unfamiliar with 3E, can someone recommend a class/build?

[loki8481]

I'm a life-long AD&D'er (in fact, the longest campaign I ever played in was a 1st Edition campaign that I played in from 1999 - 2004), but one of my friends is starting up a 3rd edition (3.0, not 3.5) campaign in a couple weeks and my dice bag is calling my name. I haven't played since moving away from that 1E campaign.

I'm trying to come up with a class/build (or some combination of classes) that might help mimic my old 1E character, a multi-class fighter/cleric who was more or less a ranged nuker* who could shrug off a couple hits and dish out some melee damage if I had to.

*my cleric worshiped the god of the oceans and my DM let me have access to any mage/druid spell that had anything to do with water or ice in addition to the normal cleric spells, so I had fun things like a boiling water version of fireball, cone of ice, etc

so with that in mind, any suggestions? we're primarily running out of the core rulebooks, but I could petition my DM to allow something from supplemental materiel on a case by case basis (subject to his review on whether he thinks it's not overpowered and blends in with his campaign world that I know nothing about)

I was actually thinking a little bit about a druid, but they seem so situational, like they might be really limited in an in-doors dungeon crawl (especially the animal companion if I don't have something I can physically carry or that can fly)

edit: for what it's worth... I don't know what anyone else in the group is playing (and won't till game night), except one friend who I know for certain is going to be playing a cleric to be a healer.

[akbearfoot]

Straight clerics are a very strong choice to play. They can wear heavy armor, have tons of great spells for both offense and defense, use average melee weapons, but can fight on par or better than fighters if they use the right buffs. They can heal and nuke, although their direct nukes are somewhat limited with core.


Druids aren't really limited at all in dungeon crawls. The only thing that keeps an animal companion out of a dungeon is if it can't fit through the door or if there is terrain that makes it impossible for a quadruped to get around. In which case, you could potentially carry them through the difficult parts. Nothing you can start out with is bigger than medium, so if YOU can get into the dungeon, so can your companion. They are loyal to you and will follow/protect you as long as you treat them well.

Druids only have a very few spells that won't work in a 'worked' dungeon. In general, druids and clerics are both considered to be in the top 5 for most powerful classes in 3.xx

[Elder-Basilisk]

For what you are talking about, I recommend the following:

Human cleric. (All the way up--if you want, you can take radiant servant of pelor, or church inquisitor without losing much in the way of the abilities you care about, but you will be fine even if you stick with the base class).

Str 14, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 10

Domains: you have a lot of freedom here, but war and sun or sun and strength would give you a good combination of physical combat and spell blasting abilities. Sun is required for radiant servant of pelor (so is worshipping Pelor, BTW).

If you really wanted to recapitulate the character you had in 1e, the water domain would be a solid choice as it adds a good number of attack spells to your repertoire and you could take domain spontainaity to cast them without preparation. Water and sun, water and strength, water and war, or water and destruction would all be solid choices.


Feats: Again, for what you want there is a lot of flexibility. You will want power attack, and weapon focus to maintain the ability to dish out some melee beatdown. You could get a martial or exotic weapon, but unless you go two-handed, you won't get much improvement over the morning star or heavy mace. You will probably want to take domain spontainaity and empower spell at some point.

For equipment, wear fullplate and either wield a buckler and one-handed weapon (longsword, battle axe, light flail, heavy mace, or morning star) or just wield a two-handed weapon (greatsword, falchion, greataxe).

[StreamOfTheSky]

If you really want to do melee and ranged blasting above all else, and are limited primarily to core, you really can't go wrong with a simple sorcerer + fighter (1 level) + Eldritch Knight (that's in the 3.0 core books, right?) build. If you must do cleric...getting attack spells from domains is nice, but you're still only going to be able to use one of those per spell level each day, not that reliable. Air actually isn't a bad blasting domain, though. It gives a bunch of lightning spells.

