Creating a Wind Based "Gish"

[Val666]

Hello everyone c: I'm joining a new campaign based on Elements. I got wind as my chosen element and was wondering which kind of wind based builds you people have in mind. One idea I thought would be really cool is to always persist cloud of knifes. I'll be casting or hitting but also using my "wind powers" to make extra attacks with the knifes. I don't have access to all books, I think I can't use completes <_<. Allowed books so far (have to ask) are: PH 1, PH 2, DMG, MM I,II,II,IV, Spell Compendium, Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, Races of Destiny, Dragon, Eberron, Stone, the Wild, Draconomicon, Oriental Adventures and Savage Species.

Starting level 5 c: Thanks everyone in advance :v

[weckar]

There are a lot of wind-themed buffs that give speed boosts and protect from projectiles. Makes me think a Skirmish-based chassis - but it will tank your BAB and I don't think there are any casting PrCs that actually advance Skirmish (although you could ask to replace Sneak attack advancement with Skirmish advancement. It might fly.)
I would honestly not even go Gish on a wind-based character. Two levels of Martial Monk for Whirlwind Attack and Spring Attack, then start a Swift Hunter progression. Be the Wind.

[Val666]

There are a lot of wind-themed buffs that give speed boosts and protect from projectiles. Makes me think a Skirmish-based chassis - but it will tank your BAB and I don't think there are any casting PrCs that actually advance Skirmish (although you could ask to replace Sneak attack advancement with Skirmish advancement. It might fly.)

Maybe Unseen Seer? it advances sneak attack and spellcasting <_<


I would honestly not even go Gish on a wind-based character. Two levels of Martial Monk for Whirlwind Attack and Spring Attack, then start a Swift Hunter progression. Be the Wind.

Uhm...I thought about swift hunter too but I don't really see the..feel for a wind based character. Thanks for your answer c:

[A.A.King]

It will be hard to create a good Gish based around a wind theme, especially if the complete books are banned. If you want to get the most out of the wind theme you might want to look at the Raptorans from Races of the Wild. If you take the Raptoran Sorcerer Racial Substitution levels you get a Small Air Elemental Familiar rather than a normal familiar and Gust of Wind, Whispering Wind and Wind Wall as bonus spells known (to get those three 2nd level spells you trade away the ability to pick your own second 2nd level spell known, but not only do you get more spells known this way you also get Wind Wall to be treated as 2nd Level spell for you rather than a 3th level spell).

If you really want to Gish though you can also look at the Swiftblade prestige class, it's more speed based than wind based but with wind spells boosting your speed you can turn yourself into the Cutting Wind, the guy who blows past and by doing so cuts his opponent into pieces.

[Val666]

It will be hard to create a good Gish based around a wind theme, especially if the complete books are banned. If you want to get the most out of the wind theme you might want to look at the Raptorans from Races of the Wild. If you take the Raptoran Sorcerer Racial Substitution levels you get a Small Air Elemental Familiar rather than a normal familiar and Gust of Wind, Whispering Wind and Wind Wall as bonus spells known (to get those three 2nd level spells you trade away the ability to pick your own second 2nd level spell known, but not only do you get more spells known this way you also get Wind Wall to be treated as 2nd Level spell for you rather than a 3th level spell).

I thought about Raptoran too, just wasn't sure.


If you really want to Gish though you can also look at the Swiftblade prestige class, it's more speed based than wind based but with wind spells boosting your speed you can turn yourself into the Cutting Wind, the guy who blows past and by doing so cuts his opponent into pieces.

Me, Like, This. I'll ask my DM if Swiftblade is allowed. Thanks for your response!

[ATHATH]

There was a Dragon Magazine issue that focused on elements. One of the articles had a bunch of Air-Themed Monk PrC's with independent spellcasting.

[Troacctid]

There was a Dragon Magazine issue that focused on elements. One of the articles had a bunch of Air-Themed Monk PrC's with independent spellcasting.

Dragon #314. Only Master of the South Wind has independent spellcasting. Master of the North Wind and Master of the West Wind advance divine casting, and Master of the East Wind advances arcane casting.

[Red Fel]

Oh, my friend. We are going to weaponize you.

You have Eberron on the table. And that means it's time to break out my favorite feat of mass destruction, the Mark of Storms.

Step one is to be a member of House Lyrandar. That means you need to be a Half-Elf. Sorry if that spoils your plans, but you have to be a Half-Elf.

Step two, do whatever you want for awhile. The class you want has a BAB +4 requirement, so you can't enter it until level 5. Pick whatever you like for the first four levels. Just be sure to take ranks in Balance and Tumble, and the Least Dragonmark feat. For that feat, you want the Gust of Wind SLA. This feat allows you to use Gust of Wind 1/day. Which doesn't sound like much... Yet.

Step three, take the Storm Sentry prestige class at level 5. Take all five levels of this PrC. This full-BAB PrC allows you to use your Gust of Wind SLA an additional 5 times per day, 6 times total. It also increases the CL of all of your Dragonmark SLAs by 5. It also lets you burn uses of Gust of Wind to use other SLAs, such as Feather Fall and Shield, to bull rush people with your Gust of Wind, and to charge your weapon with storm power.

