Insane HP/Damage Taking?

[Gwazi Magnum]

Basically, what the best ways you people know of for making a character (Preferably) Martial capable of taking the most amount of damage possible?

Bonus Points if you find a way to make it also do extra damage.

Ex: High Con for Health + Hammer that uses Con for damage.

[Slipperychicken]

taking the most amount of damage possible?

Without getting into immunity-to-damage shenanigans, I'd say Crusader. Their manuevers (particularly from the Devoted Spirit school) and delayed damage pool give them a remarkable ability to both soak and heal damage.

Also, for any non-cheesy super-tank, I highly recommend the Wrathful Healing enhancement (+2, Enemies and Allies). On each hit against an enemy, it heals the weilder for half the damage dealt.

[Gwazi Magnum]

Without getting into immunity-to-damage shenanigans, I'd say Crusader. Their manuevers and delayed damage pool give them a remarkable ability to both soak and heal damage.

Also, for any non-cheesy super-tank, I highly recommend the Wrathful Healing enhancement (+2, Enemies and Allies). On each hit against an enemy, it heals the weilder for half the damage dealt.

I don't see how the Steely Resolve ability for Crusader (at least I assume this is what you mean by the delayed damage pool) is that useful. It simply delays up 20 damage for one round, it's not really extra health or anything.

As for the stances/maneuvers, can you name the specific ones you were thinking about?

For Wrathful Strike, seems cool. Is "allies and enemies" the name of the book it's from or are you just saying it works on both enemies and allies? If the latter which book can I find this enhancement in?

Never mind the crossed out bit, found it in a google search.

[Stegyre]

I don't see how the Steely Resolve ability for Crusader (at least I assume this is what you mean by the delayed damage pool) is that useful. It simply delays up 20 damage for one round, it's not really extra health or anything..
There are a number of things you might do (or have done to you) that would then negate the damage. That, I think, is the short answer, or at least what I would do.

[Slipperychicken]

I don't see how the Steely Resolve ability for Crusader (at least I assume this is what you mean by the delayed damage pool) is that useful. It simply delays up 20 damage for one round, it's not really extra health or anything.

As for the stances/maneuvers, can you name the specific ones you were thinking about?

Steely Resolve is good because it can stave off being KO'd for a turn, which might be enough to either heal you back up and/or take the enemy down. If you can clear the damage pool reliably each turn (healing, even temporary hp, can go toward clearing it), it's kind of like DR which can't by bypassed. T

EDIT: There's also the Furious Counterstrike ability, which gives a bonus to hit and damage based on the amount of damage in the pool.


Devoted Spirit has a bunch of them. Like Crusader's Strike, Immortal Fortitude, Martial Spirit, Radiant Charge, Rallying Strike, Revitalizing Strike, Doom Charge, and Strike of Righteous Vitality. Seriously, look it up. Half the school is devoted to healing and preventing damage.

[Emperor Tippy]

UMD a Scroll of Hide Life. You will now never die from HP damage and can keep taking standard actions when in the negatives.

[Tanuki Tales]

Since this doesn't specify a need to stick to first party things, the Elite template from the WoW tabletop adds insane damage soak to any melee build if you can eat the LA (3.5) or the CR adjustment (Pathfinder).

It multiplies a creature's hit points by 4.

[Slipperychicken]

UMD a Scroll of Hide Life. You will now never die from HP damage and can keep taking standard actions when in the negatives.

That reminds me of Frenzied Berserker's Deathless Frenzy ability, which is kind of like a Barbarian rage, only the user cannot die of hit point damage while frenzied. However, the character winds up attacking friendlies unless precautions are taken. The class is in Complete Warrior.

