I gave you a pathway for your cleric on the other thread so I attempted to tackle this one.
Here is what I was thinking but can you clarify how the polearm comes into it? It isn't a double weapon so its not supported by two weapon fighting. Depending on if the character just used a polearm sometimes (perhaps for paladin attacks?) and two swords (preferably 2 light ones - a pair of short swords...or it screws up the build), the character would either have light blade expertise or the general weapon expertise feat that gives + 1/tier to weapon attacks.
I'll post the power setup/exact feats tonight but I've got pretty much all of the bases covered with:
level 10
- Human Ranger/Paladin Hybrid
- Dex and Cha 18, Str 13, Int 12 (or 13, can't recall), Con 10, Wis 8
- Multiclass Sorceror (flat resistance buff and ability to poach an Armor Buff Spell)
- Blackstaff Apprentice Theme (gives you Magic Missle as Minor Action Encounter Power and 3 Cantrips)
- a Background with Bluff
- Acrobatics, Athletics, Diplomacy, Insight, Nature (that with bluff covers all of those skills you have)
- Feat support for two weapon fighting/style and lets you use Dex with Ranger two-weapon fighting powers. Light Blade Expertise to further augment or general weapon expertise if you want to use a halberd for Paladin attacks.
- An assemblage of Paladin Smite powers (off of Cha) + Smite itself.
- Paladin Healing
- Mobility (Natural from Ranger powers + level 10 Utility Power that augments it)
- Tanking (Defender marking/control + stoutness)
- A bag of (whatever its called) dust that lets you Detect Magic 3 times per day (therefore no Arcana)
The only thing with this, is the very high level nature of it (my pc has yet to reach 6th level), and that hybrid paladins can't lay on hands. And the halberd is there as an option to switch to when the situation calls for it: Surrounded? use two weapons to cause as much damage as possible, have more room to move? use the halberd.
It also causes a big dissonance to mechanically have this character be a paladin who multiclasses sorcerer, when in character it was the other way around. Remember NEITHER THE CHARACTER NOR ME KNEW HE WAS GOING TO BECOME A PALADIN AT CHARACTER CREATION, or for the entirety of the whole first level, it all happened organically in the telling,
Bard, this screams Bard. Obviously you aren't ACTUALLY a bard, but 4e's bard heals, uses a bow, a sword, and casts spells. CHA/DEX is pretty much exactly right for this type of character. Obviously you can refluff your power as being divine inspiration. You can take Wizard's Apprentice too if you want specifically certain spells, or one of the Wizard MC feats to get MM to use once/encounter if you wanted, etc. OTOH Bard has rather similar powers. I think for instance Vicious Mockery would reskin quite well as a divine blast.
Start off as a bard - healing, some buffing, insight, and bow and sword proficiency. Probably a skald in specific. Weapon finesse - you're making melee attack rolls off cha anyway (and ranged off dex).
Again, the biggest problem is you can't just pull this off organically in 4e, you have to plan in advance, all quirks and deviations on the growth of the character specifically happening in the backstory, being carefully scripted or taking a painfull and nonsesically long time to pull off while compromising effectivity instead of emerging organically in the day to day play. A second level 4e rogue who decides he wishes to change his life and reform to be a cleric has no way to stop learning and developping roguey abililities and dedicate all of his efforts to become a cleric, he still has to keep learning rogue things for eight levels before he can be an effective cleric, and even then he never stops learning to be a rogue, and the amount of resources he has dedicated to this will make him very suboptimal overall. In 2e he could just have dual classed the next time he earned a level (of course assumming he had the stats to pull it off) and in 3.x he stopps taking rogue levels for cleric levels. Nothing short of a full character rebuild can acomplish this on 4e (and again it isn't and organic process)
I can't think of how to have that in 3e either. As for interation not combat, lazy-ish warlord with a multiclass feat into something and the ritual caster feat. Knocking people off balance for your allies to take advantage of is a 4e staple.
Weirdness aside from pretending there is a lasso that isn't there, this is actually pretty close, but I'm starting to notice that a good amount of PCs of diverse classes that I had on previous editions can only be expressed on 4ey play as a Lazy Warlord with ritual casting. Or as companion NPCs. TBH when playing 4e I find myself freeforming more often than not, and I tend to miss the supports NWPs and skills give. My playstyle and 4e apparently don't mesh too well at a fundamental level.
Well, you know, we had this healing god in my 2e campaign that was a pacifist, so his priests were pacifists. I found that it was just not logically possible to have a character that claimed not to cause harm and yet supported and tended to a bunch of murder hobos. It simply isn't a coherent set of actions. Would Ghandi go around with a bunch of thugs helping them rob people and then using the excuse that "Well at least I'm stopping some of their killing". Sure, parties can be doing "good" but even then from ANY sort of violence-avoiding perspective they're dripping in blood. I don't see how such a character could be RPed except maybe as a complete nut case. My suggestion for a 4e game is that you would have to just narrate everything in the context of non-lethal conflict, so whatever 'damage' the PC does will be demoralization, curses, etc. You can then narrate defeat of enemies as something other than death, which we do in 4e regularly anyway (IE 0 hit points means the evil rogue is disarmed and cornered, he gives up). The game can deal FINE with that, though again I just can't personally believe in actual pacifist PC adventurers.
Yeah, an actual pacifist PC adventurer not necesarilly makes any sense, however not all PC necesarilly are adventurers, there can be countless of reasons a pacifist PC goes along with a bunch of "murdering hobos", ranging from "they are my friends and I don't want them to be killed", "I'm looking for someone and being with these guys makes traveling a little safer", "I cannot go back home and they offer me a chance to survive" to "they kidnappend me and are forcing me to go along with their plans". But again there is a huge chasm between murdering and killing people and just beating the crap out of them.
Pacifist healer? Mr. "I won't shed blood myself, I will merely encourage and enable you to shed more blood than you otherwise would"? And who is only there because the rules are even more disruptive if you don't have a cleric? I've never seen them as other than disruptive.
Actually you just described the 4e pacifist healer pretty well, you just forgot the hypcritical ones who will use loopholes to directly kill enemies anyway. Again because that feat only gave you an incentive to act on non-violent ways, instead of giving you the ability to subdue, which is dearly missed. I'm looking for something more along "I just don't want anybody to die, friend or foe."
In 2e and 3e, when you use temporal/nonlethal damage, a number of things happen:
* You are still contributing to the fight.
* Short of the rogue or fighter getting lucky, (or using a coup de grace), the enemy will just pass out instead of pass over. You aren't helping your friends kill it, they are helping you to subdue it.
* You get to be picky, it doens't automatically imply you are friend to all living things (the morality of the character can still vary greatly, some could be limited to sentient beings, some would limit to humanoids, some others could consider elf aren't persons) and there's still unliving things and constructs to whom you can just go all out.
* It is something the character brings to the table, instead of having to convice everybody to play along in order to have this character concept work, you just do it, nobody has to change the way they play (except for the DM who now has the chance of recycling encounters).
* It isn't limited to just the leader, any character in any class or roll can opt into it.
And I like more the 2e (and basic) approach that had more tolerance for members in the party being less effective in combat as oppossed to "everybody fights or the party dies" from 3.x and 4e encounter design. And moreso when compared to the "enter the hp ablation game or no game". Don't get me wrong I like to play plenty of regular adventurers myself, but it is frustrating not having the support to play a character type, that was propperly supported before, beyond table fiat and heavy reskinning.
