Scalable tank suggestions for 3.5

[dob]

I'm probably going to be joining a 3.5 game where the characters are 10th level and the DM plans to take it all the way to epic. It's been suggested that the party could use another tank, as they have only one at the moment ("only a druid"). I know that straight martial classes tend to get side-lined at or around 10th level, so I'm looking to build something that'll have the potential to run with the rest of the team. Never having played that high before, I thought I'd inquire here for suggestions.

I'm considering either a tripping fighter or a knight. If I went for the former, I'd probably give the spiked chain a whirl, so to speak, but don't know which prestige classes outside of exotic weapons master would help keep it viable at higher levels. For the latter, I was thinking lance and horse-mounted combat, with a riding dog and some potions of reduce person to remain viable in cramped quarters.

I'm not yet sure which books outside core are legit; if crusader is allowed, that seems to be a natural multi-class for knights. That, or maybe a dwarven defender, though the combat potential for the latter seems to be simply park yourself in front of the party. I'd prefer something with more tactical options.

Any suggestions? I'm not looking to get crazy with the optimizations, but I do want it to still be fun to play in a few months.

[Edwin]

Might want to consider Tome of Battle if you want to stay viable at higher levels.

Though, I'm sure you've already considered that.

[Pronon]

If i was going to tank here's the options i would consider

d12 options
Knight - I recommend this because they're an awesome class. and who doesn't want your shield ac bonus to be added to their touch ac.

d10 options
Paladin - If the party doesn't mind having one
Paladin 5/ Kensai 5 - needs no comment

d 8 options
Cleric - full plate is awesome in all situations(and buff/healing self is awesome)(also flame strike)

also if you want to have fun:
Exalted(Vow of poverty) Monk 7/Kensai 3 (natural weapons can be enhanced)

I know theres a lot of Kensai on this post but... they're one of the best prestige classes and monks/paladin/samurai can freely cross class to kensai.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

For Tome of Battle, I say go Crusader. They're already pretty beefy and can last a little while longer due to the healing stance and maneuvers early game. There's also Thicket of Blades, which is one gigantic "no" to movement. With that and a few other standard feats, the Crusader can do just about everything important a Knight could do.

Stand Still is a must if you want to lock enemies in place.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

also if you want to have fun:
Exalted(Vow of poverty) Monk 7/Kensai 3 (natural weapons can be enhanced)


I would go against this as a tank, due to the fact that most martial classes really, really, really need items.

[sonofzeal]

Crusader.

At low levels you have Iron Guard's Glare, which is exactly what Tanks need to maintain "aggro". At higher levels you have Thicket of Blade + Trip, for some of the best melee battlefield control around. You're also highly durable, and have some healing ability to extend your lifespan and the lifespan of your allies.

[dob]

Y'all are suggesting straight Crusader? That's interesting, I was thinking Knight + Crusader made sense so as to get Test yer Mettle or whatever it's called to make all the enemies have at you, and then the Crusader Devoted Spirit abilities to make 'em regret it.

I wonder, how viable would a spiked chain Fighter Crusader be, particularly with a ready supply of Enlarge Persons? Fighter to get up to Improved Trip, then Crusader to get Thicket of Blades. Maybe also with Stand Still so I can choose to either attack or immobilize as the situation warranted.

[Gnaeus]

Battlefield control meleers can be a lot of fun to play. For this kind of build you want either natural large size, or the ability to enlarge yourself. Psychic Warrior works well with these builds. Cleric can do it. WS Ranger/MoMF gets there also, although the druid may have those bases covered. Anything to make sure that you have '20 or more spiked chain reach in every fight. If ToB is in, make sure to get Thicket of Blades stance, with a feat or a dip.

I think the Knight class is a trap. If you look at their abilities there is nothing they can do that a Paladin can't duplicate or exceed (especially if ToB is in play), and paladins are the second weakest core class after monk. The Tome of Battle classes (Crusader and Warblade), on the other hand, make excellent tanks. Also, if you are looking for a tank, and your other meleer is a Druid, consider Cleric. Ordained Champion prc from CChamp makes you at least equal to any mundane meleer, but cleric 10 is a perfectly fine build that will never feel weak as you level up.

