3.5 Lawful Gladiatorial Fighter - Possible Help and/or opionions are valued!

[Cerezoss]

Okay, so here's the deal, I want to make a human Fighter (I love D&D Humans, and for some reason, Fighters appeal to me) and I would like pointers and opinions about my build.

I'm always looking for ways to find more and more (prestige) classes that grant (fighter) bonus feats, as you can NEVER have too many.
I'm playing 32 points buy with the following idea in mind, and I will provide the how and why I choose certain things.
While nothing is set in stone, this build does not come with ''true'' optimisation in mind, many things are built solely around role-playing ideas.

Stats:
STR: 14 (Chose the middle road as I didn't want to compromise too much)
DEX: 16 (Without weapon finesse, this is an odd choice, I know.)
CON: 12 (It's sub-par, I know, I don't really have a justification for this, other than that I wanted to have points spent on other attributes like INT for role playing purposes)
INT: 14 (A fighter needs to be as smart as he is strong, or versatility means nothing)
WIS: 12 (A fighter should be at least a bit alert and knowledgeble about his surroundings.)
CHA: 10 (Fighters can be inspiring people and should have charisma scores that do not represent a filthy commoner)

Next is a list of what classes and feats I will take at which level.
L1 Cloistered Cleric (Because, ordained Champion, which let me switch 2 domains for 2 feats and I need the Longsword Focus if I want ordained champion, so I might as well take War Domain now)
L2 Fighter
L3 Fighter
L4 Rogue +1 DEX (With the Alternate class feature to replace Sneak attack with fighter bonus feats this makes an obvious choice)
L5 Ordained Champion (As explained above)
L6 Fighter
L7 Fighter
L8 Fighter +1 DEX
L9 Fighter
L10 Fighter
L11 Fighter
L12 Fighter +1 DEX
L13 Fighter
L14 Fighter
L15 Fighter
L16 Fighter +1 DEX
L17 Fighter
L18 Fighter
L19 Fighter
L20 Fighter +1 DEX

Alternate Class Features:
Martial Rogue: Lose sneak attack in favour of a fighter bonus feat.

Feats:
L1 Able Learner (I want to be more than just a dumb fighter, so I want to make my cross class skills worthwhile.
Two Weapon Fighting (For fighting with shield as a weapon)
Weapon Focus: Longsword (For Ordained Champion)
L2 Combat Expertise (Perquisite and a logical choice for a challenge fighter)
L3 Short Haft (I don't want people to hug the threatened squares and not being able to use my reach weapon)
Weapon Focus: Guisarme (Preq for short haft)
L4 Monkey Grip (Yep, it;s here, I want to wield that two handed weapon in one hand, because according to RAW, I don't lose my +4 bonus for wielding a two handed weapon on disarm attempts.)
L5 Improved Shield Bash (The best of wielding a shield and a weapon packed in a painful feat)
Oversized Two Weap Fight (Agile Shield defender is too cheap, this works just as well with lesser unrequired feats)
L6 Imp.Two Weapon Fighting (Bla)
L7 Improved Trip (I want to Model Flockers to trip balls)
L8 –
L9 Shield Charge (Free trip attempt is nice)
Improved Disarm (They don't need a weapon to die!)
L10 -
L11 Combat Reflexes (For Robilar's Gambit)
L12 Greater Two Weapon Fighting (Bla bla hack slash bash!)
L13 Robilar's Gambit (At this point I'll have enough hit points to justify this feat)
L14 -
L15 Dodge (And here starts the feat chain that enables me to use all of my tripping weapons and disarming balls skills while moving around the battle field as a true Spartan warrior!)
Mobility (THEY)
L16 -
L17 Spring Attack (BE)
L18 Bounding Assault (TRIPPIN')
L19 Rapid Blitz (BOLLOCKS!)
L20 -

All in all, I want my gladiator to be centred around fighting challenges, usually one on one, and even then, the main theme should be to disarm and disable opponents, rendering them useless and thus, defeated, if not vulnerable for team mates to finish them off.

If the campaign accept flaws, then Shaky would be an obvious choice.
I'm not sure about a second flaw, though, and the build will probably change considerably with the addition of even one flaw.


(Basic) Equipment:

Armor:
Mythrill Breast Plate - Armour Spikes
Adamantium Heavy Shield - Adamantium Shield Spikes

Weapons:
Guisarme, because I like tripping people. (Slashing)
Short Sword, because you always need a back-up weapon. (Piercing)
Shield, because it's (Smashing).

This covers the combat equipment, I'll think of other stuff that I want on the go.

And now...
Skills!

This, this was why I took Able learner to begin with.
Cloistered cleric makes a boatload of skills as cheap as class skills for my fighter, but what I really want Cloistered cleric for was it's total package:
Able to worship Heironeous? Check!
Weapon focus: Longsword due to war domain? Check!
Extra domain to switch in for Ordained champion? CCCHHYYYEEEECK!
More class skills that become just as cheap as fighter class skills with Able learner? Check check check!

