What sort of character will you build for Curse of Strahd?

Knight_Marshal said:

I finally made my Non-Meta-Game character

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I generally opt to just take one of my CharOp builds into each season. It was only during the RoD season that I first decided to take the setting into consideration when choosing which build to bring in, and only did so for OotA. To be honest, bringing in a character that is ideal for the season led to a more enjoyable experience. Playing as Blade, my Half-elf Rogue/Monk "Drow Daywalker," in an adventure that starts out with being captured by the Drow increased my buy-in for OotA.

Not to say that there's anything wrong with ignoring metagame reasons for creating a character. I pretty much went the same route with my character for T1 DDAL adventures during the RoD season. I busted out my Dragon Ball era Goku build, playing as an 8-year old VHuman Sun Soul Monk. That yielded fun results over the course of the season, as the female Wizard who first tried to use me as a meat shield became my Bulma.

First rule of character creation is to play what you think will be fun to play. As long as you have fun with the character you play as, none of the reasons for making that character really matter.

My Fighter/Tomelock/Fire Draconic Sorcerer exists because I wanted to make a heavy-armored Eldritch Spam Cannon. Sure, it may be a boring playstyle to some, but it gave me more in-game time to focus on the traits/ideal/bond/flaw I chose for him. He's essentially a LE version of D&D Tony Stark during his playboy days.

The Battle Buckler is a concept that I've been toying around with ever since I first laid my eyes on the SCAG. The truly optimized version of it revolves around using a rapier instead of a whip. I just figured that with CoS being all about vampire hunting, I could put a Belmont spin on the Battle Buckler by adding a whip and Spell Sniper (to extend the range of BB/GFB to 10') into the mix. Since this is a character with high Cha, I'm actually going to play him more like Simon Belmont from Captain N than like the Belmonts you see in the Castlevania games.

tl;dr - As long as you have fun with your character, who cares what your reasons are for making it.

Weird. Rogue isn't even on the poll.

I built a Var Human rogue, soon to be swashbuckler, starting with Dual Wielder as a feat. Sort of a con man / card shark.

Z. H. Darkstar said:

As long as you have fun with your character, who cares what your reasons are for making it.

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I played for the first time last night and we had 2 paladins, 1 cleric, 1 rogue, 1 ranger and 1 bard besides my fighter. I did see something that I am now planning on meta-gaming. This is the stupidest bunch of characters I can imagine. I think everyone had INT as a dump stat.

My new plan is to go fighter 2 and then the rest into wizard and readjusted my stats for that. I still plan on playing him as a fighter with a GFB glaive, since my character did stick his hand into some green flame to see if it was real. Still not sure on that. I for the most part don't plan on attack damaging attack spells, just control and protection spells, which is why I am considering Abjurer spec.

I built a Cleric for Death House and Out of 17 players at our event I was the only one. OOOOOH so many Rogues and Paladins. 2 wizards, no Sorcs, no monks,

My group has an interesting mix;
An elven paladin,
A human pirate (fighter),
A human monk (being presented as a 21st century priest from the real world who thinks he's having a nightmare),

And my own 1/2ling warlock (fey pact, folk hero) - a 10 year old girl who's patron is a greedy, lazy, little pseudo-dragon.
She is absolutely convinced that she is an AWESOME adventurer. She's possessed of a near fatal combo of fearlessness + curiosity. And very little practical/useful knowledge.

Then there's a 5th player who couldn't make character creation night. So who knows what he'll play.....

Optimized to fight a vampire lord on his own turf? Hell no! But this ought to be amusing.

Our first season 4 table is so odd. 2 elven wizards and 1 human wizard, dragonborn cleric, half elf Paladin, 2 half elves a rogue and a ranger,

Not at all a representative sample.

First night went well though playersnmade it to the third floor but havent finished explorin it.

Finished last night - we had a great time.
Last encounter was incredibly rough - the DM decided to restart the encounter after killing 2 players.
He said milestone XP was not permitted via the recent season 4 document so we went into the last encounter all level 1.
It was messy but restarting and being level 2 we could take 2 hits and although challenging, it was doable.

Z. H. Darkstar said:

I could put a Belmont spin on the Battle Buckler by adding a whip and Spell Sniper (to extend the range of BB/GFB to 10') into the mix.

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Might want to go re-read those spell entries a little closer.

RCanine said:

Might want to go re-read those spell entries a little closer.

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He is right. Spell sniper lets you double the range of a spell attack, so it increases the range of BB/GFB to 10' (providing you have a reach weapon). Using a whip, you cannot use these spells at 15' range even with Spell Sniper, nor can you make attacks with these spells at greater than 5' reach (even with a whip/reach weapon) unless you have Spell Sniper.

kalani said:

He is right. Spell sniper lets you double the range of a spell attack, so it increases the range of BB/GFB to 10' (providing you have a reach weapon). Using a whip, you cannot use these spells at 15' range even with Spell Sniper, nor can you make attacks with these spells at greater than 5' reach (even with a whip/reach weapon) unless you have Spell Sniper.

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The reach of a whip is 10', not 15'. Therefore, Spell Sniper allows BB/GFB to be used at the full reach of a whip.

EDIT: The plan is to use BB + Tripping Attack (standing from prone should proc the extra damage as it requires half of your speed) and GFB + Sweeping Attack (smack the 2nd guy with both fire and whip, but no Sneak Attack). The only way that a whip could have 15' reach is while using Lunging Attack, which I have no plans on taking.