kjones
2008-04-15, 09:43 PM
First of all, if you're participating in The Showdown (you know who you are), would you kindly stop reading this thread.
As an end-of-the-semester thing, I'm planning a 6v6 PvP battle (with 10th-level characters) set in my campaign world some twenty years in the past, during a great war. It's a neat way to establish some history in a very direct way, and it will be fun for the players in each of my two campaigns to go head-to-head in a way that's pretty infeasible for their actual parties.
To keep things balanced, I'll be building all twelve characters myself. I'll give the players a little leeway, but ability scores, class, race, feats, spells, maneuvers, and major equipment will be decided by me.
My goals here are threefold:
1. Above all, these builds need to be balanced - the team strengths need to be as close to even as possible. Of course, this is almost impossible in practice - the only way to make them perfectly balanced would be to give them the exact same characters. But I don't want the full casters to dominate, or the support classes to feel left out. Thus, the builds will not be the most optimal for the given class and level. They'll be good - I know a thing or two about optimization - but if all the characters were fully optimized, things would get pretty broken.
2. I want these builds to be fun. An ubercharger barbarian will be very effective (and one build resembles this somewhat), but doing the same thing every round can get pretty boring. These should be characters that have enough options to make them fun to play.
Additionally, I want the battle to be fun, and by "fun" I mean "not over in three rounds because the casters save-or-sucked everyone into oblivion." I want these builds to focus more on tactics, mobility, and teamwork than on pure offense or damage output.
3. These builds need to be logistically feasible for a twelve-player PvP game. I have a lot of plans in the works that will hopefully make this combat run as smoothly as possible, but if one character is controlling half a dozen henchmen and a dozen summoned creatures, and another is making eleven attacks of opportunity per round, things get bogged down very quickly. These builds should minimize such interruptions to gameplay (extra combatants and immediate actions are the only ones that come to mind, but I'm sure you can think of more.) Invisibility/hiding are other things that might be problematic, since trying to hide the location of a player (out-of-game) presents problems.
That being said, anything is fair game. I'd appreciate any constructive criticisms with regards to my builds - I don't have a whole lot of experience with higher-level characters, and making everybody balanced is a significant challenge. I'll be posting them as soon as I complete them - I hope to have most of them finished within the week.
A note on themes: The two sides, the Kromians and the Vanguard, are a little bit like the Romans and the Gauls, respectively. Thus, I envision the Kromian characters to be very brash, straightforward, and melee-focused. The Vanguard, on the other hand... well, all their classes are nature-based (to an extent) for a reason. These themes aren't absolutes, but they served as a basis for my thoughts.
Here are the builds:
Team 1
The Kromians
Crusader
Sergeant Petra (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3773)
Notes:
Petra is the Kromian party tank. I want her to be able to take a lot of punishment, and a lot of her maneuvers were chosen with that in mind. She's hammer-and-board, so she's not a real damage powerhouse, but a lot of her maneuvers should help shore that up too.
I've never built a crusader before, and I'm not terribly confident about her feat selection. Suggested improvements would be welcome.
Cleric
Leo (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3757)
Notes:
Leo should be both an effective melee combatant and a good support caster. I imagine I might take some flak for giving him Divine Metamagic (these are supposed to be balanced!) but making it apply to Extend Spell just makes him a better buffer - he'll still have to choose between casting or going into combat. Besides, the other team will have lots of access to Dispel-type stuff, so too much buffing will just go to waste.
Wizard
Under construction. Suggestions welcome; he will focus on battlefield control and tactical movement. I'll be getting rid of his familiar, but the PHBII variants are pretty lame; any suggestions for a worthwhile replacement?
Scout
The Scout will be a skirmisher, appropriately. I can't decide whether to make him ranged-focused (more mechanically effective) or melee-focused (kind of awesome; this would be the Spring Attack route most likely.) Leaning towards ranged at the moment, since the Kromians lack much ranged support.
Warlock
Megan (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3784)
Not terribly happy with this one. It seems like she'll be fairly overpowered in comparison to the other classes - she can throw down two 5d6 Chained Hellrime Eldritch Blasts, every round, as touch attacks. That's gonna hurt.
Aside from that, I'm not really sure what to give her for feats or equipment. I could think of lots of ways to make this character extremely powerful, but that's exactly what I don't want to do, and I don't want my players to do it, either.
Duskblade
Under construction. The Duskblade will be a more mobile melee combatant than the cleric or rogue, an effective counter to the more mobile classes the Vanguard has.
Team 2
The Vanguard
Barbarian
Logan the Small (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3765)
Notes:
Pretty straightforward build. Maybe too charge-focused; the battlefield will make frequent charging difficult. I considered the fairly cheesy Lion Totem variant from CChamp, but decided against it for this reason. I do like his obscene bonus to Bull Rush (especially when charging); combined with Shock Trooper, this gives him some tactical options that will (hopefully) prove very useful to the team.
Also, his AC is way too low. Bit of a glass cannon.
