Int based Warblade, Build help!

[pilvento]

Playgrounders, after you introduced me to ToB a few treads ago, now is my duty to introduce my gaming table in a one night campaing...
One DM, lots of encounters, tree players and the tree ToB clases!

My goal here is to archive the following:
Create not only a warblade, but a TACTICAL GENIUS! :smallcool:

Maximise int and get the best of it using most warblade features, swashbuckler and the eternal blade PrC.

Build so far: Swashbuckler3/Warblade7/Eternal Blade10
Race: need a good elf race here, get INT or DEX, and dont lose CON
Stats rolls: 18,16,14,13,12,10

Str 13 > 14
Dex 16 > 16
Con 14 > 14
Int 18 > 22
Wis 10 > 10
Cha 12 > 12

Must have feats:
Flaw: Imp toughnes
lvl1: Elven weapon familiarity
lvl3: ?
lvl6: ?
lvl9: Knowledge devotion
lvl12: ?
lvl15: ?
lvl18: ?

Other feat ideas: combat expertice? weapon focus, spec, etc? combat reflexes and AOO based feats?

Equip: Elven bastard sword (finneseable 18/20 crit range) and shield


Please give me a hand and dont be afraid to comment and help.

[Keld Denar]

Um, as far as race goes, I think your best bet for not losing Con would be Arctic Grey Elf. Arctic gives Con to balance out the normal penalty. Its a bit hoaxy, but...yea.

GENERALLY, Warblade stat priority tends to go Str > Con > Dex > Int > Wis > Cha, but thats not saying you HAVE to do it like that. You are an intiator, its pretty phenomonally difficult to screw up.

For feats, since you get Blindfighting as a Warblade bonus feat (and face it, WB's don't get very many good bonus feats), I'm a HUGE fan of taking Mage Slayer and Pierce Magical Concealment. PMC is very useful for handling things like Displacement and Mirror Image which will totally ruin your day as a melee. PMC also allows you to pick up a Ring of Blinking and attack partially from the ethereal plane without the 20% miss chance that that normally gives (since its a "magical effect" that "causes you to miss", even though you are generating it, instead of your foe). That is a cunning tactic that an intelectual warrior would probably utilize.

Other than that, Knowledge Devotion is a pretty handy feat. Warblade gets Knowledge: Local, which means you could qualify for it by ECL3 (assuming you have at least 1 WB level before 3, preferably 2). KD gives you another free knowledge skill that is a class skill for life. I'd pick Arcana, as it's the broadest (Dargons, Magical Beasts, Golems, etc) unless you know the game is gonna be heavily themed (Outsiders, Undead, Aberrations, Plants/Fey).

It looks like the difference in your Str and Dex is only 2 points (1 bonus). That means Weapon Finesse PROBABLY isn't worth it. I'd just swap the stats and gain yourself a feat to spend else-where.

As far as maneuvers, when I think "smart, cunning warrior", I think Diamond Mind and Iron Heart. Ironically, those are two of the strongest disciplines, possibly with a slight dip in White Raven. That'll get you pretty far in life, especially given Eternal Blade's access to Diamond Mind and Devoted Spirit.

[pilvento]

Um, as far as race goes, I think your best bet for not losing Con would be Arctic Grey Elf. Arctic gives Con to balance out the normal penalty. Its a bit hoaxy, but...yea.

It will work, and the setting is artic as i recall



GENERALLY, Warblade stat priority tends to go Str > Con > Dex > Int > Wis > Cha, but thats not saying you HAVE to do it like that. You are an intiator, its pretty phenomonally difficult to screw up.

Str means dmg, dex means AC and roll...
Int means: dmg, AC, skills, knowledge, criticals, aoo rolls and dmg bonuses, dmg against flat-footed enemys (and diamon mind have the perfect maneuver for that) all eternal blade features (more ac, rolls, dmg, bonuses for the rest of the team)



For feats, since you get Blindfighting as a Warblade bonus feat (and face it, WB's don't get very many good bonus feats), I'm a HUGE fan of taking Mage Slayer and Pierce Magical Concealment. PMC is very useful for handling things like Displacement and Mirror Image which will totally ruin your day as a melee. PMC also allows you to pick up a Ring of Blinking and attack partially from the ethereal plane without the 20% miss chance that that normally gives (since its a "magical effect" that "causes you to miss", even though you are generating it, instead of your foe). That is a cunning tactic that an intelectual warrior would probably utilize.