Regarding Knight, remember the following:

AC is increasingly useless as you go up in level, because monster BaB + str bonus goes up much faster than CR. You can stop things from hitting you with miss chances, or by tripping them 15 feet away, but just having a high AC gets weaker every level.

High level play is dominated by casters and things with SLAs. Test of Mettle is useless against these things, because they can just AOE around you, or cast spells that target your weaknesses, assuming that you somehow managed to beat their will save with (10+1/2 level+cha) DC on a mind affecting ability on a knight. The BEST way to get things to attack you is to be dangerous enough that they WANT to attack you, and Knight, with its pathetic damage output, is very bad at that.

[technophile]

For Tome of Battle, I say go Crusader. They're already pretty beefy and can last a little while longer due to the healing stance and maneuvers early game. There's also Thicket of Blades, which is one gigantic "no" to movement. With that and a few other standard feats, the Crusader can do just about everything important a Knight could do.
Including get shield AC to touch AC, at the cost of two feats (Shield Spec. and Shield Ward).

[Fastmover]

Try Duskblade13/cleric7.

I like the idea of being able to Hit my party with a full heal channeled spell, Dimension hop them and/or enemy into proper positions, have great AC buffs and Atk buffs, great AC in general, Guaranteed hits and able to switch between DpS and Prot.

[Gnaeus]

Duskblade 13/Ur Priest 7 ;-)

[PinkysBrain]

I'm not yet sure which books outside core are legit
Find that out first ... the druid is presumably melee focused, if that is what you are competing against in a core only game you are going to be looking at polymorph (ab-)use to keep up. Unless you can make a deal with the party wizard to get it I'd say Eldritch knight in a core only game.

[dob]

All 3.5 is in, with the exceptions of Exalted Deeds and Vile Darkness, so Crusader it is. I'm thinking 2 Fighter, 2 Psychic Warrior (to get Expansion and the two bonus feats), 6 Crusader, and plan on leveling Crusader thereafter.

For my attributes, it's a straight 75 point buy, so I'm thinking

STR 16
DEX 18
CON 16
INT 13
WIS 6
CHA 6

Though I could reasonably slide points from STR to WIS to increase my will save and maybe even have more psi points to play with. The only real reason I'd need STR is for trip checks, but I do figure on doing a fair number of those, so... any suggestions?

For my feat slate:

Combat Expertise
EWP Spiked Chain
Improved Trip
Combat Reflexes
Stand Still
Dodge
Karmic Strike
Weapon Finesse

And of course the Devoted path for my Crusader stuff.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

Minor nitpick, but, unless you're using items, you won't actually be able to manifest Expansion yourself, what with the 6 wisdom and all.

[dob]

Really? The -2 would count against the psi pool? That's a pity, I reckon I'd need WIS 10 or even 12 to make it work, huh. Maybe I should lose the Psychic Warrior, rely on potions or a wizard for Enlarge Person, and take two more Fighter levels so I only have to drop 1 feat, or go ahead with two more levels of Crusader. Hmm.

[avr]

Expansion is nice but if you're not advancing PsyWar it doesn't scale. You're 10th+ level, use magic items if you really want to increase size. High Dex and Weapon Finesse is not the most useful if you're wearing heavy armour - switch STR & DEX & drop weapon expertise IMO.

You can get by without the extra feats from PsyWar, I'd recommend doing so. If you really want to dip for buffs, Artificer low-level buffs remain more useful later.

[dob]

I don't want the DEX bonus as much for Weapon Finesse and AC as much as for the extra AoO from Combat Reflexes.

[avr]

I don't want the DEX bonus as much for Weapon Finesse and AC as much as for the extra AoO from Combat Reflexes.

Yeah, but with a +4 DEX item - affordable at level 10 - you're talking about the difference between a max of 6 AoOs per round and a max of 7. I don't know how your group plays but in mine this wouldn't often come up.

[mabriss lethe]

I think the prob with the wis 6 can be quickly answered by mr. SRD:


The ability that your powers depend on—your key ability score as a manifester—is related to what psionic class (or classes) you have levels in: Intelligence (psion), Wisdom (psychic warrior), and Charisma (wilder). The modifier for this ability is referred to as your key ability modifier. If your character’s key ability score is 9 or lower, you can’t manifest powers from that psionic class.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

If you're going to make a Crusader, you should probably try to stay single-classed. Multiclassing Fighter 2/ Psychic Warrior 2 is a trap, it delays your maneuvers/stances and other class features and even loses a point of BAB. If you really need more feats, take two flaws (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/characterFlaws.htm) from UA and stay single-classed.

