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unseenmage
2014-10-03, 12:32 AM
I need to spend 2,700gp on an ECL4, 1HD character in a 3.x Spelljammer game. is there a way to spend this gp in such a way that the character won't just die?
I'm not attached to Flyby Attack for his one feat either.
Edit: Gold pieces have been successfully spent. Now just trying to figure out what class most benefits a flying robot monkey. In spaaace!

For those curious here's the character (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=1021216). He'll be playing alongside two or three yet to be determined 3rd level PCs. Starting in Eberron (though the character is from Faerun).
This DM's games tend towards high power. Any 3.x, PF, Dragon&Dungeon magazine allowed. 3rd party too, with permission.


Sacred Guardian Effigy Flying Monkey
Tiny Construct (Augmented)
Hit Dice: 1d10+10 (20hp)
Initiative: +4
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares), climb 30 ft., fly 40 ft. (clumsy)
Armor Class: 21 (+4 size, +2 Dex, +6 Nat, +1 Luck), touch 15, flat-footed 19
Base Attack/Grapple: +0/-10
Attack: Bite +8 melee (1d3) or Dropped Stone +8 ranged (1d4)
Full Attack: Bite +8 melee (1d3) or Dropped Stone +8 ranged (1d4)
Space/Reach: 2- ½ ft./0 ft.
Special Attacks: Drop Stones, Group Snatch, Divine Attack (Su)
Special Qualities: Construct traits, Damage Reduction (Su): 1/magic and adamantine, Divine Grace (Su), Fast Healing (Su): 5
Saves: Fort 0+0+1 Luck, Ref 0+4+1 Luck, Will 0+3+1 Luck
Abilities: Str 14, Dex 18, Con --, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 10
Skills: Diplomacy (Cha) +2 , Heal (Wis) +5 , Knowledge (religion) (Int) +2 , Spellcraft (Int) +2
Feats: b Weapon Finesse, Luck of Heroes (FRCS36)
Environment: Any
Organization: Solitary, pair, or pantheon (3-7).
Challenge Rating: 3
Treasure: None
Alignment: True Neutral
Advancement: None
Level Adjustment: -- (+3?)
Wearing a small red vest and fez, this tiny monkey has long feathery wings spreading from its back and a cruel grin full of sharp teeth across its face.
Flying Monkeys are a plague and a pest to farmers, villagers, and brewers throughout the river and jungle lands of the tropics. They enjoy gorging themselves on stolen bananas, mangoes figs, oranges, cakes, sweet dates, and beer, while mocking their victims from the treetops. They have occasionally been tamed and taught to wear vests and fezzes, but usually they travel in nothing more than their fur, which varies from pale reddish-brown to golden yellow or pure white.
Flying monkeys often migrate from one harvest to another, often over hundreds of miles. They are prey for large birds such as giant eagles and rocs.
Flying monkeys can speak to each other through a rudimentary language of cries and grows.
Combat
Flying monkey a void combat when aisle but defend their territory or retaliate if attacked. They prefer to fight from the air, dropping rocks and coconuts on their targets, and they often attack in groups.

Drop Stones (Ex): Flying monkeys like to fight by picking up small stones and dropping them on opponents from a great height (at least 20 feet above the target). This attack has a range increment of 60 feet and no maximum number of increments. Damage from a dropped object is not subject to the flying monkey’s Strength penalty.

Group Snatch (Ex): A group of four or more flying monkeys can lift up and carry away a size Small creature, attacking as a group and using a single grapple check. Two are required for Tiny creatures, and eight for a Medium creature.
If the creature does not wish to be snatched into the air, an opposed grapple check is required. The flying monkeys gain a +2 on this grapple check for each flying monkey beyond the first participating in the attempt. If the monkeys succeed, the creature is grappled and forced to move along with the monkeys. If they fail, the creature stays on the ground.
Once a creature is airborne, it may choose to continue resisting, forcing a grapple check each round. This reduces the monkeys’ flying speed by half. If successful, the creature falls from their grasp and takes falling damage normally.

Divine Attack (Su): All sacred guardians are imbued with the power of one of their patron deity’s domains. The domain the sacred guardian represents determines which type of divine attack it possesses (see Sacred Guardian Divine Domains table).
Planning (Gond): Prescient Strike (make single melee attack as a full round action and deny target its Dex bonus or concealment).

