Unarmed Character Help, for 3.5 Game

[sage20500]

So I'm getting ready to start a 3.5 game with some friends and the DM had us role our stats to see what we'd end up with. Party comp as of now includes a druid and a sorcerer, and the stats I rolled was;

Our starting level is 4.

Str 15, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 18, Wis 13, Cha 18;

Im using human as my base race right now and am thinking about grabbing nymphs kiss as one of my level 1 feats in order toget some extra skill points.

Also at level 6 if I can I was going to grab the leadership feat to pick up an artificer co hort so that ill be able to make sure I get my hands on the equipment that lets me use my cha for my attack and damage rolls,

At the moment the group needs a front liner ish distraction to keep the baddies attention off of the sorcerer, so when I looked through the base classes and saw the Battle Dancer as well as some of the variants for monk and the dervish prestige class, I wanted to try and build a decent-good unarmed character MMA like fighter that can take the full 10 levels of Dervish if possible and have as close to full BaB progression as is possible.

House Rules that the dm is currently using is that when ever we hit a level with a stat increase, its +1 to two stats, and we get a feat ever even level sort of like how 4e does feats.

For material allowed, if it isn't either home brewed or third party content then its allowed.

As of right now, I'm currently running the Magic Blooded template on my character to get my starting Cha to 20 for battle dancer features, so it'll be a Cha of 20 and a Wis of 11.

So the current build I'm looking at is as follows,
1st Level in Spirit Lion Totem City Brawler Barbarian for pounce, and improved unarmed strike and TWF for free feats,
Battle Dancer 1 level,
Chaotic Cobra Strike Style Monk 4 levels to net Dodge and Mobility feats for Dervish Pre Reqs,
Fist of the Forest 3 levels,
and then 10 levels in Dervish,

Feats that I know I'll be picking up include Snap Kick, Versatile Unarmed Strike (To make it slashing), Superior Unarmed Strike, Flying Kick, Kung fu Genius to allow my Int to apply to my monk features, Roundabout Kick, and then the Power Attack and Cleave/Greater Cleave feats.

For right now I'm stuck with a 1 level gab to try and fill in, was looking at possibly taking a dip into sword sage but I'm currently unsure about it,

Any thoughts or suggestions for how to try and make this character concept better?

[sage20500]

Also is it possible to possibly combine both the Side Winder Monk Variant and the Chaotic Monk variant?

[atomicwaffle]

If you go straight Fighter at level 4 you can get weapon specialization (unarmed) for a +2 damage.

feats:
-Unarmed Strike (level 1)
-Dash (Complete Warrior) (human)
-Weapon Focus: Unarmed Strike (fighter 1)
-Power Attack (fighter 2)
-Flying Kick (Complete Warrior) (level 3)
-Weapon Specialization: Unarmed Strike (fighter 4)

Masterwork Heavy Steel Shield with a Masterwork Chain Shirt. If you want you can substitute Dash with Combat Reflexes if you want to dive into a combat and tank some damage with your beefy d10 HD.

[sage20500]

So yeah, not sure where to go for now, since I'm kind of filling in as the front liner as well as the party face skill monkey at the moment. I was planning on grabbing nymphs kiss as one of my level 1 feats, oh, also the DM has ruled that we are not allowed to use traits or flaws for this game.

[Lightlawbliss]

If you go straight Fighter at level 4 you can get weapon specialization (unarmed) for a +2 damage.

feats:
-Unarmed Strike (level 1)
-Dash (Complete Warrior) (human)
-Weapon Focus: Unarmed Strike (fighter 1)
-Power Attack (fighter 2)
-Flying Kick (Complete Warrior) (level 3)
-Weapon Specialization: Unarmed Strike (fighter 4)

Masterwork Heavy Steel Shield with a Masterwork Chain Shirt. If you want you can substitute Dash with Combat Reflexes if you want to dive into a combat and tank some damage with your beefy d10 HD.

...or he could replace weapon focus and specialization (and then some) with knowledge devotion and a rank in each of the creature based knowledge skills.
snap kick is essentially a second attack on full attacks and standard action attacks for unarmed focused builds.
superior unarmed strike or get monk unarmed damage progression
I wouldn't touch dash with a 39.5 ft pole let alone actually take it.
I would only take flying kick on a charging focused build which I'm not sure this one is or is not.