I'd say just go Fighter 1 (it's just plain better to start at level 1 in it for the maxed hp; sorcerer gets the same amount of skill points). Then enter sorcerer, stay in there until you meet the requirements of Eldritch Knight. Then go all the way to level 10 in that.
If you have access to Sword and Fist and/or Tome and Blood, look for other fighter/mage prestige classes you might like, and any feats at all to get a better use out of that charisma score you'll have for spell casting; sadly charisma adds to very few things without feats and such to give new things to add it to. Also, ask your Dm if he'll let you swap out spells known once in a while if you find you don't like ones you picked. 3.5 introduced swapping out spells at basically every other level for sorcerers, but in 3.0 it was rough. Whatever choices you made, without a nice DM, you were stuck with them.


Alternatively, I think Mystic Theurge is in Tome and Blood. That's a dual progression prestige class, arcane and divine. You could do Sorcerer/Cleric (note clerics can at least use high charisma for turning undead) and enter Mystic Theurge. You would not want to melee, but the cleric levels would give you decent hp, and you would have the armor proficiencies if you went for some mithral light armor (to eliminate arcane spell failure). Cleric levels would give healing and utility spells, and the flexibility of knowing every spell on your spell list and being able to prepare it. Sorcerer would give you sheer weight of firepower for offensive spells to be cast over and over.

I reccommend the first build because it's very simple and beginner-friendly. The second would be trickier to make, and would suck terribly until level 7 or so (you probably couldn't enter MT until level 8, or level 7 if you went cleric/wizard).

[Arkhandus]

Nah, Eldritch Knights and Mystic Theurges aren't in 3.0. They're two of the sad, flavorless excuses for a "prestige" class that was introduced in 3.5 after they pretty much gave up on most of the "prestige" half of the equation. And druids are more limited in 3.0 when it comes to dungeons and whatnot; Call Lightning, for example, doesn't work just anywhere in 3.0. Of course, druids were at least moderately less broken in 3.0 as well. They have rather few water and ice spells though, in 3e.

Depending on how closely you want to mimic your old character, you might play a cleric, a druid, a fighter/sorcerer, a fighter/wizard, a fighter/shugenja, a fighter/shaman, or a fighter/wu jen. Shugenjas, Shamans, and Wu Jens are spellcasters from Oriental Adventures, and all three of them have some elemental magic for water-focused characters. Plus you may take a prestige class later to better blend your classes or better focus their abilities.

Clerics with the Water Domain have some choice spells for wielding water and ice (as well as fog), and the War Domain can make them effective warriors as well. No core deity grants both of these domains, but if the DM has a different set of deities in his or her campaign, or if he or she allows the option (given in the core rules as a standard option for clerics, but certain campaigns don't allow it, such as Forgotten Realms) to serve an idealogy or philosophy instead of a deity, you can choose two appropriate domains instead of choosing from amongst your character's deity's domains.

A water shugenja (choosing either the Iuchi School or the Kitsu School, depending on whether they wanted more utility or more healing magic) is an effective healer and buffer, plus they can have an animal companion through the Animal Friendship spell (though they would have to choose that as one of their known spells, first), and they get some water/ice spells like Bo of Water, Water Breathing, Water Walk, Control Water, Wall of Ice, Control Weather, and Master of the Rolling River, as well as having Righteous Might among their available spells to learn so they can be pretty good in melee, and they get some Summon Nature's Ally spells for elemental-summoning.

A shaman with the River Domain and the War Domain (or the Hero Domain instead of War) could fit your character concept, if he's more spiritual/animist rather than godly. Besides their domain spells, a shaman has access to Bless Water, Curse Water, Obscuring Mist, Weapon Bless, Ancestral Vengeance, Create Spring, Rebuke, Castigate, Chaos Hammer, Holy Smite, Order's Wrath, Polymorph Self, Unholy Blight, Blood of Fire, Circle of Doom, Blasphemy, Control Weather, Dictum, Holy Word, Sunbeam, Word of Chaos, and Earthquake on their spell list, plus the various Summon Nature's Ally spells for summoning elementals. Wu jens have several water spells on their list as well, such as Steam Breath and Ice Blast, but they're arcane casters.

