TOPIC: V8 Friday 12:36 CST

Hello!

Noticed that there are Barbarian, Cleric, Elf Wizard, Rogue coming to the party.
Wondering if you guys had a difficulty preference? My group of 5 are looking to bring at least a Druid, Fighter, Wizard... possibly Bard/Paladin/Monk as well.

We prefer Hardcore. We don't have the hp or saves for Nightmare.

Hey Adam. Hardcore sounds good to us. Our loot from VTD7 is arriving tomorrow and we'll be gathering as a group on Tuesday to divide it all up. Will solidify the classes we plan to bring by then and try to get out stat blocks out to you.

Hey Adam,

We'll be bringing Bard, Druid, Fighter, Paladin, and Wizard for sure. Will send stat blocks soon, but looks like HC is definitely feasible. We could use a bit of help in gear for guarantee, but if nothing then we still love a good challenge

Are you all 5th level? If not we can help with that. I'll send our quartermaster this way too.

Adam's quartermaster here. We've got 8 rings of heroism, a charm of heroism and a might set so we can get a whole team to 5th level if you need to borrow rings.

If you need to borrow anything else, let me know. We've got the elemental necklace for the druid. Our only epic weapon is the +3 deathcleaver used by the barbarian.

None of us are level 5, so we would be grateful if we could borrow level boosters. Would like to inquire if anyone is using the might set and how many pieces of the set are available, as I think it would fit well on the fighter.

Also, is the elemental neck for druid the Iktomi legendary poly one?

We normally use the might set for the Bard.
It's scepter of might, boots of might and girdle of might.
The druid item is Greater Shaman Necklace.

You can borrow all those as well as 4-5 rings of heroism.

You've got... Bard, Druid, Fighter, Paladin, and Wizard
Druid I've also got dragonscale armor +8AC -1 fire damage, and a spare Gregor's Tome of Focus.
Bard I've got a shield of the Scholar (free action scroll 1/combat), Widseth's Mystical Lute (play and attack)
Fighter doesn't have much, a belt of Ogre Mage (+3str) and a Shirt of Blessed Str (+2str)
Paladin, we've got several nice things: Amulet of Guarding, Ring of Protection +4, Mithril Bracers +2, Dirtdazzy's boots of skipping, and Shaed (cloak), and a defender set (Plate, Shield, Helm)
Wizard we don't really have anything as we've shifted the good stuff to the Elf Wizard.

If you want to borrow any of that for the run, feel free.

Hi! Druid here. I normally treat druid as a tanky spellcaster somewhere between cleric and wizard. If I were to utilize the greater shaman necklace, would it make more sense to build a melee fighting druid since level 5 gives keen polymorph? Please also tell me more about polymorphing and the use of the shaman necklace. I've never seen polymorph in action before. Thanks! Looking forward to the run.

Yeah, this would play a bit differently than a tanky spellcaster. Basically at the beginning of combat you can say "I turn into a Air/Earth/Fire/Ice elemental." You then "slide" the necklace like a weapon. It has 6,7,8,9,11,12,15 damage on the wheel. You also get 10 points of damage reduction for Shock/Sonic/Fire/Cold depending on which one you polymorph into.

It plays a bit closer to a fighter, as it focuses mostly on slider attacks. For other gear, you'd want to boost STR as much as possible it increase your to-hit bonus. "Focus" items are also good to increase damage.

It's an option if you'd like to give it a try. I don't want to pressure anyone to play in any particular way. I would suggest borrowing the dragonscale armor though, as whatever you do that's probably +3 or +4 AC for you.

No lie, that sounds like a super fun alternative. I'll try to slot out a build to see where I can get my stats.
Also, since it feels like you guys are more experienced, what would you consider a "reasonable" AC to have?

It really depends on the character. Our Wizard rocks a 10 AC most of the time. It is just too costly to try to get him AC items at the expense of magic boosters. Our Druid is stated out for 23, which is decent. We've geared the druid up to 28 before in the past after a bad experience where he got one-shot'd by something in the final room, but then rolled it back to add more strength and focus items for polymorphing. If you can get 20 I'd say you are probably good.

Our Paladin in contrast to the wizard has an AC of 30 with something like 9 or 10 damage reduction from melee attacks. With double guard, a DM who picks a random character picks the paladin 3/10 times, and if the paladin somehow gets hit, the damage reduction almost negates it entirely. The paladin's damage is within the rounding error of the Barbarian though, so he's kinda only got one job.