For your race, I'd go with a Water Orc (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/elementalRacialVariants.htm#racesOfWater), Dragonborn of Bahamut (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20060105b&page=1) (RotD), Mineral Warrior (http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20031003e) in that order. If you get the wings aspect from Dragonborn, you'll still gain the fly speed as long as you gain Mineral Warrior before your 6th level. I'd go for the Heart aspect for the breath attack, and take Entangling Exhalation from Races of the Dragon and possibly Recover Breath from the Draconomicon. Use an entangling breath weapon as often as possible, and use a reach weapon with combat reflexes. Opponents will be moving at half speed and suffer a penalty to attacks and AC, so they'll be more likely to attack you than to move past you and attack someone else. This tends to be easier to build than a tripper and it's just as effective, and you'll get some superb physical ability scores and defensive buffs from those templates. Don't put Dex over 16 since you'll most likely be wearing mithral full plate, focus on Str and Con and try not to let your mental stats get too low.


For something completely different, consider making a Dragonfire Adept from Dragon Magic. Get Entangling Exhalation, and you'll be able to use an entangling breath attack every single round. For your invocations pick long-duration buffs that you won't need to use in combat. Wear full plate and use a tower shield, the nonproficiency penalties won't matter since you won't need to make any attack rolls or use any invocations while you're wearing it. You can even use Endure Exposure on your entire party every day so you won't even need to worry about hitting them with your breath attacks. Your only important ability score will be Con, everything else can be in the 10-12 range and you'll be fine.

[oxinabox]

SwashBuckler 3/Duskblade X/WarBlade Y.

So You see INT is good for everything...
Strenght handy two,
You could also add a lvl of Kungfu genius monk if you INT is far excessive

Swashbuckler 3, means if you went TWF you'ld still get to add full int to your aff hand damage. [sic]
With kakuri your crit range would be large, then warblade to help confirm.

Warblade gives you the D12 HD

you could knock out the duskblade, and put in rogue, and the feat to stack rogue and swashbluckler lvls for Sneak attack...
Wait this isn't a tank anymore...


Flaw Rules are Varients

[Eldariel]

Biffoni: Dipping two levels of non-Crusader enables taking Thicket of Blades as the level 4 stance. For a controller, that saves an extra feat and is generally worth it.


@OP: I'd definitely go Crusader 1/Fighter (or Wolf-Totem Barbarian (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#wolfTotemClassFeatures )) 2/Crusader -> and pick up Improved Trip and focus on Str (don't bother with Weapon Finesse, go Str-focus and leave Con at ~16 or so; Tripping is an Str-check so you need as much Str as you can have).

Wolf-Totem Barbarian gets Improved Trip without the prerequisite Int allowing for some stat reallocation. I'd probably skip on Karmic Strike though; Robilar's Gambit doesn't have all the crappy prerequisite feats and is better. It's available on level 12.


For the usual lockdown set, I'd get:
- Mage Slayer [Complete Arcane]
- Improved Trip
- Combat Reflexes
- Thicket of Blades
- Deft Opportunist [Complete Adventurer; take later if you don't have feats early on]
- Stand Still (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#standStill) [XPH]
- Defensive Sweep [PHBII; level 15]
- Robilar's Gambit [PHBII]

Too bad Crusaders cannot really double their AoO damage. Ah well, your Strike damage should mitigate that issue.

[Person_Man]

Melee Combo Guide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7044115).

Your feat selection should be guided by whatever combos you want to use. The Crusader can pull any of them off.

My two cp is that if you've chosen to go with Crusader, then strait Crusader or Crusader/Blackguard are your best options. Pump Cha, pick up a couple X to Y (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125732) abilities, and you're set.

[Pharaoh's Fist]

Too bad Crusaders cannot really double their AoO damage. Ah well, your Strike damage should mitigate that issue.

One level of Decisive Strike monk is all you need.