Most optimized martial build

[King539]

So. It's widely accepted that casters are the best. This is true. What I'm looking for is a martial character that is extremely powerful, in terms of both offense and defense, at all levels. All books allowed.

Go.

[Eldariel]

Define "extremely powerful" as well as your lactose tolerance.

[King539]

Define "extremely powerful" as well as your lactose tolerance.

I mean cheesiness on extreme levels, like some of the ridiculous rules exploits high-level manifesters and casters can perform.

[Manyasone]

I believe this is the second post I've seen like this... Most people are going to suggest the standard ubercharger build, you know... I prefer the inevitable nightmare build however, or my own dragoon

[Eldariel]

I mean cheesiness on extreme levels, like some of the ridiculous rules exploits high-level manifesters and casters can perform.

Impossible by definition. Off the top of my head you can take a level of Cancer Mage [Book of Vile Darkness] as a creature with infinite lifespan, infect yourself with Festering Anger (there's also one for Con and such) and essentially get infinite strength. That allows you to at least break the planet and things like that should you feel so inclined, but it's still nowhere near caster levels. You can enter it by level 4 fairly easily, so that's not horrible. You can also use Hulking Hurler if you're large to throw moons for massive damage, and add lots of levels in martial adept classes for utility. Plus some source of one of the better forms of Hide in Plain Sight combined with Darkstalker [Lords of Madness] + Mindblank + massive Hide/Move Silently bonuses to become extremely hard to detect. Then you can add like Troll-Blooded + your choice of non-lethal immunity for damage immunity.

Not gonna conjure up a build but you get the point; you can do a bunch of cool things like become immune to almost everything, become really fast, become really hard to detect and become able to do enough damage to oneshot the planet in a dozen different ways but that's still pretty far from the levels of bull**** casters can play with (and indeed, quite useless against it aside from the non-detection part).

[Menzath]

And by martial do we mean melee or can ranged count as well. Also how "martial" does the build have to be? And how much caster or other such is allowed as long as it completes the "goal" in a martial manner?

[ExLibrisMortis]

A d2 crusader can do 'enough' damage, killing anything with finite hitpoints in one hit.

A troll-blooded pugilist can be immune to damage.

Of course, a troll-blooded pugilist d2 crusader cannot kill its mirror twin any better than a regular crusader with a save-or-die maneuver.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

This thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?285801-Tippy-s-Terrifically-Terrible-Trial) has monk 17/X 3 builds that are built to solo all of the elder evils one after another.

[LordOfCain]

The ExFighter is quite good.

[Chulehdoido]

The ExFighter is quite good.

Yes. That's good. but requires epics monsters.

[Zanos]

The ExFighter is quite good.
All the ExFighter proves is that spells are powerful, even when applied to people who can't innately cast spells.

[LordOfCain]

Yes. That's good. but requires epics monsters.

All the ExFighter proves is that spells are powerful, even when applied to people who can't innately cast spells.
Both of those points are true, but the ExFighter is extremely powerful at all levels.

So. It's widely accepted that casters are the best. This is true. What I'm looking for is a martial character that is extremely powerful, in terms of both offense and defense, at all levels. All books allowed.

Go.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Both of those points are true, but the ExFighter is extremely powerful at all levels.You forgot to respond to one of your quotes:


So. It's widely accepted that casters are the best. This is true. What I'm looking for is a martial character that is extremely powerful, in terms of both offense and defense, at all levels. All books allowed.

Go.

[LordOfCain]

You forgot to respond to one of your quotes:
The only problem with the ExFighter and that quote is it dips cleric.

[stanprollyright]

Would Paladin/Ranger count, or only builds that sacrificed spellcasting?

[Bakkan]

I can't seem to make it work before level 8, but an Idiot Crusader can have arbitrarily many turns per round starting at that point. The downside is that he allows each of his enemies one turn's worth of actions during that round, which for a sufficiently prepared caster means the Crusader still loses hard. One should be able to combine this with a d2 Crusader to be able to deal (truly) infinite damage on each of his (near) infinite turns per round.

[Jormengand]

Cleric 20. Yes, casters are best, including at being martial.

If by martial you mean noncaster, then, psion 10/slayer 10. If you mean no magic or psionics, swordsage 20. If you mean no supernatural, warblade 20. If you mean "Stop doing things that are clearly magical but are still listed as (ex), dammit!" then, I don't know, maybe rogue 20?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Cleric 20. Yes, casters are best, including at being martial.

If by martial you mean noncaster, then, psion 10/slayer 10. If you mean no magic or psionics, swordsage 20. If you mean no supernatural, warblade 20. If you mean "Stop doing things that are clearly magical but are still listed as (ex), dammit!" then, I don't know, maybe rogue 20?Rogue 19/anything but an NPC class is better than rogue 20.

[Zanos]

The only problem with the ExFighter and that quote is it dips cleric.
I just kind of find the concept of the ExFighter distasteful. It's class levels are pretty much irrelevant, and the core of it's abilities comes from optimizing hired NPCs(that you have no right to build, by the way), to get permanent spell effects. It's about as impactful as making a commoner 20 and having them use wishes to wish for fully charged items of wish, and then saying that commoner is competitive by spamming Wish from the items all the time. Or using Leadership to build an artificer or other caster cohort that uses all their class features to buff the hell out of you. It works and is strong, sure. But your own levels don't really have anything to do with it.

Also, as far as I can tell, the ExFighter is not powerful at all levels. The initial character has 1 fighter level and 8/8/8 for physical stats, making it basically worthless. It also stays bad for a long time until it manages to find someone with a ML of 45+ and a 9th level caster willing to give him permanent spell effects in exchange for paltry sums of gold.

