I have this idea of a gypsy woman who is travelling with a circus and working as an acrobat - juggling with knives / kukries and other such tricks. The requirements for the build would be:
- Rogue and bard levels (more roguish than bard levels if possible)
- Not a caster (other than the bardic spells)
- Two-weapon fighting style (knife or kukri)
- Human (Gur)
- No negative stats
- High(ish) amount of skill points
- Feinter (rather without HIPS)
The original idea was to make her rogue / bard / dervish / perhaps something else, but I couldn’t find any such builds from nwn2db, so I guess such a combo isn’t viable. The character is going to be more roleplay –focused but I would still like her to be a viable build for melee as well. The character would start at level 20.
Basic idea above. You could take more DP and less rogue for the Inspiration boost, or you could replace IB with Guild Thief 3 or 5, or even Cleric 3 for a god granting Trickery Domain (would also help with Will saves and give Divine scroll use).
R16/B4/IB5/GT5. Can get PTWF and Epic Dodge. Synergy between IB and GT for a Feinter since GT gets +2 on bluff checks. Bardic Inspire Competence can help as well so with decent gear you should be able to get pretty solid Bluff checks to land Feint fairly consistently. Feats you need pre-epic would be Weapon Finesse, Combat Expertise, Feint, WF:Dagger, TWF, ITWF, GTWF, and Stealthy. Since you're human that means you have one 'free' feat which you can pick, plus 2 bonus feats from GT so you have a total of 3, of which I would grab Negotiator and Skill Focus: Bluff, the last feat could be Luck of Hero's or Deadly Defense or whatever you want. GT bonus feats include Weapon Focus, CE, and Feint so I would level Rogue/Bard and get GT ASAP, using the two bonus feats to qualify for IB (GT is the only PRC that really gives zero benefit for delaying post level 3 bonus feats to epic, since there are no epic feats on the bonus list). Bard 1 gives you Inspire Competence which is all you really want so you can delay level 2/3 until level 19/20 if you want and I would take level 4 at 30 (you need Rogue 16 by level 29 in order to get epic dodge.)
Note that because you are ending two Medium BAB classes on an odd level your BAB suffers (you reach 21 BAB). In addition to this I imagine your DEX will be 26 at most since you don't want any negative stats. This leaves us with a max AB of 21 + 10 + 4 = 35, which is fine when feint works, but not good when it doesn't. However, when you can't feint you can always use Inspire Courage for +1 hit/damage and then stock up on scrolls of Greater Heroism, Cat's Grace, Bless, and Aid or scrolls/potions of Divine Power for when you really need a boost. In epics you want Epic Precision, Epic Prowess, Expose Weakness, PTWF and Epic Dodge. Your Rogue bonus feats are Crippling Strike (10), Improved Evasion (13) and Defensive Roll (16). If you have any questions let me know.
zan5bar wrote:The original idea was to make her rogue / bard / dervish / perhaps something else, but I couldn’t find any such builds from nwn2db, so I guess such a combo isn’t viable. The character is going to be more roleplay –focused but I would still like her to be a viable build for melee as well. The character would start at level 20.
Bard 3/Rogue 11/Assassin 9/Dreadpirate 7 <= Something to consider use if you want to mix Bard and Rogue.
Now, if you are willing to drop Bard:
Rogue 17/Dervish 10/Shadowdancer 3
" I am no longer here, the elves of the Sword Coast are just far too horrible... "
Thank you all for the input. It is much appreciated.
The dread pirate is tempting, but I wasn’t planning to have any sailing background for her. Of course one could argue that sailing and caravan travelling are bit similar… but still.
HIPS is something I’d rather avoid this time, since all my previous characters have been some sort of assassins.
I have to toy with Chad’s suggestion a bit in nwn2db. The building instructions were so detailed, that even I can’t fail in building… maybe.
All this has made me realize how bad I am in building a character. That’s probably the reason why my NWN and NWN2 characters have been assassins – and all have been quite similar mechanically.
After some struggle I was able to build that R16/B4/IB5/GT5. It made me realize that epic dodge is so demanding feat that I would have to min-max the character, and the will and fortitude saves would be horribly low. So even though there is good synergy with the background and mechanically, I have decided to bury this combo.
I also tried building the dread pirate version that Steve suggested after realizing that I could probably squeeze it to the background if it’s taken after level 14. And in fact few cleric levels might also work with the background and make her will and fortitude saves bit better as well. I just don’t have any idea which feats I should take (what are the must-have feats).
About the whirling dervish: if there is also rogue and bard levels which fourth class could be an option?
As said, this character is going to be quite roleplay focused and probably won’t be doing much soloing. So I believe epic dodge is not required for the build. I am just looking - how would I describe it - a more balanced and perhaps a bit more unique build.
I'm reading into your posts that Bard is really just there for RP, and I guess for performance(s) sake? Am I right? Because I could suggest to you to forgo Bard and just put a bunch of Skill points into Perform, and then you can justify—if that is necessary—doing "bard-like" things.
I like Bard 3 + Dread Pirate 7 because you get Inspire Competence +3 (AB and magic DMG), plus Luck of Heroes so you can take Silver Palm at Level 1 (for better Bluff score).
any rogue build is going to have crap will saves and most will have crap fortitude saves. Solution is wands, scrolls and potions... Superior/Greater Resistance, Spell Resistance, Death Ward, Prot from Alignment/Mind Blank, Shadow Shield and many other buffs can be short term solutions to your weaknesses when needed. I would focus more on what you want to play and then ask questions about the weaknesses, because any "RP" build is going to have them and even most power builds have one or two....It is simply players know how to avoid the environment being able to exploit those weaknesses.
It's using a mithral chain shirt and inspire defense as a main tactic.
I'd say he's quite full of tricks and playable, I'm not going for PTWF because feint means this is not as desireable, you'll be able to land sneak attacks throughout the round if you feinted successfully. Otherwise it has various power ups, bard inspiration, CE, Feint, Dervish Dance. With UMD defenses (especially shield spell) you can also go all out offensively and get 44 AB for some time with 9 attacks per round and feint, good damage
Also with bard 8 you have a couple of spells, I suggest getting heroism, invisibility and inspirational boost but beyond that anything can do.
chad878262 wrote:I kinda like it valefort, but no epic precision? What do you do against crit immune?
STR and some dervish damage, which is more than 0. 0 is the damage that a build based on Feint-SA will do in the epics. Unless the epic bluff gear changed this. Did it change BMD?
