Playing a two-weapon fighting warbade, best dip for surviving?

[Monk of love]

I'm currently playing a 8th level warblade and doing two weapon fighting but in the campaign attaining more magic items can be pretty tough and I just gained a level so I'm looking for a dip that will increase my survival chances, right now it's pretty easy to hit me and without dr/healing I can drop pretty quickly, I was thinking about taking a level in crusader but if anyone else has a better idea I'd like to hear them

[Cerefel]

Honestly crusader is probably your best option. Take some healing maneuvers/stances and if you haven't already you should take one of the DR granting strikes.

[Waazraath]

Crusader had heavy armor, some delayed damage, and a stance that heals 2hp with each attack, ok for 2wf, though at level 9 I'm not sure if it makes a difference. You could also take a level of cleric, you also gain heavy armor, and can take up to two devotion feats, to get DR, fast healing, or a quite high and relevant bonus to AC. After a level of cleric, you probably qualify for Ruby knight vindicator (adaption says you can enter with different schools), and progress both casting and maneuvers. That opens a lot of new options, also defensive. Depending on your cha score, you might consider extra turning, or buying a nightstick.

[ComaVision]

Another suggestion, one level of barbarian would get you the Spirit Lion Totem ACF for pounce and the rage would give you +4 Con in an emergency.

[Monk of love]

My cha is a 10 and so is my wisdom so cleric is probably not the best for me a rundown of my stats

strength - 28
dex 18
con 20
int 16
wis 10
cha 10

I went with a crish fishing build and for damage it's doing nicely especially with lightning mace feat so damage isn't a problem just staying alive to do that damage is/

[Zaq]

Warblade is already a pretty darn survivable class. You've got d12 HD, you've got Uncanny Dodge, and most importantly, you've got access to great defensive maneuvers like Wall of Blades and the Diamond Mind save-replacers. I'm not really sure what one-level dip at ECL 9 will offer more survivability than you're getting from your base class, particularly since that's going to delay you from getting 5th level maneuvers (including defensive stuff like Iron Heart Focus and offensive stuff like Dancing Mongoose, and we all know the best defense is a good offense).

I mean, Crusader isn't bad. Warblade 8 / Crusader 1 has IL 5 for Crusader maneuvers, so you can get Revitalizing Strike. Unfortunately, since Crusader only offers one school that Warblades don't get already, that's about all you'd get out of it (aside from heavier armor proficiency, but that'll only be likely to help you if you're planning on buying a new set of magic armor, since your existing magic medium armor is likely as good as if not better than nonmagical heavy armor). The delayed damage pool does exist, but just 5 HP of it at ECL 9 is more likely to just be a bookkeeping headache than a useful defensive feature. By RAW, you have to take a level 1 stance at Crusader 1 (no matter what your IL is), so you'd likely end up with Martial Spirit. Martial Spirit isn't a bad stance (especially if you make lots of attacks, as many TWF characters do), but 2 HP isn't that much of an amazing benefit at level 9, and it is competing with your Warblade stances, so that may or may not be a big benefit to you.

There is merit to a dip in Cleric if you've got feats to burn and/or if you've got good access to magic items, but it's not automatically a great idea. (It's a very powerful dip if you're planning for it from the get-go, but it's mostly powerful because it enables other things that you have to build around rather than being inherently powerful in its own right.) It would get you the ability to use cheap healing wands (ideally Lesser Vigor, but CLW will work if you can't get Lesser Vigor) if you don't already have someone in the party who can do that, but again, that requires access to wands to actually be worthwhile.

Overall, I'd say that Crusader won't hurt you if you feel like you're going to get more use out of Revitalizing Strike and its lesser cousins (Crusader's Strike and Martial Spirit) than you would out of Dancing Mongoose and other 5th level Warblade maneuvers. If I were a TWF user just on the cusp of getting Dancing Mongoose, I'd have a hard time delaying that for another level, but I do understand feeling like you need a defensive boost to see more than just the next level.

[Monk of love]

Yeah cleric would have been a great idea if I had been planning for it but with a wisdom of 10 I can't actually use any level 1 cleric spells and with limited access to wands then the only reason to take it would be for the devotion feats.

I really thought about just taking another of warblade but we've have some long/drawn out battles and with 7 people and only 1 healer then my lack of self healing/low ac starts to show.
Wall of blades is nice but very overrated imo, if you are facing an enemy with 2-4 attacks a round then you might stop 1 of those attacks, I searched for ways to get continuous fast healing of even 1 or DR/immunity to crits but to no avail so I'm here now maybe finding something other than crusaders healing strikes.