[Inevitability]

Rogue 19/anything but an NPC class is better than rogue 20.

I'd argue even most NPC classes are more useful.

Rogue 20 grants +1 BAB and +1 reflex.
Warrior grants +1 BAB, +2 fortitude, and extra weapon and armor proficiencies.
Adept grants +2 will in addition to a smidgen of spellcasting and a few new skills.
Aristocrat grants +2 will, in addition to all armor and weapon proficiencies and a few new skills.
Expert grants a few weapon proficiencies, +2 will, and any skill the rogue might want to pick up.
Even commoner grants a new weapon proficiency and a new class skill.

I could see justifications for dipping any of them but commoner, and in a few select circumstances even that may be better than rogue 20. This is especially true if your DM allows gaining flaws after level 1, for reasons that should be obvious.

[Jormengand]

Rogue 19/anything but an NPC class is better than rogue 20.

Okay, granted, yes, you don't take the last rogue level. Maybe that's a good point for a fighter dip.

[Mato]

So. It's widely accepted that casters are the best. This is true. What I'm looking for is a martial character that is extremely powerful, in terms of both offense and defense, at all levels. All books allowed.

I mean cheesiness on extreme levels, like some of the ridiculous rules exploits high-level manifesters and casters can perform.You could try The Myth™. Legend says it kills all Pun-Puns before they can ascend but no wizard has been able to kill it and no one has seen it so it probably doesn't exist right? :smallwink:

The exact build of The Myth™ is shrouded in the mystery of speculation. What little is known, is that it uses adaptive style as full-round action and white raven tactics as a swift to grant it's self an infinite number of turns. It also involves seven levels of monk which gives it dark moon disciple's stealth and mantis leap's ability to charge off a move action, and if you check the RC a 5ft-step is included. So The Myth™ has an endless amount of turns with an endless amount of charging and it can never been seen unless it's pure daylight out.

There is some speculation it dipped barbarian for pounce and inspired one-punch man (because the human eye sees all the attacks as a single punch). It may have also dipped pugilist fighter and strapped it's self a soul torturing machine and/or be the offspring of a troll which makes immune to most forms of damage. But for all we know is it's just a nightmare that attacks people in it's sleep.

The thing is, no one really knows. As a former god-blooded of Vecna history has forgotten him and no divination spell can explain anything. It's possible that because Pathfinder gave barbarians a rage power called spell sunder and D&D's anthromorphic wolverines can target their weakness and reenter rage at least once per day per point of hp they have per excuse (that spell trap is my enemy this round I'm kill it!), the build may very well be a union of both rule sets and able to destroy any spell ever cast but that could just be me talking none-sense.

Or it could just be an unfinished project of mine that was started back with PF was up for you using D&D with it.
Martial dark moon disciple monk 7 / pugilist fighter 1 / lion totem "witch hunter" barbarian 6 / warblade 6 (?) / god-blooded[vecna] 0 with troll-blooded, adaptive style, mantis leap & lucid dreaming.

[Inevitability]

You could try The Myth™. Legend says it kills all Pun-Puns before they can ascend but no wizard has been able to kill it and no one has seen it so it probably doesn't exist right? :smallwink:

The exact build of The Myth™ is shrouded in the mystery of speculation. What little is known, is that it uses adaptive style as full-round action and white raven tactics as a swift to grant it's self an infinite number of turns. It also involves seven levels of monk which gives it dark moon disciple's stealth and mantis leap's ability to charge off a move action, and if you check the RC a 5ft-step is included. So The Myth™ has an endless amount of turns with an endless amount of charging and it can never been seen unless it's pure daylight out.

There is some speculation it dipped barbarian for pounce and inspired one-punch man (because the human eye sees all the attacks as a single punch). It may have also dipped pugilist fighter and strapped it's self a soul torturing machine and/or be the offspring of a troll which makes immune to most forms of damage. But for all we know is it's just a nightmare that attacks people in it's sleep.

The thing is, no one really knows. As a former god-blooded of Vecna history has forgotten him and no divination spell can explain anything. It's possible that because Pathfinder gave barbarians a rage power called spell sunder and D&D's anthromorphic wolverines can target their weakness and reenter rage at least once per day per point of hp they have per excuse (that spell trap is my enemy this round I'm kill it!), the build may very well be a union of both rule sets and able to destroy any spell ever cast but that could just be me talking none-sense.

Or it could just be an unfinished project of mine that was started back with PF was up for you using D&D with it.
Martial dark moon disciple monk 7 / pugilist fighter 1 / lion totem "witch hunter" barbarian 6 / warblade 6 (?) / god-blooded[vecna] 0 with troll-blooded, adaptive style, mantis leap & lucid dreaming.

I fail to see how this can be vecna-blooded if it lacks arcane casting.

[Mato]

I fail to see how this can be vecna-blooded if it lacks arcane casting.Who said it doesn't? It only needs one level of warblade so maybe it could be a spellcaster? And since it lost the template maybe it used to qualify but due to level loss or maybe retraining it don't anymore. No one really knows for sure...

But if you want to argue it doesn't qualify for a template it doesn't have because it sounds cheesy, you should probably remember the OP requested such things. The god-blooded part is just a cheaper version of third eye conceal and not an integral part if you're looking for a more practical use. But practically speaking, I don't think you'll find a DM that lets you use white raven tactics on your self anyway, no matter what the sage says about allies.