PDA

View Full Version : Starting at ECL 6; new players, experienced DM



Sword Magess
2018-06-17, 03:00 PM
A DM with some experience is guiding a bunch of us newbie players through a campaign. If it does not collapse because of our inexperience, it would eventually go into epic levels. He is letting us start at level 6 to get to enjoy more power, with fair warning that it means we will feel more overwhelmed if not starting from the basics. Hopefully we are getting a curve in encounter difficulty.

What is allowed
Basically any official 3.5 content for which we can find him a printed statblock is allowed. He is not going to ban things based on power, but he is going to be pretty liberal in banning unintended combinations.

The party
There are 6 players, all of which are new. But we differ in how much we read from the outside beforehand. So far we have:

1. A human barbarian 6. She is just a barbarian with no planned PrCs
2. A necropolitan human cloistered cleric 1, focused necromancer 3 (ban illusion, enchantment, conjuration), true necromancer 2. The plan is for him to finish TN then progress in mystic theurge.
3. A lesser aasimar sorcerer 6. The plan is for her to go incantatrix 10 then progress to archmage.

The other two have not built their characters yet. One is doing something with a rogue archer. The other is thinking bout ranger, paladin, or druid. I think the DM is trying to talk him out of playing a paladin because of the necromancer.

My plan
I want to try an elan.

I managed to convince the DM that the reason elans have -2 charisma is because their innate psionic abilities also means they are constant recipients of the raw thoughts of those around them. But without specific training in manifesting powers, they cannot interpret the thoughts in any way. This results in people who are confused in social interactions, giving a racial penalty to charisma. I also plan to use this as an excuse to take the inattentive feat.

Because of this downside to untrained psionic abilities, she chose a pursuit that requires less interaction with people. It can be wizard or cloistered cleric. I lean toward wizard simply because I like it better (though admittedly the party is in more need of a divine caster).

Because of lack of social grace from both the untrained psionic abilities and studied training, she is soft-spoken and tends to go along with the others' suggestions or demands. People tend to take this for politeness, though it also is reflective of a weak-will and lack of social ability.

Build path
alignment: not sure. I like LN because it most closely resembles how I behave.
abilities: 8/14/12/18(+1)/10/12(-2)
classes: abjurer 3 (ban enchantment and necromancy), master abjurer 3; plan to finish master abjurer and then go to initiate of the sevenfold veil
skills: concentration, spellcraft, knowledge (arcana), decipher script, knowledge (the planes), craft (what is a good one?)
feats: not sure, besides spell focus (abjuration)
flaws: inattentive, weak-willed
traits: polite, maybe honest?

Both roleplaying and build ideas are welcome.

noob
2018-06-17, 03:42 PM
Since you are a wizard you might be interested by spontaneous divination or domain substitution wizard.(it would take 5 levels in wizard)
If you are not very attached to master abjurer itself(it gives some cool capstone(like casting anti-magic zone on an opponent caster without save and the like)
But it is very late so it will not have much effect most of the campaign) you might try conjurer with abrupt jaunt(you still can become initiate of the sevenfoil veil) which helps a lot at low levels(always have someone in the party carry an obstacle that can be dropped so that you do not suffer from featureless plains and also because it can help with a lot of other things).
If you dislike banning schools domain wizard is good but if you are uncomfortable with mind control,body swapping and the like banning the schools with those is not a bad idea.
Uncanny forethought(which requires spell mastery) is so much op that if it is allowed you should not not take it.
If you do not ban enchantment(or if you take the feat that gives you charm person as a sla then retrain it later since having the sla and not being able to use it is enough for taking a level in mindbender) then you can dip in mindbender at level 6 then take the mindsight feat which is pure awesomeness(not as much as uncanny forethought but it is hard to be as much awesome) because nobody can hide from mindsight

