This character is a GM-PC who I've been playing with for a long time but I feel she doesn't contribute much to combat. As I'm still relatively new to roleplaying I'm unsure about whether the character is poorly designed or I'm not using her effectively. Stats etc are below. Also, a lot of choices regarding skills and feats were made because of flavour reasons.
House rules in use that may be relevant:
. Anyone can just use Weapon Finesse without the feat
. Dodge feat is combined with Mobility
. Spontaneous casters can Undercast
Sorcerer (Abyssal bloodline) level 6
Human
Stats:
Str - 8
Dex - 15
Con - 10
Int - 13
Wis - 15
Cha - 17
Feats:
Deceitful
Combat Casting
Dodge/mobility
Augment Summoning
Background traits:
Dangerously curious
Relevant items:
Bracers of armour +1
Skill ranks in:
3 Bluff
1 Diplomacy
1 handle animal
1 intimidate
2 knowledge arcana
1 knowledge dungeoneering
4 knowledge planes
2 linguistics
2 sense motive
1 sleight of hand
3 spellcraft
1 stealth
2 use magic device
Spells (have been using the Human favoured class bonus of 1 extra spell known):
0th - Read magic, detect magic, ray of frost, message, light, ghost sound, prestidigitation
1st - magic missile, shocking grasp, cause fear, aphasia, mount, charm person
2nd - apport object, bull's strength, create pit, stone call
3rd - summon monster 3
What is this NPC's role? What purpose does the party have for needing this character? That's the first step.
Use create pit as battlefield control. Use it to block in opponents, summon 1d3 SM2s to help block in opponents, magic missile them into submission. If an opponent falls in the pit, summon the monster in the pit with them, add magic missiles for zest.
Use cause fear to make opponents run along edge of pit, possibly falling in/getting AoOs from summoned monsters.
Stone call and even mount can be used for battlefield control. Use SM3 to make flank buddies for the PCs, use bull strength on a heavy hitter (PC or MS3).
This is a DM-PC, so her primary goal in life is to make fights more fun for the PCs. Usually, this will be done by making the PCs fight better. Your spell selection is mostly battlefield control plus summon flank buddy. Can you use mount as a flank buddy? You can buff with bull's strength and de-buff with cause fear.
Use magic missile as a readied action to counterspell. Shocking grasp is probably an emergency spell when you can't use ranged attacks or spells.
Outside of combat, charm person can be used to make friends and influence people.
I'm unfamiliar with aphasia and apport object.
Usually you need Spell Focus conjuration to qualify for taking Augment Summoning. You don't need Dangerously Curious to put ranks into Use Magic Device. You probably don't want to dabble so much in skills. I prefer to specialize in N-1 skills, and leave 1 skill point per level to dabble.
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To be fair, a GMPC not being powerful in combat or otherwise isn't necessarily a bad thing. A GMPC is really best used as an auxiliary character to round out an unorthodox or slimmed party, or as a means to progress the plot when the PCs themselves just fail to do so on their own merit.
A GMPC used otherwise is honestly just asking for players to complain about not getting enough time in the spotlight, or thinking that you're making the story more about your GMPC than about the characters the players are playing.
I played in a party with a DMPC eldritch knight evoker type that was sloppy with AoE spells. It was horrible! Killed my druid's animal companion by mistake. We already had my druid archer, a fighter, and an arcane trickster, so we were well balanced, if small. My animal companion and summoned beasties shored up combat. The DMPC was eventually replaced with the DM's bro-in-law's eldritch knight. He was a newbie wannabe munchkin, which was fun/ny. :-)
It might also be relevant that there's only one player (my husband).
Master_marshmallow -
Quote: What is this NPC's role? What purpose does the party have for needing this character? That's the first step. Well, the other party members are: elven rogue/sorcerer (my husband's character), dwarven cleric of Gorum and a barbarian/cavalier (my husband plays this one in combat). Honestly, we just started off with his character and the cleric and he picked up other party members along the way - we haven't thought too much about party composition.
SmiloDan -
Thanks for the advice, that's really helpful :) I always struggle with using area effect spells well (with enemy NPCs too) because of the risk of hitting allies. Also completely forgot that Bull's Strength isn't a 'personal' range spell...
I used Summon Monster with her a lot when we first started, but we took a long break and aren't as familiar with the rules now, so combat in particular has been taking a long time without adding extra creatures in :/
Regarding using Mount for flanking - I'd never thought about that. Can you? I'll have to check the spell again, I don't know whether the horse summoned behaves like a normal horse in that it would run away from combat...
Aphasia makes the target unable to understand language for a round or something and apport object teleports small, unattended objects to/away from you.
Quote: Usually you need Spell Focus conjuration to qualify for taking Augment Summoning Ah, that's another house rule I forgot. Spell focus was removed as a requirement for other feats. She has 'dangerously curious' for backstory reasons. What are 'N-1' skills?
Darksol -
Quote: To be fair, a GMPC not being powerful in combat or otherwise isn't necessarily a bad thing. That's true, but as the whole party other than my husband's character are GM-PCs they kind of need to function like a regular PC would. I should have mentioned that in my initial post. I certainly don't want to take the spotlight away from him though. We've been having a lot of trouble with combat lately - the whole party starts dying very quickly or we have a sort of stalemate for far too many rounds. I'm trying to figure out if the party isn't strong enough, or I'm running monsters wrong, or something else. His character used to be quite powerful until he changed some of his Rogue levels for Sorcerer.
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It's a GM-PC. You shouldn't be doing well in combat. Their role isn't to function as a PC. Their role is to make the PC the hero. They should be focused on buffing the PC, healing, supplementing with needed skills, or clearing out the mooks to permit your game's PC to take on the Big Bad.
So, use your knowledge skills in the first round of combat to identify what the weaknesses of the monster are and communicate that to the PC. Use your damaging spells on the mooks. Use your area effect spells like create pit to protect your PC from mooks flanking him. Use your summoning spells to absorb damage from bruisers or to flank with your PC.
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LucyG92 wrote: What are 'N-1' skills? N is your number of skill ranks per level; if you have 4 ranks per level, it refers to training 3 skills to maximum ranks, and then spreading the remaining 1 rank per level around to other skills.
roguerouge wrote: It's a GM-PC. You shouldn't be doing well in combat. Their role isn't to function as a PC. Their role is to make the PC the hero. I suppose we think of functioning as a PC as different things - maybe I shouldn't have phrased it the way I did. I just mean I'm hardly going to give them NPC stats/classes and have them stand around and wait for my husband's character to do everything, because I don't think he'd stand much of a chance. The game is made for 3-5 PCs, after all. The characters are also people with their own personalities, ambitions and desires, not slaves. We are both really happy with the way we have that aspect working at the moment.
We're also not really going the 'hero' route. More kingdom building. We do a lot more social encounters than combat.
So if this was just a normal PC, would the current advice stand? Just as someone inexperienced with roleplaying I'd like to know how 'bad' the character is.
PCScipio wrote: LucyG92 wrote: What are 'N-1' skills? N is your number of skill ranks per level; if you have 4 ranks per level, it refers to training 3 skills to maximum ranks, and then spreading the remaining 1 rank per level around to other skills. You said it better than I could! :-D
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