SciFi WiFi
Interesting. Our robo-buddy seems susceptible to the subtle magic permeating the airspace in Aqua Vitae. Who knows what racial memories are being unlocked in their core processor? It’s almost as if they have been to Aqua Vitae before. But no, that makes zero sense. I mean, why would a civilization of technologically advanced bloodsuckers who sustain themselves via live prey even need to build a race of pacifistic servants who can operate in daylight?
But who cares about the ongoing plot? What I really want to talk about is this “prestige into tomb guardian” business. It may be an offhand comment in today’s comic, but it’s one of my favorite ways to progress a PC.
As a gamer who cut her teeth on 3.X, I’m used to picking my feats, selecting my spells, and planning my level dips before the campaign’s first d20 is rolled. In a world of prerequisites and feat trees, it pays to know where you big payoffs are coming. But if you do go in for this pre-planned biz, I think it’s important to hold on loosely.
It’s all well and good to plan for X levels of Hospitaler Paladin and Y levels of Life Oracle before prestiging into Holy Vindicator at Zth. But suppose the story doesn’t hit those beats when you need it to? You’ve just arrived at 6th level, but after all those sessions adventuring in Dinosaur Jungle Setting you really want to go Beast Rider Cavalier for the stegosaurus mount. Is this as effective as your original build plan? Probably not. But it does reflect the changes your character has experienced. And to me, watching a PC grow in unexpected ways is more interesting than getting to do the thing you’d planned since before Session Zero.
That’s why I’m excited for this particular storyline. The mind-whammied automaton in today’s comic is set to join the regular cast by the end of this arc. There are still two days left as of 6/5/2023 for our Patrons to vote on their name/class. If that’s the unexpected character growth, I don’t know what is. And I certainly can’t wait to see which way public opinion falls.
As for the rest of you guys, why don’t we swap stories of our own story-driven leveling decisions? When has your character gone off-script and multiclassed into something weird? Or conversely, have you ever felt yourself annoyed that your planned build didn’t feel right given the direction of the campaign? Tell us your tales of weird and unexpected build choices down in the comments!
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Well… I once played a Brawler/Witch with strong social skills.
Turned out Giantslayer AP didn’t need those so much as damage-dealing potential, but I still made a niche for myself with Healing Hex and Vomit Swarm.
Hard not to make an impression with Vomit Swarm. ️
Warhammer fantasy roleplay (2e at any rate, never played the others) had this as standard. Since you start in one (randomly rolled) career, then, once you’ve bought all the advances from it, move into another career chosen from a list of career “exits” (or any starting career if you fancy a change, but you have to pay extra). You can plan ahead, which is useful with careers requiring expensive equipment, or you can see where character development takes you.
Never had the chance to try WFR. I’m most reminded of the skill tress in Borderlands.
https://lowlidev.com.au/borderlands/bl1/skill-trees/roland
Starting careers are kinda like if every class only had 1 level and so you had to multiclass every level-up. Advanced careers are basically prestige classes that require you to have a level in certain other classes first. And then you need to consider story/character development, as well as what you can afford/steal, because you need to have certain equipment in order to enter any given career, so you can actually do the job (you get your first career’s gear for free at chargen). Usually weapons/armour for combat careers, medical equipment for healers, bling and poison for nobility, the obvious stuff y’know.
Personally, I don’t plan ahead much… I may have a few ideas of where the character might go, but I mostly play it by ear, taking a level at a time. A long-term rogue character added a wizard level of two partway though the campaign, after developing some curiosity about magic from another PC. And I’m considering whether my bard might dabble in cleric, since that’s a character background element which has been more important than expected…
Did you find yourself underpowered because of the lack of planning? Or were you able to hang with the rest of the group despite making making these character-driven choices?
Hasn’t happened yet, but I’m looking to play a technomancer/mechanic in a Starfinder campaign soon. Considering their backstory though, nanocyte might end up replacing mechanic. Either way, can’t wait to see how my android’s story plays out!
That’s an interesting option: multiple planned build paths to accommodate character development. Neat.
