Welcome back to the weekly D&D and Tabletop Gaming thread! Here’s a place where we can talk about Dungeons & Dragons or any other tabletop games that you nerds might be into. Tell us about the games you’re playing, speculate about future expansions, recruit your fellow Avocados into new groups, whatever you want.
Discussion topic for the week: single-class parties! There are 12 core classes in D&D, and each one has a handful of subclasses that players choose from, generally committing to a path by 3rd level. These subclasses can make for some pretty drastic differences in the way one character plays compared to a character of the same class but a different subclass.
Now we all know that a balanced party is best, one that includes characters that fill certain roles. The tank that soaks up damage, the striker that deals damage to enemies, the healer, the skill monkey, etc. Today, I’m issuing a challenge–pick a class and build the most balanced party you can using only that class. You don’t need full stats/spell lists for each character, just give me a race/subclass combo and any feats or background features you think would be good. No more than one character for each subclass. Only official material (no homebrew or UA).
[spoiler title=”Cast of Characters”]The AvocaD&D group is currently running through a set of Eberron adventures, DM’d by Josephus Brown. The player characters (all at Level 2) are as follows:
- TheCleverGuy as Cybin Stoneswift, a Hill Dwarf Wizard who’s singularly obsessed with the study of various forms of mushrooms
- Otto (our only non-Avocado party member) as Magz, a Changeling Rogue, a native of Sharn familiar with the city’s seedy underbelly
- The Wasp Woman as NRS-K80, a Warforged Cleric who discovered a passion for healing after serving as a living weapon in the Last War
- The Hayes Code as Cassidy Cody, a Tiefling Bard who makes a living busking in the lightning rail stations with the talent passed down to her from her Pa’s deal with the devil
- Wafflicious as Pizzazzle, a Dragonborn Druid who just wants to clean up the planet so it’s fit for consumption by the all-powerful Nexu
- Spiny Creature as Aina Nistor, a Half-Elf Monk who wears the red hood of the Blood of Vol, a religion that worships no deity, but rather the divinity within all mortals
- Sister Jude the Obscure as Orana Coratash, a Kalashtar Barbarian who’s hiring herself out as muscle to local adventurers[/spoiler]
[spoiler title=”In the Basement of Boromar”]
Where was I? Oh yes, we’d managed to break into the desk upstairs and acquire the control ring for the secret elevator and a key of some kind. We knew we had to get downstairs, so Aina bribed those urchins again to toss a match into the big pile of fireworks out back. The rest of us milled around, trying to be too suspicious. When the explosion happened, the other party guests started running around like chickens with their heads off. I had expected that they’d all just enjoy the show, maybe a bit surprised that it started early. I guess I hadn’t counted on ALL the fireworks going off at once.
But it worked out for us. In the panic and confusion, we all managed to sneak into the hidden elevator. Well, almost all. Aina and Pizzazzle got separated and had to follow the crowd out the main door. Oh, but we did bump into NRS-K80, who’d apparently crashed the party herself, and brought her along with us. Anyway, as we approached the hidden elevator, someone said they saw the door closing, as if someone had gone in just before us. We went inside, but didn’t see anyone else. They must have already gone down.
We saw the same little halfling-sized mechanical man in the elevator, with a switch in its hand. While NRS-K80 tried to liberate the automaton from its “enslavement” by us “fleshbags,” as she so charmingly put it, Magz put on the control ring and pulled the lever. The elevator started going down at once. 
Meanwhile, the other guard and the dinosaur were attacking us. Orana engaged the halfling, but tripped and nearly fell as she swung her hammer. She lost her tempter a bit after that. I grabbed one of my most poisonous mushrooms out of my bag and hit the dinosaur with a Ray of Sickness, as it leaped at Orana to defend Orana. Luckily, the raptor overshot and missed its attack. K80 rang the beast’s bell with a Toll the Dead and it dropped to the ground. With his partner dead and both exits covered, the last guard stabbed at Orana with his spear, but missed. Orana was already mad, and she smashed the guard’s head with her hammer, sending him reeling. There’s another one whose bad side I don’t want to be on. Magz finished off the guard by stabbing him in the back with her rapier.
The guard room was mostly empty, but there were 2 big doors, as well as the secret door that first guard had tried to run into. Cassidy retrieved the body from that room and saw that it was an armory of sorts, with weapons and armor of various kinds, all made for halflings. None of it looked especially interesting. We moved through the armory through another door, Orana leading the way. The next room was a dim cave-like area, more natural stone than man-made. It was also full of torture implements. There was a path leading to the north, lined with empty cells. We figured we found where the Boromar clan keeps their “special guests.” The path was a dead end, but we searched a bit and found a secret door that led ito the sewers. Orana remembered that she’d heard about a nearby sewer system that we had considered using to get into the house in the first place. I guess that plan might have worked after all, but at least now we had a good escape route.
