What's a Good Class for a Rogue Modron NPC?

[SleepIncarnate]

So, I'm putting together a Planescape/Spelljammer campaign for my group, and none of them are familiar with either setting. As such, their introduction to Spelljamming will be getting hired onto the crew of a ship for a period of time with the promise of being taken back to their respective home worlds after that time if they still want to.

I've been putting the NPC crew together, trying to get a blend of things the players would be familiar with and new ones, and one of the NPCs is a rogue modron, who serves as the ship's navigator. It's the only character I can't settle on a base class for, and most of the others already have their respective archetypes as well.

For reference, here's the full crew compliment:

Captain - high elven swashbuckler rogue
Second in command - thri-kreen kensei monk
Armsmaster - giff champion fighter
Navigator - the rogue modron in question
Helmsman - human sorcerer (probably storm sorcerer)
Engineer - rock gnome gunslinger artificer

I know I don't want the modron to be any kind of caster as one of the things that will help get the players on the ship is the ability to also work the helm. That really leaves fighter, rogue, barbarian, and monk. If I went fighter, I'd feel like I'm ripping off Nordom from Torment. The closest I can think of to fit the idea of an ordered, organized type is an inquisitive rogue, but I'm not sold on that. Aside from the humor factor of a rogue modron literally being a rogue modron.

Any input from the community?

[Naanomi]

How broken a Modron is he? Most are still ultra-Lawful even when rogue... but maybe he is really borked, Battlerager? Or Zealot of a Lawful God, so you can kill him over and over in numerous ways?

[Particle_Man]

Maybe the Modron can't decide either. What about a multi-class fighter/rogue/barbarian/monk? I mean it is an NPC so it doesn't have to be optimized.

If you had allowed a caster I would have gone for wild mage sorcerer just for the chance of the Modron summoning (accidentally) another (non rogue) Modron. Hilarity would naturally, of course, ensue. :smallbiggrin:

[Rukelnikov]

Go rogue for the pun, make him a mastermind, have him yell at the crewmembers (aid another) and have an integrated recording device (mimic speech). I would give him a temper, but in a funny kinda way (not intimidating in the least)

[SleepIncarnate]

How broken a Modron is he? Most are still ultra-Lawful even when rogue... but maybe he is really borked, Battlerager? Or Zealot of a Lawful God, so you can kill him over and over in numerous ways?

In all honesty, I haven't fully detailed out any of these characters yet. This was originally supposed to be a sort of side campaign to the main campaign one of the others in my group is running. Basically, when enough people couldn't make it to a session for that story, I'd whip out this setting and send the present players on a random encounter, episode of the week type of adventure. Then a couple days later, enough of our crew reported having issues IRL that our DM there called to put a pin in that camaign, leaving me to need to flesh this one out more. This is only the third or fourth night of me trying to work on this, and some of the characters haven't even got names yet (namely the sorcerer and artificer, the latter of which I just decided on last night).

As for my modron, I figure that he/it (depending on which crew member you talk to) has been borked enough to be able to start to understand chaos, but is still lawful/organized at the core. Basically, able to try and make sense of the chaos of the phlogiston enough to navigate to crystal spheres that float around rather than being stationary. So maybe lawful neutral or full neutral in alignment. Definitely not chaotic.


Maybe the Modron can't decide either. What about a multi-class fighter/rogue/barbarian/monk? I mean it is an NPC so it doesn't have to be optimized.

Yeah, I picture this character being still ordered enough to just have one class and stick to it. Which is one of the reasons I'm not sold on the rogue class (aside from the pun factor), as that class lends itself to at least a little bit of chaos.

For your multiclassing nightmare suggestion, I condemn you to a fight with universe man.

[sambojin]

Mystic v3? Make him how you want, with his psi-use essentially being "the correct order of things", but when he's really ramping it up it's "his damn order of things, anyone can see that's what was *MEANT* to have happened, if it wasn't for these totally chaotic adventurers forcing his hand to keep reality on track". His temper *is* his use of psi abilities. But he's very evasive on the question of why he's not just part of the order, doing modron'y things in unison with the others.

You can do nearly anything with a mystic, from mind altering, to combat'y, to blasty. And then just play it as above.

[Vogie]

If he's a navigator, I'd immediately lean towards divination wizard.

Save that, actually, high-level Ancestral Guardian Barbarians have access to Augury or Clairvoyance every so often, so that might be the next best option.

[Man_Over_Game]

If he's a navigator, I'd immediately lean towards divination wizard.

Save that, actually, high-level Ancestral Guardian Barbarians have access to Augury or Clairvoyance every so often, so that might be the next best option.

I'm with Vogie. You want him to be well defined, have a thorough understanding of Chaos without being defined by it, while still making him the ship's navigator? Divination Wizard would fit perfectly.

Perhaps he saw something, or maybe he just got too smart for his own good, but part of his mission to uphold the law also meant he had to understand chaos, which gave him an anomalous "spark" that lets him see and do things beyond what other Modrons can. He isn't a Rogue Modron by choice, but his understanding of how Chaos works, why it exists, and the source of it made him an outcast, even if he only did so to better perform his original mission.

He recognizes the chaos, and rewrites it into perfection (using Portent). He knows how things should be, what's preventing things from following that pattern, and uses this information to predict the future. Some people call it magic, but to him it's just using resources combined with deductive reasoning.