Swordsage
Enoch (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3755)
Notes:
I think I'll be making some substantial changes to his maneuvers. My goal was to make a TWF and Tiger Claw focused swordsage, but as a result of the Tiger Claw focus, the TWF bit suffered somewhat. (He really should have Inferno Blade.) Also a bit charge-focused, though I may give him that stance that lets you float above the ground, to get around the difficult terrain problem. Also, two handaxes is extremely pimp.
For both the barbarian and the swordsage, I'm considering those skill tricks (Twisted Charge and Nimble Charge?) that let you change direction during a charge and charge over difficult terrain, respectively.
Druid
Under construction. I'll be using the Shapeshifter variant from PHBII, both for balance and because of logistical constraints (shifting into a few fixed forms is a lot quicker to work out than polymorphing into any animal, and I'm trying to avoid animal companions / familiars anyway.
Sorcerer
Under construction. While the Druid will focus on buffs, the Sorcerer will be more battlefield control / debuffs. (I'll figure out some way to boost his CL for Dispel Magic.) He will not have a familiar, but I'll probably do the quick metamagic variant from PHB II.
Ranger
Raina (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3782)
Favored Enemy (Dwarf) fits reasonably well, but I bumped it down to +2 to prevent her from being overwhelmingly effective against the crusader on the other team. Otherwise, she'd be able to hit her three times per round pretty much effortlessly.
The ranged distraction class feature should fit nicely with the spellthief.
Spellthief
Under construction. I envision the spellthief as being a very effective counter-buffer, as well as a strong melee support class. However, I might try to make him ranged-attack-focused; still, the Kromians are deliberately melee-focused.
General notes:
All of these are straight progressions, no multiclassing or prestige classes. This is both to simplify the process for me (I've gotta do twelve of these!) and to make the characters easier to balance and play. I'm not inherently adverse to the idea, I'm just trying to keep things simple.
Armor classes seem a little low across the board, but I'm not entirely sure what to do about that.
Item selections so far have been pretty straightforward and boring. This is definitely something I'd like to make more interesting, but cherry-picking miscellaneous stuff for twelve characters is just too much work. I'll be farming some of this out to the players (pending my approval) but suggestions in this area are definitely appreciated. (Especially with regards to weapons. It seems like everyone has the same weapons.)
That's all for now, I'll be coming back pretty frequently to edit these. Thanks for reading, and I appreciate your suggestions.
EDIT 1: Switched the Scout and Spellthief around, as per suggestion. Makes a lot more sense this way, so thank you for that.
EDIT 2: Posted Warlock and Ranger.
As an end-of-the-semester thing, I'm planning a 6v6 PvP battle (with 10th-level characters) set in my campaign world some twenty years in the past, during a great war. It's a neat way to establish some history in a very direct way, and it will be fun for the players in each of my two campaigns to go head-to-head in a way that's pretty infeasible for their actual parties.
To keep things balanced, I'll be building all twelve characters myself. I'll give the players a little leeway, but ability scores, class, race, feats, spells, maneuvers, and major equipment will be decided by me.
My goals here are threefold:
1. Above all, these builds need to be balanced - the team strengths need to be as close to even as possible. Of course, this is almost impossible in practice - the only way to make them perfectly balanced would be to give them the exact same characters. But I don't want the full casters to dominate, or the support classes to feel left out. Thus, the builds will not be the most optimal for the given class and level. They'll be good - I know a thing or two about optimization - but if all the characters were fully optimized, things would get pretty broken.
2. I want these builds to be fun. An ubercharger barbarian will be very effective (and one build resembles this somewhat), but doing the same thing every round can get pretty boring. These should be characters that have enough options to make them fun to play.
Additionally, I want the battle to be fun, and by "fun" I mean "not over in three rounds because the casters save-or-sucked everyone into oblivion." I want these builds to focus more on tactics, mobility, and teamwork than on pure offense or damage output.
3. These builds need to be logistically feasible for a twelve-player PvP game. I have a lot of plans in the works that will hopefully make this combat run as smoothly as possible, but if one character is controlling half a dozen henchmen and a dozen summoned creatures, and another is making eleven attacks of opportunity per round, things get bogged down very quickly. These builds should minimize such interruptions to gameplay (extra combatants and immediate actions are the only ones that come to mind, but I'm sure you can think of more.) Invisibility/hiding are other things that might be problematic, since trying to hide the location of a player (out-of-game) presents problems.
That being said, anything is fair game. I'd appreciate any constructive criticisms with regards to my builds - I don't have a whole lot of experience with higher-level characters, and making everybody balanced is a significant challenge. I'll be posting them as soon as I complete them - I hope to have most of them finished within the week.
A note on themes: The two sides, the Kromians and the Vanguard, are a little bit like the Romans and the Gauls, respectively. Thus, I envision the Kromian characters to be very brash, straightforward, and melee-focused. The Vanguard, on the other hand... well, all their classes are nature-based (to an extent) for a reason. These themes aren't absolutes, but they served as a basis for my thoughts.
