Binky's a lot better now! ;) (Epic character more buff!)

[BOZ]

(formerly known as "Help me make my Epic character more buff!")

OK, we started on this epic campaign over a year ago. In that time, the other player characters have really gotten crazy mad style buffed and maxed out, while I have stayed relatively weak and unpowerful. Of course, this may be owed to my less than enthusiastic efforts to improve him, but it’s time to fix that.

In our party, we have a paladin with ungodly sick class abilities and powers, and a dragon (!!) for a mount and uhhh, wife. There is also a shadowdancer who has 6 shadows, the fighter with the vorpal sword, and a yakfolk PC cooked up with the DM’s super-broken homemade class that has ability scores and saves about 10 higher than the average party member – he normally laughs and says “whatever” when he has to make a saving throw.

We are playing D&D 3.0, with a bit of 3.5 and some older edition stuff mixed in for flavor. But for the most part, assume 3.0 rules. We have 3.5 damage reduction rules for one thing, though. What I need are ideas for magic items, feats & skills (for the future), PrCs, etc that can buff up my character to at least be able to compete realistically with the rest of the party. We have a “party gold” stash of a few million if I am not mistaken, so if I take out my share I can get a reasonable number of magic items.

So, here I am. My character, Binky (we all have cartoony names in this campaign) is a 11/11 Rogue/Ranger. The rest of the party averages about level 23 or 24, but I have died twice. My unmodified ability scores are Str 8, Dex 22, Con 10, Int 13, Wis 18, and Cha 11. I have 151 hp, with my magic items on. I am a neutral good elf.

For skills, I have the following ranks: Bluff 13, Climb 10, Disable Device 9, Escape Artist 9, Gather Information 8, Hide 22, Intimidate 8, Listen 16, Move Silently 19, Open Lock 9, Ride 6, Search 12, Sense Motive 10, Sleight of Hand 9, Spot 16, Survival 5. (we are using 3.5 character sheets, so basically skills have been converted for the most part).

For feats, I have: Weapon Finesse, Improved Initiative, Combat Reflexes, Alertness, Improved Critical (Rapier), Iron Will, Power Attack, Cleave, Track (bonus)

For my ranger favored enemy, I took Dragons, then Aberrations, then Humanoid (Goblinoids)

I have typical spells for a ranger, which are not much, but at some point (don’t remember when) I was granted the permanent ability to cast ghost touch, detect magic, and prestidigitation once per day. In terms of spells, I really don’t need attack spells – my DCs are too low to affect much of anything at this level. If you have ideas for buffs and utilitarian spells of 0 or 1st level that I could use though, that would help too.

Magic items, what I do have:
+5 Crossbow, bane outsider
+4 Rapier, bane evil, ghost touch, chaotic
+4 Rapier, lawful, ghost touch, holy
+5 Chain Shirt, silent moves, shadow, invulnerability
+5 Large Shield, fire resistance 10, arrow deflection
Headband of Perfect Excellence
Belt of Mighty Prowess
Mantle of Spell Resistance (21)
Amulet of Nondetection
Boots of Striding and Springing/ and Spider Climb (and ingenious invention we made)
Bag of Holding II (unfortunately already filled with junk from other party members)
Ring of Protection +2
Ring of Blinking
Rope of Climbing
Cloak of Epic Resistance +6
Bracelet of Friends
Potions: Cure Serious, Fire Breath, Heroism (3), Gaseous Form, Spider Climb (2)

Unfortunately, our DM just started cracking down on some things our party has been notorious for – one of which is to make sure we weren’t mixing and matching items that we can’t wear at the same time. For example, the mantle and cloak. I will probably stick with the cloak, as the party cleric can give me SR. and the DM informed me that the Str bonus from the belt and headband don’t stack, so I’m stuck with a Str of 14.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

Definitely ditch the mantle of spell resistance. It is useless at your level as it won't provide any SR vs any spellcaster at least 21st level as they'd blow thru that like it was tissue paper.

Maybe swap that and those other strength items for one epic level strength item of +6 or better.

