3.5 sword ( or,spear) and board fighter guy

[finaldooms]

Soo after some..minor hicups,in a game,im,playing we are restarting and using core,race and class ( and as far as i can tell feats and stuff from,other books are allowed. )
So instead of being a spijed chain tripper..to make it easier im guna do a tower shielx and something

What would be some decent feat options for such a character?
( ive always been focused on damage so im not sure and to top it off the dm,is making cha mandatory while using 28pb so im not egen sure i can get enough int for conbat expertise)

Also i know as a move? Action i can hide behind a tower shield for full,cover

What if i had it on my back? Is that full cover when attacked from behind by ranged guys? Or does 3.5 not even worry about it since its not " equiped"

[Khedrac]

What if i had it on my back? Is that full cover when attacked from behind by ranged guys? Or does 3.5 not even worry about it since its not " equiped"

If you are carrying the shield on your back it is not equipped and has no effect against attacks etc.

[finaldooms]

I figured so sadly...
Anyways ..sword and board options for 3.5 would be apricated

[ZamielVanWeber]

Are you married to the idea of a sword and board? 3.5 was extremely unkind to the concept. I generally find I have the best luck by not going fighter and instead using someone with class features that synergize. A sword and board duskblade, for example, gets solid damage while one handing a weapon so the shield can be used to provide defensive goodies.

[thelastorphan]

As someone who sword and boarded for a 2 year campaign I can say that the PHB2 shield feats are the way to go if they are available. But IIRC they may not work with Towers...

[Metahuman1]

Pick one of two paths.


1: snag the PHB 2 feats, and a heavy spiked shield, and Oversized Two Weapon Fighting, A one handed weapon, and the Two Weapon Fighting Line, and a source of bonus damage. TWF with the heavy shield as your one handed off hand weapon, and enjoy the shield benefits.

2: snag a buckler, and that feat in complete warrior that lets you use a Buckler and a 2 handed weapon at the same time, build an otherwise normal 2 handed weapon build.

I'm sorry but those are really the only half way viable options you've got.

[Amphetryon]

Another option is to go the Captain America route, using your Shield as your primary Weapon. This requires a minor house rule allowing Shields to be equipped in your Character's main hand, as every reference to Shields as Weapons that I can recall lists them as Off-Hand Weapons.

There are several iterations of the Captain America build concept on the forums, if you're interested.

[Elkad]

Basically everything is aimed at two-weapon fighting with weapon+shield.

Turning into a defensive powerhouse with your shield isn't really supported. You can get a couple extra points of AC, and apply your shield to touch AC and all defensive grapple/bullrush/trip/etc checks, but you could just as well do that with an Animated Shield as well.

One of many guides.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?123630-3-X-Person-Man-s-Guide-to-Shields

[finaldooms]

Im actually nerfing my,orginal build ( which was a golaith tripper) to a human sword,and board because my,dm is new and decided i was to OP at lvl 2 lol

That link is actually,extremely,helpful though so i might consider going through with this instead of talking,myself,into a not,super optimized 2handed fighter

[Metahuman1]

That being the case, another suggestion.


Look at showing your DM some tricks to work around your Goliath Tripper, and tell him it's fine if some enemy's are well suited to dealing with him because you understand that 1 trick isn't always going to be perfect against everything. It's, not that hard really for a DM to engineer an encounter better suited to other classes.

[finaldooms]

Tried that actually, ..i even explained that im super weak to ranged attacks..and he wanted a,more RP heavy game ..so i made a,muscle and friend made a face who i was guna keep alive..the 2nd fight in he threw way to much power at us and killed the friend..but due to me tripping stuff i survived...doing a reset now ..the options for sword and board,look fun at least and not,something,ive,done,before

[Metahuman1]

Well, alright then. If your happy.



If you try the Captain America Route, see about taking Improve Unarmed Strike, superior Unarmed Strike and Snap Kick.

Or just wear a Spiked Gauntlet and punch with that.




Look into the Knight Class form the PHB 2. 1-2 home made apprentice feats and a bit of Int and you could be a workable party face as well as a tank. And the knight class get's bonuses for using a shield and reduced penalty's for wearing medium and heavy armor. It's a Tier 5 class so it shouldn't be too OP for a newbie DM.