I would personally play tiger claw focused unarmed swordsage for the OP's concept.

[Theomniadept]

Might seem weird but Barbarian with Fist of the Forest PrC gets more unarmed strike damage and barbarian stuff (which outdoes a lot of other melee classes). If you're really going for some weirdery also take 5 levels of Bear Warrior and use your natural attacks as secondary natural weapons while you full attack with unarmed strikes. Thus; kung-fu panda.

Unarmed Swordsage is good if you can convince the DM that it is supposed to get the Ki Strike abilities of monk, because otherwise all DR in existence will in fact kill you.

Then there's real cheese in Monk 2 and WIzard 3 into Swiftblade casting Greater Mighty Wallop and using Prestidigitation to make his hair blonde and his eyes green and constantly shouting and looking for 7 small orange orbs of Wish.

[sage20500]

The big thing for flying kick was that with the way that I believe the Dervish Dance works your allowed to move in between any attacks that you make with a full round action. Once everything pans out the character will have a base speed of around 70ish feet, so if I make a charge attack while doing the Dervish Dance, I only need to move a minimum of 10ft, which leaves me 60ft of movement still. The barbarian variant I'm using gives me pounce which will allow me to make a full attack on a charge, so I can make all of my unarmed strike attacks and if I happen to proc a cleave or two, move to the next closest target and continue attack them, and I'll be doing double damage with each attack because of flying kick. At least, that's how I understand how this would work. If I'm understanding this wrong then finding out now would be greatly beneficial to me.

"A dervish can become a whirling dancer of death a certain number of times per day. While in this dervish dance, she can take a full attack action (for melee attacks only) and still move up to her speed. However, the dervish must move a minimum of 5 feet between each attack when using this ability, and she cannot return to a square she just exited (though she may return to that square later during her full attack). The dervish is subject to attacks of opportunity while dancing, but may tumble normally as part of her move. A dervish prevented from completing her move is also prevented from finishing her full attack."

[Lightlawbliss]

The big thing for flying kick was that with the way that I believe the Dervish Dance works your allowed to move in between any attacks that you make with a full round action. Once everything pans out the character will have a base speed of around 70ish feet, so if I make a charge attack while doing the Dervish Dance, I only need to move a minimum of 10ft, which leaves me 60ft of movement still. The barbarian variant I'm using gives me pounce which will allow me to make a full attack on a charge, so I can make all of my unarmed strike attacks and if I happen to proc a cleave or two, move to the next closest target and continue attack them, and I'll be doing double damage with each attack because of flying kick. At least, that's how I understand how this would work. If I'm understanding this wrong then finding out now would be greatly beneficial to me.

"A dervish can become a whirling dancer of death a certain number of times per day. While in this dervish dance, she can take a full attack action (for melee attacks only) and still move up to her speed. However, the dervish must move a minimum of 5 feet between each attack when using this ability, and she cannot return to a square she just exited (though she may return to that square later during her full attack). The dervish is subject to attacks of opportunity while dancing, but may tumble normally as part of her move. A dervish prevented from completing her move is also prevented from finishing her full attack."

Do you know what sorts of encounters and/or style the DM favors? This greatly controls what is good and bad in a particular campaign.

[Val666]

Might seem weird but Barbarian with Fist of the Forest PrC gets more unarmed strike damage and barbarian stuff (which outdoes a lot of other melee classes).

This using the City Brawler and Ferocity or Whirling Frenzy should work really well. Add some Warblade levels for bab,good hd and try to get Ironheart Surge. Frostrager is another option and adding 6 levels of warlock + 1 Binder and 3 Hellfire Warlock + Eldritch Claws would be nice. (Obviosly if your dm let you do that and treat Hellfire Blast as Eldritch blast for Eldricth Claws. If he allow it, don't forget Beast Strike :v

[sage20500]

Do you know what sorts of encounters and/or style the DM favors? This greatly controls what is good and bad in a particular campaign.

