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:

>> Base Attack Bonus: +5

The fastest way to get this is with five levels in fighter-oriented classes. But the highest hurdle to entrance is not the BAB requirement ...

>> Skills: Concentration 10 ranks, Intimidate 5 ranks

... it is the required 10 ranks in Concentration! To get that, you have to have seven class levels, and at least one of those must have Concentration as a class skill. The Intimidate requires that you either buy those ranks cross class, or multiclass, since no class has both Intimidate and Concentration as class skills. Of core classes, only barbarians, fighters, and rogues have Intimidate as class skills. And neither do the Wold's house rule classes, the Sharpshooter or the Witch.

>> 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, a Woldian Horizon Walker can travel to a plane for which he has Planar Terrain Mastery, but in the Wold, Horizon Walkers are people with monk levels who only use nonlethal damage ... plus you'd have to be a 6th level HW to do it, which means 11th level PC minimum. Bleck.

Somewhat more encouraging from the Wold House Rules vault, the Witch gains Blink as a 3rd level spell, Shadow Walk as a 5th level spell, and Ethereal Jaunt as a 6th level spell.

Another way to get into the Realm of Shadows is to find a magic portal that let's 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!

BUT BUT BUT! The easiest way of all is with the special Woldian House rule for domains of Gargul. A cleric of Gargul (and no other cleric) can take the Woldian Shadow Domain. That lets you cast Blink as a level 3 spell and Ethereal Jaunt as a level 4 spell!

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 Concentration ranks. So take a 7th level cleric of Gargul with the Shadow Domain. You can bless yourself, since you are an Eye of Gargul. You can cast Ethereal Jaunt as your 4th level domain spell, and you can cast Dimensional Anchor since you are a seventh level cleric. The crummy part is that you had to buy your five ranks of Intimidate cross class, but you can bite the bullet on that and bear the pain.

If you do not want to be a cleric of Gargul, or if you want other domains, you can buy a Scroll of Plane Shift at the Catacombs magic shop, and your chance of failure is not too high (and you can reroll if you blow the check by using a hero point). Once there, you can cast Dimensional Anchor. So that's pretty straightforward.

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