Sounds like you need more feats. Check out the epic level handbook for some nifty epic level feats. You can start getting them once your character got to that 21st character level.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Ack. My first inclination would be to strip naked, leave my stuff in a vault willed to my heir, and dive head-first into a sphere of annihilation, and build a new character. Of course, that's probably not an option. Possibly some medically-calibrated undead?

I hate to say this, but the build's, um, poor. You seem to have a melee focus; however, with a Con of 10, that's suicidal. A properly twinked 12th-level fighter could probably cut you down in a round. You should be using wands and bows, not in melee. Also, as a 3.0 ranger, shouldn't you have Two-Weapon Fighting?

One feat you HAVE to get is Penetrate Damage Reduction. By all that is holy, that's your only chance to MAYBE penetrate any DR on an epic monster.

At least items can help. Please note that some of the following will require some DM approval. Be prepared to beg well.

First, ditch the Cloak. Epic Items, unless they've got a cool effect, are a waste of money. Use the funds gained from the sale of the cloak to enchant the Mantle up (it's +10k/point of SR) and then slap Resistance+5 on it (for 50k, it'll stack). If you can con one of your erstwhile* friends into buying it off of you for full price, all the better.

* - If you die at high levels and they're not paying for True Resurrection when they have a million+ gp kitty, they're not your friends.

Second, purchase as many Inherent Bonus books as you possibly can. If those aren't available, an acceptable alternate is to pay a spellcaster to summon a pair of efreeti and pay them for wishes.

Get a Ring of Protection +5.

Get a Skin of the Hero from PsiH, and get a +4 bonus to everything. I kid you not, it's what you want, and it stacks.

Why are you carrying a Large Shield +5? That's not Dancing? Make it Dancing or ditch it for one that is.

Ditch the Amulet of Nondetection (let the Mantle do that work, anyone trying to scry you at this level will blow through the Amulet like it is tissue paper). Buy an Amulet of Natural Armor +5 instead. Maybe get a Necklace of Adaptation at double cost so it doesn't take up an item slot (only 18k still).

Replace the chain shirt with +5 Mithral Celestial Chain of Heavy Fortification. Invulnerability is not worth the money, and you'd rather not be crit if you can help it. (This is one of those that will require DM approval) Slap your Hide bonus on the Mantle, and your Move Silently bonus on your boots.

Add EVERY SINGLE THING you can to your Boots. Item-stacking is a wonderful thing to do, if the DM lets you (and I think he does). Adding the Horseshoes of the Zephyr property to boots is nice, since you no longer snap twigs, set off pressure traps, etc. Gwaeron's Boots, from Magic of Faerun, are good additions.

The rapiers are probably okay, though they should ideally be made out of adamantine for durability, or maybe mithral for lightness and added durability (or glassteel, from Races of Faerun, for both). If you can persuade the DM, change them to Elven Thinblades (which in 3.5 would be a martial weapon for elves), make them +5, and start stacking Banes on as fast as you can. If you can persuade the DM a bit more, get him to let you turn them into Sunblades so you can do double damage to undead and an effective +2 vs. evil outsiders and then treat them as elven lightblades for TWF purposes. However, this may require actual bribery, as opposed to just begging.

Switch out the crossbow for an actual bow, like a Composite Shortbow, and actually take all your attacks at range. Select arrows for appropriate situations (Lawful, Chaotic, etc.).

Okay...hope this helps. Whew!

Brad

 

[Terwox]

ring of prot +2 is basically a waste.
could get a ring of prot+5 and replace nondetection amulet with amulet of natural armor +5 (in certain circumstances) although the addition to your ac might be moot at this point.
definitely ditch the mantle, SR21 is entirely worthless.
could always go for a ring of elemental command or something silly like that.

 

[Driddle]

It's simpe: Invest in more ranks of Buff, and pick up the Ski Focus (Buff) feat. And, of course, add points to your charisma attribute whenever you get the chance.

(By the way, you might want to take your computer to the repair shop and check on that 'L' key. I have the same probem from time to time.)

