"I want to be Darth Vader" he said to me.
I kept my poker face and nodded thoughtfully. He's my brother-in-law so laughing in his face may not go over well at family functions. I also wanted to keep him interested. Maybe hanging out at the game table with my friends in professional careers will get him to log off of his XBox and move on from working school security.
"I'll see what I can do."
So I've considered Magus for him, but I'm worried about how complex the class is. Not to mention, I feel Jedi/Sith are much closer to a fighter/sorcerer mashup than a fighter/wizard mashup. The Eldritch Scion doesn't seem like much fun at low levels and still has the complexity problem.
I'm going to run them through Crypt of the Everflame as a starter. All five players are new to Pathfinder, but 4 of them have played AD&D back when Reagan was President.
I'm beginning to think the answer to this Jedi/Sith type of feel character lies with the Kineticist. Maybe the Kinetic Knight? Anyone have any additional thoughts on this? It's actually a pretty interesting challenge to fit the game to someone's expectations.
This is my first post. Thank you for taking the time to read it.
I feel like there were more questions that needed asking there. Does he want to wear black armor? Be a cyborg? Make heavy breathing noises? Openly advocate a philosophy of brutal conquest? Rule an empire? Strangle people without touching them? Use a light-sabre? Tell people he's their father?
I feel like there were more questions that needed asking there. Does he want to wear black armor? Be a cyborg? Make heavy breathing noises? Openly advocate a philosophy of brutal conquest? Rule an empire? Strangle people without touching them? Use a light-sabre? Tell people he's their father?
Those are all questions which MUST BE ANSWERED! :)
I believe he wants to have a martial character with some supernatural abilities. Knowing him, black armor is probably part of the flavor as well.
As of this moment, I do not expect heavy role-play elements from him. In the future, perhaps. But for right now, I think rolling dice and the illusion of power by way of spike damage is where he's at.
Samurai mashed up with Mesmerist? I don't know either class that well...
Inquisitor could work
I think you could build something he would like with a bloodrager. A bit of magic, but a solid enough martial chassis that not being great using magic most effectively won't cripple the character.
If you wanted to go an extra step you could even homebrew a 'Dark Side' bloodline for him.
What are exactly the features he wants to emulate from Darth Vader?
If he wants all of the features of a Sith (Telekinesis, Rays, Mind Control) I would go for an Eldritch Knight. You can thematically start from an Arcanist Blade adept Archetype if the priority is the sword or from Wizard Sword Binder if the priority is having spells early.
If mind control is not required I second aether kineticist as was suggested by Val'bryn2.
One of my players is a fire one and he did pretty well in a sword contest I organized to introduce an important NPC. He used a fire sword he conjured, so if aether does not have this infusion you can house rule it and replace one of the aether infusions of the same level for the aether sword.
Another option which needs reflavouring is an spiritualist Phantom Blade. It is simmilar to the magus, but he can wear the armor he wants since it uses psychic magic. The spell list has no charm person or suggestion though, and telekinesis comes very late.
PILFERING HAND is a very nice spell for him and it is shared between a lot of clases.
I would suggest Rage Prophet. Barbarian archetype of your choosing, invulnerable would work well, then oracle with the haunted curse and the metal mystery. Gain mage hand, levitate, telekinesis and reverse gravity from the curse, and take Vision in Iron for scrying, skill at arms for heavy armor, and armor mastery to make full plate suck less for you. Pick up a bastard sword(post armor Vader always fought with two hands anyway), eventually make it adamantine.
Spontaneous spells are some of the easiest to learn for a new player, and the oracle has some decent ones. Command, Divine Favor, Augury, Boneshaker, Bull's Strength, Hold Person, and Sense Fear all fit, and those are just levels 1 and 2
If his goal is massive amounts of spike damage, Magus is the king of that realm. It's not terribly complex at 1st, just need to figure out spellbooks and spell combat. Antipaladin or Bloodrager are good runner-ups, just make sure he knows he won't be getting magic for a few levels, and IIRC, won't be getting it in that adventure. If you're not planning to play beyond Crypt of the Everflame, definitely Magus.
