Meditations on Warblade-Gestalt

[CryptbornAkryea]

I beg your patience for my love of gestalt. :)

I'm just getting to better understand warblade and some of it's strengths. I'm still not seeing a whole lot of weaknesses though, aside from equipment reliance.

I can't decide what I would pair a warblade with. Ideas I've had:

Warblade//Cloistered Cleric
divine kung-fu

Warblade//Soulknife
mind-my-knife-mind-fu

Warblade//???/Kensai
say 'Hello' to my special friend

Your thoughts, giants?

[Ratatoskir]

Hm... Go Warmage, and focus on lightning and thunder. Wield a warhammer with the flying enchantment.

Then go kick the crap outta every frost giant you see.

[CryptbornAkryea]

Lol, get an eight-legged flying horse as well? Maybe start wearing the curtains?
Love it!

[DMVerdandi]

Soulknife won't actually improve the warblade. I mean you get a plus 5 weapon, but is that actually worth it? Nah.

Kensei is an okay prestige class, But, there are much better. Its alright to get those enhancement bonuses, but you can do better.


Cleric is awesome. Excellent spells, you need no spell books, and you get all of them from every book printed. It, like war blade is simply a class that can be completely unarmed and unarmored and still destroy competition. Cloistered cleric is as you said, better, but even more superior is taking the Academic Priest feat. It assigns casting to INT.

[Ratatoskir]

Awhile back I was building gestalt avengers and I think that's what I had for Thor. So it stuck out when you were asking. Obviously not optimized, haha.

And Odin is Sleipner's master, unless the comic diverges significantly from the myths, in which case, I never read the comics so meh.

For real build's, I imagine a factotum for skills/int synergy or a wizard/psion/whatever for utility/magic/int synergy would work.

[CryptbornAkryea]

Academic Priest is about perfect, I think.

And good point about Sleipner. I figure Thor can borrow his dad's ride from time to time:)

[CryptbornAkryea]

Any thoughts on race?

Skarn could make for good fluff...

[TSED]

Wu Jen or Psions are hilariously good.

I actually have an incredibly, incredibly minmaxed gestalt character (more psion who happens to have a few levels of warblade on the other side, along with incarnate and warshaper and fighter and...) for a solo campaign with a buddy of mine. AC 62 and can become 75 in a single standard action at level 12. 15' reach (without reach weapons) while medium sized, can poink self to colossal if I am willing to spend two standard actions and a bunch of pp, utter and remorseless destruction of the action economy, a bunch of tier-1 shenanigans engaged (teleports and freedom of movement and true seeing and etc.), 15' cone of no-save-no-SR-just-damage, and many other tricks.

Plus the raw destructive melee power of a warblade's maneuvers. (Actually I took a single level of crusader for strikes and white raven tactics; warblade is for saves and iron heart surge).

Anyway what I'm saying is "psions are great with warblades." Really, really, really, really great if you spend too long minmaxing it.

Wu Jen get a bunch of gish-friendly spells that are ONLY on the Wu Jen's class list. Their various scarf spells, a bunch of neat spells like Body Outside Body or Giant Size, and so on. A warblade // wu jen can bring more pain than their body has room for. The extra neat thing about Body Outside Body is the clones get maneuvers, by the way.

[2xMachina]

Yup, Psion goes well with Warblade. You could melee, and use powers with swift action, split mind, linked, or whatever in the same round.

I, however, like Wizard/Swiftblade.

Wiz5/Swiftblade10/Incantatrix 5//Warblade 20 if you really like the Dual Stance,
Wiz5/Swiftblade10/Incantatrix 5//Warblade 16/Wiz 4 if you really like full CL (put the Wiz on the Swiftblade's no caster progression lvls).
Or somewhere in between for 3rd lvl spells and good maneuvers.

Perm the Haste, and proceed to be a melee beast with all the boosts from that 1 spell (And Swiftblade haste is undispellable). And you have spells to back you up should you need it.

[Prime32]

Factotum//Warblade is fantastic. There's Int synergy, and you get both extra actions and strong things to do with them.

[CryptbornAkryea]

Loving the feedback!

Y'know, I don't think I've ever actually looked at wu-jen nor psion. I'm going to have to fix that. :)

Edit: same goes for factotum and swiftblade, lol

[Firechanter]

Cloistered cleric is as you said, better, but even more superior is taking the Academic Priest feat. It assigns casting to INT.

Academic Priest, where is that from? I doubt it's from an official WotC source, at least I can't find it anywhere. So probably Dragon Mag?

[juicycaboose]

Academic Priest, where is that from? I doubt it's from an official WotC source, at least I can't find it anywhere. So probably Dragon Mag?

It's from Legend of the Twins which is a Dragonlance book.

And it doesn't entirely assign casting to INT, save DCs are still determined by wisdom but bonus spells and maximum spell level are determined by INT

[Gwendol]

Academic Priest is about perfect, I think.

