Please critique this character build

[Jowgen]

So, I'm making a new character for an upcoming campaign (ECL 13), came up with a character build and I just wanted to see people's opinion on it.


Race: Feytouched upgraded to Half-Fey using transition class (LA buy-off worked out with DM)



CLASS LEVELS
CLASS FEATURES
FEATS


Planar Ranger 1
Favored Enemy Arcanists, Spiritual Connection, Solitary Hunting (Dra 347), Champion of the Wild
Flyby Attack (1st), Alertness (Flaw, Love of Nature Dra 324), Favored of the Companions (Flaw, Metal Intolerance, Dra 324)


Exotist Fighter 1
Hit n Run Tactics (DotU)
Improved Critical (Fighter), EWP Scorpion Chain (Exotist), EWP Karoti Resin Scorpion Chain (Exotist), EWP Foot-Spike (Exotist)


Exotist Fighter 2

Combat Expertise (Fighter), Keen Eared Scout (3rd)


Planar Ranger 2
Strong Arm Style (Dra 326)
Power Attack


Sentinel Paladin 1 (Dra 310)
Hunter of Fiends (FE Evil Outsider), Gaze of Truth (Dra 349)
Track (Paladin Hunter of Fiends)


Sentinel Paladin 2 (Dra 310)

Blind Fight (Fiendish Ear Graft), , Mage Slayer (6th)


Sentinel Paladin 3 (Dra 310)
Celestial Fortitude



Sentinel Paladin 4 (Dra 310)
Aura of Sancity (vs Death Effect, Dra 349), Holy Warrior
True Believer (Holy Warrior, used for Millenial Chainmail)


Stalker of Kharash 1
Favored Enemy Evil
Pierce Magical Concealment (9th)


Stalker of Kharash 2
Scent of Evil




Stalker of Kharash 3
Champion of the Wild activates as ranger casting level reaches 4th due to stacking (DM approved)
Improved Favored Enemy (Champion of the Wild)


Stalker of Kharash 4
Hide In Plain Sight (Ex)
Great Flyby Attack (12th)




Key Equipment: Long Arm Graft (FF), Ring of Blinking, Feycraft Kaorti Resin Scorpion Chain, +1 Hunting Foot Spike, Girdle of Hate (Evil).

Function: Scorpion Chain and the Long Arm Graft give 20 ft reach. Combat expertise and Mage Slayer severely lock down casters via reach. Great flyby attack allows movement and attacking up to 7 enemies at once with a single un-diminished attack roll. Favored Enemies give extra damage against wide range of opponents, plus greater to-hit for trading with power attack via Solitary Hunting. Ring of Blinking plus Hide in Plain Sight allows for near constant hiding and thus flat-footed attacks, which gives Dex to dmg via Hit & Run. Pierce Magical concealment negates 20% Miss-chance from Blink. Good maneuverability at fly speed 60 (or higher via items) keeps character out of reach. 17-20x4 crit can result in occasional out-right murder.


So yeah, I don't feel it's my best build ever; but his damage, saves and mobility are quite good in my current draft. Any comments would be much appreciated. :smallsmile:

[Jowgen]

Pretty please?

[Izmister]

sorry im no expert, but your build looks good enough to me. Though people may not be responding because of the format on the statistics. Again im not an expert i just joined.

[HammeredWharf]

I think you're not getting responses mostly because you're using a lot of sources people aren't familiar with, such as Dragon Magazine. It looks like a good build, although I doubt it can keep up with moderately optimized casters. How are you going to deal with teleportation and swift action spells? Remember that while Mage Slayer prevents defensive casting, swift action spells don't provoke AoOs anyway. Flyby Attack is a bit wasted if your main method of action is threatening squares, which requires staying near enemies. Speaking of threatening squares, 20 ft reach isn't a lot, as many monsters have more by that level. As a half-fey, you can't get enlarged, either.

[Aegis013]

I don't know exactly what you want this character to be or represent, and having some knowledge on that would be helpful for anyone seeking to help you actualize the character you want in the game, but I will provide some feedback. Take it with a grain of salt, as I have no idea what optimization level your table enjoys or what exactly you would like out of this character.

An alternative for Great Flyby Attack is the 2nd level spell Whirling Blade, which is an SR: No, Save: none spell that allows you to melee attack everything in a 60ft line with a slashing weapon (your Drow Scorpion Blade is such a weapon), using your Str or replacing it with Int or Cha based on your casting. You could even wand it into a wand chamber of the weapon. The only possible disadvantage is rolling for each opponent in the line, but unless you have something like Aura of Perfect Order to eliminate the roll/randomness/chance, the Great Flyby Attack plan could be pretty disappointing; you roll a 1 and suddenly all of your attacks missed, plus, all of the enemies need to be conveniently lined up, this is true of Whirling Blade as well, but it potentially frees up a feat for other things.

As far as locking down casters, if you're playing quite low-op, then maybe, but Wizard progression casters will be toting 7th level spells, and with even a bit of attention towards their Concentration checks, they'll quite readily be capable of making a 25 DC Concentration check on a roll of 1 (16 ranks, +3 Con , +5 Tunic of Steady Spellcasting or other item), so you can expect a rough average of 36, meaning you'll need to be able to deal 36 damage in a single hit consistently to shut them down only [I]half of the time. Your ability scores aren't posted, but with a good strength (I'll guess 24) and two handing your Scorpion Chain, you'd need to power attack for 11 to consistently reach that number. (1d6 so average 3.5, rounded to 4+10[1.5x 7 str mod rounded down]+22 power attack for 36 damage). I don't really see your build having the to-hit to consistently land a power attack so high. (It'd be a little less, I didn't include favored enemy or the like)

Also, in my opinion you simply don't have the stopping power to effectively lock down a caster, or remove him from play before he gets an encounter ending spell fielded. When 4th level spells enter the game, you have to contend with single-cast encounter enders such as Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, and others, and powerful defenses such as Polymorph or Greater Mirror Image. But you're dealing in 7th level spells, which is much much nastier. By this point things like Planar Binding, Contingency, Greater Teleport, Plane Shift, Greater Shadow Conjuration, and others are available to your enemies.

Now I'm not saying the build is bad or anything, but it doesn't look like it would hold its own at the optimization level I am accustomed to, or achieve its purpose (which I inferred, and do not know if this is in fact the purpose) of hassling enemy spell-casters and generally defeating enemies quickly and efficiently.


On the second point of killing enemies quickly and efficiently, I strongly suspect Greater Flyby Attack (and by extension, Whirling Blade) aren't a good way to go about that without substantial damage increases. As best as I can tell, you lack the power to do sufficient damage to tactically alter the fight with a single action/attack. In order to do so, you need sufficient damage to KO one or all opponents you hit or some way to alter the battlefield or change the circumstances another way. The easiest way to do this is probably to incorporate Tome of Battle or (I think it might be slightly stronger but I'm not sure) Path of War DSP Pathfinder classes into your build, or increase your spell-casting capabilities by changing into more of a gish. But again, this comes with the disclaimer that I do not know the op-level of your group, so you should still do what you think is best.

[Jowgen]

Thanks for the feedback. :smallsmile:

@ Hammerdwarf

Flyby attack is there to qualify for great flyby attack, which when combined with my reach should allow me to strafe accross the battlefield to take out a whole bunch of minions in one go. My DM isn't known for overly optimized caster enemies, so I'm not particularly worried about him countering Mage-slayer in a meaningful way. For enemies that out-reach me, I've invested quite a bit into Tumble and other AoO counters.


@ Aegis013

The character is kinda supposed to be an aerial hunter of evil type thing. Fly about the battle field dishing out damage where needed, locking/taking down enemy casters when they show up. He's dex focused and derives his damage from Favored Enemy and Power Attack.

I've considered Whirling Blade, but decided to stick with great flyby, as it covers a 45x60 area of the battle field rather than 5x60. To mitigate highly disappointing 1s on mass-attack rolls, I've currently got a Lucky (MIC) wristblade in my budget, and am thinking of adding more such weapons if need be.

