Being a Front liner but having skill points?

[CyberThread]

How can you do the role of armored brute/tank yet still have skill points for rp interactions?

[eggynack]

ToB classes have a pretty good time of it. Crusaders are basically the most tankish class in the game, and they have 4+int skill points. They have diplomacy and intimidate too, so that helps out. Swordsages get 6+int, but they're more monkish than fighterish. Warblades do about as well as crusaders on both the skill having and frontlining fronts.

[Flickerdart]

Barbarians do a decent job of this - they get 4+Int points, and Intimidate is a social skill.

[A_S]

Also, Binder.

[Eslin]

Factotum! Be awesome, use tricks to be tanky, skill points galore.

Druids can be anything they want, including both a frontliner and social guy.

Alternately, be a changeling. A few levels of warshaper gives anyone the ability to frontline, and take rogue as your first level to enjoy 40+4x int mod skills

[Ravens_cry]

Factotum! Be awesome, use tricks to be tanky, skill points galore.

Druids can be anything they want, including both a frontliner and social guy.

How does a druid play face?:smallconfused:

[Flickerdart]

How does a druid play face?:smallconfused:
Druid get Diplomacy in-class, and investing in Charisma is useful thanks to Handle Animal (a significant part of what they do) and Wild Empathy using it. Since they absolutely don't need Str, Dex, or Int, and don't suffer physical ability score penalties after level 15, you can get quite a bit of Charisma if you wanted without losing anything important.

Plus, the ability to summon piles of adorable kittens has got to be worth something. :smallwink:

[Ravens_cry]

OK, they can do it, though I am surprised Diplomacy is a class skill for them. Other's can do it as well, if not better, and I wouldn't call Handle Animal that big a part of what they do. Very, very campaign dependent.

[eggynack]

OK, they can do it, though I am surprised Diplomacy is a class skill for them. Other's can do it as well, if not better, and I wouldn't call Handle Animal that big a part of what they do. Very, very campaign dependent.
They're not the best face in the world. They're just a reasonable face. The fact that they can play diplomat to animals as well as humans is a nice bonus. They don't stick all of their points into charisma, the way the best diplomancers tend to do, but they can put some points into it, and that's often enough. They don't get perfect skill points, but they do about as well as most front line classes out there. They don't get all that many skills, so they can put points into diplomacy at a pretty low cost. They're also one of the best front liners in the game. More accurately, they can set things up at any level such that their combined abilities take on the role of front liner. Druids are crazy buns.

[Eslin]

As above =P

Excellent front liner (and about a thousand other things) and a reasonably good diplomat without having to really bother. Where a paladin will have to carefully plan and allocate to have some measure of social ability at the same time as being kind of ok in a brawl, a druid will put enough points in charisma and intellect because he's not really doing anything else with those points to equal the paladin and far outclass him at every other aspect without really trying.

I'd be annoyed about how unfair that is if I didn't love druids so much. Bears, bears everywhere!

[eggynack]

I think that the funniest thing about druids is grappling. You have all of these melee guys, trying in vain to become good at grappling. They push all of these resources, like feats and size modifiers, in order to trade actions one for one with a single opponent as a best case scenario. As a worst case scenario, they fail to grapple and lose that whole action down the infinite well that is grappling. Grappling is considered a highly suboptimal tactic as a result.

Then druids get ahold of it. Suddenly, instead of trading actions one for one, you're causing your opponent to trade actions one for one with a summoned monster. Instead of constantly being on the wrong side of size modifiers, you're using a giant crocodile which has a +21 mod to grappling even before any modifiers. Instead of losing their actions when they fail to grapple, the druid's grappling monsters usually have improved grab, so they're getting a hit in whether they succeed at grappling or not. It's all vaguely ridiculous, and halfway tragic. Fighters of all stripes try so hard to be good at something, and their efforts are obsoleted by a single 4th level spell. The fact that the druid can use a single 3rd level spell, heart of water, to make pointless the enemy's efforts to grapple him, is just icing on the cake that is the druid. Moreover, this is all just one tiny facet on the wonders of the druid. Join in next week for orglashes, thomils and you: the rashemi elemental summoning story.