If you want maximum ability to transport yourself and destroy the setting "for the greater good" as fast as possible you might like getting create lantern archon in your spell-book(easy teleportation as a level 3 spell for a whole hour if you have a bag of holding and each time you cast that spell there is one more good creature in the world and you can encourage other wizards to get that spell overall pushing the whole setting toward good because it is so much convenient at transportation)
It also helps law itself because it is lawful creature spam and it improve society to have easy long range transportation for everyone.(ps: your gm will probably hate you if you instruct the lantern archon "help people go where they want as safely as possible with that bag of holding and then give it back to me right before going back to your plane")

If you want a prc other than initiate of the sevenfoil veil(if the gm can not handle it) then fatespinner is not bad as is archmage(especially if you got that master abjurer capstone: now give antimagic zones to opponent casters at range with archmage reach)

Exalted spells contains a lot of cool things in abjuration such as mantle of stars(with divine oracle you can be immune to weapons magical or not which is cool) or luminous armor(like mage armor but abjuration instead of conjuration and gives some extra bonuses).
Exalted spells works fine with lawful neutral(as long as you are not evil aligned).

For staying in line with your build I might suggest the following:
martial abjurer(up to level 3) banning enchantment and necromancy taking that feat that gives you charm person as a sla at level 1 and improved initiative at level 1.
at level 3 take spell focus abjuration
(martial abjurer is a specialist abjuration wizard who took the alternate class feature that turns bonus feats including scribe scroll in fighter bonus feats therefore allowing improved initiative as a level 1 bonus feat)
then take two levels of master abjurer.
then take one level in mindbender(never take more than one level in that class) and take the mindsight feat.
Then retrain the level 1 feat in spell mastery and dark chaos shuffle(embrace the dark chaos to transform the feat in a chaos feat then shun the dark chaos for turning it back in any feat) the Skill Focus (Spellcraft) from master abjurer in uncanny forethought.
You might want create lantern archon and a bag of holding if you have enough money left for easy transportation of the party(and other sheanighans).
Skills: whatever is needed for mindbender(there is a bunch of cross class skills but you still qualify by level 5) and master abjurer + extra in concentration if you have leftover skills.
If your gm is extremely tolerent on retraining you can retrain your abjurer levels in master abjurer levels until you are a abjurer 1/ master abjurer 4/ mindbender 1(the same kind of shenanigans allows to have 100% of your levels in ur priest and prcs progressing it so it is a doable thing if you have starmantle cloack in real life)

Oh I did reread your build: you took flaws.
Do you gain feats from flaws?(then we can save on the retraining and dark chaos shuffle shenanigans)

If you want a clerical wizard then archivist is a thing.
Cloistered cleric is cool due to domain spam especially if you can get a dip in contemplative.(4 domains + domain substitution means you can grab even more wizard spells and domain powers) you can also get some levels in divine oracle for even more domain spam(and getting evasion which can make you nearly immune to all magical and non magical weapons through starmantle cloak therefore allowing you to ignore half of the monster manuals entries and protecting you against uberchargers)
Example of cleric build: cloistered cleric 5 divine oracle 4 contemplative 2 the rest in cloistered cleric(possibly one dip in prestige paladin if you like paladining.)

Alternative: cloistered cleric 1 savage bard 2(Laborious Training feat at level 1 for early entry in ur priest and the flaws give you the two other prerequisites) then ur priest 2(you lose the casting of cloistered cleric but the gain in domain amount(which are equivalent to feats) from cloistered cleric is worth it) then divine oracle for progressing ur priest(then you can stop being evil since you no longer need to take levels in ur priest directly so by level 6 you can have your lawful neutral character) and other clerical prcs you want(if you dip in a prc that progress fortitude like prestige paladin afterwards you can then go back to evil and retrain the three first levels in ur priest because retraining is awesome like that)
That path is the fastest path to high level spells: You get ninth level spells by level 12 if you have enough wisdom(else at level 13)

If you want to be like a divine caster while being a wizard then going in rainbow servant(does not lose caster levels because text trump table) allows to fully be a wizard and then learn cleric spells at level 13(earliest level you can reach level 13 with reasonable early entry thanks to earth spell and sanctum spell)