[finaldooms]

Im not cause i liked my tripper lol..but im to awkward and slow to play pbp with,people i dont know so i have to settle ( that and i have 0 xp with tome of battle and it bothers me atm)

Kinda thinking gnomish battle cloak using the trade

..if it was more tham,just me,and 1 other guy id consider knight ( but i wana be an,evilish knight) ...also part,of his story he wants a goodish guy and an evilish guy
Friend is to goody normally lol ...

[Elder_Basilisk]

If you're looking at core race/class combos with expanded feat options, here are a few things to consider.

1. Fighter (possibly with Barb or rogue multiclass because that's usually a good idea). Get the phb shield feats and load up on some style feats.

One possibility that I tried for the first five or so levels but never quite got to full effectiveness is heavy mace and shield in combination with shield slam, shield charge, 3 mountain style, and combat brute plus shock trooper. You can trip, stagger, nauseate and generally apply a variety of debuffs to your enemies while maintaining a respectable damage output (especially with armbands of might which will make one-handed power attack a much better deal) and a solid (though probably not untouchable) AC. There's no need for two weapon fighting (though it doesn't hurt if you have the stats and can find room for the feats). Just use the shield when you charge and the mace when you full attack-whatever is convenient to trigger your style feat options.

For a mid-optimization option, it's fun and interesting and playing with bull rush can make for cinematic moments if your dm draws actual terrain on the board.

Another character that I played through a much higher level and which is probably higher optimization is paladin/monk/pious templar (if you have prestige classes available). You can use a two handed weapon if you want, but between divine favor, armbands of might, the charisma to damage for a turn attempt feat, and weapon specialization+melee weapon mastery, you can crank out a pretty respectable amount of damage with a one handed weapon. You won't use flurry of blows much because you wear a mithral breastplate with your shield but you have evasion, mettle, sky high saves, a decent to good AC, and potentially a higher than normal touch AC. You also have some very useful options from paladin spells and improved grapple from your monk levels.

[Pugwampy]

Are you married to the idea of a sword and board? 3.5 was extremely unkind to the concept

Really ? I think two weapon fighting take more flak .

[Sagetim]

Soo after some..minor hicups,in a game,im,playing we are restarting and using core,race and class ( and as far as i can tell feats and stuff from,other books are allowed. )
So instead of being a spijed chain tripper..to make it easier im guna do a tower shielx and something

What would be some decent feat options for such a character?
( ive always been focused on damage so im not sure and to top it off the dm,is making cha mandatory while using 28pb so im not egen sure i can get enough int for conbat expertise)

Also i know as a move? Action i can hide behind a tower shield for full,cover

What if i had it on my back? Is that full cover when attacked from behind by ranged guys? Or does 3.5 not even worry about it since its not " equiped"

3.5 doesn't really do facing rules*. So if you don't have your tower shield in hand, it's not giving you a shield bonus to ac. Now, you might still talk your way into cover from a fireball or what have you (or not getting shot as you run away from combat) but if you're going to use a tower shield you should...use the tower shield.

The last time I built a sword and board fighter for 3.5 (one of a number of backup characters in case my psion bit it in a campaign), I took a shining to the Combat Focus feats from Player's Handbook 2. They have some variety and utility and I figure they might be fun to build a character who uses them. After all, getting fast healing 2 every combat for 10+ rounds is nice for a fighter. It's not the bee's knees, it's not going to take out an entire army for you just by casting it once (which is what Firebrand could do from Magic of Faerun, until they recycled the spell name for a much less impressive spell for the spell compendium. I liked the old one.). Anyway, my point is that you're a Fighter, and options for Fighters are more limited than options for spellcasters because you don't have spells. So taking it as a given that spellcasters are more powerful/versatile/TO, let's look at some of the defensive options that fighters can do:

Combat Focus Feats have a variety of small bonuses that get bigger the more of them you have. The first feat starts with giving you a will save bonus while you are combat focused, and most likely combat focus is going to see you through most of your fights without running out, because most fights don't take more than 10 rounds (at least not in my experience). Will Save Bonus, Blindsight, Adjusting Dodge to a target as an immediate action (since you don't normally use immediate actions, this isn't actually bad), Fast Healing, Bonus vs getting pushed around, and a capstone at level 15 of 'can stop combat focus to get flat damage bonus to all my attacks for the rest of this round'. Are there better feats out there? Probably, but can these be fun? Yes, and do they bolster your defenses? Yes.

Full Plate, Tower Shield, Short Sword is probably going to help you a lot, because if you use a regular one hander, as I recall, you take a -2 to hit while using a tower shield. I could well be wrong about that, so look up tower shield specifics. I'm pretty sure they hate on your attack bonus.


