Help with frost campain (Frost giants/Frostburn book)

[jokeaccount]

Soo, we're a new party and all of us are new to D&D but the DM isn't. This shows in battles where every time we struggle to win and we get out half dead and 2 out of 4 people are under the 0 hp limit and dying. The campain however goes on and now we are ready to set off for the mountains where apparently we might face frost giants (its a mission we undertook) and tomorrow is the session where we travel and get there. The thing is i'd like to prepare myself this time as much as possible and since i have little knowledge i started researching what items we should buy etc.

The party is:
Fighter/Samurai lvl 8 (acts as a fighter till now, going kensai soon after the frost giants)
Wizard lvl 8 (is total new and forgets to buff before the fights and likes to deal damage instead of supporting the party but now he is starting to get the drill)
Bard lvl 8 (does nothing in battles except hast/song (+1 attack +1 damage)/cure light/medium/critical wounds)
Me Rogue5/Fighter3 (going for Nightsong enforcer soon but still stuck doing damage and having insane troubles positioning myself for flanks etc)
Apparently we will be joined by a really experienced Cleric tomorrow hopefully he knows what he's doing...

Now the thing is up to now we were fighting some shady people (rogue/swash classes or clerics) and some undeads. On undeads i'm super useless. On the others, again i can't seem to be able to dish out good sneak attack damage :S. This time i want to personally be usefull to the team maybe even give some advice to the other guys for a smoother run.

For this purpose i ask you what would be a good item/wand/buff choice in order to NOT walk in like total amateurs if we happen to initiate a fight in the snowy/icy mountains? I will be checking the frostburn book for help but some advice from veterans would much more helpful

 

[GunbladeKnight]

Traveler's cloaks are nice. Endure elements, 1/day trail rations, can be made into a tent for sleeping.

Any spells that stop cold damage would be great for buffing.

Wands of curing (medium if you can afford it, but light is still extremely useful)

If you think you'll be dealing with more UD, look into getting truedeath crystals (Magic Item Compendium).

What feats do you/your group have? What kind of tactics do you usually use?

 

[jokeaccount]

a) I talked to DM about truedeath crystals and his reaction was "uuuuuuuummm.... we'll see...... = i won't let you do this

b) About feats nothing related to cold. The classic TWF fighter with Power attack, rogue has TWF and some stupid useless feats cause i was going for the shadowlord prestige class but after hearing that DM obviously will not accept Tome of Battle (no swordsage) and generally multipouncing is prohibited the class became and i decided to switch to nightsong enforcer but it will take alot of time to retrain blindfight dodge mobility spring attack which are useless now...Wizard has empower and maximize and bard has nothing...

As of tactics...we generally charge in and try to flank while having lingering song and haste and power attacking/sneaking. A classic trick we use lately is to start the big fights with preemptive Fireballs from the wiz taking out most of the creeps and leaving only the serious enemies to deal with but other than that...

 

[Herobizkit]

A few tactical pieces which are likely situational.

Your flank partner is the Fighter/Samurai. You're a Rogue, which means you have Tumble, which means that you should have no issues getting to where you need to go. You should also have max ranks in Use Magic Device so you can use healing wands too.

Wizards are the G.D. Batman. Their job is to a) control the battlefield, b) blow crap up. Buffing is for Priests.

Bards can still fight and sing. Once his buff is up, he should be shooting arrows or wailing on stuff. Too bad he had to be the healer. With the Bard picking his nose, you only have two beefcakes to protect the others... and the Bard isn't designed to be main healer.

Adding a fifth party member will increase your survivability a lot, especially if said Priest is going to be a Priest of kick-ass.

 

[jokeaccount]

Ok

What about items/wands? For example i read somewhere that a rogue who couldnt do anything vs undead still was super usefull by tumbling around and spilling holy water on undeads disturbing them etc.

 

[kitcik]

Get some tanglefoot bags.

Why does your bard suck (+1/+1 at 8th is terrible)?

 

[jokeaccount]

It is +1/+1 but then NOTHING MORE. Lingering song keeps that up for 5 rounds. He does nothing substantial after that

 

[Wyvernhand]

At 8th level, Bard's basic IC gets bumped to +2/+2, so it should be at least that. And the song NORMALLY lingers for 5 rounds, Lingering Song makes it linger 5 more (10 total, a whole minute). Also, he doesn't have to actually STOP the song. He can fight just fine while keeping it up. If he wants to cast spells, there is a feat for that in Complete Mage called Melodic Casting. It lets you use spells and spell trigger items (wands) while keeping your song up. Its VERY useful. There are also a lot of feats and spells and items he can get. At 8th level, he could easily have a +5/+5 Bard song running, possibly more if he doesn't mind being [Exalted] (blech!).

Anyway, what you need is a Wandchamber installed in one of your weapons (or both). This'll cost you about 100g each, and the book source is Dungeonscape. This'll allow you to pack a wand in there and activate it without actually holding the wand.

Now you need a wand to put in there. For 750g, you can get a wand of Gravestrike (CDivine, repinted in Spell Compendium). This is a swift action spell that allows you to SA undead for 1 round. It used to be that activating any wand was a standard action, but then the Rules Compendium was released that stated that activating a wand is the same action as casting the spell in the wand. That means that activating your wand of Gravestrike is a swift action. 50 charges is 50 rounds of combat, which should last you most of the campaign (or at least until you are high enough level that 750g for a 2nd one is trivial). Its still a DC20 check to activate, but thats not so bad by 8th level, assuming you have max ranks (11), a +2 Cha, and a +2 masterwork tool (100g, PHB). You also get a +2 bonus if you've activated it before, so thats a total of +17, meaning you only fail on a roll of 1 or 2. In another 2 levels, you'll be able to auto-make it on a 1, which means you will never fail.

Another wand I'd highly highly highly suggest you get is a wand of Lesser Vigor. LV is in Complete Divine, but I think it was reprinted in SpC. At minimum CL, it gives Fast Healing 1 for 11 rounds. Thats 11 HP healed with 1 charge in just over a minute. If you do the math, thats about 2.3 gp per HP healed. Contrast that with a wand of Cure Light Wounds's average 5.5/charge or 4.54 gold per HP healed. About half the price! This is great for out of combat healing, which'll take some heat off the bard's spells/day so he can spend slots doing other cool things like casting Glitterdust to blind foes.

 

[Dandu]

For this purpose i ask you what would be a good item/wand/buff choice in order to NOT walk in like total amateurs if we happen to initiate a fight in the snowy/icy mountains? I will be checking the frostburn book for help but some advice from veterans would much more helpful

As always, kill it with fire.

Get some tanglefoot bags.

Why does your bard suck (+1/+1 at 8th is terrible)?

Indeed, a bard with Frostburn on the table should not suck.

 

[kitcik]

Indeed, a bard with Frostburn on the table should not suck.

And if you fix the bard, the melee characters get dragged along kicking and screaming...