Help me pick a class!

[AshfireMage]

Today's session brought unexpected player death on my part (brought on by a combo of bad luck and bad decisions on everyone's part- a couple failed saves, not healing up quite as soon as we should have, a fireball in an enclosed space, and having the sorcerer lead the party because she was the only one with Darkvision and nobody else thought to buy torches for the expedition into the Underdark :P).

Sum total is, I need a new character, at least for the moment. The DM and I agreed that while it's possible for the sorcerer to be revived once the party gets back to town, it'll be several sessions minimum before that could happen. So I'm rolling up a new character that I'll play until they can get back to civilization, at which point we can figure out if they're going to try to revive my old character or keep going with the new one.

The points I've got so far:


The character is a female Drow aristocrat, probably Neutral Evil, who joins the party to deal with a vendetta against another aristocrat (who the party has encountered before). She's sophisticated and arrogant, but knows how to work with others to get what she wants.
I would like to remain an offensive caster, as it's a role I enjoy and it's something lacking from the rest of the party, which consists of a Rogue, Factotum, Crusader, and Urban Druid
At the point, I'm considering Warlock, Shadowcaster, and War Mage, in approximately that order but don't have a firm choice in mind and would be open to other suggestions as well. I would like to retain the "darker" feel the listed classes have, and I like spontainous casters but am not tied to them.
This isn't a campaign where optimization is essential, but it's also not a walk in the park, either, so while I'm not nessessarily concerned with finding the best possible class, I also don't want something that sucks compleately. Any hints as to good builds for the chosen class would be appriciated as well.
I'll be coming in at 5th level, and the Drow racial adjustment can be applied or not. I can either take the levels of Drow to gain their spell-like abilites, resistances, etc., or I can basically play a differently flavored elf with no LA. I'm leaning toward the latter, but again, am open to suggestions.




Thanks for the help!

[nintendoh]

High status female drow are clerics. Scary clerics too. Males tend to go arcane. Try a favored soul of Lolth. That would add interesting back story and give you a nice gishy full caster while keeping the evil feel. Lolth is a bad b@i(!.

[tedcahill2]

Are you allowed to use original material? My rework of the dragonfire adept would fit your theme well.

Take a look at my sig if you'd like.

[RocksInMyDryer]

My choice would be Warlock. Eldritch Blast and Flight alone make for fun times.

[Long_shanks]

As was mentioned before, noble females tend to gravitate towards divine. But the classes you want are not. Why not Zoidberg (both)?
Eldritch disciple (warlock/cleric, the split would be your call, depending on the feel you want to give to the character) is a very solid PrC that would do both. I played one once (as a drow noble as a matter of fact; hideous blow on snake whips, even if not that powerful, is just plain awesome and fluff).

[Particle_Man]

Maybe spam the Demonic Heritage feats from Complete Mage? That gives you some spell like abilities so you can focus on being an LA 0 character. Then I personally would go with Warlock (I think there are some drow flavoured invocations in the drow book).

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

No LA, Cloistered Cleric (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#clericVariantCloistere dCleric) of Lolth 5

Knowledge, Spider, and Trickery domains.

Max ranks in Bluff, Disguise, Hide, Kn: Religion, Kn: Dungeoneering, and whatever else you think you'll need.

Evil Devotion (CC), Fiery Burst (CM), and keep Darkfire (SC) prepared so you can spam your 3d6 fire aoe.

With the Spider domain you can say you used the rebuke/command ability to take control of a medium monstrous spider, a small monstrous spider, and either a spider swarm or another medium monstrous spider. You may just want to go with two spider swarms and a small monstrous spider, considering...

Say you used your rebuke undead ability to take control of two Flind (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20040912b&page=3) skeletons and one 1 HD skeleton (high dex with a bow). The flind skeletons should be equipped the same as they were in life, and they should always be at your character's sides protecting her. Say they were created in the area of a Desecrate spell with an evil altar present to have +2 hp per HD. Make all of them Nimble Skeletons if possible, from Libris Mortis p162 (+4 Dex, climb speed equal to land speed).

[Metahuman1]

Take Warlock, and dip 1 level of Drow Fighter sub level (Consider combining with thug fighter variant.). Max Dex. Take Learn Martial Maneuver: any shadow hand maneuver that doesn't have prerequisites, and learn martial stance: Child of Shadows Stance.

As the DM if, as a noble Drow, it would be acceptable for you to have successfully spent 1 year prior to joining the party training on a sparring dummy of the master.

Take the feat Darkstalker form Lord of Madness ASAP.

If LA buyoff is a thing, consider keeping the LA and being rid of it that way. Otherwise, don't take the LA.


You now have a Drow that can hide were it is giving itself partial concealment in the process, and fire off it's Eldritch Blasts on flat footed targets, adding Dex mod damage to them. And since there always flat footed ranged touch attacks, it should be easy to hit even if the party are in melee.

[AshfireMage]

Wow, this section of the forums moves fast!

@Nintendoh- I am aware that divine casters are more common, but straight-up Cleric of Lolth isn't really where I want to go with this character for story/personal preference reasons. Favored Soul looks interesting, I'll add it to the list of maybes.

@TedCahill2- I haven't checked with the DM, but based on past campaigns he's run, homebrew is allowed on a case-by-case basis, and he's fairly generous with it. The main concern I have is with the high emphasis on burst/AoE stuff, since we have a lot of fairly squishy melee people (the entire party except my sorcerer has been known to dive into the fray on not-infrequent occasions) and not as much healing capacity as we otherwise might.

@Long_shanks- Now that is interesting. And since I'd be starting at 5th level, there's a decent chance I might be able to get into the prestige class before the campaign ends (DM is likely moving in May)

@ParticleMan- That's a great idea! I'll make sure to check both the feats and the invocations out :)

@Metahuman1- Hmmm... also a possibility, and sounds like a good one, but doesn't really have the "feel" I want for this character. I'll keep it in mind for a future character, though, as I can see several other concepts it would work great with.


What I'm getting/deciding is that Warlock is the direction I'm most likely going, possibly with some cleric in there as well to get the Eldritch Disciple prestige class. If that's the case, I will likely look at a Cloistered Cleric, although I'm not sure how helpful the advantages will be compared to a standard Cleric of Lolth. I will not be utilizing the LA features, but might look into some feats to get similar effects.

Thank you so much for the suggestions! Now to hammer some stuff out with my DM. I'd still love to do a shadowcaster at some point, but I'll probably save it for another campaign at some point.

[Stealth Marmot]

Can't go wrong with a transmuter wizard. You can beef up your party (Haste is AMAZING at your level), and still have space left over for a scorching ray or two.

[flappeercraft]

A Duskblade could be an interesting option but if not then I would go with Warlock.

[tedcahill2]

@TedCahill2- I haven't checked with the DM, but based on past campaigns he's run, homebrew is allowed on a case-by-case basis, and he's fairly generous with it. The main concern I have is with the high emphasis on burst/AoE stuff, since we have a lot of fairly squishy melee people (the entire party except my sorcerer has been known to dive into the fray on not-infrequent occasions) and not as much healing capacity as we otherwise might.


My sorcerer, and the dragon fire adept I based it on, has an invocation available at level one that would make your entire party immune to your blast damage.