eggynack
2014-09-10, 09:51 PM
Recently, I've really been liking the idea of an aberration themed druid, running both aberration wild shape and gatekeeper initiate, possibly with some vague necromancy leanings from spells and wild shape. I usually think of race as dragonborn anthropomorphic bat, but nothing I've mentioned would be especially mutually exclusive with shifter druid stuff, maybe featuring a holt warden/contemplative dip. The aberration thing is the main focus though, both from a power and flavor perspective.
Biffoniacus_Furiou
2014-09-11, 02:35 AM
Illumian (Krau/whatever), Beguiler 1/ Wizard 4/ Ultimate Magus 10/ PrCs 5, with two flaws for Versatile Spellcaster, Able Learner, and Practiced Spellcaster: Beguiler. Due to the wording of the Ultimate Magus spellcasting progression, you'll add all ten UM levels to your Wizard spellcasting, and end up with Wizard 14 and Beguiler 8 spelllcasting at 15th level. Illumians are Humanoid (Human) so they can take Able Learner, and you've got an amazing class skill list from Beguiler on an Int-SAD character. Versatile Spellcaster can be used to spend two spell slots of the same level to cast any spell you know of one level higher, including Wizard spells you've learned, plus it gives you access to the 5th level of the Beguiler spell list.
This has all the skills of a Rogue and a Wizard, all the social and problem-solving spells of a Bard, and all the Batman/God capabilities of a Wizard. You can trade Scribe Scroll for Improved Initiative, specialize in Conjuration and ban Evocation and Enchantment but still cast the latter from Beguiler, and you can even pick up the 5th Wizard level after UM to get Spontaneous Divination or a domain power instead of the bonus feat. You can grab a Mindbender dip after UM to get Mindsight, and you can make room for Incantatrix 3 at the end to use its abilities to persist all your buffs, applying its extra prohibited school to Beguiler (Necromancy) for no drawback.
It's basically the most versatile Wizard build you'll ever find.
Talionis
2014-09-11, 12:53 PM
Captain Constitution.
What is a Captain Constitution?
I was unable to find it initially, but I eventually did:
CAPTAIN CONSTITUTION
The Number One Threat To America
Required Books: Tome of Battle, Complete Champion, Complete Warrior, Eberron Campaign Setting, Races of Stone, PHB2, Player’s Guide to Eberron.
Unearthed Arcana used: Whirling Frenzy rage (optional, highly recommended).
Background: So, you’ve read all the handbooks, and you’ve noticed a trend: Not a single one suggests leaving points out of Constitution. Most put it as, at least, your second most important stat, and even those are heavy, heavy SAD classes. And they have a point: Sooner or later, your Constitution – via hit points, nasty Fort-save vs death effects (Will gets a fair number of these too, but most are foiled by a simple Mind Blank), or even Constitution damage – is going to be the only thing between you and a nasty demise. So, let’s take this to its logical extreme, shall we?
The basic idea here was simple: Make a character who could legitimately say his primary ability score was Constitution. Andarious already had a chunk of this in place when I found it, and pointed out a few options he wasn’t aware of at the time, and the rest just clicked. It turned out to have enough offensive oomph “for free” that barely anything needs to be invested in it offensively!
And no, the name is not a bad pun on Captain America (it's actually closer to the Hulk), even though the build is superheroically tough. The tagline, however, is a pun on this interpretation, courtesy of one Stephen Colbert. You’ll see.
For a real stumper, as you read through this, think about it. How would you describe this warrior to others? Is he a savvy Diamond Mind warblade, or a savage raging barbarian? Is he a monk? Is there just a hint of druid? His fighting style will drive metagamers positively insane.
The Basics
Race: Warforged. Dwarf is an acceptable alternative outside of Eberron; I’ll leave notes throughout on how to manage this as a dwarf. You want +CON and immunities. Warforged composite plating, with no maximum Dexterity bonus by default and its existence as an extraordinary ability rather than a piece of equipment, turns out to be a pretty powerful advantage, so you probably don’t want to apply Dragonborn here.
EDIT: Omen of Peace points out a pretty big goof on my end that makes Warforged stop working at level 15. The dwarf version still works after that point, but I'd maintain the warforged version is better up to then. See the Variants section below for how to handle this.
Ability Scores: 14/12/18/10/8/8 before racial adjustments (+2 con, -2 wis, -2 cha). EVERY SPARE POINT GOES INTO CONSTITUTION. No exceptions. This build is tough. Really, really tough. No, tougher than that. Even tougher. Keep going. More. No, more. Look, you basically want your Constitution score to have its own gravity well. THAT tough.
