Hi, my dm recently acquired the Worlds Largest Dungeon book, converted it to pathfinder, and now is having just 2 people do the entire thing. Me and my friend are SCREWED, but this should be interesting. Basically i just have one problem, im not good at min maxing and i need to do it.

So, if anyone would be willing to help me out it would be much appreciated. I have any 3.5 or pathfinder book available that i can provide proof exists, aside from that, were pretty much completely open for anything. Were starting at level 1, god im afraid of what im about to see.

Be sure to pick two classes that work well together. Cleric is a must have for the healing and buffs, and some kind of rogue and/or arcane caster would also be handy. Cleric can pick up rogue slack when find trap becomes available, but before that things could be painful. Could consider one person going cleric/wizard and picking up one of the various prestige classes that lets you pull double duty in those (Themurgest or something along those lines if I remember right.)

Limits to what you can do at first level to min/max, but you could try and set yourself up to eventually get to one of the 'super classes' like the hive mage. If you're not looking to go totally twinky though... less sure, but you'll definitely need a cleric or someone that can at least cure.

Consider the.... shoot, what was it called... truenamer, has abilities to heal and harm and a bunch of handy auxiliary abilities, and has a theoretically very high 'spells' per day, but is much less consistent than your standard mage.

And there is a material in arms and equipment which gives -20% spell failure, great for giving a mage armor without bracers of armor.

I'm not familiar with this dungeon set-up in particular, but I'd imagine it was probably designed for a full party - so you may want to see how your GM feels about doing Gestalt classing. Basically, you level up in two different classes simultaneously, gaining the class abilities and the better of whatever per-level bonuses they provide. I believe was original set out in Unearthed Arcana (and as moderately-common houserule before that), but has been reproduced in the html d20 SRD: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/...tcharacters.htm Otherwise, I would think you and your friend's adventuring career will be a short one. Even doubling-up may only prolong your game a bit, since you're still somewhat short-handed.

As far as cheesing it up with vanilla levelling - if you haven't already, you may want to check the CharOp boards at the official WotC forum: http://community.wizards.com/go/forum/view...er_optimization There's a bunch of threads there telling you how to break nearly every class/combo you may want to use (or at least pointers towards breaking it your way).

Apart from not entering, I think your best bet is probably to try to find a base of operations to secure supplies from and rest at, then venture out to fight as little at a time as you can to slowly level. It's a strategy that is usually more tolerable in computer games than live ones, but you might be able to make it work for you.

Of course, build is critical, but unless you want AD&D 2nd edition advice I can't help you (actually, it's been years since I could help with that, either).

~J

Okay I bought a PDF copy of that monster a while back and it is a dozy. For a heads up wizards, since the party can't really leave the place are straight up HOSED.
Artificers are probably in the same bucket, unless your DM lets them cannibalize magic items for the handwavery that is magic item creation costs in gold pieces, in which case such class would be excellent.

That said, since it;s only two players really try to convince your DM to allow you guys to go with the gestalt variant, and the Leadership feat too if you can swing it.
Second, try to get the Flaw variant rule in too to help smooth things out.
I can't remember the name but the old WotC boards and probably the Brilliant Gameologists boards might have a thread about a two member party contest where they'd try to create a party of 2 level 20 characters using any legal material to defeat some objective, but it's been so long I don't remember what it was titled.

Now then if you DO get the gestalt rule in. I'd suggest one sort of Divine/Melee combo guy, and a Arcane/Super skill monkey. Something like a wild-shaping druid/ Crusader so he can be a self-healing, buffing, melee monster and his best buddy a artificer/factotum, that can rip apart any trashy magic item to build something useful and has more skills then he knows what to do with.

Or ask you GM if you can run multiple PCs each not as fun as gestalt but not as mindbogglingly OP if you crunch it numbers wise ether.

Actually I would think two characters would be more powerful than one gestalt character if only because they would have twice the number of actions in a turn.

dwarf druid/cleric VERY GOOD IDEA being able to see in the dark and not die of starvation is importaint here. I got though most of the first level before I died of dehydration.

Yeah. The usual metric (actions per turn) has a gestalt character being equivalent to about 1.25-1.5 characters, depending on the synergy of the component classes.

Mostly Cleric + couple fighter levels (Dwarf?, IIRC its 1 level of Fighter for every 3 levels of Cleric, so like at level 4,8,12, etc take 1 level of fighter)
Mostly Wizard + a rogue level (Elf?, IIRC pick rogue at 1st level; then wizard for the rest of the way)

You should be fine if you min max it that way.

How ever with two PC you do have to eat x2 times as much ect

Never played WLD, is food and drink really that big of a sticking point?

As someone else mentioned, if you can convince the GM to let you turn gold/treasure directly into the components needed for magic items, artificer could be exceptionally powerful. They can do the rogue stuff, and can make all the exact magic items you want, and they can both cure and do offensive. Perhaps my favorite item I ever made was gloves of cure minor wounds. Infinite uses per day, and the cost of the item only works out to like 500 gold or something. Basically lets you completely heal the party between battles and do emergency stabilizing during battle.

Oh Arificers how I love you my fav PC was a warforged artificer I basicly ended up being the tank and big hitter of the party plus bane buffing your weapons before a though fight against 30 odd orcs at lvl 2 was genius.

Redblade is a free character generator that will make 3.5e characters in a blink. Does all the work for you, it's step by step and pretty. And best of all free. If you join the yahoo group you can also download the Campaign Setting mod that allows you to add dozens of races and classes.

What ECL are you allowed to start with?

How savvy is the DM?

And do you want a challenge? or do you just want to embarrass the dungeon?

Also: I've done Gestalt before, it gets pretty over powered pretty fast. But... Then again... 3.5 in general gets pretty over powered pretty fast.

Hey, just because my wizard can cast spells in which a successful save means you take 20d6 damage at 9th level....

I had a underpowered changling rouge. He wasn't built for combat as much as skill monkeying and social rolls. But by then end of it he was able read the mind for 3-4 people around him at will. Could form an array of natural weapons as needed. And with the shadow magic he took up later on top of being a shade survival practically any where. Never ageing or needing to eat, sleep or breath. He took over the theves guild ect of the campaign world playing with their rivalry to feather other goals. THis was when he go to epic lvls in Gestalt.

I also made a lvl 21 Gestalt char capable of 100+ dagger throws a turn.