Charger Bloodstorm Blade?

[danielxcutter]

Yet another thread for help with XPeditious Retreat.

So I posted a thread asking about the Bloodstorm Blade PrC a few days ago, and according to the answers I got, as well as the research I did seperately, a Bloodstorm Blade could use the Power Attack + Leap Attack + Shock Trooper feat combo to deal massive amounts of damage. That in and of itself is badass - and I'm sure more than one anime or manga artist would agree - so I decided to make a character with it.

I'm aiming for a fast and furious powerhouse that's good in both melee and ranged combat, focusing on throwing a two-handed weapon around but still able to dish out quite a wallop if someone tries to get close. This character probably won't hit level 20 during the comic, but in an OotS-style world where people know what class levels and feats they have, they'll likely have a build that works well at all stages. The planned build will likely be something like Warblade 10/Bloodstorm Blade 10, taking BSB all the way after getting it and only that until they hit the capstone.

I think I can decide the maneuvers by myself, thanks to Elfin's Warblade Handbook, but I still need help for feats and skill tricks. Advice for any crunch aspect(fluff is covered for now) is mostly welcome, but please refrain from things such as psionic feats. Race will be human.

Here's the stuff I've found.

*Feats

#Far Shot: 10 feet -> 20 feet range for thrown attacks. Probably not worth it, but I'd appreciate it if you either prove me wrong or give some other way to increase range.

#Brutal Throw: Very useful, but Dex is still needed for feats, so not sure.

#Combat Brute: Specifically, the third tactic - Momentum Swing. If you Power Attack the turn after you charge, you get 1.5 times more damage(1.5 for a one-hander and 3 for a double). The other two are rather restricted in usage but could be used in certain situations.

#Cometary Collision: Interesting feat. Since it influences the charge bonus it can still be used with Leap Attack.

#Precise Shot: Friendly fire could be lethal considering that Leap Attack alone gives three times the BAB you trade in even by the stingiest rulings. Not sure if the Improved version would be worth it, though.

#Cleave: Well, this character does have a high damage output-per-hit, so I don't see why not. Plus it matches the character fluff-wise(for spoilery reasons, of course), so going all the way and adding Great Cleave doesn't seem like a bad idea either.



*Skill tricks

#Nimble Charge: 5 ranks in Balance(needed for BSB anyway) for being able to charge on difficult surfaces seems more than worth it.

#Twisted Charge: Same as Nimble Charge(5 ranks in Jump and Balance), plus the reduction of one of charging's main weakness probably make this very powerful on this character.


List will be edited based on advice.

[AvatarVecna]

Awhile back, I made a build for one of the Char-Op contests around here - the Zinc Saucier where we had to emulate a Fighter without taking Fighter levels. I built this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17807146&postcount=35). Now, throwing a couple levels of Fighter in there for the feats might work out well, and there's a couple mechanical issues, but those are mostly about feats taken, and that can be mitigated by taking a couple of feats to accelerate the build's progression.

EDIT: Not sure how necessarily helpful that is, but who knows. Anyway, I've put together more than a few Bloodstorm Blades over the years, so I can probably answer questions well enough.

[danielxcutter]

Awhile back, I made a build for one of the Char-Op contests around here - the Zinc Saucier where we had to emulate a Fighter without taking Fighter levels. I built this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17807146&postcount=35). Now, throwing a couple levels of Fighter in there for the feats might work out well, and there's a couple mechanical issues, but those are mostly about feats taken, and that can be mitigated by taking a couple of feats to accelerate the build's progression.

Er, I think the wording of Thunderous Throw means that you can throw your weapon at the end of a charge. Plus, I don't think Pounce would be easy to fit on this character. That being said, Quick Draw is a nice feat that I didn't add, so that helped. Not much else that I didn't know, however.

[AvatarVecna]

Er, I think the wording of Thunderous Throw means that you can throw your weapon at the end of a charge. Plus, I don't think Pounce would be easy to fit on this character. That being said, Quick Draw is a nice feat that I didn't add, so that helped. Not much else that I didn't know, however.

