A rather interesting solo attempt...

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I came up with this idea once I was thinking about the D&D 3rd edition's rangers' illogical gain of ambidexterity and two-weapon fighting feats when wearing a light or no armor. Any character could use those feats just taking a single level of ranger and wearing a light armor.

I started to think, which classes use light armor. Well, rogue, wizard and sorcerer came up to my mind but wizards and sorcerers ain't so good in melee and a ranger 1/rogue X seemed quite stupid to me, so I abandoned those ideas.

Then I thought about monk. She wears no armor at all but gains AC from her wisdom. Sadly, dual-wielding isn't monk's thing because she can't fight with two fists at the same time. The AC bonus from Wis was a nice thing though.

"Hmm, does some class need a high Wisdom btw?" Yup. That would be a cleric. So, if the character had a maxed wisdom and dexterity, she would have a nice AC already in the beginning without and armor. The AC would grow when raising wisdom for the cleric and she would gain more bonus spells and her spell DCs would rise.

But what weapons she should use? Maybe small ones, so that she would benefit from the high Dex (if she wouldn't have enough points to her Str) by taking the Weapon Finesse feat. And so, I had a new character idea:

Human ranger 1/monk 1/cleric X

She is a human because of the extra feat and skill points and the 'favourite class: any' to prevent the exp penalty.

I was going to play her in our next D&D adventure but we decided to use 3.5 edition rules, where the ranger is a lot more better and doesn't gain those feats at first level. "But what the heck, there's always IWD2. I can always try the character in it." And so I started with this character my very first solo attempt.

Chiyorin looks like this atm (as far as I can recall):


Lawful neutral human ranger 1/monk of the Old Order 1/Dreadmaster of Bane 8
Str 10 Dex 18 Con 10 Int 10 Wis 20 Cha 10

She is wielding two short swords, which don't do much damage as there's no Str modifier (I didn't want to min-max) but luckily there's cleric spells to help.

AC is 23 right now without boosts (IIRC): 5 from Wis, 4 from Dex, 2 from bracers of armor, 1 from ring of prot and 1 from the Dodge feat.


The prologue haven't ever been so easy as all the exp was gained by only one character and levels came quickly and the char had a great AC. The orcs in the Shaengarne river were more troublesome at first but when Animate Dead came available, the game became easier quickly. I'm going to the horde fortress right now...

I hope there'll be soon some really good short swords or daggers or Chiyorin will let those undeads do all the melee...


I wrote quite a novel there... mayhap there's someone enough stupid to read it all.

You're free to give feedback and suggestions if you want... How could I've been able to make Chiyorin better and will she even be able to finish the game alone now...

 

I would have made her female drow. Used levels monk 3 fighter 4 Dread Master X.

 

If you're going let the undead do all the meleeing then what was the benefit of having the free dual wielding? Have you noticed any benefit at all from that one level of Ranger?

 

@Malovae

Damn, I didn't remember that female drows had cleric as their favourite class. That spell resistance would have been nice.

Hmm, I can understand the 4 levels of fighter but why 3 levels of monk? What does the monk get at level three? Or is it only for preventing the exp penalty?

And there is no ranger level in your suggestion. No free dual-wielding... but maybe she really doesn't need it after all.


@Harbourboy

Hmm, the undeads are doing the melee but so is Chiyorin too. Monsters can't really hit her except with 20's (which seem to come quite often...). Only problem still is that she ain't really doing any damage with her short swords if she has no buffs on. (Champion's Strength and Holy Power are quite nice) But that hasn't stop her yet...

What I'm trying to say is that as she is dual-wielding all the time, the single ranger level comes in use. She can't really use shields because she would lose the AC bonus from her wisdom and there's no sense to use only one weapon if she can use two short swords with equally good attack bonuses. So yes, there's benefit from the ranger level.

You know, I'm very good at answering briefly...

 

3 levels of monk for:

1 - evasion
2 - deflect arrows (always handy)
3 - Still Mind (+2 Saving throws for enchantments), increased movement rate +2.

Clerics stop getting better after lvl 22 or so IMO, so you don't really lose anything. Dread Master of Bane for the +2 Wisdom bonus you recieve in Kulduhar (?)

[ June 21, 2004, 15:53: Message edited by: Malovae ]