Character Concept need help! (3.5 class suggestions)

[EndlessWrath]

I'm joining my friends dnd game with a whopping total of 10/11 players. No worries, the game is slightly different as we're split into two parties (kind of competition)... Base idea is to find this legendary item, will take forever to find...trust me. So since the party is being split into two parties, We've decided to split Newbies and veterans. I'm considered a veteran, though this is the first campaign i'm a player in for D&D 3.5 (I've done lots of short dungeon crawls and I've dmed 2 campaigns. i'm on my third)

I can't manage to come up with a character though. I'm really looking for class/race combo... just something fun and i'll come up with a character concept behind it. I'm only allowed races from the PHB (excluding half-orc and gnome...they "don't exist").. all others are open though. I'm really thinking about standard human...go figure. though race variants are ok... Aquatic/fire... Wild elf/gray elf. etc.

Any class from any dnd 3.5 book is fine and my scores are 18,17,16,15,14,11. I had to nerf my stats... i originally rolled 18,17,16,16,16,16. I kept rolling 16s for 5 minutes . But i digress.

Anyways, playgrounders, I'm asking for your help and suggestions. Gimme a few ideas on classes and ways to play them. I need to be able to be in combat, and the only party members i know about are a female wizard (assuming human). There is 1 ranger(bow), 1 fighter (two weapon), 1 ninja, 1 cleric (follows vengeance ideal.) and an elven sorcerer. I know the Wizard will be on my team and the ranger + fighter will not. The cleric will not most likely either (being he's the other oldest vet.)

My thoughts started with Human cleric of Pelor, heal/buff bot, a Human Barbarian, or a human wizard taking a prestige class in either Master specialist (necromancy, evocation, or conjuration specialization), blood magus, or Ultimate magus. I'm worried about too much wizard though =/.

I hope thats enough info... i tend to not give enough and people have to ask for more. I can't wait to see your suggestions!

Please and thank you
~Wrath

[Curmudgeon]

You're trying to find an item, so a skillful character is a good idea. You can make a Rogue capable of sneak attacking most things, and still have lots of skills. That works well with human as your race because the race provides an extra feat and extra skill points.

The Penetrating Strike alternative class feature (Dungeonscape) lets you deal 1/2 normal sneak attack damage against those otherwise immune -- but only when you flank them. Weapon augment crystals (Magic Item Compendium) exist to let you do full sneak attack damage for undead and constructs, and you can swap these out as needed. (You can also use UMD to make use of wands of Grave Strike, Golem Strike, and Vine Strike to sneak attack undead, constructs, and plants, respectively.) You'll need to have a +3 weapon to use the crystals, optimally a keen rapier. This weapon has a wide (15-20) critical threat range, which is ideal when you take the Craven feat (Champions of Ruin). Craven adds +1 point per character level to all sneak attack damage. Since this isn't damage dice, it will be multiplied on critical sneak hits.

When you get to level 10/13 ... you can pick Rogue special abilities. Crippling Strike lets you do STR damage with a sneak attack; Skill Mastery lets you "take 10" on every mastered skill (good for everything except Use Magic Device); and the Savvy Rogue feat (Complete Scoundrel) lets you instead "take 12", and deal STR damage with Crippling Strike even against enemies completely immune to criticals, flanking, and sneak attack.

A reliable high Hide modifier lets you be visually undetectable (see the description for invisible) whenever you satisfy the skill requirements. Hide's Move Between Cover application (see Complete Adventurer) lets you move away from a place with cover/concealment, up to your Hide ranks in feet, and still stay hidden. That sets you up for visually undetectable sneak attacks. If you want to Hide all the time you can do a 1-level dip into Shadowdancer for the awesome Supernatural Hide in Plain Sight. This will let you (try to) Hide while attacking, but it imposes a -20 penalty to your skill checks. Against enemies with good Spot that might not be good enough to let you stand next to them and full attack while staying hidden. But meeting all the prerequisites for Shadowdancer also satisfies the requirements for the Spring Attack feat. Then you can Spring to your enemy, Hide (no penalty for doing so while moving), strike once with sneak attack, and Spring Away.

