Help needed; making Gambit from X-Men

[Wiggins]

I'm trying to recreate favourite characters from various books, movies and tv-series using the 3.5 system.

Gambit is giving me trouble, mainly because there's so much I want him to be able to do;

Max Dexterity and Charisma, so unfortunately dumping everything else.

Starts out as a "thief and assassin", so begins as a rogue.
Acrobatic fighting, so maybe a dip into Monk. If he then has Evasion twice or even 3 times, I'd like to use the ACF to give him Spell Reflection and Spell Sense. I think there are some feats for monks to do with staff fighting?
Ascetic Mage, of course.


So far, so self explanatory. But then we start to run into trouble.

I want him to be able to summon temporary throwing weapons, but can only find spells for creating arrows and bolts. I assume there's a spell out there for this? Probably level 0 or level 1?
And I want him to have Explosive Runes.
So, Sorcerer 6. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe get him some defensive spells, since running around in a trenchcoat and spandex is an easy way to get yourself killed.
I wonder if it's possible to apply the "summon animals with buffs on them" feats that druids get to summoning throwing weapons with explosive runes on them. 

And more importantly, I want him to be really good at throwing things. Darts. Cards. Poles. Swords. People. I've never built anything like that, so I'll need a bit of advice.

Which race? It'll need to be Favoured Monk, so I have the options of;
Monkey Hengeyokai, Lesser Axani, T'kel, or Half-Elf with the "Choose an extra favoured class" feat. I think the latter fits Gambit better than the others, but it's going to be hard to do everything I want to. Lesser Axani is my second choice.

Any tips on making a thrower without Strength?

Correct Order to be worked out later;
Rogue 5
Sorcerer 6
Monk 2
Master Thrower 5
Nightsong Enforcer 2

Does this work?

What am I missing?

[geniussavant]

Personally, if I were going to create gambit, I would use a single level of monk on top of wilder with the feat that provresses monk abilities with a single psionic class. Then add in the feat that let's you flurry with a staff and use energy powers as his energy tricks. This way you aren't trying to make a monk who can cast spells and throw, you're making a wilder who can get into melee and blast his little heart out.

[InnaBinder]

Personally, if I were going to create gambit, I would use a single level of monk on top of wilder with the feat that provresses monk abilities with a single psionic class. Then add in the feat that let's you flurry with a staff and use energy powers as his energy tricks. This way you aren't trying to make a monk who can cast spells and throw, you're making a wilder who can get into melee and blast his little heart out.

Needs to be Chaos Monk, or one of the other non-Lawful homebrew variants, IMHO.

[Wiggins]

Much easier, Thanks!

Non-lawful Monk Tashalatora Wilder... couple of problems

Can I take Ascetic Psion as Charisma the way I can Ascetic Mage? No, it's only Intelligence... That's annoying...  Any ideas for a way around that? I know that Manifesting=Psi-Like=Spell-Like=Casting to qualify for things, but it specifies "Spontaneous Arcane" and I don't think I know a work-around.

I was sure there was a feat that improved the monk's ability to use Monk Weapons, like the Quarterstaff, in some way, but I can't find it, and even if I could, I'm not sure it would work with the Chaos Monk's Chaos Flurry.

At least he can use that with the Staff just as a class feature anyway.

[geniussavant]

Check ebberon for the monk feats... I think that's where I saw them

[Wiggins]

The Feat is Sudden Willow Strike from Player's Guide to Eberron. I knew I'd seen it, but thanks for the hint.

I'd be tempted to throw in a level of Lion Totem Barbarian to keep me from worrying about wands or dorje's of Lion's Charge. May as well pick up Whirlwind Attack too. Such a good dip.

But... I'll definitely want to get trapfinding and access to Search, Disable Device and Open Lock as Class Skills
Planar Touchstone for the Kobold Domain gets most of that, just leaves him without lockpicking. And frankly, I don't think I've ever seen him pick a lock when he could blow it open instead.

I'm still annoyed at being unable to get Ascetic Mage, but I suppose with the similar bonus to Touch AC from Wilder anyway, I'm just being greedy
Either that, or that's a reason to look at bonuses to AC that don't normally increase Touch AC, since Wilder boosts the Touch AC to keep up with it.

[geniussavant]

Well, you could go Psion with the monk goodies and take kung fu genius or carmadine monk to get monk stuff based off intelligence. Then just give him the highest charisma you can afford. It would make for a pretty decent build in terms of power. If I'm remembering correctly there is a equipment to get the social skills added to your list. A feat i think, maybe from online or DMG2 maybe?

Edit: I want to say that there is a way to get trapfinging and disable device out of your barbarian dip too, from dungeonscape I believe.

[Wiggins]

Yeah, I think that takes 3 levels in Barbarian, and that's more of a loss in psionics than looks good at this point when feats can do the job

[geniussavant]

I couldn't remember what it took, just figured I would let you know you had the option.

Anything else?

[Wiggins]

It's cool, thanks!

