Help my squishy ECL 22 Rog//Swashbuck Doppelganger not die under trying-to-kill-us DM

[Runa]

This situation is a little weird, but that request in the headline is 100% accurate. Here's the skinny:

*The campaign is GESTALT.

*Rob is DMing. Rob fully informed us -and we played this campaign fully knowing - that he would "try to kill us" at every chance he got - which is not entirely true, as he's given us a few breaks, but the threat of character death is always there, and the difficulty level is intended to be high, to the point where we literally have "continue tokens" in case we want an extra life (the whole campaign is somewhat Mario-themed, heh). Actually, two. We met a god and he liked us. Anyway, so, suffice it to say I KNEW my character could die at any time if I wasn't careful.:smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown: :smallfrown:

*Campaign's party is made up entirely of epic-level characters of monster races. Yes, the entire party. The idea being that the usual role is a reversed, with intelligent monsters being normal people and humans being often evil. Rob initially described the campaign as giving us a boss who's going to be something like a level 38 wizard. I chose Doppelganger for my race, as it had a not entirely horrible level adjustment (+4, but the party includes some with like a +8 adjustment), and the abilities and such were kind of cool.

*Most of the party went with casters or Paladins and such, so I went with Rogue//Swashbuckler, figuring a mix of "sneaky" and "sneaky melee" and "skill monkey" might be handy in a party that had no or few Rogues. Plus, it just kind of fit, character-wise somehow. I figured this would not be a problem much, since it is a HUGE party (like 8 PCs - we miscalculated, and then it seemed rude to turn them away...), and we're epic and all.

HOWEVER...

The party includes a Gold Dragon sorcerer, a druid//barbarian a neutral-aligned Chain Demon, and a Paladin of somethingerorther that's basically a slayer of evil dragons, and a satyr Bard//Fighter, just to give you a taste of the kinds of stuff it can do. And then?

The first two adventures have seen us pitted against dragons! Rob fudged a few numbers so it didn't go as horrifically badly (or longly) as it could have, but we're still fighting dragons. While most of us are woefully underequipped for a our level. My weapons, for instance, consist entirely of a normal rapier and five daggers, only one of which is enchanted and then only as a dagger of returning. My armor is normal, unenchanted leather, and though I was lucky enough to be able to get a Bag of Holding so I'm not encumbered, my equipment beyond that is mostly basic stuff. Because I thought the boss was going to be some sort of intelligent humanoid wizard, I put a lot of ranks into things like Diplomacy and Knowledge (Arcana), and not a lot into things we actually ended up needing to use, such as Jump, Climb and Tumble (you try fighting a red dragon on the ground in a forest with 7 other PCs without resorting to those... ain't easy!).

And, of course, with the kinds of adventures we've been doing, I can't do jack except go around hoping not to get stomped on or breathed on or whatnot. I spent most of the first adventure hiding in the trees. My treasure for the first night of the campaign was some gold and a "Vestament of Hiding" (something the DM apparently made up, so you probably won't find it in the DMG, but it basically just gives +5 to Hide), and I think a ring of protection but I honestly wished it was a freakin' crossbow, because I can't hit any dragon with a dagger and do any kind of real damage, and I'm far too squishy to get close.

My feats are an odd mix, but they include some of the luck feats from Complete Scoundrel, including two that allow replacing a natural 1 with a "natural 20" (the one that applies to your saves, and one other one, I believe applied to attack or damage rolls, possibly both, not looking at it at the moment because I don't have the book or my character sheet in front of me), since I tend to get a lot of unfortunate rolls from time to time. I'll have more details in a little while, when I can get access to my character sheet again (right now, I'm at work), but I figured I'd throw this up now and see if anybody could point out some blindingly obvious thing I should have done. :smalltongue:

Here's some of the stats I currently have, though:

Monster Levels: 4 (Doppelganger), Rogue 14 // Swashbuckler 14, ECL 22.

DEX: +5, STR: +2, CON +2, WIS +3, INT +4 CHA +3.

Any advice?

-Runa

[Kizara]

Ok, first off your ECL doesn't add up.

On your rogue side, you have 4 doopelganger racial hd, 4 doopelganger LA, and 14 rogue levels.

On your other side, you have 14 swashbuckler levels (which I'm going to take the time to say is a terrible build, as swashbuckler gives you nothing useful after level 3; much better splicing in things like 2 fighter/3 hexblade/3 paladin of freedom, etc, add alot to your surivivibility too), and then 8 levels of... nothing?

Your doopelgangerness only effects 1 side of your gestalt, so you have 8 empty levels on your other side. I suggest doing something like swash 3/fighter 2/cleric 17.


As for your wealth, does the rest of your party have a reasonable WBL? Part of character power, especially at that level and ESPECIALLY for non-casters is magical wealth. By not giving you anything close to what you should have at that level (which is like 900k I believe) your DM is totally screwing you over.

If the rest of your party has normal WBL, just say "oops" and give yourself a few +6 stat boosters, a ring of improved invisibility and other various things. It's 900k, go _NUTS_.


