Hi all.
I'm running a Gestalt game, currently lvl 17, and one of my players is wanting to rebuild one half of her character. She's currently playing a LN Dread Necro/Beguiler (one of several ideas, but the other players thought it sounded most cool), however she's currently being overshadowed by every other member of the party.
Part of it is that everyone else is a caster/melee hybrid of some kind, part of it is because she does often make.. sub-optimal combat choices, but largely it's because in-character most of the other PCs refuse to let her do what she's good at (ie, dealing with a.. difficult NPC, they refuse to let her Dominate him to get the information out of him, because "That's not the way heroes should act and if you do that you'll be sorry" etc (hypocritical, yes), and various similar things. Her Imp familiar doesn't help much in the "Party letting her do much" field.
But anyways, long story short, after 17 levels and hitting the pointy end of the campaign, she's sick of being less than useful, and wants to rebuild the Beguiler half of her Gestalt into something else, using one of the in-world options for it (long story involving past incarnations).
Any advise as to what pairs well with Dread Necro? As she's said, ideally it's something that either makes a lot of unarmed attacks, or that can use one of the weapons that allows channeling things like her plague touch, negative energy touch, harm spells etc.
Another party member has suggested Battle Dancer as a good charisma based melee fighter.Another option is Monk, although that may cause stat issues (she'll be able to drain her Int and add it to other stats, but having to buff Strength, Dex and Wisdom will be problematic).
We're aware that Duskblade would be a good option, but they fought a Duskblade/Dread Necro early in the campaign (one of the big bads) and she doesn't want to be thought of as copying what I've done.
So. Anyone have any other thoughts? Something that can fit Shadowcaster into it would be good, but not essential.
What about a Binder? They're charisma based, and have very interesting abilities that are at-will but allow for lots of customization. They can basically "rebuild" themselves substantially, depending on what vestiges they bind for the day (or more frequently, with feats/items).
They can also bind two vestiges that give a total -4 to saving throws and pounce, among other things. Add on a few more penalty inflicting things, and stack this with her fear aura, and she should be able to land disabling spells a lot easier.
Also, isn't the ghostly visage a better familiar? Although she could take use magic device ranks, and give the imp some wands...
For a heavily save-penalizing build to stick on the other side, check this out: brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.p...
What about a Binder? They're charisma based, and have very interesting abilities that are at-will but allow for lots of customization. They can basically "rebuild" themselves substantially, depending on what vestiges they bind for the day (or more frequently, with feats/items).
They can also bind two vestiges that give a total -4 to saving throws and pounce, among other things. Add on a few more penalty inflicting things, and stack this with her fear aura, and she should be able to land disabling spells a lot easier.
Also, isn't the ghostly visage a better familiar? Although she could take use magic device ranks, and give the imp some wands...
For a heavily save-penalizing build to stick on the other side, check this out: brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.p...
Hrm. Binder would certainly be an interesting choice. Had one of those in my last campaign and he was darned near indestructible (NPC mage lobbed a dozen spells and him and didn't drop him, so used Earthquake to bring the side of a mountain down on him. After finishing off the mage, the party spent half an hour digging him out of the wreckage, and he was perfectly fine, just peeved at missing the end of the fight). I'm not sure if it'd be in character for her, but I'll definitely mention it 
.
And yes, technically the Ghostly Visage is a better familiar (pretty much broken really, other than forcing you to do evil acts), but she felt that the Lawful Imp was more in character for her to take. Especially since it's now been... experimented on by the local Steampunk goblins (led by the Goblin version of Nicola Tesla. Loooong story) and can turn into a Balor for a few rounds per day.
Dread Necro//Beguiler? And she doesn't rule the campaign world why?
Back on track: A Monk dip can be put in without having to pump Wisdom: just grab Ascetic Mage to add that juicy Cha score to work protecting you (and those Dread Necro levels boosting some Monk abilities). The low unarmed damage doesn't matter as Dread Necros can add some crazy effects to their natural attacks/touch attacks. Other than that, Binder is a Charisma-based class that adds tons of versatility and can be used to debuff even further than the Dread Necro. I second it's inclusion. She can even reflavor the vestiges as past lives.
I love to say this over and over
Dread Necro / Duskblade is awesome!
Try to get Whirlwind Attack and go!
You cast harm once and affect everyone within 5 feet with it. If she chooses a nonlethal weapon, her undead minions get healed at no cost while her enemies take lots of damage.
All the damaging touch spells will affect up to 8 creatures with one casting instead of one.
Need to be healed? Bestow wound can heal up to 8 times her caster level in this way... extremly useful for level one...
Dread Necro//Beguiler? And she doesn't rule the campaign world why?
Back on track: A Monk dip can be put in without having to pump Wisdom: just grab Ascetic Mage to add that juicy Cha score to work protecting you (and those Dread Necro levels boosting some Monk abilities). The low unarmed damage doesn't matter as Dread Necros can add some crazy effects to their natural attacks/touch attacks. Other than that, Binder is a Charisma-based class that adds tons of versatility and can be used to debuff even further than the Dread Necro. I second it's inclusion. She can even reflavor the vestiges as past lives.
Well, she doesn't rule the campaign world because the party are the "Legendary Heroes" of the realm, reborn to fight the evil overlords until one side finally wins.