[sleepyphoenixx]

If you are evil you can get a lot of emergency healing out of Blessing of the Godless (EoE). For 25gp and 6 minutes you get a collective pool of hp (your level x number of participants, up to 5) that lasts for 24 hours. You can draw on it as an immediate action to heal your level in hp. It also has a few other applications when you get higher knowledge:religion.

Another option if you can get it is the Healing Nodules graft (MoE). For 21,000gp you basically get a Cure Serious Wounds potion, once per hour, at a CL = your character level. You can stockpile them, so it gets cost effective after about 2-3 days (depending on if you need to sleep).
That's a pretty good amount of healing, and you can probably convince your party to chip in because you can share them.

Another option that doesn't cost you a level is a Companion Spirit (DMG2). They only require a small amount of gold and XP and someone in your party to make a DC 15 spellcraft check. One of the options grants a shared pool of healing for the party that grows as you level it up. They also grant a lot of other benefits and cost practically nothing.

[Zaq]

You don't dip Cleric 1 for access to 1st level Cleric spells. You dip it for access to wands, access to domain powers, and access to devotion feats. Possibly for Turn Undead uses (to power divine feats and/or devotion feats, not to actually turn undead). Again, with no good access to wands, it's probably not the best option for you, but that isn't because you have low WIS.

Anyway, as has been said, a 1 level dip isn't likely to grant a ton of extra survivability if you don't have other resources (feats, items, etc.) to devote to it. You're basically never going to get good fast healing from a dip (WotC was absolutely terrified of giving out fast healing in general; I can only think of one source of FH from class levels that is always active and has no caveats, and that's Celestial Mystic 10); a dip in Dragon Shaman with the Vigor aura would grant you an aura of fast healing 1 (works on allies too), but it only heals up to 50% of your max, and it's unremarkable otherwise. It wouldn't be likely to keep you alive during any single combat; what it would do would be to make it easier for your party healer to get everyone up to full between combats (and/or at least get you up to 50% with no daily resources expended). I can't think of any one-level dips that make you immune to crits (a two-level dip in Warforged Juggernaut will do it, but you have to have been building towards that already). I mean, I guess you could go necropolitan, but losing your 20 CON (especially when Warblade already gives you a d12 HD, so you don't get any benefit there) is not usually a winning trade, so you probably shouldn't do that.

If you're desperate to heal yourself to full between each combat, you could spend your level 9 feat on Tomb-Tainted Soul and take Dread Necromancer as your class level. Your CHA is too low to cast any spells from it (not that level 1 spells are going to help much at ECL 9), but you'd get an at-will negative energy touch, and Tomb-Tainted Soul would let you heal from negative energy instead of positive energy. The downside (aside from losing a feat and a level, because that wasn't enough of a cost or something) is that you wouldn't be able to be healed with positive energy anymore, so if your existing party healer uses positive energy to heal, they won't be able to heal you mid-combat anymore. You'd be able to heal yourself up to full for free after each combat, but you'd be in a tough spot during combat itself. (Healing that isn't positive energy, like a Crusader's Devoted Spirit stuff, would still work, but I dunno if you have access to that if you aren't supplying it yourself.)

It's unorthodox, but if you really wanted DR and crit resistance, you could dip a level of Incarnate as long as you have the right alignment (NG/NE/LN/CN, or of course a GM willing to waive the alignment restriction). One level would get you two melds and one essentia. The Adamant Pauldrons give you 25% crit resistance and give you DR (pierced by your opposite alignment) equal to one point per essentia (so basically DR 1 unless you got extra essentia somehow). If you don't generally fight enemies who can break DR/magic (most enemies can by level 9, but you said this was a low-magic game), the Astral Vambraces (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20060217a) give DR 2/magic, increased by 2 for each point of essentia (so DR 4/magic without extra essentia; naturally, you couldn't invest your one essentia in the Pauldrons and the Vambraces at the same time). That's about the only way I can think of to get DR and crit resistance with a single level. It's not great DR (either 1 point of DR that's hard to break or 4 points of DR that's easy to break) and it's only 25% crit resistance rather than immunity, but I think that's about as good as you're going to get from a single-level dip, at least for effects that last all day every day. Of course, there are lots of other melds that do cool things (and you can swap them out freely every day), but those are the ones that do specifically what you asked for.