Unfortunately, 3e doesn't have a lot of water/ice spells, and they're pretty scattered. Defenders of the Faith, the 3.0 softcover supplement for clerics and paladins, has the Knife Spray, Sweet Water, and Sword Stream spells. Tome & Blood, the 3.0 softcover supplement for arcane casters, has the Cold Orb, Lesser Cold Orb, Ice Knife, and Ice Burst spells, but they're all limited to sorcerers and wizards. Masters of the Wild, the 3.0 softcover supplement for druids, rangers, and barbarians, has the spells Creeping Cold, Standing Wave, Waterball, Cloak of the Sea, and Greater Creeping Cold, but all of those are limited to druids except for Cloak of the Sea (which still isn't available to clerics). There's also Slime Wave in Defenders of the Faith and Masters of the Wild, but that's not exactly a water spell.....

Suitable cleric spells from Magic of Faerun (a 3.0 magic supplement for Forgotten Realms campaigns) include Aura against Flame, Doomtide, and Battletide (though the latter is just a combat buff and a debuff for enemies). Suitable druid spells from there include Blinding Spittle, Speed Swim, Cloudburst, Murderous Mist, and Drown. Suitable sorcerer/wizard spells from there include Ice Dagger, Speed Swim, Cloud of Bewilderment, Darsson's Potion, Zajimarn's Ice Claw Prison, Zajimarn's Field of Icy Razors, and Zajimarn's Avalanche. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book for 3.0 has Snilloc's Snowball Swarm, Waterspout, and Maelstrom (the latter two of which are only available at upper levels as a cleric, though, through the Ocean Domain presented in the FRCS).

Class-wise, there are a few prestige classes that sort of qualify. Warpriest in Defenders of the Faith is a good fighter-cleric mix (best taken as a pure cleric beforehand, though, since Warpriest only has half spellcasting advancement, so even as a pure cleric beforehand you won't gain 9th-level spells by 20th-level). Warpriest is more for leaderly clerics though. Tome & Blood has the Elemental Savant prestige class, which is available to clerics who take one of the elemental Domains (such as the Water domain). Elemental Savant gradually turns the character into an elemental as they advance in the prestige class, and it grants bonuses/resistances related to the character's chosen element (such as Cold Resistance and eventual Cold Immunity for those with Water as their chosen element).

A fighter/wizard, fighter/sorcerer, or fighter/wu jen would probably need to take the Spellsword prestige class from Tome & Blood if they wanted to cast arcane spells easily in armor. The Divine Champion prestige class from the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is suitable for fighter/clerics or just plain clerics.

[Thanee]

Originally Posted by Arkhandus

Nah, Eldritch Knights and Mystic Theurges aren't in 3.0. They're two of the sad, flavorless excuses for a "prestige" class that was introduced in 3.5 after they pretty much gave up on most of the "prestige" half of the equation.

And we are glad for that, since they offer something, that multiclassing does not excel at, without being burdened by the "prestigious flavor" that limits the concepts more than opening them up.

Of course, these classes are just a fix for a broken system, but the system isn't easily altered, and the fix works very well.

Bye
Thanee

[loki8481]

I should add that I'm not die-hard committed to playing a cleric, it's more that I'm looking for a class (or combination of classes) that would give me ranged utility/damage spells without being completely frail and useless up close. I think what I might end up doing is creating 2-4 characters prior to the first session and deciding which of them I play based on what everyone else is rocking.

[Aus_Snow]

Druid is solid. I'm not nearly as familiar with the 3.0 version, but I'll assume that the animal companion and Wild Shape features are not radically different (from 3.5). So, with that in mind, I would recommend the Shapeshift class variant from the PHB II, a 3.5 supplement. It replaces both the forementioned class abilities, and in general makes for a more universally useful, and less hassle-prone, Druid. IMO, anyway. If it's even allowable.

Reasonable HP, medium BAB, some nice spells (including some ranged attacks, and utility of certain kinds), and plenty of oomph in melee when you need it.

