Small Packages
The votes have been tallied and our latest Patreon poll has a winner. I hope you will join me in welcoming Pugilist to Handbook-World! (Better luck next time, Investigator! I’m sure your sleuthing acumen will do your goliath tribe proud back home.)
I don’t know about the rest of you kids, but I find Pug all manner of endearing. I mean yes, she is choking the shit out of Fighter, and that’s an inherently likable quality. But even more than that, I admire the grit and and determination it takes for a character weighing 20 + 2d4 lbs to become a reasonable melee combatant. And that applies to both sides of the magic circle.
As hard as it is to rise above your shortcomings in a fantasy world, it can be just as hard for a player to accept that big hit to stats. And when you’re a furious fightin’ kobold like Pug, those disadvantages are considerable. We’ve talked about it before, but applying optimization skills to a suboptimal character concept is a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Especially if you happen to run with a group that tends to pick flavor over power, this strategy offers a way to noodle with the mechanics without overshadowing the rest of the table. More importantly though, you get to feel like the kind of outsider weirdo that we all love to RP.
Think about it. If you’ve been raised among a tribe of ambushers, bushwhackers, and trap-building sneaks, taking on the role of “the big guy” is a bit of a departure. In that sense, becoming a barroom brawler despite your pint-sized physique isn’t just a fight against mechanics. It’s a fight against culture. I think that’s why it’s always so much fun to root for magical girls or the killer rabbit or Henery Hawk. When the small cute thing is the most dangerous fighter in the room, you know that they had to earn that reputation.
Question of the day then! Have you ever used a mis-matched race/class combo? Were you able to overcome the handicap, or was the mechanical disadvantage too much to bear? Let’s hear all about your hard-hitting little guys down in the comments!
EARN BONUS LOOT! Check out the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. We’ve got a sketch feed full of Laurel’s original concept art. We’ve got early access to comics. There’s physical schwag, personalized art, and a monthly vote to see which class gets featured in the comic next. And perhaps my personal favorite, we’ve been hard at work bringing a bimonthly NSFW Handbook of Erotic Fantasy comic to the world! So come one come all. Hurry while supplies of hot elf chicks lasts!
Aw, this reminds me of another webcomic I’ve been reading https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/monsters-can-be-heroes-too/list?title_no=281278
Well that’s adorable. They also went another direction that we did on the character design. From Laurel’s comment on the Patreon preview of this comic:
Quick, good folks of Optiville! Grasp your torches and your pitchforks, for I bring you news most dire: a storygamer has hidden in our midst! In an attempt to corrupt our very souls, he suggests that we abandon our ways, going as far as willingly taking a racial penalty to your main ability score! * gasps of horror * The presence of this blasphemer, clearly a chained Rogue, cannot be tolerated! The heretic must burn, less the rage of the Dice Gods befalls us all! BURN! THE! WITCH! (do not burn the actual Witch though, a very solid class )
On a slightly more relevant note, I find that in Pathfinder at least buffers work very well almost regardless of their ability scores. All you really need is enough of your casting stat to be able to cast your spells and a little dex/con so as to not fall over to a single stray arrow. Everything else is just a “nice to have”, but hardly necessary.
…unless you want to carry that sweet loot with you (and you don’t have several bags of holdings / portable holes yet).
Well, if I’m a buffer, it’s sort of assumed I also have a Big Stupid Fighter that can carry my shopping bags for me.
A combat-trained bison has a light load of 1038 lbs and is only 75 gp:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/animals/herd-animals/bison
It’s also your group’s main source of damage for the four levels of play.
Or you can buy a mule. Those work too.
To be fair though, this is a very real problem for ultra-low Str characters. The go-to solution of “I’ll just buy a handy haversack” doesn’t work so well when the weight of the bag puts you into encumbered territory!
Yeah, this is particularly egregious to me when I see guides/builds that suggest something like a str 7 for a casting focused Cleric/Oracle. I mean, you’re not a Wizard with their fancy Mage Armor, you can’t just waltz into battle wearing nothing more than a bikini and expect things to go well for you.
