E6 Character Concept Help

[Ramshack]

Hey there play grounders.

So my regular D&D group and I are starting up an e6 campaign. The focus more on problem solving, puzzles and getting missions done. Combat will not be the primary focus but will still be an option and occasionally necessary.

Two members already grabbed Rogue characters. One with an assassin theme and one with a Charismatic Thief theme. We have another character thinking ranger / survival guide.

I was hoping you play grounders could help me come up with some interesting ideas to contribute. I was thinking something arcane, maybe a Monk/Wizard or what not. Bring the arcane utility and be the "knowledge" character. I was also interested in an engineer / tinker type character like the psion / constructor combo or something.

I am not looking for exact builds or optimized combat builds just fun concepts that would be good as more of the investigative, espionage and subterfuge realms. Some combat support does hurt either.

DM set the following guidelines: No LA Races, All books except TOB (because he doesn't have it) but has just about every other book. ACFs allowed with approval, 2 Flaws Allowed, And Prestige classes have early access as early as level 2 with his approval. Low Magic campaign, magical items are rare, scrolls, wands and the such can't just be picked up at your local magic shop.

Any thoughts or input would be greatly appreciated.

[Fouredged Sword]

Well, in E6 I find chameleon works well in an odd sort of way. Duskblade 3 / spellthief 2 / Chameleon 1. You get 2nd level spells from ANY spell list.

Another option is to build an autoharp. Warforged Bard 6 with the feat that lets you cast from wands using your spell slots. It works great on a bard chassis in E6 as you can get 1-2nd level wands all over the place.

[Dexam]

It sounds to me like Beguiler (PBH2) might suit your needs nicely - full arcane caster, a nice selection of utility spells, and plenty of skill points to spend on the extensive class skill list. Beguiler 6 is fine as it is, although you might want to dip one level of the Mindbender PrC (Complete Arcane) for fun with Telepathy. My favourite race for Beguiler is the Whisper Gnome (Races of Stone).

My other recommendation is the jack-of-all-trades-in-a-can, Bard. Go Silverbrow Human (Dragon Magic) for the Dragonblood subtype and take the Dragonfire Inspiration feat and Inspirational Boost spell if you want your fellow party members to love you for your combat support.

[Ramshack]

Beguiler is a very interesting class choice I'll look into that. not feel the bard too much for this campaign though. But the Chameleon would give me utility too.

Thank you for the suggestions guys. I appreciate it!

[Deadline]

Umm, isn't this concept the sort of thing the Factotum is tailor made for? All the skills, neat little abilities, and a smattering of spellcasting all tied up in a nice little bow?

[JusticeZero]

Psion-psychometabolist master of a thousand faces, with the added benefit of being able to patch the team up.

[Tvtyrant]

Trickery domain Cleric, maybe with a level of Monk to get Wisdom to AC and letting you not wear plate (no move silently under those conditions!)

[shadow_archmagi]

There's always the option of the Incarnate! Incarnates are one of my favorite magic systems in 3.5. (Your primary resource is Essentia, which you can shift between Soulmelds. It's sort of like having magic items, except you can say things like "Oh, well, we're not in a fight right now, so I'm going to shift the +2 out of my Soulblade of Stabbing and into my Gloves of Running Urgently for an extra +10 movement speed"

Power-wise, the class is on the low end of the spectrum, so it'll fit in neatly with rogues. Would definitely recommend picking up magic of incarnum.

[Person_Man]

+1 on Incarnate in E6.

In addition to amazing defenses and solid Skills, their most powerful class ability is the Necrocarnum Circlet soulmeld bound to their Crown chakra. This gives you an at-will, infinitely replaceable Necrocarnum Zombie. If the game is about exploring and problem solving, having an endless supply of minions to open doors, walk first into rooms, and set of traps is very handy. (FYI, this is also what makes them more of a Tier 3 class when compared to Rogues. Their damage output is lower, but their undead minion is basically like having a second Tier 4-5 cohort that you don't have to worry about dying).

[Fouredged Sword]

They can also pick up a soulspark familiar for another little assistant that is more family friendly as needed. It isn't very powerful, but it could have it's uses.

