What 3 feats? 3.p

[Seatbelt]

I have a half-orc druid 9/Fist of the Forest 3. But I'm using the alternate class abilities from Unearthed Arcana to get rage, monk defense bonuses and movement speed, ranger favored enemy and whatever the 3.p alternate class feature is to get favored terrain bonuses. I gave up the animal companion and other stuff deliberately. I like the general idea of this character.

The problem is that I need to take 3 feats, one each at level 7, 9, and 11. But I'm at a loss as to what I should do. I'm hoping the community has a cool idea.

[killianh]

There are some good Wild Shape combat feats you can look at that are really nice. Not sure on the whole idea of the character so not sure what to recommend outside of that

[Feralventas]

What'd you pick for 1,3, and 5? Easier to avoid over-lap if we know.

Additionally, what aspects of your character would you like to emphasize; alternatively, what do you want to be able to do, or think is lacking?

[Seatbelt]

I traded away wildshape and spontaneous summoning, and my animal companion, for rage (and I can rage for however long a 9th level pathfinder barbarian with 24 con can rage for), the favored enemy and favored terrain of a 9th level ranger, the track feat, swift tracker, and the wisdom/ac bonus and fast movement of a 9th level monk. My druid levels progress the ranger, monk, and barbarian bonuses, as well as druid spellcasting. My movement speed from assorted bonuses and fast movement (derived from class levels) is 16 squares or 80 feet.

I have great fortitude, improved unarmed strike, and power attack, which are prerequisites for Fist of The Forrest. Fist of the Forrest advances my unarmed attack bonus to D10 damage dice (so it's like monk levels on crack) and grants me con to AC, and a "feral trance" that grants me +4 dex and an extra bite attack for 1D6+str at my highest base attack bonus. So I get con, dex, and wis to AC. I know getting a good AC at high levels is pointless unless you go crazy, but 3 stats to AC amuses me.

I bought myself a bowstaff from the MIC and gave it the furious property because it amused me.

The character is going to be adventuring with a goblin duelist. The two are best friends and the goblin, slightly crazy, fancies himself an Orc. The other party members are going to be a wizard of some type, and probably a bard? and I'm not sure what our 5th player will be since he has to miss the first session. Possibly a paladin or cleric.

My role in the party is going to be "generalist" and front line melee fighter. I can scout, buff/debuff/bc/heal, blast if needed, through spells. I can rage and put out some damage. I was looking at the quarterstaff feats from pathfinder. But my speed is so crazy I was looking at the spring attack line. I was looking at greater grapple - with rage and unarmed strike damage and natural weapons from feral trance my grapple is respectable. But I don't understand what it lets me do.

The character is not great. But I've more or less settled on a back story and all the disparate abilities work really well for this character and I was somewhat intentionally going for "low op." So I'm happy with what I have from class levels so far. Just looking for feat suggestions.


I'm also torn between taking more levels of druid to progress all my random class abilities (I know the spellcasting makes this a no-brainer), or levels of fighter for the feats.


As fluff background he was born from an orc human union in the usual unwanted way. Shunned by his human family as a freak, scorned by his orc breathren as weak. He determined that the only real ideal life lived would be to return to a state of nature. So he's built up this philosophy (based on his hard life) that the state of nature is the ideal life (because you are completely free) and nature is at constant war with itself. Survival of the fittest and all that. He's basically the living embodiment of Thomas Hobbes.He's neutral evil. Hates society, cities, people in general. Pretty sure I'm taking favored enemy Orcs and Humans.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Superior Unarmed Strike would advance the unarmed strike damage to 2d6 (and possibly progress it to 2d8 depending on how its interaction with Fist of the Forest is interpreted). Improved Natural Attack definitely improves the damage to 2d8. Together, they improve your UAS damage to 3d8. Not sure if that's your cup of tea, but it's something.

[Feralventas]

I think the variant he's talking about grants the unarmed strike progression already, and even if it doesn't, a Monk's Belt, Tattoo, and the two levels in Fist of the Forest should already cover getting up to 2d6 or even 2d10.

I'd suggest Power Attack if you're going to be using that unarmed strike (which your build suggests you will), Improved Grapple and Magic Fang or whatever the APG feat is that automatically treats your unarmed and natural attacks as Magic for overcoming DR/Magic.

[Rejakor]

An Amulet of Mighty Fists will make his fists magical, or he could use that bowstaff he mentioned in melee.

It depends on your party role and what thematics you want.

