Complete Adventurer (merged)

[Trainz]

Are there any sort of suggestion for bard-paladins? New feats, prestige classes, abilities?

Precisely actually. A new feat:

Devoted Performer:
Prereq: Bardic Music, Smite Evil
Benefit: You can multiclass freely between Bard and Paladin back and forth. Bard and Paladin levels stack for smite evil damage and uses per day of bardic music.
A Bard 7/Paladin 7 with this feat would do +14 damage on smite evil and have 14 uses of bardic music per day.

 

[Trainz]

I was flipping through it in the store, and it seemed like the ninja core class was less balanced than the one in the Rokugan book. Samd HD, but worse attack progression....but the bonus to AC, plus a bunch of abilities, including being able to become incorporeal. had all the magic abilities I'm not keen on. Unless my first read-through was incorrect..

Banshee

My take on the Ninja: it's a nice class, but its sneak attack is LESS effective than a rogue, in that flanking doesn't let him sneak. Shouldn't a ninja be MORE deadly than a rogue with sneak attack ?

Maybe it's just me...

 

[Trainz]

Perusing this book, I came on a pretty good build for a sneak-attacker.

There is a new arcane 1st level spell that is a swift action to cast and allows you to sneak attack constructs for one round. By the same token, there is a new cleric 1st level spell that is a swift action to cast and allows you to sneak attack undead for one round.

So cleric1/sorceror1/rogue3/invisible blade 5. Sneak attack almost at will, and almost anything.

Because you're a cleric, you also pick two domains (Farlanghn is nice, for good fortune and freedom of movement 1 round per day), and you can use your turn undead attempts with a feat such as Divine Vigor. If you want more uses of sneak attacks versus undead, pick a level of Favored Soul instead of cleric. Actually, can you take a single level of cleric AND a single level of Favored Soul, for a pletora of first level divine spells ? If yes, even better !

With that, focus on feats that boost you sneak attacks (from BoED, PsiHB, and CAdv), which would make your sneak attacks do xd8 versus evil critters, reroll 1's, and if target fails an almost impossible to succeed fort save, is staggered for one round.

Boom baby.

 

[ivocaliban]

My take on the Ninja: it's a nice class, but its sneak attack is LESS effective than a rogue, in that flanking doesn't let him sneak. Shouldn't a ninja be MORE deadly than a rogue with sneak attack?

Maybe it's just me...

I would hope a Ninja would be better at sneak attacks, but it is understandable that they don't get sneak attacks while flanking. I tend to think of Ninjas as using diversionary tactics to avoid combat whenever possible. There's no pre-requisite that would keep a Ninja from multiclassing as an Assassin, is there? If not, then there's always that route for Ninja characters who want to specialize in murder.

 

[Darkness]

Actually, can you take a single level of cleric AND a single level of Favored Soul, for a pletora of first level divine spells ? If yes, even better !

Sure.

 

[ivocaliban]

So cleric1/sorceror1/rogue3/invisible blade 5. Sneak attack almost at will, and almost anything.

This brings me to a question about combinations of classes DMs would allow. I generally want something more than mechanic possibilities before I okay a build like the one above. While I'm sure there as many clever explanations for the example character above as there are people who would dream it up, I'm loathe to allow players to choose a class just because it gives them Special Ability X.

I have a PC in my campaign that is a Wanderer*/Fighter/Pirate*/Dread Pirate, the same number of classes as the one above, but these classes seem more congruent with one another than the patchwork quilt above. Of course, I realize this is merely a judgement call on my part, but I would still require a very convincing description (that was more than just BS so they could be an Uber-backstabber) of this character's backstory before I'd allow it.

What this all boils down to is the recent trend in D&D to push the options to the very ends of possibility. In most cases I commend this, but it can open up a great many holes in the net of reason. From my experience there are always going to be opportunistic gamers ready to leap through such holes and make a mess of things. While I like that much of the material in The Complete Adventurer supports unusual and interesting multi-class characters, I'm concerned that it will lead to bedlam in my games.

*The Wanderer and Pirate PrCs come from AEG's Swashbuckling Adventures.

 

[Li Shenron]

Precisely actually. A new feat:

Devoted Performer:
Prereq: Bardic Music, Smite Evil
Benefit: You can multiclass freely between Bard and Paladin back and forth. Bard and Paladin levels stack for smite evil damage and uses per day of bardic music.
A Bard 7/Paladin 7 with this feat would do +14 damage on smite evil and have 14 uses of bardic music per day.

As long as you keep changing your alignment freely "back and forth"? :\

 

[Glyfair]

As long as you keep changing your alignment freely "back and forth"? :\

Actually, the feat covers this. It basically allows you to ignore the bard alignment restriction (i.e. you can be lawful). OTOH, it doesn't allow you to ignore the paladin alignment restrictions.

 

[Sammael]

The bardic alignment restriction makes no sense whatsoever anyhow. It was one of the first things I house-ruled out in 3E.

 

[Gez]

IMC: Depending on bardic school, some bards (more like minstrels) must be non-lawful and others (more like actual celtic bards, or norse skalds) must be non-chaotic.
As for paladin, the main paladin faith accepts NG paladins as well as LG. There's also another faith that accepts LN paladins.

So, IMC, it is possible to be a paladin/druid/bard multiclass combo...