Trying to come up with a good melee character.

[LordBlade]

So starting a new campaign soon. Level 1 characters.
We're getting 75 points to spend on stats, with none being over 18 before bonuses and such. Not level adjusted races either.

Was trying to think of an interesting "beat stick" type character I could make. I've done the straight up Fighter plenty of times. Was thinking something like Monk or Ninja. Just both of those are pretty Dex based, were there feats to let you use Dex instead of Strength for hit/damage numbers?

[gorfnab]

Was trying to think of an interesting "beat stick" type character I could make. I've done the straight up Fighter plenty of times. Was thinking something like Monk or Ninja. Just both of those are pretty Dex based, were there feats to let you use Dex instead of Strength for hit/damage numbers?
I think Swordsage (very monk/ninja like fighter type) from Tome of Battle with the feats Weapon Finesse (Players Handbook, Dex to hit) and Shadow Blade (Tome of Battle, Dex to damage) might fit what you're looking for.

Here is a handbook on how to create/play Swordsages.
[3.5] Swordsage Handbook: This one'll walk the whole Way (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?259783-3-5-Swordsage-Handbook-This-one-ll-walk-the-whole-Way-WIP-PEACH)

[LordBlade]

Anything special needed to take Shadow Blade?

[LordBlade]

Oh, also the DM's insisting we only use 3.0/3.5 books. Nothing homebrew and he's not letting us use Dragon Magazine stuff (cause he says most of it is broken as hell). lol

[Kobold Esq]

Oh, also the DM's insisting we only use 3.0/3.5 books. Nothing homebrew and he's not letting us use Dragon Magazine stuff (cause he says most of it is broken as hell). lol

Assuming he is allowing anything printed in hardback by WotC then? So all the "Complete" books, any environment books, ToB, XPH, etc?

[LordBlade]

Yeah, all that stuff should be fine.

[LordBlade]

Never really used any of these stance/maneuver things. But I guess I'd have to in order to get that Shadow Blade thing to do damage based off Dex.

Shame there's not just one feat to let you switch the Str/Dex bonuses. :p

[Eldariel]

Trust me, if you want an interesting melee character, maneuvers and stances are PRECISELY the thing you want. They allow you to do so many things beyond "I hit them with my sword"; specifically, how you go about it. You can differentiate between the aggressive and the defensive stance, the reckless and the calculated attacks, the single combat and mass combat stances and maneuvers, etc.

The class is like Ninja or Monk except way more varied and fun to play. Just don't forget to pick Adaptive Style. The other good part is that there are no real bad choices with the class; Swordsage is strong no matter how you allocate your maneuvers.

And yeah, schools are:
Desert Wind: Various fire blasts and some movement abilities. Magical. Not very traditional melee, more of a blaster. Though certain abilities (Flame's Blessing is basically protection from fire, Flashing Sun is basically Flurry and Zephyr Dance is active dodging) are really solid.

Diamond Mind: Concentration-based saves, damage, etc. and a myriad of ways to act "in the moment" as extra actions. Very, very "mind over matter" Monk style.

Setting Sun: Throws, trips, tons of different counters. Combat maneuvers based on Dex, not Strength. This is very Monky too in the "size doesn't matter"; "use your opponent's strength against them" sense. Also fits for jiujitsu if you go with that plan.

Shadow Hand: Various Shadow-themed hiding and backstab sorts of maneuvers. Very strong ninja-like theme/fluff. Magical (in the same sense as the ninja and the monk classes though).

Stone Dragon: Moves for ignoring hardness, gaining damage resistance and breaking things. Also great for combat maneuver resistance. If you ever saw a monk break stones with their bare fists, that's Stone Dragon. Only works on ground though.

Tiger Claw: The two-weapon fighting school with feral links. As you probably know, kungfu originated as mimicry of animal fighting styles: this is basically it. If you only wield one weapon, you can use your unarmed strikes as the secondary. This school also features attacks that sacrifice your own defense for stronger offense.

[Gruftzwerg]

a couple of things:

1.
you don't have to go Dex with Monk/Ninja. Str builds are common for dmg builds here too.

2.
As others have suggested I would aim for a swordsage build with what you have in mind so far. Go for Shadow Blade feat and prc into Bloodclaw Master maybe.

