Need help rounding out my party

[Mongobear]

The group that I play in recently went through some attendance and member changes, and it has left us with only 3 near 100% attendance members, and 2 iffy attendance that at best are there 50% of the time. As a fix of pretty much being a man down all the time, the DM is allowing us to reroll/relevel/rebuild our current characters as needed to make ourselves more functional and balanced of a party for his campaign.

The main focus of the world so far is Dragons have been re-awakening all over the continent and just laying waste to mortal lands, while we are the only line of defense in their way. It looks like that may change soon, since were currently holed up in the capital city with what remains of the army, about to be sieged by the main horde as well as land forces ofhalf-dragon and mutated abominations that didnt succeed at hybridizations. Kind of in a "this is the big battle for humanity" feel, but I cant be certain if thats actually the plan.

Right now, our characters are as follows:

Core 3 members

Elf Rogue 12

Went with Finesse/Two-Weapon Fighting, using dual Swords of Subtlety when in position, and is our primary damage source in long drawn out fights. The whole adventure up to this point has been us enabling Sneak Attacks while she blows something up for 100+ damage per full attack turn. Highly unlikely that she will reroll, but talk was made about maybe rebuilding into something like Tempest or another partially Martial class to build up her HP and BAB to make combat safer.

Elf Ranger 6/Darkwood Stalker 5(refluffed that he is a dragon hunter instead of Orcs, but functionally the same)
Went Archery build to keep away from close combat because he has horrible HP and Con (a 10 i think, and less total hp than the rogue above). Manages to keep up with damage if/when he manages to roll well, but the Natural Armor of the bigger dragons is quickly outscaling our BAB growth.

Human Fighter 2/Barbarian 4/Frenzied Berserker 5 (My character)
Went with standard 2-Handed + Power Attack and Ubercharger stuff, but I can barely touch the dragons even when raging/frenzying because of pretty low ball equipment and because I cant use Power Attack much due to the crazy Natural Armor ACs were up against, so Often, I am just a meat shield soaking attacks until the rogue gets into position and blows stuff up.

The Iffy 2

Human Cleric 11
Went Healing + Magic domain, and has pretty much entirely been prepping Buffs and Heals. Usually sits in the back and spaces out until someone needs healing. Pretty much shows up just to hang out, and occasionally try to RP.

Human Wizard (Necromancer) 11
Spec'd Necro and gave up Evo and Illusion. But he is actually pretty effective if/when he shows up, through debuffs and other Save-or-X stuff that he does have. His only issue is attendance, and the high-ish Will saves of dragons.


Current Plans for Solution

I have already volunteered to reroll into something more straightforward at dealing with Dragons other than fishing for Sneak Attacks, was debating a Blaster Sorc/Wizard or maybe a Mystic Theurge build that gives us a blaster arcane, and secondary Healer/Support on the divine side, and just try and use as many ranged touch or Reflex save based spells as possible, since True Dragons suck against both generally.

My other option was to reroll into a Battle Cleric for a primary melee so I am beefier against dragons, and have access to healing or partial buffs as needed. Idea is pretty much extending/persisting Divine Power/Righteous Might and similar stuff, then using my massive Strength to just Power Attack stuff away, but I don't see this functioning too much better than my current berserker other than having spells as a back-up.


The player with the Ranger also volunteered to reroll into a better meat shield so that I could make the support/heal monkey, or at least a ranged blaster so that we have something more functional at dealing with flying opponents, but were just unsure what to even do at this point because of attendance disparity.


Any suggestions from the masses? We generally try and keep stuff as Core-only as possible, but the DM generally is ok with One non-core books, usually a Complete X supplement or PHB2, just to keep things from getting psycho with having to pull out a library every time we level. Also, no exotic races, were limited to PHB/MM1 versions of stuff only, with no LA allowed.

[Morbis Meh]

If you are allowed Core+1 book I recommend the Tome of Battle: Book of 9 swords (ToB) for the meatshield, warblade is a fantastic damage dealer and is quite beefy with a d12 hd and defensive maneuvers.

