Adventures in character building

[Spore]

Hello friends,

I wanted to create a provocative title pointing out the short comings of some class and feats combinations but I must say that I want to have a good time with this thread and not bash or hurt anyone. That being said most of this forum is about optimization. But I guess you guys have seen lots and lots of dumb "RP choices" of feats, skills and talents. Or non sensical choices whatsoever. Optimized skill and feat choices that have NOTHING to do with the ingame character still count. Please

- stay polite
- don't mention names if you call out any character not yours
- stay light hearted and jokingly and don't start insulting the players who made the choices (I KNOW IT'S HARD!)

I'll begin:

My first rogue and first "serious" Pathfinder/3.5 Character ever was built something like this. No strength because I learned from World of Warcraft rogues that they don't need Strength (oh how wrong I was!), maximum Dexterity possible (18+2!) and lots of Con because melee. I picked Weapon Finesse on 2 (Rogue talent) and yet miraculously never hit anything besides the Otyugh we fought on 1st level. And I mean never. I never wanted to hide because of the new flanking mechanic (which rarely worked because I always seemed to miss by 1-4) and most of the time there were enough enemies for us not able to flank all of them. I then further reduced my mobility by goind dual wield.

By 7th level this character was a mess. He had no social skills, always missed trap DCs, when stealthed was always seen by 1-2 characters that are not goons, got constantly beat up in fights (stopped counting at 12 times below 0 HP) and when he hit someone he wasn't in flanking position and did a wopping 1d6+1 damage (dual wielding penalties plus 3/4 BAB ftw!). The character was the definition of near-miss.

His highlights were when he - how does Belkar put it - made a lot of skill checks to steal a magical bow and then on his escape TRIPS OVER THE OWNER'S SON severely injuring (but I guess that was the DM pissed that I rob the good guys). At another time he stole a merchant's slavery contracts right out of his pockets. Which surely isn't a lot of highlights for a campaign of 1,5 years.

We have a dwarven fighter that isn't really into roleplaying. The player just wants to spend time with her friends and thusly joined in with her not-so-great fighter. Because let's be honest, even in our low OP group of T4's fighters smell. Her fighting capability is formidable and the DM insists on slowing our leveling progress down on 7th level because it helps the fighter contribute more (I maybe should tell him about e6, huh? if that works with PF that is, because I would be happier about e7. you get the feat naturally and my alchemist gets 3rd level extracts, but I digress).

Her schtick is eating, all day, a lot. Cue 7 ranks in Climb plus Strength. Making her the best climber in the group, hands down, spawning the mental image of a fat dwarf climbing up and down trees with one hand because the other one is filled with a chicken drum stick. Now she puts her other valuable skill points into - you guessed - Profession (Cook). She even spent 1.000 GP to create a homebrew version of that feeding spoon. A bag that provides varied and tasty food 3/day.

And while the dwarf is the best climber in the group she is usually the last one to reach an enemy to get into melee. Even with the boots of striding my character basically told our pet devil to kill someone for because we need them for our dwarf. Did I mention we have a Paladin and are mostly good? I am intrigued by her feat choice on 9th level. Just because nothing she does could make her contribute more (and the character is too young for Breadth of Experience) she might go for Skill Focus (Cooking) or something.

Yet again, a first character. Started up as a rogue assassinating people for the glory of the Empire. Got persuaded by BBEG to leave the Empire and help the enemies of the Empire. As with all Rogue snipers, sticking to cold RAW makes the first hit (from a 30 feet range no less) be the dangerous sneak attack while the other shots being ticklish.

So he decided to go for Arcane Archer. Which in and of itself isn't such a bad idea. Reaching BAB of 6 with rogue of all classes however is very hard. So he dipped into Wizard on 10th level and has two level of Arcane Archer now. The terrible transition will mend soonish (well, if you call 16th level soon) but right now he is like a a terrible ranged bard. His skills suffer from the transition (and his spread, he basically can roll on EVERYTHING and will do so even if it is pointless), his BAB suffers from being 3/4 into two dead levels. His saves are abyssmal (Con 10, Wis 10, so basically unbeatable Reflex, poor everything else) and blowing dandelion seeds into his general direction could make him topple over from allergies.

It's a shame he refuses the rebuild so heavily: the DM allowed it, and I have a build in mind with Urban Ranger 6/Transmutation Wizard 1/Arcane Archer 5 giving him good Reflex, and decent Fort and Will, BAB of +11, taking a small hit to his skills and streamlining his feats in order to support the feat heavy archery. Not to mention upping his spellcasting from CL 2 to CL 4 almost doubling his spell potential.

So what are your poor choices - or even just weird ones that worked out in the end - in character building that you did or witnessed?

[bean illus]

I built a human cleric AoO tripper once, and played it with my 20 yr old son DMing and my 13 year old playing a barbarian. The DMPC was a scout with DPR and was hitting everything for session after session, but all my tripper could do was trip. He would trip but miss the free attack, over and over. He was bada55 but only hit the trip. 8 humanoids at a time laying on the ground, and no damage. lol

[erok0809]

My first character (before I revised him after being on these boards and learning what competent character building is) was a blaster sorcerer. Focused on fire. With basically only fire spells and a dagger, without even a ranged weapon. Had I not made him a bit more competent before he hit like level 4, he would have run into something immune to fire and been reduced to the worst possible melee chassis ever, or sitting back and plinking them with ray of frost (yay cantrips!). Needless to say, I like the new character better, even if he is still mainly a blaster who likes fire a bit too much. He can at least do stuff that isn't that now though.

[Spore]

My first character (before I revised him after being on these boards and learning what competent character building is) was a blaster sorcerer. Focused on fire.

This reminds of our group's gnome sorcerer. Also a pyromaniac and focussed on damaging fire spells. The DM built the encounters that he always could contribute but then he discovered spell resistance (as well as high touch AC and good Reflex saves). Not wanting to water down his fire blaster concept he went for utility spells. Like "Create Pit".

Then we fought a toned down sorcerer lich. What was the first thing he did? He created a pit under the LEVITATING lich. He then dispelled all flight spells and yelled at me because instead of pushing him into a "hungry pit" (where he can easily buff up while taking a bit of damage) I kept the enemy spellcaster in a grapple.

For his twelfth level he dipped into oracle (basically PF's divine sorcerer) due to unknown reasons. As this class bears a curse he chose "lame" which slows his land speed by another 5 feet. Fluffwise he just "wanted to try what happens if he sticks one leg into a lava pit". Why did he dip and slows his entire casting progression down basically switching powerful 6th level spells for 1st level cleric spells: "So he doesn't have to roll on CLW wands anymore."

[Krazzman]

Uhhh it's that sorta thread? Awesome:


First DnD 3.5 game ever. Thought Elven might be cool (after that game I have a serious dislike for elven stuff that still prevails... I don't like playing anything pure elven... in DnD)
Went Rogue (we started level 6) and had whooping feats like: Weapon Focus: Short sword (always fought with either a bow or Longsword), Had no weapon finesse, had some skill feats...
We reached level 11 or so... after 2 other guys joined.

But the highlight of the character were: Not realizing how Sneak Attack worked -> not really dealing any damage.
Sneaking and scouting, looking through a door and seeing a monster, running back to the party and telling them that... getting annoyed responses.
The Wizard had a rough guide on what scream meant what sort of encounter: long scream equals one big monster, multiple screams: group.
Rolling a one on every first Move Silently check. (Could reroll because it was obviously loud and the party said it...)
There were other fails in his build but... I don't have his sheet anymore... or it is in one of the boxes that are still unopened from moving 2 years ago.