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Nosphryc Azurecoat – 5th Level D&D5 Fighter

Figured I’d post the character I wound up making before my second session, tomorrow.

I went with “simple.” That being said, given the rolls I got, I think a Monk or Paladin would be a fun second character. Granted, can’t expect the same thing a second time, but those two seem to benefit a lot from lots of good scores in the 14-16 range.

Anyway, to Nosphryc. Mostly I’m going to put up screen captures from the wonderful character sheet in Roll20, which is darn handy. More info: It’s the sheet made by Actoba, and found here, in his character sheet repository.


Core Stats

As noted in the previous character post, the dice treated me well, and choosing a human fighter focusing on STR for his attribute boost pushed him into pretty rarefied air in terms of overall attributes. Sure, I probably could have selected Dwarf or something to push my STR to 19, or played other games for 20, but the +1 to everything you get for being human took both my 15s and both my 13s to the next level that gives a bonus, and even my “dump” stat – an INT of 13, is respectable. 

I could have sacrificed the extra STR (+2) for a Feat – Heavy Armor Mastery, still giving me STR 17 and three points of damage absorption or whatever you call it. But I chose the raw STR for now, and my next ability score improvement is only just shy of 7,000 XP away. This last session was basically one fight, and we got through that with about 1350. Looking at past games, that’s the lowest award in five or six sessions, and ranges go from about 2,500-9,000+. So I’d expect 1-5 more sessions, and I can pick up that Feat, and maybe Polearm Mastery. Or maybe the other order, since getting the attack of opportunity when a foe enters or leaves my reach is darn handy. I’ll pick up five more “attribute increases” even past that, so there will be plenty of feats on my plate. I’ll also have to see if there are better ways to get +1 to damage than STR 20. But Heavy Armor Mastery would push me to STR 19, and taking a stat boost to get to STR 20, WIS 16 (I like good Perception rolls), then picking up some nice feats from there would make sense to me.

Skills


I chose proficiencies in Athletics (for grappling) and Perception (to notice stuff). My background gave me History and Persuasion. At anywhere from +4 to +7 bonuses to these skills, I’m fairly happy with them.
Background


These were fun details with game-mechanical weight assigned to most of them. They helped steer the character’s conception quite well, and led to a nice background, captured by +Ken H in this evocative opening to his session notes:

The Prelude
Nosphryc Azurecoat was surrounded by the season warriors of his family at the start of the solemn ritual in the chapel of the family castle. The family’s cleric pronounced the admonitions and blessings, as the men and women in armed splendor looked on.

When the final affirmation of the congregation is spoken, Nosphryc would be teleported to a destination chosen by the family’s gods where he would hopefully prove his worth as a brave and true hero, fit to rule his people. Of course, the hope was that Nosphryc would bring back a few wagon loads of booty as well.

The deal is that Nosphryc (and I think Azurecoat is a temporary thing, much like Kara Zor-El had to undergo the Kryptonian Trials before she could wear her family crest in the Last Daughter of Krypton books) needs to prove himself worthy to rule. It’s a family thing, basically an analog of the aforementioned Kryptonian Trials, where the children of the family (need to come up with a real name) go adventuring to become heroes, conquerors, and of course to raise cash to support the noble line’s obligations.

I think he’ll be the fifth child (ROY G BIV), thus the blue surcoat.

Class




Not too much to talk about here; I don’t think Roll20 accounts for the improved critical chance (that’d be nice, though). The two attacks is nice, and I’ve used Second Wind once already, as a prelude to a healing aura, which brought me back up to my full allotment of HP before tomorrow’s game.

Weapons




Most of the time, I’ve used the bow. Going to need to figure out where to get a stash of arrows, and I have to wonder if I can talk the GM into letting me put a ton of them into my Bag of Holding. I must have gone through at least 6-10 of them last game, and we’re 21 miles down. I’m going to run out Real Soon Now.

Parting Shot


Overall, Nosphryc has held his own, save for an unfortunate tendency to shoot gnomes in the back. He’s amongst the lowest level in the group, as befits his beginning status. But 6th level can’t be too far behind, and the current group’s lead is 8th level, I think. That’s about 26,000 XP away, which again could be done in 3-6 games. That’s two ability score increases and the Remarkable Athlete feature, which will allow me to add +2 to a bunch of rolls at 9th level, +1 until then.

Until then, he could probably use some magical protection, but honestly, AC 18 seems fairly decent, and I’m not sure how much better it needs to be in 5e. A basic magic glaive or halberd would rock, as would an an enchanted bow, just so that he can affect critters that are only affected by magic.

I also need to round out his mundane items; he’s got the Explorer’s Pack, and those items need to appear on my character sheet. I’m also a big fan of alchemist’s fire . . . 

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One Comment

  1. I might suggest looking at the Observant feat: +1 Wis and +5 to your passive Perception and Investigation scores! Since those are always in effect (per Mike Mearls AMA http://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/2l69tp/ama_mike_mearls_codesigner_of_dd_5_head_of_dd_rd/ ) that's an amazing bonus if you like being perceptive.

    As for arrows. ask Ken after a battle. Most of the time you can recover them (depending on what you've shot them into).

    AC 18 should continue to be good throughout your career; it's part of the "bounded accuracy" design goal of D&D 5e that even hideously tough things have ACs that can actually sometimes be hit by low-level characters (like Ancient Bronze Dragons are only AC 22).

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