Can someone help me decide on my character?

[SangoProduction]

I've got the following concept:
A light/sun mage. Typical holy light stuff. Blasting people with sun beams, blinding people, and generally breaking the Geneva convention. And of course, offering the warm embrace of the sun... Some people more warm than others...

I have the spheres I'm going to pick out mostly set in stone. But I've yet to decide on a few key things. Most importantly, whether he'd actually be a frontliner or not. The two roles that aren't filled by players are healer and frontliner, but they've got access to potions and NPC fighters from the prison break. Somehow, I don't take former prisoners as the most loyal bunch. Plus frontlining isn't necessarily a totally needed role. It just helps to control the flow of battle.

Second: I can't seem to decide on a good race. I mean, Human is an obvious one. It's got the feat. And we are in a setting where standing out is not a great idea. (But I think I'm kinda blowing that by having a character whose entire concept is "Hi, I shoot neon signs out my eyes.") But I kind of am just drawing a blank. Nothing feels like it quite fits. Not even just mechanically. I simply don't feel like anything quite fits the character. And I don't know why. Feels almost like I should go human, because the character idea is simply that generic. But I do like playing up the angle of a love struck elf, who betrothed a human.

Literally no one has any kind of preference for what I play in the group. And. My god. That is the least helpful thing possible.

If you want the backstory for the character, I've actually got:

A regular dude with a loving wife and 2 happy children. And very annoying in-laws. Incredibly off putting and upsetting, and they just hate him. So he started adventuring as an excuse to get away when they would come over.

Turns out the in-laws were part of a subversive cult. Big shock. But the royal guards found out, and slew everyone at the residence. All of the sudden, a revolution of the poor seemed like a pretty cool idea to join. (Yeah, he *is* partially at fault for literally just leaving his family with cultists. But it's a simple enough premise to get the character to have the same motivations as the party. And perhaps some character growth later.)

[QuadraticGish]

If there's no dedicated healer and a frontline position is still open, I'd consider picking up some life sphere fast healing, focus on the frontlines, and call it a day. Prodigy can net you an effective healing burst usable in a pinch or as a way to dump your links right as a fight ends. It scales based on your links though, so it might not be best for 2 level dips.

[Particle_Man]

What about Dragonborn? It could be part of you breaking with your past, and the heart aspect allows you to breath fire, which seems thematic.

[QuadraticGish]

Speaking of Dragons, if the Dragoon class is on the table you could spec as a heal and use your drake as the frontline beatstick. Take the Mech Dragoon Archetype and nab the armored variant for your Dragoon and Iron Scales to make it able shrug off most physical damage early on. As a construct, fast healing will let you heal it. Plus, if it dies you can fix (albeit at a high price early on.)

[Telonius]

Really not that familiar with pathfinder or spheres, but the backstory would just scream "Illumian" to me if it were in standard 3.5, with the focus on cabals and deception. Would one of those guys work?

[Logalmier]

I mean, you could go the stereotypical aasimar route but play it up as “my in-laws won’t stop being prissy about my literal divine heritage.” There’s also a slight case for Half-Orc mechanically, but I’ll get to that later.

Frontlining is very complementary to healing in spheres. You can:

Make yourself invincible with Self-Renewal and Endure Pain

Make other people invincible with Defend Other (you need at least Warden 2 to do this effectively, Defend Ally makes Defend Other an AoO. Darkness Defender gets this as well at level 4, but doesn’t get to be a champion class because it’s not called Striker).

Do absurd damage with Affliction (as long as you’ve been taking [Cure] talents) and one of the billion flavors of Spell Attack.

Create absurd crowd control with some combination of Patrol, Encompassing Light, and Glory (both of which can be gotten by a 1-talent dip in Light using drawbacks, although your character concept might be using light for other stuff. Searing Light + Resist Elements is another fun combo. Burn your enemies and heal yourself! Allies might get a bit singed).

It doesn’t take a lot of investment to get a good level of baseline competence in frontlining, and you can scale it up to taste. Healing effectively takes a lot more investment, but the efficiency of your heals is dramatically increased when you just focus on healing yourself as opposed to others (don’t have to worry about range, don’t have to worry about mass healing, don’t have to worry about action economy with Self-Renewal, and Endure Pain will often double the effectiveness of your heals.) Frontlining is one way to funnel damage to you, as your enemies will attack the beefy paladin guy frothing with divine indignation, and any that are smart enough to not to that can be forced to attack you with Defend Other.

This might not be to the flavor you wanted, but in terms of raw survivability there’s a case to be made for Half-Orc. The essential combo works with any race though:

Deathless (Berserker sphere)
The “Increase the total number of negative hit points you can reach before dying by 2” generic FCB found in Origins of the Spheres

A level 8 Warden with 14 con would thus have 60 regular hp, and 60 “below 0” hp. Sure, you’re staggered, but it’s an excellent buffer to make sure you don’t get one shot before you can heal. (Unless you have a single point of nonlethal damage in the tank, which instantly knocks you unconscious which, uh, I don't know why you would ever be suffering from nonlethal damage :sweating:. A bit of anti-synergy with Endure Pain to keep in mind - maybe stop diverting to your delayed damage pool if it looks like you're going to go under 0, or invest specifically in defense against nonlethal. The Flagellant feat for worshipers of Zon Kuthon solves this problem, but you're probably over-investing at that point. Alternatively, beg your DM to overlook this dumb dumb RAW).

With Half-Orc you can add:

Deathless Initiate feat, removing stagger and giving you a +2 bonus on to-hit and damage.

Tenacious Survivor - congrats! You can now be healed after death! Make sure to let those psions know you’ll haunt them if they don’t.

The ultimate survivability meme is all of this combined with Rage of the Grave, if you can pull off the prerequisites (consider a Bloodrager dip). Once per day, if you ever die, you’re reanimated as a fast zombie for a number of rounds equal to how many rage rounds you have left. If you manage to survive being a zombie for that amount of time, then you’re immediately returned to life with -1 hit points. That leaves our level 8 warden above with 59 hp to spare thanks to Deathless. The trick is to only have one round of rage left in the tank, to minimize the amount of time that your zombie form has to survive. Consider spending all but one of your rage rounds upon waking up. Think of it as an alarm clock for the other party members. Investing a little in charisma will also boost its hp, and will help smooth things over with any bystanders who might have witnessed your little “local man too angry to die” routine.

[Maat Mons]

I think the most fitting races for a sun worshiper are the plant-related ones. There’s ghoran, vine leshy, and gathlain. I know ghorans can’t have kids, and you said this guy has kids, but the children could be from his wife’s previous marriage.



I’m not familiar with Spheres, I assume being a “high-caster” makes you better at magic-y stuff like shooting light beams? The “high casters” I can see are Fey Adept, Incanter, Soul Weaver, Thaumaturge, Sphere Cleric, Sphere Druid, Sphere Sorcerer, and Sphere Wizard.

Fey Adept seems to run against the theme.

Incanter looks fine, though quite generic.

Soul Weaver’s whole “expending souls” thing seem too sinister for a light mage.

Thaumaturge looks okay, but a bit lacking in Magic Talents, whatever those are.

Sphere Cleric could fit the holy part of what you said. You’d be locked into taking half of your talents from the Life sphere though.

If you go Sphere Druid, can the Alteration sphere turn you into a ball of light? Or a plant?

I’m not really sure what you could do with a Sphere Wizard that you couldn’t do with an Incanter.

If you go Sphere Sorcerer, maybe the Solar or Verdant bloodlines would fit?

[SangoProduction]

Thanks for the help, you guys. I have it down now.