The character concept as it currently stands is a lycanthrope/undead hunter, bastard child of an illicit affair between two aristocratic merchant houses. In his adolescence he develops a mark with magical powers from his father’s house. He hides the mark, runs away from home, and lives in the wild for a time, where he is picked up and trained by a forest warden. He enjoys the work, but finds the life too solitary, so he wanders again, this time to larger places, and finds his place in the Church of the Silver Flame. Here he thrives and grows into his purpose.
Years pass.
Tailing a werewolf in a farflung jungle, he follows her into a set of overgrown ruins, and stepping through a moss covered stone arch, he finds himself in a park on the edge of an enormous, interplanar metropolis. After a few days, he finds himself lost, hungry, and with no obvious way back home, his target nowhere to be found. He finds a few adherents of his church in a community, but no authority figure guiding them. As they teach him about his new home, he begins to take on a leadership role within the community. Protecting them and finding a way back home are key goals for *insert name here*.
Human, male, 32yo Ranger 2/Paladin 4
str 16 dex 6 con 12 int 12 wis 12 cha 14 + 2-5 points (first two: con, next two: wis, last one: cha)
skills concentrated in survival (for tracking), search, riding, maybe knowledge religion, & nature, concentration.
feats: least and lesser dragonmark of passage (expeditious retreat 2/day and dimension door 1/day), knight training (can freely take levels of ranger without mucking up his ability to progress as a paladin), and something else.
Ranger fighting style will probably be two-weapon, but irrelevant (he’ll typically be in heavy armor, though if he’s tracking people through a jungle, I suppose full plate might be sub-optimal). Favored enemy will be lycanthropes.
I would tack some knowledge: arcana or something similar in there to indicate his lycanthrope/undead lore. I assume he’s learned something about them after hunting them professionally.
I see you wussed out on rolling dice for ability points. Chicken!
Is there an archer ranger fighting style? I never think of playing a ranger, so I don’t know them that well. For jungle/wilderness hunting, that might be appropriate, and also allow you to justify lighter armor (since you don’t expect to get close).
Also, for feats, it’s my considered opinion that you can never smite enough times in the day. You always end up wishing you had just one smite left for the unexpected truly deserving recipient…
Archer ranged fighting style does exist but with a dex of 6, he won’t be taking that. “Hey, look at me, I can waste arrows with a speed unmatched by any man”.
I had three reasons for avoiding the dice. 1) Paladins are high maintenance on the stats, not just any layout will do. 2) It had a higher expected value than the 21d6 route, albeit by one point, and 3) I didn’t want to deal with actually finding some dice. =)
Keep an eye out for enchanted plate that reduces the dex penalties or for really buff hide armor that makes you more of a tank.
like the eberron setting? i haven’t played in 16-17 years but i still follow the developments… 🙂
that’s a mighty low dexterity; don’t trip over your feet hunting the were-baddies… 😛
That’s what I was about to say. Good luck with that whole “hiding patiently before dropping prey with lethally price shot” ranger bidness with 6 dex. XD
This guy specializes in relentlessness over sniping. =)
Eberron’s kinda cool. beat me to the artificer warforged, so I had to actually get creative. =)
And I was picturing him more as “painfully slow reflexes” than actually clumsy, per se.
No fair, you get to play in an Eberron game. My group is addicted to Forgotten Realms.
It was chosen for me. And it’s an eberron, arcana unearthed, straight up 3.5 crossover. We’ll see how it goes when I actually start playing. =)
I like. 🙂
(but then I’m always biased towards knightly/paladin characters).
Thanks. =) I typically go more for spellcaster/shapeshifter types this will be novel for me.
I totally misread lycanthrope/undead hunter at first. I was trying to figure out what RPG had lycanthrope and undead hunter as classses. :/
When I first wrote the post, I’d put the actual classes in the first sentence, then I decided to think outside the box and put up a description that emphasized story over stats. =)