the prestige class, not the Epic template) is a cool way to play as a Small Dragon, but seems to have unique skills not normally thought of by PCs (making traps, busting through walls, etc.), and thus can take some getting used to.

[Vorthas]

Dragon bloodline Sorcerers, Dragonfire Adept, Dragon Shaman, or any of the draconic flavored classes are my favorite. I love all things dragons.

[Venger]

Factotum/Chameleon is usually a horrible build, no matter what you do. But, it's a really cool idea, being every character at any given time :smallcool:

horrible build? why? it at least lets you actually use able learner. oh yeah it's the best

[Mithril Leaf]

horrible build? why? it at least lets you actually use able learner. oh yeah it's the best

It's the standard able to do everything build! I personally prefer a nice 4 dips of rebuking base classes and 1 of rogue, but factotum is a solid choice as well!

[Auramis]

I really like the fluff of the Blighter and Talontar Blightlord. Something about a Druid who gives in to a an infection of the natural order, becoming corrupted as the forest is corrupted...

My brother is our DM at the moment, and he has our enemies being a group of blighters. We're trying to revitalize a seemingly dead landscape, and they're opposing us. We've yet to directly encounter them, but he's very excited to get it underway.

[userofdice136]

My favorite is most likely the Classic Druid. My first 3.5 character was an Elf Druid.

Just recently I created Druid that had it's brain switched with its hawk animal companion. It was probably the most fun I've had with a character in awhile, until he died due to complications with a Bag of Holding...

[TrollCapAmerica]

Im pretty fond of the Wu Jen myself.Elementalist Taoist sorcerers going all Lo Pan and Egg Shen on people is great.Its just too bad they are the weakest prepared caster in the game and most of the Wu Jen specific spells are cool fluffwise but done better with Core spells [Compare Cloud Chariot wind walk Overland Flight etc]

[killem2]

The White Necromancer.

[Psyren]

The White Necromancer.

Must we bring race into everything? :smallbiggrin:

[dascarletm]

Fighter.

Swordchucks yo.

[SilverSavio]

My favorite maybe homebrew, but nothing screams awesome like PUNCHING PEOPLE IN THE FACE!!!! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=204494)

[Vedhin]

I like the Dragonscribe prestige class from Dragon Magazine #296. Why? The 4th level ability is "Summon Dragon". Think about that for a moment. You have a class feature that summons dragons. It does so by adding them to the Summon Monster # lists. Oh, and did I mention they're Celestial/Fiendish?
It is technically something I like because of the mechanics, but summoning a dragon with a 3rd level spell is too awesome to not mention.

[Zeb]

Complete Arcane's Geometer

Because magic, It's all Symbols!!!

Also Entropomancer from complete divine, who wouldn't want a pet black hole?

Except for the part where it tries to suck you in...

[Psyren]

Geometer is indeed awesome. If you combine with Runesmith, you get free* still and silent on all your spells, and each one only takes up a single page in your spellbook.

*in terms of level cost rather than gp cost

[Lateral]

Pyrokineticist, far and a way. Of course, being a bit of a pyromaniac, I might be just a bit biased, but... well, its abilities may not be awesome mechanically, but you can make people EXPLODE. Honestly, I kind of just wished its abilities were more synergistic. And did more damage. I want to roll a fist full of d6, not a couple of d8s.

Also, dragonfire adept, mostly because I love making dragons out of cool things. I'm playing a dragonborn warforged dragonfire adept, and it is AWESOME.

[Pickford]

I love looking through different class descriptions and getting ideas for characters. I love basing (non D&D, just story) characters off the ideas I get from classes.

Entirely ignoring mechanics, I'd like to know your favourite classes, base or prestige. I've always loved the sound of Fochlucan Lyrists, but never really been in a situation where I could make one and not have it be such a pain, but the description and idea of nature cross with bard is awfully fun.

Hrm...

Have to break em down by source:
CW
1) Drunken Master
2) Frenzied Berserker
CA
3) Spymaster
CD
4) Evangelist
CS
5) Grey Guard
CA
6) Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil
XPH
7) Psion
8) Soulknife
9) Thrallherd
and of course...
ToM
10) Truenamer

Shadowmagic reminds me of the Conan stories, so that's interesting too :)

edit: Oh yeah, I forgot Truenaming is redundant:

PHB, pg.

To record an arcane spell in written form, a character uses complex notation that describes the magical forces involved in the spell. The notation constitutes a universal arcane language that wizards have discovered, not invented. The writer uses the same system no matter what her native language or culture. (emphasis mine)

[lsfreak]

Binders are far and away my favorites for the written fluff.

However, my preference overall is to strip fluff from mechanics and see what I can come up with. Given a certain set of fluff, what can I do mechanically that's interesting or unexpected? Or the other way around, take the mechanics, and what can we get fluff-wise out of this? As a result, I honestly don't know much about written fluff because I do such a thorough job of ignoring it (I was going to say I really liked hexblade fluff, but rereading it, it's pretty meh).

[Sith_Happens]

Im pretty fond of the Wu Jen myself.Elementalist Taoist sorcerers going all Lo Pan and Egg Shen on people is great.Its just too bad they are the weakest prepared caster in the game

Check your Miniatures Handbook. The Healer is a prepared caster.

[erikun]

Geometer is indeed awesome. If you combine with Runesmith, you get free* still and silent on all your spells, and each one only takes up a single page in your spellbook.

*in terms of level cost rather than gp cost
Oh, nice combination. I can easily see an old dwarven wizard who has learned how to etch arcane geometic patterns into his armor for spellcasting.