But if you thought we were done, you were mistaken. Steps four and five are to take the Lesser and Greater Dragonmark feats. Lesser, I don't care what you take, but Greater you want Control Winds. Why Control Winds? Because, 1/day, you can basically destroy everything in a 720 foot radius for three hours. Let an expert explain:


Control Winds gives you a range of 40 ft/level; since you have a CL of 18, you're right, that's a 720 ft range. The radius of the thing, and its height, comes out to 720 as well; that's a monster. Because your CL is 18, that's an increase of 6 steps (1 increase per 3 CL) which gets you comfortably to "A tornado (175+ mph) destroys all nonfortified buildings and often uproots large trees."

That's gorgeous. And it lasts 10 min/level, which means it runs for 180 minutes, or 3 hours. So you've got an ability that basically decimates an area over a period of three hours, and anyone inside that radius must make a Fort save (DC 11 (10 base +1 from MDM) + 5 (spell level) + Cha) or be batted about like a ping-pong ball. And they need to do that every round for three hours. Since one round is about 6 seconds, that's 10 rounds per minute for 180 minutes, or 1800 rounds - 1800 Fort saves. I don't care how good your bonus is, everyone is going to fail a save at that point.

It's once per day, but that's at level 8. The level of cheese is so minimal it's criminal, and yet you can create a tornado that basically ruins a city every day.

There's some additional optimizing involved there, but that's the basics. You are now a wind-powered warrior who can 1/day call down the absolute wrath of the storm on some unwitting bozos.

If you go with a caster class as your pre-Storm Sentry base, there are several PrCs you could enter which make you immune to wind effects, and therefore protect you from your own tornado. Even without that, you can simply be a melee who has the good sense to be away from the danger zone when you trigger your Greater Dragonmark.

[d20familiar]

You may want to have a look at Tempest_Stormwind's Storm Knight (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?471336-Weekly-Optimization-Showcase-Storm-Knight-(Tempest_Stormwind)): it's basically a Warblade 4 / Half-Elf Fighter 1 / Storm Sentry 5 / Eternal Blade 10 with some nice wind- and storm-themed abilities.

Aaand… stormsaged :smalltongue:

[DrMartin]

Since you can use Eberron stuff, you could go for the Storm Sentry prc. Not a Gish in the classic sense, but between the dragonmark and the prc you get quite a few windy things as spell-like abilities.

wow, stormsaged twice. nice.

[Sahleb]

There's also the Stormsinger, which is pretty wind themed. It's in Frostburn, although its BAB might be too low to really consider it gish material.

[Zaq]

Shame Dragonmarked isn't on that list of allowed books (though with Races of Eberron on the table, maybe you could ask?). I recall seeing at least one Iron Chef entry long, long ago that made a really cool wind-based character with a fair amount of help from Storm Sentry. I don't recall which Iron Chef round that was, so I'm not sure how best to search for it, but maybe someone reading this remembers? It'd be a long shot because you'd have to get Dragonmarked approved and then you'd have to get, well, a dragonmark approved (and that's obviously got a lot of baked-in Eberron flavor; it's not impossible to file off the serial numbers, but not every GM is willing to do so), but it might be worth looking into Storm Sentry, because it's actually pretty cool.

Other than that, the raptoran-related stuff that has already been mentioned is an option, but since "wind" (or "Air") wasn't really a common keyword, there isn't a lot else that's based around specifically making it better. Like, the [Air] keyword exists, but there are extremely few effects that actually have anything to do with that keyword, and there's also really not that many spells that actually have the keyword, which kind of turns into a chicken-and-egg feedback loop of lack of support. Which basically means that unless you can get approval for Storm Sentry or a similar PrC that just happens to be based around very specific wind-related effects, you're not really going to get a lot of mechanical support for wind effects the way you could for, say, [Fire] effects. So you just have to pick spells that will give you the flavor you're looking for, whether that's strongly supported by the spell itself (Gust of Wind) or whether you have to assert that flavor yourself.

[d20familiar]

… I recall seeing at least one Iron Chef entry long, long ago that made a really cool wind-based character with a fair amount of help from Storm Sentry. I don't recall which Iron Chef round that was, so I'm not sure how best to search for it…

Here you go: awesome OMG PONIES's spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oyjVU5JmeCnC8YTMqDArDqE5PszHl0Ysadz630kuTGk/edit#gid=0) and the build in question, TG Oskar's Halavin d'Lyrandar (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=10609686&postcount=107).

[Zaq]

Here you go: awesome OMG PONIES's spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oyjVU5JmeCnC8YTMqDArDqE5PszHl0Ysadz630kuTGk/edit#gid=0) and the build in question, TG Oskar's Halavin d'Lyrandar (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=10609686&postcount=107).

Much appreciated. I always forget that The Spreadsheet also shows classes.

[Piggy Knowles]

If Dragonmark material is allowed, I'd recommend running a Warblade half-elf with the Mark of Storm. Warblade 4/Dragonmark Heir 1 is a fine start for level 5 and you will have plenty of wind-themed SLAs, including eventual early access to the utterly devastating Control Winds. Alternately if you can get access to the Dragonmarked book, you can try the Storm Sentry from same, as has been previously suggested.

[Jeff the Green]

This is kind of cheaty, but any buff can be made "wind"-based with Spell Thematics, or just basic refluffing. So haste is the wind always at your back and speeding up your actions.

[dascarletm]

Are you allowed to port pathfinder stuff?

Also, I highly second Jeff the Green's point. Re-fluffing works wonders.

[digiman619]

Just going to put this link (https://sites.google.com/site/avatard20/) here...

EDIT: And this one (http://www.opengamingstore.com/products/spheres-of-power) as well while I'm at it...