Technomancer ended up going with mechanic, but the in-universe method of multiclass was fun. Technomancer was an android and we were in a room full of junk and tech. He gets up, walks over to a workbench, puts something together and shoves it into a port in the back of his neck (he picked exocortex for his AI creation). He actually glitches for a moment, applies some percussive maintenance, then nods like everything’s working fine. The mystic looks over, goes “you okay over there?”. My guy replies “I’m fine. …Both of us are.”
First time any of my characters has caused Concern™ in other characters rather than the other way around XD
*GASP*!!! Someone grab her, she’s telling people to make suboptimal build choices! Quickly, we can’t let her get away, if she escapes we’re all doomed! Only a human sacrifice can appease Our Lord D’tooentee, the Rolling Chaos, and purify our community of this corruption!
So Thaumaturge… Does it hurt being up there? Asking for a friend.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/cessation-of-hostilities
I was playing a “pacifist monk”, that was not much of a pacifist early on, but eventually, through gear and other choices I became the tank of the party and my one job was to not punch anything (because if I did, I would be less of a tank)… and with my job fulfilled and my character concept exactly where I wanted, I had a choice to take another level of monk and gain an ability that would have turned me back into a punchy character, or… instead take a level of cleric in my “later years” and begin a path toward peace (literally, a peace cleric). I never saw the choice coming, didn’t plan for it, but in the moment, it just felt right, so as our campaign ended, I was a level 16 monk and had 2 levels of cleric as well.
Did the cleric levels help you mechanically in any way? Or was it strictly a sub-optimal flavor choice?
Inversely this is why I “hate” D&D. The arbitrary constraints of “classes” and “progression”. Why can’t I get my Dino-riding on at level 1? Or 2? Why I can’t I learn a few things about Riding (Dinosaur) and then go back to my regular life of Swording mine enemies)?
This is why I find classless systems better, the freedom to truly grow organically if you wish, not be constrained by someone else’s arbitrary decisions about what profession your PC can be, or what their abilities would be in that profession.
And it’s always a good time to switch… Team GURPS is always hiring new players…
You’re right. I really should give Spheres of Power a try. 😛
/shakes fist
CLAIRE!
But you’ll still be locked in class/level based system! Stretch, leave those shackles behind! Come taste the freedom of the GURPS side! (Or at least give original FATE a shot, it’s a pretty light system with the full flavored freedom to build PCs as you want.)
You know what? I think I will give FATE Core a shot. Vaguely worded Aspects here I come! 😛
I played a goofy Strength-Cleric of Hercules who was all about saving your soul through body-building (I may have mentioned him a lot). After he died heroically/tragically and was resurrected, I re-evaluated the character beyond the original build and decided that the gods told him (before he returned from Hades) that he did not qualify for Elysium because of [insert past behavior here]. After that, I had no roadmap for where I would go, but every dip at every level was in pursuit of something to correct what he perceived as a fatal character flaw. Too reckless? His behavior began sliding from Chaotic to Neutral to Lawful. Too squishy? Two levels of Tough Hero. Too dependent on your signature weapon? Take a dip into Monk for flurry of blows and the Wisdom-based AC bonus. Have you ignored your party-Cleric duties for too many levels now? Prestige into Contemplative with the Practiced Spellcaster feat to make up the difference in caster level. Now the priest of Heracles is played for less of a joke than before, but is an even mightier Priest of Power.
For a different take, my son’s samurai began at level 8 and had no backstory. As he played from levels 8-10 we invented a reason for him to be wandering fantasy-Europe (it involved distant relatives, fulfilling family obligations, and misjudging the relative size of the continent). As he returned home for a full Oriental Adventures campaign, we developed a backstory: he is the younger of two brothers. His beloved older brother had been clan champion but died heroically early in his career. The younger brother, originally destined to be a poet, courtier, musician, and sage, now had to abandon his studies and take up the ancestral sword against the Darkness.
To reflect this, we retroactively added an “earlier” level in the NPC class Expert to reflect his studies before he had to become a legacy hero.
Character construction through hamartia? I can dig it. 😀
I don’t generally go off script, but that has more to do with that I don’t feel “classes” like we see them in the books (distinct, unique, filled with specific flavor) really fit in with the role playing aspect of stepping into the shoes of a person. To me… classes are just a hodgepodge of like-themed abilities that the character SHOULD continually improve over time.
