[3.5] level 8~12 bounty hunters?

[gawwy]

Hi guys im running an open ended largely urban fairly social campaign for my players starting at level 8. its based in faerun unsure of region yet. the players will be spreading the word of a deity of their own creation through whatever means they deem appropriate.

I need some bounty hunters to send after them when they inevitably piss some lord off.

As mentioned starting level is 8 so 8 ~12 level/cr is roughly where i want the power on these things.

For the partys level of op? got a bone knight cleric and two unknowns so far.

all suggestions welcome :)

[JBarca]

Even without knowing their builds, have you any idea what sort of OP level to expect at all? Because bounty hunters can range from a few Rangers, Scouts, and Fighters who can track and use bows mildly competently to a few Wizards backed up by a few more Wizards, using Divinations to track, Conjurations to hunt, and everything under the sun to subdue/kill, to everything in between.

Though with the religious theme for which you're evidently going, replacing "Wizard" with "Cleric" should do just as well, I suppose.

The only Bounty Hunter I've ever used to hunt my players was an over-leveled Ranger/Assassin (maybe some Rogue in there as well? It was a while ago) with access to a lot of fun magic items because he was sponsored directly by the government.

[gawwy]

im wanting to stay away from divinations to track as ive never seen any of these players use one ever. Also when they catch the hunter and iterigate him to find out how he found them i dont want to be all like "magic".

so for finding them i would want to use gather information and tracking.

the players op level are (we need a numerical index for this by the way it gets asked all the time, some form of tier list?) at the point where they figure out uber charging is a trap but they havent figured out batman wizards yet. also for this game theyve been told that social skills are important so they shouldn't be fully optimizing for combat. i think one dude is wanting to do a rouge/wizard but im assuming there wont be master spelltheif cheese there. the bone knight will probably be the toughest melee combatant (hes aiming for closest to full cleric casting he can, no DMM: persist in play). the third dude is wanting to play a dimplomancer build. not sure what to expect there tbh but itll be about staying out of combat not being good at it.

mainly a bounty hunter needs 3 things:
a way to find them (preferably non magical),
a theme (this is kinda what i want the most i can build round pretty much anything given a prc or set of mechanic's and a style),
a plan (preferably solid but not flawless).

does that help?

[Val666]

Ubbercharging is funny :v

Want to try something funny? It is a hilarious idea for a Bounty Hunter and can suit infiltration very well.

Chaotic Evil Tibbitt Soulborn 2/ Stoneblessed (Goliath) 3/ Barbarian 1/ Totemist 2/ Warshaper 3/ Totem Rager 9.

Your race is small, and people always think small = weak. You can turn into a tiny cat with +8 to hide OR a Large cat with +6 to strength. Get pounce with Barbarian, use your 3rd level of Stoneblessed to qualify for Mountain Rage. You can also uso the City Brawler barbarian variant to get free 1d4 unarmed damage, Improved Unarmed Strike and Two Weapon Fighting only for unarmeds. Tons of natural attacks. Get Multiattack and Beast Strike. Pump Cobalt Rage for more damage and I don't know what else...

[gawwy]

wont lie ive seen the stoneborn Goliath Barb thing used on halfling before and thought it was neat. using it on a tibbit is inspired.

i might use a cut down version of it like ranger 2(?)/stoneborn 3/barb 1/warshaper 3 for an ecl 8 character to use. maybe use urban ranger acfs?

what feats to use tho

[Val666]

The thing is, Soulborn is used to prevent Str damage, because the Tibbitt cat form have a -6 Str penalty which gets nulified with the second level of Chaotic Evil Soulborn. For feats uhm...Multiattack, Extra Rage may be handy, Cobalt Rage is a pre req, Beast Strike, Improved Natural Attack, Superior Unarmed Damage. The cat form is tiny but when raging you become Large. It's so funny Dx and it also have Scent, which is useful for tracking :v

[Astralia123]

You know bounty hunters can be anything. Any adventurer can be bounty hunters, as well as NPC who work alone (with possibly special PrCs or being special races), so actually, ANY character can be rationalized to be a bounty hunter.

So to be more specific, you need to consider what kind of encounter you wish to throw at your PCs (which may lead to extremely strange NPCs employing really exotic maneuvers) and what story hook you wish to set (which may lead to NPCs with rare or even weird combination of races, classes and background traits).

I once considered to send an octopus human wielding 6 whips, who ambushes the PCs and pouring tons of non-lethal damage with sneak attack in one round... Well, the last half is not that humorous, but just imagine an octopus assassin in a black cloak falling from above...wielding 6 whips.

[gawwy]

octo-rogue no one suspects a thing. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h27rq_RwQMk) i may have built a str based rogue off a anthropomorphic Giant octopus once. twas glorious.

a bit too silly for this campain tho.

was working on a troll crimson scourge with some fire resist for one of them.

[LTwerewolf]

This is one of the few times you'll be able to actually use the justicar class, so take advantage. Bounties typically have a higher reward for alive than dead.