As for you... Blaster characters are all well and good but dragons like you said have high saves and generally have access to spell resistance. IF you want to play an Arcane caster look no further than a conjurer wizard, battlefield control is massively important in 3.5 and conjuration has all of the goodies you could ever want, not to mention it has spells that have no saves and can completely bypass SR (check out the orb line of spells from spell compendium if you want to do some blasting)

CoDzilla is also a viable strategy but be warned you will be much more potent that the other players so be careful with that one

As for your rogue well a sword sage is a lovely class from ToB that can grant all sorts of useful abilities (gain dex to damage anyone?) and beefs up the character's defense (d8 hd, gain wisdom to AC, defensive maneuvers etc etc)

[(Un)Inspired]

If you're trying to decide whether you'd like to play a blaster, healer or a primary melee; and you're stuck in core, you'd be hard pressed to find a better choice than a Druid.

A Druid can blast, heal and ruin in melee all in a single build. Plus you would get an animal companion to help out as another chunk of meat on the field.

[Mongobear]

Not 100% sure if the ToB classes would be a good fit, especially for the rogue player. The group only until recently stuck with Core only, and only uses other books when someone brings it up. Often, stuff more complex than the basics in the PHB is viewed as OP or even as far as munchkin/power gaming because theyve all been very sheltered from the rest of 3.5.

The Ranger player and I are the only members of the group experienced enough to know what stuff is possible in the confines of complex builds/optimization, and when i showed/brought up the class tier list, none of them believed it because "a fighter would just one shot the wizard with his greatsword" and they couldnt even grasp the idea of quadratic scaling.

Id go so far as to say that making a melee character that dips 4 levels of Fighter for extra feats and Focus/Specialization is sometimes called power gaming in this group, and multiclassing outside of a prestige class is viewed similarly.

Not that I actually view these opinions as a bad thing, its just sometimes a certain level of "culture shock" whenever I come back to the group from the medium/high-op groups in my town, and see people making Fighters and Evokers as the power house builds of the group. Its just I generally dont expect someone besides me or the guy with the current ranger to attempt something out of the ordinary.


Also, if I were to go for a Blaster build, it would be mostly via Rays and other Touch Attacks, as well as stuff that goes for Reflex saves, with a Dragon pretty much doesnt even have worth mentioning, so itd be entirely Spell Resistance Id be rolling against. And what is a CoDzilla build? Ive seen it mentioned often, but have never seen a write up of it.

[yellowrocket]

Beer, jerky, cheese, and pizza. That'll make your party rounder.

[ComaVision]

It seems you made an 'ubercharger' without the Shock Trooper feat? It's a pretty important part of the build..

[Morbis Meh]

Not 100% sure if the ToB classes would be a good fit, especially for the rogue player. The group only until recently stuck with Core only, and only uses other books when someone brings it up. Often, stuff more complex than the basics in the PHB is viewed as OP or even as far as munchkin/power gaming because theyve all been very sheltered from the rest of 3.5.

Fair enough it is not for everyone but I personally love that book to death!

The Ranger player and I are the only members of the group experienced enough to know what stuff is possible in the confines of complex builds/optimization, and when i showed/brought up the class tier list, none of them believed it because "a fighter would just one shot the wizard with his greatsword" and they couldnt even grasp the idea of quadratic scaling.

...Yeah they are exceptionally sheltered to 3.5 and it feels like if you made a vanilla wizard versus a vanilla fight and beat the everlasting crap out of the fighter you would be automatically called a power gaming cheater

Id go so far as to say that making a melee character that dips 4 levels of Fighter for extra feats and Focus/Specialization is sometimes called power gaming in this group, and multiclassing outside of a prestige class is viewed similarly.

Ouch they should really be playing Pathfinder because unlike 3.5 it rewards you with staying in one class where 3.5 it kind of cripples you in a sense since class design is pretty varied.

Not that I actually view these opinions as a bad thing, its just sometimes a certain level of "culture shock" whenever I come back to the group from the medium/high-op groups in my town, and see people making Fighters and Evokers as the power house builds of the group. Its just I generally dont expect someone besides me or the guy with the current ranger to attempt something out of the ordinary.


Also, if I were to go for a Blaster build, it would be mostly via Rays and other Touch Attacks, as well as stuff that goes for Reflex saves, with a Dragon pretty much doesnt even have worth mentioning, so itd be entirely Spell Resistance Id be rolling against. And what is a CoDzilla build? Ive seen it mentioned often, but have never seen a write up of it.

CoDzilla is a cleric or druid that focuses on powering Divine Metamagic (a feat in complete divine) to get free persistent spells on themselves by expending turn undead attempts

[Mongobear]

...Yeah they are exceptionally sheltered to 3.5 and it feels like if you made a vanilla wizard versus a vanilla fight and beat the everlasting crap out of the fighter you would be automatically called a power gaming cheater.