[Devas]

For this kind of character I favor starting off with 4 levels of Feat Rogue (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#rogue). Lots of skill points, 3 bonus fighter feats, and only 1 BAB lost.

[TuggyNE]

Ranger or Bard are obvious choices, although neither is ideal for taking the brunt of enemy attacks. (Whether either will actually be considered dangerous enough to be attacked a lot is another matter.)

If nothing else, though, a Wizard gish with maybe an initial dip in Rogue or something for skill points might work out pretty well for this; lots and lots of Int means you can do decently, though cross-class skill costs hurt. And of course you're at once very dangerous and very survivable, so a near-perfect tank.

[Seffbasilisk]

Druids also get the 'Thousand Faces' feature, which is basically 'save point' Diplomacy.


As for a frontliner with skillpoints, in the basics, barbarian is 4 base. Varient wise, you can turn a rogue into a fighter-type. Bard, focusing Cha, snowflake wardance, arcane striking...


Swordsage is always fun.

[ericgrau]

How can you do the role of armored brute/tank yet still have skill points for rp interactions?
Roleplay not rollplay. Just say what you say. Skills are only supposed to be for tasks beyond the capability of a common person. For everything else you don't usually need more than 1-2 party skillmonkeys.

If you're being forced into getting skills just to participate, then recognize you are paying for something that should be free. Dip 1-2 levels to get the basics then go back to your real build. Usually you can figure out the 2-3 skills your DM obsesses over and grab those with minimal investment.

[StreamOfTheSky]

For this kind of character I favor starting off with 4 levels of Feat Rogue (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#rogue). Lots of skill points, 3 bonus fighter feats, and only 1 BAB lost.

This. I have made many a front-liner that combines Feat Rogue with either Factotum, Swordsage, or Barbarian, and then possibly into Warshaper (if Changeling...I love their 1st rogue level) or something else. Excellent skillful melee chasis.

Rogue 4 is a great breakpoint. 3 feats, trapfinding*, evasion*, trap sense +1*, uncanny dodge*, and lots of skills. Rogue 2 is also good. As Rogue 4 minus one of the feats, trap sense, and uncanny dodge.

*Or an alternate class feature that swaps this out. Especially for trap sense, man that one sucks. But Penetrating Strike is quite good if getting SA from Assassin's Stance or another source and combining w/ Staggering Strike + Craven. Then you just need *some* SA damage to get through, how much is less important, and it's not like your full SA is that hot anyway (2d6 + HD).

[Flickerdart]

Skills are only supposed to be for tasks beyond the capability of a common person.
So you are saying a common person can't craft a wooden spoon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm), or hear people taking in the next room (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/listen.htm) or jump a foot into the air (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/jump.htm)? Because there are skill DCs for all of those, so if your assertion is true and tasks that regular people can accomplish are not part of skills, then any printed skill use must be beyond a regular person's capabilities, which is pure nonsense.

[FleshrakerAbuse]

The way I like to think of commoners, is that they gain experience over time. Thus, the average teen would be about 1st level, and daily experiences add more experience and skill. After all, if that's not the case, then suddenly by surviving one housefire or forest fire (CR 6), they suddenly gain experience equal to an adventurer whose been working for a few years.

[dspeyer]

So you are saying a common person can't craft a wooden spoon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm), or hear people taking in the next room (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/listen.htm) or jump a foot into the air (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/jump.htm)? Because there are skill DCs for all of those, so if your assertion is true and tasks that regular people can accomplish are not part of skills, then any printed skill use must be beyond a regular person's capabilities, which is pure nonsense.

Those DCs are below 10. That means that an ordinary person can take 10 and do them. Even DCs of 15 can be done without ranks by someone with positive abilities and a few circumstance bonuses (provided they aren't under pressure -- that changes "can do reliably" to "can do half the time").

To get back to the OP, though, there are a bunch of tankish classes with 4+int skills: warblade, crusader, swashbuckler, barbarian.... There are moderately tankish 6+int classes with much better skill lists like ranger and factotum, but AFAIK none of them have better than a d8 hit die. I recommend warblade for builds like this because it has int synergy and multiclasses well. Factotum 4 / Warblade X with Able Learner is quite skillful and deadly.