I can see two reasons why folks think this sort of thing works. 1) A lot of GMs houserule carrying capacity away. 2) If you’re wearing medium armor, medium load doesn’t affect you any more than your armor already does, so it’s a non-issue. On the other hand, if you’d like to drop down to light armor (for example, you’ve got access to one of the Cha to AC Revelations), then it becomes a problem.
I think bison is a better choice in the ’emergency rations’ department than mule. =p
*holds pitchfork. tries to look inconspicuous.*
I always appreciated that Pathfinder casters can simply elect not to care about their ability scores. Simply go for utility and non-save spells and you still get to contribute. There’s no arguing with a wall of force, even if you happen to have a -2 to Int/Wis/Whatever.
In 3.5, I played a kobold dragon hunter. She was a multiclassed fighter/ranger/rogue, heading for the Foe Hunter prestige class. She had Strength 10, which was a lot for a kobold, and used a punching dagger, because that felt like the right weapon to use for attacking weak spots in a dragon’s scales. Between sneak attack, the Dirty Fighting feat (use a full attack action to make one attack with a damage bonus) and her favoured enemy bonus, she could mess up a dragon reasonably well.
Ain’t nothing wrong with a sneak attack to the kidneys. It is traditional!
Did you ever find yourself struggling against the penalties, or did it feel like a solid character all the way through?
Wasn’t too bad. She had an easy time getting into flanking positions, with her Tumble skill, and between size, Dexterity, armour and natural armour, her AC was excellent for her level. Had some good skills for out of combat stuff, too.
Nice. I’ve never had the chance to run a kibold myself. I feel like they’d be pretty similar to goblins in terms of RP though. Sort of the same way halflings and gnomes tend to collapse into similar tropes.
I think my best example of this was a Ratfolk antipaladin, who used a scythe, and actually ended up with a pretty good STR score despite starting small. He eventually got a permanent Enlarge Person spell cast on him, and of course, wore his trusty belt, but it was all worth it to play a character who was basically a Skaven Warlord. Of course, he wasn’t as effective as either of the other Skaven characters I played, who were a Rogue and a Gunslinger, but hey, you don’t need to be effective when you’re a terrifying rat-monster.
You used Pathfinder rules for a Warhammer game? Neat! How did shaven differ from ratfolk mechanically?
I actually basically just played Skaven in a pathfinder game. I took the alternate trait that makes natural animals repulsed by them.
A Ratfolk antipaladin with a scythe? Please tell me you took the opportunity to say SQUEAK occasionally.
One of my past games involved statting up a Feegle PC, which worked really well. Penalties to strength don’t matter too much when you can run up an attacker’s trouser leg.
If you can make your opponent punch himself in the nards in panic, you’ve pretty much won at RPG already.
The GM of my main campaign has inverted this, with the terrifying concept of the Ogre Ninja.
Ogre Ninjas started out as a running gag, the source of such jokes as “You don’t see anyone. Well, there is the ogre ninja behind the tree, but you don’t see him.” Ogre Ninjas have been supposedly stalking us since our early battles with the ogre tribes, always watching and waiting, but never striking until the time is absolutely right. What, you’ve never heard of an ogre ninja? Well, that’s how good they are!
Anyways, it seems that we made so many jokes about this that the GM has decided to actually create and put into play actual ogre ninjas to vex us. We haven’t seen any yet (THAT WE KNOW OF!) but it’s likely only a matter of time. Presumably they use this ogre stealth feat that exists for some reason ( https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/night-stalker/ ) though, as the GM pointed out, when you are invisible, you don’t need a very high base Stealth score.
Hopefully our other archnemesis, the +5 Adamantine Vorpal Bear Trap remains just a joke…
That’s bugbears! You’re describing bugbears. Stealth ogres take the concept up to 11 though.
Love that feat too. It makes me think of Norwegian style trolls that look like boulders and trees in the dark.
Orc wizard. Not half-orc wizard, not muscle wizards, but a legit bonefide full orc wizard with subpar mental stats. His only saving grace isn’t even that he had physical strength to back him up, but the fact that as one of the most naturally dim of a wizard group, he has to think the hardest. He can’t just throw spells left and right and expect one or two castings to solve his problems, because he’s just barely smart enough to know it won’t work. So he has to use his smarts in other ways than to incvrease a DC or randomly know the traits of a demon. He’s no genius but now he has to be savvy, and no excuse why he can’t be.
