The board game, I mean. I'm just curious.

Me and the wife may be joining a 3.5 game, and it made me curious to see if any of you guys happened to play - I might ask you guys for advice and so forth when it comes to character building.

Anybody out there?

Well I started playing a few months ago and I've probably played 6 times so I'm not too knowledgeable of it but if you have a question I might be able to answer it.. maybe.

Wow that was fast.

I'm more curious about who's playing right now, but what the hell - what edition do you play?

The newest as of a couple of months ago, I haven't played in like 4 weeks though lol.

That's cool. How does it compare to 3.5, or have you never played that version?

Not lately. :(

But I have played all editions. My advice for 3.5 is that multiclassing a combat character (rogue, fighter, ranger, etc.) is awesome, but multiclassing a spellcaster (wizard, cleric, sorcerer, etc.) is a bad idea.

There are feats and prestige classes which make multiclassing a spellcaster suck less, but they never get the cool synergies that you can get by mixing up combat classes.

How about a monk? My wife was looking at playing a monk and we were looking at the class listing and those guys are terrifying.

I'm thinking of playing a cleric, but I agree that multiclassing wouldn't work unless I took the Contemplative prestige class or homebrewed my own (which I may do)

Monks aren't quite as scary as they look, because they have a harder time with magic items than most other combat classes and they rely heavily on having many good base stats, but it's sometimes a boon to not be so dependent on magic swords and armor. They're great if you enjoy being a decent front-liner and you want decent skills, great mobility, and having stronger defenses against magic attacks than melee attacks. They make great mage-killers. I suggest taking a couple of grapple feats and crushing the life out of any spellcasters you encounter.

As for clerics, they're one of the most powerful base classes in the game, in exchange for the not-so-fun role of spending a lot of spell slots keeping their comrades in the action. Their skill selection kinda stinks, though. If you don't mind being support and being accountable to a church/god, I say more power to you. There are some good prestige classes out there for them, but they tend to be limited depending on what god you worship. If you're starting at low level, I suggest you persuade the party to get you a wand of Cure Light Wounds ASAP, it's the most economical way to heal once your spells have run dry, and there are going to be situations that you just have to heal through.

Well thank you then, I will keep that in mind.

Our party looks like it's goign to be way too melee-heavy - we were goign to have the Cleric, the Monk, a Ranger, a Fighter, and a Paladin. Now the Ranger may be going Wizard just to balance out a bit, but I was considering doing the same just in case we come up against enemies where hitting them with sticks won't do the job.

I'll tell my wife to take some grapple feats!

Build your cleric with lots of attack and utility spells and you'll be okay. Most of those warriors have some kind of healing ability to take up the slack. I'm more concerned that your group might be thwarted by the first tough locked door you come across...

A lot depends on your DM. I'm used to playing a character with lots of skills and utility because I played with DMs who reward information gathering and subterfuge. If your DM is mostly just going to throw monsters at you, you'll do okay as long as your warriors have the weapons they need to defeat them. A clever DM will adapt the challenges based on the group of PCs, so you never encounter a locked door that you can't smash open or circumvent or a monster which is immune to physical attacks.