I agree, but the ability isn't written consistently enough to guarantee that somebody else will get that same reading. The ability says "As a swift action, you can choose to treat your ranged attack rolls with thrown weapons as melee attacks for the rest of your turn. You use your melee attack bonus, including Strength bonus, feats, and so forth, to determine your attack bonus for each attack as normal, but you apply the standard modifiers for range penalties. Attacking into melee, through cover, and so forth incurs the standard penalties. In addition, you can apply 1-1/2 times your Strength bonus to damage if you wield the thrown weapon with two hands, and you can use Power Attack with your thrown weapon attacks." Now, making an attack at all has three components, as far as melee vs ranged: attack type, attack roll type, and weapon type. A straight reading of the text treats "ranged attack rolls as melee attacks" and then goes on about what that means (and what that means is apparently that you use your melee attack bonus instead of your ranged attack bonus). Looking at Power Attack, which the ability specifies works with thrown weapons thanks to this ability, PA specifies melee attack rolls, not melee attacks, so I generally operate under the assumption that the ability is written to be read as "you can choose to treat your ranged attack rolls with thrown weapons as melee attack rolls for the rest of your turn, which makes more sense as far as the mechanics of attack rolls goes (since you can't really substitute melee attacks for ranged attack rolls, since they're options for different aspects of an attack), even if it's really ****ing stupid since it makes most of this work less well.

Anyway, if you're operating under the interpretation of the ability that doesn't make it gibberish nonsense, you're making a ranged attack with a melee attack roll, and you can't make a ranged attack as your original charge attack even in a pounce unless you've got Hurling Charge or something similar. This difference between attack type, attack roll type, and weapon type makes thrown weapon combat far less powerful than it should be under strict RAW in a lot of ways, but I've yet to have a DM who didn't agree with me on weird points like "Point Blank Shot should apply to thrown daggers, even though it technically doesn't".

Yeah, the build isn't super-original, it just combines a bunch of nice stuff together. In regards to the feats you listed in the OP:

Far Shot) On it's own, this probably isn't worth it, but it's worth mentioning that distance is a real-world measurement, so multiplication works like normal rather than D&D's stupid "two doublings is a tripling rule" that they only have because they don't want to make things too complicated by making it "+100%", which is what they actually meant. Anyway...combining Far Shot with the Distance weapon enchantment and the Gauntlets Of Extended Range (MIC 1063) gets you x8 range on your throws, which is helpful. Also, if you've got a DM who agrees that martials should get nice things, you can probably convince him to let you apply Ranged Weapon Mastery to a melee weapon as long as you're throwing it, even though that's not technically RAW legal, and the +20ft range increment that gives you applies before multipliers, making for a potential 240ft ranged increment. Ranged Weapon Mastery takes a little while to come online, but it comes online around the same time as Bloodstorm Blade 4, so it's a wash anyway.

Brutal Throw) Waste of a feat for a Bloodstorm Blade. Regardless of whether Thunderous Throw meant to say melee attack rolls or melee attacks in that particular sentence, it later specifies that you use your melee attack bonus, including your Str bonus.

Combat Brute) The first maneuver (Advancing Blows) is useful if you're combining Knockback with Shock Trooper for massive Bull Rush bonuses/distances, but if you're pouncing with Shock Trooper, the dude you were pouncing is either dead or close to it unless they were quite the brute themselves, so how useful this is depends on just how focused on Charge DPR you are. Sundering Cleave is far less useful mostly because Sundering is less than ideal at all (I too like spending feats to destroy my potential loot), but this feat is worth taking on a standard ubercharger just for Momentum swing to keep the damage train a-chugging down the initiative track, potentially even worth the feat tax of Improved Sunder. Who knows, maybe you'll get use out of combining Sunder stuff with Dungeoncrasher or something.