This has actually happened. In our last party for a different campaign group, someone made a Diviner Wizard that gave up Evocation. The entire group laughed at him because "youre not going to do anything in a fight, besides ID the loot the rest of us find for you."

But after about 3 weeks wrorht of sessions with him applying stuff like Glitterdust, Web, Solid Fog, etc, and using Feeblemind or Deep Slumber to "save-or-lose" the encounters, everyone started crying OP, and saying he was meta-gaming a 100% PHB only build.



Ouch they should really be playing Pathfinder because unlike 3.5 it rewards you with staying in one class where 3.5 it kind of cripples you in a sense since class design is pretty varied.


We have discussed this, but no one owns the books, or a laptop to have at the table to look up stuff mid-session, and they were generally indifferent to a systems change, despite the 95% similarity.

[Mongobear]

Also, mechanically speaking, in this low powered of a group, would doing something like Wiz 3/Cleric 3/Mystic Theurge 5, or if i can convince him to allow it, Wiz 3/Arch 3/MT 5, work and function to be a good dual role filler? I could take Healing, Buffs, and Control spells from both sides to maintain utility.

Or would specializing into a single path, and then just picking up UMD for wands/staves of healing for afterwards my best option?

[bean illus]

Sounds like anything you build will be overpowered for your group, now that you're hip to the dragon thing. Play what you want for the fun of RP.

Druid is more paperwork. Cleric with extend is probably enough. Use your one book to add blasting.

Support everybody else, and they might not call you optimized.

[Lerondiel]

Also, mechanically speaking, in this low powered of a group, would doing something like Wiz 3/Cleric 3/Mystic Theurge 5, or if i can convince him to allow it, Wiz 3/Arch 3/MT 5, work and function to be a good dual role filler? I could take Healing, Buffs, and Control spells from both sides to maintain utility.

Or would specializing into a single path, and then just picking up UMD for wands/staves of healing for afterwards my best option?

That's tough losing your only two casters to poor attendance.

In a perfect world one of you would take druid, another cleric and the other wizard. Complete Divine would be your Core+1 for the Divine Metamagic cheese.


But reading their opinions and experience it sounds they're staying non-casters.

That really puts the entire workload on you, so if you're committed to it Mystic Theurge idea makes a lot of sense. In that scenario Spell Compendium is your essential Core+1.
Forgive me if you're already well acquainted with the spells in it:

Fire Shield, Mass becomes a critical spell, protecting everyone from fire/cold breaths while doing the opposite energy type damage to the dragon every time one of it's multiple attacks hits. If it doesnt get dispelled, it almost single-handedly cripples lower level red and white dragons.

If one of your hitters can be talked into wielding something like a Scythe with its x4 critical you cast Dolorous Blow on it and every 19 or 20 rolled is automatically x4 damage (if a 19 isnt a hit you shouldnt be there lol)

On the cleric side you need Close Wounds to stop PC death.
Extend Spell feat helps all your buffs and makes the Vigor spells after combat more effective than Cure spells. (Extended Mass Lesser Vigor will cost you a 4th level slot but at your proposed level will heal up to four PCs 36 HP each over 36 rounds.)


But as you mentioned, the peak of Mystic Theurge is what you can buff on yourself. By the time you hit Wiz3/Clr3/MT6 you can stand deep in the battlements waiting to see a dragon engage then (extend) polymorph yourself into something like a troll, then righteous might, divine power, righteous wrath of the faithful, haste, recitation, etc etc then dimension door to wherever it is and tear it apart as a huge troll with power attacking Wraithstrikes (spell) with strength 37, +19 to hit vs dragon touch AC, doing 3d6+28 claws, +bite, rend etc.

That's far from the best you can do but of course your DM will beat you over the head with a DMG for it if Deep Slumber is too powerful :)

[bean illus]

MT SUCKS at low level. Your BAB suffers greatly. But at higher levels you can spam buffs all day.

You will, of course, need to do something about ASF but, that's not that hard. I think the easiest thing is Twilight mithril chain shirt.

[marphod]

On the cleric side you need Close Wounds to stop PC death.
Extend Spell feat helps all your buffs and makes the Vigor spells after combat more effective than Cure spells.

Extend is really optional here. Vigor is already ridiculously better than Cure spells.

