We need you! (To optimise supposedly rubbish classes)

[Hazzardevil]

For an NPC only campaign, I'm building a magewright. and created a very nice build with it.
So I have a challenge for the playground.
Let's try and optimise the Tier 4's and below!

Magewright:
Magewright 8/mage of the arcane order 1/virtuso 1/sublime chord 1/ultimate magus 9

Monk:
Ninja 2/Monk 1/Ninja 1/Monk 16

So, what else can the playground come up with?

[enderlord99]

Soulknife with reshape mind blade: unarmed strike and Tashalatora.

[Cespenar]

Both Monk and Soulknife would be passable if you slap some aspects of a charger build onto them, I guess.

[Coidzor]

Adept can either go into BeastMaster+Sacred Exorcist & then PrC Paladin & get a Dragon as its special mount (mostly with Dragon Magazine material) and with a bit of animal companion HD tacked on, a sort of demi-super mount (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19866958/Supermount!) or go into Hexer(one of very few classes that gets divine lightning bolt, if I'm recalling the requirements right) and make for a fairly nice gish-ish thing.

Some ideas I was kicking around at one time while I was trying to expand the adept spell list & get it a dragon mount.
adept 8/Knight of the Raven 3/PrC Paladin 2/Contemplative 1/ PrC Ranger 2/Knight of the Raven +4?

Human - Zen Archery
1 - Track
3 - Endurance
6 - Mounted Combat
9 - Point Blank Shot
12 - Rapid Shot
15 - Holy Mount
18 - Dragon Mount

Adept 6/ Divine Oracle 2/Knight of the Raven 3/PrC Paladin 2/Contemplative 1/ PrC Ranger 1/Knight of the Raven +5

This mostly makes it fairly gishy & gets it the mount that's a fairly tough cookie as well. I'm sure what I've got so far could be greatly improved, even by just focusing the build.

Dipping fighter would accelerate its entry into the more martial PrCs. I can't recall if I found it was quicker to just use Knight of the Raven to get Turning or if I didn't have access to Sacred Exorcists' Pre-reqs when I was doing this though...

I believe for something more pure gishy, Lupin (or other playable Monstrous Humanoid) Adept X/Hexer 10/Knight of the Raven Y

And since your familiar shares your BAB, buffs, and half HP, that can be some fun times as well...

One of the biggest things with Adept is to expand its spell list, since it auto-knows all of its spells on the list. But since it never gets past 5th level spells, even though it gets some rather nice ones, you'll be wanting to do something else as your main schtick, even if it's just to preserve your spell slots.

Unless you can do something like... tainted scholar was it? that makes casting stat irrelevant for bonus spells and DCs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Similarly, Warmages' main desire is to increase the spells they have access to, and then they're brilliant.

I can't recall the main ways to do that though, beyond Rainbow Servant.

[Fouredged Sword]

Commoner 6 / chameleon 10 / cunning trickster 3 / commoner 1.

First level hit rats with a club. ->save up enough to by a rideing dog and a wand of some kind of attack spell.

Just rock out handle animal and UMD for 6 levels with warbeast rideing dogs killing everything for you and wands of lesser vigor, grease, and colorspray to rock out most encounters.

Then go Chameleon and get whatever abilities look good for the day. Wrap up with cunning trickster or anything else you could strap on the character.

Start - tier five commoner
End result - Tier three skillmonky.

[Zaq]

Similarly, Warmages' main desire is to increase the spells they have access to, and then they're brilliant.

I can't recall the main ways to do that though, beyond Rainbow Servant.

Arcane Disciple and Sand Shaper are the easy ways. If you've got a wealth of feats to burn (perhaps through the DCFS), Dragontouched through Draconic Legacy will eventually get you a few more spells known. The bloodline feats from Dragon Compendium are options, but they're from a relatively obscure source. Also, Mage of the Arcane Order is just as good for Warmages (Warmagi?) as it is for Sorcerers, which is to say pretty damn good. Oh, and depending on how you read Exalted Arcanist, it can give you access to a whole bunch of Sanctified spells.

[Coidzor]

Just rock out handle animal and UMD for 6 levels with warbeast rideing dogs killing everything for you and wands of lesser vigor, grease, and colorspray to rock out most encounters.

Oh, yeah, that reminds me. Marshal + Commoner -> Bubs (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7097263&postcount=38)! Or just Marshal.

Train just about anything. At level 4.

Getting the beastie to train, on the other hand, that's the tricky part. Except for mules & magebred mules to warbeast a stable of in advance. Those are pretty easy to get a hold of & are quite good for the first 4 levels for their price & general availability.