Skill Notes: Umm…. This is kind of complex. Your later PrCs have tricky skill requirements, but it IS possible to hit them without that much cross-classing. I’ve listed at each level where the skill points go. Read through the build carefully before employing them. (The numbers you see are skill points to invest, not skill ranks purchased; I try to call attention to cross-class points when they show up, but I might have missed a few. If you’re building along at home, you’ll spot it.)
Basic Equipment: You don’t need any. Not even a weapon – your slam is good enough until you can shapeshift, then you are your own weapon. (Level 1 is probably too deadly to bypass a weapon or shield though (particularly because warforged are half immune to healing spells) so don’t skimp it if you’re playing 1-20. You can probably go without in the lower-mids, though.)
Magical Gear Goals: +Constitution through amulet and tome is a good place to start. Adding in plating enhancements is an interesting choice – you don’t need wilding clasps or magic to keep your plating while shapeshifted. I assume +5 Ghostward below (the enhancement applies to touch AC as well as normal AC); you can add more beyond that if you have the cash or want to customize.
Speaking of, if you can afford it, Wilding Clasps let you carry over your gear when you shapeshift. These are costly but very, VERY useful. Interestingly we do not assume any of them in the snapshots below; once you include them the results get nuts.
The Build.
Build Stub: Warblade 6 / Barbarian 1 / Bear Warrior 5 / War Shaper 2 / Fist of the Forest 1 / Stoneblessed 3 / Deepwarden 2.
1 – Warblade – (Battle Clarity, Weapon Aptitude) (Power Attack) (Moment of Perfect Mind, Charging Minotaur, Wolf Fang Strike) (Punishing Stance)
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2 – Warblade – (Uncanny Dodge) (Sudden Leap)
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3 – Barbarian – (Pounce, Whirling Frenzy, Still Literate) (Extra Rage)
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4 – Warblade – (Battle Ardor) (Action Before Thought)
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5 – Warblade – (Battle Leader’s Charge swaps Wolf Fang Strike) (Leading the Charge)
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6 – Warblade – (Bonus: Endurance) (Steadfast Determination) (Insightful Strike)
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7 – Warblade – (Improved Uncanny Dodge) (Iron Heart Surge swaps Charging Minotaur)
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8 – Bear Warrior – (Bear Form: Black)
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9 – War Shaper – (Morphic Weapons, Morphic Immunities) (Improved Unarmed Strike)
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10 – War Shaper – (Morphic Body)
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11 – Bear Warrior – N/A
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12 – Bear Warrior – (Scent) (Great Fortitude)
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13 – Fist of the Forest – (AC Bonus, Fast Movement, Feral Trance 1, Unarmed Damage, Primal Living)
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14 – Bear Warrior – N/A
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15 – Bear Warrior – (Bear Form: Brown) (Shocking Fist OR Extra Rage)
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16 – Stoneblessed – Stonebond (Dwarf or Goliath)
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17 – Stoneblessed – (Racial Battle Technique)
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18 – Stoneblessed – (Stoneborn: +2 Con, and Stonecunning / Toughness) (Martial Study: Greater Insightful Strike)
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19 – Deepwarden – (Trap Sense +1) (Bonus: Track)
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20 – Deepwarden – (Stone Warden)
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Snapshot: There are two forms here, so I’ll stat them out accordingly.
The normal (humanoid warforged) form has +6 items on Strength and Constitution, and a +5 Tome of Con. His plating is enhanced +5 Ghostward. Armed with a +5 amulet of natural armor, a +5 cloak of resistance, a +5 ring of protection, two ioun stones (Pale Green and Dusty Rose), a Luckstone, and a +10 Competence bonus to Concentration – that sounds like a lot, but it leaves him with over 250,000gp left to spend on other gear, possibly enhancing his natural attacks like his slam, or wilding clasps – you get the following stats:
HP 404, Melee +24 (as weapon with +5 Strength modifier), saves of +45/+31/+43, with base AC of 56, a flat-footed AC of 56, a touch AC of 49, and a hosed (flat-footed/touch) AC of 49. (The Balance ranks at the end were designed to retain that Con-to-AC while balancing, which is the only place from which that he was still at risk of losing his Dex bonus.) You have Speed 40 and full access to your maneuvers, including those with Concentration (at a skill modifier of +45). Your final Constitution in this form is a whopping 32.
(Feral Trance doesn’t add much to this numerically – the Dex bonus is overridden by Stone Warden, for instance – but it does give you a decent fallback position offensively. Just be sure your magic gloves and boots are warforged components.)
