Decent Horsemen Of The Apocalypse Classes?

[Afgncaap5]

So... my players just did something that they thought was good, but will gradually release four powerful fey beings known as the Merry Horsemen, harbingers of The Wild Hunt. I wasn't expecting my players to do this, and not so soon. The Harbingers are are known as near-opposites to the human interpretation of what they are ("Feast" is the harbinger of Famine for humans, and the one who celebrates the joys of "Life" brings much Death to mortals). So... would you have good class suggestions for low-powered Horsemen? I see them as being level 10-ish in their current weakened forms (CR 12-ish each once I apply a custom True-Fey template.) I'm liking some Dragon Magic for War/Merriment, but not sure. Thoughts?

[DMVerdandi]

Merriment
Battle Sorcerer 7/Abjurant Champion 3
(take dragon spells and draconic aura feat)

Feast
Cleric 7/Divine Disciple 3 (Fae/Community. Take Spontaneous domain casting for fae domain)

Life
Druid 10

Freedom (Inverse of conquest)
Sha'ir 10

(Chose sha'ir because It gains freedom and flexibility By imprisoning and binding it's Gen spirit into servitude.Also chose it because it is a flavorful alternative to wiz/sorc that still kicks major butt. Feel free to give it all of the wizard spells. )

[Afgncaap5]

Hmm... I suppose from a fey perspective, Conquest/Merriment against humans might be seen as a form of pestilence by humans. Not an exact match, but in some ways not being exact makes it better. Thanks!

[Kymme]

Wouldn't the opposite of War be Peace? :smalltongue: That said, DMVerdandi's builds are all pretty good.

[Seto]

Hmm... I suppose from a fey perspective, Conquest/Merriment against humans might be seen as a form of pestilence by humans. Not an exact match, but in some ways not being exact makes it better. Thanks!

That's because under most interpretations, the Horsemen are War, Famine, Death and Conquest, not Pestilence. But I find Pestilence more flavorful myself. And indeed, from a Fey point of view, Pestilence would probably be Health manifested as the expansion of a calamity. Close enough to Conquest.

[Telonius]

Here's how I'd build them:

War/Merriment: Bard/Crusader multiclass
Famine/Feast: Druid into Blighter
Pestilence/Health: Monk into Cancer Mage
Death/Life: Incarnate into Necrocarnate

The idea is that each one takes a class that could actually embody the "good" aspect of the harbinger, but turns it on its head to get to the "bad" aspect.

(I've always thought that Pestilence made more sense than Conquest; Conquest and War would be kind of redundant).

[Afgncaap5]

Ah, thanks for the update on Conquest. Just shows that I should always do more research.

It also occurs to me that if I take a secondary approach, the four horsemen could be introduced as a sort of "Live to be Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise" sort of thing. Something like "Here's to a Life of Feast, Festivity and Fortitude!" but said more poetically.

[yellowrocket]

I'm surprised no one else suggested they all be clerics. I'm mean let's face it we've shown clerics can be any class.

On the other hand you could use sorcerers v with spells chosen from what ever list you want because of raw they can have any spell of appropriate level.

[Afgncaap5]

I'm surprised no one else suggested they all be clerics. I'm mean let's face it we've shown clerics can be any class.

On the other hand you could use sorcerers v with spells chosen from what ever list you want because of raw they can have any spell of appropriate level.

"Sorcerers with any spell" is basically the conceptual grounding I have, adding or taking things away as needed (War, for instance, will be proficient with any weapon and likely have Initiator levels worked in somewhere, if I go with Pestilence instead of Conquest it'll definitely have poison use as a feature, etc.) RAW isn't really a concern on my side of things. I'm basically just using class levels as a quick and dirty monster homebrew blueprint since they won't be at their "full power" yet (and likely won't be until much later in the story.)