As for prestige classes, one that I really like the idea of is the Justiciar. Someone who can deal subdual damage without penalty, is actually better at it, and also focused on pinning and manacling opponents? That actually sounds like it would be a fun combat system of a cleric. Too bad Cleric/Justiciar is mechanically terrible. (I mean moreso than just the regular Justicar.)

The other one I liked is the Master Alchemist, for producing potions of any spell. Cleric/Master Alchemist was fun, as it's just about the only way to make a potion of Raise Dead. A few other spells would be fun to bottle and drink, such as giving the fighter a Righteous Might potion or tossing a potion of Holy Word at opponents.

[Auramis]

CS
5) Grey Guard

Perhaps I have a specific image of what a paladin is, but I never did get the appeal of Grey Guards. It sounds like it's a class that gives a free pass for paladins to turn into bullies.

Edit: Then again... there is a certain appeal in your church placing that much trust in your actions.

[sketchtb]

Factotums are too much fun, who doesn't want to be Indiana Jones.

I've also got a barbarian with the lunatic character concept. Having to roll percentiles everytime you encounter something new to see if you fly into a rage involuntarily is great for fluff.

[NEO|Phyte]

I'm pretty fond of Thrallherd. So much potential with your gaggle of minions. Do you care for them and try to keep them safe, or throw them aside like the replaceable fodder they are? Plus it's always fun to try to explain to the rest of the party that it's not actually mind control.

[Psyren]

Oh, nice combination. I can easily see an old dwarven wizard who has learned how to etch arcane geometic patterns into his armor for spellcasting.

Actually, the adaptation for Runesmith lets you open it up to non-dwarves, provided you come up with a strong backstory for your rune-scribing mages. One cool option I came up with is a society of Warforged wizards, who use this technique to practice their magecraft without their plating getting in the way of their somatic components. Being robots, they'd be pretty inclined towards mathematics and geometry also.

[Roguenewb]

Jade l phoenix mage is so goddamn awesome. The endlessly reincarnated wandering do good soul of a master swordsman /spellcaster? Remind me why I ever play anything else again?

Finally, factotum as Indiana Jones will always have a special place in my heart

[PaucaTerrorem]

Must we bring race into everything? :smallbiggrin:

Must you not?

[Slayer Lord]

Paladins, sorcerers and rogues, all the way. Especially Pathfinder sorcerer.

[Feint's End]

Bloodstorm Blade ... finally you really can play a Chakram throwing girl :smallbiggrin:

Cryptic .... just awesome ... that's the way psionic skillmonkeys should be done

Vitalist ... great way of healing and shifting of damage

Psion ... especially nomads ... running on walls, teleporting ... now that's the way I think of a fast manifester

Tattooed Monk ... sadly bad but awesome flavour

PF Sorceror ... way better than the 3.5 one -> not only from power but also from the flavour side (bloodlines hurray)

and many, many more but it would take hours to count them all

[Pesimismrocks]

Binders, Truenamers, Blighters, Charlatans and Warlocks are all favourites of mine but in first place it just has to be: Master of Masks. A man who can change his entire being by changing masks, a man capable of any disguise at any time.

[VariSami]

Artificers and Archivists - because what is cooler than playing magitech engineers and fantasy humanist professors? They both suit an academically bent character and I simply prefer them over Wizard (although Wizards are cool as well - using the power of studying hard to bend reality).

Regarding prestige classes, I have a bias towards dual casters. Mystic Theurge, Soul Manifester, Anima Mage, Ruby Knight Vindicator, you name it. Actually, though, I do not like Jade Phoenix Mages and Sapphire Hierophants all that much. I simply love the idea of combining multiple esoteric disciplines to achieve true power and enlightenment.

[Invader]

First and foremost all of the Harper PRC's because I love the Harpers and their lore.
After that, Spell fire wielder because it should wreck face it just falls short sadly.


Truenamer
Arcane Archer
Horizon Walker

[Toy Killer]

Bloodhound, and Justicar.

I like the idea of having a sword of Damocles hang over the heads of the foes who escape.

[Milo v3]

Binder and Flesh Mage would be my favourite, but I generally tear the fluff away from classes and add in my own.

If I can do that it's Summoner who I treat like having a Daemon from His Dark Materials.

[Waker]

Fluffwise? Hmm, lets see.
Bard/Truenamer- I love the fluff for both classes, as they strongly remind me of Rhapsody from Symphony of Ages.
Factotum/Chameleon- I love the idea of a hero that dabbles in a bit of everything.
Binder- You make contracts with beings outside of reality, inviting them into your body to grant you superpowers. Where do I sign up?
Paladin- The concept of a hero who won't back down no matter what, defends good no matter the odds is one I can get behind. Specifically I am reminded of a Captain America quote,
Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world — "No, you move."
This quote also works.

These are dark and desperate times. I know that some of you are afraid. It's alright. It's perfectly natural. But I want you to know that I am not. I am not afraid to die this day because what we do here is necessary. It may seem impossible, our enemies may appear to be endless, but that doesn't matter. Because there is no one else. Look at me. I believe in an idea, an idea that a single individual who has the right heart and the right mind that is consumed with a single purpose, that one man can win a war. Give that one man a group of soldiers with the same conviction, and you can change the world.

[anacalgion]

Right now I've been in love with Umbral Disciple. It's just super fun to run around and have random shadow powers, even if the class basically has 5 dead levels (+1d6 sneak attack is a dead level to me)