High-level Warrior-type Help

[byaku rai]

In my current campaign, i am playing a half-drow fighter 9/wrecker 5/warblade 2. Thankfully, my DM has long since abolished multiclassing XP penalties, but that's not the point. My party also includes a halfling ranger 15/shadowdancer 1, a human sorceror 16, an elven druid 14/ghostwalker 2, and a human warlock whose levels i don't even care about.

What I'm looking for is advice on how to be useful when surrounded by acorn grenades and maximized empowered fireballs. My character sucks with ranged weapons. If nothing else, I would like some way to not be obliterated by the fireballs, lightning bolts, and cones of cold being thrown my way. I realize my character is a bit unoptimized, but he's a whole lot more powerful than a pure fighter would be at this level.

I can give you more stats below, but the core of the problem is that i can kill anything in melee combat but everything is already dead by the time i get there.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Help the Druid buy a Metamagic Rod of Extend, and get him to cast Energy Immunity on you every day with it. That way you'll have two of that spell constantly up, and he can alternate between cold and fire when he casts it so you'll be immune to both all the time. Superior Resistance is also spectacular, he can cast that Extended every day alternating between himself and your character so you'll both have it constantly active.

[byaku rai]

She, actually.

My armor grants permanent fire and electricity resistance 10. With that and my 190 HP, energy resistance is a lower priority than spell resistance or similar (which is horribly overpriced even considering its usefulness, just saying). I also have a Ring of Evasion and a decent reflex save.

Like I said, how does a fighter make himself useful among so many high-level casters?

[Z3ro]

Ask them to change up spell selection? If they're targeting your area with area effect spells, the problem isn't you as a fighter, its them as uncaring players. I mean, how about instead of a fireball, try chain lightning or similar targeted spell, that seemed to me the easiest solution.

[Weezer]

Sadly it's extremely hard, if not impossible, for any meleer to contribute equally with high level spellcasters. It's one of the most unfortunate aspects of the whole D&D system.

My only advice is to get magic items that help you become more versatile, you need some manner of flight, teleportation is a plus, pump your saves (it's more reliable than spell resistance). Also if you can retrain some of those fighter levels as warblade that would give you more options.

[Yora]

With a Sor16 they are at least not optimizing very hard. That gives you more room to shine.

[FMArthur]

What is Wrecker? Google's turning up nothing.

Anyway have you taken movement-centric maneuvers with your Warblade levels? Sudden Leap is a 1st-level Tiger Claw maneuver that lets you move up to your Jump check in distance as a swift action, which is very easy to do for good distances if you are also in the Leaping Dragon stance (which lets always you make Jump checks as if running and gives you a 10ft bonus on them). Also White Raven Tactics is another first-level maneuver and it lets you choose an ally as a swift action to change their initiative to yours -1. You are your own ally for the purposes of targetting, so you can use it on yourself to act twice in a row.

Your DM has probably noticed that you're having a problem. Unless you're on bad terms with them already for some reason it shouldn't be too hard to work something out to let you retrain some of your levels over time (PHII has detailed rules on it). In particular that extraneous 9th Fighter level is utterly useless, but so are most Fighter levels; ToB maneuvers are designed to replace feats as the driving force behind melee characters and often do things very similar to what you'd get out of wasteful feat chains. See if you can't retrain most of it to be Warblade levels.

[Keld Denar]

Demonwrecker? I think its in FCII.

Anyway, your role as melee at high levels is primarily to kill things as fast as possible and secondarily get in the way of things that want to hurt the casters and tertiarily not be a liability. Focus your gear and efforts to those 3 things. Check out Ernir's guide on essential character gear. You should have miss chance, mind blank, true seeing, flight, and a few other abilities at this level, so make sure you have your bases covered.

[RTGoodman]

Is there a way to get the Archmage's Mastery of Shaping high arcana ability without being an Archmage? That'll stop you from being hit.

As far as making sure you can get to the enemy before it's dead? Maybe a fast, flying mount? That's certainly within your WBL Outside that, find a way to move faster, teleport, or something.

