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I am looking into the order of the flame daring champion and I'm having a hard time with picking a race. Given that its pretty powerful I was thinking it could be fun to go with a slightly less optimal race. This got me thinking about gnomes, halflings, kitsune. I plan to use the character in an upcoming RotRL game. Which makes for the stronger race/class combo?
For the Kitsune/ Halflings I was thinking of a 11/17/14/8/14/14 spread.
And for the Gnome 10/16/15/8/14/14.
Gnomes do benefit from defensive training and spell-like abilities which would grant access to arcane strike.
Kitsune, definitely. Vulpine Pounce is good.
"When you change shape into your kitsune form and use the charge action in the same round, you can make a full attack against your opponent."
It's the same as Greater Beast Totem, you can use it with your weapons just fine. The Kitsune form still has thumbs and whatnot, you're not quite a fox yet.
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Oh man! Right on dynamite!
I can dig it.
I had confused it with the catfolk one.
Is there really anything with the other two which could redeem them? I'm the only optomizer in my group so I tend to try turning things down a notch. But I guess I could just grab kitsune feats for social reasons then BAMM with a vulpine pounce.
Can you see a kitsune being a boon in Rise of the Rune Lords?
The Halfling's saving throw bonus is nice. I don't think there's any particular reason to take a Gnome unless you just really want to play a Gnome, though. The only really good reason to play a Gnome as a martial character is Bewildering Koan.
I don't know much of anything about Rise of the Runelords, but from what I've heard it's mostly about combat and dungeon crawls; there aren't the kind of espionage missions that makes Realistic Likeness really attractive. I could be pulling this out of my ass though, I haven't played it myself and am just saying what I think I remember other people maybe telling me.
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What about a goblin? I really enjoy the idea of him being slightly insane rather full insane over a stereotypical goblin.
Could that work in ROTRL?
I'd just love to use this picture
cute goblin
You'd need to talk to your GM about a Goblin, there's a decent chance they'd say no to the race straight up. The charisma penalty hurts; you might be better off keeping charisma low and using feats for Extra Panache.
Other than that though, Goblins are a CRAZY good race for anything dex-based.
Goblins is probably not a good fit for the first book of Rise of the Runelords unless your GM is willing to do a bit of tweaking - you start off in a town that is very hostile to goblins. You could probably write a background story that explains why the town doesn't kill your particular goblin on sight, but I'd definitely run it past the GM first.
Unless your heart is really set on the goblin I'd just go with halfling.
I'm not sure I'd quite call halflings level-headed, though they are probably more grounded than gnomes. Goblins are definitely on the far, far right side of that scale.
I think that all of those race features will come into play in RotRL, except for the SLAs - it's really up to the player to find traction for those.
I'd say the halfling may shine slightly more in the first two books, while gnomes catch up (and possibly overtake) as you reach the mid game. Both are viable options.
Well the big thing with SLAs is that it allows for Arcane Strike... but I am kind of thinking that this build is about as swift-action starved as possible.
Yeah, I think Arcane Strike might be hard to fit into this character's action budget. However if you really want the option avilable, you can always consider taking a trait that grants a SLA? There are quite a few available.
Order of the Flame on a Goblin with a very well written backstory about how a goblin managed to survive in Sandpoint ;) Order of the Flame is great for any race if he says no to the Goblin. Greatly increases the mileage you get from Challenge (class feature) at the cost of defense. Not called 'Daring' Champions for no reason, am I right? :D
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Well I decided to just mock up a couple of options and back stories and give them to the DM. In the end, I think that the halflings makes for a stronger DC Cavalier in large part due to the +Dex, speed, and saves.
For the goblin option I built him up as a dexbased warder from dreamscarred's new path of war book since my GM had expressed interest in the book. He found a cute puppy and saved it rather than ripping it to pieces which got him kicked out of his tribe.
Excuse me, but why is Order of the Flame Daring Champion so powerful?
And I think Kitsune is good for a lot of builds.
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The big reason for the power is that Daring Champion has challenge and a swashbuckler's precise strike, both of which add class level to damage, add in slashing grace or another dex to damage feat and you are looking at + kagillion damage. The reason for Order of the Flame is they have an ability to constantly continue adding Challenges, and ever challenge new challenge ups your damage exponentially at the cost of AC.
Oh I see, I didn't pay attention to the combination of abilities. Thank you.
Indeed, with fortunate positioning you can make a Challenge last an entire encounter and stretch your very strong Class Powers across an entire adventuring day :)
Golarion hath no fury like a Goblin Daring Champion of the Order of the Flame with an Agile weapon or Slashing Grace. It's quite a lot of fun and no one gets heartbroken when a 'common sense' GM kills your precious pony. It's a pretty solid option imo, on par with it's derivative class and at certain times/situations far surpassing it.
