Hi all,
I have a character concept for a kingmaker campaign a friend is starting, but am unsure how to build it. I'm quite excited about the prospect of focusing on exploration, settlement, and governance in this campaign and want to build a character focused on these issues. I'm picturing a dwarven explorer based a bit on the Victorian explorers/Indiana Jones types, but also on the early American settlers like John Smith. He should be comfortable in the wild, but with the attitude of taming it for settlement, a man with a technical and strategic mind. He should be a character with a fairly broad range of knowledge and skills - He should have knowledge of geography, local, history, nature, and engineering, maybe profession (architecture), definitely survival, maybe diplomacy.
In some ways rogue seems like a good base, but the whole stealth and sneak attack aspect seems a bit misplaced. Ranger seems like a good base too, but lacks a lot of the qualities I would put into a character who is such an overt agent of civilization. Bard has some appropriate characteristics, but is also a magical singer of magical songs, which seems oh so wrong for a map-drawing, tree-chopping, dam-building dwarf. Pathfinder seems like an appropriate prestige class thematically, but I've read some sharp criticisms of its in-game effectiveness.
So what do you think? Should I make him a rogue/ranger multiclass? Am I missing a great option elsewhere?
Thanks!