Piss-poor melee

[Adamaro]

I am making Badland orcs (and ogres and kobolds, goblins, etc ...) for my setting. What is common for these creatures, is that they have almost no acess to magic items, but have perfected their martial arts as much as they can be perfected. There are many masters and bandmasters in their ranks, teaching ways of superchargers, shocktroopers and warblades to give these inhabitants of the Wastes a decent fighting chance.

Reason for this is they are regularly:
- warring among themselves
- fighting vs. ever present ghoul- and wraith-plagues
- fighting vs. MM2 monsters
- fighting vs human-based Empire
- have poor access to casters. They have no access to wizards, only very very small access to nature-born sorcerers and some clerics, but these rarely join the combat

So, my question is - if you would build a melee with access ONLY to nonmagic items, how would you approach this? ALSO! it is very important that the goal is not for these characters to start "operating" at lvl 20 but lvl 3.
They may have an advantage of numbers, but still - when you live in a sort of Dark Sun-ish enviroment (with access only to nonmagic iron/steel items) you hone your skill the best you can.

How would you represent these inhabitants of Badlands with a build?

[Saph]

I'd probably be tempted to use Incarnum. Totemists and Incarnates effectively get built-in magic items, and their major weakness is that they can't use chakra binds and magic items in the same slots at once - if you're not going to have any magic items anyway, that problem goes away.

Oh, and if you know you're going to have abysmal WBL, Vow of Poverty becomes a great choice, but somehow I don't think Exalted Good would fit that campaign setting very well. :smallbiggrin:

[Greenish]

No magic items or support? I'd stay the hell away from melee. Massed archers and Handle Animal are the way to go. Combine for mounted archers. Pick your fights, never engage an enemy directly (without overwhelming numbers, at least), pray to gods of luck like your life depended on it (which it does).

Scout or Swift Hunter would work, if you can ignore scout errata. It'd require going a bit too close to the enemy, but eh.

[Adamaro]

I like your approach a lot, Greenish. It really raises that slashy fodder-orcs into sniping mounted beasts of death. Lovely :smallbiggrin:

[navar100]

Tome of Battle is the way to go. They don't even need magic weapons since the Mountain Hammer line punches through DR, and Crusaders get Foe Hammer for one more. Even without them lots of strikes do lots of damage.

Their one weakness is flying creatures. Crusaders are proficient with the bow, but that's it. You can use this weakness as a feature for a campaign plot point.

[Clawhound]

I'd go with fluff first.

"They know little of magic, but what little they did scrap together by trial and error, using bits of ancient stuff they discovered, ..."

Now you can give them semi-magic weapons that stop functioning after 24 hours, or effects that work once, like "boom bags." You have an explanation on why they have capabilities, and why the character's can't loot those capabilities. (Really, it's just a twist on the classic drow weapons from 1st edition.)

A wizard would look at their stuff and say, "Primitive and crude, and even suicidal, but effective."

[paddyfool]

How about if each race specialised in particular modes of combat?

- Goblin archers on wolves: swift hunters. Goblin elite: Warblades (they're the only ones with no int penalty from this lot).
- Kobolds: sneak-attack and handle-animal abusing wilderness rogues, plus some swordsages
- Orcs: Barbarians and Crusaders.
- Ogres: Barbarians
etc.

Some shifters among the wild races might also be nice.

[mikau013]

You can't hurt wraiths without magical weapons.

Though I'm sure you could use one of the ToB casters to kill them.

[Ziegander]

You can't hurt wraiths without magical weapons.

Though I'm sure you could use one of the ToB casters to kill them.

/ROLLSEYES. :smallsigh:

[Greenish]

Though I'm sure you could use one of the ToB casters to kill them.Yeah, but sorcerers and clerics are supposed to be rare, let alone RKV and JPMs.

[NeoSeraphi]

/ROLLSEYES. :smallsigh:

To be fair, Ziegander, he's got a point. You could use Inferno Blast to kill a wraith even if you had only a non-magical weapon, since Inferno Blast doesn't use your weapon at all.