Your DM seems to not know what he's doing TBH, and nor do you. If you want a complete character build for your concept, I'll try my best, but honestly others could do better. Finally, casters get pretty out of hand at level 15. At level 22, it's more-or-less a joke. Roll a druid//wizard and have a fun look at the epic casting system. Some creativity will easily 'win' you the game.

[The Glyphstone]

Insist that the DM give you the WBL you're expected to have. If you're not a caster, you'll never be able to defeat an encounter of even equal level without excellent luck, DM fiat, or some other extenuating circumstances, since the game assumes you are following the wealth guidelines. At epic ECL like this, DR/Epic is quite common...without the +6 weapons that the designers expect you to be toting, those monsters are vastly harder to even damage, let alone kill.

If he refuses, hide in the biggest, most well-guarded city you can find and use Craft and Profession skills until you have enough money. :)

[Azerian Kelimon]

Or swordsage. Distracting ember + TWF'ing + Penetrating Strike = Winzorz. Hitting any enemy with sneaks? DINGALINGABLING! We have a winner.

And there IS a vestment of hiding. Crappy an item as they come.

[Bauglir]

Your doopelgangerness only effects 1 side of your gestalt

Really? I thought the rules were mum on this. I tried doing it this way once, and things turned out stupidly broken for even gestalt characters, but that could've been due to somewhat heavy min-maxing (I'm looking at you, Mind Flayer) having more to work with. And LA adding on both sides penalizes you more than it would in a normal game, so I'm really not sure what the right thing to do here is.

[Reptilius]

If he refuses, hide in the biggest, most well-guarded city you can find and use Craft and Profession skills until you have enough money. :)

Not only that, but the city might have a "person" willing to teach you arcane magic to substitute your swashbuckler levels 4-14.

Also, the warshaper PrC, while more combat-focused, is great for doppelgangers. As a doppleganger, is there ever a time when you're not in another form?

[Illiterate Scribe]

Pick up UMD. Tons and tons of it. Buy (or, if your DM continues to starve you of money) steal/loot a staff of some description. Boost up its CL. It's one of the few ways you can survive.

[Vortling]

Really? I thought the rules were mum on this. I tried doing it this way once, and things turned out stupidly broken for even gestalt characters, but that could've been due to somewhat heavy min-maxing (I'm looking at you, Mind Flayer) having more to work with. And LA adding on both sides penalizes you more than it would in a normal game, so I'm really not sure what the right thing to do here is.

In most cases it only takes up one side of gestalt. That allows for better playability since LA and monster HD tend not to be worth the levels.

To the OP: Look through some books and see what you can find for nice humanoid forms. You could ask your DM for a reworking of your character. Also see what you can do with detect thoughts. If you know the surface thoughts of a creature it should give you a bit of an advantage.

[Runa]

Ok, first off your ECL doesn't add up.

On your rogue side, you have 4 doopelganger racial hd, 4 doopelganger LA, and 14 rogue levels.

On your other side, you have 14 swashbuckler levels (which I'm going to take the time to say is a terrible build, as swashbuckler gives you nothing useful after level 3; much better splicing in things like 2 fighter/3 hexblade/3 paladin of freedom, etc, add alot to your surivivibility too), and then 8 levels of... nothing?

Your doopelgangerness only effects 1 side of your gestalt, so you have 8 empty levels on your other side. I suggest doing something like swash 3/fighter 2/cleric 17.

...perhaps this would be a good time to mention the following: 1.) This is only our second Gestalt campaign. and 2.) I still barely understand how to calculate out a normal character sheet (I'm not bad at math, or reading, just bad at remembering weird numerical game rules for some reason), and have been entirely relying on other players and DM to help me figure out the Gestalt variation. Is that seriously how Gestalt works though? I was told it would be "monster-related" levels on each side, and that my classes would be even unless I took additional classes or PrCs. Unless our group just house-rules it and didn't bother to mention they were doing that? But it would make sense... in which case I should add something else on the Swashbuckler side?

The whole party is supposed to be "ECL 22", though. But, again... they're apparently also doing the calculations the same way they taught me to. So, yeah.



As for your wealth, does the rest of your party have a reasonable WBL? Part of character power, especially at that level and ESPECIALLY for non-casters is magical wealth. By not giving you anything close to what you should have at that level (which is like 900k I believe) your DM is totally screwing you over.

I know. That was part of the deliberate difficulty of the campaign, actually - that we'd have less starting wealth than the DMG recommends. He gave us basically 10,000 gold's worth to start, I think, though he's supplemented some of the others with special weapons and in one case (I kid you not) an enchanted dragon scale codpiece that gives +8 to AC (for the satyr bard//fighter, who's character is obsessed with pants and codpieces to an amusing degree). Maybe I should just ask Rob to even out the special weaponry/magical AC-booster distribution, because that alone would help a lot. But anyway, the equipment issue is why he's giving out "continue tokens" in the first place. :smalltongue:




If the rest of your party has normal WBL, just say "oops" and give yourself a few +6 stat boosters, a ring of improved invisibility and other various things. It's 900k, go _NUTS_.

