Judge my Old Build.

[ScrambledBrains]

This is something I've always wanted to post here. Before I discovered this awesome forum and site, I had two characters from my first campaign. The first, a Halfling Rogue archer(primarily anyway) died due to a mis-fired arrow of disintigration and I left his character sheet with my DM. However, my second character, a Human Swordsage survived from level ten till we ended the campaign at level twenty and I kept his sheet because of how much I loved the character. I've always wondered how well I designed him(as again, this was before I had even heard of either this site or the Tier system.) and I figured the Playground is the place to come for honest, brutal opinions. :smallbiggrin: And now, without further ado.

Name: Blais Vistas
Race: Human
Class: Swordsage 20
HP: 152

Stats Without Gear(With Gear)
Str: 16 (24)
Dex: 14 (14)
Con: 16 (16)
Int: 15 (15)
Wis: 14 (22)
Cha: 11 (11)

AC: 28(10+3[Studded Leather Armor]+2[Dex Mod]+6[Wis Mod]+5[Ring of Protection]+2[Bracers of Armor])

Saves:
Fort: +8(+10 in Diamond Mind or Shadow Hand Stance)
Reflex: +14(+16 in Diamond Mind or Shadow Hand Stance)
Will: +21(+23 in Diamond Mind or Shadow Hand Stance)

Gear:
1 Masterwork Bastard Sword-Keen, Wounding
1 Masterwork Javelin-Returning, Distance
10 Darts
1 Masterwork Studded Leather Armor
1 Onyx Dog Statuette
1 Headband of Concious Effort
1 Silent Shoes
1 Ring of Protection +5
1 Glittergem
1 Pererapt of Wisdom +6
1 Belt of Epic Strength +8
1 Ring of Jumping +10
1 Vial of Wyrm Poison
1 Vial of Feverous Fumes

Feats:
Unnerving Calm
Quick Draw
Exotic Weapon Proficiency(Bastard Sword)
Fey Heritage
Adaptive Style
Fey Legacy
Fey Skin
Protection Devotion
Dragon Cohort

Skills(Important ones, anyway. :smallsmile:)
Concentration: 25
Heal: 21
Hide: 25
Jump: 36
Move Silently: 26
Sense Motive: 26

Skill Tricks:
Speedy Ascent
Healing Hands
Leaping Climber
Nimble Stand
Extreme Leap

Manuvers:(*If Readied at time of last game)
Mighty Throw
Mind Over Body*
Insightful Strike, Greater
Comet Throw
Cloak of Deception*
Hand of Death
Shadow Garrote
Swooping Dragon Strike*
Claw at the Moon
Death From Above
Shadow Blink*
Shadow Noose
Sapphire Nightmare Blade
Ruby Nightmare Blade
Zephyr Dance*
Diamond Nightmare Blade*
Burning Brand
Emerald Razor
Time Stands Still*
Feral Death Blow*
Five-Shadow Ice Enervation Strike*
Death in the Dark*
Shadow Stride*
Dragon's Flame
Ring of Flame*

Stances
Pearl of Black Doubt
Hearing the Air
Assassin's Stance
Hunter's Sense
Dance of the Spider

Now, my role in the party was light melee and surgical strikes against softer targets. I had some of the better saves barring Fort, and I had that covered with one of my gear choices and one of my readied manuvers. I was also scouting and stealth strikes with my decent mobility and hide/move silently checks. Now then, judge my build Playground. Could I have picked better choices?

(P.S. If anyone requires additional info, ask and I will answer to the best of my ability.)

[tyckspoon]

Your biggest area for optimization is poorly spent wealth, but without knowing how your DM managed wealth/opportunities to customize your equipment it's hard to say if you should have done that better during the game. In a vacuum, you certainly could (for example, your AC is painfully low, you don't have a save boosting item at all, and you would have far too much money tied up in that Belt +8 that could be more usefully spread over other items.) As it stands it looks like your group probably played fairly low-optimization; you have a lot of defensive holes that would get you killed very quickly by the more brutal kinds of opponents (very low Fort save + no immunity to [Death] effects, say- you get 2 chances to make that save with a Concentration check instead, which is good, but you're at a level where such effects can be spammed against you by certain kinds of enemies.)

Build-wise, you're not terrible, although there are a few things that could go differently; I wouldn't have picked that many Desert Wind maneuvers. Not sure what I would replace them with, because you kind of run out of obvious ones to go for with a Swordsage, but there's probably something better.

Your feats could use some tuning; Darkstalker (Lords of Madness) allows you to hide from some of the more common 'lol I found you!' (blindsense/tremorsense etc) senses and is a staple for this kind of character. Bastard Sword Proficiency would be an obvious option to swap; I can kind of understand having it around for the flavor (and maybe Diamond Mind Weapon Focus) but it's not a good trade mechanically. Unnerving Calm could also be given up without too much pain. The Fey line could be swapped for better feats, but I'm guessing if you went into them at all you probably had strong flavor/character background reasons to do so and don't really want to give them up.

Things I'd look into changing feats for: Darkstalker, Extra Readied Maneuver, maybe Blade Meditation- Diamond Mind if you're particularly fond of the Nightmare Blade/Insightful Strike family.

[Torben Raibeart]

Never actually played ToB-characters, but lets see...