Divine Grace (Su): All sacred guardians are imbued with the power of one of their patron deity’s domains. The domain the sacred guardian represents determines what type of divine grace it possesses (see Sacred Guardians Divine Domains table).
Planning (Gond): Cast augury as a spell-like ability three times per day (caster level equal to its Hit Dice).

Skills: Flying monkeys have a +8 racial bonus on Balance and Climb checks. They can always choose to take 10 on Climb checks, even if rushed or threatened. They use their Dexterity modifier instead of their Strength modifier for Climb checks.
A sacred guardian’s class skills are the same as a cleric.

Hit Points: A Sacred Guardian receives bonus hit points as if it were one size larger.

EFFIGY CONSTRUCTION
An effigy can be built either by means of the craft effigy class ability of the effigy master prestige class (see page 30) or by means of the Craft Construct feat (see page 303 of the Monster Manual).
An effigy built with the Craft Construct feat uses a body built from wood, leather, metal, and wire, constructed with either a DC 15 Craft (woodworking, leatherworking, or metalworking) check or a DC 15 Knowledge (architecture and engineering) check. The cost of the effigy’s body depends on its size: Tiny 500gp
The market price of an effigy creature is equal to the cost of its body plus 2,000gp per Hit Die. The cost to create is equal to the cost of the body plus 1,000gp and 80 XP per Hit Die, and creating an effigy creature requires a minimum caster level equal to the creature’s Hit Dice.

Crafting a Sacred Guardian
Creating a sacred guardian requires the body be sculpted to a high degree of craftsmanship.
The size of the sacred guardian can vary, much as an animated object, or it can even be constructed as a golem. To imbue it with divine power, it requires 200 steel pieces worth of rare oils and precious metals per size category (thus a Large sacred guardian requires an additional 1200 steel pieces on top of any other costs for construction). Creating the body requires a Craft (sculpting) check DC 15 and a Knowledge (religion) check DC 20 for the proper rituals.
Caster Level: 11th; Prerequisites: Craft Construct (see Monster Manual), animate objects, commune, caster must be a cleric with access to the Domain the sacred guardian will be dedicated to; Market Price: +1,000 stl/size category; Cost to Create: +500 stl/size category + 10 XP/size category.
Sacred guardians are imbued with intelligence and capable of speaking up to three languages (regardless of actual Intelligence) determined at the time of its creation.

(Sacred Guardian from Bestiary of Krynn page 84, Effigy Creature from Complete Arcane page 152, Flying Monkey from Dragon #334 page 39.)

Phelix-Mu
2014-10-03, 02:03 AM
Welp, belt of healing?

There was, I think, some not-too-expensive single-use items in complete scoundrel designed to effect an escape in a pinch. That might be worth having one of. Maybe called "escape button" or "panic button." Maybe worth a look.

How about partially charged wands? Even if your character can't use them, in the hands of the party spellcaster, they could provide vital buffs for those first few crucial levels. They occur on treasure lists at the back of MIC, giving their existence something of a precedent (but the real question is can you go somewhere and buy one, like a used car salesman...NOTE TO SELF: great npc idea there).

There is a spell called updraft, basically launches you into the air for a round, ostensibly to avoid damage or reach a nice tactically advantageous perch. Druid spell, but maybe on other lists, too. If you could get a skull talisman of that (or other thing if you can UMD), then that would help put a bit of distance between you and surprise enemy, couple with your character's fly speed.

Sorry this didn't come with any prices. Well, belt of healing is 750gp, IIRC.:smallbiggrin:

unseenmage
2014-10-03, 02:59 PM
Glad for the advice. Thing is as a Construct the char is immune to a lot, with a fly speed mobility is rarely an issue (Am loving the Updraft spell suggestion though!). He has Fast Healing 5 so healing himself isn't an issue. Being tiny sized with 6 Natural Armor at ECL 4 in an ECL 3 game means he's likely good for AC too.

I think his saves are crud and if he does get hit for even a moderate amount of damage he's likely to die before Fast Healing would even come into play. As a tiny creature carrying capacity might be an area that needs shoring up too.

Jeff the Green
2014-10-03, 03:18 PM
Is there a reason you're not replacing the RHD with a class level? I know Curmudgeon is of the opinion that only humanoids and pixies do that, but as far as I can tell it's a minority opinion and, in my opinion, entirely specious.