Or yeah, Cleric is strong. Pick the War domain, and one other, preferably using a martial weapon courtesy of some deity or other, and you'll be fighting nearly as well as a Fighter (without Weapon Focus) for your first four levels, give or take. You can wear plate armour too, and heft a shield if you like. Your HP are not going to be quite as high, but the difference mightn't be that great. And besides, your spells can buff you (and/or others) like crazy, if that appeals.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Actually, animal companion is a lot different. In 3.0, you could have a whole army of weak companions if you wanted, and I don't think there were rules to improve a single animal if you went that route. You just went for the highest HD animal you could find, and when you gained more levels, find soething with even more HD, or a few weak creatures to fill up your allowed maximum.

Druid can pack that mix of utility/healing, blasting, and melee better than any other base class, although I still think cleric is a bit stronger.

And yeah, I'm shocked EK isn't in core 3.0, I knew MT was in Tome and Blood, but I thought at least my first suggestion was do-able in a core-only game...my bad.

[Dannyalcatraz]

Originally Posted by loki8481

I'm trying to come up with a class/build (or some combination of classes) that might help mimic my old 1E character, a multi-class fighter/cleric who was more or less a ranged nuker* who could shrug off a couple hits and dish out some melee damage if I had to.

*my cleric worshiped the god of the oceans and my DM let me have access to any mage/druid spell that had anything to do with water or ice in addition to the normal cleric spells, so I had fun things like a boiling water version of fireball, cone of ice, etc

Without faulting anyone else's builds, I'll suggest the following (this is just a checklist of ideas, not an actual build):

1) Take at least a level or 2 of Fighter, just for the warrior feats.

2) Good Cleric Domains for this build would be War and Water. War would let you be very "fighter-y" without causing you to multiclass- you wouldn't get the bonus feats, but the War domain gives you a couple of bonus feats and some nice spells.

Water domain, of course, gives you access to many of the kinds of spells you're used to casting.

3) There is a feat called Energy Substitution which will let you substitute one single energy type (chosen with the feat) for another in a given spell. A feat that has that one as a prereq is Energy Admixture, which makes the damage in the spell half of one type and half of another.

Taking the first would let you do a giant Waterball instead of a Fireball, for instance.

Taking the second would let you do a giant Boiling Waterball, as you mix the fire and water equally in your spell.

4) Oriental Adventures is a 3Ed book (its been updated in Dragon, but never in hardcover) that has a class called the Shaman. Its kind of a mix of Monk and Cleric. I bring it up mainly because it has the same kind of access to Domains as the Cleric...but eventually gains a 3rd Domain.

5) If you're serious about being effective in ranged combat, make sure you have a 12+ in your Dex score, unless you're just talking about area effect attack spells.

6) One of the better arcane/divine spellcaster prestige class mixes- one I actually prefer to the MT- is the Geomancer. Lots of flavor and flexibility, but it is pretty exotic.

[loki8481]

well, it's a long ways from where I originally started, but i think I finally decided on a fighter/rogue/lasher (from Sword and Fist, pending DM approval)

fighter 2 -> rogue 3 -> lasher 5 -> fighter 4 -> rogue 11, ending up as 11/5/4 (rogue/lasher/fighter)

anyone see any major glaring problems with that setup? I was kinda leaning halfling, but the more I think about it the more I wonder if i shouldn't just go human for the extra feat since I'd have to lose a feat right away for exotic weapon proficiency.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Bard's actually a nice way to get to Lasher, since it can give you whip proficiency for free. Bard also gives a small modicum of spellcasting, though definitely not the blasting kind. If you do take some bard levels, I highly reccomend using Use Magic Device and keeping a good stock of wands of utility spells, maybe even some scrolls, though the DC is higher for those.

Also, remember that while you're free to multiclass as you like, you face xp penalties if any two classes, other than prestige classes and your race's favored class (which effectively don't come into consideration), become more than one level apart. Which, for the progression you want, means that to go straight rogue at the end means you'd need to be a human, half-elf, or halfling. Since half-elves suck beyond redemption, you made a fine choice narrowing it down to human or halfling.

[Arkhandus]

Actually, no Waterball through Energy Admixture or Energy Substitution. It'd have to be an Acidball or Coldball at best, because Water isn't an energy type, let alone one of those allowed by those two feats.