At the moment all I know is that the module he is running is Return to the Temple of the Elemental Evil, I've been trying to avoid looking up information about it online because i'd rather not spoil the experience for him or myself since its his first time actually running that particular module with a group of players, as well as for everyone who is playing this is going to be their first experience with 3.5 D&D, for two of the other 3-4 people playing this is actually their first experience playing D&D at all X).

[sage20500]

This using the City Brawler and Ferocity or Whirling Frenzy should work really well. Add some Warblade levels for bab,good hd and try to get Ironheart Surge. Frostrager is another option and adding 6 levels of warlock + 1 Binder and 3 Hellfire Warlock + Eldritch Claws would be nice. (Obviosly if your dm let you do that and treat Hellfire Blast as Eldritch blast for Eldricth Claws. If he allow it, don't forget Beast Strike :v

If I can I'd like to avoid taking any kind of levels in a caster class. The sorcerer in the group is a first timer and I'm really hoping to avoid taking away the fun she'll be able to start having once she gets to above level 6-8 ish and gets to start messing around with their really fun spells. Also for this character I'm really hoping to be able to do the full 10 levels of Dervish to do the Dance of Death shenanigans that they get. One of the big things about Dervish is that your unable to use any rage's or trances in while your using their Dance ability.

[tyriuth]

This using the City Brawler and Ferocity or Whirling Frenzy should work really well. Add some Warblade levels for bab,good hd and try to get Ironheart Surge. Frostrager is another option and adding 6 levels of warlock + 1 Binder and 3 Hellfire Warlock + Eldritch Claws would be nice. (Obviosly if your dm let you do that and treat Hellfire Blast as Eldritch blast for Eldricth Claws. If he allow it, don't forget Beast Strike :v

If you're going to put warlock levels in there; add in the three levels of uncanny trickster to get that boost to the hellfire blast (It nets you +2 levels of existing class features and the damage is based off the levels in Hellfire warlock). But don't forget to have LOTS of restoration on hand as a con hit for a melee character is bad.

[sage20500]

At the moment I'm looking at changing a couple of things around in order to try and decrease the MAD this character currently has.

First thing is I'm changing the template from Magic Blooded for the +2 Cha -2 Wis to Unseelie fey for +2 Dex +2 Cha -2 Str -2 Con. That is unless my DM is ok with me running 2 +0LA templates in which case I'll gladly throw the Magic Blooded template back onto the character.

Second thing is I'm taking fist of the forest out of the picture, as well as 2 of the 4 levels of Chaotic monk I currently have slotted up, which frees up 6 levels for something else to take it's place. I'm honestly really tempted to take chaotic monk out entirely, as of right now the only reason why I have it in there is for the ability to add my Int mod to ac through the Kung Fu Genius feat, because I'm honestly not sure if the flailing blows is even worth the trouble I'm currently getting with it.

I'm looking at replacing one of these 5-7 levels with Swordsage 1 at the moment so that I can nab Shadow Blade, which with that and weapon finesse will eliminate my need for strength until I can get my hands on a pair of Slippers of Battle, ( http://www.imarvintpa.com/dndlive/items.php?ID=3184 ), as well as get a few tiger claw maneuvers.

Instead of the 3 levels of fist of the forest I'm looking into grabbing the Shou Disciple prestige class for +3 BaB still, 1d10 unarmed strike damage, an extra feat (most likely weapon finesse for unarmed strike or else improved initiative) and the ability to use flailing blows with magiced regular gauntlets since they qualify as light melee weapons for martial flurry, which since I'm grabbing an artificer as my cohort should at least help me out with keeping my to hit at an acceptable level.

A question regarding shou disciple that I have based on things I've read in the forums, if a character is taking the shou disciple prestige class and has no levels in monk, then when they hit level 3 do they gain the flurry of blows feature as if they were a monk?

Im also thinking about maybe doing the last 2 levels if possible in BloodClaw Master so that I can eliminate the -2/-2 penalty for using two weapon though I'm pretty sure overall this will cost me -3 to my BaB leaving me at +17 instead of +19 as it currently is at right now.

