Character Concept
He was trained to be a knight, but dropped out because he's a half-kender and the knights of solamnia never 'accepted' him. So he wandered from group to group as most half-kender tend to do. Eventually he became a factotum, or he wound up with someone who taught him to be a factotum. Anyway, I thought he should have heavy armor proficiency and mounted combat from his knight training. As such I was thinking the second level could be fighter to represent that I have training with all armor also. The DM has said we'll just assume I was trained in it from level 1; as I said this is heavy roleplaying so we need 'excuses' for everything that we learn or do.
Factotum 8/Fighter 2/Kensei 10
Wish me luck
Do you have a lord to serve for kensai? That is a pretty essential component of the class in a roleplaying heavy environment. Another class you might want to consider is halfling outrider-- I could see that being adapted to kender fairly easily in Dragonlance.
You might also want to pick up Font of Inspiration a few times-- it was published in one of Wizard's web articles.
Maybe I don't understand DL that much, but could you explain to me how you convinced your dm to play a factotem in just about the only world I can say with a certainty that wouldn't have a factotem? But I know DL have bards.
Absolutely no reason there would not be a Factotum in DL.
In fact Kender is a great idea for a factotum.
Although some classes require a bit of re-flavoring in a Dragonlance setting, there is very little that can't be done.
Maybe I don't understand DL that much, but could you explain to me how you convinced your dm to play a factotem in just about the only world I can say with a certainty that wouldn't have a factotem? But I know DL have bards.
I talked to my DM, essentially most of my abilities can be explained by my character jumping from group to group as he grew up and his high intelligence. The only part I thought was odd was that the factotum's spellcasting was sorcery not wizardry. I pointed out the preparing spells and the DC being intelligence based but he countered with:
DM's explanation
"Your point about study and intelligence is irrelevant and easily countered by earlier source material. Dragonlance sorcerers only use charisma because WotC decided that that's what sorcerers do. SAGA system sorcerers were reason based. The preparation thing can be handwaved away, it's like an actor going over his lines. Not real, wizardly memorization.
The class seems like something you naturally picked up in your travels. Spend a little time with a sorcerer, pick that up (note that this makes more sense for this adventure as wizards have only been back for 6 months), spend time with your mothers people, pick up trap finding. That sort of thing. No schools, probably never met another factotum in your life.
"Your point about study and intelligence is irrelevant and easily countered by earlier source material. Dragonlance sorcerers only use charisma because WotC decided that that's what sorcerers do. SAGA system sorcerers were reason based. The preparation thing can be handwaved away, it's like an actor going over his lines. Not real, wizardly memorization.
The class seems like something you naturally picked up in your travels. Spend a little time with a sorcerer, pick that up (note that this makes more sense for this adventure as wizards have only been back for 6 months), spend time with your mothers people, pick up trap finding. That sort of thing. No schools, probably never met another factotum in your life.
Which honestly doesn't bother me at all. As far as the Kensei I was hoping I could talk to him about swearing my oaths to Kiri-Jolith (Lawful Good God of war, unity, knighthood etc), and changing the flavor to somewhat more akin to a paladin.
Another option which might be interesting which might work well for you could be entering a different knightly order later-- albeit without cleric since your wisdom isn't amazing. Something like Factotum 8/Fighter 1/Archivist 1/Knight of the Raven 10 (Expedition to Castle Ravenloft) could work well for you for instance.
That would leave you with the ability to spend action points on standard actions, 5th level divine spells, BAB of 17, decent saves, turn undead, and other miscellaneous abilities.
Another option from Holy Orders of the Stars could be something like Factotum 3/Fighter 2/Archivist 4/Righteous Cohort of Kiri-Jolith 10. That isn't quite as good though, since it will have a fairly low base attack bonus. It is the order of kiri-jolith though.
More specific to Dragonlance and eliminating the spellcasting, you might want to consider becoming a Steel Legionnaire. The character level based bardic lore on that is very nice for an Int based character and the favored enemies aren't bad either. And cohorts are always nice for the third level ability.
I would consider something like Factotum 8/Fighter 1/Steel Legionnaire 3/Kensai 8 if you want to stick with the Kensai class. (Or Steel Legionnaire 1/Kensai 10 if you want ki warlord.) If your DM doesn't want to go with the deity based route, that would give you a lord to swear to as well.