Anything But Normal, Sailing the Endless Falls... Characters Selected!

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

Everyone has 30,000 XP, which is 2,000 above the 8th level minimum. That should allow the item creators some leway.

Oh, and (weird request) could you or Wrahn post the link to the epic game's Rogue's Gallery? I want to steal the formatting I used there.

Here's the link to the Scions of the Endless Falls gallery.

Lupaz - Hound of Ill Omen
* The problem here is mostly that I can, as things stand, take a grand total of 2 levels of Hexblade, which isn't nearly enough to make the cursing worthwhile. I'd like to do something to lower the LA a bit (maybe reducing the number of natural HD or treating hexblade as nonassociated since I don't plan to focus on the martial aspect [I can only ever get one attack anyway, no matter what my BAB is]?). Maybe fiddle with the Hexblade's class abilities (cleric BAB instead of fighter for a faster curse or spell progression? dropping Mettle and Summon Familiar for cursing feats?). I'd also like something like to be able to take, as a feat, a Practiced Curser feat (like Practiced Spellcaster - +4 levels for determining cursing stuff as long as your total ability doesn't exceed your level). Between those things and spending all my feats on the cursing feats from Dragon 339, I think I can cover the "Ill Omen" thing well enough.

The Hound of Ill Omen is one of my favorite legends, so I personally like this idea a lot. I agree there are several things that can be done to make Lupaz a better prospect for a hexblade. Now, stripping the Blink Dog down to more of a Blink Puppy will be a bit more difficult. Let's drop the blink ability and the dimension door ability down to once a day. Natural AC down to +1 instead of +3, Dex only a +2 instead of a +6, no Wis adjustment. Keep low-light vision, darkvision 60 ft., and scent. I think we can drop you down to a +2 LA with 1 racial hit die. Anyone else feel free to chime in if you feel I'm far off base! I don't often do monster power-downs, I tend to do power-ups!

As for making the hexblade a curser supreme as opposed to a misguided paladin-type...

All bonus feats are to be hex feats, spell focus, spell penetration, or metamagic feats.

Hit die is d8.

LvL...BAB......Fort..Ref..Will....Special................................................Spells per Day
.................................................................................................1st...2nd...3rd..4th..
1st....+0.......+0....+0...+2...Hexblade's curse 1/day
2nd...+1.......+0....+0...+3...Arcane resistance
3rd....+2.......+1....+1..+3...Bonus feat..............................................0
4th....+3.......+1....+1..+4...Hexblade's curse 2/day.............................0
5th....+3.......+1....+1..+4...............................................................1
6th....+4.......+2....+2..+5...Bonus feat..............................................1
7th....+5.......+2....+2..+5...Greater hexblade's curse............................1...0

How does that look to the rest of the class? Or do I need to be smacked around a bit?

I'm liking the grippli erudite concept a lot and will start with that one. I'm thinking a slightly paranoid psionic tutor for one of the omnielemental's progenies (crysmal makes sense, though psionic would work too), rewarded with a share in the ship after aiding in foiling a minor plot. inquisitor feat, probably wounding resonance from Hyperconsciousness, and either the focus as move feat or the narrow mind permanent focus chain. Strong sense motive and lots of psi and knowledge skills as well as a few points to learn common and probably Terran.

The leprechaun is listed at +3 but I think it is a fairly powerful +3 with at will PAO and more. I will drop the concept if you think the mechanics will be a pain, the grippli will be enough fun to develop.

The ability to polymorph any object at will scares me greatly, so I saw go with the grippli. He sounds cool.

Fenris - Something I just noticed. Unless I'm missing something, your ECL is way above what it should be. Your base ECL is 5 for your satyr HD, plus 2 level adjustment, for a total of 7. So you should only have one Druid level, I think...

Unless Isida has some kind of house rule regarding LA races that I'm not aware of?

