Scheming and Rakish Nobles

My friend created 2 builds for his noble class, the Scheming Noble and the Rakish Noble.

Scheming Noble

The scheming noble is a master of stratagems and battle tactics and relies on his minions to get most of his work done on the battlefield.

If you’re a tactician, you’ll love this build. The class feature of the Scheming Noble is an encounter power sense weakness.

You instinctively know the weaknesses of your enemy and can signal to your allies to take advantage of it.

The effects are similar to that of the wondrous item Foe Stone (go ahead and look that up).

Rakish Noble

A rakish noble is a flamboyant, wise-cracking saboteur who is a skillful user of poisoned blades and poisoned words.

If you’re a storyteller, you’ll love this build. Warning: You’ll have to come up with tons of improvised insults. The suggested at-will power is Taunting Remark…

The class feature of the Rakish Noble is an encounter power unexpected distraction.

By tossing a rock, making a offensive statement or acting in a highly unusual manner you distract your enemy and waste his precious time.

It disrupts a minor action done by a creature within 5 squares. The flavour is actually quite compatible with the changeling’s racial power Changeling Trick. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to use this combination while playing… it just looks awesome in my mind. *sigh*

Thoughts

I like strategy. I just like storytelling more. So my personal preference is the rakish noble. The powers allow more flair (have you seen the dramatisation of Venomous Blossom and Cloaked Escape?).

Because of the minions involved, when you’re playing a noble, it could feel like playing a chess game. Especially if you’re playing a scheming noble. You’ll have to really think to press the enemies and still keep the game going without delaying other players.

Let me tell you, the noble class is not for the faint hearted. The complexity of the requirements of the powers, together with the manipulation of minions and positions, are going to push your brain’s CPU cycles to 95% capacity. However, if you find the classes you’ve been using are not challenging you anymore, the noble is just the class for you. (or maybe you’re just masochistic… whatever works for you then).