Here are the builds:
Team 1
The Kromians
Crusader
Sergeant Petra (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3773)
Notes:
Petra is the Kromian party tank. I want her to be able to take a lot of punishment, and a lot of her maneuvers were chosen with that in mind. She's hammer-and-board, so she's not a real damage powerhouse, but a lot of her maneuvers should help shore that up too.
I've never built a crusader before, and I'm not terribly confident about her feat selection. Suggested improvements would be welcome.
Cleric
Leo (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3757)
Notes:
Leo should be both an effective melee combatant and a good support caster. I imagine I might take some flak for giving him Divine Metamagic (these are supposed to be balanced!) but making it apply to Extend Spell just makes him a better buffer - he'll still have to choose between casting or going into combat. Besides, the other team will have lots of access to Dispel-type stuff, so too much buffing will just go to waste.
Wizard
Under construction. Suggestions welcome; he will focus on battlefield control and tactical movement. I'll be getting rid of his familiar, but the PHBII variants are pretty lame; any suggestions for a worthwhile replacement?
Scout
The Scout will be a skirmisher, appropriately. I can't decide whether to make him ranged-focused (more mechanically effective) or melee-focused (kind of awesome; this would be the Spring Attack route most likely.) Leaning towards ranged at the moment, since the Kromians lack much ranged support.
Warlock
Megan (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3784)
Not terribly happy with this one. It seems like she'll be fairly overpowered in comparison to the other classes - she can throw down two 5d6 Chained Hellrime Eldritch Blasts, every round, as touch attacks. That's gonna hurt.
Aside from that, I'm not really sure what to give her for feats or equipment. I could think of lots of ways to make this character extremely powerful, but that's exactly what I don't want to do, and I don't want my players to do it, either.
Duskblade
Under construction. The Duskblade will be a more mobile melee combatant than the cleric or rogue, an effective counter to the more mobile classes the Vanguard has.
Team 2
The Vanguard
Barbarian
Logan the Small (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3765)
Notes:
Pretty straightforward build. Maybe too charge-focused; the battlefield will make frequent charging difficult. I considered the fairly cheesy Lion Totem variant from CChamp, but decided against it for this reason. I do like his obscene bonus to Bull Rush (especially when charging); combined with Shock Trooper, this gives him some tactical options that will (hopefully) prove very useful to the team.
Also, his AC is way too low. Bit of a glass cannon.
Swordsage
Enoch (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3755)
Notes:
I think I'll be making some substantial changes to his maneuvers. My goal was to make a TWF and Tiger Claw focused swordsage, but as a result of the Tiger Claw focus, the TWF bit suffered somewhat. (He really should have Inferno Blade.) Also a bit charge-focused, though I may give him that stance that lets you float above the ground, to get around the difficult terrain problem. Also, two handaxes is extremely pimp.
For both the barbarian and the swordsage, I'm considering those skill tricks (Twisted Charge and Nimble Charge?) that let you change direction during a charge and charge over difficult terrain, respectively.
Druid
Under construction. I'll be using the Shapeshifter variant from PHBII, both for balance and because of logistical constraints (shifting into a few fixed forms is a lot quicker to work out than polymorphing into any animal, and I'm trying to avoid animal companions / familiars anyway.
Sorcerer
Under construction. While the Druid will focus on buffs, the Sorcerer will be more battlefield control / debuffs. (I'll figure out some way to boost his CL for Dispel Magic.) He will not have a familiar, but I'll probably do the quick metamagic variant from PHB II.
Ranger
Raina (http://www.coyotecode.net/profiler/view.php?id=3782)
Favored Enemy (Dwarf) fits reasonably well, but I bumped it down to +2 to prevent her from being overwhelmingly effective against the crusader on the other team. Otherwise, she'd be able to hit her three times per round pretty much effortlessly.
The ranged distraction class feature should fit nicely with the spellthief.
Spellthief
Under construction. I envision the spellthief as being a very effective counter-buffer, as well as a strong melee support class. However, I might try to make him ranged-attack-focused; still, the Kromians are deliberately melee-focused.
General notes:
All of these are straight progressions, no multiclassing or prestige classes. This is both to simplify the process for me (I've gotta do twelve of these!) and to make the characters easier to balance and play. I'm not inherently adverse to the idea, I'm just trying to keep things simple.
Armor classes seem a little low across the board, but I'm not entirely sure what to do about that.
Item selections so far have been pretty straightforward and boring. This is definitely something I'd like to make more interesting, but cherry-picking miscellaneous stuff for twelve characters is just too much work. I'll be farming some of this out to the players (pending my approval) but suggestions in this area are definitely appreciated. (Especially with regards to weapons. It seems like everyone has the same weapons.)
That's all for now, I'll be coming back pretty frequently to edit these. Thanks for reading, and I appreciate your suggestions.
EDIT 1: Switched the Scout and Spellthief around, as per suggestion. Makes a lot more sense this way, so thank you for that.
EDIT 2: Posted Warlock and Ranger.