[lsfreak]

The delayed damage pool is helpful for giving a chance to throw on some healing or something in case you drop just below zero health, plus it gives you bonuses for taking hits which isn't really a thing elsewhere in 3.5 save for Robilar's builds. The maneuvers that help with tanking hits are Martial Spirit, Crusader's Strike, Revitalizing Strike, Rallying Strike, and Strike of Righteous Vitality (for healing), Doom Charge/Radiant Charge and Stone/Iron/Adamantine Bones for DR, and Immortal Fortitude for resetting your health to 1 every time you go negative (and thanks to the delayed damage pool, all attacks are going to be 20 less so it's more likely to make the save to reset your health to 1; just be sure you can reliably hit at least Fort DC20 from your delayed damage pool that hits every round). Plus there's some maneuvers that let you negate attacks altogether, though most aren't on the crusader's list (requiring warblade and/or swordsage dipping) and I can't remember the names of them off the top of my head.

Mineral Warrior template (Underdark) is one of the better places to start. A +1LA template that provides +4 Con, +3 NA, DR8/adamantine plus a few other benefits in exchange for -2 to mental scores.

Incarnates are Con-focused and have a meld that gives health based on essentia investment. You can get really high levels of health with that. The ones that are good tanks (Lawful iirc?), though, aren't outstanding in the damage department.

Hide Life spell (9th level, 3.0 spell) that Tippy's been touting recently makes you immune to death from hit point damage.

Someone with Fairy Mysteries Initiate (Dragon Magazine, Int to hit points instead of Con) using one of various methods of getting Unholy Grace/Unholy Toughness (Cha to hit points, feature of certain undead monsters) is likely to out-hit-point any other non-TO build in the game, but is going to be high on the cheese-meter to pull it off and pretty much require casting (Walker in the Waste PrC gets it as a capstone and might be the only non-cheese way, but I'm not sure how useful it'll be without cheese since you're likely going to be rather MAD without any).

If you're planning on tanking hits, though, the Big Thing you need is reliable miss chance, and the more than better. I've toyed with a high-mid level barbarian using Shock Trooper to tank his AC into the negative every round, making it up for miss chance plus a Bodyfeeder falchion (turn half your crit damage into temporary hit points); I'm not sure it would actually play out well (my instinct is it's far too random-chance-based to survive a PC's life) but it might be something to work off of. A better approach might be a gish making heavy use of Greater Mirror Image.

Paying your friendly cleric (via a pearl of power) to cast Magic Vestments on you daily is a good choice for fairly low-cost extra AC. If your DM allows Defending Weapon stacking, then a chained Greater Magic Weapon on armor spikes, shield spikes, and the various types of hidden blades from Complete Scoundrel would net you a ton of extra AC (and for this reason most DMs don't allow it).

[Prime32]

If you're using PF material, Synthesist summoner gets two hp pools. Optionally gestalt it with Aegis and call yourself Rom Stol. :smalltongue:

[RagnaroksChosen]

So even though you said a martial character I feel like this needs to be mentioned. Egoist's can get some insane HP I've had one in my game, they can easily be played as martial characters and there a lot of fun. However psionics are not always allowed.

[Emperor Tippy]

Venerable Elan Psion 10/ Crystal Master 10 with FMI has an Int of 40 and 410 PP. With Elan Resilience, Enhanced he can as an immediate action trade PP to negate HP damage at a rate of 6 HP damage per PP.

His HP is at least 323 and burning all his PP he can negate 2,460 points of damage from a single attack. This means that he can survive and remain conscious after tanking a 2,782 damage attack.

[Rubik]

A psionic manifester with Psicrystal Affinity and the Vigor and Share Pain powers can gain +5 temp hp per power point he spends (and can give his psicrystal the same by sharing Vigor with it), and can essentially double his hp and temp hp by manifesting Share Pain to halve the damage he takes by giving it to his psicrystal as well.

That leads to an effective +10 temp hp per power point spent on Vigor (slightly less, since Share Pain costs 3 power points).

You may also want to check out the King of Smack (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/910286) psychic warrior build. Make sure you have Claws of the Vampire ready, and you can absorb tons of vampiric healing every round while dishing out ludicrous damage. If that's too much for you, you can always tone it down a bit.

[Mountain]

Knight, although the class is generally terrible, also has an ability (loyal beyond death) that allows them to continue fighting regardless of hit points.

