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Greetings all, i'm running a Strange Aeon's home game, and as such, i've been tasked to supply my players with a PC.
Fitting to the Adventure Path, i've decided that this PC is going to be a doppelganger.
The consensus of the party, was they needed a Wizard for the crafting and blasting it could potentially do.
problem is, i have no idea how to build such a character. Is it even possible?
my idea is that this character is maintaining his own humanity, even after his transformation.
As a PC or a DMPC?
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Sorry, as a DMPC, the character itself will be near mute, that's only there to support the players.
So i'm expecting to use an assortment of spells, and eventually dip into metamagic- gotta love those Selective Fireballs.
fyi-
There was a Doppelganger character in Serpent's Ire, so i'm just wondering how to build one- like do they have any stat-boosts/defects?
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I'll just outright say- I need to be walked through this.
I've not built a monster PC, let alone for an entire adventure path.
In the AP, there is a CR4 Doppelganger with stats- 16/17/14/13/16/17 as a caster type.
compared to the base monster with stats as CR3- 18/13/12/13/14/13
it makes sense with the [+4, +4, +2, +2, +0, and –2] class stat adjustment.
would it be wise to consider giving the DMPC a template, so he's not outpacing the PC's level wise?
If you want the DMPC on parity with the PCs, I'd suggest re-skinning one of the regular PC races to suit your tastes. It's faster, and it avoids the unpleasant directions some - not necessarily your - DMPCs wind up in.
Generally speaking, support DMPCs seem to be best used as healers, carriers of heavy things and other purely support roles. A bard could readily to all of the item crafting required without packing the heavy artillery a Wizard can bring to the table. They combine healing, buffing and support into an easy-to-manage DMPC. Throw in a few fun masterpieces and you've got a memorable DMPC that should not overshadow your PCs.
You might be interested in the much more PC-friendly Changeling from Eberron.
You could also go Variant Multiclass Oracle and pick up the Mute curse (only described in the Jade Regent Adventure Path, but I'll summarize:
Since "changeling" is its own race in Pathfinder, simply rename the race (I've seen another poster call their character a "seemling" using this race.)
Hope that's helpful.
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If you want the DMPC on parity with the PCs, I'd suggest re-skinning one of the regular PC races to suit your tastes. It's faster, and it avoids the unpleasant directions some - not necessarily your - DMPCs wind up in.
Generally speaking, support DMPCs seem to be best used as healers, carriers of heavy things and other purely support roles. A bard could readily to all of the item crafting required without packing the heavy artillery a Wizard can bring to the table. They combine healing, buffing and support into an easy-to-manage DMPC. Throw in a few fun masterpieces and you've got a memorable DMPC that should not overshadow your PCs.
I'll toss that idea out to my players when we get together again.
The rest of the party consists of a Warpriest of Rovagug [yup, i'm allowing evil characters], a Gravedigger, and i forget the class archetype that uses a book as an actual weapon.They do lack a dedicated arcane caster.
I do feel that a doppelganger would be an appropriate dmpc and very fitting to the story. I could just make it a core-race survivor.
Mostly its the massive buffs they get from racial HD and improved racial ability scores that can create a problem, whether short term or longer down the road.
One possibility is to stick with doppleganger, but have it suffering the same fugue as the PCs. This shuts off its racial special and spell-like abilities for a protracted period "locking" it in its human form.
It still has racial HD, plus 1 level of Wizard. However, it cannot advance level until it XP total accounts for (Wizard level +4 racial HD) as a total character level. In this case, it attains 2nd level Wizard when the rest of the group hits 6th level. The downside is that this puts its advancement too far behind the party to be useful.
Perhaps if you want the DMPC to be a bit more robust but not lagging too far behind, pull a fairly common shtick hereabouts: assign it one NPC class level prior to its 1st Wizard level.
Alternatively, say the DMPC is an exceptional specimen of a core race (awarding it the advanced simple template without the racial natural armor bonus), grafting that onto the Heroic NPC Arcane Caster ability score array.
This gives your Arcane Caster DMPC 12 Str, 18 Dex, 16 Con, 19 or 17 Int, 14 Wis, 17 or 19 Cha. (Int or Cha determined by casting ability score). Tack on racial modifiers as decided. An elf could be particularly useful: 12 Str, 20 Dex, 14 Con, 21 Int, 14 Wis, 17 Cha. Strikes me as an old school "grey elf", extremely long-lived and formidable. This configuration would make for an extremely formidable Arcanist, especially one built following the "Guide to Blasters" for that class. With elf weapon proficiencies this Wizard can be doing the whole Gandalf bit (staff in one hand, long sword in the other) plus packing a semi-decent composite longbow down the road to provide fire support.
You could even have the fellow enter Arcane Archer later in the campaign directly from Wizard. However, this deprives the group of their desired item creation feats.
Yet another alternative is to simply waive item creation feats altogether. A caster gains them gratis upon attaining the normal requisite caster level. This removes the primary concern for needing access to such feats, placing that burden back upon the players.
However, lacking a 4th PC ... hrm. Perhaps you would consider running a gestalt campaign? Let each PC play a gestalt character (especially if you handwave item creation feats), removing the need for the 4th PC altogether. They'll do a bit better on loot from the script in exchange for suffering on the action economy.
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I was thinking about giving it the "Degenerate" template- -4 to all stats.
What NPC Class would work here?
I think the easiest solution would be to just make a standard character, instead of being a thematic doppelganger, i can still make it a inmate that fell in with the cult primarily to survive.
monster DMPC with slow progression vs a survivor that's not a monster.