Recommendation on character in a new game

[Essence_of_War]

Right now I'm DM'ing for my group, but after we finish the present adventure, we're planning on starting a new campaign with a new DM, new characters etc.

Prologue (for context):
Myself and the next DM were the only people who'd played 3.x before we started. Our group was solidly 2nd edition before our old DM quit, I stepped up, and volunteered to run 3.x stuff. I say this only to put in context the fact that my group is EXTREMELY new to 3.x so there are still weird reactions that I humorously characterize as:
"LAWL TEH WARLOCK IZ SICK!"
and
"ToB, more like ToBroken amirite?"

They are, of course, perfectly fine with natural spell druids, wizards, and clerics of all stripes.

Anyway, the character concepts I was looking at were:
1. A swift hunter likely with a 1 level cleric dip to pick up travel devotion.

2. A human or half-giant psychic warrior - charge + battlefield control with knockdown/knockback?

3. A martial adept (probably Warblade or Crusader) a la tome of battle. .

The primary issue is that #3 is my personal favorite option, but I'm quite certain the DM is just not going to allow it. I've tried numerous times to point him towards the tier lists and explanations therein to no avail.

As such I'm looking more seriously to the other options which he seems to be ok with. I think I can build a reasonable tier 3ish swift hunter that doesn't really break the game without too much trouble.

I'm more concerned about the psychic warrior. I don't think the DM knows about chargers, and I don't think he knows about optimized tripping either. My primary evidence for this is that he is presently playing a fighter/homebrew dragon samurai in my game that pretty much hits things with a big sword and if that doesn't work hits them again. As such, I think that it would be in extremely poor taste to show up with a half-giant shock trooper topped with Deep Impact and Psionic Lion's Charge. It would probably be in equally poor taste to show up with a human spiked chain AoO lockdown/knockdown expert.

So how do I resolve this issue. Should I sit down with the DM and show him what I'm trying to do before we build characters? Should I just build it and intentionally hold back? A charger, for example, works fine without leap attack to make him truly ridiculous. Does anyone else have experience being in this sort of situation to offer some advice?

[Ein0r]

First of all talk to your DM and ask him about the rules you want to massively use. If you think he is inexperienced you have to know his limits. Because it is not really fun for a DM if he cant grasp the full potential of your char.
I DMed some adventures too and a friend of mine wanted to play a Binder. A char concept which i totally was not aware off and had really trouble to understand at first. But he was experienced so i could trust him. And after some sessions and some reading about the char concept by myself i could understand it and i knew where the limits of the char are.

So whatever you want to play, (ToB Char or Charger) you wont be able to avoid the work to create those chars and show them to your DM. Because he is the first who has to know what your char can do and what not.
And in my oppinion ToB is way easier to understand than a char which builds up on 1-2 rules, and a diversity of feats and optimization ( TO THE MAX:smallbiggrin: )

You just have to be able somehow to explain it that ToB is something like a SpellBook for Melee chars.^^
It is just hard to explain a quite new DM that any melee/physic character types are in a "slight" disadvantage compared to casters (without ToB) if he hadnt experienced that himself :/

[Hiro Protagonest]

For the ToB thing, create three characters. A level 20 fighter, a level 20 druid, and a level 20 warblade. Now, have the fighter fight the druid, see who wins. Then, have the warblade fight the druid, see who wins.