The raging bear form loses all of his gear (and presumably can’t use Feral Trance either) given no wilding abilities. You can easily afford to add these on if you want, but we left them out for snapshotting. Only his composite plating remains (yeah yeah, insert Transformers: Beast Wars robot bear joke here), as does the effect of the tome of Con. Here, we are looking at 464 HP, Melee +30 (brown bear natural weapons with strength modifier of +12), saves of +41/+25/+41, with a base AC of 57, Flat-footed AC of 57, Touch AC of 50, and hosed AC of 50. In this form he also has speed 50 and is size Large (with the corresponding reach), and you finish with a truly mind-boggling 44 Constitution. These numbers assume NONE of your over 250,000gp in remaining wealth were spent on Wilding Clasps, which can easily push the numbers higher (why yes, I do feel like clipping one to my +6 Constitution gear, thanks!).
In both forms, he has Base Attack +18, can’t fail Fortitude saves on a natural 1 (and has a bonus high enough to basically always pass them on any other result), has two (freely chosen) skill tricks, has a huge immunity list (warforged+war shaper+Improved Uncanny Dodge (Rogue 10 needed to flank)), and is capable of initiating a suite of martial maneuvers. A few, most notably Greater Insightful Strike and the Diamond Mind counters, can’t be used while raging, but can continue to dish out serious damage output even against targets who use Elusive Target to negate power attacks. Those that can be used while raging include Iron Heart Surge (anything that gets past your immunities won’t stay long) and Battle Leader’s Charge (mostly used to avoid AoOs while charging), along with the +13 charge damage to yourself and allies from Leading the Charge. (How can he use Leading the Charge in a form that can’t speak? BECAUSE HE’S A BEAR AND HE DOESN’T NEED REASONS THAT’S WHY.)
Overall Strengths: This is one tough cookie. Most dramatically, he gets Con to AC twice, along with Improved Uncanny Dodge and a host of other goodies. It’s hard to negate all of his defenses, and all of them came with immense boosts to Strength or damage in other ways (insightful strikes with +45 Concentration modifiers). Once he rages, he’s a juggernaut – seriously, just try to stop him. Great saves and Steadfast Determination will throw you for a loop, to say nothing about his huge immunity list and Iron Heart Surge. Even if you do manage to break through, you’re looking at over 450 HP between you winning and him killing you.
Overall Weaknesses: Reliance on melee tactics is just about it, really. This is exaggerated a bit since gear is absorbed during a rage; you’ll need Wilding Clasps on mobility gear. None of the usual melee weak spots here, including the Will save, are actually weak. This build does, however, mature VERY late, although it remains competitive until then. Similarly, without the right magical gear, heavy damage reduction will slow him down (hard to get natural weapons to bypass that without gear), but given how he was really built for defense first, that’s not all that surprising. (That’s also why Shocking Fist is there.)
Variants: I gave details along the way of handling this with Dwarf instead of Warforged. I prefer warforged myself, but still…Should work with any +Con race. At a higher point-buy (say, the high-power 32 pb), the quintessential CON race, Mongrelfolk, becomes an option. Mongrelfolk come with an Intelligence penalty, and this build literally cannot function with less than 10 Int, so you either need a higher PB or some painful guttings (8 Dexterity or 6 Wisdom. And I'm not sure how fun a character with 10 Int, 6 Wisdom, and 4 Charisma would be to act as.) I still prefer warforged for the immunities (even more “can’t stop me” effects), but if you want raw numbers, in 32pb, it’ll be hard to beat mongrelfolk. And, as I noted above, Dragonborn remains an option almost regardless of race for even more Constitution (although here, it costs you access to your composite plating, which is a pretty powerful bonus!).
Omen of Peace points out that Warforged do not meet the type requirement for Stoneblessed (and, by proxy, for Deepwarden) - a big goof on my part. If you're following the build as originally presented and you like the 'Forged, finish the last five levels off with something like the last three levels of Bear Warrior and two extra levels of War Shaper for simplicity. Alternatively, five levels of a Tome of Battle class would be interesting. If you're fixing this goof by playing a dwarf (or mongrelfolk), and thus lack the 'Forged's immunities and composite plating, you should definitely go for broke with Dragonborn and budget for Wild armor or wilding clasps.
There you have it. I'm very pleased to showcase this one; it's one of my favorites, and Andarious deserves serious credit for making it work. It's obscenely tough and, through that toughness, gets a pretty impressive melee presence.
Segev
2014-09-11, 01:50 PM
By fluff with utterly underpowred mechanics?