I agree wit Kelleris. LA must be added to Hit Dice. An satyr has an ECL of 7, not 2. BUT! There is a half-satyr race in Dragon #313 that has an LA of +1, if you're interested. I can discuss preliminaries with you over e-mail if you can't get ahold of the magazine.

sans - As Voadam asked, using a single scroll for a planar binding might work, depending on what you offer. Consider your current place of residence, as wantonly binding an elemental against their will might have caused you to die before now. But if you found one that was willing to travel or that liked magic... that's a different kettle of fish all together.

 

[Kelleris]

Yikes! That's probably more than necessary, I think. Don't forget that the blink dog has a fair share of negatives to go along with all the other stuff - I can't speak a humanoid language without getting some kind of item, I have no hands for items and the like, I can't (and wouldn't anyway) wear armor, and my magic item slots are all screwy (especially since I want to be able to pass for a normal dog!). With those changes, it looks even less worth the (now 3) effective levels I'm giving up to me than the 6 levels I was losing earlier.

Also, the revised advancement you posted looks weakened rather than anything else. It looks (unless I'm reading the chart wrong), that I'm giving up a HD size, Mettle, a familiar, and 2 points of BAB to move the spellcasting chart down 1 level, get freer bonus feat choices, and get the second use/day of the curse one level earlier. That doesn't look like a balanced trade to me. What do you say to using the Bard as the basis (I debuff instead of buffing, basically)? So it looks something like this:

Bard
1d6 HD
6 + skills/level
bardic music and bardic knowledge
rogue BAB
good Fort and Ref
Cha-dependent spellcasting as noted in the PHB

and the revised Hexblade would be -->

Hexblade
1d8 HD [one size better than the bard]
4 + skills/level [one step worse than the bard, and I'd like to improve the skill selection to match, with your permission]
cursing abilities (as listed except increase the uses/day progression from 1 extra per 4 levels to 1 extra per 3 levels)
rogue BAB
good Fort and Will OR good Will and Arcane Mettle
Cha-dependent spellcasting identical to the bard's using the hexblade list
and LOSE Mettle and Summon Familiar (about two feats' worth of stuff) entirely

Nobody's ever accused the bard or the hexblade of being overpowered to my knowledge, so matching them to each other should be fine, power-level-wise, assuming you agree with me that bardic music and bardic knowledge are (together with losing Mettle, the familiar, and possibly arcane resistance) two good, solid abilities and roughly equivalent to the hexblade's cursing ability. It's worth noting that the hexblade's spell list is substantially worse than the bard's as well.

And considering the built-in drawbacks of playing a dog, I think you'd be alright leaving all the basic stats alone and just concentrating on the ethereal movement ability, which is where the meat of the blink dog's LA comes from in any case. In keeping with the nature of the character, how about making them unreliable (Lupaz is extremely sensitive to minor variations in the ethereal, and thus subject to mishaps most blink dogs instinctively avoid). Say, an automatic failure chance of 50%. So I can only dimension door half the time I try to, and it can take me several rounds at the beginning of combat to start blinking, or to shut it off if it becomes inconvenient. That way I can't rely on the abilities tactically, so they're more balanced for combat, but I can still do the creepy "appearing from nowhere" and "walking through walls" bits I'd like to be able to do. If you're still worried, that failure chance could go all the way up to 75%, making those abilities almost useless in combat and only really good for movement and the like.

How does that sound? I know it's a lot more than your first thought there, but I've tried to stick pretty closely to existing models for the alt. Hexblade and I really think the basic blink dog stat boosts are essentially paid for by the drawbacks of being nonhumanoid, leaving the admittedly impressive teleportation abilities as the only real reason to tack on a +2 LA.

 

[Gli'jar]

I just couldn't deal with the loss of 4 caster levels with the wolverine shaman so I decided to go with a anthro snake constrictor monk. POst coming soon. Do I qualify for the rending constriction feat (p. 39 SS). Only one part of me, my body, is constricting rather than 2 limbs. On the surface I would say no, but considering my whole body is involved, I figured it may be a possibility.