Only downside is that marshal can't do his aura schtick with animals.

Commoner though allows the Bonus FeatFlaw of Chicken Infested, and that's all kinds of fun.

[Lord.Sorasen]

Arcane Disciple and Sand Shaper are the easy ways. If you've got a wealth of feats to burn (perhaps through the DCFS), Dragontouched through Draconic Legacy will eventually get you a few more spells known. The bloodline feats from Dragon Compendium are options, but they're from a relatively obscure source. Also, Mage of the Arcane Order is just as good for Warmages (Warmagi?) as it is for Sorcerers, which is to say pretty damn good. Oh, and depending on how you read Exalted Arcanist, it can give you access to a whole bunch of Sanctified spells.

I feel like at that point you're not really optimizing a warmage at all but playing a completely different class which happens to begin with warmage. Like if I was told to optimize the bow and arrow and in response placed an archer on a tank.

--------------------
Any divine class that might suck can be immensely improved by just remembering that they have access to exalted spells. What's more, if you're playing at low levels, well, the healer gets access to restoration at second level, which can make you the party's greatest hero considering such enemies as allips are CR 4.

With only 1 level of human paragon, a soulknife can gain access to aijitsu focus. Since they can drop and draw their blade as a free action, you can aijitsu jackhammer stab people, which has to be worth something, maybe. Or, now that I look at it, maybe not nearly enough.

[Xtomjames]

This is interesting, though I'll have to admit that I think, except for the NPC only classes, that the Tier 4s don't need optimization so much as a deeper understanding of how they work.

Look at the Truenamer, it's technically tier 4. Most people hate it and say it's either low powered or super broken. In reality it's neither but has a lot of potential. Especially with Dark Utterances. In fact a straight Truenamer could be the most powerful class in the entire game.

Warlocks tend to be underestimated as well, even though a properly built straight Warlock can usually wipe the floor with any other creature (and can you imagine making a gestalted Truenamer Warlock...ooo, makes me shiver).

Use of Spellfire Wielder and the Metamagic feat Spell Absorption and there's a nasty combo.

What about Bard with a level of Swordsage? Take Sword sage, swap out the maneuvers for Spell Fusion, True Strike, and a few other buffing measure that become immediate actions or swift action and supernatural in nature and you can apply it to the the Bard's spells.

[Rogue Shadows]

Look at the Truenamer, it's technically tier 4. Most people hate it and say it's either low powered or super broken. In reality it's neither but has a lot of potential. Especially with Dark Utterances. In fact a straight Truenamer could be the most powerful class in the entire game.

It's not really any Tier, actually. It flat-out does not work mechanically after a certain point (and IIRC, that certain point is fairly low), so it can't actually be ranked.

I mean, a Fighter 15 might not be very good but at least it can still hit things, as long as it gets close enough to do so.

[Safety Sword]

Look at the Truenamer, it's technically tier 4. Most people hate it and say it's either low powered or super broken. In reality it's neither but has a lot of potential. Especially with Dark Utterances. In fact a straight Truenamer could be the most powerful class in the entire game.

Please use smilies when you joke so people don't think you're serious about this.

You were joking... RIGHT?!

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

A truenamer is never T4. It takes a very large amount of optimization just to get it functional (an Expert would be a budding diplomancer by that time), and the one unique schtick it has (gate gate gate gate) just makes it broken the other way and only comes online at level 20. No tier for the truenamer.

What's the restriction on class selection? Are we allowed to PrC out as soon as possible? Barbarians have some pretty nice PrCs. Are we allowed to multiclass? Tashalatora monks would like to know.

I'll go for a beatstick: Half Minotaur Barbarian 2/Fighter X with Dungeoncrasher, Zhentarim Warrior, Spiritual Lion Totem, Whirling Frenzy, and Wolf Totem ACFs. Get Power Attack, Shocktrooper, Knockback, Knock-down, Extra Rage, and Intimidating Rage; if you want more damage, get Leap Attack. If you want more tricks, you have the feats. Outside of standard chargepounce routine you have three different schticks - free bullrushes into Dungeoncrash for ++ damage, free trips into extra attacks (depending on whether 3.0 errata overrules 3.5 material without errata), and intimidation tricks for the wimps you can't get to on round 1.

As for out-of-combat versatility... A dungeoncrasher with an adamantine weapon has pretty good dungeon crawling utility. Sure, you're a liability in social situations that don't require roaring at people, but optimizing a low tier class isn't going to produce a T1 "do anything" character without much more serious abuse.