Edit: And "shaping your inner ki" to create a fireball definitely does sound a lot like a caster. I'm not on that side of the ToB fence, but I can see room for the argument (especially since WotC themselves called it "Blade Magic")

[Doorhandle]

Oh, and if you know you're going to have abysmal WBL, Vow of Poverty becomes a great choice, but somehow I don't think Exalted Good would fit that campaign setting very well.


I think vow of poverty could still work: Just represent it as simply being badass enough to survive on guts alone without piddling magic items.

Are their any morality restrictions on it? If not, go for it, if so, do it anyway and bullcrap your way past it.

[GoatBoy]

Drugs.

Seriously. There are drugs in BoVD which give short-term stat boosts in exchange for long-lasting penalties and the risk of addiction. Magic of Eberron has some weird syringe-type-thingies called bloodspikes which provide a few bonuses, such as adding acid damage to bite attacks, giving you DR 1/-, and (probably the only one worth using) granting you a free extra move action on your turn. There are also rules for drugs in the Sanity subsection of Unearthed Arcana in the SRD, but none of them are geared toward melee characters.

Or, come up with your own.

Also, I think there are special materials which allow weapons to count as magic for purposes of DR, despite being wholly natural. They are found all over the place among splatbooks, a few coming to mind are Frostburn and the Fiendish Codices. Plenty in the Eberron books, too.

[The-Mage-King]

Honestly? Incarnum class 1/ToB class 2 should do the trick. Or Incarnum class 3. Or ToB class 3. Or...


You get the picture.


Or you could use Clawhound's explaination.

[Heatwizard]

I am making Badland orcs (and ogres and kobolds, goblins, etc ...) for my setting. What is common for these creatures, is that they have almost no acess to magic items, but have perfected their martial arts as much as they can be perfected. There are many masters and bandmasters in their ranks, teaching ways of superchargers, shocktroopers and warblades to give these inhabitants of the Wastes a decent fighting chance.

Nomadic bands of optimizers, trying to make the best of low-magic surroundings. That's far more amazing then it has any right to be, I love it.

Get some trip-based lockdown in there; spiked chains even fit in with the wasteland aesthetic. If Horizon Walker and its planar terrain masteries aren't too far from mundane to fit in, the "dimension door every 1d4 rounds" ability from shifting planes is a healthy boost to melee mobility.

[Adamaro]

Does Greenish's idea mean that we could have orcs riding basilisks, rust monsters and MM2 monsters?

[hisnamehere]

I found a feat online once for orcs. It was called Orcish Fetish, or some such. You had the orc gain a small fetish (such as a bag of special herbs tied on a thong around the neck) that granted him an AC bonus dependant on character level.
This is kinda "magick-y", but I always liked it for the more shaman/adept/witch-doctor feel of orcish magic.

I think the truth to be remembered here is that these tribes ARE going to be less powerful than many of their enemies, but that's okay. It's flavourful, and I like it.
Granting ToB classes or Incarnum would both be interesting flavour-wise, but would definitely change what seems to be your original concept. Swordmagic or incarnum on their own without any magic items is still going to be less powerful {let's not debate this statement within this thread, please} that societies using base classes AND magic items.

Abusing and even mis-using tactical and OP combos sounds like a fun way to go, and the best to represent the "superior martial training" you want these tribes to have.
Maybe let them qualify for race/alignment-specific PrCs and feats due to their assimilation of all things martial.

Happy gaming,

[ericgrau]

Taking down foes at very long range before they reach you is ideal but you can't always manage that. I'd give everyone a backup ranged weapon, and a few specializing in range would have a backup melee weapon, perhaps with weapon finesse. I'd usually want to mix both together even if a race favors a larger amount of one or the other.

With minimal magic a lot of them might get good listen checks, blind fight, tremor sense, etc. to fight in poor conditions. Heck blindsighted grimlocks could be a major racial player in such a world. Others might have evasion, mettle and so on. The few casters they did have would probably focus on utility issues like flight and revealing invisible foes (e.g., invisibility purge) to help out the non-caster majority.