We went back to the guard room and checked the other doors for traps, but both looked clear. Orana tried the eastern door first and found a small room with a safe in the middle. The safe was covered with arcane runes and was positively glowing with magic. I inspected the runes a bit and determined that it was some kind abjuration magic, probably an alarm spell of some kind. If we could disrupt the runes, we could probably disarm it, but it would take a very steady hand not to trigger the spell at the same time. Before we started, I suggested checking the other room, to make sure nothing was going to jump us from behind. Orana went first again, but all she found was a latrine dug into the ground. The smell was nauseating, so we quickly left that room and shut the door again.
Back in the safe room, Magz used her theives’ tools to expertly deface the arcane runes and disarm the spell–it was very impressive even if we later remembered that key we’d picked up upstairs. Inside the safe, we found the stolen letter we were looking for, along with a bag of gems, a stack of promisory notes, and an enchanted silver circlet. I recognized the circlet as a circlet of blasting, and we gave it to Cassidy. I pocketed a particularly large gem from the bag, thinking I might be able to use it for a spell or two later on.
As we left the room, we suddenly heard the elevator starting back down. The ruckus upstairs must have died down and someone was coming down to check on their goods. We bolted through the sewers, thinking that we’d made it out without being seen, but as we exited the sewer, among a busy street, we saw a group of Boromar halflings heading our way. Apparently, they saw us go in and someone knew where that sewer tunnel came out and they were trying to cut us off! We managed to get out just ahead of them though, and we made a break for it. To throw off pursuit, I tossed out another of my special mushrooms and made an illusory ogre appear in the street, causing a panic among the crowd and slowing the halfling downs somewhat. Following suit, Orana tossed a flask of oil and a match behind us, but unfortunately all she managed to do was give a poor old woman some sever burns and alert the authorities. Magz dropped a bunch of ball bearings on the ground in front of the pursuing halflings and a few of them fell. Meanwhile, Cassidy dropped her magical disguise and blended in with the crowd, breaking off from the group. K80 commandeered a skycab, shoving the driver out onto the streets. A few of the halflings fired slings at us, hitting Orana with a rock, and a couple more emerged from an alley. I reached into my pouch for a handful of powdered lichen of different colors and used an incantation I know to blind them with Color Spray. As Cassidy melted away into the crowd, the rest of us piled into K80’s cab.
We sped away, Orana shouting directions at K80, but another cab full of halflings flew over giving chase. From the ground below, Cassidy cast Sleep on the halflings in the pursuing skycab, causing some to pass out, but the driver remained awake. We started to pull away, but members of the city watch had now arrived scene. The guards cast Web across the streets, but K80 pushed the cab right through. I don’t know where that robot learned to fly like that, but I’m glad she did! The halflings got stuck and lost some more ground, though they managed to burn their way out of the web in a few minutes, and started shooting at us with longbows. K80 took an arrow from one of the halflings, and the cab itself was tagged as well, but we kept driving. We needed some more distance to get away cleanly, and I was out of magic mushrooms. But I still had Mage Hand. I pulled a blanket out of my bag and used the Mage Hand to toss it at the driver of the following cab. I hit him just right, and the blanket wrapped around the driver’s head. The cab crashed, tossing most of the halflings out. K80 managed to get us around a corner, scraping the walls of the alleyway and bursting out into another street. We pulled away just as the city watch stopped the bandits behind us.
Having finally shaken off our pursuers, we headed for the police station where Officer Kevin was waiting for us. Along the way, we opened the letter we’d gone to all this trouble for, but it was written in a cipher we couldn’t decode. Outside the station, we met up with Cassidy again, who’d made her own way on foot. We went in and met with Officer Karat and a representative from the courier guild, House Orien. The Orien rep said they were just happy that the letter didn’t make it wherever the Boromars wanted it to go, but didn’t really care what happened to it otherwise. Kerwin suggested we keep it, because it might be helpful as leverage if the Boromars try to retaliate against us. Especially if we can decode the message. Also, as a reward, the officer gave us some items usually used by police officers– a horn of silent alarm, a rope of mending, a couple more healing potions (Orana and I claimed each claimed one), and small bag of magic stones that he said would pack a punch hard enough to knock a person on their ass. Magz thought she’d get some use out of that stuff.
I don’t know what sort of trouble these people are going to get me into next…[/spoiler]