Hello everyone,
I've been interested in role-playing for 20 years but never had many chances to indulge. I've owned and read the 3.0 player guide, and I've seen lots of supplemental material, but I don't have a lot of practical experience.
I've recently gotten involved in a game as a sorcerer, in which I'm learning a lot but playing well enough. I've been invited to play in a new game, however, and I'm looking for advice on what to build.
The campaign is Carrion Crown. All I know about it is that it's 'an ordinary type of character's odyssey into Halloween.' I've availed myself of the Carrion Crown Player Guide, so I expect that will help. The DM for the game has said that there are certain things he's looking for in his characters that will make his life easier in regards to the campaign. One of them is someone with a lot of knowledge skills who can identify monsters and immunities. (I'm not sure how that works, but I'll no doubt find out soon.) He said some other things, but my predisposition towards arcane magic classes kind of zoned me out during the rest. I was too busy envisioning an elven wizard 'keeper of lore' to pay attention to the rest. Given the stats I rolled, I'm not sure that character will work.
Dice rolls: 15, 15, 14, 13, 12, 12
While it's nice not to have any negative stats, I'm not sure what I can or should do with rolls like this. My vision of the wizard attributes were high intelligence, good constitution, and who cares what else... I'm not sure what to do with 'okay in everything.'
The group will be 4 people, and we're starting the campaign at level 1. The other characters are a cleric, an inquisitor, and possibly a ranger (but the DM sounded iffy). The cleric's backstory involves being a fighter before losing everything and being devolved to nothing, only to start again as a cleric. The inquisitor's player has a strong penchant for trickery and sneaking types of characters. I know nothing about the possible ranger player.
I figure any class would be fun, for the novelty if nothing else. I would think that the melee classes lend themselves better to the dice rolls. Also, the DM sounded pretty iffy on whether we'd survive the first module. A melee class seems like it would be more useful to the party in the early levels, but that might leave our party without an arcane spellcaster and the associated knowledge skills.
So what classes would lend themselves well to the dice rolls, and which classes would be the most effective in Carrion Crown?
Those stats will make a fine wizard. That said you might consider a sage bloodline sorcerer, and possibly going human instead.
Don't get me wrong -- I like elven wizards -- however if you are new to the game then having all the choices a wizard has, and then being locked down into them each day can be overwhelming.
A sage bloodline sorcerer is an intelligence based caster (this replaces your arcana and you'll have extra skill points) and gets a force ray as his first level bloodline ability (other than that he's basically an arcane bloodline with no arcana).
Humans have a favored class option for sorcerer that lets them grab extra spells known each level (the spell has to be one level lower than your highest spell level) which will help you have plenty of spells to cast.
A Magus or Bard could also allow the knowledge and arcane abilities you like while still allowing a more combat orientateed character.
I think I'll be going with the sage idea.
I'd like to take child of a temple and teacher's pet (campaign) as my traits, but since they both give a bonus to different knowledge checks (religion and history, in my case) I'm not sure that I can take them. Is this considered stacking? Here's his proposed skill list and the bonuses:
Spellcraft +3(c) +2(sage)
Knowledge: Arcana +3(c) +2(sage)
Knowledge: Religion +3(c) +1(t: Child of the Temple)
Knowledge: History +3(c) +2(t: Teacher's Pet)
Knowledge: Dungeoneering +3(c)(arcane)
Each knowledge skill is an individual skill just as each craft, proffesion, and perform skill is so they can all gain a trait bonus.
Regarding knowledge to identify monsters, it is pretty straight forward. You say "I want to see what my character knows about that pile of slithering tentacles and horrible smells!" and the DM says "roll knowledge XYZ" where XYZ depends on the type of monster (religion for undead, nature for animals, arcane for magical beasts, etc). Then the DM compares your roll against a DC based on the monster's CR and tells you things about the monster.
The types of information provided depends on how much you beat the DC. Getting a 17 when the DC was 15 tells you little while getting 35 when the DC was 15 roughly equates to being given the monster's stat block and tactics. It is explained in detail here
Now, you have an inquistor already. That class has a special rules that allow it all kinds of bonuses when making the aforementioned "what the heck is that?" knowledge checks. They aren't good at general knowledge, but they add all kinds of bonuses to monster knowledge checks.
I'd work with the inquistor to make sure you have a fair bit of the knowledges covered between you two. It is not a bad idea to have religion and arcana doubled up on this adventure path.
The knowledges are also useful for other things. Arcana is used to identify spells in play, which is very useful for spell casters.
As for being a sorcerer - High charisma and high dexterity are important. You still use dex bonus to attack with some spells (scorching ray, ray of frost, acid arrow). Constitution is, of course, always useful for anyone squishy. Intellect is what all the knowledges use. That leaves the useless wisdom and strength. No one needs those (except maybe strength for a dragon sorcerer).