3.x is really bad about this IMO. If you are some breed of caster, it really feels like shooting yourself in the foot to pick up anything else. And so-called Prestige Classes feel more like box canyons jam packed with bombs than any kind of actual thing I’d want.
When the biggest perk of the prestige class is belonging to an organization that doesn’t get run in your game, it feels like a waste of your levels, and several PRC’s have exactly this problem.
Exactly. Classes aren’t your character, they’re just a box of tools that your character can use to showcase their own character.
Amen.
For example my last character is a strange Elf Barbarian in PF2 (based on an idea on unusual builds i read here), and the last thing i chose was the class, which were Rogue and Wizard, because they fit the concept i had in mind.
This is an interesting development. It takes the “your class is not your character” concept and takes it a step further. Your class is *totally separate* from your character.
So in that sense, do you think that character mechanics ought to be influenced by narrative in any way?
I’ve told the story of my first-ever PC (a Magus) before, so I won’t go into great detail here, but my original plan was quite simply to go Magus all the way. Around Level 5, however, I was having a lot of trouble with durability, and decided to take a level of Bloodrager. This gave me a decent boost to strength and HP and, thanks to an archetype, snagged me a prerequisite feat for the feat Snake Style, which bolstered my AC by a lot. The character had been adopted and grown up away from her biological family, so I flavored this as her finding ways to combine her regular arcane training with her natural instincts to dodge attacks unnaturally fast and to strike harder than it would seem possible, thanks to her ancestors’ magic. This corresponded with a big leap in the character’s mechanical effectiveness, so it worked really well with the story. Later, she also gained a level of Cleric as her religious faith had bloomed (and the campaign was nearly over, so the dip gave her more features than if she just took another Magus or Bloodrager level).
This seems like the optimal scenario, when character progression happens to sync with narrative. Too bad that it’s almost accidental when that happens. :/
So, way back when I got to be PCs, I was a Robin Hood-esque Gunslinger with a hidden past that involved a lot of wrongs that he needed to right, or at least counterbalance with enough good to make up for it. Getting noticed by Evandra wasn’t really part of the plan, but he was happy enough to take the benefits of divine favour even if he wasn’t particularly devoted in return. That changed when he got got getting the rest of the party out of a room that kept filling with lightning, and suddenly found himself face-to-face with his sorta-kinda-patron offering one 1-Up in exchange for a more formal arrangement between the two of them.
And that’s how I multiclassed into Cleric.
Incidentally, there seems to be something weird going on with the comments section where it doesn’t allow numbers in the usernames any more. Is that meant to be happening?
Not a clue. Will report to Laurel. She handles the WordPress side of things.
As for your cleric class, same question I asked the others: Did you find yourself underpowered because of this character-driven choice? Or were you still able to keep up with the rest of the group?
Well, the thing with Gunslinger and my dice was that it was very much a case of either doing no damage or all the damage anyway, so it didn’t make all that much of a difference. All I really missed was an extra ASI/Feat from doing a second Level 1 rather than Level 14, and the mechanical advantages of having a second dip-healer to go with the 10/4 Barbadin were a goodly counterbalance to that as well.
I disagree.
When you plan out a build in that manner, you shouldn’t even consider it a multiclass, but simply an unorthodox customized single class.
I have a Swashbuckler15/Hexblade5, and all the various levels have an optimal point at which they can be taken, but I don’t view this as something that needs to “take cues” from the story as these levels are no different than if I came up with a “magic swordsman” homebrew class that just used existing abilities.
It’s the same way that when you play a Paladin or Arcane Trickster, some levels boost your martial abilities, and some levels boost your spellcasting, and in the end you wind up with a lower spell range than a full caster and also the ability to dish out damage through weapons. The Swashbuckler/Hexblade is no different in that respect.
It’s not unreasonable to treat classes like multiclassing is akin to changing majors at college, but it’s a very limiting way of looking at character growth. It implies that if you start as a fighter or wizard or whatever, that your character was going into that path already committed to finishing that all way, and that multiclassing is going “off course” from that.