Also, why does he not have 20 HP? You should get max HP first level.

unseenmage
2014-10-03, 03:23 PM
The hp thing is a clerical error on my part.

The class level simply hasn't been gained yet.

Technically this is an NPC who was the minion of a previous character who then got lost in space. I wasn't sure if I could even take a class level yet or if I would need xp to level before I could. I'm fuzzy on the details of that process at the starting levels.

I know my DM agrees that 1HD monsters replace their RHD with their first class level.

Honestly I might have just been curious to see how viable he'd be without the class level and gotten it stuck in my head that he couldn't have it yet.

Jeff the Green
2014-10-03, 03:27 PM
You shouldn't need XP to swap it out; your ECL's the same in either case.

What class were you planning on? That could obviously influence what items could work.

unseenmage
2014-10-03, 03:42 PM
Well, as we know I prefer Artificers and casters.
I'm a bit burned out on Artificers at the moment. I was thinking either Wizard or Sorcerer, and was leaning towards Sorcerer.

unseenmage
2014-10-05, 11:12 PM
Okay so I've settled on a "+1 Tiny Darkwood Composite Longbow (Str+5)" as the place to spend this little guy's money.

Still not sure what class to give him though. A friend suggested Factotum as the class to play when you don't know what to play.

I'm still considering Sorcerer, I just know how weak Sor can be and this DM's games tend toward the OP end of the spectrum.


Is there a 3rd party class I should be considering?

Phelix-Mu
2014-10-06, 12:43 AM
I'm partial to monk homebrew, but I'm not sure that satisfies you caster-inclination; see Xaotiq1's fix in my extended sig if you are really fishing for ideas, as that uses an invocation-like system to bump monks up to a solid Tier 3.

Ever consider psionics? It's a nice flavor twist over magic, and psion is solid Tier 2, much more so than sorcerer, in my opinion, but mostly down to tricks. At highest levels of optimization, psion overtakes wizard, landing somewhere close to artificer in the "broke game yesterday, now what?" category. Your LA will still hurt, though, but there isn't much caster-ish anywhere where that isn't going to be very sad.

Really wish I had more 3rd party suggestions. I'd plug my biogenetor homebrew, but it's in a sorry state atm (but look at it anyway, lol?). Would be really cool to have a flying monkey construct Dr. Frankenstein, though.

Hmm. Ever consider a wu jen? Giant body and body out of body would be pretty cool options for a tiny construct. It doesn't have quite the support of sorcerer, but it's pretty solid from what I gather. Some of the spells have pretty cool flavor, and you get some metamagic stuff for free, which might shore up the issues with LA affecting caster levels.

Ever consider incarnum? I've been reading some guides, and there are several builds that can do casting-lite via UMD tricks and combos. Very versatile as well, and I'd definitely say it competes well with sorcerer for survivability at low levels.

Or maybe binder? Extra cool with the web support, and allows the critter to compensate well for flexibility lost due to LA (in a manner similar to the incarnum). The summoning doesn't come online for quite some time, as I recall, but there are many cool options leading up to that. Might be cool to fluff the monkey as trying to find a place among the living, but perhaps erroneously being waylaid by a bunch of quasi-real beings that are looking for exactly the same thing (vestiges).

unseenmage
2014-10-06, 01:15 AM
You'll be glad to know that I looked at your homebrew previously. I like the concept but also agree with your assessment of its sorry-state-edness. :smalltongue: Would be glad to help playtest it once it's all fixed up.

Incarnum is tempting but the status of Constructs and other artificially made creatures and souls is somewhat messy in our gameworld at the moment.

Binder is tempting. Reminds me of Demonbinder and that I've never gotten to play one.


I wonder if there's a divine PrC or template or something to tie my desire to play an arcane caster in with the character's ties to his deity...

Phelix-Mu
2014-10-06, 01:38 AM
Yeah. My homebrew is rather sad, atm. Luckily, my irl gaming group's foray into other gaming systems appears to be ending, as an 12 month Exalted campaign draws to a close sometime this month (thank the gods, this project was way over my head for the longest time). So maybe I'll have time to polish that up.