And good point about Sleipner. I figure Thor can borrow his dad's ride from time to time:)

Thor had a chariot pulled by two meat-eating(!) billy-goats.

[Metahuman1]

Binder, Incarnate, Bard, Swordsage, Crusader, Wizard and Artificer are all solid options.

[Red Fel]

I've heard Incarnate mentioned twice. I'm going to throw in with that - simply because Incarnum is underrepresented - and take it a step further.

In my sig, there is a handbook. In that handbook you will find the Ironsoul Forgemaster. Consider a Warblade 20// Incarnate 10/ Ironsoul Forgemaster 10. You get your full array of Warblade abilities. You shape soulmelds as a 19th-level Incarnate. You craft any equipment you want, whatever you want, with a CL of 30. (Also, according to the fluff, Dwarf clerics give you a discount on enhancing it.) You gain some really potent abilities built in to your armor and weapon (particularly that on-hit daze effect). You have the Incarnate's awesome passive utility, the Forgemaster's ability to customize your gear, and the Warblade's ability to be completely awesome. You get your full BAB, plus good Fort and Will saves. And while Incarnate and Forgemaster don't share Int synergy with Warblade, they all feature Con as an important stat (seriously, any melee class that doesn't have Con secondary isn't thinking it through).

Don't want Forgemaster? What about Totemist? Warblade 20// Totemist 20 is a clean, simple build. It gets you full BAB and good Fort and Ref saves. It gets you your full Warblade arsenal, plus Totemist soulmelds. Why Totemist soulmelds? Because you took the Dragonblood subtype. Why the Dragonblood subtype? Have a web article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060912a&page=4). Now, imagine your Warblade. He takes Improved Unarmed Strike, maybe even Superior Unarmed Strike, because violence. Also take Beast Strike, you'll see why. He has four Girallon Arms that make claw attacks. He also has Dragon Claws, which add to his unarmed strikes thanks to Beast Strike. He has a Dragon Mantle, so that his natural weapons overcome DR. He has a Dragon Tail, that can do a nasty whip attack.

Point is, dude's got a lot of natural weapons. He's also in Punishing Stance, which adds 1d6 on every hit. Most importantly, he took Stormguard Warrior. Every first round, he's using all of his attacks as touch attacks that deal no damage. Every second round, he's doing the same thing, but now they all deal outrageously inflated damage thanks to Combat Rhythm.

Expect one enemy to explode every second round.

Both are simple, clean builds, that blend nicely with the Warblade.

[TSED]

Don't want Forgemaster? What about Totemist? Warblade 20// Totemist 20 is a clean, simple build. It gets you full BAB and good Fort and Ref saves. It gets you your full Warblade arsenal, plus Totemist soulmelds. Why Totemist soulmelds? Because you took the Dragonblood subtype. Why the Dragonblood subtype? Have a web article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060912a&page=4). Now, imagine your Warblade. He takes Improved Unarmed Strike, maybe even Superior Unarmed Strike, because violence. Also take Beast Strike, you'll see why. He has four Girallon Arms that make claw attacks. He also has Dragon Claws, which add to his unarmed strikes thanks to Beast Strike. He has a Dragon Mantle, so that his natural weapons overcome DR. He has a Dragon Tail, that can do a nasty whip attack.


Snap Kick.

[Red Fel]

Snap Kick.

Is it my birthday? Did you read my wish list? :smallbiggrin:

[Werephilosopher]

A lot of great suggestions already. Just make sure your class makes up for the Warblade's weaknesses. You already have d12 HD and good Fortitude, look for good Will and Reflex and maybe more skill points. Casters work wonderfully with Warblade, as do incarnum-users, as has been pointed out already.

[TSED]

Is it my birthday? Did you read my wish list? :smallbiggrin:

Sure, why not?

Here's some delicious cheese when it comes to Girallon arms: Girallon arms grant three secondary claw attacks. It grants one primary and three secondary. Yeah, so what?

If you have a primary claw attack in use from another source, with, say, two claw attacks...

Girallon arms grant three secondary claw attacks.

[Rebel7284]

Here is a nice gestalt warblade build.

Martial Wizard 5/Swiftblade 1/Spelldancer 1/Swiftblade +8/X 5
//
Factotum 5/Wizard 1/Factotum 3/Wizard 1/Warblade 2/Wizard 1/Warblade 7

- Casts as a level 20 wizard.
- Initiator level 14.
- 3 standard actions per round = 3 spells per round OR 3 maneuvers per round, not counting anything you can do with your swift/move actions.
- The ability to apply free metamagic.
- INT to everything... multiple times generally. Take Faerie Mysteries Initiate feat for maximum int focus.

Note: this build is not for the average party. It's ridiculously powerful.

[CryptbornAkryea]

I do have love for totemist, hee hee