For armor, the usual recommendation is a mithral chain shirt (light armor). You can add the Mobility enhancement (Magic Item Compendium) to light armor, basically buying the feat with gp. (Feats are precious for Rogues, so I recommend spending the money.) With more funds and a high WIS score you could instead opt for Bracers of Armor and add Mobility to those. Then make use of your good WIS score to get a Monk's Belt. Next, add a Fanged Ring (Dragon Magic) and you'll be cranking out the unarmed damage: 2d6 base, the same as a greatsword. This sets you up for the Snap Kick feat (Tome of Battle), allowing an extra unarmed attack whenever you make a melee attack with any of the following:

• full attack
• standard action attack
• attack of opportunity
• bonus attack, such as from Improved Trip

This is a much more effective choice than Two-Weapon Fighting, which only gives an extra attack for one of those four situations.

[Nohwl]

do you have any idea what the rest of your party is going to be? even a guess is good.

[Kaszman]

if they don't have a big stupid fighter I say dwarven defender dual wielding towershields.

dorf dorf dorf dorf.

you know...for the sake of all that beard and metal.

[Faleldir]

if they don't have a big stupid fighter I say dwarven defender dual wielding towershields.

Fighters suck, Dwarven Defenders suck, sword and board sucks, shield bonuses don't stack.

[Salt_Crow]

Go with Druid. You can never go wrong with it unless you didn't take Natural Spell or multiclass out.

It would look like you'll have a Wizard, a Ninja and a Sorcerer in your team is that correct? So being a druid will let you be a tank and a healer to your fullest potential.

Go with standard human and arrange your ability scores as: Str 11/Dex 14/Con 17/Int 16/Wis 18/Cha 15. After level 5 you'll never look back ;)

Go straight Druid unless Planar Shepherd (Faith of Eberron; eberron specific) is allowed, taking NS as your 6th level feat regardless. All other feat choices are open but Summon Elemental reserve feat from Complete Mage is especially nice when you meet the prerequisites.

At 8th level, you can basically spend all your time in wild shape 24/7 although you'll have to find a way to communicate with your party members. Rary's Telepathic Bond can be immensely useful there. Anyways, buff up (Barkskin, Greater Magic Fang/s etc) prior to a battle, summon something to charge and cause mayhem and charge in yourself to make a little pandemonium of your own. Maybe summoning even more allies wouldn't hurt.

Did I mention summoning? Yeah they're that good. ;)

[Kaszman]

Fighters suck, Dwarven Defenders suck, sword and board sucks, shield bonuses don't stack.

for the sake of all the beard and metal....not for these empty "bonuses" you speak of.

[unosarta]

for the sake of all the beard and metal....not for these empty "bonuses" you speak of.

I hate to say this, but hes right.

go down to armor/shield bonus.

[boomwolf]

Well, you team so far seems to lack melee fighters, I'll go that direction.

As your rolls are silly good you can take a sub-optimized character (or even a lame character) and try to work from that.

Paladin of Freedom (in the SRD) is a less-a-pain paladin variant and is quiet fun (in my idea)

Fortune Friend (PrC-Complete Scoundrel) is good for someone who wonna have fun even at the cost of effectiveness. a bard is a good start for it, so is hexblade and duskblade.

Complete Warrior will grant you alot of cool melee PrCs (and hybrid-melee ones) to take if you wonna be melee.

If you REALLY want to be a nightmare go with human chameleon (Races of Destiny), you got the ability scores to keep alot of things up and it will be quite effective, and a ture jack of all trades (except, yaknow, not sucking at it.)


Now, for this I might get murdered. but you can be a monk if you really feel like it.

[Xallace]

Well my first thought was Unseen Seer from Complete Scoundrel (or was that Mage? Anyone able to confirm?), which would be able to do a lot of the rogue stuff Curmudgeon noted with the added benefit of hyped-up Divination spells. And if you're out there looking for an ancient artifact, sounds to me like a psychic Indiana Jones. Professor at a wizarding academy who adventures for artifacts quite often?

I wouldn't really suggest Whip Proficiency, though, doesn't seem worth a feat. Maybe see if your DM will give you a bonus to punching Nazis as long as you're wearing your hat.

[Leon]

Fighters suck, Dwarven Defenders suck, sword and board sucks, shield bonuses don't stack.

That is but your humble opinion.

I'd Play a Druid, no not one of those cookie cutter druids that everyone suggests.

Something with a bit of variance, like the Hunter or Avenger variants from the SRDs Variant Classes

Both of them together makes for a great Druid
Stat wise I'd go with
Str 15
Dex 17
Con 16
Int 14
Wis 18
Cha 11

for ever more fun, take a couple of levels of monk as you advance to get into the Sacred Fist PrC

[Curmudgeon]

do you have any idea what the rest of your party is going to be? even a guess is good.

the only party members i know about are a female wizard (assuming human). There is 1 ranger(bow), 1 fighter (two weapon), 1 ninja, 1 cleric (follows vengeance ideal.) and an elven sorcerer. I know the Wizard will be on my team and the ranger + fighter will not. The cleric will not most likely either (being he's the other oldest vet.)