I like some of the Encyclopedia Arcane/Divine for some stuff that is third party. Can't remember the other book...lost access to a bunch of third party stuff some time ago, so my memory is rusty. There is a list on this forum that got bumped last week or so of all of the 3rd party base classes and estimates of their tiers. Might be worth a gander, if you haven't seen it already; it's impressively huge.

Jeff the Green
2014-10-06, 03:17 AM
Unfortunately I don't have any homebrew that would work well. Constructs can't be Haematurges, the Strega (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?359145-Just-don-t-ask-Big-Anthony-to-be-your-apprentice-The-Strega-PEACH&p=17695879) will have problems because of LA, and my PrCs are pretty much all casters.

Have you thought about a ranged warblade? I've used these (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=8887672&postcount=11) homebrew substitution levels and they work well. It would help your squishiness and give you ways to contribute.

Maybe aim for a PrC that has its own casting? Here's the table from this thread, converted over to the new format


ClassTypeProgressionLevelsMax spell levelStatOtherBook
Apostle of Peace Dv, Va Ac 10 9th WIS Spon. Cure BoED
Assasin Ar, Sp No 10 4th INT - DMG
Beloved of Valarian Dv, Va No 10 4th WIS - BoED
Blackguard Dv, Va No 10 4th WIS - DMG
Chameleon Ar or Dv, Va Ac 10 6th INT or WIS Wiz spellbook and/or Clr casting RoD
Champion of Gwynharwyf Dv, Va No 10 4th WIS - BoED
Consecrated Harrier Dv, Va No 10 4th WIS - CD
Corrupt Avenger Ar, Va No 10 4th CHA Uses corruption with spellbook HoH
Cyre Scout In De 10 4th INT - DraMk
Death Delver Dv, Va No 10 4th WIS - HoH
Divine Crusader Dv, Va Ac 10 9th WIS One domain only CD
Emmisary of Barachiel Dv, Sp No 10 4th WIS - BoED
Fatemaker Ar, Sp No 10 4th CHA - PlHB
Fist of Zuoken Ps No 10 5th WIS - XPH
Hoardstealer Ar, Va No 10 4th INT - Draco
Holy Liberator Dv, Va No 10 4th WIS - CD
Justice of Weald and Woe Dv, Sp No 10 4th WIS - CoR
Knight of the Weave Ar, Sp Ac 10 6th CHA - CoV
Nentyar Hunter Dv, Va No 10 5th WIS - Una
Nosomatic Chiurgeon Dv, Va No 10 4th WIS Cast as Adept class DraMk
Ocular Adept Dv, Va No 10 5th WIS Keep cleric casting; Sp cure/influct F&P
Pious Templar Dv, Va No 10 4th WIS - CD
Prime Underdark Guide Ar, Va No 10 4th INT Spellbook Udrk
Runescarred Barserker Dv, Va No 10 5th WIS Scribe scrolls onto body. Una
Scaled Horror Dv, Va No 10 4th Wis Uses Ranger spell list SS
Shade Hunter Ar, Sp No 10 4th INT - CoR
Slayer of Domiel Dv, Va No 10 4th WIS - BoED
Suel Arcanamach Ar, Sp No 10 5th CHA - CAr.
Telflammar Shadowlord Ar, Va No 6 3rd INT Gain high level spells at low level Una
Temple Raider of Olidammara Dv, Va No 10 4th WIS Can prep without rest. CD
The Vassal of Bahamut Dv, Va No 10 4th WIS - BoED
Thayan Slaver Ar, Va No 10 4th INT - Una
Trapsmith Ar, Sp No 5 3rd CHA Gain high level spells at low level Dscp
Ur-Priest Dv, Va Ac 10 9th WIS Cannot have other source of Dv casting. CD
Vadalis Beastkeeper Dv, Va De 10 4th WIS - CD
Vigilante Ar, Sp No 10 4th CHA - CAd
War Mind Ps No 10 5th WIS Requires 1 PP to enter. XPH
Zerth Cenobite Ps De 10 4th WIS - CP

nedz
2014-10-06, 06:24 AM
Beguiler with multiple Arcane Disciple feats to cover your religious obligations.
Int and Wis based so you might need to shuffle your stats a little.
You will need to find a full casting PrC to dip before Beguiler 7, if you want to bump up your advanced learning.

If you prefer blasting over the more subtle stuff then you could use Warmage instead, or Dread Necromancer — if you are that way inclined.