If you want to stop enemy creatures getting past you in tight spaces, you could go for a Lockdown sort of thing, transform your bowstaff into a Greatbow/Longstaff, which has reach, and pick up Improved Trip, which will let you trip creatures using your AoOs, with your high strength it should be a cinch. Later perhaps think of taking a level of crusader, for the Thicket of Blades stance and the self-healing strike attacks (remember, your initiator level is half your normal levels + your levels in the initiating class, so if you took a level of crusader at 13th, you would have a initiator level of 7, and be eligible for 4th level maneuvers - if you focused on one discipline, like Devoted Spirit or White Raven, you could pick up all the prereqs and get 1 or 2 4th level maneuvers, which are very competitive even at level 13), you can build on that by taking Stand Still, which means that people moving past you end their movement, and Combat Reflexes, so you can lock down multiple people to stop them getting to the casters.

If you want to be an all around face breaker and name taker, considering you already have Power Attack, i'd take Improved Bull Rush, Shock Trooper, and either Leap Attack or Knockback. With Leap Attack your charges become twice as dangerous, more on par with your full attack, and Shock Trooper adds to that by making your charges much more likely to hit (at the cost of penalizing your AC while charging). With Knockback, and Improved Bullrush/Shocktrooper, you're hitting people who get thrown away from you into other people and then both of them fall down. Also if they collide with a wall they fall down, by some readings of the feat. So you basically become a wrecking ball throwing people everywhere. It works best with the Dungeon Crasher ability of the Dungeoncrasher Fighter, where if you hit someone into a wall they take damage, but it still works fine for disordering and wasting the actions of your opponents otherwise.


If you want to be a stealthy assassin druidic avenger style of fing, get someone to cast silence on a rock for you and make it permanent, and then then keep the rock in a pouch til you want silence. In addition, take the Darkstalker feat which lets you hide even from creatures with blindsense and darkvision and such, and look into taking a level in Shiba Protector(Oriental Adventures), which adds your wis to hit and damage on top of whatever you normally add. Also a level of swordsage would help you, too, as it gives all kinds of movement related and hiding related abilities, and Assassin's Stance (Shadow Hand 3) gives you sneak attack that you can use to take Silencing Strike, a feat for rogues that lets you neck-punch someone so they can't cast spells or shout out an alarum.


As for grappling, i'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'Greater Grapple', if you just mean focusing on your grapple, well, there's whole 20 level builds that focus on grappling so you have a lot of choices, but basically a high BAB, a high Str, and Improved Grapple will let you grab dex focused people or wizards, and nothing beyond severe optimization will let you grab big huge monsters, because they have arbitrarily large grapple scores and while you can make a titan mauler, it's pretty hard to do so without spells or whatever.

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Those are all some basic suggestions that are fairly low op, if you want something specific, like for example stronger base weapon dice damage, I can give you some help with that - i've played a few psionics based unarmed melee characters, so I know a bit about how unarmed melee works in DnD from a mechanics perspective, and how to go about tackling whichever specific branch of it you're aiming for.

[Lonely Tylenol]

I think the variant he's talking about grants the unarmed strike progression already, and even if it doesn't, a Monk's Belt, Tattoo, and the two levels in Fist of the Forest should already cover getting up to 2d6 or even 2d10.

To wit, it does not--granting only the AC bonus and fast movement of the monk--and the unarmed damage is simply coming from the 3-level dip into Fist of the Forest.

Even so, using either my feats OR your Monk's Belt and tattoo, you're getting the character to the tipping point where weapon damage starts to explode; if you combine them, then the damage begins exploding and turns ridiculous.


I'd suggest Power Attack if you're going to be using that unarmed strike (which your build suggests you will), Improved Grapple and Magic Fang or whatever the APG feat is that automatically treats your unarmed and natural attacks as Magic for overcoming DR/Magic.

Power Attack is already on the list, since it's a prereq for Fist of the Forest.

Another option is to go for feats that advance rage, or other class features that you are gaining from the trade.

[Seatbelt]

We're using Pathfinder's rules. So I'm trying to focus on taking Pathfinder feats. I'd have already grabbed leap attack and superior unarmed strike otherwise. I'm going to ask my DM about taking non-pathfinder feats. Since all my variant abilities are non-pathfinder and my PrC is from Complete Champion I don't think it will be an issue but I don't want to assume.

Fist of the Forest advances my unarmed strike damage. But it fast tracks it over 3 levels to D10. With a Monk's Robe from pathfinder I'm at 2D6. What is this tattoo you're talking about and where do I find it?

