So first of all, I've heard Rage Prophet is on the weak side. I'm not interested in taking up the debate, and truthfully I don't have an opinion either way.
Instead I'm interested in sharing my character who's picked up Rage Prophet in kind of a nifty way which is also totally sweet and awesome.
So there's this guy, Laughing Aurochs. He's kind of a standard barbarian -- came from the northern steppes, something of a wandering mercenary, into wine, women, and song, that sort of thing. He's a giant of a man, almost seven feet tall, and carries a two-handed sword.
Laughing Aurochs and his friend Kyris, a duelist, recently tangled with a couple of winter wolves, and killed them. 'Ochs, still caught in the war-fury of his people, raised one of the white corpses above his head and howled in victory. Its blood rained down, onto his face, and into his screaming mouth.
That night, strange white dreams came to him. In the morning, his friends told him his eyes glowed blue, like a winter wolf's eyes. A few days later, he started to feel unusually warm. Lately he's finding that his old friends ale and tavern brawls hold less and less interest for him, and unusual thoughts and images appear in his mind from time to time.
So he was Bbn 6 when he encountered the winter wolves. He then gained a level of Oracle, which the GM let me modify somewhat because none of the curses and mysteries seemed to line up with the winter wolf possession concept quite right (the newish Possession curse isn't that close either). He's now got vulnerability to fire and low-light vision, and the Flame Breath revelation from the Flame Mystery, modified for cold. Rage Prophet I think can be taken pretty much as-is; I just got level 1.
It's really neat having this surprise hard right-turn from the character's original concept, which was intended to let me roleplay a simple, easy, fun character that could really help out in combat. Now I'm starting to acquire weird powers and spells, to let me contribute substantially to events outside combat, and the roleplaying opportunities are changing too. The APG wasn't even published when I made the character!
It's rare (for me, anyway,) that my PC stays the same as first envisioned from 1-20. I'm glad your GM worked with you to make a variant that really fit your campaign.
In a party of 2, a little multiclassing can help a lot. You're enjoying the character enough to share it with us, and all I gotta say is rock on!
That's some gooooooood roleplay. Have fun with it!
Kudos to you for creating a barbarian and not dumping Charisma.
Thank you both! I'm having a lot of fun with him. I will add that we're not technically a party of two, rather it just so happened that the duelist and I were fighting by ourselves against the winter wolves at the time. The rest of the party was barred from interfering, because we were in an illegal underground gladiatorial contest.
Heh, originally I gave him a decent Charisma because I wanted him to have a certain animal magnetism. No good being into the ladies if you can't actually attract any of them.
PS - I wonder why my post was moved to advice?
PS - I wonder why my post was moved to advice?
Shush you fool! Anger not the moderator gods. Their wrath will destroy us all! :p Glad to see someone building a character for RP over optimization. Makes me feel all warm inside.
Haha, gods of internet forum moderation? What a disturbing thought. On the other hand that makes me imagine some sort of modern fantasy game in which the pantheon does, in fact, have a low-ranking demigod of such things. His arch-rival would be the Archdemon Forrchan, Lord of Trolls and Noobs. :']
For full disclosure's sake I have to say that although my character isn't optimized, I was still definitely thinking about a kind of effectiveness, namely, to help out with healing. Our sole cleric was starting to feel strait-jacketed because our party of six needed so much healing. That's not the only reason I did it, but one could still say I was engaging in party optimization.
In a related note, the duelist in our party is juxtaposed with my character. When the campaign started he hadn't taken Duelist yet and was really lacking for it. Now he's got two duelist levels and just got another Int bump so he's really starting to hit his stride, just as I've had to plateau a bit, ironically to multiclass just like he has. It'll be interesting to see how things develop over time.
And of course, tomorrow I start a new job and the schedule may interfere with the very good campaign this is all happening in. Figures.