 

[BOZ]

What I’m going to do, when I’ve mined this thread for all the useful ideas I can get out of it, is write a “shopping list” for my DM to let him know what I am interested in.

OK, mantle will be gone, as per my instinct. I may trade it to another party member, or sell it.

You know, that yakfolk I mentioned above has apparently read each of the magic Manuals that increase ability scores. Perhaps if I get my hands on the Strength one that will make up for my 14 Str. and yes, the other manuals couldn’t hurt either…

When I hit level 24 I can take another feat, even an epic one. Ideas? Where is Penetrate Damage Reduction (ELH?) the party’s fighter mentioned that he is going to get this one.

Ack. My first inclination would be to strip naked, leave my stuff in a vault willed to my heir, and dive head-first into a sphere of annihilation, and build a new character. Of course, that's probably not an option.

hey now, I like my character just fine. I never ever ever “twink out” my characters, but for all this wacky epic level stuff it seems I could have given more of an eye to at least keeping him on some minimal level with the other PCs.

An upgrade on Ring of Protection is a good idea – I went with what I could afford at the time, but now I can afford much better.

Dancing shield sounds awesome.

Is Skin of the Hero from the new PsiHB or the old one? This DM is not totally adverse to psionics, so that might fly.

Funny thing about the Amulet of Nat Armor is that I did have one at one point… until my party members convinced me to get the Nondetection because everyone was paranoid that we were always being scryed on. thing is, if I ditch the mantle, it won’t be able to make up for the amulet of nondetection anymore.

What does the necklace of adaptation do again?

Yes, a +5 mithril celestial chain shirt of heavy fortification would definitely require DM approval. I’m definitely going to want to keep those Hide and Move Silently bonuses though, so I’m going to want them somewhere.

I don’t know if he’s going to go for horseshoes of the zephyr on boots, but I can always ask.

The rapiers are items I picked up from a treasure horde, so hardly customized to my ideal. Silver would be a good thing to have, as I forgot to mention but we come across werewolves often.

The crossbow is annoying… composite shortbow would probably be much improved. What properties would you put on that? And I like the variable arrows idea. one party member has silver arrows with essence of wolfsbane – came in really handy last week when a gang of werewolves attacked us!

Ring of elemental command sounds interesting, but we haven’t faced too many elementals so far.

It's simpe: Invest in more ranks of Buff, and pick up the Ski Focus (Buff) feat. And, of course, add points to your charisma attribute whenever you get the chance.

(By the way, you might want to take your computer to the repair shop and check on that 'L' key. I have the same probem from time to time.)

LOL - that was so deapan, I was taking you seriously for a minute.

Another thing I was thinking of was to have a decent animal companion. After all, we’ve got the shadowdancer with 6 shadows (each with class levels!) and the paladin with his dragon mount… and wife, and did I mention that one player now has 2 characters for some reason? And I’ve got jack squat.

The other ranger in our party (now dead) had a dire wolf – just an ordinary dire wolf. Somehow the thing made it through about a dozen game sessions, but that thing bought it when we got stuck fighting an avatar of lolth (thanks overzealous paladin). So, I want something more – a maxed out HD animal or dire animal for a companion would be a start – and give him some permanent spells and/or magic items. Beyond that, I’m also going to request stuff that a 2E ranger might have for companions – you remember, NPCs, fey, and magical beasts! Any ideas there?


Another thing I forgot to ask about – I was totally lazy on buying even just mundane gear for this guy. Every single item he is carrying is listed above – I didn’t even buy a backpack. suggest some simple mundane non-magical stuff I could benefit from without being encumbered by it?

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

In the way of mundane stuff:

Get 1 or more bags of holding and fill them to the brim with everything you can think of... Hundreds of pounds of it! Depending on how big the GM decides the mouth of the bag can open?

If you want to cram more in, grab an item that gives you lots of Use Magic Device, some items of Shrink Item and some of Permenancy. Either that, or get a friendly spellcaster to cast shrink item and remember to get it recast in plenty of time. - The permenant version is only really useful if you cast it yourself.

