Hello, my name is Corsair, and I'm an addict.
Some people are addicted to power. Others to the thrill of gaining XP or wealth. Some merely crave destruction. I however am different.
I crave complexity.
I told my DM a year or two ago that I couldn't just play a fighter if I was going to be a warrior. At minimum I had to be something like a barbarian/ranger/beast master, or a Paladin/sorcerer/spellsword. Playing a rogue wasn't enough, but I had to be a rogue/spymaster with a bevy of alter egos and weave intricate plots. Arguably my "simplest" character was my most recent, a wizard/loremaster/archmage, archetypal to be sure, but with the possibly the largest selection of spells I had ever seen accumulated by any arcane caster in any game I had ever played in. Oh and I had a cleric cohort to go along with it for much of that game, just to give myself two full high level casters to keep track of.
And I loved every minute of it.
I didn't realize however just how far I had fallen until I was working on a character I knew I would never get a chance to play (at least not any time soon). My old group that I left to go to law school now has characters up to 17th level, so on a lark I decided to whip up a 17th level character that could hypothetically join them if I was back in town for any extensive period of time.
So during breaks between classes, I slowly developed: Gnome Beguiler 1 / Wizard (Illusionist) 3 / Master Specialist 1 / Ultimate Magus 9 / Shadowcraft Mage 3, using focused specialist and chains of disbelief variants, dropping evocation and conjuration as schools.
This monstrosity has as many (if not more) slots than a 16th level sorcerer from his wizard side alone, in addition to the 8 levels of Beguiler casting tacked on. He has access to every evocation and conjuration (creation or summon) of 8th level or lower, and a smattering of spontaneous metamagic. I made a character with the widest number of options and most complex, fluid casting mechanics I could (between heightened image spells, the Ultimate Magus metamagic mechanic, earth spell+heighten, Metamagic School Specialist). It wasn't enough to make a powerful character, but I had to make one that would be as mechanically challenging to play as I could. I know deep down inside that I would enjoy this character more simply because of the sheer variety of choices that I'll have to make on a regular basis if I ever played him.
I look to the madness of the mechanics. Where others see chaos, I see a dance of a thousand tiny bits of crunch, spinning and twirling, tossing and swirling, cavorting across the character sheet to some unknowable, unhearable tune. This silent music that guides their dance pulses within me. It drives me onward, but to where I cannot say. I know only that I must listen to it's beat, and I must march in time with it.
My name is Corsair, and I am an addict.
Some people are addicted to power. Others to the thrill of gaining XP or wealth. Some merely crave destruction. I however am different.
I crave complexity.
I told my DM a year or two ago that I couldn't just play a fighter if I was going to be a warrior. At minimum I had to be something like a barbarian/ranger/beast master, or a Paladin/sorcerer/spellsword. Playing a rogue wasn't enough, but I had to be a rogue/spymaster with a bevy of alter egos and weave intricate plots. Arguably my "simplest" character was my most recent, a wizard/loremaster/archmage, archetypal to be sure, but with the possibly the largest selection of spells I had ever seen accumulated by any arcane caster in any game I had ever played in. Oh and I had a cleric cohort to go along with it for much of that game, just to give myself two full high level casters to keep track of.
And I loved every minute of it.
I didn't realize however just how far I had fallen until I was working on a character I knew I would never get a chance to play (at least not any time soon). My old group that I left to go to law school now has characters up to 17th level, so on a lark I decided to whip up a 17th level character that could hypothetically join them if I was back in town for any extensive period of time.
So during breaks between classes, I slowly developed: Gnome Beguiler 1 / Wizard (Illusionist) 3 / Master Specialist 1 / Ultimate Magus 9 / Shadowcraft Mage 3, using focused specialist and chains of disbelief variants, dropping evocation and conjuration as schools.
This monstrosity has as many (if not more) slots than a 16th level sorcerer from his wizard side alone, in addition to the 8 levels of Beguiler casting tacked on. He has access to every evocation and conjuration (creation or summon) of 8th level or lower, and a smattering of spontaneous metamagic. I made a character with the widest number of options and most complex, fluid casting mechanics I could (between heightened image spells, the Ultimate Magus metamagic mechanic, earth spell+heighten, Metamagic School Specialist). It wasn't enough to make a powerful character, but I had to make one that would be as mechanically challenging to play as I could. I know deep down inside that I would enjoy this character more simply because of the sheer variety of choices that I'll have to make on a regular basis if I ever played him.
I look to the madness of the mechanics. Where others see chaos, I see a dance of a thousand tiny bits of crunch, spinning and twirling, tossing and swirling, cavorting across the character sheet to some unknowable, unhearable tune. This silent music that guides their dance pulses within me. It drives me onward, but to where I cannot say. I know only that I must listen to it's beat, and I must march in time with it.
My name is Corsair, and I am an addict.