Tuesday, July 24, 2018

The Joy of Purchasing Your Starting Gear in D&D

So, as you can guess from the posts, I've been DMing for roughly two years now, and I'm very excited about several things (Ravnica and Eberron stuff announced/released today, for example,) but one of the most exciting things is that one of my friends is going to run his own couple-session adventure, giving us a break from our massive campaign and allowing me to actually play a character!

Per the DM's instruction, we're not revealing our characters to each other until we're at the table, but I doubt anyone in my group reads this blog, so I'll talk about it right now!

Spoilers for people in my D&D group other than the one who will be DMing to follow. For the rest of you... whatever!

My character is going to be a Great Old One Warlock (intending to go Pact of the Tome if we make it to level 3.) He's a human, but using the variant human rules I've given him moderately armored, which allows him access to medium armor and shields (something Hexblades get automatically.)

For this reason, I figured I'd forgo the usual starting gear and instead roll for cash to spend in "session 0."

So with +2 to his dexterity, my Warlock is able to wear Scale Mail, bumping him up to 16 AC, and then throw a shield on his off-arm (leaving the main hand for somatic spell components) and I've got what is basically a pure caster with the armor of a guy in full plate.

Then, a dungeoneer's pack covers most of the basic stuff you need, though I think I had to get a bedroll. From there, it was largely flavor stuff, like a book (with a Noble background, he already has some nice clothes.) He's got a quarterstaff as a weapon, though I suspect that he's almost never going to hit things physically (once I get Pact of the Tome I might go with Toll the Dead as range-agnostic alternative to Eldritch Blast.)

It's really fun, though, to go through the equipment and look at all the various things you can purchase.

With today's release of the Eberron material (I haven't purchased it yet, but they did post an updated Unearthed Arcana for its new races) I decided to roll up a Warforged Juggernaut Eldritch Knight Fighter (though he's technically not an EK yet as I'm rolling these at level 1.) I have two character concepts which would be next in priority after the Warlock, one a time-traveling Dragonborn from a modern future who essentially works for the time police, and the other the Warforged who was the guardian of an ancient library that was destroyed by some foe in the distant past and has only recently woken up.

Warforged are definitely a race you'll want to consider purchasing gear for.

In the new design, Warforged don't wear armor, but they can switch armor modes after a long rest to effectively get Light, Medium, or Heavy armor, and you have access to these modes based on the proficiencies of your class. Darkwood Core, the unarmored/Light armor option, gives you 11+dex, and you get to add your proficiency bonus if you're proficient in light armor. Composite Plating is effectively your medium armor mode, giving you 13+dex, with a max dex bonus of +2, and then your proficiency bonus. So if you have the +2, you're getting 17 AC at level 1. Heave Plating is the equivalent of heavy armor, giving you 16+proficiency and disadvantage on stealth checks. That means effectively starting with full plate.

But the biggest thing about this is that you can save a ton of gold.

You don't need to buy armor (though you can still use shields for the +2 AC bonus) and you're going to get guaranteed boosts to that armor as you level up.

On top of that, you also get to ignore rations or even bedrolls. A lot of your expenses are really negated by that whole construct nature (though you still count as a humanoid for spells.)

Anyway, this gives you tons of gold to consider spending on stuff like acid vials, caltrops, weapons, and any other fancy stuff you might need.

Going through the PHB's equipment lists really lets your imagination run wild. You could roll a character who has a whole bunch of acid vials to throw at enemies (and wouldn't that be a novel way to pick a lock, too?)

No comments:

Post a Comment