To Strive, to Seek, to Find, and Not to Yield: The Seeker's Handbook
"It's just one of those things. We can control many aspects of life, but we cannot control nature."
Selling Points: Why You Would Want to Play a Seeker
Seekers are not good. The designers didn't
eat their Wheaties the morning they wrote the Seeker, and the result is a
Controller who specializes in perfectly ignorable soft control. Still,
if you're reading this you likely want to play one, and if you do you
probably fall into one of these two groups (or both, like me):
You like to be challenged when
you play D&D and you like to optimize, but your friend wants to
play a Goliath Pacifist Runepriest. If you play a Seeker you can
optimize to your heart's content without overshadowing your
CharOp-phobic friends.
You are in love with the Seeker conceptually. All
those melee STR builds with big weapons start to blend together, but
the Seeker looks and plays radically different from even the most
similar builds (Ranged Weapon Bard, Hunter, Thrown Weapon Ranger). It's a
Primal iteration of the Arcane Archer archetype, and that makes it
cool.
Fear not; with proper care, the
Seeker can ascend to the lofty heights of mediocrity, and actually
approach competency instead of burdening the party by increasing xp
budgets without contributing significantly.
This Handbook will use the following system for ratings:
Gold: You should pick this. Period
Sky Blue: Brilliant. You should be putting this into your build.
Blue: Good. This pick is a solid choice.
Black: Average. You could do worse, you could do better.
Purple: Bad. Can work sometimes but should be generally avoided.
Red: Terrible. Look elsewhere.
This Handbook covers the following sources:
AP - Arcane Power
AV - Adventurer's Vault
AV 2 - Adventurer's Vault 2
DXXX - Dragon Magazine, issue XXX
DMA 2009 - Dragon Magazine Annual 2009
DP - Divine Power
DSCS - Dark Sun Campaign Setting
FRPG - Forgotten Realms Player's Guide
HoS - Heroes of Shadow
HotFK - Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms
HotFL - Heroes of the Fallen Lands
MM - Monster Manual
MM 2 - Monster Manual 2
MOTP - Manual of the Planes
MP - Martial Power
MP 2 - Martial Power 2
PHB - Player's Handbook
PHB 2 - Player's Handbook 2
PHB 3 - Player's Handbook 3
PHH 1 - Player's Handbook Heroes: Series 1
PHH 2 - Player's Handbook Heroes: Series 2
PHR: DB - Player's Handbook Races: Dragonborn
PHR: TF - Player's Handbook Races: Tieflings
PrP - Primal Power
PsP - Psionic Power
AP - Action point.
BBEG - Big bad evil guy.
Burst/Nova/Spike Damage - Generally understood to mean the highest amount of damage a character can inflict in the space of a single round. Usually, calculations for this allow 1 round of setup before the actual damage.
CA - Combat advantage.
DPR - Damage per round, which is generally meant to mean the character's expected damage value using At-Will powers against a standard enemy of the same level (eloquently described by Adslahnit as the Official CharOp Inanimate Block of Tofu™).
ED - Epic destiny.
HP - Hit points.
LX - Level X.
MAD - Multiple attribute dependency, which is defined as needing 3 or more ability scores for a given build.
MBA - Melee basic attack.
MC - Multiclass or multiclassing.
NAD - Non-AC defense.
OA - Opportunity attack.
PP - Paragon path.
RBA - Ranged basic attack.
THP - Temporary hit points.
Props:
To everyone posting first of all: I'm relying on you to give me perspective.
To the terrible, worthless layabouts at ##4eCO who poked and prodded me along while I worked on this, and endured my endless blathering.
To LDB in particular; the format/layout is 97% copypasta.