[deuxhero]

^ Barb and fighter aren't NPC classes.

[Lord.Sorasen]

^ Barb and fighter aren't NPC classes.

It's specifically about rubbish classes, not NPC classes.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

^ Barb and fighter aren't NPC classes.Neither are monk or ninja, but they're in the OP. If you want NPC classes, you could replace Barbarian/Fighter with Warrior and do boring charge stuff, though you lack pounce. Expert can do Iajitsu shenanigans or diplomancy or UMD. Adept played straight is more useful than certain PC base classes anyway.

[Psyren]

Healer gets a lot of love from BoED, and the sanctified spells aren't nearly as painful when you can fill your 2nd-level slots with lesser restoration to deal with sacrifice payments.

Some builds:

Healer 5/Combat Medic 5/Contemplative 10: minor decursing, great in-combat healing, free domains

Raptoran Healer 10/Contemplative 1/Skypledged 9: Now you're practically an Archivist, with almost every divine spell at your disposal. And free Greater Restoration, + a Unicorn.

[HunterOfJello]

Magewright 5/Sandshaper X would be pretty good.

A Warmage going into the Prestige Bard would also be good and I don't think it was mentioned before. The Prestige Paladin and Prestige Ranger are also good options for a few of the Tier 4s and below if they're spellcasters.

Fighters can use 2 of their fighter feats to grab an Iron Heart stance and maneuver so that they can get into Bloodstorm Blade. They become pretty awesome ranged attackers after that without ever dipping into ToB and still follow the fighter character type.

[Greenish]

What about Bard with a level of Swordsage? Take Sword sage, swap out the maneuvers for Spell Fusion, True Strike, and a few other buffing measure that become immediate actions or swift action and supernatural in nature and you can apply it to the the Bard's spells.Even if one were to use the rather poorly formed suggestion that is Arcane swordsage, it says nothing about changing the cast times of the spells.


Also, this thread is about "rubbish" classes, or at least those in tier 4 and below, so bard doesn't really belong. :smalltongue:

[Godskook]

Look at the Truenamer, it's technically tier 4. Most people hate it and say it's either low powered or super broken. In reality it's neither but has a lot of potential. Especially with Dark Utterances. In fact a straight Truenamer could be the most powerful class in the entire game.

Um, the last sentence makes me think you're not even familiar with the class in question.

See, Truenamers, like Warlocks, are watered-down vancian casters with a unique mechanic for casting that was balanced by allowing them to spam their abilities more often. Unlike Warlocks, even Truenamers have a limit(law of resistance and the fact that skills can't crit means you'll always have an upper limit).

The reasons why the class is bad are probably best told by Zaq:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6255122&postcount=3


Warlocks tend to be underestimated as well, even though a properly built straight Warlock can usually wipe the floor with any other creature

Warlocks get three note-worthy class features. Invocations, Eldritch Blast, and item crafting. Of these:

1.Invocations are great and all, but they're almost always watered down spells with infinite use. Some are better that way, but being spammier and with fewer choices got Sorcerer knocked down out of tier 1, so I'm not seeing anything that's over a tier 3 here.

2.Eldritch Blast, without optimization is comparable to reserve feats. With optimization, is moderately better, but can't even get near the mailman for instance.

3.Finally, the item crafting, which is quite good, but is on one hand totally out-classed by Artificer(a point that is significant enough to drop someone a tier), and on the other hand, is quite difficult to optimize with since it comes so late in the class's progression while providing no bonus feats in relation to the effort.

That said, Warlock is a fairly good class for its tier and is quite fun to play, but you're not going to be outclassing that many people.


(and can you imagine making a gestalted Truenamer Warlock...ooo, makes me shiver).

Me too, like nails on a chalkboard. No synergy and not really powerful classes to begin with. Nothing special comes from combining them really. At least Marshal//Rogue is outclassing the non-gestalt Factotum for the skillmonkey slot.

[Rogue Shadows]

See, Truenamers, like Warlocks, are watered-down vancian casters

Gkt.

Neither Truenamers nor warlocks are Vancian casters.

Yeah yeah yeah, not on topic, but it gets to me. They're like Vancian casters, but they're not.

[Godskook]

Gkt.

Neither Truenamers nor warlocks are Vancian casters.

Yeah yeah yeah, not on topic, but it gets to me. They're like Vancian casters, but they're not.

I like how you cut out the part of that run-on sentence where I said exactly that.

[Arundel]

Gkt.

Neither Truenamers nor warlocks are Vancian casters.