Cometary Collision) If you can't uber-charge with a pounce, this lets you counter-charge a charging opponent and upgrades your charge as well, and is a solid upgrade to your ability to protect your allies and hinder your opponents (potentially letting you bull rush them off-course in the middle of their charge). If you can uber-charge with a pounce, you're giving up multiple charge-attacks on your turn for the ability to make a single charge attack outside of your turn, which could very well be devastating to your DPR to the point that it's not ever worth using. The only reason to even consider this on a pouncer is if either you really want the ability to interrupt your foe mid-charge and bull rush them far off course, or you've run out of more interesting/useful feats to take on a ranged uber-charger build.

Precise Shot) This feat is never bad to have on a ranged build, and it's even one of the few ranged feats that doesn't run into the stupid confusion mentioned earlier, which is nice.

Cleave/Great Cleave) If your DM agrees with your reading of Thunderous Throw (that it makes your ranged attacks into melee attacks), these feats are an awesome upgrade, allowing you to apply your ridiculous damage to a larger number of foes and giving you "cleave reach" even most dedicated reach-monster lockdown builds can't touch (assuming you did the things I suggested in regards to range increments). If your DM agrees with my reading of Thunderous Throw (that it turns ranged attacks rolls to melee attack rolls), these don't work since they specify melee attacks, and you're making ranged attacks. If your DM agrees with you, though, it's great.

Now for stuff you didn't mention.

Melee Weapon Mastery) Regardless of whether your DM is allowing you to apply Ranged Weapon Mastery to your thrown weapons, they might also let you apply this feat to them; while this feat doesn't do anything RWM doesn't do on its own, it opens you up to take Slashing Flurry (extra attack with slashing weapon on either a standard action or full action attack, at a penalty, which you can combine with Rapid Shot, Haste, TWF, and other extra attacks) or Crushing Strike (cumulative +1 to attacks for every attack you've hit with this round, which helps boost the attack bonuses on your lower iteratives). I don't recommend taking Weapon Supremacy outside of epic play unless you can bypass the requirements via Martial Monk (if your DM allows) because 18 levels of Fighter is a serious investment that's best spent elsewhere; I don't recommend Driving Attack at all for this kind of build.

Knowledge Devotion) Yeah, everybody knows this one. It's a flavorful attack/damage bonus that rewards you for making a knowledgeable warrior, but even without investing a single rank it's a better boost than Weapon Focus.

Leap Attack) Standard ubercharger material, but worth mentioning just in case.

Rapid Shot) Only works with ranged weapons, so to get it you'd need to sweet-talk your DM into handwaving away the RAW issue. My DMs have been cool with it, but YMMV.

[danielxcutter]

-snip-.

Ah, but this is for an OotS-style comic I'm making, which means that I have enough EDMLs(that is, Effective Dungeon Master Levels :smallamused:) to qualify for houseruling reasonable RAIs. I'm not planning on adding Pounce on this particular character, so Cometary Collision is perfectly viable. as I've stated above I read that Thunderous Throw allows you to apply both ranged and melee feats, so you can apply, say, Cleave and Rapid Shot, plus even if the target's out of charging range you can deal charging damage if they're in charge+throw range. Knowledge Devotion sounds useful, since Warblades both need decent Int scores and get decent amount of skill points, but unfortunately none of the useful Knowledge skills are on the Warblade skill list... unless you take the Education feat, which makes it a real beast. :smalltongue: Hurling Charge is interesting, since it's basically an extra charge attack, and Quick Draw's going to be included anyways so it's a solid choice. Leap Attack was mentioned at the beginning, but it's so good it's basically Power Word Yes. :smallbiggrin: I'm not sure if I can fit Melee Weapon Mastery or Ranged Weapon Mastery since making a melee/ranged hybrid burns through lots of feats, but if it fits then MWM could be useful for Slashing Flurry.

[Darrin]

Far Shot can be picked up via magic item. Horizon Goggles (8000 GP, Complete Mage) is cheaper, but Helm of the Hunter (9000 GP, MIC) probably looks cooler.