Vigor, Lessor heals 11 points of damage at level 1, and 15 at 5+. Cure Light Wounds does 5.5 (Max 9) at level one and 9.5 (max 13) at level 5+.

Vigor does 30 at level 5 to 50 at 15. Cure Serious Wounds does an average of 18.5 at 5 (Max 29) to 28.5 at 15 (Max 39).

Vigor, Mass, Lessor heals 15 HP per creature (level 5) to 25 (level 15). On the other hand, it is a 3rd level spell (compared to Mass Cure Light at 5th)

Vigorous Circle (which could be more suggestively named, but not by much) heals 33 HP per creature (at 11th) to 90 (at 20th). Where Mass Cure Moderate does 20 at 11th, and 29 at 20th.

(Vigor, Greater does fall behind Heal. It heals 76hp at Level 9, to 120 at 20th. Not sure why you would ever use it, actually, given heal also has the status removals)

[Lerondiel]

Extend is really optional here. Vigor is already ridiculously better than Cure spells.

Vigor, Lessor heals 11 points of damage at level 1, and 15 at 5+. Cure Light Wounds does 5.5 (Max 9) at level one and 9.5 (max 13) at level 5+.

Vigor does 30 at level 5 to 50 at 15. Cure Serious Wounds does an average of 18.5 at 5 (Max 29) to 28.5 at 15 (Max 39).

Vigor, Mass, Lessor heals 15 HP per creature (level 5) to 25 (level 15). On the other hand, it is a 3rd level spell (compared to Mass Cure Light at 5th)

Vigorous Circle (which could be more suggestively named, but not by much) heals 33 HP per creature (at 11th) to 90 (at 20th). Where Mass Cure Moderate does 20 at 11th, and 29 at 20th.

(Vigor, Greater does fall behind Heal. It heals 76hp at Level 9, to 120 at 20th. Not sure why you would ever use it, actually, given heal also has the status removals)

Optional? What's not awesome about doubling the amount of healing for +1 spell level? The max limit on duration due to CL is before applying the feat.

[charcoalninja]

I highly recommend Mystic Theurge. Pop a Craft Wonderous Item feat on your guy and you're the world's best support class making any item your party needs. Scribe scroll plus all of the spells is another perk.

With ALL of the other casters being flakey MT is going to rock socks and you definitely have the system expertise to make it shine.

[marphod]

My point is that the Vigor series is better than the Cure series, whether you extend them or not.

[Sagetim]

Now...I think we're running into a bit of a clash of expectations here. Dragons are not something that a low optimization party is going to have even a decent time facing. Every dragon is going to give them a very hard time. Dragons have high armor class, a bunch of hp, elemental immunities, flight and breath weapons. If you have to fight a dragon in an open field, they can breath weapon you to death from outside most class' range using overhead sweeps.

There is a lot of good advice for Mystic Theruge here, and you don't have to worry about the low level issue for Mystic Theruge because you're starting at level 12. That's great. Level 12 is awesome.

But while we're here in level 12 land, let's look at some other potential options still open to us from even just the completes books.

Like warlock. At level 12 warlock can pick up a blast that skips past SR and deals acid damage. Sure, most dragons aren't weak to acid damage, but only, what...black and maybe green dragons are immune to acid? I don't think you're fighting metallics either. So that means that you have at least one option for dealing consistent damage at up to 250ft range (eldritch spear, mmmm) that ignores sr and targets a dragon's relatively low touch ac. Warlock can also pick up walk unseen to go invisible basically at will. And there's also an invocation for flying. So while the dragon can strafe the rest of the party to death with breath attacks, the warlock can drop a blast, fly a bit, go invisible, fly off in another direction, drop a new blast. By playing keep away, they can try and kite the dragon to death. Of course, if they get taken down too low, they can just scamper off while invisible. I was looking over dragons recently, and if I recall right, most of them don't have blindsense, and those that do don't have it at particularly long ranges.

It's probably not as effective as a mystic theruge build can be, but it's an option to consider. Also on the table would be some of the warlock prestige classes, like eldritch disciple if you still wanted cleric spells and to have a theruge type build. That would potentially open up healing blast as an option as well. And given that you're having to fight off not only armies but dragons and **** to protect what may be the last bastion of civilization on your world...I think it would be forgivable to have.

The DM is literally sending armies of mutated bullcrap and DRAGONS at you. The rogue may need to pick up leadership for a cohort to provide them flanks with. And that's okay. Because this campaign is an end of the world scenario.