Hey guys,
I'm building a character for a Reign of Winter game that I'm going to be involved in soon. Basically as soon as I wrap up Shards of Sin, one of the players in my group is going to run The Snows of Summer, then I'll run Curse of the Lady's Light, and so on and so forth.
It's been a long time since I've actually played in a game of this type. In the last few years I've played in GURPS, Warhammer 40k, World of Darkness, Cortex and 2nd Edition D&D, but haven't played 3.5 in about 4 years, and have always been the GM for Pathfinder games. So I'm a little bit rusty on building PCs. Flavour wise I'm good, but I'm more used to throwing together NPCs quickly than I am to building something I want to actually play.
So, I'd like to get some input on a few things. Before I go into it, I should state that I'm not going for outright optimisation.
Anyway, I decided I'd like to play a bard. I've only ever played one once back in high school, but I enjoyed it. Based just on the personality/fluff of the character I'm going for, I'm thinking of the following possibilities:
- Sound Striker
- Sound Striker/Dawnflower Dervish
- Sound Striker/Dirge Bard
The main things I'm considering are race, early choices of spells, skills & feats, and if there's any particular arguments for or against the three character concepts I listed above (while I don't consider myself an optimiser, I'd rather not play something that is broken to the point of being useless). I do want the character to have a decent viability, as I'd like to keep him alive for as long as possible (I've just lost one character due to a WoD game going on hiatus, and another because the GM killed him off while I was on a business trip for nearly 7 weeks - apparently the fact that I was out of the country doesn't stop his 'miss 4 sessions in a row, your character dies' rule - so I'd like this one to survive a while)
Current thoughts in terms of race is an Azata-blooded Muse, as I've never played an Aasimar before. The GM was playing one in my game and seemed to think it was an interesting race given the option for completely random replacement of the SLA. Given that the Azata appear to be the muses of the good outsides, it seemed like a logical choice as well. But if there's anything others would suggest, please let me know.
Additionally, the GM has advised that he'll be making a few house rulings to how things work, some of which may have some bearing on suggestions. The major ones that affect my proposed character are below
DR functions slightly differently for players compared to monsters. Basically he'll take the damage off the total that a PC deals to a monster in their turn, rather than off each separate attack (however if a PC has damage reduction, it functions as written).
Weird Words is confirmed as being able to be focussed in his game (which I'm fairly sure is how it's meant to work anyway, but I've seen some disagreement). Combined with the DR rule change this means Weird Words should remain viable into higher levels, since it won't get entirely soaked by DR. I hope it will be anyway.
He's also advised that he's willing to let me make a one time choice for how Weird Words works in terms of whether it is treated as a ranged weapon (his ruling on this is that it means it can be affected by weapon feats like Point Blank Shot and so on, but will provoke AoOs when I make the attacks), or I can choose to have it not count as a weapon (meaning no feats, but I also don't provoke AoOs when using it). Additionally, he's said that no matter which of these options I choose, the ability will never incur the -4 firing into melee penalty. I'm honestly not sure what to choose here, how much of a difference do the feats make? How many of them would be useful to me?
If you're wondering what the personality of the character is, I've put it below in spoiler tags.
He has a fascination with sound, and it's effects on the world. This relates to all noise, whether natural or manmade, instruments or vocal. His particular love is vocals though, particularly singing and chanting.
Standard clothing is black breeches tucked into soft leather boots, with a white shirt. Over this he wears an armoured long coat. His hair is short on one side, while the other is longer and falls around his jawline and partially covers that side of his face. The other side of his face is covered by a white half mask with a pattern scrawled on it in black ink (the masks are replaced occasionally and a new pattern designed, seemingly at random).
It's all still being fleshed out, but that's what I've got so far
So guys, please hit me with any suggestions you've got. Once I've got a stronger feel for what I want to build, I'll actually do up some builds and post them.
EDIT: Should mention that this is going to be 20pt buy, possible 25. But definitely no lower than 20.
Bump.
Could really use some suggestions here guy :)