Haunted Oracle ain't a bad suggestion. Pretty much gets the force powers from the curse, and Vader seems like he would jive well with a curse. And then the mystery can fill in the martial aspect.
I am currently playing a Jedi-like mind blade magus. I'm finding even at 4th level that its a little more complex than I originally thought. He primarily manifests a green, longsword mind blade. His feats are weapon focus (longsword), combat casting, and improved unarmed strike (prerequisite for deflect arrows). He is building up to Cut from the Air from the Weapon Master's Handbook. I tried to select spells to emulate Jedi powers as much as possible (mage hand, message, expeditious retreat, anticipate thoughts, etc.). I chose Focused Mind and Inspired as character traits. Hope my example helps!
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Haunted Oracle ain't a bad suggestion. Pretty much gets the force powers from the curse, and Vader seems like he would jive well with a curse. And then the mystery can fill in the martial aspect.
Plus, the curse totally jives with the movies. Name one time a character drops something and it lands less than 48 feet away.
I'll wait.
If you allow Psionics, he could play a Soulknife. They can create a mind blade out of kinetic energy from their mind (light saber) and they get some simple psionic powers (the Force) if they go with the Gifted Blade archetype.
Now just put him in some Hellknight Plate Armor :)
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/power-lists/power-list-gifted-b lade/
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/armor/hellknight-plate/
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By the time he's level 20, he will only have a total of 7 of those powers listed, and he won't have a ton of Power Points either. This can both be fixed with feats and items. You can use Expanded Knowledge as a feat to gain a Power that doesn't appear on your class's power list (I have a couple of recommendations for this to make him feel very "Darth Vader-y"), AND you can use Mind Stones (items) to gain extra powers known from your own class list. Also, Cognizance Crystals can provide extra PP per day.
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Psicrystal Affinity (feat) + Solicit Psicrystal (Power) + Telekinetic Maneuver (Power) = Telekinetic Grappling/Pinning/Disarming/Tripping/BullRushing. Basically, manifest the power Telekinetic Maneuver on someone, then use a swift action to have your Psicrystal maintain concentration of the power (for multiple rounds) while "Darth Vader" hacks them to pieces with his Mind Blade.
Detect Hostile Intent (Power) = Force Sense. You know when someone has hostile intentions towards you while they are within 30 ft of you.
Far Hand (Power) = Jedi telekinesis. This is a 0-level power and doesn't appear on the Gifted Blade power list. Either he can spend a feat to get this, or the DM can hand-waive this.
Telempathic Projection (Power) = Jedi Mind Trick. "You alter the subject’s mood, adjusting its attitude toward you by one step in a positive direction. For instance, an unfriendly creature can be made indifferent, or a hostile creature unfriendly. You can grant a +4 bonus on your own (or others’) Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Perform, or Sense Motive checks involving the affected creature."
It says "new player" in the title.
-- Make him a 1st-level fighter who wears a black trenchcoat and a mask. Give him the Masterful Demeanor and Dangerously Curious traits. (Cha score will be positive.)
Keep it simple, until he's more experienced. Otherwise you're going to blow his head off with minutia and gobbledegook.
It says "new player" in the title.
-- Make him a 1st-level fighter who wears a black trenchcoat and a mask. Give him the Masterful Demeanor and Dangerously Curious traits. (Cha score will be positive.)
Keep it simple, until he's more experienced. Otherwise you're going to blow his head off with minutia and gobbledegook.
He says he wants to be Darth Vader though. A concept character would be an awesome way to start playing D&D/Pathfinder, imo.
fighter is not the class for beginners.....
It requires the least work to do what it is expected to do.
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He says he wants to be Darth Vader though. A concept character would be an awesome way to start playing D&D/Pathfinder, imo.
