My D&D group finished off our second module last week and decided to shake things up a little for the next one. Sky seemed to be getting bored with his overpowered but very straightforward tanking character and built a sorcerer instead. This caused a bit of a chain reaction and I think we're all building brand new characters for this weekend. On the one hand this is a little overwhelming since we're making 11 levels worth of decisions at once with no real idea of party composition or what any of our new abilities actually do. On the other hand building characters is a lot of fun and trying them out will be too. I have tons of ideas but who knows if they're actually as awesome as they seem or if they'll just never come up.
At any rate, I wanted to pick a new class and role. I've been the healer for the last two modules and have spent a lot of that time letting other people attack and tracking all the hit point totals. That was fun but I want something different. I figured I'd take a look at the DPS classes and try to make something fun. I looked at the list of classes and one immediately jumped out as being different and cool... Vampire! Now, I'd assume vampire would be a race and not a class but I gather they recently released a 'Heroes of Shadow' book which has both a vampire type race and a vampire class. It doesn't matter if vampires are good or not they're definitely cool so I was pretty much sold without even looking at what they do.
It turns out they're a mostly melee attacker pretty similar to a rogue but with an interesting resource mechanic and fewer abilities. (Most of my 'choices' were fixed as there is only one vampire class power at most levels.) It turns out they use healing surges as a resource to power up a few abilities. They also drain healing surges when they use at-will powers which seems interesting. They definitely have a lot of flavour.
As an added bonus they use two stats: dexterity and charisma. What's a race with both of those stats? Hobbit! (Ok, Halfling, please don't sue me estate of JRR Tolkein.) I've looked at some of the other races but none of them quite have the coolness factor of being a hobbit vampire. One of the hobbit racial bonuses is to get +2 to AC against opportunity attacks and I found a pair of boots that lets me walk through enemy occupied squares. I was thinking that would be a great way to set up flanking... Stack AC so they couldn't hit me and just walk through the enemies even if they're blocking a hallway or something. So I tried building a character with all the AC stacking I could find and ended up getting up to 37 AC against opportunity attacks. Considering my shaman had 22 AC... That's huge!
And then Sky pointed out I can't actually buy those boots since they're not common and that whole plan went out the window. There's actually a hobbit feat which provides a similar effect but only lets you walk through spaces of enemies 2 sizes larger. We've been tipped off that there are lots of large monsters in this coming module so this could still work... But the feat prevents opportunity attacks from the monster you're walking through so the whole point of super AC is kinda moot.
We get one magic item of level 12 and it's the first level of item with +3s that can have a bonus. They need room for better +3 items all the way up to 15 so the bonuses at level 12 tend to be weak or unexciting. One really stood out for me in the super AC build which was an extra +1 to hit while at full health. Hobbits get a racial power which forces a re-roll of an attack which hits you and vampires put up 7 temporary health with their main at-will attack so this actually seems like it'll stay up for a reasonable amount of time. And I could really go out of my way to try to keep it up all the time if I tried. So the question is, how good is that +1 to hit and is it worth trying to keep it up?
My basic at-will attack (the one that puts up the 7 health) hits for 25.5 damage at +18 vs fort assuming I have combat advantage. That won't be hitting on a 2 so +1 to hit should be worth 5% of that damage, or 1.275 damage. Better than +1 to damage for sure but not super exciting. The first 3 times it hits I get to tack on an extra d10 damage which boosts the gain up to 1.55 damage. Seems pretty good and gives me a baseline for evaluating how important it is to take 0 damage over the fight.
As I said vampires have very few power decisions to make so pretty much my only choices are which feats to take. I could try to find a bunch of pure damage feats or I could try to take some damage prevention feats and roll some of that extra 1.55 damage per round into those.
One of the feats I took in the super-AC build was a multi-class rogue feat which let me add my charisma bonus to my AC after being hit by an opportunity attack. That's obviously terrible now that I'm not planning on taking a ton of opportunity attacks but there was a hobbit feat that unlocked when I took it which turned my free re-roll of a hit into a free re-roll with -5 that can't crit which seemed reasonable. I wanted to pick that up so I needed another multi-class feat from a martial class. My first thought was the rogue feat which lets me backstab once per fight. An extra 3d6 seems pretty great. (In fact, 10.5 damage is better than +1 to hit if the fight lasts 6 or fewer attacks so I probably want this even if I'm not trying to keep my +1 to hit up.) Of course I eventually noticed that you need to be using a light blade to backstab and I use a holy symbol so that got thrown out. Then I found a ranger multi-class feat which takes a minor action but gives 2d6 damage twice. (This requires attacks to land in specific rounds instead of just one ever so this isn't actually 14 damage but it's still pretty sweet.) This seems worth taking.
I didn't really find much else in the straight damage category worth taking. I took straight +1 to hit, of course, and decided to try the weird feat which gives +1 to hit, damage, and ac when beside a wall. I don't know how often it'll come up but it seems great for all kinds of reasons when it does. Making sure I have combat advantage is worth +2 to hit on its own so I'm giving the cunning stalker feat a try (it gives combat advantage on any enemy who is standing alone). Then a flat +2 to AC seems like it'll help keep my weapon buff up especially with my re-roll ability.
My last feat had some interesting options. I could take a boring but useful +2 to reflex, fortitude, and will defenses. I could take +2 to ac if I'm beside two larger enemies. I could take the feat that lets me walk through large enemies. But I found something really cool that is probably terrible but might be a lot of fun... If I'm standing beside an enemy, and have combat advantage on them, and they shift... I get to shift too. So all I need to do is get beside an enemy caster and then they need to either stop casting brutal spells or let me get free attacks. +1 to hit is like 5% of an attack so if this gives a free attack every other fight it's probably better than +1 to hit. If it shuts down brutal spells it won't do any damage but might help us win. Probably it won't do anything at all and I'll wish I had +2 to ac when I get ganked.
I'll probably end up making lots of changes after getting a week actually playing the class instead of just thinking about playing the class but I'm pretty happy with what I have. Though after I read the rules about stealth I'm really thinking a shade vampire could be intriguing...
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