Foxydono
2017-09-19, 10:14 AM
First off, I was thinking about placing this question in either Zman's E10 variant thread http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521922-Zman-s-5e-Tweaks-E10-Variant-V1-0 or my own thread about a gritty low magic realism campaign http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?536489-gritty-realism-low-magic-rules-for-5e, but I didn't wanted to pollute Zman's thread and my thread was about something totally different, so I decided to make a new one instead.
Secondly, I want to give a bit of background regarding both the rules and the campaign itself, because we are not playing by the standard d&d 5e rules. I'll try not to get into much detail, but if you are interested you can check out the above mentioned thread for a detailed version of the campaign and the rules we use for character creation, progression and multiclassing. As for the short version, the campaign is deadly, very deadly. There is little healing, no spells of 5th level or higher, healing and healing pots are rare and hit point regeneration can take a week easily. As for the rules regarding level progression and multiclassing we use the Zman's E10 variant rules. You can achieve 10th level maximum, but you dip into another class by using feats.
Thirdly, my character. We begin at third level and I rolled randomly for both the background, (sub)race and class. Then we used a point buy to allocate stats. This gave me a deep gnome ranger (Rocky), who has a city watchmen background. As for the stats: STR 8, DEX 16, CON 13, INT 16, WIS 13, CHA 9. His history (in short) is that he began his adventuring life after the failed Resurrection of Tiamat. He first ventured outside to discover the wonders of the world, but ran out of money quickly. Since most cities were destroyed getting a job as a city watchmen was easy. He worked in Waterdeep for two years and was recruited by a (mad)wizard named Mordenkainen to be one of his personal bodyguards. He offered a fair coin so Rocky accepted. This wizard once tried to kill Stradh, but failed and got his spellbook and staff stolen and since become very paranoia and mad. This wizard traveled around a lot to strange placed (like the abyss and the celestial plane for reasons unknown) and in my spare time I was able learn rare languages such as abyssal, draconic and celestial (I rolled for this randomly as well). Mordenkainen become even more mad and I feared for my life but was afraid to quit the job, but then Storm Silverhand and Elminster came to try and cure his madness and they took over and so Rocky was free to start his adventure.
As a deep gnome ranger, I had to pick beast master as my archtype. Using the UA variant BM, as my pet I chose Grumpy, a Giant Wolf Spider (has been approved by the DM). For my spells I chose Hunters Mark, Longstrider and Absorb Elements. Although the idea of two lances does amuse me, I rather play it save and shoot people from a far. We have a Firbolg forge cleric who's willing to tank and a Goliath bard (also rolled randomly. A fourth character will join, but he has yet to roll a character. For my skills I took insight, investigation, athletics, stealth and survival. As for my feat I took crossbow expert. That's about all the relevant information I think.
Lastly my question, if I take feats to multiclass, what would be wise? Keep in mind that you have a total of 11 feats + 2 feats from the base class to work with. So in short you have 13 feats. To make my question a bit more tangible I'll post some of my own ideas and why I have such difficulty choosing what path to go with.
- General thoughts: Since I've taken the crossbow expert as my first feat and because I have darkvision 120 ft., I'll probably take the sharpshooter feat as well. This way I can attack from afar without being hit. Also, it speaks to reason to max out my dexterity as quickly as possible. More damage, more AC, better hit chances. To accomplish this it will take me 4/13 feats. Other worthwhile choices I'm considering: Lucky because a bad roll can kill you, alert because being surprised can kill you, mounted combatant because BM ranger, resilient con/wis because this is always good to have, stealthy because not being detected is good, Svirfneblin feat because its awesone and versitile, skilled because: perception, medicine and animal handling. These are seven decent feats to consider as well. If I take 2x ASI dex, sharpshooter and crossbow expert as the basics, this leaves us 9 feats to multiclass with and take feats.
- Wizard: Well I do have 16 intelligence! If I do multiclass into wizard it's most likely worthwhile to take the abjuration archtype and svirfneblin feat for non-detection to create temporary hit points. You also have shield, blur and probably something like mirror imagine for more defense. You could even consider taken a 3rd level for 2nd level spells or 5th level for 3rd level spells. This would cost 6 feats though.
- Rogue: A 2nd level dip in rogue for cunning action and expertise is awesome for sure. I would definitely take stealth and maybe insight. You could even take more levels in rogue up to 6/7. This would take 8 feats though, and I'd probably take skilled as well to get expertise in medicine and perception. Sneak attack damage will be helpful as well. Compared to the wizard route this gives me more damage, but less defense and versatility. Although cunning action makes up for some of that.
- Rogue/Wizard combo: this would probably be something like wizard 2/rogue 2, this take 6 feats and gives both cunning action and defensive spells. This way I would loose on 2/3rd level spells if you go only wizard or another expertise/evasion and uncanny dodge and sneak attack compared to full rogue.
- Other options: 2nd level fighter for action surge, second wind and a fighting style, or cleric (haven't really looked into this) and druid or monk. Druid has wild shape, but you only get 1/2 hp from the beast you transform into as temporary hit points, so this is not as good an option. Monk doesn't seem like a good fight when fighting with ranged weapons.
