Night's Embrace: Part 1--A Touch of Darkness

[Rystil Arden]

: pokes with stick for Shayuri's benefit :

 

[Shayuri]

Argh!

Remember way back when I was trying to decide what to take for Sulannus' second level, and then maybe I was going to make her a duskblade and...blah!

I'm just having deep problems with Sulannus, and I don't know what to do. Mechanically...thematically...conceptually... I messed up with her from the very start, not checking with Rystil for the appropriate background elements and just making assumptions about how things worked. Those assumptions turned out to be wrong, so her background no longer makes sense. Plus, the whole 'arcane archer' thing looks great on paper, but it's a long, awful slog to get to the point where it really works. Not to mention we lost a major melee character, so a duskblade would be great. But she's not built to be a melee character. She hasn't got the strength or constitution to make it work.

This is why I've been having trouble posting. I have no idea where to take Su...either RPwise or mechanicswise.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

[Legildur]

What about the Champion of Correllon PrC in Races of the Wild? A decent melee class and could fit with Sul moving towards a more 'champion' against Night's Emrace if Sul thought it posed a threat to the elves.

Similarly for Pious Templar - as a champion of your god.

 

[jkason]

Not to mention we lost a major melee character, so a duskblade would be great. But she's not built to be a melee character. She hasn't got the strength or constitution to make it work.

This is why I've been having trouble posting. I have no idea where to take Su...either RPwise or mechanicswise.

Is it possible, given the circustances, that Rystil would allow you to swap around some of your scores? Flipping DEX and STR gives a better melee attack and damage on its own, but if you want a Duskblade with higher STR and CON, it strikes me that if you move your 17 from DEX to CON (dropping it to 15 for the racial penalty), flip the 14 to STR (since it no longer takes a racial penalty), then plop your 13 into DEX, you have a more workable stat block for the class you're looking at. 14 STR, 15 CON, 13 DEX (+2, +2, and +1 bonuses, respectively). You aren't entirely re-statting the character because you're using the values you already chose, but wind up with mechanics you can maybe work with more?

As far as background, I'm afraid I've lost the thread where you really detailed that (back when we were pitching characters, I believe), but I seem to recall Sul was running away to be more resilient and self-reliant? That still all works, and you wouldn't necessarily have to change her characterization a lot; she's just more physically aggressive in this permutation, yes?

jason

 

[Rystil Arden]

I agree with Legildur and jkason that a rework can be done mechanically. Also note that while we lost a major melee character, most of the rest of the party is actually still major melee characters This group was a bit unbalanced that way from the start (Paladin, Ranger, Monk, Fighter, Rogue), so if you still wanted her to be not a melee fighter (like Arcane Archer, etc), that would be fine for group dynamics.

As for the backstory, it works pretty easily if Sulannus's mother is dead or otherwise rendered incapable of transferring her political privilege (or else on the verge of being so)--if Sulannus is the heir, then her family would be pretty much insistent that she find a covarath immediately because otherwise the family basically has no political leverage or say in anything. She could easily be running away from that--that's not a commitment, or amount of pressure, that everyone could deal with.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Poke?

 

[Shayuri]

Heya. At work. Busy day.

I apologize for not posting last night.

Would you be open, as an option, to me moving some of Sulannus' scores around a bit?

I am having ideas...and they intrigue me. Also, is my reading of the rules correct in that a Duskblade could qualify for Arcane Archer with no further multiclassing?

 

[Rystil Arden]

I would say moving them a little is fine. Changing something from like 8 to 18 or something similarly drastic might be a bit much, of course, to keep her character consistent, and I forget if she was knocked down low / almost killed in the first fight, but if so, let's not lower her Con (since she might have died with the lower Con), but otherwise, I'm game for some moves.

Bear in mind that when it comes to the channeling of full attacks (which, given the speed of PbP games will probably come up...never), I endorse the reading that you have to attack different targets, since each individual target can only be hit by it once. Of course, if you multiclassed into Arcane Archer, you'd never have to worry about that anyway. It does indeed look like a single-classed Duskblade has no problem qualifying for AA at level 6.

 

[Legildur]

I apologize for not posting last night.

Have I missed something in the IC thread??? <runs off to check>

 

[Shayuri]

Hee, no... Rystil brought the OOC thread's suggestion to my attention, and I said I'd seen them and would post. Then a game of Supreme Commander got out of hand and... *cough*

But werry soon I will be fixing Sulannus up real good.

I like Rystil's idea for revising her background story, though I feel it could use some 'punch.' It seems kind of like a dubious, whiny, annoying thing for her to do...though I suppose some would say that fits her to a T.

Mechanicswise, I think I'm finally settling. There won't even be a huge change. Of course the Duskblade retcon could be considered big...but it's explained in game by the lessons and so on. We'll just say she was -almost- a Duskblade before...and this pushed her over the edge.