If you aren't going to use knight or frenzied berserker (I wouldn't) then the feat Die Hard is almost like 10 extra HP, and improved toughness is +1 HP per level. I'm assuming here that every little bit counts, because these are very little bits, especially at higher levels.

Then there's possibly the worst feat in 3.5... Toughness... +3 HP. There, I said it.

Contingent Heal can save you from an unexpected sneak attack, giving back 150 HP.

Psions, as stated before, can amass tons of temporary HP, DR, fast healing, etc. That's your best bet for having the absolute toughest character to kill by HP damage.

[Slipperychicken]

Then there's possibly the worst feat in 3.5... Toughness... +3 HP. There, I said it.


If you ever think about taking Toughness, stop and take Improved Toughness instead. 1hp/level is almost worth a feat slot.

[TuggyNE]

If you ever think about taking Toughness, stop and take Improved Toughness instead. 1hp/level is almost worth a feat slot.

But you can only take it once! :smalleek:


:smalltongue:

[mabriss lethe]

I'm seconding psionics for this. It has some of the most readily available tools for this sort of thing.

[Treme]

If you ever think about taking Toughness, stop and take Improved Toughness instead. 1hp/level is almost worth a feat slot.

This is an Insane HP thread remember :smalltongue:

[Greenish]

This is an Insane HP thread remember :smalltongue:But Tarrasque has Toughness six times, and no one's ever accused the Big T for not having enough HP! (Except for filthy optimizers.)

[Ruethgar]

Martial Monk to skip the Epic requirement and get, what was it, +30 HP for a feat?

[NeoPhoenix0]

I know it's not martial but i need to say it. Sorcerer/Walker in the Waste. It's doable with the southern magician feat. If you want minimal cheese you can take your first level at level 5. if you want more cheese, take flaws and grab the precocious apprentice feat, southern magician feat, and maybe the arcane dicsiple feat. (I can't remember the exact build, but if i remember right it could be possible to enter at level 2.) Also charisma is the big winner of x stat to y bonus, so grab more charisma stuff and spend most of your money optimizing your one stat. If you want to do melee, you might make use of the thunder lance spell.

[Slipperychicken]

Contingent Heal can save you from an unexpected sneak attack, giving back 150 HP.

True optimizers also use Craft Contingent Revivify.

[Eldariel]

Delay Death + Beastland Ferocity = lifetotal doesn't matter. Does the same as Hide Life, but with a 4th and a 1st level slot instead of a 9th (of course, Hide Life does more). Well, you need Death Ward too, and since these spells have durations you need to Persist them (and since they're Touch you need Ocular/Reach/whatever Spell for it). Anyways, complete damage immunity all day every day is doable on level 7 with a Cleric without skipping ahead in spell progression.

Other than that, I second what's suggested; Psion/Illithid Slayer with Vigor shared with Psi Crystal and Share Pain for a ridiculous amount of extra HP from Vigor (add Overchannel plus Talented for more Funzies and Body Adjustment + Empathic Transfer, Hostile for more ways to stay up). Psi Warrior works too but Psion straight-up gets more Power Points and here we're using Power Points to sustain. Could even add Elan as race for even more ways to do it.

For purely martial classes, Crusader, not close. Pimp out the saves or get a way to take 20 to ignore any amount of damage with Immortal Fortitude on level 15. You combine Stone Power feat with Delayed Damage Pool, and healing/DR strikes to basically have two HP pools to survive with, and in addition to have constant healing and resistances coming your way while doing solid damage and having a Temporary HP pool refreshing every turn (while controlling people with AoOs or such since Crusader can do that easily and this way you aren't just a low HP ignorable frontliner).


So, my suggestions in order:
Cleric > Psion (Warrior Gish) > Crusader


True optimizers also use Craft Contingent Revivify.

Bah, true optimizers don't need to waste Contingencies on preventing death. There are many more proactive ways, and ones that don't waste valuable Contingency Slots.