Sure. And the next new player wants to be Yoda.
<slide over a gnome bard character-sheet>
Kineticist
aether
Kinetic Blade = light saber
You can lift and throw enemies.
it would not be op to let him strangle enemies.
He says he wants to be Darth Vader though. A concept character would be an awesome way to start playing D&D/Pathfinder, imo.Sure. And the next new player wants to be Yoda.
<slide over a gnome bard character-sheet>
Umm.. F&*! yes. If I had a brand-new player who has never played D&D or Pathfinder in his life, who then said I want to be Darth Vader during a campaign I was running, I would say F&*! yes. Here's option A, B, C and maybe this other D thing. Which would you prefer?
If that same player came to me and said "I want to be Yoda" in the next campaign, I would say F&*! yes, and then sacrifice a youngling, and hand him a Gnome Bard character sheet.
I would not hand this player a Fighter character sheet even if I was paid 40 gold dragons and 100 silver stags.
I'm almost wondering if this Darth Vader character should be a Psion Kineticist Discipline so his Psionic Powers are very powerful rather than being lack luster with the Gifted Blade Soulknife. He needs to get a Brilliant Energy weapon though. The problem is that Brilliant Energy, while very light sabery, is a +4 enchantment.
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to get it to do what you want and expect it to do, a fighter is the most experience intensive class in the game, you need to know exactly what you are doing and exactly what feats you will take at what levelfighter is not the class for beginners.....It requires the least work to do what it is expected to do.
Which makes it exactly the same as every other character in the game that gets feats, which is all of them, and they get fewer. (We'll leave aside the odd corner-cases like Brawler, for the moment.) The fighter has way more flexibility in picking and retraining marginal feats that he decides he's tired of, and you don't need five-chain-deep complicated nonsense to be a decent fighter (not like you have any of that all glued down before high level anyway).
A "new player", by definition, doesn't yet even know how to do the basics: I.e., avoiding AoOs (because granting them to enemies is what kills most noob characters), full-attacking if you're capable, else circling for a flank (but only if no more bad guys are lurking), or avoiding melee because you know that this monster is not what you want to be messing with up close, and so forth. Fighting defensively, learning withdraw rules, developing the smarts to realize when a fight is going against you and it's time to retreat behind "Fresh Ally" while you fish out a ranged weapon, etc.
-- I wouldn't give the new player a barbarian because their AC is horrible, they get hit twice as often, and it only takes one extra hit at low level to motor through a measly few extra HP and then some.
Magus? OK, now he has to know how to cast spells too while learning all of this combat stuff and flouncing around in lighter armor. What spells (among hundreds of just 1st-level spells) to take, how they work, how to avoid AoOs (more ways to grant them as a fumbling magic-user), and all that jazz.
....what does Darth Vader do, anyway? Well, mainly he's a very intimidating badass. He fights with an awesome melee weapon (which I would gather the player does not expect to be a lightsaber when playing a medieval-fantasy game, but something reasonably tricked-up better-than-average). The Force-choke thing? Well, Anakin Skywalker couldn't do that either until he was like, what, an 11th-level(?) character and fell to the Dark Side?
What Vader is, is durable. He has armor and hitpoints, and can wade through a hallway filled with enemies and not go down. Straight up high-AC fighter territory. As a 1st-level character, Vader works best as a decent-charisma fighter with traits and skillpoints stroking Intimidation for viable out-of-combat utility.
Final note: Retraining rules exist, and it costs relatively measly gold to rework a character.
Anakin Skywalker (Vader) isn't chaotic-evil (required for antipaladin); he's a lawful-neutral who keeps failing will-saves to the Emperor (speaking of a guy who is manifestly chaotic-evil).
