Finding a class for a religious Fighter

[Drewzer987]

Greetings,

Last session the DM told our group that we would be levelling up to 5th level.
My character, a wild elf fighter, has recently had a near death experience, and I have decided that she is going to become more religious. To reflect this I want to go into a more 'holy' class or prestige class within the next few levels.
The problem is that I don't really know what class to take, and wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions.

Mentally, my stats are awful, so anything with spell casting won't really work. Physically however, everything's pretty good. Feats-wise I've gone down the two weapon fighting and weapon focus routes along with using weapon finesse.

I'm thinking the favoured enemy paladin variant from unearthed arcana, but I was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions?

[ExLibrisMortis]

Paladin is usually a good choice, but with a low charisma score, Divine Grace is almost useless. Maybe you could do something with From Smite to Song, though? (trade Smite Evil uses for Inspire Courage uses)

Crusader would be very good. Lot of toughness, extra healing (especially with TWF), a few alignment-based effects at higher levels.

Cleric is quite good, even with low wisdom/charisma. For example, Travel Devotion will still function twice a day, even with a charisma penalty.

For wild elves, druid might be quite appropriate? Especially if you do a replace-all-the-things druid, with Druidic Avenger (gain Rage, Fast Movement; lose companion, spontaneous casting) and 'swift and deadly hunter' (gain monk AC bonus, monk fast movement, Favoured Enemy, Track feat).

[DeTess]

If Tome of Battle is on the table, maybe take a look at the Crusader?

[zlefin]

while not exactly what you asked for, Complete Champion has some fighter ACFs for the more religiously inclined fighter on page 48.
normally they replace levels where you get a bonus fighter feat, but your dm could probably work out somethin g(like replacing the feat you'd get at 6, or losing the one you got at 4 to replace it with the ACF)

[Eldariel]

I'd recommend asking for some retraining (what are your scores, btw? They may be more workable than you think) and going e.g. Fighter 2/Crusader 3. That is, spend some time self-actualising your new religious self (that is the process of retraining). Though Cleric is fine even with relatively poor Wisdom; if you have 11, you can already roll with it and just taking 1 level for some good picks from whatever domains your deity offers is already fine (Devotions [Complete Champion] and Domain Granted Powers can often be more important than the Domain Spells early on, and you get those with a single [Cloistered] Cleric-level). You could even roll with an 8 Wis [Cloistered] Cleric for a level or two. Trade Knowledge-domain for Knowledge Devotion (learn of your adversaries), put ranks into the various Knowledges about recognizing enemies (Local, Arcane, Religion, Nature, Dungeoneering, The Planes), take e.g. Law Devotion or Animal Devotion or something like Luck/Pride domain (reroll is always nice) or some such and roll from there.

[Sagetim]

Divine Crusader is actually pretty good for fighters, it has a low bar of entry requirements (weapon focus in deity's favored weapon, same alignment, +7 bab, 2 ranks of knowlege religion. Really easy to do).

Now, the downside is that it has charisma based casting, so unless you can finagle some decent charisma out of somewhere (such as wearing a cloak of charisma of sufficient mein and later on hunting down a nice inherent bonus to charisma) you're not going to get the most out of the prestige class. But that's still a few levels away. You're not going to enter it until 8 anyway, even if you do build towards it.

Crusader (the base class from tome of war) also fits the bill, and taking it at level 5 is actually not a bad trade off. You'll start with 3 initiator levels, allowing you to skip level 1 maneuvers known entirely unless you actually want any at that level. Taking the level 1 stance for Devoted Spirit would let you supplement the healing in the party by smashing people in the face (it's something like 2 healing per successful hit, so two weapon fighting is rather good with that).

Holy Liberator is another easy entry requirements prestige class that you can take soon on the horizon, bab 5, diplomacy 5, sense motive 5, chaotic good, iron will. It also suffers from having charisma be it's casting stat, but it has more class features than Divine Crusader, so you'll have more access to what the prestige class provides even with a crap charisma. Like Break Enchantment 1/week, detect evil, smite evil, etc. It's like a 10 level prestige class paladin of freedom. And they get a bird (well, the one in the picture does, at least).

Pious Templar has some not insurmountable entry requirements, and class abilities that are more focused on beating faces in than casting spells. It does get some limited wisdom based spellcasting, but that aside it has solid things like Mettle at first level, weapon specialization (which you can admittedly already get), smiting, straight damage reduction (3/- by level 10 in it), and some bonus feats mixed in.

War Priest would require taking at least one (better to take 2) cleric levels to qualify for it, but you could then ride that class all the way to the bank. It gets high level cleric spells (useful ones, even) as class abilities, and since they aren't done as spells per day you don't need to worry about having enough wisdom to use them. Mass Cure Light Wounds, Haste, Heroes Feast, and Mass Heal are all on the list of things that the Warpriest gets as spell like abilities from their class abilities. It's seriously fantastic if you want to go that route. Admittedly, it only gets 5/10 casting progression, so at level 16, you would have like, 7th caster level (11th with practiced spellcaster) and 4th level spells (barely) but your role in the party isn't to be the party's priest/healer/buffer, so anything you do on top of what they do is gravy anyway.


So, most of those are just from Complete Divine, with one Tome of Battle reference. Most of them have charisma based casting, and most of them allow for entry from pure fighter levels (though some may eat more of your limited skill points just to qualify than others). If you want to be particularly ridiculous, take a crusader level, a cleric level, another crusader level, then grab one Divine Crusader...and then from there launch into War Priest with a vengance and laugh as your 5/10 casting still nets you 6th level spells, by applying it to your Divine Crusader progression instead of to your cleric progression. But, as mentioned, that's being silly.