[Fable Wright]

+1 the Incarnate option. From one of the games I was in when someone was looking to make a Detective-type character:

I hate to mention it because of its obscure, somewhat convoluted subsystem status, but I've heard good things about the Incarnate, from Magic of Incarnum. It's non-casting, has some solid skills and good flexibility. It's a role that you can grow into easily enough, has some ranged damage options (Dissolving Spittle, could be similar to a pistol with fluff), defenses (Fellmist Robes), has a bit of luck for the aspiring detective (Lucky Dice), and a number of other modular abilities. It honestly seems like the best base class for a detective, as long as you can get a handle on the rules for it. (Remember: No bonus Incarnum granted from ability modifier, DCs based on Constitution, only 1 point of essentia can be invested in a soulmeld at a given time unless class abilities or feats say otherwise, which is increased at level 5 up to 2 points. Under no circumstances can you have more essentia invested in a soulmeld than your constitution modifier. You can reassign all of your Essentia with a single Swift action.)

Actually, to help keep the detective vibe, you could take the City Slicker feat to get decent detective skills onto your list. Keeneye Lenses would give you the perception skills that you need, Truthseeker Goggles give you all the detective skills you need (Gather Info, Search, Sense Motive), and there are a host of other skillmonkey Soulmelds you can grab when the time comes up. Shape Soulmeld (Truthseeker Goggles) would mean that your Detective skills are always on, freeing up a slot to use, and a standard layout of Dissolving Spittle, Fellmist Robes, and Lucky Dice with it means you have a combat-ready Detective, complete with pistol, omnipresent trenchcoat, and a lucky charm, that can forget that he has some skills on a given day to learn new, better ones. Leaving Lucky Dice at home and bringing out Theft Gloves or Keeneye Lenses, Planar Ward against when Beguilers are about, and so on. Maybe even ditching the trenchcoat on a job, for Theft Gloves and Acrobat Boots. You could make a fine detective with an Incarnate...
(Note that we were around level 2-3 at the time I typed up the soulmeld loadout; you get more options later.)

[Ramza00]

My other recommendation is the jack-of-all-trades-in-a-can, Bard. Go Silverbrow Human (Dragon Magic) for the Dragonblood subtype and take the Dragonfire Inspiration feat and Inspirational Boost spell if you want your fellow party members to love you for your combat support.

In e6 take the dragontouched feat instead of silverbrow, besides getting the dragon blood subtype dragontouched also allows you to take sorcerer only feats. After taking dragontouched take the feat draconic hertiage and now you can use sonic damage with your dragon fire inspiration

[Lonely Tylenol]

Hey there play grounders.

So my regular D&D group and I are starting up an e6 campaign. The focus more on problem solving, puzzles and getting missions done. Combat will not be the primary focus but will still be an option and occasionally necessary.

Two members already grabbed Rogue characters. One with an assassin theme and one with a Charismatic Thief theme. We have another character thinking ranger / survival guide.

I was hoping you play grounders could help me come up with some interesting ideas to contribute. I was thinking something arcane, maybe a Monk/Wizard or what not. Bring the arcane utility and be the "knowledge" character. I was also interested in an engineer / tinker type character like the psion / constructor combo or something.

I am not looking for exact builds or optimized combat builds just fun concepts that would be good as more of the investigative, espionage and subterfuge realms. Some combat support does hurt either.

DM set the following guidelines: No LA Races, All books except TOB (because he doesn't have it) but has just about every other book. ACFs allowed with approval, 2 Flaws Allowed, And Prestige classes have early access as early as level 2 with his approval. Low Magic campaign, magical items are rare, scrolls, wands and the such can't just be picked up at your local magic shop.

Any thoughts or input would be greatly appreciated.

Wha-heeeeeeeeey there...

Step 1: Be an Artificer (Eberron Campaign Setting), with a focus on Alchemy (the skill). This fits the roll of arcane(ish) utility, "knowledge"-type character, and engineer/tinker all in one; that is literally the Artificer's niche. So we've hit all the checkmarks for concept fluff. It also solves a lot of the problems with item availability (assuming your DM will allow you to play it at all), although if you feel like being nice to your DM, you can certainly play this back a bit.

