So, We've looked at the voting, and selected our Four party memebers... Now we need to sit down and figure out how we are going to mold these four into a balanced team... and we want YOUR input on what to do with these guys.
Iskar
Iskar was planned as a Cleric/Monk, but we cna take his build in multiple directions. The original planned build was for him to head down the Sacred Fist for a mix of Divine Magic and Monk craziness, but since he is our only Divine character he could easily go straight Cleric, or Cleric/something else.
Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh is our Arcane party member, And also the Party Face. We could have him start as a Sorcerer and use spells to simulate his sword shooting and armor, and possibly class him into a Gish-style Prestige Class. Alternately we could toss him down the Path of the Bard, and give him Snowflake Wardance to take advantage of his high Charisma to get a Deadly character effective with Magic and In melee. An Alternate option would be to make him a Refluffed Warlock or Hexblade and build him that way with some of the PRCs.
Lila
Lila and Curtis were pretty close... But in the end we decided that Lila fit the party better than Curtis did, both in personality and in party role. Lila has a couple ways she could go. On one hand, she could easily work as a Ranger and agument the ranged damage while mixing in spells and allow her to start off the game with her loyal Cat, Faith. Alternately, she could go down a more support based route and go scout, giving us a skill monkey for our group capable of some pretty devstating sneak attacks, potentnially even going into Avenger later on. Another option would be to have her do a bit of both and have her start as a scout, and pick up some extra oomph from the Swift Hunter feat along with some ranger levels, though she wouldn't want to take a Prestige class in this case.
Bartleby
Bartleby... is pretty straightforward. He is is a jerk, and flat out the evil member of the party. Statwise He is first and foremost the parties frontline warrior, the Tank and Slaughterhouse all in one. There are some options on how his build can go. He could go straight Barbarian and get all the awesome features that they get. Alternately he could slip into Frenzined Berseker for more oomph in his rages, or he could jump into Dragon Warrior and sacrifice some of his rage to tap into more of his Draconic power.
I'd recommend straight cleric for Iskar, or maybe Cleric + relevant PrC. Monks are generally bad in 3.5e, and I see no reason to waste perfectly good levels on Monk.
ReplyDeleteCan't comment on Gilgamesh, really any build for him is going to end up being useful to some degree or other.
Lila... well, again, a hard choice. Rangers and Scouts are both quite useful and in fact work quite well in combination, but there's a lot of good options there.
Bartleby should go Frenzied Berserker. It's an absolutely amazing class.
Straight Cleric Iskar
ReplyDeleteGilllock
Rangerlila
Dragon Warrior Bartleby
Cleric Iskar, Bard Gil, Scout Lila, Dragon Warrior Bartleby.
ReplyDeleteLosing any levels in the party's only primary healer would leave you screwed. Go with Cleric for Iskar an fiddle with the fluff.
ReplyDeleteGilgamesh... Primary spellcasters win at D&D anyway. Go nuts and see if you can make something that works. Once you get to 6th level, you might as well retire fighters.
Trapfinding is a mandatory ability. She needs at least some levels in a class that allows that. Multiclass for flavour.
Bartleby will be the workhorse for the first few levels, eventually, he's going to realise that the casters are just better than he is. It'll be interesting to see how that affects his mental health.
Iskar
ReplyDeleteHow good is Sacred Fist? I'd actually like to see it in action if it's a solid class.
Gilgamesh
Sorcerous gish, with more emphasis on sorceror. He shall have all of the blades!
Lila
Ranger + Scout
Bartleby
Frenzied Berserker as soon as possible. If reckless violence isn't solving your problems, you're not using enough of it.
Er, in terms of absolute powerlevel? Sacred Fist is better than monk but worse than cleric, if I have to be honest. Its main advantage is extreme Wis synergy and full BAB, which one can argue is less useful when you can cast Divine Power. Oh, and its cool flavour-wise, but when you're already a bear, it might not add as much.
DeleteIts a solid class and I've seen some really cool builds for it (adding Vow Of Poverty and the add-Wis-to-attack feat from BoED can make it silly), but its not going to match as full cleric unleashing spell fury.
The thing about Gil is 'how many non-caster levels to take', since I can get into some Gish PrCs on just Sorceror levels, if I waste some feats and wait for several levels longer. Adding fighter early gives more HP and free feats to set up my fightiness, but reduces his blasting power early on, while waiting to get in means a fairly standard Sorceror until level 8 or so, before suddenly changing to actually be good with the sword he bought the proficiency for.
The other thing to consider is that I'll only have direct control of one PC at a time, either Iskar or Gil, and the AI will be taking over the other. I can switch at any time, but it does mean I have to be careful when micromanaging.
Hmmm. How about a cleric of a war god then? Iskar doesn't come across as the type to hang back and duel with spells.
Deletehttp://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Uthgar perhaps?
DeleteIt gets my vote. War domain!
DeleteA note on Iskar, whichever way you level him up. Perhaps more emphasis on buffing and battlefield control so you won't have to heal as often? Healing is inefficient in combat.
ReplyDeleteskar: Cleric, prestige in to something useful as soon as possible given the general lack of interesting stuff in a straight cleric progression.
ReplyDeleteGilgamesh, Sorceror Gish. Bard just doesn't seem to suit him
Get Bartleby in to Dragon Warrior. We can afford to sacrifice a bit of rage for some dragony stuff
For Lila, I'm inclined towards Ranger/Scout Swift Hunter
Sadly, it doesn't seem like NWN2 has any really interesting PrCs for clerics that would suit Iskar.
DeleteCleric Iskar
ReplyDeleteGillock
Scoutlila
Dragon Bartleby
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI would like to make a comment on how Swift Hunter works in NWN2 as opposed to PnP as it is not quite as useful as it was in the past.
ReplyDeleteSwift Hunter
You have applied the hit-and-run tactics learned from scouting to your strong hunting abilities.
Type: General
Prerequisite: Scout level 3, Ranger level 2
Benefit: Your ranger and scout levels stack for the purpose of determining how many dice of sneak attack you have.
This means that the Feat is only really useful in builds that focus more on Ranger levels than Scout levels, to keep the Sneak attack damage high.
A ranger/scout Lila with no prestige classes sounds fine to me.
Delete