I'm trying to look around and see if there's any way to get Stunning Fist to use anything but Wisdom, otherwise taking the Quarterstaff Stunning feat with only 13 or 14 points in Wisdom is kind of lacklustre, but I think that's another dead end, lol

[geniussavant]

Depending on how your Dm reads kung fu genius, it might make it based off int.

[McBeardly]

Something you might want to consider if the DM lets you use online material is playing a ballister.

It is a psionic prestige class focused on charging thrown objects with psionic energy and exploding them.

[Wiggins]

Genius, genius.

Now, if only this whole tashalatora thing wasn't so complicated, lol.

Maybe increase that Barbarian dip to 3 after all...

Trapkiller Lion Totem Barbarian 3, Chaos Monk 1, Wilder 1, Tashalatora, Ballisteer 10, Sudden Willow Strike, Fist of Dal Quor 5 ??

[Zonugal]

Wiggins, I'd watch out on spreading your character too thin. You have a lot of focuses and you don't want to fall into the trap of a Jack of All Trades.

I honestly think an Ascetic Mage build works fairly well. A build like Monk 2/Sorcerer X can be rocking charisma to AC, using the Fiery Burst reserve feat to imitate Gambits power and with Slippers of Battledancing you can be using Cha for attacks & damage.

[nijineko]

hmmm, wandering in a different direction might result in a drunken master / master thrower / exotic weapon specialist. even take a couple levels of targetteer if you could fit it. that would give you some decent thrown damage and the ability to throw anything with proficiency. a psionic race plus greater psionic shot would also be interesting.

[Wiggins]

Wiggins, I'd watch out on spreading your character too thin. You have a lot of focuses and you don't want to fall into the trap of a Jack of All Trades.

I honestly think an Ascetic Mage build works fairly well. A build like Monk 2/Sorcerer X can be rocking charisma to AC, using the Fiery Burst reserve feat to imitate Gambits power and with Slippers of Battledancing you can be using Cha for attacks & damage.

Yeah, I knew from the start I wanted this guy to be able to do too many things

hmmm, wandering in a different direction might result in a drunken master / master thrower / exotic weapon specialist. even take a couple levels of targetteer if you could fit it. that would give you some decent thrown damage and the ability to throw anything with proficiency. a psionic race plus greater psionic shot would also be interesting.

I'll have to look into that, I'm afraid that's the direction of things that I have very little experience with

[Surreal]

I feel like a dip into soulknife/soulbow handles the whole projectiles thing nicely. Mix and match with whatever other rogue/monk-ish classes fit after that. Perhaps unarmed swordsage instead of monk?

[nijineko]

if you're going soul weapons, then you need to use the soulknife prestige from athas.org (completely 100% official material, as per wotc. athas didn't like the soulknife as a base, so they converted it back into a prestige, and a much better one at that), take at least a single level, then jump into soulbow. furthermore, if dragon is allowed, use the mindblade feat to boost your effective soulknife level by four, which upgrades your weapons a whole lot faster in the prestige than with a 20 level base class. ^^ will need four levels of psywar, or something similar to enter soulknife, however.

[SleepyShadow]

What about Spellthief 1/Wu-Jen 4/Unseen Seer 4/Master Thrower 5/Unseen Seer +6?

If you focus on using Fire Shuriken, it could result in quite a lot of damage dealt, as well as being thematically appropriate

[Wiggins]

So many good ideas!
I'll lay the problem out once more though, just so people can see what a compulsive idiot I'm being.

Trapfinding (I know the Kobold Domain gets this, or the Theft Gloves soulmeld)

High AC (Mage Armor, Ascetic Mage etc. make the Sorcerer very appealing for this)
High Reflex

Concentration
Diplomacy
Bluff
Sense Motive
Tumble
Jump
Search
Open Lock
Disable Device

Throwing weapons or similar ranged touch attacks, ideally made out of or resulting in either force or explosive damage, though fire is a close 3rd

Pounce or other improved acrobatic charge methods (Is there a prestige that grants Transmutation advanced learning so I can grab "Lion's Charge"?, failing that or a Barbarian dip, I may end up taking all 3 Martial Study feats and getting Pouncing Charge at 18th Level)

Either Flurry of Blows or something else that grants extra attacks
A way to apply extra force or explosive damage to melee attacks
These must be compatible with a Quarterstaff

If I had a way to get Stunning Fist to use Charisma rather than Wisdom, I'd also try to take either Sudden Willow Strike or Stunning Master, but I don't think this exists, and if it did I don't think I'd have the feats.

Casting is only as important as its ability to enhance damage at close and melee range, and possibly to improve armour class or to help improve the charging ability, so if you can see another way to achieve these, casting is disposable, it's just hard to give up though.

Sneak attack is optional. It doesn't really fit, except maybe via the dragon feat that lets you replace it with energy damage. That'd be cool.

So you see, I don't think it's really possible to do this all in one character. It's been fun to try though.