You mentioned that you have low AC. What is your AC, and how did you get to that number (DEX/armor/magic/etc.)? In comparison, what AC do some of your fellow front-line party members have? One weakness of the 3.5 system as a whole is that AC basically doesn't scale naturally and generally only scales through investment of gold (some combination of bigger plusses on your magic armor, DEX-boosters, or accumulating nickel-and-dime bonuses through items like the Ring of Protection and the Amulet of Natural Armor), so if your GM is forcing you to work with low access to magic items but isn't scaling down the enemies you're facing to accommodate for that, that might be a big source of the problem. (This is one reason why a lot of high-level characters go for miss chance instead of for AC, but that generally requires magic, gold, or both.) Naturally, in a game like this, you're going to want to avoid the Warblade maneuvers that lower your effective AC (Punishing Stance, Steely Strike, Rabid Wolf Strike, etc.), so definitely retrain out of those if you have the opportunity to do so.

Overall, I'm not sure that anything I've mentioned here is going to do exactly what you want. Crusader might be your best bet, honestly, since it's the only way a one-level dip is going to give you access to healing that can be used more than once or twice a day. With your CHA, a dip in Cleric and swapping the Healing domain for Healing Devotion would give you FH 2 for one minute, usable 4 times a day . . . that actually isn't a terrible amount of healing, but it won't spike-heal you in combat the way Crusader strikes will. But yeah. On the one hand, a level actually is a pretty big investment, but the way the game is set up, it doesn't always give you a huge return on investment if you don't have other resources to support that investment.

[Metahuman1]

Point on crusader: Doesn't martial spirit stance give back 2 HP per ignitor level Per attack made? Meaning the OP would be getting back 10 HP per swing in that stance?

Ok, other stuff.


Get an animated object. A really little one, and made of Riverine. This opens up 2 options.

1: You can put some investment into Pact Magic. A level of binder and a feat should do it as a start point. Get Delvenari (I think that's how it's spelled.) bound. His his once every 5 rounds ability on the animated object. Congratulations, you will only take half damage when you get hit, and the other half will go into an object that can only be damaged or destroyed by hitting it with a Desentigrate style spell, a rod of cancelation, a mage's disjunction spell, or a specific artifact. Which should really probably not be showing up in such a game.

2: You can, in addition, get ahold of Crusader at some point for a level. Spar with the animated object between fights. It makes utterly ineffective attacks, you keep spamming full attacks that can't actually hurt it but can trigger marital spirit stance so that your going into fights with full HP.

Note: Binder and all pack magic everything is in Tome of Magic. Animated Objects are Core. (As is Shrink Item and permanency which may be useful for your purpose.) Riverine is from Stromwrack.



IF you can get a necklace of natural weapons/Amulet of Mighty Fists +1 (Savage Species/DMG respectively.), consistent access to Greater Magic weapon spell all day every day, and to an Adamantine Weapon Augmentation Crystal (Magic Item Compendium.), then dipping either Monk or Unarmed Swordsage could help a lot. Equip the Amulet/Necklace. Equip the augmentation crystal to the unarmed strikes the necklace/amulet are key'd too, and greater magic weapon it every day. Since your body is all available for unarmed strikes and now treated as both a manufactured and natural weapon, you gain Hardness. Up to 25 Hardness if your getting a +5 and have a greater Crystal.

Hardness is like DR. Except harder to get around. And it stacks with DR. (Also with that half damage trick, just saying.)



Last idea. Maybe see about dipping Bard? Retrain some redundant weapons proficiency's into things like Words of Power (BED), Lingering Song (Complete Adventurer I think.), Song of the White Raven (Tome of Battle.), Knowledge Devotion (Complete Champion.) if yo've got the bonuses to those skills, Song of the heart (One of the Eberron books, forget which one.) , Dragonfire inspiration (Obviously key'd to a hard to get around energy source like, say, sound. And from dragon Magic.) and if your only doing one level, a few hits of extra music (Races of Stone I think.). Yes, the bard dip is about jacking up your bonus to hit and your bonus to damage per hit, so that your hitting a lot harder and more frequently, meaning your killing things LOT'S faster, and thus taking less damage and surviving better.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

How about taking a "dip" into a level adjustment +1 divine minion template (http://www.realmshelps.net/faerun/lore/magicbooks13.shtml) (I suggest Anhur, for lion), which you immediately pay off with LA buyoff? Divine minions wild shape at will as a free action as though they were a level 11 druid. Guess what happens when you wild shape? You heal as if you'd rested for the night. Take the Rapid Metabolism feat to heal more than twice as much. Divine minion is an acquired template, so you're pretty well off there. Better still, it qualifies you for warshaper.

[Zaq]

Point on crusader: Doesn't martial spirit stance give back 2 HP per ignitor level Per attack made? Meaning the OP would be getting back 10 HP per swing in that stance?

Ok, other stuff.


Get an animated object. A really little one, and made of Riverine. This opens up 2 options.

1: You can put some investment into Pact Magic. A level of binder and a feat should do it as a start point. Get Delvenari (I think that's how it's spelled.) bound. His his once every 5 rounds ability on the animated object. Congratulations, you will only take half damage when you get hit, and the other half will go into an object that can only be damaged or destroyed by hitting it with a Desentigrate style spell, a rod of cancelation, a mage's disjunction spell, or a specific artifact. Which should really probably not be showing up in such a game.

2: You can, in addition, get ahold of Crusader at some point for a level. Spar with the animated object between fights. It makes utterly ineffective attacks, you keep spamming full attacks that can't actually hurt it but can trigger marital spirit stance so that your going into fights with full HP.

Note: Binder and all pack magic everything is in Tome of Magic. Animated Objects are Core. (As is Shrink Item and permanency which may be useful for your purpose.) Riverine is from Stromwrack.



IF you can get a necklace of natural weapons/Amulet of Mighty Fists +1 (Savage Species/DMG respectively.), consistent access to Greater Magic weapon spell all day every day, and to an Adamantine Weapon Augmentation Crystal (Magic Item Compendium.), then dipping either Monk or Unarmed Swordsage could help a lot. Equip the Amulet/Necklace. Equip the augmentation crystal to the unarmed strikes the necklace/amulet are key'd too, and greater magic weapon it every day. Since your body is all available for unarmed strikes and now treated as both a manufactured and natural weapon, you gain Hardness. Up to 25 Hardness if your getting a +5 and have a greater Crystal.

Hardness is like DR. Except harder to get around. And it stacks with DR. (Also with that half damage trick, just saying.)



Last idea. Maybe see about dipping Bard? Retrain some redundant weapons proficiency's into things like Words of Power (BED), Lingering Song (Complete Adventurer I think.), Song of the White Raven (Tome of Battle.), Knowledge Devotion (Complete Champion.) if yo've got the bonuses to those skills, Song of the heart (One of the Eberron books, forget which one.) , Dragonfire inspiration (Obviously key'd to a hard to get around energy source like, say, sound. And from dragon Magic.) and if your only doing one level, a few hits of extra music (Races of Stone I think.). Yes, the bard dip is about jacking up your bonus to hit and your bonus to damage per hit, so that your hitting a lot harder and more frequently, meaning your killing things LOT'S faster, and thus taking less damage and surviving better.

Martial Spirit is 2 HP, not 2 HP per initiator level. It doesn't scale (except insofar as that higher-level characters usually make more attacks).

He's told us that he can't really afford wands of CLW, so it's really not likely that he's going to get access to an animated riverine item. Or all those magic items you were talking about.

[Rijan_Sai]

Point on crusader: Doesn't martial spirit stance give back 2 HP per ignitor level Per attack made? Meaning the OP would be getting back 10 HP per swing in that stance?

I just checked, and it's only 2 per "successful melee attack." That said, it's 2 per every successful melee attack, and with high strength, full BAB and TWF, there should be a lot of those, and they will add up! (At least enough to keep you going a bit longer.) You can also target the healing to allies within 30 ft., if you don't need the health yourself at the moment.

(It does compete with other Warblade stances, but as it is a swift action to change, it's not the worst thing that could happen.)

[sleepyphoenixx]

There's very few classes that grant DR at level 1, and it's generally just 1 or 2. There's also a few feats, but they have a similar problem. The same applies to fast healing, only instead it's limited use/limited time. Here's a list. (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=9ela20v1k9j792t7s0get84mh0&topic=1412)


I just checked, and it's only 2 per "successful melee attack." That said, it's 2 per every successful melee attack, and with high strength, full BAB and TWF, there should be a lot of those, and they will add up! (At least enough to keep you going a bit longer.) You can also target the healing to allies within 30 ft., if you don't need the health yourself at the moment.

(It does compete with other Warblade stances, but as it is a swift action to change, it's not the worst thing that could happen.)

It doesn't really matter what action it takes to change. When you're in Martial Spirit stance you're not in whatever Iron Heart (or other) stance that could boost your damage instead.
And Warblades (initiators in general) usually make quite a bit of use of their swift actions anyway. Constantly using them up to switch stances really cripples your ability to use boosts and counters.

[Talya]

If you have access to retraining, Martial Study/Martial Stance is superior to taking a level in Crusader, if you really need the self-healing that much.

Seriously, Warblade is one of the more survivable classes to start with, I'm not sure what the multiclass really brings you, and I don't think devoted spirit is really that valuable.

[Monk of love]

A lot of good suggestions, especially the incarnate one and the tomb tainted soul but I should probably run it past the group to make sure I won't be "killed" for going dread necromancer which I will need to look into, sadly my ac is only 23..10+dex + my armor which is a total of +7 and ring of protection + 2, that and my magic kukri's are the only magic items I have lol..usually when we find magic items it goes to other people, a tome of +1 level, a few artifacts and other things but nothing that could benefit my character has ever been found..all those magic items are things I started with and I rarely ever actually receive gold so the chances of me buying new items are pretty low.

mechanics wise divine minion looks good but doubt I could get past the fluff considering my characters worships a dead god of strength and is trying to resurrect him.
the fast healing from shaman looks good too, either way I will have to run it all past my dm/possibly group and do some thinking.

being able to switch stances as a crit build is very iffy against crit immune creature it's no problem but otherwise I would need to be in blood in the water for the stacking damage that's why the crusaders strikes that heal look so good.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

A lot of good suggestions, especially the incarnate one and the tomb tainted soul but I should probably run it past the group to make sure I won't be "killed" for going dread necromancer which I will need to look into, sadly my ac is only 23..10+dex + my armor which is a total of +7 and ring of protection + 2, that and my magic kukri's are the only magic items I have lol..usually when we find magic items it goes to other people, a tome of +1 level, a few artifacts and other things but nothing that could benefit my character has ever been found..all those magic items are things I started with and I rarely ever actually receive gold so the chances of me buying new items are pretty low.

mechanics wise divine minion looks good but doubt I could get past the fluff considering my characters worships a dead god of strength and is trying to resurrect him.
the fast healing from shaman looks good too, either way I will have to run it all past my dm/possibly group and do some thinking.

being able to switch stances as a crit build is very iffy against crit immune creature it's no problem but otherwise I would need to be in blood in the water for the stacking damage that's why the crusaders strikes that heal look so good.Lions go well with divine portfolios of strength. Lions are the "kings of beasts," and are very powerful predators that fit that particular sphere very well. You could always say you're being filled with your totem animal, and it brings you closer to your god through the strength of the predator.

[Edit] Just refluff. It's definitely the way to go.

[Metahuman1]

Martial Spirit is 2 HP, not 2 HP per initiator level. It doesn't scale (except insofar as that higher-level characters usually make more attacks).

He's told us that he can't really afford wands of CLW, so it's really not likely that he's going to get access to an animated riverine item. Or all those magic items you were talking about.

Huh, odd, I could of sworn it did. Oh well.

That said, though just crossed my mind. If he's not getting items or gold, but other members of the party are getting minor artifacts and the like, doesn't that mean somethings being done wrong with the WBL?

Maybe that's why he's having such a hard time surviving. The rest of the party have magic items and minor artifacts they can use, he only as a couple of bladed weapons.



And if that's the case, fixing it would go a long way toward correcting the issue.

[Fizban]

It's unorthodox, but if you really wanted DR and crit resistance, you could dip a level of Incarnate
Unorthodox? Incarnum is pretty much made for dipping and there's been tons of people suggesting it the last couple months.

You're at 8th, which means next is 9th and a feat, which means you're in prime dip position since most dip friendly classes want exactly 1 level and a feat, the feat here being Extra Essentia, which will give you enough juice to keep one soulmeld maxed out until 17th level (assuming you don't use any more feats or levels on incarnum stuff). Zaq already mentioned Astral Vambraces, and they're pretty ridiculously good-but only if your foes are lacking in magic weapons, you're allowed to use web article material, and you've got some decent essentia in them. It's up to you to evaluate your usual foes and incoming damage to decide if DR 6/magic is enough to make a difference at this level. And of course you still gain access to all the other Incarnate melds, including but not limited to stuff like crit resistance, miss chance vs ranged attacks, fire damage vs people that hit you, minor spell resistance, short distance air walking, deflection bonus to AC, and creating a free magic weapon.

Bonus: after dipping Incarnate, dip Crusader and then argue about weather or not Theraputic Mantle boosts the healing from maneuvers. If it does that's a massive increase in healing factor, but it combos best with Marital Spirit and loads of attacks rather than the single healing strikes.

The alternative is dipping Totemist (and Extra Essentia), which gives you more traditional defenses. The big one here is the Purple Worm belt. Go take a look, I'll wait. Yeah that's a base of +2 natural armor before essentia, which will go to +4 at this level, all the time no questions asked. Totemists also get an excellent selection of skill boosting soulmelds of the same type you'd usually get from magic items, good guys can use the Lammasu Mantle for some extra deflection bonus vs evil, and of course there's the Blink Shirt for at-will short teleporting through bars/windows/anything you can see past .

Both classes work much better with a 2 level dip, which will still only reduce your initiator level by 1. This gets you another meld, another point of essentia, a bind, and for Totemists in particular your totem bind which is the source of most of the best totemist stuff as well as your expanded capacity (so you can Purple Worm belt up to +5 AC). Incarnates would prefer to hit level 3 (for their expanded capacity), but even just having a Soulspark Familiar around can be quite amusing: it's Tiny size does funny things with blocking movement, it can keep watch and shoot you awake if you get Sleep'd, and just generally be a nuisance if you try hard enough. Or just bind Crystal Helm since you've probably got it shaped for AC anyway and hitting ghosts 100% isn't bad.

[Melcar]

Most of it has probably been mentioned, but I would agree with crusader. And how about getting an animated shield or two weapon defence, if the items is out of question... Oh and remember to have 5 ranks in tumble...

I was also thinking that swiftblade makes it very difficult to hit your at higher levels, but the entry requirements are tough. Knockdown might also give your some options, if you can trip your enemies... Without abusing the trip rules one can get yo about +20 fairly easy, but im sure you already knows this.

Improved toughness gives you a little extra hp, but is generally a poor choise.

[Andezzar]

Another suggestion, one level of barbarian would get you the Spirit Lion Totem ACF for pounce and the rage would give you +4 Con in an emergency.Yes, inflicting the dead condition on enemies is a good way to avoid being hit. When you also get the feats that usually go with that dip, make sure your attacks kill the enemies in range. Otherwise the retaliation can be quite painful.


Yeah cleric would have been a great idea if I had been planning for it but with a wisdom of 10 I can't actually use any level 1 cleric spells and with limited access to wands then the only reason to take it would be for the devotion feats.Then go wizard, you have more than INT 10 right? That's always a good suggestion when the DM is *****rdly(:smallfurious: swearfilter!) miserly with magic items. You get shield and some other level 1 spells, access to wands and a familiar/other good stuff instead of a familiar.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

This is cheese-heavy, but buy a +4 Wisdom item, take a level of ardent with the Magic Mantle, and take the Supernatural Transformation (Psionics) feat. Your ardent level will be equal to your hit dice (because manifesting = psi-like abilities = spell-like abilities with the Magic Mantle = fodder for Supernatural Transformation = full ML), and a Wis of 14 will equal 9 bonus pp. Make sure you grab access to the vigor and inertial armor powers for your choice of a bunch of temporary hit points or plenty of AC (practically all day), and dip another Wis-based manifesting class next level -- likely psychic warrior (which Supernatural Transformation will also apply to) -- for another full round of bonus pp that you can pool together with your ardent power points. Then start buying a few manifestings of psychic chirurgery for some extra ardent powers known. Boost your Wisdom however you can.

If you take the mantle substitution ACF from the Mind's Eye, you can basically get whatever powers you want, including whatever arcane spells (from the StP erudite) and divine spells (from rainbow servant/Southern Magician/wyrm wizard/etc) you want. Make sure you add owl's insight to boost your Wisdom score; if you take Extend Power followed by Persistent Power (from Hyperconscious, or from 3.0 if Hyperconscious is off the table), you can make owl's insight and animal affinity last long enough to give you bonus power points for each Wis-based manifesting class dip you take every day. Extend Power is viable for the psychic warrior bonus feat, just so you know.

If you want a major upgrade to your offenses, follow your manifesting dips with a level of variant pyrokineticist (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040625e) for a sonic lash. You'll get 15' reach melee touch attacks at will that practically nothing will resist. Then start using psychic chirurgery to add powers that boost your defenses and melee attacks and damage. Buy metamorphosis and Craft Universal Item, then craft yourself a psychoactive skin of proteus. Hire a manifester with access to the Words of Creation feat to make it ML 8 for practically free.

Now go out and wreck face.

