Help choosing feats and Character building

[tennesay]

I acquired the Forgotten realm books and I was examining the book Races of Faerun. I think I found the solution to at least some of my problems. Apparently I can negate the 1 level adjustment of the aasimar by forgoing the outsider type and instead becoming a humanoid with outsider subtype. I didn't realize that the outsider type was so powerful that it negated charm person and the like effects. Anyway in the book are some awesome feats. My personal favorites are the Eyes of light because you can shoot laser beams from your eyes. The solution I think is to go aasimar, take the celestial blood line feat, then take the outsider wings feat which gives the character wings and flight speed equal to land speed. I will probably choose this path because it has the least hassle as far as I can tell.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Wow, thanks for help. It does look roughly stupidly powerful. I think it might be still a tad too powerful for this campaign, does it have any level adjustment?

Yes. It has 12 racial HD and a +8 level adjustment. If you look at the progression, it says at each level if you gain a HD. If not, you're effectively "gaining" +1 point of your LA. You would not be able to take a class level until epic levels. As for being powerful, you have to remember: It for the standard levels 1-20 of play is providing you with your racial AND class abilities effectively, since you can't take a class. And besides that, it's also dropping you 8 HD from a typical human along the way! By the end,
I'd say Astral Deva is roughly balanced with a Human [Class] 20. If anything, it will have a wider range of stuff, but a lot less ability to specialize. The only time it's noticeably more powerful, even with my friend's progression, is very early levels. you would be starting at 7 or so, so this isn't an issue.

I looked over the raptorians and I kinda liked the stats but not the actual creatures themselves. For some reason they don't appeal to my ascetics. I wonder if my Dm will let me create a race of winged humans...probably not though. But the concept of what I wanted was spot on. I am trying to move away from the book of nine swords because I found the system of abilities and need to prepare ahead of time a little overwhelming.

Raptorans - You could always try and re-flavor the race while leaving the mechanics the same. Maybe they're faintly related to the elemental plane of air (already have some ties). Maybe they're descended from celestials or dragons, and have the wing appearance to match. Of course, in the latter two cases, you'd likely gain a "blooded" type, like dragon blooded, which is a minor boon as it opens up options like draconic feats.

ToB - Yeah, I kinda figured so, a lot of people don't want to bother with it. If you have C.Champion and still want an aerial charger, check out Lion Totem Barbarian. It lets you trade Fast Movement for Pounce. Your DM might ban it on sight, though.

I think I have finally decided on a character concept. I thought about my character from our 4th edition campaign and saw that I had a fighter that was basically a striker. I think I intended this character to at least be similar. That character uses a bastard sword over a great sword, and a long sword because its simply a better weapon.

I don't know what this means.... Longsword > Bastard Sword > Greatsword and thus he uses a longsword?

Well, the astral deva comes across as being a tad underpowered to me at ECL20. I think what the designers did was try to make it more attractive by front-loading many of its abilities (for instance, you get 5 outsider HD for your 1st 5 lvs, sr at lv8 and the equivalent of a 5th lv spell at 3rd lv - because wotc was too lazy to come up with a proper progression for them?). As such, it is fairly powerful at lower lvs, and slows down at mid-higher lvs. If you don't expect your campaign to last past lv12, it was a fairly powerful choice for a PC.

Also, I felt that while it received a lot of defensive capabilities, its offensive prowess left a little to be desired. It was hard to kill, but didn't really do much damage, and so was relegated to a support role for most part.

From seeing that player in action with his astral deva, I'd agree with your assessment completely. he used a reach weapon and had Flyby Attack, generally either using spell-like abilities (and wands) as primarily a buffer and party healer or doing skirmishing melee attacks for small damage. The lack of class and only the typical feat allotment by hit dice (and reduced HD at that) make it very hard to be an offensive powerhouse, though his character was indeed very hard to kill. And he still enjoyed it, it just...wasn't a massive damage dealer.

 

[tennesay]

I'm sorry if I poorly worded my statement. What I meant was that my character primarily used a bastard sword because it was better than a longsword in terms of damage. Also it was more favorable compared to a great sword because it was a versatile weapon. Then again my fighter has more weapons then he can shake a stick at. He has a bastard sword, a long sword, a short sword, 2 daggers, 5 javelins, 300 arrows, a spear and a long bow. Think he has enough weapons?

On the topic, I can't really decide what class to be. I am looking into the complete champions because I have never seen it before. I was thinking about being a Paladin of the eternal order from the Faerun books and being an "advisor" to heironus. Though for increased speed, nothing beats a psionic taking way too many speed of thought and up the walls to literally run up a 180ft tower.

 

[Herobizkit]

The solution I think is to go aasimar, take the celestial blood line feat [...]

This depends on how strict your DM is, but the RAW states that taking Bloodline feats requires you to "give up" levels at certain intervals.

