My friend is making a dungeon crawler campaign, I think 3.0 or 3.5 edition, for some friends and me. The friends went with a rogue and a fighter. I'm doing a human sorcerer as my first character ever!
Currently my stats are
Char 17
Con 16
Dex 13
Str 13
Int 13
Wis 9 (Originally I had a 14 roll in there, but he changed it to this and said my stats were too good) sad face
He's also allowing me to choose only 2 level 0 spells, one level 1 spell, my skills, feats, and a familiar. He will choose the rest of my spells since I'm a sorcerer and don't know my spells he said. Here's where I need help.
He said he's going to remove requirements for spells/skills/feats. Like dust, feathers, etc. So yay free spells and such
For spells I was thinking
0 light
0 detect magic
1 grease
For feats (I really dont know which to choose).
improved initiative
toughness
spell focus - conj? HELP
skills (16 points)
Concentration 4 points
Knowledge (Arcana) 4 points
Spell craft 4 points
Hide 4 points <-- need help choosing a 4th
familiar
I figure I would go with the rat and he can check closed areas or talk to other rats in dungeons.
This is what I got up to so far. He's waiting for me to send him my picks so he finishes my background story. That is another thing that I would need help in, as I know you can put some good stuff in the story but again I don't know much about this
Thanks in advance!!
The colour spray spell is surprisingly potent at low levels, since it can disable creatures that fail the saving throw for multiple rounds, allowing you and your allies to deal with them. It does depend on what kind of things you want to do with your magic, though.
On the feats front, Improved Initiative is generally very solid, but Toughness quickly loses its appeal (those 3 hit points aren't such a big slice of your overall health in the long run). Spell Focus (conjuration) is most often taken in order to get Augment Summoning (which is great if you plan to get into summoning things); the conjuration school has some nice spells that use saving throws, but it's not packed full of them. Though if it's 3.0 your DM is running (as opposed to 3.5), then Augment Summoning isn't available in the core rules.
Without a lot of better options for your class skills, you might as well put ranks into Bluff; even in a dungeon delve you never know when you might need to lie to someone's face. At least it's a Charisma-based skill. If your DM is planning to ditch the idea of skills being limited by class, something like Spot would be good for noticing things (while Hide might not be as useful unless you can also afford to invest in Move Silently).
Knowing what spells to suggest would mean knowing what spells the DM is going to require your character to know. I'd assume that because he is assigning you spells known they should be very important to the adventure or at least useful; the DM should know his own metagame and should NOT give you useless junk when he could just let you risk picking useless junk.
I wonder what is meant by "remove requirements" because while letting you ignore material components is pretty common for Sorcerers (not that a spell component pouch should be a problem) ignoring the "requirements" for other things is pretty major. Does this mean I could ignore the spell slot "requirement" at pick Time Stop as a spell?
With your feats I wouldn't argue with Improved Initiative. On the other hand Toughness can be ok at 1st and 2nd level but after that it is a joke when Improved Toughness gives you +1 hp/level. IIRC most summoning spells don't have a save which make Spell Focus less useful unless you are shooting for something later.
Yeah he won't tell me anything until I make my choices. Hence my problem with choosing heh.
For requirements he said item requirements. So if a spell asks for feathers or whatever, then he just ignores it. BUT if it's just gold that it requires then he will use up my gold. The other prereq are still in effect. Essentially he doesnt want me to worry about going to a store everytime I want to cast a spell.
Should I drop the 13 str to WIS or keep as is? I never really thought about it before
As for color spray I think it would be awesome! But not knowing what my second spell is, I think Grease as a main would be helpful during fights/puzzles. I hping to get glitterdust in the next level.
As for STR/WIS you need to ask yourself what you'll use each of them for. For you the only basic use for STR is so you can carry things because you should NEVER want to get into melee where the attack/damage bonus/penalty will come into play; there may also be a few skill checks but those don't come up often. You use WIS for your WILL save which can be very important even if your class already has a good save; it is also the ability that governs the Spot and Listen skills (amoung others) which are very important if you want to avoid being surprised.
Personally, I often prefer DEX as my second highest score but CON also has its benefits. There is a +2 bonus difference between 13 and 16 and with DEX/CON you are looking some important concepts. You have AC vs. hit points and REF save vs. FORT save and when it comes to skills Concentration is CON based (which may be important for you) but DEX covers a lot of other skills including the Stealth skills. A potential tipping factor may be that DEX also helps your ranged attacks (this includes ray spell) hit and could help melee attacks if you took Weapon Finesse (which I'm not recommending at this time.)
While they are too "low" for you I'd stat out a basic Sorcerer using PB 26 as STR 10, DEX 14, CON 12, INT 12, WIS 10, CHA 15 although I normally do PB 28 giving me two more points to play with for +1 to either DEX or CHA or two +1s to give in any other ability.
As for feats instead of Toughness (you've got 7 HP at this point...you're pretty tough for a Sorcerer), I'd choose Rapid Reload (you'd need something to do during the time you're not slinging spells...why not fire off a few crossbow shots?), Skill Focus, or Scribe Scroll (to create more scrolls of useful spells).
With CON 16 providing +3 hit points each level I'd agree that Toughness is a joke although that could give the character as many hitpoints as a BARBARIAN with his d12 HD. Rapid Reload isn't going to help this character at all; sure it makes reloading a crossbow faster but it will be LONG time before that really matters as he doesn't have the BAB to make multiple shots and if he can't use his move to reload he'd better be using it to get to safety. Scribe Scroll is also a poor feat for a SORCERER; you need to know the spell to create the scroll but as long as the sorcerer has an open spell slot he can just use the spell anyway. Wizard's like Scribe Scroll because that lets the "prepare" a spell without actually having it take up a slot.
My backstory has me orphaned and picked up by mercenaries for the sole purpose of being their sorcerer, until I escape.
For hide, I guess I would only get 2 points. I don't exactly know what this means
"If you're wanting to stay with CC skills, you might want to pick up a skill or two that you've already got in the party; if you do, even if you've only got one rank, you can help the specialist by adding a +2 with a successful DC 10 skill check. One rank in the basic spread of skills (Listen, Search, Spot) lets you assist with a roll of 9 on a d20."
Based on my DM, the story has the three of us randomly meeting in this dungeon, as such he won't tell us what each of us have heh.
sorry for all the annoyance and thanks for all the help guys!
So, I'm still looking for:
2 feats
1 skill (4 points to spend, cc cost 2 points per rank)
How is your DM doing combat order? You do realize that in 3.x you only roll initiative once to get your place in the order then a "round" is from a character's place to when his turn comes up again? Once you have the order things just keep flowing but you still have rounds. You need to realize that there are multiple "rounds" going all the time instead there just being one "round" which has a begining and an end.
We are all recommending Improved Initiative knowing how rounds work in DnD. There are two big reasons for this. The first is that until you go you are flat-footed which means (amoung other things) no DEX for your AC and you are subject to things like Sneak Attack damage. The second is that if you go before your opponents do you may be able to cast a spell that will "win" the encounter before it even gets off to a good start. The reasons you see Grease and Color Spray suggested is because they can end an encounter very quickly or at least give your group a significant advantage.
The comment about wanting to have a rank of a cross class skill is based on the idea that you must have a skill trained in order to use it to Aid Another. I don't believe it is true (that's to say anyone could attempt to AA provided they could roll the skill) but the idea is that you have enough skill that you can help someone else improve their skill.
When it comes to CC skill ranks I'd suggest putting them into something that you must be trained in to use like Tumble or Use Magic.
As for what feats and skills to take it would really depend on your long term goals. You really don't have that much to work with if you'd eventually like to enter certain advance classes (or PrCs as they are known) which have requirements which must be met.
For skills... I do like tumble and out of all the "train only" ones it seems to be the best. I can put 2 points in that for the 1st rank. Out of all the other "train only" spells I think Speak language would be interesting. Since I'm a human with 13 int I'll have 1 extra language. If I put the other 2 points in it I would learn a second. My back story is that I was with mercnenaries for a long time so it's possible to add this... I think... we have an Elf and 2 humans int he group. I'm not too sure what my 2 bonus languages should be.
So I think it's down to my final skill, and what 2nd (and 3rd if I take speak language) language to choose.
Thanks for all the help up to this point.