For the wizards, I've looked into the damage. Favored Enemy Arcanist gives me 2 to hit and 9 to damage (thanks to Hunting and Improved Favored enemy). Same goes for FE evil (which should apply the vast majority of times), so 18. That FE total gets doubled by the Girlde of Hate, so 36. I add 7 from dex via Hit n Run (my hide is far too optimized for them to beat), so 41 base damage bonus damage with an extra +4 to hit for cushier Power Attack. If I take those +4 off for Power Attack and add the minimum damage from the weapon, we get to a nice round 50, which should lock down effectively and force Massive Damage saves from living casters.

In regards to stopping power, the above applies, and should ideally combine with double damage Dive Attack Charges in the first round of combat (where I'll ideally be in flight already); to take out the main enemy caster. After that, I'll have to rely to the Ring of Blinking, Mind-affecting immunity and hide in plain sight to avoid whatever semi-optimized casting my DM throws our way.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention is Sudden Stunning (DMG II), which I can use 5/day and should (from the way it is written) apply to everyone hit with a great flyby attack.

[Aegis013]

@ Aegis013

...
For the wizards, I've looked into the damage. Favored Enemy Arcanist gives me 2 to hit and 9 to damage (thanks to Hunting and Improved Favored enemy). Same goes for FE evil (which should apply the vast majority of times), so 18. That FE total gets doubled by the Girlde of Hate, so 36. I add 7 from dex via Hit n Run (my hide is far too optimized for them to beat), so 41 base damage bonus damage with an extra +4 to hit for cushier Power Attack. If I take those +4 off for Power Attack and add the minimum damage from the weapon, we get to a nice round 50, which should lock down effectively and force Massive Damage saves from living casters.

...

Ok, well that's all well and good, and certainly better than my original estimates. You'll be able to reasonably lock down casters if they happen to be Evil Outsiders who use Arcane abilities. What if they're not? What if they're Undead who use Divine abilities? 7th level Cleric spells are just as dangerous as Wizard spells. After all, you've got to deal with things like Blashpemy and Word of Chaos among others.

It seems too situational to me, personally. If you're intending to try to take down a caster before they can act at 13th level, (op-level I'm used to), you'll need a way to gain additional actions, which I don't see. Belt of Battle is the norm, but if you rely on charging, you may need even more, particularly since I suspect Girdle of Hate is occupying your Waist slot.

Feats like Shocktrooper and Leap Attack will assist in getting sufficient damage for your opening dive charge to be effective (because unless you actually get the caster out of the fight, you probably didn't help that much), but you can expect Contingent defenses (Abrupt Jaunt, Celerity, Greater Mirror Image) on the Arcane casters you're most geared to fight, and you don't appear to have any effective answer. On Divine enemies you may even need to deal with things like Craft Contingent Revivify or Word of Recall, among others. You'll need ways to overcome this, usually in the form of extra actions. One way to achieve this, if your DM permits, is Battle Jump feat. Technically teleporting over an enemy and falling doesn't qualify for the feat, but your DM may allow it - since you can get a swift and a standard action teleport. A move action too if your DM permits Shadow Hands from ToB. Though some DM's will say that completion of the falling charge uses your move and standard as normal for charging (probably correct by RAW). It still combines well with Dive Attacks.

You'll also need to win initiative, which might be doable at your table, but up against things like Nerveskitter and +1 Warning/+1 Eager quarterstaff, it might be difficult. After all, if they have initiative, they'll simply drop an encounter ending spell and they'll effectively have won.

As far as hide, it is definitely a good tactic, particularly at this level where casters won't have easy access to Foresight, but it's certainly not infallible. After all, a caster can pretty easily get +30 or better to any skill they wish with only two level two spells (Guidance of the Avatar, Divine Insight) on top of their normal ranks and attribute modifier. Particularly because you'll need at least a quarter concealment (which might mean 25%) in order to utilize your version of Hide in Plain Sight. Discuss with your DM, because that's some peculiar HiPS language, and it still won't protect you from non-targeted spells from an enemy using Mindsight.


For me, personally, the build still lacks sufficient capability to tactically alter the combat, but that may not be the case with you and your group.