 

[Kelleris]

I thought of another point of comparison for the alt. Hexblade - the druidy-Bard variant in Unearthed Arcana gets the animal companion, nature sense, resist nature's lure, and wild empathy abilities of a druid in exchange for the "inspire X" line of abilities and bardic knowledge. The cursing is probably better than those druid abilities, but giving up fascinate and suggestion as well as Mettle and a familiar in addition would balance things out, I think.

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

Kelleris, go ahead and lay me out a class and race progression that seems fair to you and I'll review it.

 

[Kelleris]

Okay, let's see if I can get this to format right...

Following the progression out from above, out to 10th level (as high as we should need) -->

Hexer (alt. Hexblade)

Hit Die: d8
Skill Points: 6 + Int Mod./Level
Class Skills: TBD

LVL......BAB.....Fort.....Ref.....Will.......Special
.....................................................................................
1st.......+0.......+0......+0......+2.........Hexblade's Curse 1/day
2nd.......+1......+0......+0......+3.........
3rd.......+2.......+1......+1......+3.........Arcane Resistance
4th.......+3.......+1......+1......+4........Hexblade's Curse 2/day
5th.......+3.......+1......+1......+4........Bonus Hexblade Feat
6th.......+4.......+2......+2......+5........Greater Hexblade's Curse
7th.......+5.......+2......+2......+5........Hexblade's Curse 3/day
8th.......+6.......+2......+2......+6........
9th.......+6.......+3......+3......+6........Bonus Hexblade Feat
10th.....+7.......+3......+3......+7........Hexblade's Curse 3/day

Spells per Day and Spells Known - As Bard, using the Hexblade spell list (so at 5th level I'd have 6 cantrips known useable 3/day, 4 1st level spells known useable 3/day, and 3 2nd level spells known useable 1/day.

NOTE: I did accelerate the rate of curse gainage a bit, to make it a little better and to get a smoother progression. I could reduce the HD further to 1d6, maybe, to make up for that, although at 8th level the changes I made didn't make any difference to my actual abilities (assuming I'm getting 5 levels).

 

[Shayuri]

Hmm. Ishida, what are your feelings on the character class options from PHB2? Specifically, the Warmage option for Eclectic Learning. It lets you select non-evocation spells, but at +1 level (so Invisibility would be a 3rd level Warmage spell when learned this way).

Would this be a possibility?

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

Fine with me Shayuri!

Kelleris, I'm going to think on this a bit. The skill points and spell progression just went way up in comparison, and the loss of BAB, mettle, familiar, and a slightly lower hit dice is not quite weighing up yet. But that could be because it's late and I'm tired. I'll let your fellow potential players look it over if they're so inclined, and I pass judgement on it in a day or so.

 

[Kelleris]

Alrighty. I might almost be better to consider this an alternative bard than an altered hexblade, though, since the bard is closer to what I want for the character (just debuffing instead of buffing). Maybe I should look into some other way to get the same effect... I'll do that while others weigh in.

 

[Voidrazor]

Dichotomy - Oh I so saw what Voidrazor doing in moritheil's thread with the sylph... And don't think that I didn't! And I happen to agree with moritheil's ruling, as you do too apparently. So yes, yes you may advance the HD for the sylph.

Heh, I haven't seen an official LA for sylphs. So either moritheil's ruling or RAW with maybe a +8 LA would balance it out. I have seen +5 LA bandied about on the net. But that would be broken , effectively paying one caster level and a bunch of HPs for at will improved invis, nice stat adjustments, flight and a 1/day elemental.

That said, moritheil's ruling clearly works better for your campaign anyway. And it looks like it will be and extremely cool campaign. I'm not sure if I'll have time to get a character submission together, but I do have an idea developing in my mind. Haven't picked a race yet, but an adolescent child of a hulking monstrous race from a small town in the orbit of the Kingdom of Knowledge that has a tradition of being relatively self-governing.