Detecting danger as T1

[ahenobarbi]

Hello Playgrounders!

I've read a lot about T1 character being able to prepare for chalenges very well but I never did it (even when I played T1 builds I played them more like T3) so please share cool stories of how you learned averted (in-game) danger. Or advice on how to effectively use abilities of T1 character (in a real game, not in TO) to avoid getting into extremly simple traps like an idiot (what I did a lot).

My party had a bad problem with lack of competent reconeissance ("enemy getting a surprise round and managing to shut down at least one member of our party virtually every fight" bad). As I was dissatisfied with my character I decided to solve the problem and built a moderately competent scout (lesser Tiefling Factotum 8/ Mindbender 1/ Warblade 1/ Legacy champion 2 with Mindsight and Darkstalker as important feats).

Sadly my group (yeah, not just DM) hates mundanes and decided to remove distance penalties to listen / spot. This effectively gives -10 to hide / move silently to my character (I notice most things with decent spot with Mindsight, when they are 100ft away, which gives them -10 modifier to spot/listen), which severly inhibits perfomance of the character).

I made my case and do not want to convince the group to reverse the decission, instead I'm going with the flow and I'll build a magic user who [hopefully] will do the same but better and have more usefulnes outside of scouting to the boot. However until now I used few divinations so I need some ideas on how to do it effectively.

The build I plan to use (but I'm not certain, if you can recommend anything that is T1 and can detect danger better than I plan, please do post the suggestion) is:


Grey Elf;
Elven Generalist, Domain Wizard (Divination domain), Spontaneous Divination 5 /
Mindbender 1/
Divine Oracle 3/
Initiate of Sevenfold Veil 3

at the beginning, 4 more levels of Io7V and I'm not certain about remaining levels. I don't have any non-prereq feats planned yet.

Relevant game info:

Stat array is 15/14/13/12/11/10.
Spot & listen do not have penalties for distance.
No flaws.
No LA buyoff.

[JDL]

Step 1: Get Summon Monster IV

Step 2: Cast Summon Monster IV, select Lantern Archon

Step 3: Command your Lantern Archon to Greater Teleport to wherever you intend to go, look around, count the enemies, Greater Teleport back to you and tell you what's there. Bingo, both parties are aware of each other, roll for initiative, no surprise round.

[Renen]

Ddddd-drop the bass divination!

[emeraldstreak]

Ddddd dire tortoise!*



* - admittedly it's more about reaction than pro-action

[Silva Stormrage]

Step 1: Get Summon Monster IV

Step 2: Cast Summon Monster IV, select Lantern Archon

Step 3: Command your Lantern Archon to Greater Teleport to wherever you intend to go, look around, count the enemies, Greater Teleport back to you and tell you what's there. Bingo, both parties are aware of each other, roll for initiative, no surprise round.

Summoned creatures can't teleport.

To answer the question for the OP, I only ever played in two campaigns as a tier 1 fully optimized. One with a Spell to Power Erudite with a power point recharge mechanism. This one was basically me spamming every single divination I could find and learn about 20 times before doing anything. Except for the epic level casters who were "Plot protected" my character generally knew what was going on and could solve pretty much every challenge. I optimized that one too much though in hindsight.

The second time was a group of 4 fully optimized necromancer tier 1's and 2's. It was a solo campaign and I controlled all four though. By the time we reached mid levels the group had enough divinations and spies to essentially pick out a target locate them, teleport and do a brief assault capture the corpses of those slain and then reanimate them as intelligent undead and have them tell us everything. We would simply bunker in our mini underground fortress that we built until we had all the right materials and then proceed to blitz the target. Eventually the DM had to give up on that campaign as he was really running out of ways to reliably threaten my group since every enemy I killed I simply reanimated under my control. :smalltongue:

In most campaigns though tier 1's don't get as much use out of divinations for one reason. They are VERY VERY dm dependent. Some DM's do not like divinations and will have any sort of divinations retrieve useless to near useless information even for basic things.

[Aharon]

Summoned creatures can't teleport.
vinations for one reason. They are VERY VERY dm dependent. Some DM's do not like divinations and will have any sort of divinations retrieve useless to near useless information even for basic things.

If you're not opposed to creating some good in the world, Create Lantern Archon with some way of getting around the cost (for example, concurrent infusion of spellstoring item (Create Lantern Archon)) isn't summoning, but creating it, and gets around the no teleport clause. It was my artificer's preferred mode of travel.

[Troacctid]

Summoned creatures can't teleport.

That's why you get it as a familiar!


It was my artificer's preferred mode of travel.

Uh, still not really an effective means of travel, though, since the Lantern Archon can only teleport itself plus 50 pounds of objects.

[ryu]

That's why you get it as a familiar!



Uh, still not really an effective means of travel, though, since the Lantern Archon can only teleport itself plus 50 pounds of objects.

Ve have... Vays around that. Namely flesh to stone, shrink item, and a bag of holding. Technically also some dispeling effects, but that's just for convenience.

[Aharon]

That's why you get it as a familiar!



Uh, still not really an effective means of travel, though, since the Lantern Archon can only teleport itself plus 50 pounds of objects.

I just knew omitting the fact that he carried my character in a bag of holding would bite me in the ass, but still omitted it out of laziness. :smallbiggrin: