Combo for my fighter? - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Combo for my fighter?

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
kugu
Feb 08, 2009 22:46:25 Alright, not sure if this is the right board and my books are with a friend whos learning the ropes. We just started a forgotten realms campaign though it's not really on the mainland, the DM described it as an aztec looking place (Mazteka (sp) ). When we were making our characters I decided to be a fighter and then I suggested to my Girlfriend that she should be a cleric to heal me and give me magic sword buffs and the such ( we also have rogue in the party.) The Dm threw a fit when he heard us talking about setting up our characters and talking about combo strategies. In the end, mainly because we wanted to play she went with druid instead.

Why would the DM discourage this so much, shouldn't a team fight well together? He stated hes got nothing against clerics. Also is there any classes, or prestige classes in the normal DnD books or in the forgotten realms that might help buff me up. I was thinking like Red mage of Final fantasy (Lame I know) where they have a lot of buff and debuff spells, specially ones that might embue fire onto a weapon.

Had to write this quickly sorry for any errors! I'll be glad to awnser any questions people might have.
#2
daidojitaidoru
Feb 09, 2009 1:47:24 First this is not a good first sign from a GM. You may be in for some choppy waters here. He's obviously bad at mechanics, because he should have been very glad you've got a cleric buffing up the fighter instead of going full CoDzilla. He won't have such luck with a Druid, because there's not much a Druid can to buff non animals. But with good enough storytelling and luck he should be able to keep the game fun, so there's still hope.

My suggestion. Try to find out what his problem was. It's possible he's got the assumption that all metagaming is bad. That is fairly a common mistake to make as a GM, especially if they've had issues in the past. See if having a backstory of working together as a team would have helped. Mention you didn't want to have ALL of the downtime RP being held up by disscussion of tactics. Remind him that you only have a few small windows of time to detail their entire lives. If you show a strong commitment to RP those GMs usually feel less threatened.

As for your character, for what you want I'd suggest switching to Duskblade, with maybe a Fighter dip. Duskblades are like the old FF5 Magic Knights. The buffs your intrested in are mostly arcane, and usually only come in premade weaponized form. The Duskblade channeling ability along with their swift action spells would allow you to do those things yourself, and still maintain a decent Fighter feel. Aritificer would work as well (you could make your weapons and armor enchanted on the fly), but they're more castery in the end. Either way you'd be able to help the rogue make up for the lack of a dedicated arcanist in the group, allowing you to access important abilities like Fly and Teleport at higher levels.

(I'm assuming you're doing 3rd from the post so my answers will reflect this. However outside of mechanical specifics it doesn't change anything much.)
#3
kugu
Feb 09, 2009 2:10:16 Yes, we are playing 3.5. I called My Dm (He's actually my Ex-boss (He got canned not me) ) and asked him what exactly his problem with us wanting a good combo set up like such and me wanting to have a good buffer to keep us going. He said that in all his years of Dungeon mastering (He's supposedly dm'ed for years) its always ended in disaster for his games when players rely on combo attacks a lot. Then I had to run again, and its too late to ask further questions tonight.

The duskblade and Aritificer.. Are prestige classes I assume? What books are they in, from what I'm understanding he's not allowing any books but the core. Sorry if these are obvious things, like I said I'm completely new. I'm working to be a DM as well so I'd like to know my stuff. Thanks in advance.
#4
salla
Feb 09, 2009 2:39:43
Yes, we are playing 3.5. I called My Dm (He's actually my Ex-boss (He got canned not me) ) and asked him what exactly his problem with us wanting a good combo set up like such and me wanting to have a good buffer to keep us going. He said that in all his years of Dungeon mastering (He's supposedly dm'ed for years) its always ended in disaster for his games when players rely on combo attacks a lot. Then I had to run again, and its too late to ask further questions tonight.

The duskblade and Aritificer.. Are prestige classes I assume? What books are they in, from what I'm understanding he's not allowing any books but the core. Sorry if these are obvious things, like I said I'm completely new. I'm working to be a DM as well so I'd like to know my stuff. Thanks in advance.

Duskblade is PH2, Artificer is Eberron Campaign Setting.

There's a difference between 'relying on combos' and 'having combos ready when they can be done'. The cleric doesn't NEED to combo with anybody, it can run the whole show by itself.

If you're stuck with 3.5 core, play a druid, cleric, or wizard. Everything else is a waste of paper. The first two will melee better than a fighter, and the wizard renders the fighter utterly unnecessary.
#5
daidojitaidoru
Feb 09, 2009 10:37:02
The duskblade and Aritificer.. Are prestige classes I assume? What books are they in, from what I'm understanding he's not allowing any books but the core. Sorry if these are obvious things, like I said I'm completely new. I'm working to be a DM as well so I'd like to know my stuff. Thanks in advance.

Ouch. Yeah as Salla stated those are new base classes from other books. There's really almost nothing like what you're asking for in core ass far as enchanting blades on the fly. In fact without non PHB feats you can't even make core melee stop sucking. The Barbarians the best of a very bad lot, and it still falls into the "useless without massive amounts of properly selected magical gear or two full casters wasting their time buffing."

