Building a thiefy warlock? Or a magey rogue?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right. And MC'ing Rogue or Assassin or Monk a couple of times can get you Thievery and Stealth while generally being useful. Monk's ability to power swap for Quicksilver Motion in particular is awesome.

Right. You could probably also do a rather nice Swordmage-based 'thief', though the defender role might feel a bit of an odd one to be cast in as a roguish sort. I'm not so up on Avenger and whether a high dex version would cut it too well or not, but that might be another fairly magical-seeming blade-armed guy with no/light armor that could feel pretty thiefy. Then of course there's always bladesinger too, as much as it gets panned by some.

I bet you could spin a barbarian into something kinda interesting too, lol. Granted the 'magic' would be more of the "I take your head off with a single swipe" sort...

How about a druid? hehehehe, wildshape would be kinda handy for a thief, though there are of course many other ways to get shape-changing. Druids have some pretty easy access to limited flight too, which would be nice for a burglary type.

 

[MwaO]

Right. You could probably also do a rather nice Swordmage-based 'thief', though the defender role might feel a bit of an odd one to be cast in as a roguish sort. I'm not so up on Avenger and whether a high dex version would cut it too well or not, but that might be another fairly magical-seeming blade-armed guy with no/light armor that could feel pretty thiefy. Then of course there's always bladesinger too, as much as it gets panned by some.

My Battlemind|Swordmage in actual play's background was that he was an Eladrin Thief sent to prison, and possessed by the ghost of a Knight of Myth Drannor. There's some complicated stuff in the backstory in that he was my 1st or 2nd PC in 4e, he used an Urgrosh, and they errata'd it in a way that made it really unclear how it worked with Eladrin Soldier. So I used the PC generation rules to make him a Battlemind|Swordmage and used his background to give him some Rogue skills. He was a lot of fun.

 

[Joshua Randall]

From actual play I can state that a typical Wis/Dex Avenger ends up with strong Perception and Stealth, which covers 2/3rd of the typical 'thief' skill array. The remaining 3rd, Thievery, could be picked up with a multiclass feat.

Also Avengers have some Insubstantial, and later Phasing, powers, which -- if you DM allows -- could be used outside combat to bypass traps/walls/etc. in a thief-ly manner.

= = =

If the OP tell us what, specifically, he wants to be able to do... I'm sure there's a way to do it through some combination of reflavoring / feats / multiclass / hybrid / PP / whatever.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My Battlemind|Swordmage in actual play's background was that he was an Eladrin Thief sent to prison, and possessed by the ghost of a Knight of Myth Drannor. There's some complicated stuff in the backstory in that he was my 1st or 2nd PC in 4e, he used an Urgrosh, and they errata'd it in a way that made it really unclear how it worked with Eladrin Soldier. So I used the PC generation rules to make him a Battlemind|Swordmage and used his background to give him some Rogue skills. He was a lot of fun.

Sounds fun!

 

[Roseweave]

I've been looking at Chaos Sorcerer since it kinda goes well with the "creepy/weird girl" archetype I had in mind for the character, and gives me plenty dex to use. However, there aren't a lot of great Spidery spells to use thematically. Warlock is great for that, but doesn't really give me Acrobatics.

I'm not sure I'm really bothered with the Rogue stuff as much now, though it would be nice to have some dagger type attacks. If I was going with Sorcerer, I could do dagger sorcerer. Would Enscrolled blade work for a Wild Magic sorcerer though, who tends to do stuff form a distance?

 

[Roseweave]

So I guess I want the character to have:

Some kinda creepy magic, mostly non elemental, but not too similar to the Bard/Wizard I've been playing who has a lot of pied pipery powers. Pref some stuff that's easy to fluff as Spider powers - swarm stuff, poison, webs(pull, slow & immoblise powers perhaps as well as non-radiant blinding) though not exclusively.

High dex - acrobatics, thievery, stealth.

Decent charisma - high bluff, as the character is sort of living a double identity and may be concealing stuff from the rest of the party initially.

Pref. able to use dagger(s)- I guess a Sorcerer dagger or pact blade could work.

I'm probably going to go with Hengeyokai as I like the idea of the character turning into an actual Spider(going to use Cat and refluff).

Suggestions for themes also welcome. I was going to go with Beguiler.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You could use Swarm Druid for a 'cloud of spiders', but its mechanically kinda hosed, unless you can get your DM to let you use the old version of the AC patch feat, which puts them mostly on a par with other druids. You'd still have to burn a feat slot to get dagger as an implement, but it isn't exactly HARD to do.

Of course you could always do a 'menagerie' build. There are a bunch of those that are possible. Pick 2 pet classes and hybrid them, then take one of the pet themes, and then add on the Arcane Familiar feat (which might require an MC feat depending on which classes you are). Alternately you can use Druid instead of a pet class, becoming your own pet. There's quite a variety of classes that do/can acquire a pet, Shaman, Ranger, Sentinel Druid, Cavalier, Binder, Necromancer, etc. You could probably have a LOT of spiders. There are of course also various items, some PPs, etc that can add to the fun, not to mention summons (usually kinda sub-par but druids certain have some that are effective).

 

[MwaO]

You could use Swarm Druid for a 'cloud of spiders', but its mechanically kinda hosed, unless you can get your DM to let you use the old version of the AC patch feat, which puts them mostly on a par with other druids.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Swarm Druid. Just need to recognize that Con is a Swarm Druid's 3rd stat, not 2nd. A 12-14 starting value in Constitution that never gets leveled up is fine.

Beguiler's a great theme, one of my favorite.

 

[Roseweave]

How about a Hengeyoukai Wild Soul Sorcerer with Binder Multiclass? I heard Binder wasn't great but you get 2 decent abilities, plus skill training. Very useful at low level.

 

[MwaO]

How about a Hengeyoukai Wild Soul Sorcerer with Binder Multiclass? I heard Binder wasn't great but you get 2 decent abilities, plus skill training. Very useful at low level.

Binder the class sucks because it is almost strictly worse than Warlock at doing what Binder does with very limited power choice that the Warlock can already get.

Binder Initiate is an awesome entry feat into Warlock. Much better than the Warlock options.