3.
Champion of Corellon Larethian gets Dex to dmg for elven swords (thinblade, courtblade...) and specializes in heavy armor. Not the best fitting prc for monk/ninja, but could be an alternative if you are just looking primally for Dex to dmg builds.

[LordBlade]

I was looking at a way to get Dex for hit/damage so that I could make use of the Dex bonus for AC to be as dodgy as possible while still giving out huge damage.

I generally end up either making a Str character who does crazy damage and relies on heavy armor, or a Dex monkey who dodges everything but doesn't really hurt any more than any other character. I was wondering if there was a way to get the best of both worlds.

For the Sword Sage, that Shadow Blade thing said it's in effect when using a discipline that's tied to it. So I have to keep activating maneuvers and such to keep that option open? How exactly do the stances work, can I just be in a specific stance for the whole fight? Is that enough to use Shadow Blade?

[Eldariel]

You need to be in a Shadow Hand stance for it to activate. And yes, you can be in any given stance pretty much forever. Even out of combat for tracking via Scent or whatever. You can only maintain one stance at any given time though. Swift action to switch.

[Gruftzwerg]

Why not go for all 3 goodies (dex for dmg & ac + medium/heavy armor?

have a look at the mentioned Champion of Corellon Larethian. Gets Dex to dmg with elven weapons & higher Dex-bonus cap for armor. Further you movement speed isn't slowed in medium/heavy armor anymore. And last to mention a couple of free mount related feats.
I even have a build with it in my Driving Attack builds (the first build of em). It's a solid prc, which can build into a nice ubercharger or a heavy tank.


edit: your Shadow Blade question:
yes, you need to be in the shadow hand stance all the time and use a shadow hand weapon to profit from it. Imho CoCL has it easier, since he is only limited to his allowed weapons and don't need to be in a specific stance type.

[LordBlade]

Where is the Champion info? Nevermind, found it.

Thing is, it's a Prestige Class. I was kind of looking for something that I could work with from the start. But definitely seems interesting.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

If you're interested in Monk, Swordsage actually has a printed conversion called the Unarmed Swordsage generally considered superior to Monk.

[LordBlade]

Printed conversion?

[Eldariel]

Where is the Champion info? Nevermind, found it.

Thing is, it's a Prestige Class. I was kind of looking for something that I could work with from the start. But definitely seems interesting.

Frankly, Champion of Corellon is kind of a waste. Why wear heavy armor if you have enough Dex to use light armor and retain your full mobility instead? Plus it's just precision damage, which many things are immune to. I once played a Dervish predicated on using Skirmish and CoC Dex-damage and it works fine until you run into some immune enemy (even there, it's only good if you can TWF weapons you get Dex to damage on). I 100% rather recommend a Swordsage and either multiclass (the class multiclasses well) or just going all the way (it's also great 1-20). If you want a ninja/monk-style character, there's no better class in the whole of 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder (aside from perhaps Path of War).

Printed conversion as in there's an adaptation section that mentions how to make it unarmed; you give up armor proficiency (normally Swordsage gets light armor and Wis to AC) but get Monk unarmed strike progression. If you're interested in fighting unarmed, it's definitely a solid option.

[noce]

Do note that with swordsage you add DEX to damage, without replacing STR.
This means you add both stats to damage.

Since you start with 75 points you can, for example, start with 18 STR and 20 DEX as a DEX race, thus adding +9 dmg to main hand and + 7 to off-hand.

I was wondering though, 75 points allow a 18 18 18 18 16 9 distribution, so why don't you just start with 18 in each stat?

[Gruftzwerg]

Frankly, Champion of Corellon is kind of a waste. Why wear heavy armor if you have enough Dex to use light armor and retain your full mobility instead?

Sry, but I don't seem to get your logic.

CoCL gives you +3 to max Dex of armor. Add +2 from mithril and you get a total of +5 max Dex bonus on your armor.

A mithril full plate would have a max Dex cap of +6 (Dex:22)
and a mithril breastplate would have a max Dexx cap of +8 (Dex:26)

And my reason was, that the author likes to invest into AC by either heavy armor or high Dex, and this enables both. For a non caster imho a reliable way for some AC boost. Sure, it's not OP, but we are talking about non-casters. A simple druid20 will always outshine this.
And I guess the aim ain't high PO (otherwise we would be talking sole about ubercharger I guess) and for that the build is solid enough I guess.