What level range are you guys playing in? That'll influence how badly melee gets owned. If it's really low level you can just shrug and grab a Fighter anyway. Up to level 8 and I'd be hesitent to go anything but Barbarian. Past that and I'd probably just go Cleric if I wanted melee.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 kugu Feb 08, 2009 22:46:25	Alright, not sure if this is the right board and my books are with a friend whos learning the ropes. We just started a forgotten realms campaign though it's not really on the mainland, the DM described it as an aztec looking place (Mazteka (sp) ). When we were making our characters I decided to be a fighter and then I suggested to my Girlfriend that she should be a cleric to heal me and give me magic sword buffs and the such ( we also have rogue in the party.) The Dm threw a fit when he heard us talking about setting up our characters and talking about combo strategies. In the end, mainly because we wanted to play she went with druid instead. Why would the DM discourage this so much, shouldn't a team fight well together? He stated hes got nothing against clerics. Also is there any classes, or prestige classes in the normal DnD books or in the forgotten realms that might help buff me up. I was thinking like Red mage of Final fantasy (Lame I know) where they have a lot of buff and debuff spells, specially ones that might embue fire onto a weapon. Had to write this quickly sorry for any errors! I'll be glad to awnser any questions people might have.
#2 daidojitaidoru Feb 09, 2009 1:47:24	First this is not a good first sign from a GM. You may be in for some choppy waters here. He's obviously bad at mechanics, because he should have been very glad you've got a cleric buffing up the fighter instead of going full CoDzilla. He won't have such luck with a Druid, because there's not much a Druid can to buff non animals. But with good enough storytelling and luck he should be able to keep the game fun, so there's still hope. My suggestion. Try to find out what his problem was. It's possible he's got the assumption that all metagaming is bad. That is fairly a common mistake to make as a GM, especially if they've had issues in the past. See if having a backstory of working together as a team would have helped. Mention you didn't want to have ALL of the downtime RP being held up by disscussion of tactics. Remind him that you only have a few small windows of time to detail their entire lives. If you show a strong commitment to RP those GMs usually feel less threatened. As for your character, for what you want I'd suggest switching to Duskblade, with maybe a Fighter dip. Duskblades are like the old FF5 Magic Knights. The buffs your intrested in are mostly arcane, and usually only come in premade weaponized form. The Duskblade channeling ability along with their swift action spells would allow you to do those things yourself, and still maintain a decent Fighter feel. Aritificer would work as well (you could make your weapons and armor enchanted on the fly), but they're more castery in the end. Either way you'd be able to help the rogue make up for the lack of a dedicated arcanist in the group, allowing you to access important abilities like Fly and Teleport at higher levels. (I'm assuming you're doing 3rd from the post so my answers will reflect this. However outside of mechanical specifics it doesn't change anything much.)
#3 kugu Feb 09, 2009 2:10:16	Yes, we are playing 3.5. I called My Dm (He's actually my Ex-boss (He got canned not me) ) and asked him what exactly his problem with us wanting a good combo set up like such and me wanting to have a good buffer to keep us going. He said that in all his years of Dungeon mastering (He's supposedly dm'ed for years) its always ended in disaster for his games when players rely on combo attacks a lot. Then I had to run again, and its too late to ask further questions tonight. The duskblade and Aritificer.. Are prestige classes I assume? What books are they in, from what I'm understanding he's not allowing any books but the core. Sorry if these are obvious things, like I said I'm completely new. I'm working to be a DM as well so I'd like to know my stuff. Thanks in advance.
#4 salla Feb 09, 2009 2:39:43	Yes, we are playing 3.5. I called My Dm (He's actually my Ex-boss (He got canned not me) ) and asked him what exactly his problem with us wanting a good combo set up like such and me wanting to have a good buffer to keep us going. He said that in all his years of Dungeon mastering (He's supposedly dm'ed for years) its always ended in disaster for his games when players rely on combo attacks a lot. Then I had to run again, and its too late to ask further questions tonight. The duskblade and Aritificer.. Are prestige classes I assume? What books are they in, from what I'm understanding he's not allowing any books but the core. Sorry if these are obvious things, like I said I'm completely new. I'm working to be a DM as well so I'd like to know my stuff. Thanks in advance. Duskblade is PH2, Artificer is Eberron Campaign Setting. There's a difference between 'relying on combos' and 'having combos ready when they can be done'. The cleric doesn't NEED to combo with anybody, it can run the whole show by itself. If you're stuck with 3.5 core, play a druid, cleric, or wizard. Everything else is a waste of paper. The first two will melee better than a fighter, and the wizard renders the fighter utterly unnecessary.
#5 daidojitaidoru Feb 09, 2009 10:37:02	The duskblade and Aritificer.. Are prestige classes I assume? What books are they in, from what I'm understanding he's not allowing any books but the core. Sorry if these are obvious things, like I said I'm completely new. I'm working to be a DM as well so I'd like to know my stuff. Thanks in advance. Ouch. Yeah as Salla stated those are new base classes from other books. There's really almost nothing like what you're asking for in core ass far as enchanting blades on the fly. In fact without non PHB feats you can't even make core melee stop sucking. The Barbarians the best of a very bad lot, and it still falls into the "useless without massive amounts of properly selected magical gear or two full casters wasting their time buffing." What level range are you guys playing in? That'll influence how badly melee gets owned. If it's really low level you can just shrug and grab a Fighter anyway. Up to level 8 and I'd be hesitent to go anything but Barbarian. Past that and I'd probably just go Cleric if I wanted melee.