Blind assassin

[Novir Vetru]

How would one go about making a blind character in 3.5 who is also proficient enough with knives to fight in close-quarter combat? Any ideas?

[Nifft]

There's a magic item (Blindfold of True Darkness) which gives you blindsight within a 30 ft. range.

Wear that, plus use some magic to hinder everyone who can see.

[Novir Vetru]

Is there a specific class or classes that I should take? I want to be able to work the character's eyes being gouged into the backstory somehow. Maybe as some sort of punishment for failure or misconduct

[Nifft]

What level is this character?

At mid-to-high levels, you're usually better off using spells in some capacity or other. There are plenty of ways to make a knife-fighting spellcaster, too.

Daggerspell Mage, for example, is supposed to be a knife-fighter who casts spells while face-stabbing.

[Novir Vetru]

The campaign is starting at level 10, and pretty much anything is allowed other than homebrew and punpun related builds.

[Venger]

There's a magic item (Blindfold of True Darkness) which gives you blindsight within a 30 ft. range.

Wear that, plus use some magic to hinder everyone who can see.

good item.

If you're okay with a little refluffing (I'm assuming the character you are recreating specifically uses knives and you want to use knives), roll a totemist

meld list (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=11823659&postcount=30)
handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?287304-danzibr-s-Totemist-Handbook)

and bind the shadow mantle. it surrounds you in a big ball of magical darkness that can't be dispelled, so you can put paid to your enemies within it.

[Nifft]

The campaign is starting at level 10, and pretty much anything is allowed other than homebrew and punpun related builds.

Cool. Level 10 is well within the range where you'll want magic to augment your face-stabbing capabilities. It's also where PrCs can shine brighter than any base class.

You could go for a skilled gish build, using stuff like Unseen Seer or Daggerspell Mage on top of Rogue + Wizard. When possible, dip into Mindbender (from Complete Arcane) for 1 level, and pick up the Mindsight feat (from Lords of Madness) for 100 ft. better-blindsight. If you pick a class which grants a Familiar -- or take the Obtain Familiar feat -- you get a critter which can sit on your shoulder, and you can't share its senses but you can ask it to recognize faces for you.

It sounds like you've got access to Psionics, so you could also do a thing with Touchsight or Synesthesia, or with the Telepath ACF (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070411a) that gives you telepathy 5 ft./level + the Mindsight feat. Psionic gish is quite possible: just go Ranger 1 / Psion 6 / Slayer (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/prestigeClasses/slayer.htm) 4 (+ more as you level up).

Alternately, you could do something with the Chameleon PrC (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20041210b) -- there's plenty of room in the 5-level prefix to make you a good dagger fighter, and then you've got 5 levels of powerful spellcasting on top of it.

Finally, there's Tome of Battle. There's a level 5 Stance in Diamond Mind which gives you Blindsight, which could be used to compensate for your lack of vision, but it's not great to rely on that because you would be locked into just that one Stance forever. There are some decent two-weapon attack maneuvers in Tiger Claw, so you'd probably want access to that discipline -- which means either Warblade or Swordsage.


Anything look appealing so far? :smile:

[Falontani]

Finally, there's Tome of Battle. There's a level 5 Stance in Diamond Mind which gives you Blindsight, which could be used to compensate for your lack of vision, but it's not great to rely on that because you would be locked into just that one Stance forever.
Only thing I want to add here Nifft is that the blindsight of that stance would be great for him as its nonmagical and works in AMFs, however everything else I do agree with

[Nifft]

Only thing I want to add here Nifft is that the blindsight of that stance would be great for him as its nonmagical and works in AMFs, however everything else I do agree with

Yes, and needing to kill something in an AMF is a valid concern at level 10+, so the upshot is you'd maybe want to consider having the blindsight stance as a backup rather than as your primary mitigation.

[Novir Vetru]

I like the ideas that you have thrown out, and will likely use some combination of the classes you three have mentioned. thank you for the input, it really helped!