Greenfield
Adventurer
Well I got my first glance at the Problem Child's character. Not an actual audit, just a few points.
His character is Human with the Amphibious template from Stormwrack. We use the point buy system, at 32 points, and his character had a 16 Dex. Since the template includes a -2 Dex penalty that means he either had to start with an 18, which costs fully half of his creation points, or he paid for a 16, to get a 14, then spent both stat bumps to get it back. Or, possibly, he failed to read the "Creating an Amphibious Creature" section of the book, which is all there actually is on the subject. It's not a formal Template as such. My bet is that he faile dto read the rules.
His build is two levels of Rogue and six of Sorcerer, and he chose the Stalwart Sorcerer variant. That variant says that by giving up one spell from the top tier of the character's "Spells Known" list, the character gains extra hit points. It says that you gain twice the character's Sorcerer level in hit points.
The way he read that, he got didn't roll dice for hit points but instead got 2 points at first level, 4 more at second, 6 more at third, 8 more at fourth, etc.
Naturally, that's not what the book says at all. The character gets +2 to every Hit Dice rolled, period. It even gives examples. Once again, the player saw something he liked and grabbed for it without actually reading the rules.
The player character's Feats are: Smiting Spell (lets you lay a touch spell into a weapon for up to a minute, so it goes off on a hit), Practiced Spellcaster (allows the character to count levels in non-casting classes to their Caster level, up to 4, and not to total more than the character's actual level), Improved Familiar, and I don't know the last one off hand.
His character has a small Air Elemental as his Improved Familiar. When asked his alignment he said, "Chaotic Good". The DM immediately replied, "That Familiar disappears." His character is Aquatic and is more than one point away from the Neutral aligned Air Elemental familiar. He immediately amended his alignment back to Neutral Good.
I asked, conversationally, what the back story was, what made an Air Elemental an appropriate familiar for his Aquatic character. He told a back story that basically said, "My character likes Air magic." I asked for his spells. No Summon Monster spell that could be used to summon Air, no Gust of Wind, no Wind Wall. Just Lightning and more Lightning.
The reason he wants the Air Elemental is because he wants to take the Elemental Savant prestige class next level, and a prerequisite is that the character has to have had friendly contact with a creature from that elemental plane. He could have included that in his back story and we would have accepted it.
He doesn't yet have the Energy Substitution feat called for in the prerequisites for that PRC.
His character wears a Mithral breastplate (proficiency from Rogue levels). A Breastplate normally incurs a 25% Arcane spell failure, dropped by 10% because of Mithral. He, however, was calling his failure chance 10%, not the 15%. When asked how that was, he said it was "Gearth armor". At first we didn't understand what he said, and had to ask him to repeat it, several times. Didn't help. He dug out DMG II and found it: Githcraft armor and weapons, as in, made by Githyanki. Only 600 gp extra.
One quick group vote later and the Githcrafted armor was gone. I didn't even have to vote, it was decided before my vote was even asked.
He asked for approval on the Prestige Class, and I suggested that he send us a PDF of his character sheet, by email, so we could look it over, and have a week to consider the Elemental Savant class.
We had a combat this game session. As usual his first spell was a personal buff. His second spell was a Touch spell called Parching Touch, which can be used once per caster level. He said he wanted to add it to my character's arrows. He moved nearby (10 feet from my pc) before casting it. He said he could hand me arrows from there. He was corrected but didn't change his character's position.
My character, being a Scout, will move at least 15 feet prior to taking a shot, and nothing had been said to that point about his character enchanting arrows for mine so no arrows were ever juiced.
His character then cast Alter Self, as a way to become a small creature, and thus pick up more AC. He then tried to lay his Parching Touch spell onto his own long spear (now 5' long), and was surprised to be told that casting a new spell negates any Touch spell being held. Another rule he never read.
I suspect that he also failed to read which weapons Rogues and Sorcerers are proficient. with. Simple weapons, and a few extra for Rogues, and Simple weapons only for the Sorcerer. The Long Spear is a two handed melee weapon, and not in the "Simple Weapon" category.
I know he was frustrated to learn that, when he Altered himself into a Gnome, his base move dropped to 20 feet. He was trying a Charge in combat and came up five feet short. He tried to argue that his Longspear was a Reach weapon, but the weapon size dropped when he Altered, and was now 5 feet long, not 10. If it hadn't transformed with him (an arguable point) he wouldn't have been able to use it at all.
A question that will come into play is this: If a PRC has a feat as a prerequisite, can the character take the PRC on the same level when they gain the Feat?
I'm sure that's clarified somewhere in the rules, but I can't recall right off hand.
So we discovered a lot about what the character is and what he wants it to be, and he discoveried that his latest "perfect" build doesn't work anything like the way he thought it would. Doesn't end up with more HP than the party fighters, can't cast spells in armor with impunity, doesn't have the stats he thought he should, his spells and feats don't work the way he thought they should, and that his Familiar isn't nearly as useful as he thought it would be.
The thing he apparently failed to discover is that lots of ironwork-type armor doesn't do Bandini against a lot of Undead.