Lets just say that the rest of the party has a very... dim view of her views on things (like raising zombies of a village's dead inhabitants to defend it. She thinks it's efficient and stops more living dying, the party thinks it's monstrous. Or dominating an annoying NPC to get info out of him. She thinks it's expedient, the party thinks otherwise), since they think most of her methods are un-heroic (of course, half of them act worse at times, but I only police alignment, not hypocrisy ).
The other advantage with something like Monk is that with the sheer number of spell slots that she has to burn, even if she drops Beguiler, she can be using Arcane Strike a *lot*, and with a monk's five attacks, that'd be pretty nasty.
I assume Ascetic Monk is Cha instead of Wis? I've actually banned feats like that in the game, since I didn't want most of the game builds managing to take a couple of feats to make all their abilities work off only one stat.
I love to say this over and over
Dread Necro / Duskblade is awesome!
Try to get Whirlwind Attack and go!
You cast harm once and affect everyone within 5 feet with it. If she chooses a nonlethal weapon, her undead minions get healed at no cost while her enemies take lots of damage.
All the damaging touch spells will affect up to 8 creatures with one casting instead of one.
Need to be healed? Bestow wound can heal up to 8 times her caster level in this way... extremly useful for level one...
Yes. Dead Necro / Duskblade is awesome.
It's also, for reasons listed in my first post, not an option for her
Yeah, Ascetic Mage moves the AC to work off of Charisma instead of Wis as well as using Sorcerer levels (which there are none) to figure Unarmored AC bonus. Can burn a spell-slot to gain a bonus to attack and damage rolls as well and can multiclass freely between Monk and Sorcerer (whoop-de-do). If you banned it, I guess it's out. Still, there isn't a reason to shuffle ability points around as you can get similar protection otherwise (Dread Necros wear light armor with no penalty after all).
Of course, from a roleplaying perspective I could see the character growing to resent the other characters and ignore them from time to time. My guess is that if she really wanted to, she could handle the rest of the party solo, which makes me a little surprised such a charismatic character is backing down at all. I would say "screw ethics, the ends matter more," with such a character (which seems to me to have likely been the original intent) and perform the action anyway. The other PC's may not like it, but if they deny that it isn't effective and preferable to not succeeding, then I'm guessing their sense is still in a past life. Only exception to this is if one member is a Paladin as their code causes issues.
Yeah, Ascetic Mage moves the AC to work off of Charisma instead of Wis as well as using Sorcerer levels (which there are none) to figure Unarmored AC bonus. Can burn a spell-slot to gain a bonus to attack and damage rolls as well and can multiclass freely between Monk and Sorcerer (whoop-de-do). If you banned it, I guess it's out. Still, there isn't a reason to shuffle ability points around as you can get similar protection otherwise (Dread Necros wear light armor with no penalty after all).
Ah, right, one of those ones, the 'mix class together a bit' ones
Of course, from a roleplaying perspective I could see the character growing to resent the other characters and ignore them from time to time. My guess is that if she really wanted to, she could handle the rest of the party solo, which makes me a little surprised such a charismatic character is backing down at all.
*Cough*
Lol
Ahem. Sorry
If it came to blows the rest of the party would have her torn into tiny little shreds before she even got to roll for a surprise round, the combat capabilities of this party, especially against a low-ac caster, are absolutely staggering (though admittedly not to the muchkin degrees that the CO boards often pull up).
She does resent the party's interference at times, but being Lawful typically means she doesn't go 'screw them' and go off on her own. She has once or twice (Animating an Ancient red dragon that they killed as a Vampiric dragon for eg), but that.. typically doesn't end well for her. Basically, class combination plus alignment plus personal code of ethics plus world situation has conspired to neuter her, and so she's falling further and further behind the curve.
I'm going to second the Binder option, especially since this is set at level 17. You get tons of options, and binding Zceryll is just short of broken. It gets you telepathy and Mindsight, which lets you detect any non-mindless creature within 100 feet that is not in an antimagic field automatically, and pull awesome summoning shennanigans. Check out community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758... for the skinny on Binders.
Well, decision has pretty much been made.
Binder, in spite of a large number of nominations, didn't win, sorry.
Plan is: Dread Necro on one side (of course), and Monk 1/Beguiler 2/Monk 2/Enlightened Fist 10/Monk 5 on the other side, using Dread Necro to fulfil the casting requirements but advancing Beguiler with Enlightened Fist.
It'll give (at 20):
1) Effective Monk level 18 for stuff like unarmed damage, AC, speed etc,
2) Real monk level 8 in terms of class abilities
3) Beguiler casting level 10th (5th level spells)
4) Real beguiler level 2 for class abilities
I'll also be allowing her to take Greater Flurry as a feat so that we don't need to worry about mixing & matching Monk 12/Beguiler 1/Enlightened Fist 7 kind of thing to make sure that she gets the best bonus of class abilities (Like Diamond Body).
Enlightened Fist's ability to turn a ray spell into a touch and cast a touch spell as part of a full attack, combined with Arcane Strike and Greater Flurry for 5 attacks should be pretty potent (Avasculate on the first attack anyone?).
Thanks go out to all those who gave their ideas