Homebrew 3.5E dual wielder

[Osric_Ironfist]

Hello! So, I am not exactly a noob to D&D and roleplaying games and such, but recently I have gotten involved in something just a wee bit out of my experience range lol. Basically, my friend is running a homebrew 3.5 campaign, and pretty much anything goes. We have a pretty small party, so our DM decided to allow us to make Gestalt characters. My first one turned out awesome as all hell, so when my DM told me I could play a second character that could be Gestalt I kinda jumped on it haha. Long story short, I ended up creating an Orog Fighter/Ranger. Now, the issue I am having is that I want him(henceforth referred to as Graak for the sake of simplicity) to dual wield, but from what I have seen, it is fairly difficult to make a competent dual wielder unless different classes are used, such as the Dervish, Scout, etc, rather than Ranger. Either that or burning through feats. I am just looking for some tips/advice that can help me build a competent dual wielder. Any help would be appreciated.

P.S Its worth noting that my DM has given the Orog a racial feature called Powerful Build, which essentially treats Graak as one size larger than he is for the purposes of wielding weapons, and wearing armor. As such, Im looking for Graak to dual wield greataxes like a boss XD

[Grod_The_Giant]

TWF in 3.5 generally works best with a source of bonus damage, yeah-- Sneak Attack, Skirmish, Dragonfire Inspiration, whatever ya got-- the more times you can hit, the better. You also want to full attack as often as you can, for obvious reasons, so you need a way to move and attack-- Pounce, Travel Devotion, Sudden Leap, whatever.

So, first and most important questions:

Are you building a character from scratch, or improving an existing one?
If a pre-existing character, what have you taken to date? If a new one, what level?
What sources are available?
How strong are you looking to be, from a scale of "commoner" to "Pun-Pun?"

[Osric_Ironfist]

To answer your questions:

1. It is a completely new character, from scratch.

2. I believe with racial adjustments and such, that he is career level 3 l(I think that's what its called), class level 1.

3. Basically any and all sources, my DM is pretty lax and easy to work with. He has roughly 8GB of PDF"s and SRD's and other material for 3.5, and is letting us do pretty much whatever we want. For example, my first character I made is an Aasiling Barbarian/Friar who worships Dionysus(He created the friar class Im using himself, basically a Monk with Cleric spells) We also have a Warforged Dragon Shaman/Bard, a Shinigami, and a Death Knight/Wizard.

4. As strong as he can possibly be, because the campaign is going to be very challenging and he's going to need it lol.

And also because the image of Graak single handedly slaughtering an entire evil lair filled with *insert monsters here* or smashing through a stone wall to make a doorway as he yells "GRAAK SMASH!" just highly amuses me.


I already rolled his ability scores and bought his starting equipment along along with the general info, but haven't touched anything else yet. Oh and it may or may not affect anything, but I have a story worked out where Graak is sworn to serve my Friar/Barb character for life.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Mkay. So. Effective Character Level 3. LA+2 race.

One thing that gets done frequently in gestalt is to put level adjustment and racial hit die on one side, in place of class levels. So, like, instead of an Orog Fighter 1//Barbarian 1, you'd be a Orog 2/Fighter 1//Barbarian 3. Check with your DM if you can do this, but if so, it's highly recommended-- otherwise, well... compare how many hit points (and BAB) you'd have with the two options and get back to me.

One side of the gestalt, then, will be mostly Orog LA, plus one level of Barbarian-- speicifcally, Barbarian with the Spirit Lion Totem ACF from Complete Champion. That gives you Pounce, which means you can full attack at the end of a charge. We want that a lot; it means that you can move around the battlefield and still kill things at maximum efficiency.

On the other side... well, part of me wants to say Dungeoncrasher Fighter 2. That's an ACF from Dungeonscape that lets you do a bunch of damage whenever you bull rush someone into a wall, in addition to giving you a +5 bonus on Str checks to break things. Combine that with something like Pushback (Miniatures Handbook) or Knockback (Races of Stone; technically superior, but you need to be large to qualify) to get free bull rushes, and you can dish out some serious smashy-smash.

After that... Scout is pretty good, yeah. Advance Scout on one side and Barbarian on the other; that'll get you some solid smashy-smash. But take the Scout level first; you'll get more skills that way.

---------

The final produce then looking like

Orog LA 2/Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian 1//Scout 1/Dungeoncrasher Fighter 2.

[Osric_Ironfist]

That sounds pretty solid and exactly like what I want him to be, though he is only allowing us to mix 2 classes, not 3. At least starting out. I'll run it by my DM and see what he says. Depending on his answers, I may have some more questions lol.

Thank you, this was very helpful.