Odd Powers [3.5]

[Moose Man]

I am mulling over playing a Half Orc-Elf monk/unarmed swordsage gestalt. he has okay stats, but has an insane power. the power to bring himself back to life nine times with the powers of whatever killed him. the limit of his awesomeness is that he takes a -2 penalty to Con whenever he dies.
Thoughts???

[Grynning]

Dude, that is something so houseruled your DM is going to be the one to talk to about it. There's not really any "advice" anyone who doesn't play in your group's game can give about such a thing.

[Dragonmuncher]

So, do you turn INTO the thing that killed you, or you just gain, what, a dragon's fire breath or something?

What if you get eaten by a bear?

I guess if you're looking for optimization advice, go try and get killed by wildly superpowered monsters?

Although, it might be more fun if the "ability" aspect of your ressurection was dialed down to something minor. Like, you get killed by a dragon, you auto-resurrect in 24 hours, lose 2 Con and then get something very minor but flavorful.

Like... scaly skin, giving you a +1 natural armor bonus or something?


You're gonna be having fun with unarmed swordsage gestalt as it is, so you probably don't have to worry too much about being a weak character.

[Thrawn183]

Clearly you need to design him to survive as well as possible so that he only dies at higher levels against awesome foes. You wouldn't want him always running around smelling like a troglodyte because he got killed a bunch at low level.

You should name him The Brave Sir Robin.

[Moose Man]

dragonmuncher: I'm not sure, but i'm open to ideas.

thrawn183: i know, i am thinking about maneuvers that help me escape opponents or deal more damage faster.

[Lev]

Sounds like something that would only fit in an anime.

TBH mechanically this sounds like something a DM should create, something a player shouldn't even have to worry about.

[Urpriest]

There's no reason to do a monk/unarmed swordsage gestalt. Unarmed strike won't increase twice as fast, since gestalt is only supposed to advance a given class feature once per level. Same reason you can't gestalt wizard|wizard and get spells twice as fast.

[Endarire]

Hood. Works better with reach weapons but does uber damage.

[Moose Man]

urpriest,i just liked the flavor.

[Moose Man]

his main goal in life is to only die 4 times.
1) Doppelganger
2) Iron Golem (magic immunity)
3) Great wyrm (any)
4) Tarrasque
After this, he is virtually unkillable.

[FMArthur]

Let's hear your sales pitch to your DM on this one: what on earth could possibly make him think this is okay to play? Just the fact that you are effectively giving up one side of your gestalt by taking a class whose abilities are a subset of the class on the other side isn't enough, and neither is -2 Con if you start with a decent score. Hell, even a poor Constitution score would still let you be very overpowered. It doesn't balance out the fact that he has the most ridiculous superpower ever.

It also makes for a nonsensical character motivation - he'll want to be killed by strong things. It'll play havoc with a DM's planning.

[Moose Man]

My dm is so used to optimized characters, he'll probably help me make him unstoppable.

[Urpriest]

My dm is so used to optimized characters, he'll probably help me make him unstoppable.

Ok, there is a huge different between optimization and piling on powerful bull**** (no offense). Optimization is an intellectual exercise. Simply giving your character a powerful and arbitrary ability takes no intellectual effort and is likely to be disliked by a DM who actually favors optimization.

[Keld Denar]

Whats the fun of being unstoppable? If nothing is a challenge, why bother?

Not saying what you are doing is wrong, just curious as to your motivations?

(PS, thats not "optimizing", thats "making stuff up")

[Moose Man]

i said unstoppable, meant unkillable.
1) he is currently quite very weak
2) i see that i am in error on the front of optimization vs "making stuff up"
3) he could die nine times to slews of minions
4) in another campaign, my dm had a character who never stayed dead for more than a few days, due to latent talent
I appreciate the different angle on this guys and gals.

[prufock]

Wrong system, really. Mutants and Masterminds would let you do this pretty much out of the box. However, in D&D, this is entirely deus ex machina. There isn't really any way I know of to work this with 3.5 rules.

The Feat Leach psionic power would let you "borrow" a feat for a few minutes, but it can't be made permanent with Incarnate. Contingent Reincarnate (which you can't really do easily, you need a Druid/WizOrSorc to cast it) wouldn't allow you to gain the powers of what killed you, except by "Other" (rolling 100) and having the DM say "Okay, you become a gold Wyrm."

This is epic-level stuff.

[Lev]

Unable to be killed? There's plenty of options for that without having to make things up. Lich comes to mind. How about a ghost? Agreement with a kingdom that they are to use an extreme fund you have left them to periodically true res you?

It seems like you just don't want to accept the concept of risk while playing a system that has inherent risk.

Speak to your DM to carebear your system.