Breaking Stuff

[Doughnut Master]

So I'm looking to build a human(oid) battering ram, and I need ways to improve its stuff-breaking ability.

So far, I've examined:
1. High Strength Score
2. Size Increases
3. Dungeon Crasher Fighter
4. Barbarian with Destructive Rage
5. Warforged Juggernaut


Do ye wise giants have any suggestions regarding 1 & 2 or any other avenues that I should examine?

[Zeofar]

Strength Devotion from Complete Champion will allow you to ignore hardness on your attacks for a minute once per day (more if you have turn attempts to burn).

A bunch of Stone Dragon maneuvers will allow you to bypass hardness and Stone Dragon's Fury deals +4d6 damage against objects.

Adamantine weapons obviate the need to worry about bypassing hardness in most cases, so those are obviously a good choice.

[Doughnut Master]

Good tips. Anything for the pure strength check to break or burst?

[Cespenar]

Good tips. Anything for the pure strength check to break or burst?

Anything to raise your strength, more or less. High level Cleric with Strength domain power, Kensai 2, Frenzied Berserker, etc.

[IdleMuse]

Other things to examine are:

Half-Minotaur template (Dragon 313), for a +12 STR template for only +1 LA.
War Hulk PrC (Minis 23), a class for large characters which grants strength increases (+2, every level), instead of BAB.

The king of size increasing spells is Giant Size, but it's hard to get.

[DoctorGlock]

Other things to examine are:

Half-Minotaur template (Dragon 313), for a +12 STR template for only +1 LA.
War Hulk PrC (Minis 23), a class for large characters which grants strength increases (+2, every level), instead of BAB.

The king of size increasing spells is Giant Size, but it's hard to get.

Ur Priest+Ruby Knight+Miracle only takes about half a build and gives it.

Arcane swordsage can also pull it, but is likely to get you taken behind the shed in the back.

[Doughnut Master]

Can you grab War Hulk with powerful build or do you have to be large?

[NOhara24]

Adamantine weapons obviate the need to worry about bypassing hardness in most cases, so those are obviously a good choice.

They ignore hardness as long as it's less than 20, specifically. :smallbiggrin:

[Ksheep]

You can get another +6 STR from Lolth-touched (MM IV) for another +1 LA.

[DoctorGlock]

Can you grab War Hulk with powerful build or do you have to be large?

You count as large where it would be advantageous is the wording I believe, so signs point to yes

[Doughnut Master]

Cool. And the half-minotaur template looks absolutely disgusting. How is that legal?

[DoctorGlock]

Cool. And the half-minotaur template looks absolutely disgusting. How is that legal?

because melee needs nice things and he becomes obsolete past level 5 anyway

[Doughnut Master]

I agree melee needs nice things, but that doesn't really seem to solve the problem. With such a great benefit for such a small price it only makes characters that don't choose that option more suboptimal while characters that do take it still face the same difficulties later on.

[Cog]

If you're taking Fighter anyway, there's some web content (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cwc/20061013a) that's of use here. Also, Factotum's 3rd-level ability lets you add Int to Str (and Dex) checks.

Edit: Powerful Build does not qualify you for War Hulk. The description of the ability states specifically when it does apply: anything beyond that, it does not apply to.

[IdleMuse]

Cool. And the half-minotaur template looks absolutely disgusting. How is that legal?

Dragon magazine! Which means, no playtesting, no balance. You can stack the Half-Ogre template on afterwards (same article) and get another +4 str for free. In fact, after reading this thread the first time, I threw together a cheesy build on that principle. It's not really TO, I'm sure there are plenty more things that can be done to pimp it, but it's got some pretty large numbers:

Lolth-touched Incarnate Construct Dustform Feral Half-Ogre Half-Minotaur Water Orc
Barbarian 1/Dungeoncrasher Fighter 6/War Hulk 10

Large Giant
+34 str
-6 dex
+16 con
?? int (gets rerolled as 4d6k3 from Incarnate Construct)
-4 cha
(total +3 LA)

at ecl20
+58 str +items+rage

Total breaking objects strength: 110 (that's a +50 modifier)
assuming
: Destructive Rage
: Belt of Giant's Strength +6
: Manual of Gainful Exercise +4
: Armbands of Might +2

So I guess it's a Water Orc of extremely murky heritage, who got buried in a Desert and reawakened as a Dustform. That dustform was found by an Avatar of Lolth who turned it into an Incarnate construct... that makes sense, right? :smallamused: It hasn't even got too bad stat penalties, thanks to good old Incarnate Construct Dustform cheese.

[Slipperychicken]

Portable Battering Ram gives +2 to break doors open. If you have a buddy to help you, it's +4. At the size/strength you're going for, it'll probably look more like an *actual* battering ram than anything else.

Item of Continuous Enlarge Person: 4,000gp. +2 Str, +1 Size

Goliath Race (RoS. 56). +1 LA, +4 STR, Powerful Build.

[Bakkan]

IIRC, Shape Soulmeld (Mauling Gauntlets) from Magic of Incarnum will give you a +2 bonus, and if you take Bonus Essentia you can get up to a +6.

[Fax Celestis]

Probably irrelevant, but the Legendary Dreadnaught (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/prestigeClasses/legendaryDreadnought.htm) epic PrC has a lot of stuff about breaking things. Honestly, it's not that amazing, so if you fiddle with the prereqs and make the bonus on Unstoppable and Umovable be something like "+2x class level" instead of just "+20", you could probably play it in non-epic.