Need Ideas for 6th Player

[gawwy]

Hi All,

im running a 6 man 5th level run of the red hand of DOOM for my players.

currently we have:

a warforged crusader,
a swordsage,
gnome bard,
changling sneaky cleric (some rouge and ninja levels and the trickery domain),
lesser teifling wizard

but the 6th player is having trouble deciding what he wants to play.

he usually likes playing smashy characters but we have quite a bit of that.

any suggestions as to what could round out the party / be fun to play in this party?

[Osiris]

Well you have a Melee Bot, a Sneak Theif, a Divine Caster, and an Arcane caster, with room to spare. Is he new? Does he like wizards? If he's played before, whatever he wants. If new, warlocks don't have many powers and are still fun

[dascarletm]

Warmage would be a solid choice, and would let the wizard focus on non-blasty spells.

I also find that players who prefer the big bruisers tend to like warmage since they just bruise with magical balls of death.

[gurgleflep]

I see arcane, divine, melee, and sneaky, so how about a psion of some other such psionic character?

[gawwy]

hmm all of these are great :)

ill suggest the war mage to him and the Psionic Warrior.

is there a solid tier 3ish ranged class?

I keep seeing that there's loads of melee in the party and its mostly tier 3, apart from the wizard, the cleric sort of gets watered down with rogue and ninja.

however I also know that 75% of RHoD is hobgoblins and there's a bunch of dragon bosses

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Swift Hunter with Favored Enemy: Goblinoid and Dragon. I'm not sure how good it would be at that level, though.

Soulbow (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060403a&page=2) makes a superb archer. He could go with a major bloodline (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/bloodlines.htm) and go Soulknife 1/ Bloodline 3/ Soulknife 1/ Soulbow. Bloodline levels don't increase your character level, if you're 1st level and gain 1,000 xp you gain a level, so if you take a bloodline level you're still 1st level and need only another 1,000 xp to gain another level. Each Bloodline level costs you only 1,000 xp if taken before your 2nd character level, but they do increase your max skill ranks among other things. Probably the best major bloodlines to pick for this would be Djinni and Celestial. Be sure he gets the Two-Weapon Fighting line of feats, since it only takes one hand to fire a Mind Arrow.

[nedz]

A Spellthief or a Beguiler. There are plenty of skill based archetypes, they don't all have to be sneaks — that said three sneaky types in the party can support each other quite well.

There's also Druid, which can do most anything out of the box.

Any input from the player ?

[eastmabl]

Halfling monk - because who sees that coming?

[Maginomicon]

With that many casters in the party, a Sha'ir / Spirit Shaman / Mystic Theurge with the Druidic Theurgy feat and Alternative Source Spell wouldn't go amiss. Tattoo Magic / Rune Magic would also be useful.

No matter what you pick though, ask your GM to use the Companion Spirit Rules in DMG II. It's an oft-neglected section that's right after the Teamwork Benefits section. A Companion Spirit is like a configurable party-wide upgrade that you can advance as you level up. All it requires is a DC 15 Spellcraft check (that you can take 10 on) from one person, and then 300gp and 300 XP from every person in the party. I'd recommend the Companion spirit that lets everyone in the party (including non-casters) use a spell of your choice.

[ddude987]

I would say you have quite a bit of melee, and though archery is subpar, swift hunter is an option, though it doesn't come online till a bit after that.

They could be a Wis based archer, Zen archery, Cloistered Cleric who trades knowledge domain for knowledge devotion. Once the cleric gets divine power and can DMM: Persist it, they'll be quite effective at combat, and have full casting on top of that.

[atomicwaffle]

every party ever can ALWAYS use a Transmutation Specialist. You can never have too many transmuters

[Magesmiley]

Hard to wrong with another cleric. Especially if he is focused on a very different set of domains.

[Captnq]

Psionics? Dunno what you are allowing.

[Fouredged Sword]

I would suggest option YES. Factotum 5 / Chameleon 1 going for chameleon 10. Why be only one class?

[Thurbane]

I would suggest Binder (Binder always brings something to the group).

Let him be smashy if he wants, or bind different vestiges to suit the situation.