[3.5] Elemental Themed Warrior

[Thurbane]

Hey all,

Looking for some specific build advice.

Say I want to create an elemental themed non-caster: if I was to use a ToB class as a base, and dip 5 levels of the Elemental Warrior PrC (yes, I know it's very unoptimized), what would be the best ToB base?

I'm thinking Swordsage for Desert Wind? Is there any way for a Warblade or Crusader to get Desert Wind (with feats or PrCs?).

For this build would like to avoid casters and pseudo-casters (i.e. psionics, Binding, Incarnum, invocations etc.).

Cheers - T

[jiriku]

Swordsage is far and away the best choice, yes. You can use Martial Study/Martial Stance to get Desert Wind maneuvers on a warblade or crusader chassis, but at that point it's just a dash of spice and you want the whole hog. Let me do some digging.

Edit 1:Frostrager might also interest you -- you could arguably make a "flamerager" or similar just by changing the descriptors.

Edit 2: Warblade 6/cobra strike monk 1/master of nine 5 is an ECL build stub that gets you up to eight Desert Wind maneuvers -- but you won't get your first one until ECL 8. Still looking.

Edit 3: Question -- are you interested in manipulating all elements, as many elements as possible, or only one particular element?

Edit 4: If you're interested in gaining thematic elemental abilities and aren't overly concerned about optimization, consider some combination of dwarven warblade 6/cobra strike monk 1/master of nine x/deepstone sentinel x/shadow sun ninja x. You'll get fire and light manipulation from the Desert Wind maneuvers and shadow sun ninja abilities, earth-manipulation from the Stone Dragon maneuvers and deepstone sentinel abilities, cold and darkness abilities from Shadow Hand maneuvers and shadow sun ninja abilities, and some throws from the Setting Sun discipline that could be fluffed as air-manipulation. That covers all four elemental planes and the two energy planes as well, just for good measure.

[nedz]

Wild Shape Ranger, though they are limited to animals so you need to tweak this — perhaps by chaining Aspect Of Nature or using some Wild feats.

Possibly the Elemental Essence ( Complete Champion p58) or Stone Form ( Races of Stone p144) feats.

[arixe]

In pathfinder theres a nice monk feat style that lets you make your unarmed strikes elemental and make a cone attack and such its pretty good

[Thurbane]

Edit 3: Question -- are you interested in manipulating all elements, as many elements as possible, or only one particular element?

Hmm, probably one element in particular, but if there was a build that got access to several, I'd be interested.

[ShurikVch]

Which element(s)?

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

How's about the -kineticist series of PrCs? The default is Pyrokineticist, but there's a WotC article with adaptations for each element.

[Mr Adventurer]

True story: I played an Elemental Warrior to high levels once, but I became so dissatisfied with the experience that I rebuilt him as a Sorcerer mini-gish (6th level spells by 20). There just are spells that do what the Elemental Warrior does, and they do them more often.

What was that build again... Something like Fighter* 6/Sorcerer** 1/Abjurant Champion 5/Human Paragon 3/Spellsword 3/Eldritch Knight 2, I think.
*ACF for light armour but armoured spellcasting, from Complete Mage
**ACF to lose familiar but be able to burn spell slots to soak damage... I forget the source on that one.