I cant belive i never heard that feat chain, its a very good idea and ill take notes of it (bte setting is steampunk, means artificers constructs and also the DM loves demons for late in the campaing)



Other than that, Knowledge Devotion is a pretty handy feat. Warblade gets Knowledge: Local, which means you could qualify for it by ECL3 (assuming you have at least 1 WB level before 3, preferably 2). KD gives you another free knowledge skill that is a class skill for life. I'd pick Arcana, as it's the broadest (Dargons, Magical Beasts, Golems, etc) unless you know the game is gonna be heavily themed (Outsiders, Undead, Aberrations, Plants/Fey).

and for those untrained knowledges i can use my eternal blade lvl thanks to the eternal knowledge feature



It looks like the difference in your Str and Dex is only 2 points (1 bonus). That means Weapon Finesse PROBABLY isn't worth it. I'd just swap the stats and gain yourself a feat to spend else-where.

finnese its free thanks to swashbucler :smallwink:



As far as maneuvers, when I think "smart, cunning warrior", I think Diamond Mind and Iron Heart. Ironically, those are two of the strongest disciplines, possibly with a slight dip in White Raven. That'll get you pretty far in life, especially given Eternal Blade's access to Diamond Mind and Devoted Spirit.

Any more sugestions for maneuver choises will be apreciated since im just an initiate to ToB, All diamond mind maneuvers are awesome, but the stances are kinda "meh"

[Keld Denar]

Yea, I know, I'm just saying that GENERALLY, a WB benefits from Str>Con>Dex>Int>Wis>Cha. With the Swashbuckler and EB thrown in there, you do skew it a bit. The main concensus, however, is that 80% of the Int based features on the main WB chassis are not worth as much as Str or Con are. Str and Con are your bread and butter, Int is more of a garnish to make life interesting. You are building specifically to favor Int and Dex, which obviously bumps them up slightly.

That said, Swash3 is...eh. You lose 2 ILs, which puts you a whole maneuver level behind. This isn't so bad if you are primarily using a 2hander with PA and Emerald Razor, but you are using a 1hander so you'll want more higher level maneuvers because they add more damage. Sure, you get some extra damage from it, but if you swapped Str and Int, you'd make up some of that (especially with a 2hander), become more SAD and less MAD, keep a higher IL. It also doesn't have any Knowledges as class skills, which hurts your progression of Knowledge Devotion. It all ends up being the difference of a point or two of damage, which ultimately isn't gonna break the build.

In the end, its your character. I'm just trying to help you make informed decisions. By not doing it the "cookie cutter" way, you do lose a little bit of your potential, but not enough to call it "wrongbaddumb".

As far as Eternal Knowledge...well, its kinda dumb. Eternal Blade's get all Knowledges as class skills, and since you are focused on Int, you get a pretty big bonus from that. Collector of Stories also helps quite a bit, if you understand that the check to determine the vulnerabilities of your foe IS your KD check. Thus, you'll generally have more of a bonus on your Knowledge skills than Eternal Knowledge will give you, even with only 1 rank in each of the 6 "schools" of Knowledge that cover monsters (Arcana, Dungeoneering, Religion, Planes, Nature, Local). The other abilities are really cool though.

As for maneuvers, well, a lot of that depends on your build order. I'm assuming you have a bit of flexability on where to place to Swashbuckler levels? Since you have 3 non-WB levels instead of 4, I'd suggest plugging 1 WB level in at 1st level for the extra HP and skills for KD, then take 3 Swashbuckler levels, THEN hop back into Warblade and ride that all the way to ECL10. If you pick up another 1 level dip (doesn't cost you any ILs, due to the fact that you have a floating 1/2 IL to give away), then I'd consider taking those 4 levels first and THEN heading into Warblade. This allows you to start your WB career with access to 2nd level maneuvers, a much more favorable start.

So yea...more input for you to read.

[Kaeso]

If you're going the knowledge devotion route and maxing int, consider taking the educated feat. It gives you all knowledges as class skills, so you can max out the most important ones from the very start. High int should give you a lot of skill points anyway. Maybe you can combine it with Nymphs kiss from BoED for an extra skill point per level?

[The Rabbler]

I would throw factotum levels in instead of the last 8 levels of eternal blade. In my mind, the bonuses you get from factotum far outweigh the handful of abilities you get from finishing eternal blade. The second level is nice by all standards, but after that Eternal Blade gets extremely average until you hit the capstone. I might even drop swashbuckler as well in favor of factotum; as the swashbuckler's main appeal gets mimic'd and then some by a factotum of a similar level. And lets not forget the piles of skillpoints you receive as a factotum.

My point is that your build can certainly do some interesting things, but that's all it can do. It doesn't really have the capacity to come up with things on the fly beyond the scope of maneuvers. It seems a bit too focused on a specific mode of combat to really make it warrant the title of genius.

Plus, a factotum has those flavorful "flashes of genius" which seem to coincide with the fluff for your character.

[Optimator]

Combining Battle Mastery with Robilar's Gambit and high Int can result in hard hitting and accurate counterattacks, but you need to be level 15 in Warblade for that.

[Ardantis]

I love your build idea, the character makes a lot of sense to me.

However, I agree with Rabbler that levels of Factotum make more sense than additional levels of Eternal Blade, and here's why:

Factotums can add their Int modifier to combat maneuvers like trips and disarms.

This synergizes with your build, and the rest of the class is entirely Int-based, not only giving you more int combat synergies but a whole boatload of Int-based abilities to boot, which would more than make up for the loss in initiator levels. After all, wouldn't a brilliant combat tactician be good at everything else too?

[kpenguin]

The Modguin: Thread closed.