Though his orc blood did help a lot in our below levels. Naturally as the only guy with a passable strength and a falchion, he didn’t need spells when the goblins came into melee.
A Wizard who’s relevant at low level? Sign me up!
Hah yeah, for the longest time people just thought I was a fighter or something since I described my guy as a orky wearing orc with a falchion (which was his bonded object), said he was saving his money for something big which was why he didn’t wear armor (also because of Mage armor). Though my secret eventually broke when I had to use feather fall to save myself from getting splattered due to a pit trap.
I have often heard that the way to win a wizard duel at level 1 is to play an orc wizard who casts Greataxe.
I really like optimizing normallh suboptimal choises for just the reason you stated. Currently, I’m playing a optimized version of absurd, the puffin forest character. Basically the concept is to play a guy with atleast 1 level in every class. I only need 4 more levels to reach that point. I highly suggest that everyone watch puffin forest’s video about this character, as it is just hilarious.
Nice try Puffin Forrest. I’m onto your tricks!
Yep, I’m definitely puffin forrest, i definitely have the editing skills to make his, I mean my, videos.
In 5e, the difference between an optimised character and a weak character isn’t particularly large, so I just don’t bother with looking at racial stats when creating a character. However, since 5e also doesn’t have many negative racial penalties, the only time that I’ve played a really bad race was with that orc wizard during a one-shot. It was quite fun, bashing people over the head with my staff and casting burning hands, and there weren’t many issues with low intelligence.
At least, not until the end, when that -2 intelligence meant that I had one less spell prepared. And that spell?
Feather fall.
I’m guessing that your orc took the express elevator to death?
First one question: “[…] she is choking the shit out of Fighter, […]”, so Pugilist is a girl? Fighter is not only losing a fight, he is too losing a fight against a girl that barely can reach his knees?
Second: While Pugilist is small and has a strength penalty this is only compared to the racial standard of humans. Humans are the standard for all: Height, str, dex, con, int, wis, cha, age, is kinda all the material was written by humans. Things is then that Pugilist is only is disadvantaged compared to humans, in a tribe of purse… i mean kobolds, she in fact can be quite strong. She cold be the female, and kobold, version of Eugen Sandow, quite strong for a kobold, lame and puny in human standards.
Also Wisdom is the best stat 🙂
Fighter is indeed getting beat up by a tiny girl. Don’t worry though. He’s learning all about gender equality over in the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy comics on the Patreon.
As for racial norms, I’m amused by the idea of a kobold convinced they’re the biggest and toughest.
“Hiskk is 2’ 9”! Basically giant. Impressive that you not run in terror before Hiskk’s intimidating presence.”
I have created 18 characters so far. 15 of them are melee focused. Out of those 15, only 5 of them are Strength based. And one needs a rebuild anyway so she might end up Dex based as well in the end.
How deep do you tend to dump your STR?
I tend not to. I just leave it at 10 so they can at least carry some stuff. Even with my gnome and halfling, I bumped it back to 10. I think the character with the lowest strength was that wizard I tried to make. He ended up with 8 Str after racial adjustment. If I ever rebuild him, I’ll probably go with 10 Str again. Just because he won’t be wearing armor doesn’t mean he won’t have to carry a bunch of stuff.
Though not technically a class/race mismatch, I made a Troll Physical Adept as a super ninja in Shadowrun. He bought a bunch of adept powers to make him super sneaky and used his basic trollish capabilities for his murder skills.
It worked out fine, because magic, but it also gave the hilarious image of people not noticing the hidden giant troll in the room.
You should compare notes with clcman further up the thread. Maybe you and those ogre ninjas could exchange tips and tricks.
I’ve played multiple dwarven bards. Charisma penalty is a bit rough, but dwarven bards are really fun.
I also had a lot of fun with an orc wizard once. She was a tusked bookworm cutie-pie who looked big and intimidating, but actually considered her giant greataxe to be a sidearm compared to a good application of logic on her problems.
