Do you have the stones to help me?

[Mithosaurion]

Hello, I don't post often on the forums so forgive me if I have no idea what I am doing or if I have placed this thread in the wrong area.

Anyway, I am... less than skilled when it comes to practical optimization. However most of my friends are. I was hoping you could help me with constructing a character of tier 3 or 4 who is stone themed. Whether their a warrior or a mage or something in between does not matter, just that the theme is PROFOUNDLY stone or earth related (at least as much as is possible without being useless).

[candycorn]

I'd say a good start would be a build working towards Stonedeath assassin, which allows you to petrify enemies with a very unique version of a death attack.

[RagnaroksChosen]

Goliath Druid with the Goliath racial substitution levels and i can't remember if they get an earth elemental for a pet, but I know there is an earth elemental pet feature as well.


My friend play's an human cleric who has earth and travel domains. he says its alot of fun.

[Zaq]

OK, time for all the standard questions. What level are you starting at? What books do you have available?

Anyway, I've played a Spirit Shaman with an earth theme before, and it was awesome. A little bit more powerful than T3, though (Spirit Shamans are solid T2, arguably bordering on T1). The Druid spell list has no shortage of earth and stone, if you're willing to accept that kind of power.

You might go for a Crusader. Stone Dragon is great just for the name, but maneuvers like Stone Bones and such are thematic for other reasons as well.

There's the Stonelord PrC in Complete Warrior, but it's rather crap. Here's the Iron Chef thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150595) where people tried to turn it into something good.

Races of Stone, predictably, has plenty of stone-themed classes in it. Earth Dreamer, Stonespeaker Guardian, etc.

Deepstone Sentinel is a pretty perfect PrC from Tome of Battle, but it comes online really late (it has a prereq of BAB +10).

[Eldariel]

Well, Warblade/Deepstone Sentinel [Tome of Battle] is very much a functional Stone-focused character. You'd have to be a Dwarf but that's not necessarily a bad thing, and you'd be squarely in the Tier 3 territory. I'm not gonna delve further into building unless you express interest though, of course. This would mostly be a frontliner combatant with decent control capabilities and some magical power over stone.

[etrpgb]

The obvious choice is an Earth Shugenja, about the order I would use Order of the All-Seeing Eye or the always good Order of the Ineffable Mystery.

Here is the handbook of Shugenjas (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19870718/Shugenja_Handbook).

[Metahuman1]

If you paired down some of it's racial traits/LA and/or could get your DM to let you Buy off LA and use class retraining rules to retrain Racial Hit Dice, Stone Child could be really cool for a Race.

I know, lot of If's in there, but it would help the theme you've said you wanted.