Newbie's questions on prestige classes

Remove all ads!

I'm buying the gold edition and HOD soon, but there are plenty of stuffs thats I still don't know.
1. Will the weapon master gain additional favorite weapons as he level up or will he only favorite a single weapon all his life?

2. 1 of the requirement for RDD is 8 points in lore right? but if I have a level 8 bard(If I'm not wrong, 1 lv of bard will have 1 bonus lore) with no lore skill points at all, he may not level as the RDD right? or can he?

3. I would like to know which classes are best played pure. Monk must be 1 of them, maybe barbarian too. Any other classes? Anyone have luck with pure ranger?(I will hoping that the animal companion of a pure high level ranger will be very powerful, and the many favorite enemies will also make a pure ranger powerful enough to roleplay with.

[ February 15, 2004, 06:46: Message edited by: Skywind ]

 

1. The weapon master does NOT choose a new weapon. It's the same all the way.

3. You must remember that this is the 3.0 ranger, not 3.5. This means that it greatly sucks and shoould not be played by anyone.

 

I found pure rangers to be 'very' powerful if you plan your stats right. Remember that the ranger can get the level 2 spell Cat's Grace that will boost his DEX by a minimum of two. So rather than pumping heaps of points into dex, lay off it a bit and don't exceed 16 dex if you want to have a good AC with studded leather (Cat's Grace lasts for AGES). If you want to dual the ranger to anything I would suggest the fighter and/or maybe weapon's master with rapiers and grab weapon finesse to have a nice 6 definate hits per round and incredible critical strike range (if you take the feat improved critical with rapiers).

Now THAT'S a ranger that'll prod buttocks.

 

2. 8 points in Lore means you have to spend 8 skill points in it, not counting any bonus you may have to it. Therefore, earliest you can take RDD is level 5.

 

For Rangers, Bane of Enemies is currently broken. It is, in my opinion, something of a class defining feat. Currently you get +2 to hit but you do not get an extra 2d6 damage. It is supposed to be fixed in 1.62.

 

@Laches,

the 1.62 you mentioned is patches right?

@Abomination,

I will play a pure ranger only after I tried out most of the prestige classes first. But anyway, the starting stats for the pure ranger I'm planning is:

str:12
dex:16
con:14
int:12
wis:12
cha:10

Most likely, I will also take up feats like greater str, wis etc to boost up my stats further.
Looks good enough?

 

If you want a weaponmaster to kick asses from dawn till dusk, you may want to consider the following build.

Str 17~18 (19~20 if half-orc)
add all ability bonuses to STR
add all epic feats to Greater STR
use your bonus epic feats to get Devastating Critical

Pick Scimitar or Rapier as your Weapon of Choice
Dual Wield would also be a good idea

Now, you are running around with a weapon master that kills everything in 1 hit half of the time.
10-20 crit range, and very high Devastating Critical DC (10+Level/2+StrBonus)
Level 26 (first level you get Dev Crit)
DC = 10+13+(24+item-10)/2 = 30+

Anything you crit(which is half of the time) will have to roll vs a DC of 30+ or die... now that's one destructive machine

 

Might I suggest for your Ranger build that you drop one of the other stats to increase wis to 14? That way you will have access to all levels of Ranger spells without having to spend level up points on wis. This is especially usefull if you're indeed going pure Ranger.

 

@ Skywind
Looks fine. You might want a higher wisdom for ranger spells since they are often oh-so-useful when buffing.

As a ranger you don't need to be strong, you just need to hit often and hope to score a critical.

 

Thanks to all.
Btw, will the animal companion of a ranger be powerful enough to hold off the enemies at high levels? Or is it really very weak?

 

I doubt it will be able to hold off enemies, but having the panther is very nice for the sneak attack. This becomes really effective if you take a few rogue levels for some sneak attack damage too. Plus it usually will last one fight, but you may have to spend a buffing spell or two on it. Such as the magic fang and an elemental resist spell. Dunno, it worked for me.

 

If you're going for a powergamer Red Dragon Disciple then just take 1 level of sorcerer/bard, then fighter (he actually got lore as a class skill, I was quite surprised of that fact) until you get to a 8 in lore. Then 10 RDD, rest fighter.

It's pretty lame that the Red Dragon Disciple is a fighter PrC when you must be a arcane caster for it. I don't know how it is in the books though.