How does a charismatic dwarf work? I’m having trouble picturing one.
Do you know Terry Pratchett (https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Giamo_Casanunda)
Pratchett is actually my dog’s name, if that tells you anything. 😛
I think I’ve mentioned I have a problem with not being easily able to make myself make a character with misaligned race bonus and class main stats.
To get around this I very frequently ask GMs if they’d be ok with the players just changing the racial bonuses given to be whatever they want them to be.
For one this doesn’t require people to sacrifice something for a character concept (which isn’t really a reasonable ask of the system) and it allows more variety (such as dragonborn getting to be anything other than paladins).
Secondly, this is how I think such systems should work in the first place. Every PC is by fact of existing already an exception to the standards of their race. What stat mods a typical member of that race would have should be irrelevant.
So I’ve certainly played some matchups that are atypical, but I don’t recall playing any where I was actually being mechanically punished for doing so.
Because when GMs say no to that request there are still usually a fair number of options to choose from. And I typically don’t bother to sign up for “core races/classes only” types of games so my options tend not to be extremely limited.
That said, there are certainly cases where I’ve played a Human or more expected option for a class when I otherwise wouldn’t have given the ability to just rearrange the stats of some other race.
You know me. I’m usually not much for simulating worlds for the sake of simulation. I’ve got a healthy suspension of disbelief going, and can handwave a lot of reflavor for the sake of my players. But stats based on species physiology is such a central metaphor of the system, I’ve got a hard time letting that go.
How do you justify the strongest kobold being as strong as the strongest half-giant? I want there to be a meaningful difference between the two!
But with a hard cap of 20 to stats, the kobold would get there eventually if they wanted to anyway. So anyone can be as strong as the strongest half-giant. The half-giant just gets there quicker. To me, that isn’t really a worthwhile justification for making things difficult.
And there’s really all sorts of in character justifications for that situation you could come up with if that’s the requirement. Maybe the kobold has some dragon blood in them. Or is favored by Kord. Or they’re just really angry about tall people thinking they’re always better at everything. Or maybe they were bitten by a radioactive giant. Or whatever.
The possibilities are endless… and when you get to the mental stats it becomes a lot harder to justify that every member of some race should in theory be wiser/smarter/more charismatic than every member of some other race. Because if humans are any kind of standard (and they’re literally the standard we’re measuring the other races with), there is a very wide range in which people can be gifted or lacking in those areas.
You’re right about the 20 cap in 5e, but I was coming at this with 3.X in mind.
It’s not so much a matter of power, as it is of difference. I want these wacky fantasy races to feel mechanically distinct from one another. One of the clearest ways to make that delineation is the ability scores.
Bold and forthright. Unafraid to speak freely. He may have some of his race’s gruffness, but he manages to make his directness seem charming and earthy. His friendship may be reserved for those who’ve truly earned it, but once you’re there, you’ve an honest companion who’ll always be at your back, ready to stake his entirety for your honour.
…Probably a great storyteller, good on an instrument or two, and maybe good for some deep, emotional slow ballads, as well as the occasionally bit of silliness regarding things that Bilbo Baggins hates.
(Aw shoot, I meant to put that reply slightly higher up, to the question of charismatic dwarves.)
OK. Point taken with the Bilbo Baggins reference: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e5/19/37/e5193720361be644eec9025285a2b836.jpg
First of all, Pug is a treasure and I love her already.
Second, to answer the question of the day, while I haven’t had a chance to play him yet, I have a build drawn up for a dwarf daring champion (cavalier archetype that loses the mount to act like a swashbuckler, ie Dex+Cha focused). Counter-counter-intuitively will be that his finesse weapon of choice will be a heavy pick.
I can’t wait for Pug to meet Barbarian. I have a feeling they’ll get on famously… just as soon as I can figure out a reason to put a them in the same room together. Just saying, I’d read the shit out of a “The Adventures of Pug and Barbie” comic.
Let me know how that dwarf pans out! I’ve wanted to try that build for myself for a while now.
I didn’t realize how badly I need “The Adventures of Pug and Barbie” in my life until right now. Also didn’t realize that shortening barbarian to barbie works so well.