Your AC is rather terrible considering that you're level 20. You'll be hit by pretty much everything. How you does not have a magical studded leather by this level baffles and confuses me, but there's probably a good reason. Point is that you'll take a lot of damage unless you have some way to prevent this with maneuvers, (see that you have Protection devotion, which heps, but only once a day) with with your average hp probably is a problem. Bracers of armor does not stack with studded leather by the way.

Your will-save and reflex-save is okay, but that low fort probably isn't good in the long run. But Mind over Body covers that if I'm guessing correctly? Saves look good.

Bastard sword is a trap. Just saying. Usually not worth spending a feat on it, all though it's double as both one hand and two hands can be useful. Otherwise your feats look fine. was sceptic reguarding the fey-feats until I realized that they give you DR and dimention door.

Other than that I can't really say much, as I (as mentioned) does not use ToB and therefore can not evaluate how good the stances and manuvers are, but I suspect that assassins stance and the shadow manuvers probably would deliver the damage needed to be effectiv.

All in all it looks pretty decent, apart from the low AC.

[ScrambledBrains]

Your biggest area for optimization is poorly spent wealth, but without knowing how your DM managed wealth/opportunities to customize your equipment it's hard to say if you should have done that better during the game. In a vacuum, you certainly could (for example, your AC is painfully low, you don't have a save boosting item at all, and you would have far too much money tied up in that Belt +8 that could be more usefully spread over other items.) As it stands it looks like your group probably played fairly low-optimization; you have a lot of defensive holes that would get you killed very quickly by the more brutal kinds of opponents (very low Fort save + no immunity to [Death] effects, say- you get 2 chances to make that save with a Concentration check instead, which is good, but you're at a level where such effects can be spammed against you by certain kinds of enemies.)

Build-wise, you're not terrible, although there are a few things that could go differently; I wouldn't have picked that many Desert Wind maneuvers. Not sure what I would replace them with, because you kind of run out of obvious ones to go for with a Swordsage, but there's probably something better.

Your feats could use some tuning; Darkstalker (Lords of Madness) allows you to hide from some of the more common 'lol I found you!' (blindsense/tremorsense etc) senses and is a staple for this kind of character. Bastard Sword Proficiency would be an obvious option to swap; I can kind of understand having it around for the flavor (and maybe Diamond Mind Weapon Focus) but it's not a good trade mechanically. Unnerving Calm could also be given up without too much pain. The Fey line could be swapped for better feats, but I'm guessing if you went into them at all you probably had strong flavor/character background reasons to do so and don't really want to give them up.

Things I'd look into changing feats for: Darkstalker, Extra Readied Maneuver, maybe Blade Meditation- Diamond Mind if you're particularly fond of the Nightmare Blade/Insightful Strike family.

True enough on the wealth and the low-op(Had a guy who took 20 levels straight fighter, had highest damage output(and nothing else.))

I wasn't sure what else to grab after some of the more obvious ones for Swordsages. They just sort of filtered in. :smallbiggrin:

The only reason I took the Fey line was for the DR. If I could have found a better source for it...and true on the rest. (I only took the EWP for Bastard Sword because of Diamond Mind...bad move apparently. :D)

If I ever revive this character, will do. :smallsmile:

[ScrambledBrains]

Never actually played ToB-characters, but lets see...

Your AC is rather terrible considering that you're level 20. You'll be hit by pretty much everything. How you does not have a magical studded leather by this level baffles and confuses me, but there's probably a good reason. Point is that you'll take a lot of damage unless you have some way to prevent this with maneuvers, (see that you have Protection devotion, which heps, but only once a day) with with your average hp probably is a problem. Bracers of armor does not stack with studded leather by the way.

Your will-save and reflex-save is okay, but that low fort probably isn't good in the long run. But Mind over Body covers that if I'm guessing correctly? Saves look good.

Bastard sword is a trap. Just saying. Usually not worth spending a feat on it, all though it's double as both one hand and two hands can be useful. Otherwise your feats look fine. was sceptic reguarding the fey-feats until I realized that they give you DR and dimention door.

Other than that I can't really say much, as I (as mentioned) does not use ToB and therefore can not evaluate how good the stances and manuvers are, but I suspect that assassins stance and the shadow manuvers probably would deliver the damage needed to be effectiv.

All in all it looks pretty decent, apart from the low AC.

I was never sure how to keep light armor and still get a high AC(this was before my days here on this forum started. XD) so I decided to just stay low AC. And you say the bracers wouldn't stack with the studded leather? Hmmm, guess my DM house-ruled that one in my favor.

[tyckspoon]

I was never sure how to keep light armor and still get a high AC(this was before my days here on this forum started. XD) so I decided to just stay low AC. And you say the bracers wouldn't stack with the studded leather? Hmmm, guess my DM house-ruled that one in my favor.

WBLmancy, mostly; if you've been hanging around here for a while you've probably figured it out by now. If not, just mention it and I'm sure somebody will lay it out.

[ScrambledBrains]

WBLmancy, mostly; if you've been hanging around here for a while you've probably figured it out by now. If not, just mention it and I'm sure somebody will lay it out.

Ah, I see. Was never all that sure of the best ways to spend me GP. I'll ask someone if I ever need the help. XD