Masters of the Wild has an optional rule to let folks increase their animal companions' Hit Dice through a ritual that costs some XP and stuff, but it doesn't give them all the boosts that 3.5 animal companions get; they're just normal animals (and you could have lots of them with fewer individual HD), that you might use a ritual to advance along its natural hit die progression with normal animal HD-based benefits from those like any other animal. And I don't think the DM would allow a 3.5 supplement like PHB 2 in a 3.0 game, but who knows? Also, note that 3.0 druids cannot cast spontaneous Summon Nature's Ally spells.

Clerics can be brutal fighting machines. The 4th-level cleric spell (also on the War Domain, and the Hero Domain as well for Shamans) Divine Power gives the cleric a fighter's BAB and HP for a while, and Righteous Might (also on the same spell lists, along with the Strength Domain list and the Water Shugenja spell list), a 5th-level spell, makes the cleric one size larger and gives them higher Strength for a while. Clerics have Searing Light and Flame Strike on their spell list, of course, which are good for blasting. With the Water and War domains, they'd have a bit more ranged-damage spellcasting.

Shamans get Ancestral Vengeance instead of Searing Light, but a Shaman with the Hero or War domain, and the River or Fury domain, would fit well enough. Unfortunately, Shamans get fewer proficiencies than Clerics, but that does mean they would benefit more from a dip into 1, 2, or 4 levels of Fighter (preferably 1 or 2, since 4 would cut into your spellcasting a lot).

A fighter 1/sorcerer (or wizard) 9/Spellsword 10 would cast spells as per a 14th-level sorcerer or wizard (7th-level spells, like Mordenkainen's Sword, Prismatic Spray, Finger of Death, Bigby's Grasping Hand, and Delayed Blast Fireball), while being slightly less tough than a cleric. The only supplement this requires is Tome & Blood. If going Wizard, it should be an Evoker for blasting, or Transmuter for buffing. Also, note that the 6th-level Transmutation spell Tenser's Transformation can make you a tougher, more effective warrior, though it prevents you from casting spells while it is active. And Stoneskin is still effective in 3.0, though slightly less than in 3.5 I think (at least at high levels) and much weaker than in 2nd Edition AD&D (in which it was awesome). But on the other hand, Protection from Arrows is better in 3.0 than it is in 3.5.

I own all WotC 3.0 books (not PDFs) except for a few of the FR books (basically the regional ones), Book of Vile Darkness (IIRC it came out at the end of 3.0, and I oppose its use of "vile" content on moral grounds), and Enemies & Allies because it would be useless to me. Mystic Theurge is not in 3.0. Period. Fact. Nor is Eldritch Knight, Horizon Walker, or Thaumaturgist. Horizon Walker was loosely based on the King/Queen of the Wild from Masters of the Wild. Thaumaturgist may have some small resemblance to the Incantrix from Magic of Faerun. Eldritch Knight is a lame substitute for the Spellsword from Tome & Blood. Mystic Theurge is a lame substitute for the Geomancer from Masters of the Wild.

A fixed Spellsword, fixed Geomancer, and so on could have been used in core 3.5 rather than the utterly flavorless "prestige" classes they threw in. Or they could have just fixed multiclassing (gasp! shock!) and/or put in a few simple feats to handle that, rather than pointlessly changing so many feats and spells and other things that weren't broken in the first place. Not to say 3.5 didn't fix a few things, but honestly, most of it was wasted effort that changed or broke things that were fine or at least acceptable in 3.0 (like druids, who were strong in 3.0 but not nearly as broken as 3.5 made them, especially by including Natural Spell in the core when it had previously been one of the more-broken supplemental options in Masters of the Wild, pretty much the most-poorly-vetted supplement before 3.5). Instead, things like Practiced Caster and such didn't come out until later supplements.

[loki8481]

so, it's been an even longer road, but just in case anyone was curious, I *finally* finally decided on what to play... rogue/wizard/arcane trickster

long way away from where I originally started, but I'm digging the concept. the party already has a cleric and paladin, so I was feeling like we were already divine'd out and we've already got a sorcerer, so I wanted to take a little bit of a different approach to arcane casting.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Originally Posted by Arkhandus

...Masters of the Wild, pretty much the most-poorly-vetted supplement before 3.5). Instead, things like Practiced Caster and such didn't come out until later supplements.