It's always good to read posts before responding.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

You can't have 'too much wizard' in this RPG. Go with a Grey Elf focused specialist Conjurer, get Abrupt Jaunt from PH2 and Enhanced Summoning from UA to swap Scribe Scroll for Augment Summoning. If you can, take the feat Obtain Familiar at level 1 to trade it for Rapid Summoning from UA, since you'll be trading your built-in familiar for Abrupt Jaunt. Prohibited schools should be Enchantment, Evocation, and Necromancy.

I'd go Wizard 3/ Master Specialist 6/ Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil 7/ Archmage 4. Put Str 12, Dex 18, Con 15, Int 20, Wis 11, Cha 15 after Grey Elf racial adjustments. Get Obtain Familiar (1), Augment Summoning (B), Spell Focus: Conjuration (3), Skill Focus: Spellcraft (B), Greater Spell Focus: Conjuration (B), Spell Focus: Abjuration (6), Greater Spell Focus: Abjuration (9), Quicken Spell (12), Metamagic School Focus: Conjuration (15), and maybe Residual Magic or Repeat Spell (18).

Some of the best offensive spells are Conjurations, including Grease, Glitterdust, Web, Icelance, Acid Breath, Nauseating Breath, Solid Fog, Black Tentacles, the Orb spells, Arc of Lightning, Freezing Fog, and Maze. In the higher levels Summon Monster can get some strong combatants, including earth elementals and storm elementals from MM3. Be sure to get Auran and Terran among your languages known by the time you'll be using those.

[SurlySeraph]

*description of how to kill everything with a druid*

Sounds a bit overpowered for the party he described. I'd just go with a bog-standard rogue, probably a human for the skill points or elf for the DEX boost, with a focus on sneak attack to improve combat capabilities. Put the 18 in DEX and the 17 in STR. The Deadly Precision and Assassination weapon enhancements increase sneak attack damage, and would be useful. At least one level in Assassin would help SA damage, and more levels would let you do some mildly useful arcane casting, especially if you use spells from outside core. Alternately, you could use the Thug and Sneak Attack Fighter variants (both are in the SRD) to give up some of your skill use to be more effective in combat.

[Baron Malkar]

for the sake of all the beard and metal....not for these empty "bonuses" you speak of.

I hate to say this, but hes right.

go down to armor/shield bonus.

Only if you use both tower shields for AC. If you use one for cover and the other for AC your fine.

Now if only I could find a way to attack as well...

[ChaosDefender24]

The fact that you thought up a cleric healer, a barbarian, and a wizard as 3 character ideas should be proof enough that right now you're a little all over the place.

Which is why you're getting a lot of ultra-versatile "can't go wrong" suggestions, namely two of the Big 3 and the skill monkey, because we really don't know what you want to do. You want a character who can "be in combat," but everyone has to be in combat.

If you could decide on one niche that you want to fill in the party, we could probably give you responses that conform much more to the gaming experience you're looking for.

[dspeyer]

In summary, your allies are a ninja, a wizard and two unknowns. Your rivals (enemies?) are a ranger, a fighter, a cleric and two unknowns.

I suspect you will find flight very valuable. There are many ways to get it: arcane magic, wildshape, invocations, a race with wings....

A second arcanist is entirely viable here. Talk to your other wizard about specialization. If she's focusing on battlefield control, you might focus on buffing (for example).

Ultimately, though, this doesn't sound like a heavily optimized campaign, so think of a concept that sounds fun and then try to find crunch for it.

[EndlessWrath]

So i wanted to update you all. I started today as a 4th level Druid. Did well. I'm now 5th level...although I'm gonna have to find a way of fixing up a forest i couldn't stop from being burned down .

To my understanding, the point of the game is to find a ring of eight wishes.. use that to make 1 for each party member, then change the world and stop Armegeddon. Unfortunately, the other party is huge and is competing to do the same thing.

with our measly group of 1 barbarian (dwarf), 1 Wizard (human conjurer), and myself (human druid)... we were missing 3 players.

they had 5...and we know they have 2 more coming.

Anyways, we did plenty of awesome stuff and i wanted to thank you guys for all the character concepts! I'm definitely going to be using them for my campaign that I'm dming in, or any short adventures I'm gonna be running/playing in.

Thanks
~Wrath