[turbo164]

Marshal should fit. Only a d8 hit die, but Heavy Armor and Shields for frontlining. Skills are 4/level, including Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate/Sense Motive, Skill Focus Diplomacy as a bonus feat, and an aura that lets you double your Charisma mod for skill checks; all at level 1. Feel free to multiclass to rogue/bard/fighter/whatever.

[WhatBigTeeth]

A Ranger gish tends to have a ton of skill points, and has a framework that can more or less be applied to any casting system (it has relatively easy access to most of the PrCs like Impure Prince, Cyran Avenger and Halfling Whistler, which can be applied to any casting system - even invocations or shadow magic). The skill list is even malleable with Skilled City Dweller, Urban Ranger and various substitution levels.

[ericgrau]

So you are saying a common person can't craft a wooden spoon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm), or hear people taking in the next room (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/listen.htm) or jump a foot into the air (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/jump.htm)? Because there are skill DCs for all of those, so if your assertion is true and tasks that regular people can accomplish are not part of skills, then any printed skill use must be beyond a regular person's capabilities, which is pure nonsense.

I was obviously referring to skill ranks.

A ranger is a good dip because you keep your full BAB. They lack social skills though. Dragon disciples are good for melee, get diplomacy, gather information and speak language and get enough stats to more than make up for lost BAB. And others atypical to melee like spot and listen. They only get 2+int skills though. Horizon walkers also get diplomacy and speak language and 4+int skills. You need a feat or ranger 3 to get in though. A thug fighter variant gets bluff and gather information. A paladin gets diplomacy while a paladin of freedom variant gets bluff.

An intelligence of 12-13 is usually a minimal cost and a 13 provides the requirements for the combat expertise tree. That helps.

[Dusk Eclipse]

A Wildshape Ranger while not exactly a face is a pretty good frontliner with a good set of skills (if you are starting at levels 5 or higher you can even dump str and dex for more points in Int and Cha).

Actually a feat rogue 2/Widlshape Ranger 5/Warshaper 4/Master of the Many Forms 9 sounds like a pretty cool build, a late bloomer though.

[Barsoom]

How can you do the role of armored brute/tank yet still have skill points for rp interactions?

Cloistered Cleric with Trickery domain and Persistant Divine Power and maxed out Diplomacy and Bluff makes for a pretty good brute and face. Might be a bit too powerful for your table. If you want to keep it down a notch, Crusader.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Yeah, I like Wildshape Ranger 5 / Master of Many Forms 10 / [Warshaper 5 or more Ranger]

You can use the Urban Companion variant from cityscape to get a familiar instead of animal companion (good idea in general; at least the familiar gets half your hp regardless of your ranger level...) so you gain Alertness and thus have all the feats MoMF requires just from ranger levels.

Still want to play one someday. The closest you get to a (decent) pure shapeshifting "class."

[Coidzor]

OK, they can do it, though I am surprised Diplomacy is a class skill for them. Other's can do it as well, if not better, and I wouldn't call Handle Animal that big a part of what they do. Very, very campaign dependent.

I'd argue that not having an animal companion is the odd duck here. :smallconfused:


They're not the best face in the world. They're just a reasonable face. The fact that they can play diplomat to animals as well as humans is a nice bonus. They don't stick all of their points into charisma, the way the best diplomancers tend to do, but they can put some points into it, and that's often enough. They don't get perfect skill points, but they do about as well as most front line classes out there. They don't get all that many skills, so they can put points into diplomacy at a pretty low cost. They're also one of the best front liners in the game. More accurately, they can set things up at any level such that their combined abilities take on the role of front liner. Druids are crazy buns.

Plus, two frontliners for the cost of one character.

In that vein, a Supermount (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19866958/Supermount!)build is almost completely free to invest in Int and spend its skillpoints as it will beyond pre-requisites. And if you go with a dragon for a mount, it gets its own skillpoints too...

[Fouredged Sword]

Dwarf

Crusader 2 / Dwarf paragon 3 / Incarnate 1 / Iron soul forge master / Crusader X.

More tank than anything else, sans full casters.

Invest all your feats into roll with it.

Rock out your late game with 34 con, DR20/- (DR23/adi), Energy resistance 25 to most things, and enough cool offense to make things care you exist.

Also you get free trap detection in stone areas out to 20ft with thief's gloves. It comes up more than one would think.