Soaking up all the damage

[Gwazi Magnum]

Basically with a combination of things like temporary HP, high HP, high AC, high DR, SR and regeneration what do you guys find are the best ways to create a character whose sole purpose is be able to soak up and take as much damage as possible?

[Greenish]

Does being immune to damage count as soaking it? Because that'd be the technically best way.

[OldTrees1]

I recently tried a Mineral Warrior (template with DR 8/admantine) Dvati (race with 2 bodies) Cleric (casting Shield other on both bodies) Crusader (ToB material)

So damage was shared back and forth and interacted with DR each time.

So 100 incoming damage would be
Body 1: 50-8[42] + 13-8[5]=47
Body 2: 25-8[17] + 6-8[0]=17
So 36% of damage was absorbed

Using 10 temporary hp/body from Stone Power would have reduced the actual damage to 37 & 7 or 54% absorption.

Then the child of shadows stance would give a 20% miss chance.

Then the Crusader healing strikes helped heal any damage that did happen.

[Gwazi Magnum]

Does being immune to damage count as soaking it? Because that'd be the technically best way.

Yes that would count.


I recently tried a Mineral Warrior (template with DR 8/admantine) Dvati (race with 2 bodies) Cleric (casting Shield other on both bodies) Crusader (ToB material)

So damage was shared back and forth and interacted with DR each time.

So 100 incoming damage would be
Body 1: 50-8[42] + 13-8[5]=47
Body 2: 25-8[17] + 6-8[0]=17
So 36% of damage was absorbed

Using 10 temporary hp/body from Stone Power would have reduced the actual damage to 37 & 7 or 54% absorption.

Then the child of shadows stance would give a 20% miss chance.

Then the Crusader healing strikes helped heal any damage that did happen.

Interesting, I need to look more into that double body thing. Never heard of that before.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Always the Vigor-Psycrystal-Share Pain loop.

[Story]

You can also redirect half of all damage you take to someone else with a 1 level dip in Binder and the Improved Binding feat. Might as well stack pain sharing even more.

[Platymus Pus]

Basically with a combination of things like temporary HP, high HP, high AC, high DR, SR and regeneration what do you guys find are the best ways to create a character whose sole purpose is be able to soak up and take as much damage as possible?

There are monsters who can be immune to everything soaking all of the damage.
One of the reason DM's can be evil sometimes.

[holywhippet]

I recently tried a Mineral Warrior (template with DR 8/admantine) Dvati (race with 2 bodies) Cleric (casting Shield other on both bodies) Crusader (ToB material)



Wouldn't you get a bit more DR if you wore adamantine armour?

[OldTrees1]

Wouldn't you get a bit more DR if you wore adamantine armour?

No. DR does not stack. So DR 8/adamantine reduces damage by 8 rather than the 3 from adamantine fullplate's DR 3/-. Now DR 8/adamantine is vulnerable to adamantine weapons but those are rare.

Edit: However if your DM is using the "Armor Damage Reduction" variant from Unearthed Arcana, then Adamantine Fullplate gives +4 AC and DR 7/-. In that case I would opt for Adamantine Fullplate rather than Mineral Warrior.

[TroubleBrewing]

I built a guy for this before. Not sure the exact details, but I'll recollect as much as I can here.

Changeling Incarnate 4/Crusader 2/Warshaper 4/Something else 10.

The basic idea was to bind the Therapeutic Mantle soulmeld, which increases the healing you receive by X, where X is the amount of essentia invested in the soulmeld. Then, you stack healing effects like crazy. Martial Spirit stance heals you 2 points every time you make an attack, Warshaper 4 gives Fast Healing 2, etc. Considering that with just 4 levels of Incarnate you can dump 3 or 4 points into the Mantle, you can stack heals pretty effectively.

[holywhippet]

How about the "roll with it" feat from savage species. It provides DR 2/- which stacks with all other forms of DR.

[Psyren]

Always the Vigor-Psycrystal-Share Pain loop.

That. Temp HP wins simply because nothing bypasses it.

[Fouredged Sword]

Why not all those tricks, and a few more.

What you want to do is play a Psywar 4 / crusader 2 / incarnate 2/ ironsoul forgemaster 2 / crystal master 10. Mineral warrior earth dwarf as the race.

So you get devoted spirit healing on each attack, and incarnate cranks that healing up by essence invested. The you get psiwar for a vigor / share pain / psicrystal thing going on.

Start with 20 con, (18 from buy, +2 from dwarf.) get toughness from your psiwar feat, and roll with it from your 1st level. Get solicit psicrystal as your 2nd psi war feat, and then get roll with it as many times as posible.

Now you get good DR/adi, and later good DR/-. You con ends up in the high 30's by the end of the progression. You get 20-30 points of energy resistance to most energy types. You heal with every hit. The damage you DO take is halved and half is sent to your psicrystal. Also, that damage has to first come out of your high temp HP. Get big and stomp around the battlefield as an unstoppable dwarven juggernaut.

OR

Look up the emerald legion.

[TuggyNE]

Basically with a combination of things like temporary HP, high HP, high AC, high DR, SR and regeneration what do you guys find are the best ways to create a character whose sole purpose is be able to soak up and take as much damage as possible?

Lesser planar bind a Nightmare for astral projection, layer lots of other buffs on top, and then be a very dangerous caster so I get attacked as much as possible.

[Galvin]

I believe you can have multiple types of damage reduction, and the DR doesn't stack with just the other type that shared the same descriptor. For example,

If you had DR/Silver 3 from one source and DR/5 Silver from another only the 5 would apply, though if you can have DR 5/Silver and DR 10/Magic at the same time.

[Karnith]

I believe you can have multiple types of damage reduction, and the DR doesn't stack with just the other type that shared the same descriptor. For example,

If you had DR/Silver 3 from one source and DR/5 Silver from another only the 5 would apply, though if you can have DR 5/Silver and DR 10/Magic at the same time.
You can have as many sources of damage reduction as you want, even of the same type, it's just that the effects will overlap. No matter how many forms of DR you have, you'll only use the best value (unless it is bypassed, in which case you use the second-best value, and so on and so forth). Per the SRD: (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#damageReduction)
If a creature has damage reduction from more than one source, the two forms of damage reduction do not stack. Instead, the creature gets the benefit of the best damage reduction in a given situation.