I want my fighter to not only know Religion, as a matter of fact, I don't care much for Knowledge: Religion, but I need it, so he does too and his personality will reflect it in some sense.
I really want Diplomacy, I kinda would like Heal, I need knowledge Religion, I kinda want Knowledge Nobility, some Engineering and maybe craft.

Later, the Rogue class enable me to select Perform: Oratory, because you want to entertain the crowd and raise the morale of your troops and loyal followers (a.k.a. party members.... ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?)

This is why I also want SOME INT.
I want a smart tactician and someone who is charismatic enough to not only lead a half-wit brick, but inspire people as well, unfortunately, you need skill points, and with the fighter, this nets me a total of 4 per level, which is enough to keep at least 2 skills (Diplomacy and heal / Later Diplomacy and Oratory) maxed at all times.

I hoped this has given you some insight about how I would like to build this character and above all, I hope this has given you some ideas about where I might be able to fetch more extra feats from?
Also, how would you do this?
Again, nothing is set into stone yet, but a lot is chosen due to role-playing potential, so shifting or dropping certain things around will be hard for me.

Anyway, I hope you had a nice read.
Cheers!

[Fouredged Sword]

Ok, one quick point, then back to your build.

Have you considered warblade 20?

Ok.

You take martial rogue 1, but not 2? The second level grants evasion, +1 bab, a fighter feat, and more skills. Why not replace a fighter dead level?

Factotum 3 makes tripping much easier and uses that Int a lot more.

[Cerezoss]

Thanks for the tip- yes I did consider warblade and even though it appeals to me, I specifically chose fighter because of the classic taste and possibilities of kitting out your character for specific tasks.
I'm not saying that the warblade would not be able to do it just as well (if not better), but the fighter allows me to select specific feats and thus, fighting style.
Warblade offers a lot of the versatility and seems like a clear-cut solution of what I wanted out of my character skill-wise and it comes in the form of many stances and thus combat versatility, but, more often than not, I like to take the tough road. :P

Anyway, back to the build then-
Thanks for pointing out to me that the Martial Rogue gains another bonus feat at level 2, I misinterpreted it as 'you replace your sneak attack with a fighter bonus feat', but it literally states ''lose sneak attack and gain bonus feats as a fighter instead', so that's already a pretty valuable addition to the build.

I had also considered factotum, yes, it's actually, among with the rogue and fighter, one of my favourite classes to play, yet, I somehow feel that it does not particularly fit in this build, especially being that this build is very- VERY feat heavy, and 3 levels factotum would, with the rogue 2 included in this build, cost me 2 feats, which sounds like a pretty hard trade-off for me at the moment.

Anyway, thanks again for the input, I'll reconsider the warblade and the inclusion of the Factotum just for good measure just to see how well it might work out and if/how it would negatively/positively influence the build. :)

[Zonugal]

I'll be honest, your build is kind of all over the place. What exactly do you want to do as a character? It sounds like you have a lot of basic ideas but they are sort of crashing against each other and I'd be concerned of this build just becoming a pile of bonus feats as opposed to an organic character designed mechanically well.

So I'll ask some base questions.

* What do you want your character to accomplish?
* What do you want your character to achieve?
* How do you envision your character accomplishing/achieving their goals?
* How do you envision your character fighting?

Hopefully we can begin to slice off some clay and get a better idea of what type of character you want.

Because right now I highly doubt you need 20+ feats to realize this character.

[Cerezoss]

Well, the build-up of this character is quite a chaotic mess, I'll admit (though he's supposed to be Played lawful, oh the irony!) but to me, the path and goal is pretty clear.

* He wants to achieve glory through combat, martial study and become one of the world's most renowned combat tacticians.
Also, he wants to prove that even the shield can be as mighty as the sword, should the tongue/pen falter. (As vague as that may sound)
*^
* I like to think that he will /try/ to get most of his foes into single combat challenges as others deal with the 'chaff' so to say.
* A mix of defensive fighting, while trying to get as many opportunities off to trip and disarm the opponent. (I didn't want to be another guy to take the spiked chain cheese route)
His favoured weapon would be the Guisarme due to it's reach and bonus on tripping (it was a hard fought battle between this and the Ranseur) in combination with a shield, sort of like in the movie ''300'' spartan style fighting, except with more tripping and disarming involved, just in case issuing a challenge wouldn't work and still being able to be of value to my team.

I hope I sound a little less vague now?

Again, most of the things in this build aren't there because they're necessary in order to reach the best combat potential, they're there to reach the best way to resemble how I want to role-play him.

[Zonugal]

Well, right off the bat you are going to have some difficulty in wielding a Guisarme and a shield at the same time...