[Dgwizard]

What kind of armor are you wearing now. Would one level of monk with kung fu genius help? Int to ac when your unarmored and stacks with bracers of armor.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

What kind of armor are you wearing now. Would one level of monk with kung fu genius help? Int to ac when your unarmored and stacks with bracers of armor.Unless he's running around in a tunic and not much else, removing his armor and gaining +3 to AC likely won't increase it at all. If he was Int-focused to the point of being SAD, I could see it, but it's definitely not worth a level at this point, let alone a level AND a feat.

[Metahuman1]

Ok, random idea, hear me out.

Step 1: Get tumble up to were your making DC 40 checks trivially.

Step 2: Dip fighter or Martial Rogue for 1 level. (The latter is in Unearthed Arcana.)

Step 3: Take the following 2 feats. Evasive Reflexes (Tome of Battle.) and Robilars Gambit.

Result: You move 10ft every time someone takes a shot or swing at you. It doesn't help vs area effect attacks, and you might need to spend actions to close the distance again when it's your turn to swing the sword, but your not getting hit, cause your not there to BE hit up to 4 times a round, and if you move out of attack range on that first or second shot, it get's you flat out of attack range.




Another though: If you can get an item of Unseen Servant (Say a collar of perpetual attendance.) and a lighter then normal weight Tower Shield, one made with like dark wood or one of the other materials that's notably light weight, you can order the servant to hold the shield for you in such a position as to give you cover, and get a cheap 50% miss chance as a result. Which means a lot of attacks that might otherwise have connected will suddenly not be able to do so.

[Troacctid]

This is cheese-heavy, but buy a +4 Wisdom item, take a level of ardent with the Magic Mantle, and take the Supernatural Transformation (Psionics) feat. Your ardent level will be equal to your hit dice (because manifesting = psi-like abilities = spell-like abilities with the Magic Mantle = fodder for Supernatural Transformation = full ML),

That doesn't work. Supernatural Transformation doesn't affect your manifester level. It only affects your caster level, which is already equal to your hit dice. The Magic Mantle doesn't change that.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

That doesn't work. Supernatural Transformation doesn't affect your manifester level. It only affects your caster level, which is already equal to your hit dice. The Magic Mantle doesn't change that."You treat psionics and magic as identical." What is your psionic caster level? Your manifester level.

And whenever an item boosts your caster level, it explicitly also raises your manifester level, according to the transparency rules.

And the spell-like ability feats use your manifester level as your caster level.

And PrCs that boost caster levels but have conversions to psionics boost manifester levels.

The same goes for spells.

And so on.

[Troacctid]

"You treat psionics and magic as identical." What is your psionic caster level? Your manifester level.
No, your psionic caster level is your caster level. Psionic powers have both a caster level and a manifester level. The manifester level is usually equal to your level in that class; the caster level is equal to your hit dice and generally isn't used for anything.

Just because there's a vaguely similar equivalent between psionics and magic doesn't mean they are the same thing. Can you cast spells using power points? Can you manifest powers out of spell slots? Can you use Mystic Theurge to advance Psion + Ardent? Are Psicraft and Spellcraft combined into a single skill, and what happens if you had ranks in both—are they added together or do you use whichever is higher? Can you apply metapsionic feats to spells by using a higher spell slot? Can you apply metamagic feats to psionics by expending your psionic focus? When you cast the Dimension Door spell, can you augment it with power points like the psionic version?

(Hint: No, you can't, because transparency doesn't work that way.)


And whenever an item boosts your caster level, it explicitly also raises your manifester level, according to the transparency rules.
I'm looking at the transparency rule right now and it says nothing of the sort.

[HalfQuart]

Get tumble up to were your making DC 40 checks trivially.... Take... Robilars Gambit.... get an item of Unseen Servant (
He's made it clear that magic items are in short supply, so no item of Unseen Servant. And how do you make a DC 40 tumble check without magic items?

Oh, and he's level 8; Robilar's Gambit requires BAB +12, so won't be available for at least 4 more levels, and thus isn't very practical for this challenge.

Your point about miss chances is a good one though, but he'll need to figure some other way of achieving that. Maybe Air Devotion? Cloak Dance feat (using move action means no full attack, which is bad), Shrouded Dance Skill Trick (uses move action, only 1/encounter, and requires Perform 5), Child of Shadow stance (requires movement and a way to get shadow hand access), what else?

Andezzar suggested dipping Wizard... the problem with that is he already wears armor, so will have an ASF that can't easily be reduced. He could just cast spells without somatic components, but that's pretty limiting. Also, Shield would technically work (except for the Somatic component), but it's usually a pretty bad option to burn a round casting a buff spell when he's supposed to be out there killing stuff. So that's definitely only worthwhile if you frequently find you have a round to prepare before combat. You could take Combat Casting (lousy feat) with your 9th level feat, and then go straight into Abjurant Champion with the goal of being able to auto-Quicken Shield, but that means not advancing initiator levels.

