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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Elliott" data-source="post: 7431325" data-attributes="member: 6955382">Hi All,First-time poster, long-time reader, as they say. My brother-in-law has asked me to drop in on his new campaign as a filler character while someone else is away caring for their new baby. I did the same for him once before, running a few sessions as a warlock character I came up with that I really enjoyed. I'd like to try this time around as a non-primary spellcaster if I can. To that end, I wanted to try to build a stick-fighter (I study the Filipino martial art eskrima IRL). Backstory/fluff is that he was a former ship's boy castaway who landed on an island that ended up being inhabited by a tribe of elves. The elves took him in, trained him in their ways, and he settled into life with them. However, the island was merely one island in a large archipelago, and a tribal empire came, driven by a primal cult, and forcibly converted my character's adopted tribe to slaves or corpses. Cast out to sea, my character drifted for some time before being picked up by a passing merchant ship and is now recently brought to shore, where he will meet with the adventuring party.I'm flexible on class, but would really like to make use of the stick-fighting idea. For those not familiar, eskrima involves fighting with one or two sticks (about 20 - 28 inches in length typically, though some styles go up to about 36) and teaches you to make use of them in cuarto (close-in), media (middle), and largo ("long" -- about sword-length) apart. The techniques used for sticks are translatable to knives and swords, either singly or paired. The moves also translate to hand-to-hand and grappling. You can also learn staff, spear, and whip. There's a cool versatile sword called a panabas that the Moros used to use to whack in the conquistadores' heads right through their helmets. But I digress.Fortunately for me, my DM is super-flexible with re-skinning and homebrewing; I'm not comfortable with 5e enough to "brew," but minor alterations like changing shortswords to blunt damage and then re-skinning them, for example, works fine for all involved. I like the flexibility of fighter, am comfortable with a Revised Ranger, and have no experience with monk but kind of think that may ultimately suit best... I'm also drawn between duelist and TWF fighting styles as what might be most appropriate, but then there's mariner, which fits the RP side of things... So many choices! I'm also fine with multiclassing. I am joining at level 8.I was thinking variant human or half-elf, for RP reasons (I always go for RP value first). We roll and assign our stats; mine (prior to racial adjustments) are 16, 13, 14, 11, 14, 16. I envision him as lightly-armored to go with the tribal/sea-based origin. If I go for a class that has spellcasting as part of it (e.g. ranger, eldritch knight, etc.) then I plan to re-skin it as tattoo magic (because I still miss my Tattooed Atlantean from Rifts...)Any advice on the mechanical side of things for 5e would be appreciated. One of the things I'm trying to focus on is if I choose something like quarterstaff and PAM, go with the re-skinning and TWF option, and what that might mean for the future. Thanks!</blockquote>

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