As it stands right now my attacks with my Bowstaff are slightly better.
Assuming rage and greater magic fang my unarmed strike is +18/+13 for 2D6+9 and bite attack at +16 for 1D6+7. The Bowstaff, again assuming rage, is +19/+14 with 1D6+13. But power attack adds 9 damage to the bowstaff and only 6 damage to the unarmed strike. If the DM allows superior unarmed strike and improved natural attack then it's a no-brainer to use my unarmed strikes as my primary attack and grab Boar Style. If I hit with 2 of my natural attacks that adds another 2D6 bleed damage. But if he doesn't what would be better to focus on?


This is the feat greater grapple: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/greater-grapple-combat---final

I don't understand how it interacts with a normal grapple action and why it's good. As I interpret pathfinder's grapple rules I can maintain the grapple as a standard action and then perform one of a list of actions (like dealing damage). So it would stand to reason that this feat would let me make two grapple checks to deal my unarmed damage twice in a round. But I'm not sure. If it doesn't work that way I don't understand why you would ever want to take this feat. Or why you would want to make a grapple monkey in Pathfinder, because the feats utterly suck.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Fist of the Forest advances my unarmed strike damage. But it fast tracks it over 3 levels to D10. With a Monk's Robe from pathfinder I'm at 2D6. What is this tattoo you're talking about and where do I find it?

Magic of Faerun, p. 163, "Monk's Tattoo". Advances unarmed strike, AC, and unarmored speed as if you were a monk four levels higher.

I can't speak to the capacity of a grappler in Pathfinder, but I am leery of the PF-only feats, because of some truly God-awful ones that have shown themselves to me in the past (see: Antagonize).

[Seatbelt]

Are you sure the belt and tattoo stack?

[Lonely Tylenol]

Are you sure the belt and tattoo stack?

There is no wording that says the contrary, and there are no general stacking issues, since neither item is providing a typed bonus of any sort.

[Seatbelt]

There is no wording that says the contrary, and there are no general stacking issues, since neither item is providing a typed bonus of any sort.

It's 80 grand though. I can't afford an item that expensive. :P

[Rejakor]

I recently made a character for a pathfinder game, and while they have a lot of feats, sorting the dross from the gems is a chore because unlike 3.5 where the dross is clearly obviously visible, in pathfinder they pretty it up and make it sound awesome and then you look at the actual mechanics and they don't do what it said the feat does and furthermore they're not worth taking as a trait, much less a feat.

That said, I did find the Serpent Style feats, which at the third feat let you take a free unarmed attack before someone attacks you, and then if you want another free unarmed attack as an AoO after they attack you (obviously this would be limited by AoOs per round, but the first one isn't). So that's non-trivial, especially combined with reach of some kind and Improved Improved Trip (why they split all the Improved feats into two feats I will NEVER KNOW).

That said if you're running with backwards compatibility, i'd just use 3.5 feats for the most part, Pathfinder feats can do interesting things but they're so split up and feat chainey you need essentially double the number of feats to do anything comparable to the good 3.5 feats.

EDIT: Okay, a quick look at pathfinder feats shows me that your best options are probably either improved grapple, greater grapple, rapid grapple, pinning rend, then neckbreaker, which is the grappler route, and lets you grapple for unarmed damage 3 times, but if you lose a single grapple check ever they get out of the grapple and you have to reinitiate it (big deal). This means you'll look like a ridiculous slapfighting grab-artist, but so what.

Step Up, Following Step, and Step Up and Strike are three other feats that grab my eye. You move up to someone, hit them or whatever, then if they try to move away on their turn you get to stay next to them. For some DMs, this will never see use, for others, it's a godsend. The last one lets you hit them when they 5' step away, or if they full move, AoO them and then follow them and then hit them again, all on their turn and costing you nothing on your turn.

Combine with Improved Trip or whatever to taste, and bam.

Another option is more blendery and you don't seem like you want that, but Vicious Stomp gives you an AoO when enemies fall prone, and you can use Improved Greater Trip to basically trip someone and hit them twice using only one attack (or even as a charge). So there's that. Adder Strike also lets you poison your unarmed strikes, which is pretty druidey.

[Waker]

Ferocious Tenacity: Lose rounds of rage to prevent damage from killing you.
Gore Fiend: Whenever you crit or are critted against, you regain a round of rage.
Punishing Kick: I just think it's a fun feat.
Vicious Stomp: Nice because it doesn't require you to be the one who trips the enemy.

[Seatbelt]

I'm going to go the grapple route. We had our first session tonight and one of the other party members made a bard. She makes us awesome. I was happier with my damage output when between persisted haste from the wizard and bardsong I dished out 71 damage in a round. Not sultan of smack territory to be sure. But respectable.

[Rejakor]

What kind of bard?

There's a pretty sweet 3rd party pathfinder feat called Pander that doubles your inspire courage bonuses for one specific person.