Feat wise, Shadow Blade, Versatile Unarmed Strike,Superior Unarmed Strike, Snap Kick, Combat Expertise, Leadership, Dodge, and Mobility are all absolutely required for this character idea for the total 11 feats I would be getting without including any free feats I gained as class features. If I include the two free feats that I get for taking 2 levels in the cobra strike style monk, then I'm currently using 6 of the full twelve feats that I'm getting, unless I drop the idea of doing 2 levels of BloodClaw Master to instead grab 2 levels of fighter for +18 BaB and 2 more free feats, but I keep the -2/-2 penalties on my TWF attacks.

For feat's I'd like to try and grab if possible, these include Nymph's Kiss as one of my level 1 feats because since I have a high charisma and int I'll most likely be filling in as a party face/ off skill monkey so having extra skill points is always a plus,

Power Attack for pre reqs, Round About Kick, Flying Kick, Cleave and Greater Cleave, Improved Two Weapon Fighting, Combat Reflexes, Melee Weapon Mastery, and if possible Slashing Flurry and Greater Two Weapon Fighting would be nice.

Item wise at the moment all I have set in stone is trying to get my hands on a Monk's Belt, a Monk's Tatoo, Slippers of Battle Dancing and Gauntlets of Heartfelt blows, after that since I've managed to reduce my stat dependency down to just my Dex, Int and Cha I was probably going to look into any items that might be able to raise those since I am not allowed to wear any armor. For the actual gauntlets that my character was going to wear over her fist I know that I'll probably want the enchantment that gives me an extra attack, as well as I was going to try and have them wand slotted so that I can have a wand of blood wind in one and probably a wand of greater wallop or some other buff kind of spell in the other. Oh, and also the Fanged Ring, if thats the name of the ring that gives you improved natural attack for free.

Pretty much the biggest thing with the character is that I'm not allowed to re roll my stats as well as if at all possible I really wanted to stay away from any direct sources of casting magic myself since the other two character we currently have in the party are casters of some kind. The battle dancer itself was what gave me the inspiration to try and figure out a way to make the character like this work since it allows me to add one of my highest stats to my AC and try to work on being a mostly effective front line meat shield. While I don't mind using magic items to help bring up my potential of doing this job, I want to try and avoid being a caster myself X).

Any opinions I can get on this to see if I'm going in the right direction or if not where/what I should be looking at to get there? Also what are some good other items to look at trying to get at some point?

[Lightlawbliss]

1st: cleave is worthless if you can't attack a second enemy, and greatcleave is so rare to proc it isn't even funny. The name of the mod strongly suggests you will be inside a building, which tends to not support massive walls of enemies coming at you so I would strongly recommend against Greatcleave and I would recommend giving some serious thought to how likely cleave is to activate and how much it would improve your average damage.

2nd: Your high int and statement that you will have highest skills, I suspect you will have good knowledge scores. Knowledge devotion used a knowledge check to grant you increased damage and accuracy, and it works well with builds based on number of attacks.

3rd: I would recommend bracers of armor or some other source of an armor bonus, and possibly get a source of bit of the wererat. You will want a fly speed (I would recommend a phoenix cloak [MIC])

4th: Since you don't want to take over what your allies are doing, mind telling us what they are doing?

[sage20500]

First ally is going a sorcerer, it's her first time playing so I was going to show her some of the less complicated sorcerer builds and let her go from there with what she wants to do.

Second ally is a warforged wild shaper character that has 18 int and wis, and he plans on taking full levels of master of many forms among other things. He's also going VoP with that character because he's planning on spending almost all of his time being wild shaped.

[sage20500]

1st: cleave is worthless if you can't attack a second enemy, and greatcleave is so rare to proc it isn't even funny. The name of the mod strongly suggests you will be inside a building, which tends to not support massive walls of enemies coming at you so I would strongly recommend against Greatcleave and I would recommend giving some serious thought to how likely cleave is to activate and how much it would improve your average damage.



Between the dervish allowing me to move in between attacks as well as the wand of bloodwind allowing me to have range 20ft with all of my unarmed strikes that I make I wasn't sure that was going to be an issue, i'll take another look at it though.

Am heading off to look at Knowledge devotion right now