I feel like they go out every couple of weeks for cosmos and barroom brawls in order to keep in touch. Networking is a class skill for both of ‘em!
And on a related note, I really need to read more Rat Queens.
I once played a halfling barbarian, wielded a human longsword as a greatsword. Eventually due to the side effect of an artifact he also went blind. So the party had to just sort of… push him in the direction of the enemy and hope for the best. Fun times.
He has tow settings: frappe and PVP!
Kinda against type but back in 3.5 I played a Kobold Fighter. However, Kobolds had racial substitution levels that replaced the level 2 and 4 bonus feats with a +2 bonus to Strength and Constitution. This allowed the Kobold to become a +2 Dex, -2 Str character, which is much more reasonable as a martial character. As far as feats go, it’s a decent enough tradeoff, getting +2 to an ability score.
Funnily enough, you can pick and choose racial substitution levels, so if you take the level 2 and 4 levels, you don’t need to take the level 1 substitution level. On the other hand, it’s pretty good, giving Weapon Focus to Shortspears, Spears, and Longspears. It works perfectly in sync with the “Changeling” spear enchantment, which allows you to change a spear between sizes.
Nice! I always appreciate your stories from 3.5. I never got to dive deep into the system, so it’s cool to hear all the fun character options that passed me by.
Thanks! I dove into it primarily from reading the “Races of the X” and books like Stormwrack/Frostburn/Sandstorm, which were primarily full of setting and race lore rather than any particular mechanical focus. And most of my stories are from a rather narrow span of four years from right before 5E became big (basically 2013-2016).
I similarly enjoy hearing about your Exalted games. That and GURPS are games I’ve long been interested in getting into, but have never really found anyone to play with.
That’s the bummer about older systems. If you ever want to play the more obscure systems, you basically have to start the conversation with, “I’m going to run a game.” Experiencing that with Exalted myself after the recent move.
My 3.5 experience was a whirlwind tour through a couple of high level games before my group switched over to Pathfinder. By the time I understood the rules well enough to start playing with builds we’d move on. Maybe we’ll head back one of these days. 🙂
You’re doing third party homebrew content now?
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/184921/the-Pugilist-Class?term=pugi
Third party content that can’t attack with Dex anyways so the above comic makes no sense?
Pug is amazing and I adore her. But I’m biased, kobolds have always been a favorite of mine.
I tend to favor the “Square Class/Round Race” playstyle. Ariwotha, my Tabaxi Paladin in a 5e Curse of Strahd game has found a SURPRISINGLY high amount of uses for that racial climb speed, and my most recent Pathfinder character was a Kobold Cleric. For lo – let it be known that racial penalties are no match for a fully self-buffed Clericzilla.
I’m just imagining that tabaxi shredding Strahd’s drapes out of spite.
The kobold has me curious though. There’s a lot of different ways to go with a Clericzilla. What’s your go-to suite of self-buffs for the little guy?
Divine Power, Righteous Might, Bull’s Strength, Haste (cast from a scroll), Shield of Faith.
Good mix of various bonuses that stack (thanks to them being different sources).
So does this count as Fighter 40’s death?
It does not. The aftermath of the fight (as presented in the next comic) does.
I had considerable fun playing a one-shot 4e Pixie as… basically a Nac Mac Feegle with wings (complete with being named “Big Jan”).
See, I noticed something interesting in the Grappling Fighter powers: RAW, they were exempt from size modifiers. You use power, you grapple enemy, end of story. Cue in-game remake of the Tinkerbell bar fight scene in Hook.
The party basically ended up using my character as a grenade. “Toss into room where you want fight happen”.
Not 4e, but are you familiar with the songbird of doom build over in Pathfinder? Hilarious stuff: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rzop?The-Songbird-of-Doom-A-Guide-to-a-most
I just got to this one by hitting “random” from Bell Curve Losses… which also features Fighter getting his ass handed to him by a kobold, to his utter disbelief. I’d say “poor guy can’t catch a break”, but I don’t think he actually deserves one…
lol. He may learn his lesson one day. Like I said in the hover-over text on this one…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/size-differential