Making an exotic character build from 1 to 20.

[jangartharn1]

Hey guys. So my group will be starting a new campaign soon. And I really want to step outside the box and play an exotic or exciting character build. I'm usually stuck with being the party tank so I thought " hey why not try something new?" So I need help coming up with an awesome or exotic character build that goes from 1 to 20. The build would include what feats and class levels and even prestige classes I would need to take. I'm pretty bad with character builds so anyone who could help me make a complete character from 1 to 20 I'd be most appreciative of. Ok thanks guys!

[Red Fel]

Hey guys. So my group will be starting a new campaign soon. And I really want to step outside the box and play an exotic or exciting character build. I'm usually stuck with being the party tank so I thought " hey why not try something new?" So I need help coming up with an awesome or exotic character build that goes from 1 to 20. The build would include what feats and class levels and even prestige classes I would need to take. I'm pretty bad with character builds so anyone who could help me make a complete character from 1 to 20 I'd be most appreciative of. Ok thanks guys!

First: Allowed sources? Doesn't do much good if someone suggests some cool Dragon Magazine options, only to be told, "Sorry, core only." (Also, if you say "core only," please define what "core" means to you. It varies.)

Second: Particular theme or concept? You say you usually play the tank, so I assume that's not what you want - but there are a lot of things that translate to "not tank." Any specifics or inclinations would be helpful.

Third: Dairy content? Builds can range from "Here's a simple thing you can do that makes a Barbarian fun," to "If you take these feats, visit this magic site, and cast the following spells in sequence, you can break the universe on any day that ends in a Y." There's a wide spectrum in between. It would help to know how much cheese you (and your table) are comfortable with.

Fourth: By what meaning exotic? Obscure sources? Unusual races? Strangely-designed mechanics? Or just something hip and cool?

[jangartharn1]

Well anything 3.5 is allowed. And any race that is la 1 or lower.

[jangartharn1]

And also when I mean exotic I mean out of the ordinary or cool or something that meshes with something else that it isn't supposed to and does really well anyway.

[jangartharn1]

And to be honest any kind of build is good. When I said an exotic or awesome character build I kind of meant any idea would do.

[AvatarVecna]

There's a lot of things that could be done, but it kinda depends on what you want to do. There's builds that can let you lock down everybody within 100 ft, builds that let you wielding a bowling ball as your primary weapon, builds that snipe people with arrows from miles away, builds that make you an undetectable prankster-assassin, builds that let you hug people to death, builds that let you utterly destroy basically everything you can see on a whim, builds that let you create illusions that are realer than reality, builds that make you the love child of Dr Strange and Iron Man, builds that make you the love child of Hulk and Joker, and so on. We can make basically anything in 3.5 D&D...so what weird thing would you like to play?

[jangartharn1]

I personally would love to do a build that would allow me to snipe people from miles away. And one that would allow me to use a bowling ball as my weapon man that sounds interesting. ;)

[ZamielVanWeber]

That last post aside Air Goblin Sorcerer into Spellwarp Sniper is a bit different but still good. You get the benefits of small, medium speed, a nice boost to Dex, penalty to one dump stat (I admit the Con penalty can hurt) and then you go into an effective damage class.

[jangartharn1]

That last post aside Air Goblin Sorcerer into Spellwarp Sniper is a bit different but still good. You get the benefits of small, medium speed, a nice boost to Dex, penalty to one dump stat (I admit the Con penalty can hurt) and then you go into an effective damage class.
That's pretty cool. So in what book can you find the air goblin race?

[LTwerewolf]

Acknowledging that there is a box that you want to stay outside of means you're still being bound by the foundations of said box. Ask yourself "what box?" and then begin creation. Don't take into account anyone else's build. Don't take into account what the party "needs." Just make something completely from scratch that you would find fun to play, and make it from concept before build. You can make 800 builds work for any one concept, but you cannot make a specific build work for many concepts.

