Thrair
2014-04-01, 05:34 AM
Ok. I'm not going to lie. The Russian Jaeger was, by a mile, my favourite. I really want to play a character that fits the theme of Cherno Alpha: Big, slow, and unyielding. I don't give much of a rat's ass about damage. This is unashamedly a lockdown build for big uglies with emphasis on flavour, rather than optimization.
Looking over the Archetypes, the one that seems to best fit the theme is the Brawler (Fighter). As it has heavy armor proficiency, bonuses to CMD against common big monster maneuvers, and several useful abilities to prevent opponents from running past.
That all said, I do need to be able to actually succeed on the checks enough to be viable at current level (11th, heading onto 12th), so some amount of optimization is required. Ideally, I'll have at least a 70% chance of beating the CMD of a large/huge monster of fairly appropriate CR, less so on bosses, ofc. Here's what I have so far, as options:
1) Human Fighter Favoured Class Bonus: +1/level to CMD on two maneuvers of choice, one of which is going to be grapple. This helps greatly in getting the CMD up high enough to make it hard for them to just brute force out of it with their own grapple check.
2) Traits: Bred for War (Racial, +1 CMB) and Serpentine Squeeze (Religion, +1 on grapple checks and grapple CMD)
3) Feats: Improved Grapple, Greater Grapple, Weapon Focus (Grapple), Greater Weapon Focus (Grapple)
4) Equipment: Armbands of the Brawler (+1 Competence), Gauntlets of the Skilled Maneuver (+2 Untyped), Adhesive Armor (+2 Enhancement, requires standard to activate), Cracked Pale Green Prism Ioun Stone (+1 Competence, won't stack with the much cheaper Armbands).
On top of that, there's full BAB and strength bonuses. I could get a Permanency Enlarge person, as well. And flanking bonuses can help get the initial grapple. I'm strongly considering getting the human racial feat tree for Inexplicable luck, netting a +8 on a roll of choice 1/day (good for establishing the initial grapple for the +5 bonus on successive checks), +4 if used after the roll.
What else is there, to ramp up the CMB? I've got the CMD dealt with. Enough bonuses make it hard for them to break on their turns. I'm now looking for the things that will allow me to establish the hold, and preferably pin them quickly, before they start full-round attacking me as payback (which, btw, is a bull**** rule, if you ask me). Ideally, I'll be able to get it high enough that I won't need to use every trick, and can spend some stuff on flavour and non-lockdown utility.
In particular, I have a rules question:
Does grapple benefit from the Brawler's weapon training (all "close" weapons), and does an Amulet of Mighty Fists apply to grapple checks? I'm thinking they probably don't, at least RAW. But I wanted to get people's opinions on that.
Looking over the Archetypes, the one that seems to best fit the theme is the Brawler (Fighter). As it has heavy armor proficiency, bonuses to CMD against common big monster maneuvers, and several useful abilities to prevent opponents from running past.
That all said, I do need to be able to actually succeed on the checks enough to be viable at current level (11th, heading onto 12th), so some amount of optimization is required. Ideally, I'll have at least a 70% chance of beating the CMD of a large/huge monster of fairly appropriate CR, less so on bosses, ofc. Here's what I have so far, as options:
1) Human Fighter Favoured Class Bonus: +1/level to CMD on two maneuvers of choice, one of which is going to be grapple. This helps greatly in getting the CMD up high enough to make it hard for them to just brute force out of it with their own grapple check.
2) Traits: Bred for War (Racial, +1 CMB) and Serpentine Squeeze (Religion, +1 on grapple checks and grapple CMD)
3) Feats: Improved Grapple, Greater Grapple, Weapon Focus (Grapple), Greater Weapon Focus (Grapple)
4) Equipment: Armbands of the Brawler (+1 Competence), Gauntlets of the Skilled Maneuver (+2 Untyped), Adhesive Armor (+2 Enhancement, requires standard to activate), Cracked Pale Green Prism Ioun Stone (+1 Competence, won't stack with the much cheaper Armbands).
On top of that, there's full BAB and strength bonuses. I could get a Permanency Enlarge person, as well. And flanking bonuses can help get the initial grapple. I'm strongly considering getting the human racial feat tree for Inexplicable luck, netting a +8 on a roll of choice 1/day (good for establishing the initial grapple for the +5 bonus on successive checks), +4 if used after the roll.
What else is there, to ramp up the CMB? I've got the CMD dealt with. Enough bonuses make it hard for them to break on their turns. I'm now looking for the things that will allow me to establish the hold, and preferably pin them quickly, before they start full-round attacking me as payback (which, btw, is a bull**** rule, if you ask me). Ideally, I'll be able to get it high enough that I won't need to use every trick, and can spend some stuff on flavour and non-lockdown utility.
In particular, I have a rules question:
Does grapple benefit from the Brawler's weapon training (all "close" weapons), and does an Amulet of Mighty Fists apply to grapple checks? I'm thinking they probably don't, at least RAW. But I wanted to get people's opinions on that.