[Eldariel]

(Non-unarmed) Swordsage with decent Wis and Celestial Armor will still hit far higher AC totals. +8 Dex, +5 non-magical AC and Wis to AC needs only 14 Wis to beat Mithral Fullplate with full CoCL and Dex. That's equal to +3 Mithral Fullplate of Nimbleness - and you can get way higher Wis with items (they give you other benefits too), let alone the counters that improve your AC. Far as AC goes, Swordsage is pretty much just the best martial class. And it serves extremely well as a Dex-based warrior to boot.

[Gruftzwerg]

(Non-unarmed) Swordsage with decent Wis and Celestial Armor will still hit far higher AC totals. +8 Dex, +5 non-magical AC and Wis to AC needs only 14 Wis to beat Mithral Fullplate with full CoCL and Dex. That's equal to +3 Mithral Fullplate of Nimbleness - and you can get way higher Wis with items (they give you other benefits too), let alone the counters that improve your AC. Far as AC goes, Swordsage is pretty much just the best martial class. And it serves extremely well as a Dex-based warrior to boot.

Still no reason to skip/ignore CoCL totally imho.
I mean, you can have both:
Mithril Breastplate works with CoCL & Swordsage.

[Eldariel]

Still no reason to skip/ignore CoCL totally imho.
I mean, you can have both:
Mithril Breastplate works with CoCL & Swordsage.

Mithril Breastplate measures up even worse than Fullplate; the combined Dex + AC of Mithral Breastplate with +3 Superior Defenses is +13, same as Celestial Armor (+8 Dex, +5 AC; exact same stats, actually). Up to the OP of course, but given the requirements, I find CoCL generally 2 levels deep; the remaining levels are too much investment for too little gain compared to taking more levels in any class with class features. And as the Dex damage is precision damage and the requirements are rather hefty, I usually would recommend against it; you can't make it work against enemies with Greater Fortifications, Undead/Elemental/Ooze/Plant/Construct-types or any other sort of crit immunity. And again, to make the most out of it you should dual wield which is hard since all the weapons on the list are one-handed except for Elven Lightblade which requires another feat.

It's just a huge feat/level investment for the amount you gain from it; unless you're picking up Combat Expertise, Dodge and Mounted Combat anyways, you'll have to ask yourself if it's worth investing 2 levels and 3 feats (2 since you get one Bonus Feat) for precision Dex to damage that doesn't work with the usual ways to bypass precision immunity (Penetrating Strike, Vine Strike/Grave Strike/Golem Strike, Weapon Augment Crystals). I find it beyond obvious that you don't want to go full 9 levels to pick up Superior Defenses; it's a marginal gain in a stat that's quickly losing importance and where it doesn't compete with the resourceless top options anyways. Swordsage with Celestial Armor gains pretty much the same AC as CoCL 9 with Mithral Breastplate (if we assume Celestial Armor can't be further enchanted, Nimbleness can give you a grand total of one point of AC over Swordsage who has those 9 levels to play with instead).


Having played a CoCL in practice, I've found the problems with precision damage quite real. It's worth considering but I'd say you probably get more out of e.g. more Swordsage or even Master of the Nine levels, or something of the sort. Trading up your maneuvers and picking up new ones is quite sweet, and Swordsage has some rather good class features too. Alternatively, dipping something like Invisible Fist Monk for some feats and the Invisibility ability could also be nice, though maneuvers can replicate that somewhat (but the maneuver option is a tad worse).

[Kobold Esq]

I was wondering though, 75 points allow a 18 18 18 18 16 9 distribution, so why don't you just start with 18 in each stat?

I assume it is not 75 point "point buy", but a non-diminishing returns system were all stats combined add up to 75, like 15 15 15 10 10 10, or 18 16 13 10 10 8, etc.

[LordBlade]

Necroing an old thread, but I was wondering if there was some way for non-sword sage (or any of those classes) to pick up stances and such.

Is there a way for a say a Warlock to pick up the Shadow Blade stuff?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

You'd need to spend two feats on Martial Study and Martial Stance to learn a shadow hand maneuver and a shadow hand stance, then get Shadow Blade. You're probably better off taking a level of Swordsage, two if you want the AC bonus. Also remember that if you take Swordsage at 1st level, you get x6 skill points instead of the standard x4 skill points of a 1st level character.

Keep in mind that Shadow Blade only works with the shadow hand discipline's weapons (dagger, sia, saingham, shortsword, spiked chain, unarmed strike).