[Keld Denar]

Spellguard Rings work, kinda. They allow the caster to spend a swift action to make you immune to any spell they cast that round for 3 spells/day. Unfortunately, the wording they use (Immunity) technically means "unbeatable spell resistance" in D&D, so Spellguard Rings don't work on any spell with SR.

[byaku rai]

Wrecker is a Mongoose prestige class which allows you to use melee weapons a size too big for you. It also gives you Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Improved Critical, and the Greater versions for free and increases the threat multiplier for the omfgbig weapon by one. it's pretty sweet.

Thanks for the input, guys. :smallsmile: I'mma try to get a short range teleportation item. I think i've got the rest covered. :smallsmile: Now to find some way of doing more damage... *evil laugh*

Also, my party is way unoptimized for anything except dealing lots and lots of damage. Except me. I can also TAKE lots and lots of damage. Which i do. Every time...

EDIT: One last thing: we just went from a campaign fighting devils which made the casters next to useless (energy resistance, spell resistance, etc.) and I was epic to the campaign where i have these problems. Everything is still getting sorted out.

And the DM is unhappy with me because of my main weapon. With the Wrecker abilities, it is as follows:
+4 keen holy wallblade: +38 to hit, 2D8+23+2D6 holy vs. Evil creatures, 17-20 x4 for crits.
I once one-shotted a Horned Devil. that was at level 11.

[Keld Denar]

<snip> Improved Critical,<snip> +4 keen holy wallblade<snip>

Do note that in 3.5 (unlike in 3.0) Keen and Improved Critical don't stack. So...yea...

[hoff]

I use a house-rule that allows you to add your shield AC to Reflex. It's a fair rule that actually makes shields suck less (they still mostly suck). If your DM allows this, you can get a magic shield to boost your Reflex plus a cloak of resistance +5 and some magic item that gives you evasion (I remember seeing some of those) or you can multiclass into something with evasion. This would also help you with melee enemies by giving you more AC.

If you don't want to lose your awesome weapon there is a spell/enchantment that makes a shield hover around you, giving you full shield bonus without taking your off-hand. I don't remember the name though, but I think it was on the dungeon master book.

[byaku rai]

<quote>Do note that in 3.5 (unlike in 3.0) Keen and Improved Critical don't stack. So...yea... </quote>

The way it's worded in the class, it stacks. Plus my DM is awesome.

Already have awesome ref save and Evasion-granting item. If I use my Combat Expertise and Defensive Fighting I can have like 35 AC, easy. I think you still need a hand free for the floating shield, but idk. I'll look it up.

[FMArthur]

No, the limitation is not that you still need a free hand, but that you still suffer from Armor Check Penalty and Spell Failure chances as if you were wielding it.

[byaku rai]

Ah. That is useful then. O_o at least, if i can talk my dm into it. with the instant death crit 20% of the time, he might be less than willing.

[FMArthur]

It's just the Animated property from the DMG. It would practically come by default on most warriors if +pittance to AC meant anything by the time you'd be willing to spend the money on it. Seriously a +1 Animated shield is going to give you +3 AC for 9000 gp. It becomes a good deal per point of AC after you've already got good armor, a Ring of Protection and an Amulet of Natural Armor, but really that's the beginning of the point in the game where monsters and melee classes start to frequently appear with +yes to attack rolls.

[byaku rai]

yeah, i'm at the +yes point now, both my character and others. I'm getting my DM to homebrew an item with a limited Dimension Door effect, so that solves the problem of getting to the enemies before flaming death (assuming i make initiative). Plus this also lets me get to the enemy spellcasters before their flaming death hits me.

[Keld Denar]

Plus, if you have a friendly and generous cleric in your party, an Animated shield is a great target for a Magic Vestaments, meaning that 9000g for +3 AC can turn into 9000g + 3rd level spell slot for a +7 AC. Thats pretty cheap in the long run, especially if you can pull some shananananananananananananigans to get MV chained (there are ways, like Occular Spell or Reach Spell).