(Another) War Blade build 3.5e

[Armeni]

Good day,

I would like to create a War Blade starting at level 1 for a fresh campaign that a friend of mine is putting together. Currently the group consists of a Barbarian, Bard, Rogue/Sorcerer, and potentially another War Blade other than my self. The universe that my friend is building the story around has very little magical influence. He described it as something along the lines of Game of Thrones or "The Black Company" (apparently another DnD material?) where magic is extremely rare and even magical items are scarcely seen. My friend is trying to keep only the core classes and races in this campaign (races can be only human, elf, half-elf, gnome, dwarf, and halfling), but made an exception for War Blade since it does not use any magical abilities. We are also using a 28 point buy system.

I played a Fighter in my previous campaign that focused on using a Spiked Chain and lots of tripping, AoO, and Power Attacks. Is a build like that feasible with straight War Blade? Or would I need to multi-class with Fighter? Barring a feasible trip centric War Blade, what is the best damage dealing? I'm having a hard time finding my optimal path from level 1-20 for feats, manoeuvers, and stances. I don't care what weapon I use as long as it is the absolute most optimal damage dealing build for War Blade.

Any tips, advice, or builds would be greatly appreciated. The last campaign we played was for Path Finder and our previous GM was an absolute guru with pretty much all things DnD and PF, but he has moved and is not available to ask (torment) questions with any more.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Obligatory handbook link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176968).

[Keld Denar]

Go with a Glaive. It has reach, but doesn't really lock you into tripping or whatever. Then take Power Attack and whatever maneuvers suite you (mostly Diamond Mind, Tiger Claw, and Iron Heart). Warblades are so ezbake, it's not funny. Well, actually, kinda funny. Otherwise, yea....

[Firechanter]

Good choice, Warblades are lovely.
Be a human.

The only problem is the rather stingy 28 pt buy. Try suggesting to your DM that non-casters should get a better deal, like 32 pt buy. (so essentially, in your group that would affect everyone except Bard and Sorc) As you're stuck with Melee weapons and Medium armour, you will need some Dex investment. Personally, I can only say that with 28pt buy I'd refuse to play anything else than a Druid or Wizard.

Also, make sure that you can delay your 2nd stance to level 5. That's a bug in the progression that has never been errataed.

Another necessary bugfix is for Iron Heart Surge. As written, the maneuver is stupid and just plain silly. I prefer the fix written by Saph, simple, effective and elegant:


IRON HEART SURGE
Iron Heart (Boost)
Level: Warblade 3
Prerequisite: One Iron Heart maneuver
Initiation Action: 1 standard action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: See text

When you use this maneuver, you may choose one condition from the list below which is currently affecting you. That condition is removed immediately. You also surge with vengeance and confidence against your foes, gaining a +2 morale bonus on attack rolls until the end of your next turn.

Iron Heart Surge can remove the following conditions: Blinded, Charmed, Confused, Cowering, Cursed, Dazed, Dazzled, Deafened, Diseased, Dominated, Energy Drained, Entangled, Exhausted, Fascinated, Fatigued, Frightened, Nauseated, Panicked, Paralysed, Poisoned, Shaken, Sickened, Stunned. It can also remove any effect that gives a penalty to your ability scores or saving throws (such as ray of enfeeblement), reduces your speed or actions per round (such as slow) or imposes mental control (such as suggestion).

At the DM's option, Iron Heart Surge can also remove any unusual condition in line with those listed above.

Unlike other maneuvers, you may use Iron Heart Surge even when one of the above conditions would otherwise prevent you from using a standard action.

Weapon: consider investing in an Exotic Proficiciency. My favourite is Spiked Chain, because you can attack both close and reach, trip and disarm. That will help against enemies ganging up on you.
Also, being a Warblade, buying one Exotic Prof means you can use ANY Exotic Weapon in the game.
If you don't want to afford the feat, Glaive and Spiked Armour is the way to go.

For maximum damage output, I prefer the Ubercharger route. So I take Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush (feat tax), Leap Attack and Shock Trooper.
Complement with the Tiger Claw maneuvres Pouncing Charge and Dancing/Raging Mongoose. Eventually, you'll get up to 6 attacks on a Charge with a two-handed weapon, 3 of them at highest BAB. And you can charge every other round if you really want to.

Maneuver Progression, 1-20:

Wolf Fang, Perfect Mind, [Any]
Steel Wind
Emerald Razor
Wall of Blades (drop the [Any] from lv 1)
White Raven Tactics
Iron Heart Surge (drop Steel Wind)
Mithral Tornado
[level 8: no changes]
Pouncing Charge
Dancing Mongoose (drop Wolf Fang)
Order Forged From Chaos
--
Greater Insightful Strike
--
White Raven Hammer
Raging Mongoose (drop Dancing Mongoose)
Time Stands Still
War Master's Charge (drop Order forged from Chaos)
Strike of Perfect Clarity
Mountain Tombstone Strike

Pick up as item: Mountain Hammer

Stances (bugfixed progression):
lv 1: White Raven
lv 5: Tiger Claw
lv 10: Iron Heart
lv 15: Diamond Mind

--

The great thing about the Warblade is that you are not a one-trick pony, but good at several things. You can charge the living bejeezus out of anything. Your damage output during a Charge should suffice to one-shot anything except the Tarrasque. A Shock Trooper Charge will leave your AC around 0 but you can parry with Wall of Blades.
If something prevents you from Charging, you're still not helpless, as you can switch to winning the action economy via White Raven Tactics, and later stun foes with White Raven Hammer. If enemies gang up on you, you use Mithral Tornado, which is like Whirlwind Attack, but better. And so forth.