Elf Generalist Wizard 20/Rogue 1. He was actually adopted by a human family when he was the elven equivalent of 10 years old (about 50ish, most likely), and runs under the assumption that elves age uniformly more slowly than humans. Raised amongst humans, he strove to stay "mature enough" to hang out with his adopted brother, and studied and worked and became a 1st level wizard about the same time his brother became a 1st level adventurer (class is mutable). Adventuring with his party from 1 to 20, they faced a powerful evil with a horrifyingly dangerous artifact. The elf hit it with a Disjunction, which cost him his spellcasting ability.
Having sold off many of his higher-level treasures, he tried to retire from adventuring, because he's now a burden to his party (being not really able to hang out at ECL 20 adventuring with no spellcasting). But enemies have heard of his weakened state, so he's gone into hiding, and now is posing as a ECL 12ish rogue, and claiming to be a street rat. He's debating whether to tell his new party the truth as he gets to know them.
Sadly, this character is mechanically difficult to nail down for an effective ECL, and thus is unlikely to ever be played.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I'd like to play one day my concept for an Elan Psion 5/Beholder Mage 2/Cerebromancer 10. I'd want to play it from level 1. The concept is that he was a skilled human wizard in a high-level party that ran into many beholders in its time. He became somewhat obsessed with them and looked for excuses to hunt them down for study. Having encountered Beholder Magi, he began to suspect that he could never grasp magical knowledge and power the way they do without some major changes. So he sought out and underwent the Elan procedure with a plan to become a Beholder via hired PAO after he mastered the psionic gifts necessary to ensure he could obtain all of the Beholder's magical prowess. Interesting points will be arranging the PAO and then figuring out how he moves around before he gets high enough level to cast Overland Flight, as the beholder's natural flight is not something that PAO grants.
Tragak
2014-09-11, 03:00 PM
For flavor---the ranger archer. I have always had a soft spot for the class since I started in 2e. I'll see that and raise you a Half-Orc Archery-Ranger :smallwink:
Thorgisrich Denniar: "Imagine that you are a Half-Orc, and that the mining town where you grew up was frequently raided by a neighboring Orc tribe. Now imagine that many of the Orcs who would not have survived the life of violence, including your mother and older half-sister, ran away from their tribe to join civilization. These defectors are not normally threatened with Human-supremacist violence, as the town has so many 1st/2nd... generation Orcs (such as your mother and sister) and 2nd/3rd... generation Half-Orcs (such as yourself) - many of whom have given their lives defending the town against the raiders - that the population as a whole doesn't bother with "HUMANZ IZ GUD, ORCS IZ BAD" dogmas.
But imagine, however, that you got into an argument as a child, an argument where you hit your best friend harder than you intended and he then had to spend weeks with his good arm in a sling. Everybody around you understood that you simply forgot your strength - rather than your morals - but imagine that you yourself have become terrified that you could become like the boogeymen that your mother and sister had risked their lives running away from.
Yes, you have hurt people deliberately since then. You understand perfectly that people often need to commit violence to defend themselves and their loved ones against aggressors, and you are willing to commit such violence yourself when it is absolutely necessary, so the town's requirement that all able-bodied citizens spend at least 1 year in the militia did not cause a problem for you; in fact, you have spent over 4 years and have no plan on finding a different profession any time soon.
However, imagine that you are nonetheless afraid that close-quarters violence could turn you into a person that does not remember the line between 'necessary' and 'unnecessary', and that you signed up with the scouts and archers instead of the swordsmen. This way, not only would you be able to use your woodland training to aid the innocent - in addition to simply hurting the violent - but you could keep yourself detached from any violence that might be required of you."
STR 12+2=14
DEX 16
CON 12
WIS 10
INT 12-2=10
CHA 12-2=10
WIS to be bumped at every opportunity to keep up with spell casting potential
First Favored Enemy: Orcs
ManicOppressive
2014-09-11, 07:50 PM
I love Sublime Chord gishes, especially with Swiftblade and Spelldancer dips. Being able to cast persistent buffs on myself at the beginning of the day and rampage through encounters with 30 Dexterity, Snowflake Wardancing all the way, is awesome.
Dusk Eclipse
2014-09-11, 08:46 PM
The Chrono-Leggionarie holds a very dear place in my heart, but I didn't make it. One build I did make was The Black swordsman of Aincrad (See spoiler in my sig), I really want to play it as I originally wrote it, but alas.... I haven't been able; though I'm currently playing a less. cheesy version right now, so I have that going for me which is nice.
I also second the Psycarnum Warrior, it is just effective, simple and elegant.
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