Wait, really?
Sword and Fist had the Knockdown feat, Tiger Leap sandals, and that weapon with the 17-20 crit range typo.
Song and Silence had Ninja of the Crescent Moon.
Defends of the Faith had haste armor!
Masters of the Wild always seemed like one of the most balanced supplements to me.

On the other hand, I think Druids need Natural Spell, otherwise their two major class features (wildshape and spell casting) are completely and utterly incompatible. Kind of like how the monk's two big class features (moving fast and full attacking for a lot of damage) aren't compatible, except WotC printed a fix for the former. The latter has to be left to houserules... If you don't see that sort of thing as a problem, obviously you'd view the feat differently. I wouldn't mind it if it were a +0 metamagic feat level adjustment, so the player had to choose beforehand what he can cast in and out of wildshape.

Originally Posted by loki8481

so, it's been an even longer road, but just in case anyone was curious, I *finally* finally decided on what to play... rogue/wizard/arcane trickster

long way away from where I originally started, but I'm digging the concept. the party already has a cleric and paladin, so I was feeling like we were already divine'd out and we've already got a sorcerer, so I wanted to take a little bit of a different approach to arcane casting.

Awesome! Let us know how it goes. I don't know if 3.0 had clearly printed rules about how weapon-like spells work (I normally reference the 3.5 complete Arcane), but you should be able to do nasty things with your ranged/melee touch spells and sneak attack dice. Like using ray of frost, a cantrip, to turn all your SA damage into cold damage, which means it does extra against things like red dragons...

Another nice synergy I'm not sure applies in 3.0 is that creatures balancing lose dex to AC. So, grease them up, and then get free sneak attacks!

[kitsune9]

Originally Posted by loki8481

I'm a life-long AD&D'er (in fact, the longest campaign I ever played in was a 1st Edition campaign that I played in from 1999 - 2004), but one of my friends is starting up a 3rd edition (3.0, not 3.5) campaign in a couple weeks and my dice bag is calling my name. I haven't played since moving away from that 1E campaign.

I'm trying to come up with a class/build (or some combination of classes) that might help mimic my old 1E character, a multi-class fighter/cleric who was more or less a ranged nuker* who could shrug off a couple hits and dish out some melee damage if I had to.

*my cleric worshiped the god of the oceans and my DM let me have access to any mage/druid spell that had anything to do with water or ice in addition to the normal cleric spells, so I had fun things like a boiling water version of fireball, cone of ice, etc

so with that in mind, any suggestions? we're primarily running out of the core rulebooks, but I could petition my DM to allow something from supplemental materiel on a case by case basis (subject to his review on whether he thinks it's not overpowered and blends in with his campaign world that I know nothing about)

I was actually thinking a little bit about a druid, but they seem so situational, like they might be really limited in an in-doors dungeon crawl (especially the animal companion if I don't have something I can physically carry or that can fly)

edit: for what it's worth... I don't know what anyone else in the group is playing (and won't till game night), except one friend who I know for certain is going to be playing a cleric to be a healer.

In 3.0, take 2 levels of fighter for the fighter bonus feats and then have cleric levels all the rest of the way. For spells that you want to change elements of, you'll need the feat Energy Substitution from (Tome and Blood?) You can choose any energy spell and then substitute it's energy for ice, acid, etc. or work with your DM for some other thematic. The cool thing is that it doesn't boost up your spell levels.

[FEADIN]

Originally Posted by loki8481

well, it's a long ways from where I originally started, but i think I finally decided on a fighter/rogue/lasher (from Sword and Fist, pending DM approval)

fighter 2 -> rogue 3 -> lasher 5 -> fighter 4 -> rogue 11, ending up as 11/5/4 (rogue/lasher/fighter)

anyone see any major glaring problems with that setup? I was kinda leaning halfling, but the more I think about it the more I wonder if i shouldn't just go human for the extra feat since I'd have to lose a feat right away for exotic weapon proficiency.

If it's the starting build it's a 20th level character, in 3.x the multiclassing does'nt work like in 1ed.

Halflings use smaller weapons, they do less damage.