Post/Author/DateTime	Post
LFK 10-23-07, 01:39 AM	Presently I'm playing a 2 Fighter/5 Rogue, but my initial character concept (law man/non-lethal combat/social solutions to conflict) has been pretty much shattered by the direction the campaign story has gone. My secondary character concept that evolved along the way (merchant warrior) has similarly been shattered. Basically at this point I'm playing an Urban character out in the wilderness and it's frustrating me. It's to the point that I'm just getting disenchanted over front-line combatants. So I'm thinking of making a support/healing character that still has interesting social options provided we ever get back to civilization that isn't trying to murder us. Presently my options that I'm rolling around are: 7 Holy/Protection Cleric 7 Healer or 6 Cleric/1 Apostle of Peace I'm thinking that the Cleric is more flexible in terms of having buffs on top of healing/protecting options and spontaneous casting, but at the same time the Unicorn is a pretty sweet bit of flavor. Ideas? note: first person who says Holy/Sun = Radiant Servant of Pelor gets skull****ed in their sleep.
CryoSilver 10-23-07, 02:05 AM	Don't be an Apostle of Peace. Just don't. I've DMed 4 games with characters who've had Vows, and played in 2, and all 6 went down the crapper because of them.
Mejdrich 10-24-07, 12:57 AM	If you can give us an idea of why your first three characters haven't worked might help us help you. And let me add my voice to CryoSilver. If you are having problems keeping characters, Apostate of Peace is working in the wrong direction. They usually are game-breakers.
Salla 10-24-07, 01:12 AM	Definitely go straight Cleric. (What, exactly, is the problem with the Radiant Servant? It's decent, but not a breaker.)
LFK 10-24-07, 02:46 AM	I haven't gone through three characters, but rather my current character has evolved as I took levels. I started alternating fighter/rogue/fighter/rogue levels for the bonus feats to get Imp. Grapple, disarm, and trip, and lots of skills for intimidate, diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, and the other face skills. The concept was a lawman type character specializing in non-lethal strategic combat, strong ties to King and country, lawful good. Start off as a Corporal in the army with a minor posting in the town the GM wants us all to start in. Then I get framed and fired on the first day. The group gets hired to be a paramilitary "special ops" crew for the deposed princess who gives us vague orders to do "stuff." Time goes on and my character basically abandons the lawman life as he feels more and more isolated and abandoned by his superiors and the Law as a whole. He slips from Lawful Good to Neutral Good. He develops a fascination with trade as the group sets off on a trek through enemy territory under guise of being traveling merchants. Whenever we're in a city I can do some reasonable good, but our group is perpetually beset on all sides by enemies, and even our friends hate us and are either impotent or indifferent. We spend a lot of time in the wilderness getting attacked by random things that can't be reasoned with, so my array of social skills do little, and non-lethal combat has proven useless from the beginning as virtually everything fights to the death. A couple days ago I came to the realization that I'm frustrated with my character because I've (inadvertently) built an Urban character when our GM has no intention of running an Urban adventure for more than a session or two. Presently my character is the AC25 "tank" of the group, but just doesn't seem to be able to tank (I can't pose enough of a threat to make things attack me, and I lack the mobility to force them to since I took social skills instead of mobility skills, so monsters ignore my full plate, shield bearing ass and gibb our Scout and Warlock.) Lately my character stands there and just uses his wands (I did boost my UMD lately) to Enlarge the rest of the party's hitters. Basically, front line isn't working out for me, and support just seems to be a better role for me as a player, so I'm looking to make a switch. Radiant Servant isn't bad, but it's not what I'm looking for and I already had to deal with some heavy evangelizing over it.
LFK 10-24-07, 02:53 AM	Addendum: if there's a more healing/buffing oriented Druid variant (vs. shape shifting) or just generally nature oriented healer then I'd be interested in that too. My GM has all the splat books, but some of these options aren't always where you'd think to find them (Miniature's Handbook, what what?).
Salla 10-24-07, 10:22 AM	Addendum: if there's a more healing/buffing oriented Druid variant (vs. shape shifting) or just generally nature oriented healer then I'd be interested in that too. My GM has all the splat books, but some of these options aren't always where you'd think to find them (Miniature's Handbook, what what?). The PHBII has a Druid substitution that loses Spontaneous Summon Nature's Ally for the ability to give your party fast healing for a limited time ... that's about all I can think of.
Mejdrich 10-24-07, 03:57 PM	A couple days ago I came to the realization that I'm frustrated with my character because I've (inadvertently) built an Urban character when our GM has no intention of running an Urban adventure for more than a session or two. I sympathize. When this happens to me, usually I ask the DM to write a new character that fits his story. This is also the reason why I usually ask my DM lots of questions before writing my first one (although sometimes even that doesn't help). Another thing to look at, the PHBII has rules for retraining your skills. When you are leveling, it allows you to move skill points into something more useful (sometimes the DM makes you pay a few GP for the new training). Might help you get rid of the useless social skills. Best of luck!