They don't and it's not, but I might say "oops" anyway and give myself a ranged weapon in case I need it... which I typically do, it seems.



Your DM seems to not know what he's doing TBH, and nor do you. If you want a complete character build for your concept, I'll try my best, but honestly others could do better.

Aside from handling the Gestalt (not sure what's going on there...), I'm almost positive he knows what he's doing - his campaign is basically biweekly filler between Ryan's (much more complex, story-riffic) campaign, and it's meant to be a none-too-serious but very difficult-to-survive campaign where none of us are getting all that attached to the characters we play - for a few sessions, until Ryan's gets really rolling, at any rate. He's being an ass on purpose, but we had a choice in the matter and we agreed as a group to do it, and in fact we find it funny for the most part (some ridiculous things have happened, let's just put it that way) - except of course I'd like to be able to do more in a fight than I really can at this point, because I think I'm the only one with virtually no supernatural abilities.



Finally, casters get pretty out of hand at level 15. At level 22, it's more-or-less a joke. Roll a druid//wizard and have a fun look at the epic casting system. Some creativity will easily 'win' you the game.

Eh, I would - 'cept we're in the middle of the adventure/campaign. However, a druid//wizard does sound like a good option for the backup character that I should probably have anyway (I could always do something monumentally suicidally crazy if it gets frustrating enough, heh). :smallwink:

Creativity... heh, our druid//barbarian actually has a fondness for using "summon (porpoise)" to do squishing damage. He KO'd the red dragon that way in this campaign, and in the last one, KO'd more than a few goblins. Best. KO. Ever. :smallbiggrin:


Or swordsage. Distracting ember + TWF'ing + Penetrating Strike = Winzorz. Hitting any enemy with sneaks? DINGALINGABLING! We have a winner.

'zat in Complete Warrior? If so... yes, helpful.



And there IS a vestment of hiding. Crappy an item as they come.

Is it honestly +5 to Hide? Or was he just reaching as much as I thought he was when trying to come up with appropriate treasure for the one person who hid for the entire encounter for lack of ability to attack without risking their contin-I mean, life? :smallwink:

I figure at this rate I may go the aforementioned "do something crazy that will likely get you killed [but may still be entertaining, at any rate]" thing, and roll a second character... with perhaps, um, a better understanding of Gestalt rules. :smalltongue:

-Runa

[Azerian Kelimon]

Nah, I was talking of Tome of Battle's amazing swordsage and one of it's level 1 maneuvers, and Dungeonscape's Penetrating strike ACF for rogue which replaces trapsense, and allows you to do half of your SA dice to enemies immune to sneaks, so long as you flank. Makes a rogue a LOT more useful, and you should do ANYTHING to get the by-the-book definition of it, since it'll change everything.

Now, lesse complete warrior...

Kensai. Love it, adore it, prostrate yourself to it, and take it out to an expensive restaurant everyday (Or cook for it, if your cooking skill is really good). A magic weapon will be amazingly useful for you, and if you can get your DM to alter the Lawful restriction (Which is a sucky thing that doesn't even fit lawfulness too much), it'll work with neutrals or chaotics.

Master thrower can be REALLY nice too, but it requires building for it.

As for feats, Hamstring can make your party love you, improved toughness can give minor but useful added resilience, elusive target is a godsend if your DM uses PA for monsters. And what books d'you have?

And the vestment is inside the DMG. Worse still, it has upgrades.

[Aquillion]

I should point out:

There are magic items that grant flying ability. In addition to your ranged weapon (which it certainly sounds like you need) you may want to look into some of those at that high a level; assuming your DM lets you move up to something approaching your expected WBL you'll certainly be able to afford them.

Skipping over things that don't only offer flying on a very limited basis (e.g. boots of flying, 5 minute 3 times a day), you could try a Broom of Flying for 17,000 gp, which flies like Overland Flight for 9 hours a day. The rules aren't completely clear on using it in combat, though -- you might want to ask your DM how they'd rule it, first (does it take move actions to control it, say?) Ditto for a Carpet of Flying, which costs a little to a lot more depending on size, but can carry a lot, too (including other people in combat if you get more than the 5x5 model.)

The Cloak of the Bat theoretically allows you to fly for up to 7 minutes at a time, but the catch is that it says you have to 'hold the edges' to do this -- it isn't made completely clear, but presumably this limits your actions while flying with it. It also gives a bonus to hide checks, though, which would presumably help your character, and it lets you polymorph into a bat (and hang upside-down from the ceiling even without polymorphing.) 26,000 gp.

However, the gold standard in items of flying is the simple Wings of Flying. This cloak turns into wings that give you a fly speed of 60 feet with good manuverability, as often and for as long as you want, with no downsides or interpretation issues. 54,000 gp.

EDIT: Alternatively... actually, you're a doppleganger, so if your DM allows it, you could turn into an Avariel or Raptoran to fly. That obviously has the advantage of costing you nothing, but is fairly cheesy. Well, actually, with a Doppleganger's LA in mind, it isn't so cheesy, but it's going to make most people think of using Alter Self to do the same thing, which is pretty cheesy.