For example, A 1st-level character with a major bloodline (silver dragon) receives a +2 bonus on Sense Motive checks as a bloodline trait. When he reaches 2nd character level, he gains the Alertness feat as a bloodline trait. Before he reaches 3rd character level, he must take a level of bloodline in order to continue gaining bloodline traits. if he reaches 3rd character level and has no bloodline levels, he does not gain the bloodline trait due him at 3rd character level (Strength +1) and must take a 20% reduction on all future XP gains. If he later meets the minimum required bloodline levels, he gains his 3rd-level trait at that time (as well as any other traits he may have failed to receive for not taking his bloodline level right away), and the XP reduction no longer applies to future gains. Before reaching his 6th character level, he must have taken two levels of bloodline in order to keep gaining bloodline traits. If he takes his third bloodline level before reaching 12th character level, he becomes eligible to gain all the traits of his bloodline (as they become available when he reaches new character levels).

In essence, if you take the Major bloodline (as I'm sure you'll want to), you need to "give up" a level at 3rd and 6th in order to continue gaining Bloodline abilities, or you suffer a 20% xp penalty until you do. This means that your level 7 guy will, in fact, start off as a 5th level guy (with all the relevant abilities to your class).

Described another way, you'd be a multi-classed 5 (whatever)/2 Celestial Bloodline; you'd be treated in all ways like a 7th level character but only have class abilities of your level 5 (whatever) plus the bonuses you enjoy from your Bloodline.

Everything else (including the laser eyes) is candy. Good candy, though; a PC in my game did almost exactly the same thing.

This may go without saying, but remember that you need a Feat in order to wield your Bastard Sword one-handed.

 

[Herobizkit]

Though for increased speed, nothing beats a psionic taking way too many speed of thought and up the walls to literally run up a 180ft tower.

You want versatility? Monk + Psychic Warrior = teh awesome. Trust me. You'll love it. I did.

If you want to emulate an actual Striker, little to nothing beats the peanut butter and jam of Fighter/Rogue. (Monk/Rogues are awesome but don't come into their full potential until around level 10).

 

[tennesay]

The celestial bloodline feat I was talking about came for the forgotten realms. In the book races of Faerun the celestial bloodline feat grants an aasimar pro evil and bless with the requirements of having at least 1 per fort, reflex, and will save.

I am still trying to pin down a class. My current thought is that an aasimar psionic warrior or soulknife (basic class) might be a tad too exotic to explain.

 

[irdeggman]

Aasimar's favored class is paladin.

There is a feat in the Races of Eberron book (and duplicated in others too) that once taken allows a character to multiclass freely with the paladin class.

 

[tennesay]

I have to speak with my DM first, but I don't think he really takes the whole favored class thing into account. On the other hand, do you know of any good variant paladin classes, particularly those that lose the mount? I don't think I would use the mount very often due to having wing naturally.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Aasimar's favored class is paladin.

There is a feat in the Races of Eberron book (and duplicated in others too) that once taken allows a character to multiclass freely with the paladin class.

Another option is to pick Illumian (Races of Destiny) as the race and then take that celestial bloodline and freely multiclass with paladin (or monk, for that matter).

I have to speak with my DM first, but I don't think he really takes the whole favored class thing into account. On the other hand, do you know of any good variant paladin classes, particularly those that lose the mount? I don't think I would use the mount very often due to having wing naturally.

There are several. C.Champion has one, can't recall what it offers at the moment. PH2 lets you trade it to do more smite damage on a charge attack (Charging Smite variant).

My favorite is from Dungeonscape, Divine Spirit. It lets you summon spirits once per day, eventually getting 4 to summon.

Level 5+: Spirit of Healing -Allies can heal themselves (standard action) when the spirit is over them, from a pool equal to 2x your lay on hands amount (does not take any from that ability).
Level 11+: Spirit of Combat - Grants sacred bonuses to any allies next to it on attack and damage and makes weapons good aligned.
Level 16+: Spirit of Heroism - Basically just gives you (and only you) DR 10/-- and the Die Hard feat.
Level 20+: Spirit of the Fallen - Gives fast healing 10 to adjacent allies; once/round can revive an ally from the dead for no level loss. Simply epic.

All spirits last round/level, basically cannot attack or be attacked, and can be moved 30 ft each round as a free action.

 

[tennesay]

I think I have finally decided exactly what to do with my character.
I have one question, do regional feats count on top of the 1st level feats?

My current plan is to take a lesser Aasimar, take 5 levels of the paladin (maybe adding holy warrior?). Using the paladin substitution levels for helm particularly levels one and the 4th level. I was wondering would I also be able to take the charging smite feature over the mount even if I take a substitution level? After that I was kinda considering going into grey guard.
The feats are kinda iffy. First level feats, I really have no idea maybe powerful charge. 3rd level is celestial bloodline, 6th level is outsider wings.

For equipment I looked at alot of speed enhencers because if they increase land speed, the fly speed should increase too right? The weapon will probably be valorous.