Making a human Dungeon Crasher

[JoeChip]

I've been hearing great things about the Dungeon Crasher variant of the Fighter for a while now and I've wanted to make a pure fighter using it for some time. However most of the advise that I've seen for using it involves the Knockback feat, which is restricted to large races or ones that count as large. I've always preferred playing as a human so I did a little research and I think I've found a way for human characters to make the best use of the Dungeon Crasher.

Here is my build so far

The Jotuncrasher

Human Fighter 20

1. Jotunbrud, Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush
2. Dungeon Crasher
3. Cleave
4. Improved Sunder
5.
6. Dungeon Crasher 2, Shock Trooper
7.
8. Combat Brute
9. Leap Attack
10. Mage Slayer
11.
12. Pierce Magical Concealment , Blind-Fight
13.
14. Pierce Magical Protection
15. Dodge
16. Mobility
17.
18. Elusive Target, Spring Attack
19.
20. Free Feat

The Jotunbrud feat from Races of Faerûn gives you some nice bonuses to Trip and Bull rush attempts. Dungeon Crasher lets you Bull Rush enemies into solid objects for impressive damage. Get yourself a Brutal Surge weapon and in addition to dealing your normal damage you get a free bull rush attempt when the weapon hits. If your wielding this weapon in both hands you also get a + 2 bonus on your bull rush attempt. This Brutal Surge property is only usable 1 + your constitution modifier per day but as a fighter you should have a pretty high constitution anyway. Brutal Surge weapons are also pretty cheap so at higher levels you could always carry around a gulf bag full of them :smalltongue:.

I think it's a pretty good build but I would like to know what others think. Any suggestions on how to improve this build while keeping it a pure fighter or as close to a pure fighter as possible would be appreciated :smallsmile:.

[ExLibrisMortis]

You should probably replace Dodge, Mobility, Elusive Target and Spring Attack with Travel Devotion (all of them, if you want, but you probably don't have enough general feat slots for that). It's not like you're using your swift actions otherwise, and it's a much better way to move + attack than Spring Attack, and it allows a sort of pouncing. You can use your spare feat on something that adds versatility: Shape Soulmeld, Bind Vestige, Planar Touchstone and so on (you have to shuffle a fighter feat into the level 20 slot). A silverbrow human with Draconic Aura is nice, too. It means your charge/bull rush/dungeoncrash combo comes online later, which is bad, but maybe repeated applications of retraining rules can fix that.

The other parts look solid, a good straight fighter.

[Hal0Badger]

I suggest improved trip in the build. Combined with the shock trooper's ability, it is possible that you bull rush one enemy to another, and get free trip attempts to both of them.

Good part of this, bull-rush does not require an attack roll to initiate, so if you win and trip, you can adjust your PA considering enemies' -4 AC due to being prone.

Also, with a spiked chain (or similar weapon) + Brutal Surge, you can attack, do damage, bull rush into another enemy within your reach, trip them both and attack them both, all in 1 attack.

It is not uber-good, but something to consider. Gives versatility.

[Troacctid]

I recommend just getting a permanent Enlarge Person. It only costs about 3000 gp (although it's worth paying extra for a higher caster level if possible).

[JoeChip]

You should probably replace Dodge, Mobility, Elusive Target and Spring Attack with Travel Devotion (all of them, if you want, but you probably don't have enough general feat slots for that). It's not like you're using your swift actions otherwise, and it's a much better way to move + attack than Spring Attack, and it allows a sort of pouncing. You can use your spare feat on something that adds versatility: Shape Soulmeld, Bind Vestige, Planar Touchstone and so on (you have to shuffle a fighter feat into the level 20 slot). A silverbrow human with Draconic Aura is nice, too. It means your charge/bull rush/dungeoncrash combo comes online later, which is bad, but maybe repeated applications of retraining rules can fix that.

The other parts look solid, a good straight fighter.

I looked up Travel Devotion in Complete Champion. I see that it grants you swift actions but I'm not really sure how swift actions work. I could not find them in the players handbook and I'm not sure how they would work with the other feats and abilities of this build. For example, if I had three attacks as part of a full attack and I hit with the first attack, normally I could activate the Brutal Surge weapon's ability and bull rush them but I would not be able to use my other two attacks because the book states brutal surge weapons only send your opponent backwards, you do not follow with them. Normally they would be out of reach and I could not use the rest of my full attack. However, with Travel Devotion, could I hit them, bull rush them with my brutal surge weapon, use a swift action to get back into melee range and then finish my full attack?

Here is another situation that confuses me. It's already a bit unclear how the shock trooper ability of domino rush would combine with a brutal surge weapon. Domino rush says that if you bull rush an enemy into another enemy that you may make a free trip attempt against both enemies, but if the bull rush from my brutal surge weapon sends my enemy into another enemy fifteen feet away from me do i still get a chance to trip both of them? Even though they are out of my weapons reach? If I do still get to trip them and I had the improved trip feat would I also still get the free attacks granted by that feat? And how would the swift actions of the Travel Devotion feat affect all of this? Would I be able to bull rush an opponent into another opponent who is out of my reach, use a swift action to close the distance and then trip and attack them as normal?

From what I've read Travel Devotion and swift actions seem very confusing :smallfrown:. I would extremely appreciate it if someone could explain them to me in greater detail or point me towards a book that does.

[Curmudgeon]

You can read about swift actions here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#swiftActions).

[Rubik]

I heartily suggest you use Power Attack, Shock Trooper, Knock Down, Knockback, Improved Trip, Leap Attack, and Snap Kick. Now you can Power-Attack-Leap-Attack-Knockback-whack someone into the ground (for extra damage), followed by a quick Power-Attack-Leap-Attack-Knock-Down-Snap-Kick-Knockback, and if that deals at least 10 points of damage (which isn't hard), Knock Down will immediately give you a trip attempt. If you succeed on the attempt, you make an attack through Power-Attack-Leap-Attack-Knockback-Improved-Trip, and since that's a new action, that activates Power-Attack-Leap-Attack-Snap-Kick-Knockback again.

If you want to thwack enemies across the battlefield, look into either a dip into incarnate or totemist (from Magic of Incarnum) and the Mauling Gauntlets and Totem Avatar soulmelds, as well as a few feats for extra essentia (especially Cobalt Power and Cobalt Expertise). Mauling Gauntlets give you +2 to Strength checks (including bull rushes), plus +2 per essentia. If you bind them to your hands chakra, you get Improved Unarmed Strike and +2 unarmed damage per essentia. If bound to the feet chakra, Totem Avatar gives you stability (a la the dwarf racial trait), and you count as a size larger for bull rush and trip attacks, granting you a +4 size bonus and letting you affect larger creatures than you normally could (and it stacks with Jotunbrud, allowing you to affect Gargantuan and smaller creatures, rather than the limit of Large that you normally would be stuck with). Cobalt Power gives you Power Attack and bull rush bonuses, and Cobalt Expertise gives you trip attack bonuses.

Three levels in factotum gives you +Int mod to your bull rushes and trips (as well as tons of other things), and a level of marshal can give you +Cha mod, as well.

Heck, I have a Human Blooded/Jotunbrud kobold that has a +106 to bull rushes without any buffs aside from Divine Power (or any magic items except two a luckstone and pale green ioun stone, for +1 each), and he counts as Huge sized when performing maneuvers like this.