I wouldn't make any special investments into Trip. Take Combat Reflexes as one of your bonus feats, and later maybe add Stand Still if you want. Improved Trip requires Combat Expertise, for which you will probably lack the INT score and the feat slots.

Notable equipment:
- you'll want a Mithral Breastplate in good time
- augment your weapon as +1 Adaptive Valorous [Discipline] [Discipline]. The first Discipline should be Tiger Claw (as you will be using the maneuvers when charging), the second whatever Stance you use in late-game.
- the rest of your gear will be pretty standard; you'll want the usual AC upgrades and Save boosters, Freedom of Movement and Evasion, and some boosters to your movement (increased Speed, Fly mode).

That's it, I hope this helps. =)

[Armeni]

That looks like a pretty sweet build -- thanks!

I don't think the DM will budge from the 28 point buy system. He's trying to keep everyone on even footing. For any magic users he is neutering them so they cannot use any offensive magic (barring the ranger/sorcerer for story reasons, also NPC), so the cleric and bard are only able to utilize spells/abilities that will buff, heal the party, or debuff the enemy.

He's still developing the limitations/setting for this campaign, but magical items will likely be scarce or non-existent. So, basically, rings of protection and the like will not be available. My current stat allocation as a human is: STR 16, DEX 12, CON 14, INT 14, WIS 10, CHR 8. I'm thinking of switching my INT and DEX scores, but I don't want to neuter my class feats later on. Keep in mind I likely won't be able to get many items that will allow great stat increases to make up for my weaknesses now, i.e. DEX 12. My extra AP allocation would probably be lv4 STR, lv8 DEX, lv12 STR, lv 16 STR, lv20 STR.

What do you think?

Edit: I'm thinking of dumping points from WIS since Moment of Perfect Mind will make up for the -1. So instead my stats would look like STR 16, DEX 14, CON 15, INT 12, WIS 8, CHR 8.

[Firechanter]

What do you think?

Well, my first impulse whenever I read "no magic items" is "OMG run!" or "Why do some DMs insist on using a game system that doesn't support their desired game style?". Then, my next thought is, if you absolutely want to play in such a game, be a Cleric. (Because Clerics can just buff themselves with all the stuff you'd normally buy gear for.)

But that's probably not what you wanted to hear. ;)

In all seriousness, I hope that if your DM is determined to completely ignore WBL, that he at least has something in store to balance that out, such as inherent bonuses by level progression. Believe me, without magic items D&D 3.5 _will_ break down without magic items, not too far beyond level 6.

--

That said, back to your aspiring young adventurer.
Yes, you should switch around Dex and Int. Dex is more important for you, among other things because you want to use Combat Reflexes, and of course you use Light or Medium armour. Warblades do benefit a little from Int, but it's just icing and not a central class feature, so 12 sounds fine. I'd use all levelups for Str. The rest of the stats look fine.

If you don't automatically get inherent bonuses, consider taking Vow of Poverty. That gives you some boosts to your stats that would normally be covered by magic items. Note that I would normally _never_ recommend VoP, as it's strictly worse than proper WBL, but it's better than nothing. :p
If you do, do it at 1st level so you get free Exalted feats in return.

[Firechanter]

*bump*

It occured to me that some additional words of clarification might be in order. If you play this build from level 1 up, it may feel weird and you may find that several of your maneuvers are sub-optimal during the first 4 levels or so.
(We usually start play at level 3-4, so I didn't think of this before.)

Thing is, they are. A number of those lowlevel maneuvers I've picked mainly to fill pre-reqs for the really good stuff that starts a bit later. I really fiddled with it time and again, but I wasn't able to find a better mix of lowlevel maneuvers that didn't throw a wrench in my gears due to some missed prereqs further up the track.

So you just have to make the best of it, and improvise your combat style a bit to make use of this strange mix of Wolf Fang Strike and Steel Wind.

* First off, consider going Sword'n'Board until you have sufficiently pimped your AC. Make it a Spiked Shield, and you can use Wolf Fang Strike with it when it seems like a good idea. If you have already taken Exotic Weapon Prof, set it to Bastard Sword for the time being -- being a Warblade, you can reset it any day.
* Speaking of Wolf Fang Strike, did you notice that nowhere in the description it requires the off-hand weapon to be Light? That's right, you might as well dual-wield Bastard Swords if you really want to, and still only take -2 attack penalty. However, keep in mind that second weapon is dead weight every other round, so it's probably not that clever at all.
* Alternatively, if you want to go THF from lowlevel on, you can still use WFS with Spiked Armour.
* WFS or Steel Wind, both granting extra attacks, would be extra-effective with Punishing Stance, but as I said, I haven't managed to figure out a way to swap WR and IH maneuvers and still qualify for everything a few levels further up.

I stuck to Sword'n'Board up to level 6-ish, and switched when I had a comfortable AC and HP cushion.