What if I was always planning to master arcane magic for the sake of practical combat while still dabbling in some divine worship and heavy armor (WarMage19/Forge Cleric1) or what if I was always planning to gain not just an understanding of the various beasts of nature, but to master them in a way that elevates them beyond simple beasts? (Totem Barbarian5/Moon Druid15) what if I was always planning to brute force my way through a field-practical utilization of undead? (Necromancer7/Undying Warlock13)
It’s not like I don’t have some builds that work off of narratives. I have a Paladin2/Goolock that went on a hermitage to determine what the nature of his oaths would be, but in the process of meditating, accidentally tapped into the raw power of Dendar, the Nightmare Serpent, and is thusly plagued by terrors to the point that he refuses to sleep, wandering in a dreamlike haze that can barely discern reality from the dreamworld.
I have a Samurai who is an Ex-Major Domo that picked up Magic Initiate in order to compensate for his weak strength and dexterity, using shillelagh to apply his incredible wisdom to his fighting capabilities. He picks up the Chef feat much later, but this is simply the culmination of his already existing focus on cooking and acting as general butler for the rest of the party.
Point is, you don’t have to be tied down by either interpretation.
So let’s boil it down:
— Planned multiclass is as valid as single class.
— You don’t have to base your level-up choices on narrative.
— You CAN base level-up choices on narrative if you want to.
That leaves single-class characters as a seemingly unproblematic default. But it makes me wonder: Do players limit themselves by sticking in their class from 1-20?
One of my players is a warlock with amnesia, who used to be an extremely powerful wizard. After he started learning about his past, he started to take levels in Wizard, even through it wasn´t all that optimal for his build. I always thought that was a pretty cool move.
For myself, I generally don´t do that. I might take a feat that is not optimal, if I think it is fun for the character, but I will generally stick to whatever plan I had for the character. Which in most of the games I have played in have been necessary. Because I find it difficult to go off-script in Pathfinder 1e, unless you are playing a combat light game. And I haven´t really gotten to be a player in a long running 5e game. Most other games I have played haven´t had a class system, which often makes it much easier to include nuance in your character, as you can simply chose different skills or abilities when you level up, that fits with the path you want your character to go. Which also means it becomes a lot more gradual and a lot less of an immediate noticeable change compared to a D&D/Pathfinder character where stuff like multi-classing is a much greater decision.
Trivia: Gary Gygax used Si Fi not Sci Fi in dragon magazine.
Who’s going to spellcheck Gygax?
“A serious conversation cannot be had unless one first establishes the correct grammar of the language. In the proceeding subsection, we will first derive a formula for etymological valuation, cross referencing the resulting EV# with the popularity quotient, expressed as P/Q. These ratios will clearly establish…”
“You know what, Gary? Let’s just spell it your way.”
Sigh Fi
The 5e campaign I play in currently has a heavy mind flayer emphasis. It’s also a campaign where only the DM and I aren’t beginners, so my original plan was to do something straightforward and not too complex to avoid distracting the new guys. I ended up going paladin (making it a halfling dog rider to have some fun with the concept) and PLANNED to just be a paladin.
The thing is, as mentionned, the campaign has a heavy mindflayer emphasis. And a few sessions ago, we learned that our characters had been implanted with tadpoles before the campaign began (we started with a week-long blackout that was one of the things we were trying to figure out), but the ceremorphosis didn’t work as normal on us, for some reason. This left us with our body and free will intact, but a connection to the Hive Mind we could tap into every now and then. The way the DM presented it to us, there were a lot we could potentially do with that if we wanted to explore it, gleaning information for example, but also potentially tap into psychic powers…
…in other words, the DM had delivered my the perfect excuse to multiclass into an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer to do the infamous Sorcadin combo. So, well, I ended up doing it (after making absolutely sure the DM knew what he was getting into and he was okay with it). It’s still quite recent, so I haven’t had too many opportunities to really explore what it means character-wise, but it’s shaping up to be quite fun (especially since my example inspired the new guys and they also went in weird directions with their build).
Neat! What’s the narrative rationale for the pally? Is it affecting the relationship with the pally’s god?
definitely mentioned this before but my last long term character was built with arcane archer intent and because of plot reasons progressed into a melee focused anti-caster, though was still capable of being ranged if the need called for it. turns out when your main enemies are enemy clerics that being up in their face forcing extra checks with feats and such is pretty handy. as is dispel magic attached to your melee attacks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsUFBm1uENs