Damage Sponge advice

[Yutiko]

Hey Playgrounders, in my free time I like to come up with certain characters in my mind for fun. Recently I thought of doing a Damage Sponge character. Looking for general advice/tips.

Thinking of Dragonborn Arctic Mongrelfolk (+8 Con? Heck yes!) going Crusader (stances/strikes for healing/being harder to hit plus a lost health pool). However I feel the -6 to Cha to be a huge blow, but I'm not sure if it truly is.

So far in my games my character has not faced anything that does Cha damage, and am wondering how likely it would be to come across this.

Other than this what other races would you suggest, or classes that would be better for this type of character than Crusader.

(No homebrew, and if you list something in a Dragon Mag I need a reference.)

[Silva Stormrage]

Not sure how you feel about psionics but psions and erudites can be AMAZING damage sponges. Especially STP Erudite (Might be a tad bit cheesy for you though). Share vigor (5 HP/pp) with your psicrystal and then manifest share pain on it so it takes half your damage. Right now I am playing a StP Erudite and it runs out of PP's way before it runes out of HP. (Last 7 levels nothing has made it run out of temporary HP).

[FMArthur]

Ardents also perform quite well as a damage sponge, have access to psionic damage mitigation techniques (there are many), and are one of the only base classes outside of Crusader that can dedicate themselves to actually protecting their allies and punishing enemies for attacking and have the means to accomplish it.

As an alternative to the psion and erudite they have slightly better hit dice, the same PP pool and medium BAB. They also run off Wisdom, which would make you suffer less for being Mongrelfolk. They get access to useful protective mantle granted powers, and while most psionic classes can gain access to each another's stiff in roundabout fashion, the Ardent gains access to missing psionic powers with less work than others take to gain access to mantle granted powers.

[Metahuman1]

Tacking on Draconic creature and Magic blooded templates (Google the latter 1, it's a Dragon Mag Template.) would take it down to -2 wis -2 cha. And net you an extra +2 to con.

[Yutiko]

Tacking on Draconic creature and Magic blooded templates (Google the latter 1, it's a Dragon Mag Template.) would take it down to -2 wis -2 cha. And net you an extra +2 to con.

With Dragonborn Arctic Mongrelfolk I get +2str +8con -6cha -2 for the rest. Are you saying that I can also just add Draconic and Magic blooded for +10 con? Not quite sure how the race/subrace/bloodtype works entirely.

[Xtomjames]

Barbarian with Spellfire Wielder feat.

[grarrrg]

Why no Mineral Warrior?
Granted it's +1LA, but DR 8/Adamantine? AND +4 Con? You can't lose!
(+2 Str, -2 All Mentals, and other assorted goodies)

[Yutiko]

Why no Mineral Warrior?
Granted it's +1LA, but DR 8/Adamantine? AND +4 Con? You can't lose!
(+2 Str, -2 All Mentals, and other assorted goodies)

Never heard of it. Also can it get the arctic type?

I have never looked into the psionics book. I don't have access to it atm but can someone give a quick highlight of how the Ardent is a good damage sponge?

[IdleMuse]

Mineral Warrior is in Underdark, for reference. I once statted a... Blooded One Mineral Warrior Dragonborn Draconic Water Orc Dragon Shaman for an ECL6 game at one point; that's +8 STR and +12 CON for +3 LA. And you get a lot of other goodies as well (+5 natural armour and DR 8). Big penalty to Int though, be careful with anything that needs skill points.

[Madcrafter]

Survivor PrC and the Roll With It feat (x8), both from savage species. No defense against energy damage though.

Or cleric, and buff yourself to high heaven (delay death when the fan gets hit).

Or maybe, if you like homebrew, take a look at Flickerdart's Implacable Man (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153003).

[grarrrg]

Never heard of it. Also can it get the arctic type?


Link to Mineral Warrior (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20031003e) (halfway down)

[gorfnab]

Totemist (MoI) would be awesome with that high of a Con score.

[Snowbluff]

Your doing it wrong if all that gives alot of LA but no Hit Die. +8 Con bonus plus 1HD = Crap. HD literally multiplies the usefulness of your Con bonus, at the same time granting health. The Holy Grail would be something that grants more HD than it's level adjustment.

[TuggyNE]

Your doing it wrong if all that gives alot of LA but no Hit Die. +8 Con bonus plus 1HD = Crap. HD literally multiplies the usefulness of your Con bonus, at the same time granting health. The Holy Grail would be something that grants more HD than it's level adjustment.

Uh... forgive me if I'm wrong :smallconfused:, but aren't most RHD pretty useless, since they dilute your ECL without giving class features at all? So this advice seems counterproductive to me.

[tyckspoon]

Uh... forgive me if I'm wrong :smallconfused:, but aren't most RHD pretty useless, since they dilute your ECL without giving class features at all? So this advice seems counterproductive to me.

They're better than most LA, which tend to give you thoroughly underwhelming features and *nothing* HD related (HP/BAB/Saves/Skills. No matter how neat your templates are, unless one of them makes you Pun-Pun you need a certain minimum level of those HD-granted qualities to function.) If you build an ECL 5 character with 1 HD and 4 LA, he's still quite likely to die to a simple magic missile in the face.

[Snowbluff]

Uh... forgive me if I'm wrong :smallconfused:, but aren't most RHD pretty useless, since they dilute your ECL without giving class features at all? So this advice seems counterproductive to me.


I'll give a big yes/no to that. Ideally, you would have no Level Adjustment, but if you do, I would say make you would get RHD out of it, since your HP would go up, too. You also still get feats, skills, etc. with RHD.

Though, IMHO, this is all very pointless. There definitely class features that would go much farther than stacking LA and templates.

EDIT: Swordsaged. Nice to know I am not the only one thinking this way, though.

[TuggyNE]

They're better than most LA, which tend to give you thoroughly underwhelming features and *nothing* HD related (HP/BAB/Saves/Skills. No matter how neat your templates are, unless one of them makes you Pun-Pun you need a certain minimum level of those HD-granted qualities to function.) If you build an ECL 5 character with 1 HD and 4 LA, he's still quite likely to die to a simple magic missile in the face.

Fair enough, I was mostly reacting to the advice to get "RHD more than LA", which seemed based on a misinterpretation (i.e., that you could somehow get hit dice for free, or something of that nature). Ideally, of course, you minimize both RHD and LA, but at least RHD are somewhat more useful.

Edit: and swordsaged! heh.

[IdleMuse]

If buyoff is being used, it's probably worth having up to 3 LA. If not, you can probably justify 1, with Mineral Warrior or some equally good template/race (Goliath maybe?). Beyond that though? meh. RHD are alright for brute type characters if you can get a typing that gives full BAB and a good hit dice, but you still don't want more than about half your ECL to be non-class levels.

[Yutiko]

If buyoff is being used, it's probably worth having up to 3 LA. If not, you can probably justify 1, with Mineral Warrior or some equally good template/race (Goliath maybe?). Beyond that though? meh. RHD are alright for brute type characters if you can get a typing that gives full BAB and a good hit dice, but you still don't want more than about half your ECL to be non-class levels.

Not quite sure what buyoff or RHD are.

As far as I am aware Dragonborn Arctic Mongrelfolk are only 1 LA so that's just fine with me.

[IdleMuse]

RHD is just short for racial hit dice. LA buyoff is an alternative rule (yet another), from UA, that lets you spend XP to reduce LA after a certain number of levels. The idea is that LA generally represent diminishing returns as characters level up, and so it's not worth continuing to penalise a character once the LA is basically irrelevant for power concerns.