[AvatarVecna]

I personally would love to do a build that would allow me to snipe people from miles away. And one that would allow me to use a bowling ball as my weapon man that sounds interesting. ;)

To wield a bowling ball as your weapon, you'll be wanting Master Thrower 1 and either Bloodstorm Blade 4 or (if your DM allows PF content) a Blinkback Belt; you may also want a level of Hulking Hurler, but that's not necessary. You'll also want a "Bowling Ball", the creation of which I'll detail below. Build a standard thrower build (using BB4 or the Belt to make your bowling ball auto-return after every attack), with an emphasis on range and number of attacks (since optimizing damage is easy). You'll want to be capable of wielding weapons as if you were much larger than you are; use the Half-Minotaur template to make a good Medium race Large, and make sure you have either Powerful Build or Strongarm Bracers (the latter are better because they work by RAW, whereas PB is weird by RAW because it specifies Large size IIRC), and you'll be wielding as if you were Large. This allows you to wield improvised weapons up to 40 lbs.

Now to create your "bowling ball". I recommend you make this a spiky ball, rather than a more standard bowling ball (because making it spiky doubles its effective weight), but either way works. By the normal rules, a weapon has to be masterwork quality in order to be enchanted, but improvised weapons cannot be created as masterwork weapons (because that would imply they were created with combat in mind). However, any weapon made out of certain special materials like mithril or adamantine is naturally masterwork in nature...and any object can be made out of those materials. Thus, an adamantine spiky ball, despite being an improvised weapon, can be enchanted just fine (I recommend Distance, Impact, and Speed, but it's up to you). At this point, you want to get a Permanancy'd "Shrink Item" spell on your bowling ball (so that it un-shrinks when thrown and re-shrinks when returning), so that what would normally be a 640 lb spiky ball weighs only 40 lbs when it's in your hands. Because effective weight is doubled, your spiky ball deals damage as an improvised weapon weighing 1280 lbs: base damage of 9d6, and all while wielding it one-handed (allowing you to make iterative attacks with it). How exactly this interacts with things that increase effective weapon size for purposes of damage (such as Greater Mighty Wallop) isn't entirely clear; I'd be inclined to say it doesn't interact, because the weapon's damage is based on weight instead of size, but you're welcome to argue with your DM about it if you want to upgrade that 9d6 base weapon damage.

The reason you care about the weight limit is because going above actual weight of 10 lbs (doubled per effective size increase) requires both hands to wield the weapon...and throwing a two-handed weapon takes a full-round action, which means no iteratives. Besides, if you go the two-handed boulder route, you're going to go down the dark path that is the Hulking Hurler, who's weight limit is less "50 lbs doubled per size increase" and more "basically whatever I can carry", and when you consider that the damage per weight for improvised items increases linearly, while Carrying Capacity increases exponentially...well, you can see how things can get out of hand quickly. Hulking Hurlers are well-known for their cheese potential.



Now to max out bow range. You'll want to be a Half-Minotaur with Strongarm Bracers (again), and you'll want to have Fighter 5/Deepwood Sniper 10/Cragtop Archer 5, the Far Shot feat, a Huge Dragonbone Greatbow with the Distance enchantment, and the Ranged Weapon Mastery feat. This gives you a range increment of ~1250 ft ([{Base 150+Ranged Weapon Mastery 20}*Huge 2.25*Far Shot 1.5*Distance 2]+Deepwood Sniper 100=1247.5), and Cragtop Archer lets you get 15 range increments for max range (making your maximum range 18712.5 ft, or ~3.5 miles), not to mention letting you take a full round action to fire a single shot at no range penalty.

There's also some Dragon Mag arrows that extend range and some Races of the Wild arrows that decrease range penalties, if you're interested.

EDIT: The larger size only helps if you're allowed to use Arms and Equipment Guide rules, which makes larger ranged weapons have longer ranges; similarly, Half-Minotaur is only available if you're allowed Dragon Mag, and Deepwood Sniper is 3.0 material as well. Without all three of those, though, you're still looking at a range increment of 510 ft, which makes your 15 increment max range 7650 ft (just under 1.5 miles).