[SPOILERS, NOT FOR PLAYERS] Need help rebuilding stats for a certain Champion of X3.

[Riding Bull]

Once again throwing my sad cries of help around here, but the situation is this: To bind the background of one of my players PC's in to the overall arch of the story, active user of the forums and avid reader of my players PC's journal, NobodysHome came up with a devious plan of placing this PC's brother in place of Viorian Dekanti in The Pinnacle of Avarice.

I am so grateful for the idea and I've already put it partially in action by allowing a single scrying momentarily bypass the occluding field to give some foreshadowing, but now that the K-Day is closing in (ending Runeforge by the end of the week), I find myself attempting to rebuild a AP character for a first time and feel a bit overwhelmed.

The player is adamant, that the brother of his PC is master of the martial art of two handed sword fighting (and so in the vision he had a golden great sword, Chellan modified) but if I just swap the shield & scimitar along the feats to great sword & 2H feats, the Champion will lose 7 AC (and maybe something else I'm ignoring?) which will most likely be quite critical for his welfare. Sure he will also deal way more damage, but I'm wondering if someone with more experience could help me wrap my head around a solution to keep his defences up without just handing him 7 natural armor "because Karzoug"..?

There certainly will be the "DONT KILL HIM! HE IS MY BROTHER!" aspect to this.. But after few slashes of Chellan that should turn in to "KILL HIM, CUFF HIM AND REVIVE HIM!"

Dropping the shield, I do have that much gold available to be used on something else.. Or should I rebuild his stats completely from ground up? Maybe even as some other class completely?

Any wise words from more experienced minds are welcome on how to handle such situation? Hand wave

Shameless plug wrote:

And in case someone reaaally wants to catch up on these events, the player writes a reaaally well written journal from the perspective of his character, which can be found here: Alpharius's Journal.

[Akerlof]

The shield adds 25,000gp to your budget.

Ring of Spell Storing with a Quickened Shield would make up 4 of the AC. Would your PCs likely do something that the Ring of Freedom of Movement would negate? That would be a net of -10,000 for swapping the rings, leaving you with 15,000gp to work with.

Swap out the Headband of Inspired Wisdom +6 for a Headband of Mental Prowess +4 (Int and Wis) gain you 4,000gp, and let him qualify for Combat Expertise. That would give you +5 to his AC at the expense of -5 to attack. Are your PCs the high AC types where the reduced attack bonus would significantly reduce the danger? (Hmmm, Furious Focus and a Spring Attack build might be the way to go if you do this...)

That would also leave you with 19,000gp of budget for extra stuff. Like upgrading his cloak to a Major Cloak of Displacement (it's cheating a little, but not much.) Especially if your damage dealers don't have Permanent True Seeing.

Alternatively, you could swap his Str and Dex around, make Chellan an Agile Elven Curved Blade, and give him Mithral Full Plate. Armor training 4 + Mithral brings the max dex bonus to Full Plate up to +7, leaving him 1 AC shy of where he was with the shield. Also, it reduces the damage from +13 to +9 from his stat, though he still gets the +15? from Power Attack, putting him more in line with where his damage was when wielding a one hander. Also, that increases his initiative to +13-ish, giving him a better chance of getting to act.

If you go with rebuilding him, the first time I looked at the Viorian I thought a Duelist would be a good fit. Now that the ACG is out, Swashbuckler would do really well, I think. For a two handed weapon wielder, a Warpriest of Lamashtu could be downright scary: Chellan doing 2d6 damage with a 15-20 crit range and an extra +4 worth of enhancement bonuses that can be added as a swift action...

[Riding Bull]

Well that is certainly the sort of brain work I was hoping. I mean.. I.. Wow :D

I think Combat Expertise would work. I'd rather have him last a bit longer than be nailed down by instant arrows.. But you just couldn't stop there and now I'm drooling over the idea of Warpriest. But not one of Lamashtu. The player has also made clear that this brother believed in the deity of Pharasma and wouldn't that be wonderful excuse to go and pick up a Chellan because you know finding such weapon must be fate. Rise of Karzoug has been prophesied by the divine. Or should I not?

I sort of like the agile version too.. But given that his character is an archer ranger and he has described the brother being more sturdy, I'd think his finesse is more about strength.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I will certainly look into building that Warpriest and see if I can build it to fit the part.

[Ian Bell]

Why *not* hand him 7 points of natural armor "because Karzoug"?

I mean, this is the Champion of Greed we're talking about here! Literally gold skin, or something like that.