[Remuko]

For wild elves, druid might be quite appropriate? Especially if you do a replace-all-the-things druid, with Druidic Avenger (gain Rage, Fast Movement; lose companion, spontaneous casting) and 'swift and deadly hunter' (gain monk AC bonus, monk fast movement, Favoured Enemy, Track feat).

I second this idea.

[Drewzer987]

Yay, replys

I like the idea of becoming a Divine Crusader, as the Mettle ability sort of fits worth my characters backstory

On the other hand, with the Crusader, our group just tends to stay away from Tome of Battle, due to the amount of extra stuff everyone would need to remember. I like the idea though, if allowed to.

Druidic Avenger. Now that's an idea that sounds really interesting. I never thought about becoming a Druid, but if the DM allows me to change a few points of strength into wisdom, I can totally see that working. It wouldn't even require an alignment change. I think this has to be my favourite at the moment

[theboss]

If you have a good dex score and have so free feat slots I'd recommend Champion of Corellon Larethian from Races of the Wild. It's has nice abilites (Dex to damage, bonus feats and healing abilites). Also strong saves are Will and fort which will help with fighter's poor saves.
Tome of Battle is also a good option, personally I prefer swordsage from them all but Crusader has nice things also, you should read about him.
In any case, Good luck... Also an Elf fighter here :) More like (Fighter 2, Exotic weapon master 2, Ranger 1, Revenant Blade 5, Hexblade 3, Swordsage 1)

[DMVerdandi]

1. Religion doesn't give you class levels
(In particular. Class levels support religions. It sounds like semantics, but as per the rules, deities aren't actually bestowing powers to these classes, because when they do, it's a separate mechanic. So cleric gains their power from FAITH, and paladin gains their power from LAWFUL GOODNESS)


2. You can become more religious without it reflecting your class. You could take rogue levels from here on out, and simply work as someone who keeps their elf-ears to the ground, and makes sure to protect the sanctity of your cult.

3.Magic of incarnum might be what you are looking for
Incarnum gives the user soul melds, which act like magic items that can be flexibly buffed with it's own resource mechanic (essentia). It gives some really interesting abilities, and works off of constitution, so it can be used fairly well for an Ex-Beatstick.

I have less experience with Binders from tome of magic, but I hear they are just as effective.

4.What religion?
Like a 3.5 deity being worshiped? Some sort of Not!Church? An elf deity, or wilderness worship, cause yeah, You could retrain into Druid and be A-okay.
Or spirit shaman if you want armor instead of wild-shaping.
Elf Fighter, huh... O-tayyyy.

[Celestia]

Hellreaver (Fiendish Codex II) is a nifty class that's easy to qualify for. It's focused on fighting evil outsiders and gives a pseudo-smite ability. You can also make demons blow up like meat balloons.

[Metahuman1]

I'd go with Druidic Avenger. See if you can find something that swaps out your remaining spell casting, and then go master of Many Forms. REALLY dig into using your Wild Shape and the Rage offered (ask if instead of vanilla rage and fastmovement from Druidic Avenger you can have Whirling Frenzy and Spirit Lion Totem in there place. They fit what your doing loads better.). Or just prep all your spells for druid as just healing and summon natures ally spells, which only care about Wis for how many times and how high a level you can do at a given time. It'll be severely nerfed compared to a dedicated druid, but it's still got it's uses. And those Wild Shape bonuses will be immensely helpful. With a Ring of Arming and a Wilding Clasp, you can even retain most if not all of your gear use.




I also REALLY love Crusader. Run down and print out the Tome of Battle Cards and just show them to the DM. Have a deck of them that you draw from for your randomly granted maneuver's. Preparing maneuver's is changing the cards out between a readied deck and a known deck. Stances are there own little side deck. When you recover maneuver's you take cards form the discard and return them to deck and shuffle. Ever played a Trading Card Game? You can learn to do this.

Also that shows you not just what you have but what it does right there. Just remember, unlike a wizard, you can't have 2 of the same ready at the same time. A wizard can prep Magic Missile or Glitter Dust or Fly 2 or 3 or 4 of whatever times a day. Each maneuver you know can only be readied one time. You will recover it, but you can't have 2 in the same readied and/or granted pile at once.


Easy.




If you go Incarnum, which is a fun option but more complicated then Tome of Battle in my experience, go Totemist. The only stat it truly cares about is Con, and aside form that, Str and Dex and Int are helpful only for the same reasons and in the same capacity they help a fighter. Hit with more accuracy and for more damage, more AoO's a round with combat reflexes if you have it/higher initiative bonus/better reflex saves/help armor class, More skill points a level, Bonuses on affiliated skills, RP value, qualifying for feats respectively.

They all do those for the first 5 levels of fighter and with totemist, none of it changes. It's just you get some religions/nature flavor and power based on your Con score as well.



If you go Paladin, dip Paladin of Freedom for 4 levels and forget about the spell casting, and take the True Believer Feat. Buy Reliquary Holy Symbols. AFC out Smite Evil for From Smite to Song to get Inspire Courage and optimize that (Look at bard handbooks most of the same applys.) and see if you can find something less stat based then Divine Favor to swap Divine Favor out for while your at it.

Then take things that run on Turn Undead Attempts like Animal Devotion, Travel Domain, Luck Domain, Ext.





I think you can do something with any of the above, or maybe even a combo of some or all of the above.