Sorry for all the information, but this Zman's multiclassing system is rather complex and cool at the same time. Playing it with different d&d rules doesn't make the choice any easier either, but if you have any advice on how to multiclass and at what level I'm all ears!
Secondly, I want to give a bit of background regarding both the rules and the campaign itself, because we are not playing by the standard d&d 5e rules. I'll try not to get into much detail, but if you are interested you can check out the above mentioned thread for a detailed version of the campaign and the rules we use for character creation, progression and multiclassing. As for the short version, the campaign is deadly, very deadly. There is little healing, no spells of 5th level or higher, healing and healing pots are rare and hit point regeneration can take a week easily. As for the rules regarding level progression and multiclassing we use the Zman's E10 variant rules. You can achieve 10th level maximum, but you dip into another class by using feats.
Thirdly, my character. We begin at third level and I rolled randomly for both the background, (sub)race and class. Then we used a point buy to allocate stats. This gave me a deep gnome ranger (Rocky), who has a city watchmen background. As for the stats: STR 8, DEX 16, CON 13, INT 16, WIS 13, CHA 9. His history (in short) is that he began his adventuring life after the failed Resurrection of Tiamat. He first ventured outside to discover the wonders of the world, but ran out of money quickly. Since most cities were destroyed getting a job as a city watchmen was easy. He worked in Waterdeep for two years and was recruited by a (mad)wizard named Mordenkainen to be one of his personal bodyguards. He offered a fair coin so Rocky accepted. This wizard once tried to kill Stradh, but failed and got his spellbook and staff stolen and since become very paranoia and mad. This wizard traveled around a lot to strange placed (like the abyss and the celestial plane for reasons unknown) and in my spare time I was able learn rare languages such as abyssal, draconic and celestial (I rolled for this randomly as well). Mordenkainen become even more mad and I feared for my life but was afraid to quit the job, but then Storm Silverhand and Elminster came to try and cure his madness and they took over and so Rocky was free to start his adventure.
As a deep gnome ranger, I had to pick beast master as my archtype. Using the UA variant BM, as my pet I chose Grumpy, a Giant Wolf Spider (has been approved by the DM). For my spells I chose Hunters Mark, Longstrider and Absorb Elements. Although the idea of two lances does amuse me, I rather play it save and shoot people from a far. We have a Firbolg forge cleric who's willing to tank and a Goliath bard (also rolled randomly. A fourth character will join, but he has yet to roll a character. For my skills I took insight, investigation, athletics, stealth and survival. As for my feat I took crossbow expert. That's about all the relevant information I think.
Lastly my question, if I take feats to multiclass, what would be wise? Keep in mind that you have a total of 11 feats + 2 feats from the base class to work with. So in short you have 13 feats. To make my question a bit more tangible I'll post some of my own ideas and why I have such difficulty choosing what path to go with.
- General thoughts: Since I've taken the crossbow expert as my first feat and because I have darkvision 120 ft., I'll probably take the sharpshooter feat as well. This way I can attack from afar without being hit. Also, it speaks to reason to max out my dexterity as quickly as possible. More damage, more AC, better hit chances. To accomplish this it will take me 4/13 feats. Other worthwhile choices I'm considering: Lucky because a bad roll can kill you, alert because being surprised can kill you, mounted combatant because BM ranger, resilient con/wis because this is always good to have, stealthy because not being detected is good, Svirfneblin feat because its awesone and versitile, skilled because: perception, medicine and animal handling. These are seven decent feats to consider as well. If I take 2x ASI dex, sharpshooter and crossbow expert as the basics, this leaves us 9 feats to multiclass with and take feats.
- Wizard: Well I do have 16 intelligence! If I do multiclass into wizard it's most likely worthwhile to take the abjuration archtype and svirfneblin feat for non-detection to create temporary hit points. You also have shield, blur and probably something like mirror imagine for more defense. You could even consider taken a 3rd level for 2nd level spells or 5th level for 3rd level spells. This would cost 6 feats though.
- Rogue: A 2nd level dip in rogue for cunning action and expertise is awesome for sure. I would definitely take stealth and maybe insight. You could even take more levels in rogue up to 6/7. This would take 8 feats though, and I'd probably take skilled as well to get expertise in medicine and perception. Sneak attack damage will be helpful as well. Compared to the wizard route this gives me more damage, but less defense and versatility. Although cunning action makes up for some of that.
- Rogue/Wizard combo: this would probably be something like wizard 2/rogue 2, this take 6 feats and gives both cunning action and defensive spells. This way I would loose on 2/3rd level spells if you go only wizard or another expertise/evasion and uncanny dodge and sneak attack compared to full rogue.
- Other options: 2nd level fighter for action surge, second wind and a fighting style, or cleric (haven't really looked into this) and druid or monk. Druid has wild shape, but you only get 1/2 hp from the beast you transform into as temporary hit points, so this is not as good an option. Monk doesn't seem like a good fight when fighting with ranged weapons.
Sorry for all the information, but this Zman's multiclassing system is rather complex and cool at the same time. Playing it with different d&d rules doesn't make the choice any easier either, but if you have any advice on how to multiclass and at what level I'm all ears!