Yeah yeah yeah, not on topic, but it gets to me. They're like Vancian casters, but they're not.

Eh, give him/her benefit of the doubt. S/he was probably using "watered down" to mean "like". I am always fascinated that people claim truenamers are anything but broken. Its always fun to see debates revolving around misunderstanding the tier system.

[Rogue Shadows]

Eh, give him/her benefit of the doubt. S/he was probably using "watered down" to mean "like". I am always fascinated that people claim truenamers are anything but broken. Its always fun to see debates revolving around misunderstanding the tier system.

"Broken" here meaning, hopefully, "does not work," right?

[Arundel]

Well broken in the DO NOT WANT way from 1-19. I have been told at 20 they at least partially invert to being OMGHAX broken with the Gate tricks.

Forgive me, I played Counter-Strike after dinner.

[Psyren]

Me too, like nails on a chalkboard. No synergy and not really powerful classes to begin with. Nothing special comes from combining them really.

There's a little synergy, actually. Warlocks can craft any item in the game, including potions, whereas Truenamers can rebuild any item in the game. This effectively means that you have a chance to double up on every potion or scroll you create without increasing the price. The other thing Truenamers can do is add Metamagic to an item that your 'lock side has created, making you a sort of ghetto artificer.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

For an NPC only campaign, I'm building a magewright. and created a very nice build with it.
So I have a challenge for the playground.
Let's try and optimise the Tier 4's and below!

Magewright:
Magewright 8/mage of the arcane order 1/virtuso 1/sublime chord 1/ultimate magus 9

Monk:
Ninja 2/Monk 1/Ninja 1/Monk 16

So, what else can the playground come up with?

The Magewright build, at least, I can see having 9th level spells. But tell me, how is a Ninja/Monk in any ways optimized? Other than violating the multiclassing rules for Monk, that is.


Like a member of any other class, a monk may be a multiclass character, but multiclass monks face a special restriction. A monk who gains a new class or (if already multiclass) raises another class by a level may never again raise her monk level, though she retains all her monk abilities.

[Hazzardevil]

I was mostly hoping for tier 4 and below optimisation.
Also, as long as the base is your tier 4 class, go nuts.
But when someone suggests Commoner 1/Druid 19, that is not what I want.

Back on the discussion at hand.



Arcane Disciple and Sand Shaper are the easy ways. If you've got a wealth of feats to burn (perhaps through the DCFS), Dragontouched through Draconic Legacy will eventually get you a few more spells known. The bloodline feats from Dragon Compendium are options, but they're from a relatively obscure source. Also, Mage of the Arcane Order is just as good for Warmages (Warmagi?) as it is for Sorcerers, which is to say pretty damn good. Oh, and depending on how you read Exalted Arcanist, it can give you access to a whole bunch of Sanctified spells.

Is there a feat that lets war mages qualify for Mage of the Arcane Order?

Lets just leave Truenamers, because they use a system not everyone understands, and the only way to actually optimise them is to pick good spells (I can't remember the proper name) and just to a million and one things to boost truenaming.

I'll make a quick list of what I deem to be tier 4 and below here. (That wasn't on the original tier list)
Shadowcaster,
OA Samurai,

[Hazzardevil]

The Magewright build, at least, I can see having 9th level spells. But tell me, how is a Ninja/Monk in any ways optimized? Other than violating the multiclassing rules for Monk, that is.

Well You can take Ascetic Stalker and Rogue so your monk levels progress sudden strike and ki pool, and you can turn invisible so you can get a Full attack with sudden strike on each hand crossbow bolt.
Ascetic Stalker allows free multiclassing. I was planning on using this in a game here, but I didn't get in. I got ditched for a cleric build.

[Fouredged Sword]

While the ninja/monk build isn't great it is rules legal if you take the ninja / monk gestault-lite feat from scoundrel.

[Hazzardevil]

While the ninja/monk build isn't great it is rules legal if you take the ninja / monk gestault-lite feat from scoundrel.

It is better than monk 20, so that's a start.

[Greenish]

Is there a feat that lets war mages qualify for Mage of the Arcane Order?Do you mean Arcane Preparation?

[Hiro Protagonest]

What about Bard with a level of Swordsage? Take Sword sage, swap out the maneuvers for Spell Fusion, True Strike, and a few other buffing measure that become immediate actions or swift action and supernatural in nature and you can apply it to the the Bard's spells.

So, uh, you're combining a tier 3 class with a class variant that is tier broken?

You also think Truenamer is undervalued. You must be new to the forums.