Some stuff you could have fun with:
A longboat?
Shrunken Anvils or Rocks- as big as you can drop...

Steer clear of disjunctions and anti-magic fields!

 

[Trainz]

50/50 dual-classed characters are the weakest epic level characters. The best characters (epic) are single classed, or those that only have 1 or two levels in another class (Paladin 2/Sorceror 21 makes for a very powerful build for example).

I am afraid that trying to fix your character at this point is like trying to patch a torpedo hit in a boat's hull with duct tape. I know I'm not being that much helpful here, but hear me out;

It *is* possible to tweak your character a tad better, but you will have to bust your cojones in doing so, and the end result won't really fill the gap between you and the other stronger PC's. Further, in your quest to shape up (which could be extensive), will weigh heavilly on the party's ressources/time for no real gain.

I am afraid it would be much more effective and wiser to simply retire the character and create a new one. Your party appears to be missing an arcanist and/or divine character. Playing a wizard or cleric is just an awesome experience at epic levels. With only 3 epic feats, your character will be able to cast two spells per round all the time. And gaining 10th, 11th, 12th and on spell slots is just invaluable with the right metamagic combo. I'm not talking hyper min-maxing here, but just regular epic caster creation.

Anyways... these are just my two cents. If you do decide to stick to your PC, I still wish you the best of luck and if your PC's role-playing background is well detailed, it could still be fun to play.

 

[BOZ]

Ah, I think Binky’s still got some mileage on him. He’s not the toughest, but he has personality to make up for it. The yakfolk guy may be a super badass, but his personality is super lame. I don’t want to make my guy as tough as the others (I think they are overkill), but because they are in the party the DM makes our enemies tougher… and I need to reach some sort of minimum at least just to survive. And that’s all I want – to be the best Binky I can be. the party will cough up some dough to beef me up. A lot of the reason that some of them are so tough is because they have found or purchased a number of magic items already. I was always indecisive and unsure, so I never knew what to get. Thus, I don’t have as many “power-ups” as the rest of the group. We have already spent much cash and time building up PC’s power base, and when it comes time to do so again, I want to be active instead of inactive this time.

Now though, Trainz you do have a point. Our party does have a wizard that I haven’t mentioned yet, working on becoming a dragon disciple. He’s a time-stopping, polymorphing fool, so we have the arcane spellcaster covered. We went for awhile without a cleric (costly on us – many of us have died more than once, and the two times I died without a true resurrection cast on me were times when we didn’t have them available). However, the guy I mentioned above with two characters has one as experimental “pseudo-cleric” – he hates the guy so the DM allowed him to function as a semi-NPC (that is, the player controls him for the most part, but the rest of us decide how he uses his spells). If that guy doesn’t work out, I’ve been thinking of recreating my favorite dwarf cleric/paladin, Brokk. But that’s a backup plan – for now, I want to stick with Binky.

That mithril chain shirt isn’t sounding too bad now that I think about it. You know, we did destroy some mithril golems recently and are lugging around sick quantities of the stuff… I don’t know what the “celestial” property does? And heavy fortification shouldn’t be too much of a problem, in theory, because the paladin does have a suit of that. And yes, invulnerability is a particularly useless quality. However, silent moves and shadow do grant me +10 bonuses each to skills, and for cheap, so I think I would want to keep them on my new armor.

For a rapier, I’d like to have a silver one… I think ghost touch, holy, and bane (evil) if the +2d6 stacks from both properties, otherwise I’d switch them around.

Ideas for composite shortbow properties? I could give that alignment properties too, maybe.

Skin of the hero is nice, although the bonus from either edition is +3 and not +4 (and the type of bonus varies as to which edition it is from).

Thoughts on my companions idea above?

And about more useful items, not necessarily for combat? (tanglefoot bags and holy water come to mind, for one thing)

 

[Nightfall]

My advice?

Ranger 5/Rogue5/Viligant 10

Trust me. With d12 HD, you'll be a bad ass for sure.

Plus you get better overall! Viligants man. ONLY way for a Ranger/Rogue to be the best.