Fellow D&D Players, lemme pick your brains

[SccrD25]

Should this go here or Games? It's not a forum game so I ended up here.

Below is a bunch of babble that finally ends in me asking for advice on classes for some NPCs.

Anyways, I would like some help brainstorming. As some of you know I'm running a 3.5 game. The 4 players are all level 4 goblins (monk, rouge, druid, scout/barbarian). The whole thing is extremely Goblins based (I killed the monk's dad in a fight with Mr. Fingers, still evil chuckling over that).

Anywho... right now things are going poorly for their tribe. The cult they are fighting is coming to destroy their village for crossing them, they have poor relations with the other monster tribes and the Chief just got gooeyified by Mr. Fingers (giggle).

So now its time to kick them when they are down.

My next plan is to introduce them to their foils. A group of human/dwarf/or elven adventures. They, like Minmax and Forgath, will be D&D characters with "players" behind them. If they do well I plan to have them keep showing up throughout the game. That is assuming they don't get ganked in a fight.

So I have a general idea of how to build them but before I started I figured I'd see what y'all had to say.

The build goals are as follows:
3.5 rules
3 Characters
Non-monstrous Humanoid Races
Level 5-6
Mostly sticking to the core books. Mostly...

Other minor things to keep in mind. They have a few magical items, namely the monk's weapon which can deal a surprising amount of damage, and a decanter of endless waters (ale actually). The druid focuses on battlefield control spells rather then attack or defense. The scout and rouge are a deadly flanking/skirmishing combo. The world is super "racist" so even a half-orc wouldn't be a welcome team member for humans. They can have magical items, but basically nothing that would be game-breaking if looted off them. A huge bonus would be some form of "escape pod", so once they are defeated, I can bring them back later with a few more levels, true Gary Oak-nemesis-style. There are also minor homebrew changes but the only ones that really matter here are: 1, no material components needed for spells except expensive focuses; 2, weapon finesse applies to attack AND damage.

So... thoughts, ideas, plots, shenanigans? I've heard some solid D&D advice on this forum so I'm looking forward to what you have to say. And not just D&D advice, maybe you have an interesting idea for a character trait or something. Please do share. Anything from a fully developed character to a simple suggestion of for an item is welcome.

[thinkslogically]

I can't really help with your characters, but just a warning that if your players see this then it's not going to be much of a surprise when your NPC group do show up

[SccrD25]

No worries, I've tried over and over to get them to read topics on here with no luck.

[Arydra]

I ca n give you the stats on one of my used characters, but scaled down to lvl 6. I will pm you the page later so your players have no possibility of anticipating this character, who is completely legal and not game-breaking.

[SccrD25]

Fantastic! Thank you very much

The whole point of this is I want them to feel very "not mine"ish. I tend to build certain ways, and have a certain style of building, character developing and fighting. There are certain classes I've never used once. With y'alls help I'm hoping to get the feel that these guys really are D&D characters sprung from other peoples minds and distinctly separate from the other NPCs they know so far.

[RocketScientist]

I don't have any Brians.

[SccrD25]

I don't have any Brians.

*facepalm*

[ThroughTheWell]

Changeling: rogue 1, w racial sub, bard +X. Style this guy after the Joker. There is a whole thread on this ChE villan on the OOTS site.

Changeling: ?, warshaper 1+. Why, because you can't be sneak attacked. There are a few ways to get uncanny dodge too. And, if you went Cabinet Trickster 5, you'd have free at will detect thoughts, to keep tabs on the party.

Elf wizard, because the goblin party is light on magic. You could even keep this guy mostly as support.

Dread Necromancer, because they can't turn undead. Make him a necropolitan himself for, again, no sneak attack.

Those 4 look like easy choices to me. After that, well you can get evil or wierd. I'd double check ghoul touched... or undead templates. It would be nice to get something like paralyzing touch, disease, fire or cold, to give the touch attack monk something to think about.

Pixie rogue might do a number on them. Double check the invis available to it. Then flavor it as an unseelie emmisary, when they somehow tick off the fey.

If you grab 4 of these as NPCs, I'm not even sure that you need them to be above the PCs level. 1, because the party is low tier, excepting the druid, and 2, because a couple of these are specificaly designed to negate some of the PC strengths. Maybe make the Joker a level or 2 higher, but only because you want him to be a mastermind, and the source of future enemies, not because you want a straight up fight.

There is also a thread (in the last week) at OOTS about prepping for a monk as an enemy. I think the consensus was kite the monk, and no worries.

Heh, there is at least 1 wis draining monster (allip: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/allip.htm). That could do a number on both the monk and the druid, and unless the party has a ghost touch weapon, an allip might be a TPK, despite the low challenge rating.

I'm just throwing ideas out there. I did not double check what is core or not, or listen very well when you said non-monsterous.

[Zathyr]

As far as usable equipment goes, keep in mind size differences. If some human has some nice magic armor and the goblins manage to take it, it's not going to fit anyone.

I'd be tempted to make their rival group entirely halflings, myself. Not just for size reasons - there was an "Apple Dumpling Gang" that's sort of an infamous story in one of my gaming groups. That band of halflings nearly wiped out the party.. Ponies for all of them, and a vicious streak a mile wide.