Step 2: Create a Launch Item Cannon (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14355460&postcount=47). Basically, it's an item of at-will Launch Item (Spell Compendium) that allows you to launch all of your mundane(ish) Alchemy items, such as alchemist's fire/frost, acid, thunderstones, tanglefoot bags, and the like. It also allows you to launch caltrops, grappling hooks, and various other mundane items with both in-combat and out-of-combat utility. This is an effective way to deliver ranged touch attacks for thrown weapons in a "quality over quantity" manner; you can't make iterative attacks or extra attacks, but you can deliver them 110+ feet (it's a Medium-range spell) with no range increment penalties. Made to fit an item slot, it would take about 900gp to make, and made as a held item (no item slot), it would take twice that (a whole 1800gp).

Step 3: Become an Alchemist Savant (Magic of Eberron). Every single level of this class is definitely worth taking (especially in a game which doesn't scale out of it), from efficient alchemy all the way to universal potions, but the winner for this build is the spellvial: a potion (offensive or defensive) that you can deliver to a target with a ranged touch attack. Now, you can create "potions" of Combust (Wiz/Sor 2, Spell Compendium), Vampiric Touch (Wiz/Sor 3, SRD), Shivering Touch (Wiz/Sor 3, Frostburn), Ghoul Touch (Wiz/Sor 2, SRD), and many, many other awesome spells! If you manage to squeeze four levels of alchemist Savant in (with DM approval), you gain the ability to create alchemical mixtures, combining splash weapons (such as acid, alchemist's fire, etc) with spellvials and (with 4 ranks in Craft [poisonmaking]) poisons--meaning you can have a vial of acid combined with drow poison in order to deal 1d6 acid damage and a Fort save vs. unconsciousness, or alchemist's fire combined with a spellvial of Combust to deal 1d6 initial fire damage (+1 splash damage), plus an initial CLd8 fire damage! The best part about this is, all targets damaged by the splash weapon suffer the effects of the spellvial or poison as well as the splash weapon damage, which makes this an effective way to deliver debilitating spell and poison effects (such as the aforementioned Ghoul Touch and drow poison, respectively) to multiple targets at a range.

Step 4: Grab your Launch Item Cannon and deliver the mail.

[GreenETC]

Add my hat to the Incarnate bag. With all the free feats, you can easily make up for not being able to access many magic items by just being them yourself.

[ArcturusV]

I'm always leery when someone says "low magic world" or the like. Because almost always you have someone who decides to play an item crafting caster and breaks the concept of "low magic world" over his knee, in a way that the setting just isn't designed to cope with unless you got DM Fiat Resets going on or suddenly it turns into a high magic setting.

So I'd avoid full casters, particularly full crafting based casters. If not for the "Low Magic" bit, I'm almost suggest playing the classic Red Mage. Add a bit of Cleric, add a bit of Wizard, thuerge into a blend if you can get your DM to say something like you can go 1 Cleric/1 Wizard/4 MT. Call it good. Cleric magic is really well suited to investigation type things. And since you won't have higher level spells that just necessarily give you the answers straight out, it's more like a Dial-a-clue. Wizard casting is just always nice to have.

Barring full casters though? Hmm... in E6... you already got a lot of skill monkeys in two rogues and a ranger. I'm kinda tempted to suggest going Human Paladin 2/Sword of Righteousness 3/1 Something. Not that Paladins SEEM good on paper for that. Low skill points after all. But detect evil, fairly useful. Saving bonuses? Nice. "Being a Paladin"... often worth your weight in gold if you know how to play it up ICily. People that your Rogue/Face can't charm can often be shamed/intimidated by a properly played Paladin, and without having to roll a check. I've seen them get away with it all the time. Usually I'm of the belief that as a Paladin, what you want is More paladin levels, not less. But 2 is a good cut off if you can get early entries into PrCs. I kinda like Sword of Righteousness as a concept because it's early access to Exalted Feats, and Paladins are about the only class that gets a lot of Exalted Feats, which can give you some extra utility early on. Yeah I know you get extra feats eventually in E6. But sometimes you need or want Now over Eventally. And Paladins level 3+ aren't going to get you much unless you want very minor access to first level spellcasting.