A steelblooded bloodrager uses heavy armor (reasonably survivable + fits Vader), the rage feels like the Sith giving in to their emotions, and spells are introduced at a slow rate allowing them to learn before getting them. The destined bloodline is fairly simple to use and fits well.
fighter is not the class for beginners.....It says "new player" in the title.
-- Make him a 1st-level fighter who wears a black trenchcoat and a mask. Give him the Masterful Demeanor and Dangerously Curious traits. (Cha score will be positive.)
Keep it simple, until he's more experienced. Otherwise you're going to blow his head off with minutia and gobbledegook.
Fighter is complicated to build, easy to play.
If you're building the fighter, it has no expendable resources and numbers do not need to be recalculated round-to-round.
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Emperor is Neutral Evil, only out for himself, able to plan long-term, and has more interest in conquest than in destruction. Vader would be Lawful Evil, which would be allowed by the Tyrant archetype as has been suggested.
The Emperor was a cackling maniac whenever he revealed his true persona (e.g., as while fighting Yoda). He didn't give a damn for anyone else's rules, and reveled in the destruction of his own personnel and equipment. He was a Sith following the "Rule of Two". It was an ego-driven head-trip, and raw power is how a Sith climbed up, and all he craved. Nothing else mattered. The reason for being top dog? So you could finally let your hair down, society be damned, and fully embrace the psychotic monster inside you.
Vader, otoh, ..what did he do? Mainly, he did his job. Outside of deliberate orders, he kills only when aggravated. He isn't happy with his life, and truly doesn't care a wit for the Empire, but can't do anything about it (imagine being conscious of the fact that you're Dominated by a more powerful being that you can't shake -- that's the position he's in). He does not use his powers to get rich or other manner of personal advancement (such as scheming to murder his way up the Imperial command hierarchy; for example he ranks underneath Tarkin in the original film despite that personage lacking any Force-powers).
Lastly, Luke "saw the good in him", and he was not wrong. So, LN best fits Vader. He's basically a Hellknight in unbreakable thrall to a malevolent entity.
Fighter is complicated to build, easy to play.They're drop-dead easy to build: keep your physical stats decent, and don't sack wisdom. That's about it. Feat-wise, well, all those combat feats other classes take are just as good for you, and you get more of them. (I'll tell him to play a dwarf, but Vader hasn't had his legs cut off...more on that later.)
If you're building the fighter, it has no expendable resources and numbers do not need to be recalculated round-to-round.
That, right there, gets to the bane of all existence in RPGs-without-engines, and why seemingly "boring" core classes are still fan-favorites even over others with clear mechanical edges given system mastery.
For the lightsaber, that's another reason I suggest an adamantine longsword. Brilliant Energy does NOT equal a lightsaber. Remember, a lightsaber cuts through just about anything, a Brilliant Energy sword would fail to damage nonliving matter, so no cutting doors, no slicing up robots. Adamantine weapons, on the other hand, do all of that, so a lightsaber is best approximated by a +1 flaming adamantine sword. Bastard sword, most like.
A "generic" lightsaber is a 2d8 19-20/2 weapon whose properties, when transposed from SWd20 into Pathfinder, can only really be described as "epic-level artifact": Since it can cut through almost anything that isn't another lightsaber, that ability has to be a +5 (over Brilliant Energy's +4). Dodge and various magical/mystical bonuses to AC are all that seem effective (i.e., if you have +2 plate, you'd get +2 to AC). Throw in Vorpal, because no kidding. I'd also give it the Speed property since the "blade" is weightless (but even so, one may use strength to attack, and gain the usual 2h 1.5x bonus). Has some penalties to Stealth, as you would expect.
So..... What would be the ramifications of handing a 1st-level character a 4,500,000gp epic weapon?
From the moment he first turns it on, I'm guessing 1d20 hours until the first top-drawer wetwork squad on the continent is Teleported in on a mission to retrieve that goodie for their employer. That is, if *deities* don't immediately show up.
If the player is lucky, they'll take it before he's accidentally amputated more than one important body part.