What variants do you find to be the most viable, useful, or that you just plain like? What’s the reason for your choice?
I really like the shapeshift variant for the druid. It’s solved a lot of the wild shape and animal companion problems, and balanced the druid.
Totem barbarians have given more flavor and variation in barbarians; however some are definitely better than others.
The battle sorcerer makes the dragon disciple more of a viable choice. I like the D.D. so anything that could potentially get it more play time I’m all for.
There are several others that I like and actually prefer over the base classes, but these are a few that seem to pop out to me.
Fizz
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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I like the savage bard for flavor reasons. The urban druid has seen a lot of NPC use in some of my games. In a similar vein, I came up with an urban druid variant that a PC used in an urban mini-campaign.
I like the concept of the variant monk styles, so I also came up with a new monk style.
Those are the real standouts for me.
Spontaneous Rejuvenation for Druids
The Barbarian totems are nice
The monk style will get heavy use in my next game.
I like several of the specialist wizard variants.
I have seen the shadow companion (I think that's what it called) variant for the Hex Blade in use.
I find the clostiered cleric interesting but not sure how good it would be in play.
What variants do you find to be the most viable, useful, or that you just plain like? What’s the reason for your choice?
I really like the shapeshift variant for the druid. It’s solved a lot of the wild shape and animal companion problems, and balanced the druid.
I enjoy the Shapeshift variant for druid also, along with the spontaneous rejuvenation (gets rid of all those pesky spontaneous Nature's Ally spells!) and really allows a druid to follow a different path than usual.
The dude that runs me, Fake Healer(what a wussy name!), he says he like all the variants in the PHB2 and most of the ones in the SRD, Battle Sorcerer being a favorite of his. Cloistered cleric, Domain wizard, Druidic Avenger and all the simple variants are all real good also.He believes that all splat-books are unneeded if people would just use the variants in the SRD and PHB2. Another thing he likes is the "Generic Classes" in the SRD. He is playing some Mul in a Darksun PBP that is a kinda sneaky fighter using the 'Warrior' generic class in the SRD. Holdass or something is his name....Anyway, good thread!
He is playing some Mul in a Darksun PBP that is a kinda sneaky fighter using the 'Warrior' generic class in the SRD. Holdass or something is his name....Anyway, good thread!
Shut up, nature-boy! The name is Holdrus! Oh, my world has so much water...people don't wanna jack us up if we own a metal weapon...Damn Oerth dwellers think they're so smart.....
I've happily played:
--Battle sorcerer (with Arcane Strike feat, and arcane bloodline feat/s from Dragon magazine)
--Cloistered cleric
--Spontaneous divine caster (by the way, also MUCH easier to make and run as NPCs, and makes divine PCs more flavored to their deity and/or role, IMO).
Allowing a cleric (or paladin) to replace turn undead with an equivalent turning ability (or other ability) feels like a simple way to differentiate clerics. I miss the priests of 2nd Edition.
One of my players also ran an avenger druid from level 1 to 14, but with the witch spell list from the DMG. Not optimal, but the rage and wildshape etc really made her a chaotic fey-like witch.
I'm not sure whether PHB, PHB II, and UA are all that's needed. I played a Hexblade for 5 levels. I suppose he could be duplicated as a battle sorcerer with a couple new spells (bestow minor curse, etc).
I enjoy the +4 to hit from behind, along with the +2 from the flank without needing another character threatening the creature from the opposite side. This also allows the rogue to sneak attack from behind without the need of another character.
I also like that when there is an attack of opportunity from either behind, or the flank, the attack adds a -10 or -5, respectively.
Found in UA pg. 126
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I like Unearthed Arcana's variant of the Paladin that makes it into a prestige class for Clerics. It makes more sense to me like that, and will be set up as such for my campaign.
I'm thinking that I may set up the Bard as a prestige class as well, if I like the outline in UA on it as well.
I also like the Non-Spellcasting Ranger in Complete Warrior.
Some variants, however, seem a bit superfluous.
I think the Sidhe druid from Dragon mag is cool, always wanted to play one...