Grim Advice

Here is some advice I wrote for a player who was thinking about becoming a Grim from level 1. Even those thinking about the Grim prestige class might find it useful if picking a PrC mid-career.

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Some players have their PCs take levels in Grim later in their career, maybe after meeting Gargul during a resurrection. You, on the other hand, have the benefit of starting off from first level with a goal in mind. And planning now will give you some real advantages.

You will have some role-play choices ahead of you. Are you a loyal servant of Gargul from day one, content to serve as a Grim in any capacity needed? Or are you a true ghostbuster, maybe with more of a scholarly interest in the afterlife and the unknown, and less of a champion of the god? Or are you a humanitarian, seeking to help lost souls find their way because their sad stories tug at your heart? There are a number of ways to approach the prestige class.

But to get to the nuts and bolts, you will want to qualify for the prestige class as soon as you can. With that in mind, consider the requirements:

>> Spells: Able to cast 1st level spells.

That's not hard to hit. Rather, the highest hurdle to entrance is this ...

>> Skills: Intimidate 7 ranks

... it is the required 7 ranks in Intimidation! To get that, you have to have seven class levels, so the earliest you can take a level of Grim is 8th.

>> Feats: Iron Will, Toughness

Iron Will takes up one of your feat slots, no way around that. But I will point out that you can get a Toughness feat free by being a liontaur, minotaur, or centaur; and by signing up for a tour of duty in the Woldian Mailed Fist organization, and, at 6th level, by joining the Woldian League of Adventurers organization.

>> Special: Must perform a special ceremony while in the Realm of Shadow

Here is the kicker! The "Realm of Shadows" is the Woldian equivalent of the Ethereal Plane. So to fulfill this requirement, you have to spend at least a few rounds there. But how are you going to get into the Realm of Shadows? The Eyes of Gargul won't take you there ... getting there is part of the test.

So how? Certain spells will do it: Blink, Plane Shift, Shadow Walk, Etherial Jaunt, for example. The lowest level of these is Blink, but there is a chance you'll blink back into the Wold at the wrong time (save your hero points to use in this case). You can also use magic items, notably scrolls of those spells, but with a chance of failure if you are not high enough in level. There are also magic items like the very expensive Armor of Etherealness and the very expensive Cloak of Etherealness. An Obsidian Steed is somewhat less expensive but more dangerous.

Using House Rules for the Wold, the Woldian Blood Witch gains Blink as a 3rd level spell, Shadow Walk as a 5th level spell, and Ethereal Jaunt as a 6th level spell. But Dimensional Anchor and Lesser Planar Binding are not on the witch spell list, unless you take the Rune domain and gain Lesser Planar Binding as a 5th level spell.

Another way to get into the Realm of Shadows is to find a magic portal that lets you enter the plane, or a friendly NPC to cast a spell to help you get there. These would be major PC quests that you would have to arrange with your DM, if they were possible at all. A DM helping a PC in this way should not make it too easy!

And even after you get into the Realm of Shadows, you have to nail your shadow into the plane, using Lesser Planar Binding or Dimensional Anchor (or similar effect). These are nonstandard uses for the spells, and they only work while you are under the effect of a Bless cast by an Eye of Gargul.

So let's put all these together. You have to be 7th level just for the required Intimidate ranks. So take a 7th level cleric of Gargul. You can bless yourself, since you are an Eye of Gargul. You can cast Dimensional Anchor as a 4th level spell, and you can read a Plane Shift scroll with only a small chance of error. So that's pretty straightforward.

UNDER REVISION BELOW

If you want to multiclass in order to stock up on those Intimidate ranks, you could still do it as a barbarian1/cleric6 or rogue2/cleric5 if you used scrolls and were willing to gamble on the scroll failure checks.

But what if you wanted to be an arcane caster? A sorcerer or wizard could cast Blink to get into the Realm of Shadows. And Dimensional Anchor is a 4th level arcane spell as well as a 4th level divine one. Once again, you have to gamble on the Blink roll, but what the heck! Live dangerously.

Let me mention a couple other options. Wiz3/Cleric3/Mystic Theurge is a possible option, especially if you are willing to wait a level and jump into Grim at level 9. A witch honoring Gargul and taking the Shadow Domain gets there by level 7, too, taking a first level of the PrC at level 8.

But you might want your Grim to be a little more war-like. An option is to take four levels of Cleric (Shadow and Travel domains, the latter for the survival ranks), then three levels of Undead Hunter (another Gargul prestige class), then branch into Grim. The Undead Hunter gets a fighter BAB progression and better weapons than a pure cleric.

And you could go crazy, like me. I currently play a liontaur sorcerer1/fighter1/rogue2/avenger3/grim2! The Grim Avenger is a neat option with the idea that helping ghosts get revenge on their murderers sends them off to their final rest.

Other crazy options include taking some ranger levels, or paladin levels, for example.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

-- Cayzle