Whatever you do for races, for class mix I'd say make one Barbarian. An absolute damage beast, immune to flanking at level 5, and a big sack of hit points. Make one of the others Wizard or cleric and make sure they have dispel magic to deal with some of the druid's battlefield control spells. Something as simple as Protection from Evil should let them ignore any summoned creatures. Partially charged wands make good magic items for bag guys - not game breaking, cheap, dangerous, and make the party scramble to keep them from getting used up so they can loot them for themselves.

[ThroughTheWell]

Oh yeah, pixe rogue would be a terror. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/sprite.htm#pixie Fly, greater invis at will, and other SLAs that if you can get them off first, would give the Pixie an advantage. Would just need to double check that the druid could not dispense with the invis (farie fire?), or have the pixe observe the party for awhile to attack at the best time. Bit of a glass jaw though, so you, as the pixie, could not afford to get hit. Probably a good idea to do hit and run.

A cleric might substitue well for a Dread Necromancer.

Is the party good or evil? Pick the opposite type of paladin (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/class ... AndTyranny ), and then give him either a fancy mount or a mount w magic items for the paly to escape. You might have to give him a good enough goal or higher masters, so that he'd be willing to run away and come back another day. If the mount flies, and the party does not, the the paly can charge, hit the party, and be back up in the sky over and over (?). Then you are probably only a magic item away from protection from arrows. If the paly is deadly enough, you might have to give him a reason to just humiliate the party and leave, but any mostly melee types run a risk in straight up fights with PCs, particularly if the BBEG is either less optimized or localy outnumbered.

[Zathyr]

"Non-monstrous humanoid races" though, so fey are probably out. With the level adjustment you're only looking at 1d6 for the sneak attack as well, though I suppose with the change to weapon finesse it'll still have some bite. If the goblins don't have cold iron weapons, it's not really a glass canon either.

Oh, and since you mentioned escape pod: the spell Obscuring Mist is something I always take for my clerics. It makes a great spell for covering an escape, setting an ambush, negating sneak attacks and attacks of opportunity. Does the goblin group have mounts? If not, even the monk isn't going to be able to catch them if the adventurers run away mounted on anything - don't even need a flyer.

[ThroughTheWell]

Or, go here and pick a few characters. http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/ ... vel_builds
Lv 1 King of Roc, substitute a couple of more reasonable animals.
Lv 2 Master disarmer, for the Lols.
Lv 3 Psion blaster, if you play up the invisibly mental aspects it could have flavor.
Lv 3 standard TW fighter. There are som Prcs that would give you an extra 1d6 sneak attack, if you wanted to add more.
Any of these that are too weak, just bump up to level 4-6. But those 4, plus say 3 high HD animals would be more than a challenge. Make one of the animals an actual Roc, and they can all escape too. I suspect you can adjust this to be a CR appropriate challenge, while still throwing a trick or 2 at the players. Disarm the monk. Use the animals for your own flanking and or positioned to avoid flanks to you.

I guess one thing I'm saying is, if you must melee with the party and you want to live, then you probably need some of these high op builds to get some licks in and throw the party for a loop or 2, even if the party eventualy wins. A tripper is also a viable build, or the reach weapon specialist, etc. Each has an edge in a particular way.

Again, if these guys start to demolish the party, then you can have them call down the Roc and leave to go destroy a village while saying "Thanks for the entertainment but we have a schedule to keep" as they leave. Now come up with a reason for these guys to be together, or better yet, over at OOTS, read the Giant's villan workshop article http://www.giantitp.com/articles/rTKEiv ... 4H1Sn.html and make 1 of these guys, or again the Joker above, the villan and all the other BBEGs his hired guns.

[SccrD25]

Crazy busy day at work so I'll respond to everything later but real quick I wanted to say THANK YOU!

You guys are awesome, covered everything I needed and brought up a lot I never even thought about. Like I said, I'll respond for real later but for now, seriously, thank y'all

[ThroughTheWell]

The King of Roc, above, could be a fair bad guy if advanced right. So do the max chr, marshal 1, and animal handling thing to keep the Roc getaway service, but then add chr useful levels. I'm thinking paladin or blackguard, hexblade (if you go outside of core), and or sorcerer (be carefull about losing caster levels though). Paladin, particularly the paly of tyrany, has some nice fluff. Give him evil demon armor and an unholy sword (that maybe advances with him), and the PCs won't even be able to use his magic even if they could get it off of him. Plus as DM you can 'back the paly up' with the power of evil gods to do things like resume magic after a dispel or get out of jail free. Paly, has fair saves. And, if you throw in some other classes and feats that use chr for things, you can start to make the max chr go farther. There is a whole thread, again over at OOTS IIRC, about x to y, which list the bonus you get from ability scores for various feats and classes, grouped by the ability score. That way you can start stacking. I wonder what the glora (sp) template is, cause it looks like it uses chr too.

And if the Roc paly works with the joker, well then, one is the face and hammer, and the other could be anyone, respectively. It also increases the odds of get out of jail free events, or even back from the dead events, particularly if the PCs don't know that there are 2 of them to start.

Hee hee, invis the Roc for fun Klingon warbird decloaking effects.

[ThroughTheWell]

Please tell me you want traps too. I have a couple of ideas for traps I've not seen elsewhere. Although, they are kind of deadly. OTOH, some DMs and parties gradualy start to learn that old adventurers get that way by being very cautious, and if PC death is common enough to be no big deal, then death can accelerate that learning. I guess it depends on the flavor of your game, and player expectations.

[Corpsificus]

You can pick my brain, just don't pick Abby Normal.