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Halfling.
Halflings are better than gnomes, because…they are not gnomes.
Plus you could play your character like Bull roarer took, who was so large he could ride a horse, and knocked the head off the goblin king (sounds like a daring champion to me!)
And as far as action economy theres no reason you can't purchase a battle trained mount with a Daring Champion ;)
Alternatively, if you like to optimize, yet want to turn things down a notch, take Dwarf as your race,
Sure, you take that hit to CHA (that's you turning things down a notch), but you pick up that whole dwarf racial feat chain from the ARG.
(goblin cleaver, orc hewer, giantkiller, and cleave through)
makes a a mobile cleaving machine to all your racial enemies that, coincidentally, appear in that AP.
Doing all your swashbucklery things with a battle ax after to take slashing grace.
All sub optimal, but especially cool
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Alternatively, if you like to optimize, yet want to turn things down a notch, take Dwarf as your race,
Sure, you take that hit to CHA (that's you turning things down a notch), but you pick up that whole dwarf racial feat chain from the ARG.
(goblin cleaver, orc hewer, giantkiller, and cleave through)makes a a mobile cleaving machine to all your racial enemies that, coincidentally, appear in that AP.
Doing all your swashbucklery things with a battle ax after to take slashing grace.
All sub optimal, but especially cool
Couldn't you do all that swashbuckler-y nonsense with a dwarven waraxe? Because that's where all the cool kids are at.
Couldn't you do all that swashbuckler-y nonsense with a dwarven waraxe? Because that's where all the cool kids are at.Alternatively, if you like to optimize, yet want to turn things down a notch, take Dwarf as your race,
Sure, you take that hit to CHA (that's you turning things down a notch), but you pick up that whole dwarf racial feat chain from the ARG.
(goblin cleaver, orc hewer, giantkiller, and cleave through)makes a a mobile cleaving machine to all your racial enemies that, coincidentally, appear in that AP.
Doing all your swashbucklery things with a battle ax after to take slashing grace.
All sub optimal, but especially cool
yea yea… that's true… you could, for SOME strange reason, it slipped my mind.
I'm going to second the dwarf; the Champion is way less reliant on charisma than a straight-up swashbuckler, you get a boost to hit points, the important saves, and then a +2 save versus the stuff that is really dangerous to fail saves against. You can't be encumbered, and - this is a big one - you have Darkvision innate.
However you do get saddled with some garbage - Greedy is useless and there's not really a good trade for it. Stonecunning, defensive training, and hatred are all pretty nice when they come up... but they rarely come up and again, the replacements aren't exactly that inspiring. Defensive training / hatred MIGHT be good in RotRL, I'm unfamiliar with the AP, so your mileage varies.
Plus? Everyone expects a dashing, gregarious gnome or halfling whipping his rapier around; you get the bonus of being surprising.
Oh and also; you use medium weapons without a strength penalty. so there's that, too. If you like you can even devote your feats to something other than fencing / slashing grace because of that.
I quite like the idea of a dwarven daring champion with the dwarven cleave feat chain. But it makes me wonder if the order of the flame would be worthwhile; it'd only be possible to do one glorious challenge in a round, so you'd be trying to guess each time which enemy you can kill on the next round, rather than this round, or the turn after next. I think it'd wind up being very unusual to string together more than a one or two in a fight.
I'm also finding myself wondering if a dwarf is still considered to be carrying a medium or heavy load if doing so isn't actually affecting them at all? If not, then that makes Nimble much easier to work with - not worrying about encumbrance is one of the things I like most about dwarfs. On the other hand, if it does still count as encumbered, it might be worth ignoring Nimble (and the AC bonus of Dodging Panache) and building around Strength and taking Heavy Armour Proficiency to make up for the AC difference.
And while swashbuckling with a d10 x3 waraxe sounds entertaining, I don't know that the feat for Slashing Grace could be spared given the length of the dwarf cleave feat chain. (Admittedly, HAP presents the same difficulty.) The d6 x4 heavy pick is nearly as ridiculous an idea for a swashbuckler though, and does have a better critical going for it.
cleaving finish is the key to this build I think ZanTrax, never use normal cleave once you have it
I just want to add this in favor of gnomes:
Riving Strike is a new feat form ACG that requires arcane strike. In essence, it is a 1 turn evil eye hex on saves against spells when you smack someone with your glittered up weapon. Yes, that is a -2 to saves. Making yourself a debuffer is always nice.
cleaving finish is the key to this build I think ZanTrax, never use normal cleave once you have it
Cleaving Finish is just a free attack every time you kill something, not a special action. It's something to do as well as cleaving, rather than instead of.