I'll remind him of that when I take the DM's chair, next week.
His character is Human with the Amphibious template from Stormwrack. We use the point buy system, at 32 points, and his character had a 16 Dex. Since the template includes a -2 Dex penalty that means he either had to start with an 18, which costs fully half of his creation points, or he paid for a 16, to get a 14, then spent both stat bumps to get it back. Or, possibly, he failed to read the "Creating an Amphibious Creature" section of the book, which is all there actually is on the subject. It's not a formal Template as such. My bet is that he faile dto read the rules.
His build is two levels of Rogue and six of Sorcerer, and he chose the Stalwart Sorcerer variant. That variant says that by giving up one spell from the top tier of the character's "Spells Known" list, the character gains extra hit points. It says that you gain twice the character's Sorcerer level in hit points.
The way he read that, he got didn't roll dice for hit points but instead got 2 points at first level, 4 more at second, 6 more at third, 8 more at fourth, etc.
Naturally, that's not what the book says at all. The character gets +2 to every Hit Dice rolled, period. It even gives examples. Once again, the player saw something he liked and grabbed for it without actually reading the rules.
The player character's Feats are: Smiting Spell (lets you lay a touch spell into a weapon for up to a minute, so it goes off on a hit), Practiced Spellcaster (allows the character to count levels in non-casting classes to their Caster level, up to 4, and not to total more than the character's actual level), Improved Familiar, and I don't know the last one off hand.
His character has a small Air Elemental as his Improved Familiar. When asked his alignment he said, "Chaotic Good". The DM immediately replied, "That Familiar disappears." His character is Aquatic and is more than one point away from the Neutral aligned Air Elemental familiar. He immediately amended his alignment back to Neutral Good.
I asked, conversationally, what the back story was, what made an Air Elemental an appropriate familiar for his Aquatic character. He told a back story that basically said, "My character likes Air magic." I asked for his spells. No Summon Monster spell that could be used to summon Air, no Gust of Wind, no Wind Wall. Just Lightning and more Lightning.
The reason he wants the Air Elemental is because he wants to take the Elemental Savant prestige class next level, and a prerequisite is that the character has to have had friendly contact with a creature from that elemental plane. He could have included that in his back story and we would have accepted it.
He doesn't yet have the Energy Substitution feat called for in the prerequisites for that PRC.
His character wears a Mithral breastplate (proficiency from Rogue levels). A Breastplate normally incurs a 25% Arcane spell failure, dropped by 10% because of Mithral. He, however, was calling his failure chance 10%, not the 15%. When asked how that was, he said it was "Gearth armor". At first we didn't understand what he said, and had to ask him to repeat it, several times. Didn't help. He dug out DMG II and found it: Githcraft armor and weapons, as in, made by Githyanki. Only 600 gp extra.
One quick group vote later and the Githcrafted armor was gone. I didn't even have to vote, it was decided before my vote was even asked.
He asked for approval on the Prestige Class, and I suggested that he send us a PDF of his character sheet, by email, so we could look it over, and have a week to consider the Elemental Savant class.
We had a combat this game session. As usual his first spell was a personal buff. His second spell was a Touch spell called Parching Touch, which can be used once per caster level. He said he wanted to add it to my character's arrows. He moved nearby (10 feet from my pc) before casting it. He said he could hand me arrows from there. He was corrected but didn't change his character's position.
My character, being a Scout, will move at least 15 feet prior to taking a shot, and nothing had been said to that point about his character enchanting arrows for mine so no arrows were ever juiced.
His character then cast Alter Self, as a way to become a small creature, and thus pick up more AC. He then tried to lay his Parching Touch spell onto his own long spear (now 5' long), and was surprised to be told that casting a new spell negates any Touch spell being held. Another rule he never read.
I suspect that he also failed to read which weapons Rogues and Sorcerers are proficient. with. Simple weapons, and a few extra for Rogues, and Simple weapons only for the Sorcerer. The Long Spear is a two handed melee weapon, and not in the "Simple Weapon" category.
I know he was frustrated to learn that, when he Altered himself into a Gnome, his base move dropped to 20 feet. He was trying a Charge in combat and came up five feet short. He tried to argue that his Longspear was a Reach weapon, but the weapon size dropped when he Altered, and was now 5 feet long, not 10. If it hadn't transformed with him (an arguable point) he wouldn't have been able to use it at all.
A question that will come into play is this: If a PRC has a feat as a prerequisite, can the character take the PRC on the same level when they gain the Feat?
I'm sure that's clarified somewhere in the rules, but I can't recall right off hand.
So we discovered a lot about what the character is and what he wants it to be, and he discoveried that his latest "perfect" build doesn't work anything like the way he thought it would. Doesn't end up with more HP than the party fighters, can't cast spells in armor with impunity, doesn't have the stats he thought he should, his spells and feats don't work the way he thought they should, and that his Familiar isn't nearly as useful as he thought it would be.
The thing he apparently failed to discover is that lots of ironwork-type armor doesn't do Bandini against a lot of Undead.
I'll remind him of that when I take the DM's chair, next week.