Stat-wise, you so far have:
Str: 14, Dex: 16, Con: 12, Int: 14, Wis: 12, Cha: 10

Now are these purchased with point-buy or rolled or assigned?

Also, have you taken a look at the Knight class from Player's Handbook 2? It has a mechanic similar to your wanting to target an enemy in one-on-one combat.

[eggynack]

You should probably throw some double extra consideration to the warblade. It fundamentally fits every single facet of the character better than a fighter. You want to build an intelligent melee guy, and warblade lets you pump intelligence without that being a terrible decision. Warblade is much better at being kitted out for particular tasks, and martial study is right there in their abilities. As is, your build is very messy. Two weapon fighting and sword and board are both horrific choices, and you appear to desire both at once. If you want to trip folks, that's a perfectly viable progression for a fighter. Your build could work for that, with some tweaking, but it's all over the place as is. You seem to want to wield a two handed weapon, and a shield, and a second weapon, all at the same time. It's just not really going to work out.

[Cerezoss]

Well, Monkey Grip is supposed to help with that, and according to RAW, so far as I have read, even if a 2 handed weapon is wielded in a single hand, it is still considered a two handed weapon for bonusses and penalties, other than things that specifically say that you need it to wield in two hands for the bonus to funtion.
(From what I understand, a 2 handed weapon wielded in 1 hand will still confer it's +4 bonus on disarming, and so forth)

It was 32 points buy.

And yes, I already took a look at the knight, but another party member already took the class and I don't want to be a copy-cat in that sense.
Besides, he's going to play it way differently than I would.
He's wants to play it like a high-class bastard, treating everyone like inferiors and taking the spotlight from anyone else, though knowing him, he will do a poor job at it, as he has no idea how to play out his charisma properly.

Anyway, both Warblade and Knight are fairly suitable options for the build, Knight evermore so, but as I stated, another party member chose the knight before me, and we have the unwritten rule of not picking each other's classes, besides for 'dipping'.

@ Eggynack:
A shield counts as a weapon when you're bashing with it, so it would be perfectly reasonable to use a shield along with a weapon in a two weapon fighting combo, I presumed.
While tripping and disarming might be done a few times during combat, I will still always be attacking with the shield, just to stack up more damage where possible.

[Fouredged Sword]

Monkey grip allows one to wield a large two handed weapon as a medium two handed weapon, for a penalty. It is almost never worth the feat, and it does not allow you to wield a two handed weapon one handed. Generally you are trading -1 to hit for +2 damage unless you are already wielding a large weapon.

That said, power attack a better damage provider, but with no penalty when you don't want one, and works for all non-light weapons.

Thus, I would drop the shield and TWFing feats and focus on the gurisame.

Because you are lawful, consider a 2-3 level dip in monk for Focused Attack. This takes you in another direction than gurisame, but a quarterstaff can be used to make two handed double damage power attacks as AOO's every time you use focused attack as your main attack. Move around using travel devotion and trip -> smash using focused attack and power attack to pile on the damage, then rolbar anyone who is foolish enough to attack you back as focused attack applies to all attacks you make that round.

This cuts your feats down to needing power attack, travel devotion, and the trip line. Monk can provide the trip line, so your feats are freed up to go into factotum for int to trip attempts and all skills as class skills.

Also, you are getting evasion twice, so trade one for ray reflection to make spellcasters with ranged touch attacks twitchy about targeting you.

CC 1 / Feat rogue 2 / Monk 2 / Factotum 3 / Fighter 2 / Ordained Champion 1 / swordsage 2 / warblade X

You are the guy who walks in with a stick and wipes the floor with everyone in the arena.

[eggynack]

You explicitly need two hands to use a two handed weapon effectively. In particular, "Two hands are required to use a two-handed melee weapon effectively." There're probably some exceptions, but the guisarme is not one of them. Monkey grip doesn't help with anything ever. It's just universally terrible. It seems like the problem part of the build is the guisarme, but it, or a weapon like it, is a rather critical part of tripping builds. You might want to go the standard two handed spiked chain route. If your goal is stacking up damage, two handing is pretty much always better. Also, the knight option is apparently closed for weird reasons, but that still leaves the far superior warblade. It's incredibly helpful from a mechanical standpoint, and the flavor fits far better.

[Cerezoss]

Apparantly I have been interpreting monkey grip all wrong (or my DM has houseruled a different version of it while never telling me) but all in all I have received a lot of valuable information from you people and I will be trying to put it to the test the first thing in the morning!
I might try to work something out and try to have an option open for Knight just in case.

Anyway, thanks everyone for the information, I've learned a lot today!

[Grayson01]

Have you looked at the feat Goad? It is in the I wanna say complete adventure or PHB2.... It is very simular to the knight's challenge. This would help you get more of those one on one challenges.

[Kuulvheysoon]

What, no Law Devotion?