You can take a feat to learn a maneuver. And while it doesn't give you a recharge on that maneuver, if you pick wisely you won't need a recharge. Because once you have that feat you can keep taking the feat that lets you learn stances. So, for example, get to level 6 and take feat for maneuver- Foehammer, then take as your fighter bonus feat the level 1 Devoted Spirit stance. You can now heal your party and yourself a little every time you hit something. Not bad for two feat investments. And then if you want some of the higher level maneuvers, you can get them with the feat when your effective initiator level gets high enough. It may never be amazing without actual initiator levels, but that's okay. Also, sometimes you just need that one counter, like using your concentration check instead of your will save.

For shield feats, you have Improved Shield Bash, which lets you beat people in the face with your shield and keep the ac bonus. Shield Specialization gives you a +1 to ac with that shield, but can't be applied to tower shields. Agile Shield Fighter nets you only suffering a -2 to hit when you use a shield bash as part of a full attack (I think with the implication that it's a bonus off hand attack), but it requires Shield Specialization and Improved Shield Bash to get. And then there's Shield Snare, which nets you the ability to ready an action to disarm someone with your shield. You don't get your shield bonus to ac for that round though.

Building off Shield Specialization, there's also Shield Ward, which nets you your entire shield bonus to touch ac and resisting things like trip, disarm, bull rush, grapple.

If you want to buff allies, you can take Shieldmate and Improved Shieldmate, and grant adjacent allies a +3 shield bonus to their ac just from you standing nearby.

There is, of course, Combat Expertise if you want more armor class. Between Dodge and Combat Expertise, you can get Defensive Strike, which gives you a +4 to hit if someone misses you while you full defense action (which admittedly isn't going to lead to you killing them very quickly, but if you're trying to stay up as long as possible...)

Improved Combat Expertise is a feat tax to remove the +5 cap on Combat Expertise.

If you don't mind taking damage, Karmic Strike and Combat Reflexes can net you a large increase to how many attacks you are putting out in a round by giving you a revenge shot for each one that hits you.

Elusive Target (a tactical feat that requires Dodge and Mobility) has one of it's options as negating power attack bonus damage from the target of your dodge. Pair this with the combat focus feat that lets you change your dodge as an immediate action, and you can now give the finger to a target that was about to tear you a new one.

Melee Evasion, requiring Dodge and Combat Expertise can give you a use for Immediate actions. With conditionals, allowing you to spend your immediate action to change your AC to 1d20+BAB for one attack.

Anyway, there's a lot of feats out there, and this post has gotten long enough.





*2e did facing rules, really really poorly. If you weren't using mini's, it was basically up to the GM if the rogue could get their sneak attack off, which was called Backstab, and required you to stab someone in the back for it to work. So there seems to be a number of players from that era with stories of why the thief sucks (the class name before it got changed to rogue for 3.0) and they seem to generally come down to the GM being a jerk and running a 'me vs the players' instead of 'we're using the rules to tell a story and play a game'.

[finaldooms]

The bard talked me into a dwarf..so,im doing a war axe and razor heavy steel shield with a focus on the weapon mastery line ( slashing)
And im,picking up shield feats as well ..that first,link was extremely helpful

With agile fighter do i only get 1 shield bash as an attack? And only,on full attack?

[Sagetim]

Oh, hm, it's kind of weird. I'll just give you a quote



Benefit: When making a shield bash and armed strike attack as part of a full attack action, you take a –2 penalty on each attack. These penalties replace the normal ones you incur for fighting with two weapons.


So, taking the feat locks you into taking the lowest penalty for two weapon fighting (light off hand). As far as I know, it doesn't count as two weapon fighting for the rest of the two weapon fighting chain, but at low level you would only need one or the other.

The general idea seems to be that you are treating the shield as a light off hand weapon for the purpose of two weapon fighting, when it would otherwise count as something else, I guess? That would be my assumption, because otherwise this feat wouldn't have like...any real purpose.

If anyone knows about any errata or rulings that might apply (like allowing this feat to count as two weapon fighting so you can keep going up the two weapon fighting chain without paying a feat tax), that would be helpful in the long term.

To be clear, you can two weapon fight without the feat for it, you just take obnoxious to hit penalties for doing so. That's the point of the two weapon fighting feat. Improved Two Weapon Fighting and other stuff that builds off from the basic Two Weapon Fighting feat are actual upgrades, adding extra iterative attacks and so on.