EDIT: There's even some precedent for that sort of thing - it turns Ordikon into some interesting foreshadowing. How much worse will it feel when someone sees his own brother with the personality-dampening effects of that greed magic on top of being controlled by the sword?

If you have the Advanced Bestiary you could just go with the metal-clad template, as Ordikon has.

[Latrecis]

Why not just build him as a great two-handed sword wielder and ignore the AC consequences? If you've chosen to got the two-handed route, you've essentially chosen to forgo a shield and survive by doing more damage faster. Otherwise Akerlof's suggestions are on the right track - enhance his dex and his armor and ignore any wealth by level balance. He's a thrall of the Runelord of Greed - money is simply not an object of concern.

[Riding Bull]

Well the reason I'm asking is because the AC consequences mean that the PCs would hit home more than 75% of the time dropping him in a flash. I'd rather see him have a slightly longer lifeline and so in lack of own ideas, came asking :)

I do have considered just keeping the stats as is and only flavor him to be fighting with a two-handed sword, but as evident, got great ideas from here already.

Ian Bell, I really like that idea, but I'd also like to leave the backdoor of redemption open (as detailed on Viorian) and considering how Ordikon has lost his ability to learn and difficulty of retaining memories, I'd think the gold-clad brother would have hard time returning from the mindless being controlled by Chellan? It could be said that the brother just hasn't yet have the burden of years similar to Ordikon and destruction of the runewell would slowly reverse the gold-clad effect.

[JohnHawkins]

Ordikon was a mere apprentice, using the fruits of his research before he ruined himself Karzoug was able to do a much better job retaining the mind of the person he performed the ritual on

[Ian Bell]

You could go either way with it (fixable or not fixable), it all depends how much tragic pathos you want to put your player through. ;)

[Akerlof]

Pharasma would be cool with having one of her Warpriests work for the Runelord of Greed, I think. He's not big on animating undead after all. And you can make any weapon your Sacred Weapon, so he could keep the greatsword. I'm on a warpriest-as-enemy kick because the swift action buffs help with the action economy without running into the "Oh yeah, I totes always eat lunch with Shield of Faith up," problem.

You'd want to build him from scratch, though, instead of trying to keep him similar to what the book has.

Latrecis wrote:

Otherwise Akerlof's suggestions are on the right track - enhance his dex and his armor and ignore any wealth by level balance. He's a thrall of the Runelord of Greed - money is simply not an object of concern.

Hey now! Following all my suggestions would increase the value of his gear by 7,000 GP, 1.7% of the budget of a 17th level character (which the book said he had. Increases the CR of the encounter by 1.) And that was listed as an alternate idea. (Mainly because I'm not sure if you want to give your PCs a Greater Cloak of Displacement when they face Karzoug.) Without upgrading the cloak, my suggestions actually reduce his gear value by 19,000, thankyouvermuch. ;P

[Riding Bull]

Oh am I glad I asked! So a gold-clad Warpriest of Pharasma and Champion of Greed shall be made. At Karzoug's stat block it mentions him having stats done by 25 point buy while others are 15, so I assume Viorian is built 15 point buy as well? I haven't quite figured how hit points are calculated for humanoid NPCs in the book, but I guess it shoudn't go too much off if I hand wave it in the direction of Viorian's HP based on how much CON I have for the Warpriest.

[Akerlof]

Riding Bull wrote:

Oh am I glad I asked! So a gold-clad Warpriest of Pharasma and Champion of Greed shall be made. At Karzoug's stat block it mentions him having stats done by 25 point buy while others are 15, so I assume Viorian is built 15 point buy as well? I haven't quite figured how hit points are calculated for humanoid NPCs in the book, but I guess it shoudn't go too much off if I hand wave it in the direction of Viorian's HP based on how much CON I have for the Warpriest.

From everything I've seen, it looks like hit points are calculated "normally" for NPCs with PC classes: Full HP for their first level, average rounded up for all the other levels, so a Warpriest gets 5+Con/level.

Don't forget favored class bonuses.

Don't forget the Stat bumps every 4th level. And Viorian has +5 inherent bonuses on 2 stats and +4 on two more. (I'm guessing those are included in the wealth calculation?)

You've got 410,000 gp to work with, the wealth of a 17th level PC, which bumps the CR up by 1.

Have fun!

Also, there's a Gold-Clad template you can add, but I don't know if you want to go that far: It includes -6 Dex.

[Ian Bell]

Just use one of the better metal-clad templates and reflavor it as some sort of fancy bling metal. If Chellan can be an effective weapon made out of gold, so can the Champion.