| Building a character (help me please?) | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 12 2006, 06:34 AM (204 Views) | |
| Freston | Feb 12 2006, 06:34 AM Post #1 |
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Guild of Necromancers: Give us your hungry, your sick, your cold
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Oh Joy! Finaly my gaming group agreed to try an evil campaign. We are off to Belgium next thursday for our annual get-together. Eleven gamers in a cottage in the Ardennes. And I get to play my first necro. Happy! Joy! But, I've never played a wizard before. And now I have a terrible time selecting the prohibited schools for my necro. Let me tell you a little about him. He's a human, age 25. He's got a severe growth disorder, effectively making him Small, with all to applicable penalties and benefits. He also has additional health problems, he's skinny and sickly. This makes death almost an obsession for him. He's definetly not an outdoors type, rather bookish. He has learned from his study in the local library (large city) that health can be magicly improved and death can be overcome. Studying this has become the main focus in his life. He despises other humans, out of envy and out of malice. He's been teased and bullied a lot, which has scarred his ego and his view on humans. His defence mechanism against this is to develope a superiority complex, but it also caused him to fear his kin like nothing else. Now, against his better judgement, he is forced to go out of his basement and into the world. For there is only so much study you can conduct in an ill equipped basement. And there are not a lot of books in the local library that he can use. Stats: Str. 7 Dex. 13 Con. 7 Int. 18 Wis. 14 Cha. 9 HP: 2(!) AC: 12 Alignment: NE Skills: Not selected yet. Comments are welcome. Feats: Not selected yet. Comments are welcome. Spells: Every spell from necromancy. The rest I've not selected yet. Comments are welcome. You probably see that this character is build around angst. This is translated into game mechanics by very low stats (except Int.). Only 2 HP and lousy AC. This I want to also reflect in the other choises I still have to make. I for example think he needs Sense Motive and Spot maxed out. And ranks in Move Silently and Hide. Alertness as feat perhaps. I like the idea of roleplaying someone who has to row up stream. One one hand the fear for his life prevents him from going into the world (let alone going on adventure). On the other hand, if he wants to pursue his goals he has to gain experience. And the NE part of his personality, hehe... that will be fun too. So, I turn once again to the wisdom of this board and ask: What are your thoughts on this? |
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| Didge | Feb 12 2006, 12:30 PM Post #2 |
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Residential Alaskan Igloo & Walrus Inspector
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Interesting idea. I've played in a very tough campaign once with a character who had a 6 Con before so I know a little about surviability in that regards. He was a rogue tho, not a wizard, so that gave him a few extra hitpoints to work around. By the looks of what you're going for, I'd really suggest you take your first level as a Rogue. Background wise, it makes sense, as he hasn't really explored his spell casting abilities, and it'll allow you not only to gain more skill points to start off with (which will be your only offense seeing as you've got such a low Con, and AC), and in addition raise your total hitpoints to 4! By doing this you'll also have access to certain skills at class level, instead of cross-class, which will help the low level ability of hiding and moving silently. In fact, I'd suggest taking two levels of Rogue, because then you'll gain access to evasion, which for all intents and purposes your character is going to need in desperate supply. After this, you'll be able to branch into magic, i.e. necromancy and have enough skills to survive until you become even more effective as a spell caster. This is all based on the idea that the campaign is semi-combat heavy. If your group is more role-play, and less combat, your original idea might survive well, so long as you don't put him in situations where he'll be hit. Thus I definately recommend some form of long distance attack. The alst thing you want to be doing is standing toe-to-toe with an opponent, who quite frankly will eat you for lunch. Now, as for skills? I'll list out what I'd take if you go Rogue, and if you decide to stick with being a wizard from level 1. Rogue: With an 18 Int, and Human granting another four additional skill points at first level, you come out with a grand total of 52 skill points. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about. Yeah, he suddenly becomes MacGyver! The skills themselves, I'd go with this selection, based on the information you've provided. Skill / Skill Rank / Adjusted Appraise: 4 / 8 Bluff: 4 / 2 Decipher Script: 4 / 8 Gather Information: 4 / 2 Hide is Shadows: 4 / 5 Knowledge (Local): 4 / 8 Listen: 4 / 6 Move Silently: 4 / 5 Open Lock: 2 / 3 Sense Motive: 4 / 6 Search: 4 / 8 Slight of Hand: 2 / 3 Spot: 4 / 6 Tumble: 4 / 5 The Appraise is to determine what you've found is either junk or actually valuable, always nice to have for someone searching for lost things, which is where I see your adventurer headed. Bluff to get people to leave him alone, I thought about Intimidate, but that just didn't seem the right choice. From your description he didn't stand up to the bullies when he was younger so I didn't see this as an option. Whereas Bluff is more for seeding snide remarks back at the bullies, which is more in line with what I'm thinking fo for your character. Gather Information ties in with the Knowledge (local) and allows the character to find info about hush-hush things. Which from the sounds of things, is something he'll need to do. Knowledge (local) would be useful in determining info about an area and getting leads on things. It also will give you a Synergy bonus once you hit 5th rank to your Gather Infomation roll, which you'll need due to your low Cha. Open Locks because things your character has read has mentioned valuable items, such as scrolls, books and such are often kept under lock and key. Slight of Hand to flip the page of the book dealing in necromancy to something less offensive if someone comes upon you and you shouldn't be looking. Or even to palm a piece of paper with valuable info on it regarding necromancy that you sketched down and not wanting others to see. Tumble simply to get away from trouble if you become engaged. Your characters goal will to be avoid hand-to-hand, and tumble allows you to do that effectively. Wizard: With an 18 Int, and Human granting another four additional skill points at first level, you come out with a grand total of 28 skill points. Respectable, but still not in the level as the Rogue suggestion. Skill / Skill Rank / Adjusted Concentration: 4 2 Hide in Shadows:* 2 3 Knowledge (Arcana): 4 8 Knowledge (Religion): 4 8 Move Silently:* 2 3 Sense Motive:* 2 0 Spellcraft: 4 8 *Cross-class skills As you can see, not that wide range of skills that you'd need to survive. On top of this, the skills you expressed an interest in, are very low, due to them being cross-class skills for a wizard, and your character's low Cha. FEATS: You get two, either way you go. I suggest the same choice of Feats for either class decision: Toughness, Alertness These two Feats are going to be your character's bread and butter. Meaning that with Toughness you'll have those extra three hitpoints, which mean everything at low levels (especially for a low Con character). Alertness gives you the nice bonus of +2 to Listen and Spot, which if you choose Rogue for the first two levels will only improve your awesome skill arrangement. As a Wizard with Alertness isn't optimal, seeing as you can gain this Feat for free via your familiar, so another resonable choice might be to take Toughness again. Hope this all helps. |
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| Freston | Feb 13 2006, 06:56 AM Post #3 |
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Guild of Necromancers: Give us your hungry, your sick, your cold
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Thanks Didge! Having starter level in Rogue is actually a very good idea. Specially because our little necromancer here will have to be stealthy if ever he wants to do those necromancer things that people just don't understand, like being at the graveyard late at night. But when I was completely convinced at this approach, it struck me. I will not be gaming with this character with my regular group. Only the DM will be from that group, and he views this as an experiment. So only if everything goes really well and everyone is really enthousiastic about running an evil campaign, only then will this character have longlivety (there is an irony in there). So I feel I have to focus, and I shall. I'm going for a single class, despite the fact that I really do think your idea was very good. Also, I've changed the background a bit. He did not find the books in the local library, but in his fathers library. His father is a very dominant man, and a bit of a know it all (I model him after an uncle, who is a really cool uncle but has traumatised both his children by demanding nothing short of perfection. He wanted his oldest son to do better than he did, but he's the CEO of a major multinational and there is no topping that really). This here father would have levels in wizard, amongst others. I don't think I have to fully develop that, you get the point. ---------- What to this character would be good prohibited schools? Any thoughts? |
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| Mordien | Feb 13 2006, 10:36 AM Post #4 |
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Old
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HellO! Here is another option ! Why not give him a Vampire bloodline or something like that. Then if you are going for a real Necromancer take on the path of a Cleric to an Undead deity and go for True Necromancer |
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All warfare is based on Deception MORDIEN | |
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