[HalfQuart]

Oh, and not sure that it's a particularly GOOD option, but you could take Combat Expertise and fight defensively.

[Troacctid]

Andezzar suggested dipping Wizard... the problem with that is he already wears armor, so will have an ASF that can't easily be reduced. He could just cast spells without somatic components, but that's pretty limiting.

It's not as bad as you might think. Assuming you have 12 Int, a one-level Focused Conjurer dip gives you a Fighter bonus feat, Abrupt Jaunt 4/day to teleport as an immediate action, and four castings of Blades of Fire (which synergizes nicely with two-weapon fighting). If you prefer transmutation, you can get Swift Expeditious Retreat instead, maybe a Feather Fall just in case. Or you can go divination and take four castings of Master's Touch to make you proficient with any exotic weapon you like, or Critical Strike for 1d6 sneak attack and a bonus to confirming criticals.

[Fizban]

Oh, and not sure that it's a particularly GOOD option, but you could take Combat Expertise and fight defensively.
Not as bad as some people think. Depends heavily on what your starting AC is and what you're fighting, at 8th you're still in the range where it's not too hard to reach good AC and an extra +5 whenever you want is pretty huge. Expertise+fight defensively+tumble 5= +8 AC when you hunker down and you can still roll for luck/Emerald Razor to sneak in damage. Totemist dip's +4 all the time is generally better but obviously doesn't go as high, or Totemist 1+ Expertise would split the difference at get +3 all the time with +5 in reserve.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Retrain your feats (or pay for a psychic reformation) to take Combat Reflexes, Evasive Reflexes, and Karmic Strike (which unfortunately requires Combat Expertise and Dodge, so take one of the other feats that COUNT as Dodge to qualify). Grab a reach weapon and wear a gauntlet for adjacent strikes. Now every time something tries to hit you (and would otherwise strike you successfully), it provokes an AoO, and you can take a 5' step away from the attack before the attack actually occurs, thereby negating anything that would actually hit you.

Or you could just take a reach weapon and Improved Trip and gain an AoO when they move through your threatened space, tripping the damned thing before it can hit you. Doesn't work so well on really large monsters.

Or you could buy a shadow cloak from Drow of the Underdark which gives you Abrupt Jaunt a few times per day.

If you dip into wizard, not only will it give you Abrupt Jaunt, but you can also buy (or craft) a really cheap wand of the no light spell and the ring of the darkhidden to be invisible to to both regular vision and darkvision. Get darkvision however you can, and you're good. Really cheap invisibility.

[Andezzar]

Where is the no light spell from?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Where is the no light spell from?It's from the BoVD, and I'm writing a bunch of extra text because 4 characters don't work here, so I've got to add a bunch of pointless drivel to actually be able to post without it giving me an error message every time, so here you go; I hope you're happy, because this is way too much text to have to write because of a single four letter answer due to the admins not liking short posts.

[Monk of love]

After looking through all this I'd have to say a dip into incarnate and then crusader looks like the best option healing , dr and light fortification is exactly what I was looking for and my DM said therapeutic mantle will stack onto my crusaders healing abilities.

[Fizban]

It's from the BoVD, and I'm writing a bunch of extra text because 4 characters don't work here, so I've got to add a bunch of pointless drivel to actually be able to post without it giving me an error message every time, so here you go; I hope you're happy, because this is way too much text to have to write because of a single four letter answer due to the admins not liking short posts.
How about: by the way, it's also a spell completely unduplicable by other means (everything else either creates shadowy illumination or an obvious blob of blackness that also blocks darkvision) which is rather inappropriate for a cantrip so discretion is advised. Or edit the response into your previous post.

After looking through all this I'd have to say a dip into incarnate and then crusader looks like the best option healing , dr and light fortification is exactly what I was looking for and my DM said therapeutic mantle will stack onto my crusaders healing abilities.
Awesome. I had an incarnate/totemist aiming at a crusader dip myself but we changed games before the combo pulled together (just as well really, DM didn't have the chops to challenge it and the roleplay was the better part of that game anyway).

[Metahuman1]

One other thought. If you have a big enough bonus to hit, maybe pick up the stone power feat? Put a wall of temp HP between your regular HP and incoming damage on a round to round basis.