Just for fun - A Bard-Bear-ian

[Greenfield]

My wife, who is not an RPGer, wants me to run a Bard-Bear-ian. That is, a bear who is a Bard and a Barbarian.

Bears, in the MM, have a Charisma of 6, and the Awaken spell adds a D3 to that, limiting his Charisma to a max of 9. Hard to be a Bard with that.

a Were-Bear is an effective ECL of 9, so a 1st level anything is a 10h level character. Not a winner that way either.

So how would you do it?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What system/Edition?
What level?
Also, there is a third path: anthropomorphic animals from Savage Species.

 

[Greenfield]

Sorry, I thought I put those in the header.

System is D&D, edition 3.5.

Figure to aim for 11th level or so.

I hadn't consider Savage Species, I'll confess, largely because we aren't using that book at my game. Still worth looking at . Thanks for the t

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If Savage Species isn’t an option, I’d go Awakened. With 11 levels to work with, you should be able to get a couple stat boosts.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And for his “bard”yness, play to his strengths...literally. Have his shtick be feats of strength.

 

[Greenfield]

Yeah, but...

Let's look at the tale of three bears.

The Black Bear has 3 dice of Bear and two of Awakened.
The Brown Bear has 6 dice of Bear and two of Awakened.
The Polar Bear has 8 dice of Bear and two of Awakened.

The Black Bear starts with a Strength of 19 and 2 points of Natural armor. Hardly worth the +5 ECL.
The Brown Bear starts with a Strength of 27 and 5 points of Natural armor. He's a +8 ECL.
The Polar Bear starts with a Strength of 27 and 5 points of Natural Armor. He's a +1- ECL.

So none of those allow 11 levels of stat advancement. The best allows six, the best deal allows three and the worst allows one.

The Black Bear could gain a point in Charisma at levels 8, 12, and 16. The might allow him to get up to a 12.
The Brown and Polar bears would get points at 12 and 16. That allows an 11, max.

Okay, plan B: Go straight Bar-Bearian and put some skill points into Perform, and fake the rest.

Note, of course, that Awaken doesn't give him hands or opposable thumbs capable of holding a weapon (or an instrument or casting a spell with somatic components either for that matter.)

The only bears that have those are Lycanthropes and/or Anthropomorphs.

Curiosity: Can a Bear become a were-human?

 

[Richards]

Or you could ignore the "bear" stats entirely and hand-wave that part of the character. I recently played in a D&D 3.5 campaign based on the "Skylanders" videogame universe: my nephew played Baabby the Baabarian (a humanoid sheep barbarian/cleric) and I played his sidekick Sam Crow (a humanoid crow ranger/rogue). We just used the rules for human PCs when designing our characters and ran with it; the fact that these were a sheep and a crow meant nothing other than what our PCs looked like.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable campaign.

Johnathan

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That’s one approach, but it depends on DM buy-in and how your fellow players feel.

In 2Ed, playing monster races was a bit different. You got a solid head start, but you didn’t advance until ecpveryone else caught up to you. So, my Minotaur Ftr/Mage was more powerful at lower levels than any other PC in the party. But once they had earned enough XP, his head start had disappeared.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I wouldn’t sweat the mechanical side so much if you can find a good concept.

This PC is a bear barbarian bard. His Cha is the mechanical “weak link”. But if he’s doing feats of strength and banging on a drum...loudly...his less than ideal Cha makes sense. He’s barbaric and loud, but still somewhat charming.

What kind of weapon are you thinking offor the PC? A high-Strength character with a bow can be a blast, and thematically appropriate. A large spear could be fun, too, even though you wouldn’t have the feats (or Dex) to get full use of it in an AoO build.

Note: I keep saying “he”. A female PC built on this concept could be even more fun.

Note 2: did anyone else hear the voice in my head say “PANDA!”?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Bear-humanoid from Savage Species, and the skald (hybrid class) from Pahtfinder SRD.