Spore
2015-12-11, 08:24 AM
It's no secret to anyone who knows me that recently indulged media heavily influences my character creation.. When I played The Old Republic, I tried to apply the Jedi mindset to a standarf fantasy setting. When I read dark fairy tales I want to create a Winter Fey character. But I also try to create backstories to make certain classes work, like the D&D 5th edition Warlock which just oozes flavor left and right. Recently I've played Hearthstone, and inside that the mini adventure concerning parody discoverers of the early 20th century. Think Dwarven Indiana Jones reseaching his ancient roots with the Titans, think about an extradimensional thief trying to get highly magical artifacts.
But this is also rekindling my spirits in a build I wanted to do since I started with Pathfinder three years ago. A mundane researcher in a highly magical world, looking for and already having pocketed several ancient artifacts. I've done this with a rogue in Pathfinder, leading to one of the worst thieves/tomb raiders in history. As it turns out building a skill monkey requires a decent portion of rules knowledge. Like - which skills are substituted by UMDing them with wands, which skills are utterly focus of such a build, and how do you play this thing in combat?
In any game I could start off in we would be fairly high level, requiring me to spend a lot of money on weird magical items. But I'd honestly be completely ineffective in combat if I can have some artifact grade items in my pockets. Next to the fact that D&D battles severely lack being gimmick-focussed (to the point where you pull up a chart for the sweet spot on power attacking), I would want to write some severely circumstantial but powerful magical artifacts for my character.
The main question is: Would you as player and/or DM be okay with some very powerful non-combat focussed items?
I'm not thinking about:
- dual wielding Holy Avengers.
- finding spellbooks close to scrolls of Netheril or
- the [insert disgusting body part] of Vecna
I am more thinking about items like:
- the Diamond Scepter of Chomylla - enables Identify, Legend Lore and Tongues and quickened detect magic, and even Maze 1/day (and I would be fine with an encounter not giving XP because you mazed the guardian) or
- the tome of books - giving you access to all books you throw into the extra dimensional storage, with a hefty amount of ancient books inside that require checks to deceipher
or situaitonalitems like:
- the Golembane Scarab, giving you a gigantic edge on fighting ancient guardians because it circumvents DR of any golem.
Basically anything that doesn't affect skill checks or combat in a general way. Items that enable speciaiized uses. One-off items are also great if they are an asset in a fight that you could know of.
I realize that using a Golembane Scarab might make a Golem fight a cake walk so stories like these need the cooperation of the DM who more often than not doesn't want to spoil his encounters. Not even for someone researching the tomb before entering.
But this is also rekindling my spirits in a build I wanted to do since I started with Pathfinder three years ago. A mundane researcher in a highly magical world, looking for and already having pocketed several ancient artifacts. I've done this with a rogue in Pathfinder, leading to one of the worst thieves/tomb raiders in history. As it turns out building a skill monkey requires a decent portion of rules knowledge. Like - which skills are substituted by UMDing them with wands, which skills are utterly focus of such a build, and how do you play this thing in combat?
In any game I could start off in we would be fairly high level, requiring me to spend a lot of money on weird magical items. But I'd honestly be completely ineffective in combat if I can have some artifact grade items in my pockets. Next to the fact that D&D battles severely lack being gimmick-focussed (to the point where you pull up a chart for the sweet spot on power attacking), I would want to write some severely circumstantial but powerful magical artifacts for my character.
The main question is: Would you as player and/or DM be okay with some very powerful non-combat focussed items?
I'm not thinking about:
- dual wielding Holy Avengers.
- finding spellbooks close to scrolls of Netheril or
- the [insert disgusting body part] of Vecna
I am more thinking about items like:
- the Diamond Scepter of Chomylla - enables Identify, Legend Lore and Tongues and quickened detect magic, and even Maze 1/day (and I would be fine with an encounter not giving XP because you mazed the guardian) or
- the tome of books - giving you access to all books you throw into the extra dimensional storage, with a hefty amount of ancient books inside that require checks to deceipher
or situaitonalitems like:
- the Golembane Scarab, giving you a gigantic edge on fighting ancient guardians because it circumvents DR of any golem.
Basically anything that doesn't affect skill checks or combat in a general way. Items that enable speciaiized uses. One-off items are also great if they are an asset in a fight that you could know of.
I realize that using a Golembane Scarab might make a Golem fight a cake walk so stories like these need the cooperation of the DM who more often than not doesn't want to spoil his encounters. Not even for someone researching the tomb before entering.