Edeldhur wrote: ↑Wed May 28, 2025 3:47 pm
To be honest, I am not THAT inspired to play a Cleric
I am moving away from MU types for a change of pace.
Mountebank is not my cup of tea - I suck at playing 'Charisma based' characters.
I would like to play a Thief, but that is just a MUCH worse Lupine - with 4hp per level and leather armor they definitely cannot melee. And ranged weapons... What are the rules for firing into melee? I could not find them.
There aren't any, other than possibly penalties for partial cover, which I haven't really been using. So I've been allowing people to fire into Melee without any real penalties. Plus you get a +1 to hit if you're within the ranged weapon's close range. So ranged weapons are actually pretty potent here. The major downsides are action economy penalties (and action economy is
important so I think it's a fair trade off). You literally cannot fire a ranged weapon if you're in melee. So if you go to fire your bow, but an enemy closes into melee first, your action is wasted. You also can't move backwards and shoot. You can move closer to an enemy and shoot. You can stay still and shoot, but if you want to put some distance, you can't attack the same round. Also, you need to count arrows. A Thief can also backstab with a ranged (or thrown) weapon so long as you're in that weapon's close range, which is
not melee and grows as you improve on the weapon.
I was trying to find a way to build a Thief 'specialized' in daggers. Dual wielding in melee and throwing them at range. But I don't think it has any chance of survival.
Well, dual wielding daggers is a bad idea. They aren't offhand weapons in DDX, and you suffer
heavy penalties if you dual wield with non-offhand weapons. You could take a buckler though to give you a bit of extra AC, or bolas if you want to be able to restrain a target.
But I think that a Thief with a brace of throwing daggers would be more survivable than you think. You can still backstab (well, sneak attack) with thrown daggers, so you don't have to close into melee, and you have three characters with reasonable melee survivability on the team, so you could hide behind them and chuck daggers from the shadows. You might have problems outside, but in dungeons you'd actually probably be safer than Mordred. Plus, starting at level 3 means you'll be able to start Skilled.
You'd probably want to let Corvin still take point on scouting.
The only thing going for 'Martial' classes I feel is removed by the introduction of Weapon Feats. Because now they just cannot pick up any weapon and use it decently.
I cannot find a reason to play a Fighter over a Dwarf or Halfling, unless you want to use a large weapon.
Large weapons really are the big thing that Fighters have over Dwarves and Halflings. Large weapons are REALLY powerful because of the way Weapon Feats and weapon AC bonuses work. They do obscene damage, have powerful riders, give as good or almost as good AC as shields against many opponents and put less pressure on your (very infrequent) Weapon Feats to get the most out of them. The other team has a Fighter with a Halberd as a henchwoman. She's put that hook ability the Halberd has to
very effective use.
Fighters also have access to Tower shields. Tower shields give you -2 AC vs 2 attacks at basic proficiency vs the -1 vs 2 with a medium shield. Your shield is probably going to be sitting at basic for a while, so a Fighter is going to be getting a better AC. Tower shields also can be used to attack from Skilled onward. So a Fighter could get two attacks at level 3 if they wanted to.
Fighters also have better stat requirements. Both Strength and Dexterity are powerful (especially Dexterity). Constitution is frankly the weakest stat in the game. It very, very rarely comes up as a Statistic check, and its Stat bonus only applies until level 9. The fact that both Dwarves and Halflings require a high Constitution hurts them in my opinion. A -1 to AC and a +1 to hit/damage with melee weapons is way better than +1 HP/level plus one of the above, and it
keeps being valuable. Past level 9 that high Constitution becomes steadily less important, if not outright dead weight. Granted if you're going all in on combat, maybe it doesn't matter. But this means that a Fighter can shove their 9 into Constitution, and have room to make one of their mental skills good if they want to be good at out of combat skill checks. So Fighters are a bit less pigeon-holed than dwarves or halflings in my opinion.
I hear you on the "can use any weapon decently." But, ehhh. I roll for the properties on a magic weapon, but I generally handpick the weapon type based on my players' capabilities. So it's not like you'll find a Shortsword+3,+20 vs Demons and shake your fist at the sky because you've Grandmastered Longsword instead. Does that stretch verisimilitude? Yeah, I guess. But I don't think it's any worse than a guy in plate armor getting bathed in magic dragonfire and coming out only a little crispy on the edges.
And the weapons in this game are (IMO) fun!
