Bes factotum Build

[Costantine10]

What is the best factotum build without using bard/Sublime Chord or Iaijutsu Focus? I can't think anything, maybe factotum x + ardent 2 with Practiced Manifester and Freedom mantle for having the Hustle power thath with cunning surge it's like having 2 standard actions and 2 move actions.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

UMD is still quite good. Dip two levels of Chameleon for the floating feat, it can be an item creation feat when you need to make wands/staffs.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Factotums are hard to make work properly. At low levels, you can sort of get away with just a decent martial weapon and BAB; by level ~10ish, their casting is catching up enough that you can throw some good punches that way, but even then you'll lack endurance, and there are a whole lot of crappy levels in between. The best thing I came up with was dropping three levels on Swashbuckler for Weapon Finesse and Int to damage, grabbing a Feycraft greatsword, and using Power Attack/Leap Attack to convert "+Int attack" into "+3*Int damage." Other than that, abuse downtime spells as much as you can.

[Cosi]

Honestly, it's just not a very good class. There's nothing they do terribly well, and while you can take lots of actions, they aren't all that good. You'd likely be better served by looking for some other way of realizing whatever your character concept is.

[Eldariel]

You can make for a pretty reasonable tripping build using Brains over Brawn combined with the feats but of course, the best Factotum wants to be taking just Font of Inspiration for the super Standard Action flurry on level 8. Manyshot goes great with Cunning Surge (and also Int-bonuses to a single attack), and many of the spells do support gishing it up a bit though so that's not a terrible path to go down. Obviously anything involving skills is in your turf; UMD, Sleight of Hand and Diplomacy are some of the easier ones to break but a lot of them do get real good with the class. Thanks to Brains over Brawn and the class level to check bonus, you're pretty innately good at all physical skills for what little good that does to you. Of course, the spells are a big one and using long duration buffs is often a good way to make them count for more. Alter Self is an example of a great buff for a lower level Factotum.

Frankly, it's more about making the most out of what they have than building them in any specific way. They have a lot of rather good stuff but they lack endurance so you want to maximize the impact of each inspiration point used, each spell cast, etc. And yeah, even at worst they're UMD monkeys. Also Cunning Strike can arguably stack with itself for rather potent alpha strike damage, which of course leaves you depleted for the rest of the fight (not a convenient way to plan your fight but at least you can True Strike before you go for it). Honestly, Iaijutsu Focus is the easiest way to get low investment high effect damage on them; without that I'd look elsewhere. Though being able to double up on Str and Int for combat maneuvers does make Factotum uniquely suited to take advantage of those (particularly the one that doesn't care about BAB, Trip).

[DEMON]

grabbing a Feycraft greatsword, and using Power Attack/Leap Attack to convert "+Int attack" into "+3*Int damage."

A feycraft template can only be applied to light and one-handed melee weapons and ranged weapons.
You could go with a feycraft longsword and 2-hand it, though.

[Anthrowhale]

A Human Factotum 8/Fighter 4/Psychic Warrior 8 has BAB+16 and can take Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, and Manyshot as fighter bonus feats then Psionic Shot, Fell Shot, and Psionic Meditation as Psychic Warrior bonus feats. With the human bonus feat, you have 8 feats left for Font of Inspiration, implying 41 (= 5(factotum 8)+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8) inspiration points which implies 13 extra standard actions per encounter.

Suppose you start combat psionically focused with Hank's energy bow and use power shot Fell Shot Manyshot. Then, you have 4 arrows targeting touch AC (typically 10ish), each doing ~26 damage with 95% probability, implying expected 100 damage per manyshot. Then you can use 3 inspiration points to psionically focus and 3 more to Fell Shot Power Shot Manyshot again, repeating this process 6 times doing a total of ~700 damage at the beginning of combat, potentially in the surprise round. That's enough to be respectable at level 20.

[Cosi]

A Human Factotum 8/Fighter 4/Psychic Warrior 8 has BAB+16 and can take Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, and Manyshot as fighter bonus feats then Psionic Shot, Fell Shot, and Psionic Meditation as Psychic Warrior bonus feats. With the human bonus feat, you have 8 feats left for Font of Inspiration, implying 41 (= 5(factotum 8)+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8) inspiration points which implies 13 extra standard actions per encounter.

That's not how Font of Inspiration works. It scales linearly, not triangularly.

Also, if your plan is to take four Fighter levels, it is a bad plan and you should pick a different plan.

[ViperMagnum357]

That's not how Font of Inspiration works. It scales linearly, not triangularly.

Also, if your plan is to take four Fighter levels, it is a bad plan and you should pick a different plan.
Anthrowhale is right; Font of Inspiration provides a number of Inspiration points equal to 1 + the previous number of times you took the feat-if you took nothing else, it gets ridiculous.

[Cosi]

Anthrowhale is right; Font of Inspiration provides a number of Inspiration points equal to 1 + the previous number of times you took the feat-if you took nothing else, it gets ridiculous.

No, it doesn't. It very obviously doesn't do that, and people would realize that if they actually read what the feat says instead of parroting what the rest of the CharOp community thinks it says blindly. The relevant text:


Special: You can take this multiple times. Each time you take this feat after the first time, the number of inspiration points you gain increases by 1 (for example, you gain 2 inspiration points if you take the feat a second time). The maximum number of times you can take this feat is equal to your Intelligence modifier.

You see how it says "you gain two inspiration points if you take the feat a second time"? If you gained three (as Anthrowhale claims you do), it would say you gained three inspiration points. Because for a feat to do something, it has to say it does that thing. And Font of Inspiration very explicitly doesn't say that it does the thing you believe it does.

Note that, no, this is not a additive gain, because the text for taking it once:


Benefits: When you take this feat for the first time, you gain 1 inspiration point.

Uses the exact same language to describe the one inspiration point you get for taking it one time as the special section does for the two inspiration points you get for taking it a second time. That is the total number. Any other reading of the feat is just not founded in the actual text. It is founded in the CharOp groupthink of late-period 3.5 optimization, but that is not the same as the rules.

Also, if you're going to make stupid arguments for getting lots of inspiration points, there's no reason to involve Font of Inspiration at all. The class is already broken and just doesn't put a expiration timer or limit on the inspiration points you get for starting encounters. So just buy a bag of rats and bludgeon them periodically until you have enough inspiration to blitz everyone you ever fight.

[Anthrowhale]

Note that, no, this is not a additive gain, because the text for taking it once:

I'm not convinced. The first feat says:
you gain 1 inspiration point. and the second feat says:
you gain 2 inspiration points. In normal english, two gains are additive. If I gain a dollar from you and gain 2 dollars from ViperMagnum357 then I have 3 dollars, not 2.

The rat bludgeoning plan seems obviously against RAI.

W.r.t. fighter 4, maybe come up with a better plan? The ability to action nova every encounter is the unique power of Factotum. There may be some other way to take advantage of it. Spells clearly seem like a fail since you run out to quickly.

[Cosi]

In normal english, two gains are additive. If I gain a dollar from you and gain 2 dollars from ViperMagnum357 then I have 3 dollars, not 2.

Setting aside the profoundly bizarre choice to make an analogy that compares gaining something from the same source twice to gaining things from different source, that is not at all what is being said. The effect of taking the feat once is gaining one inspiration point. The effect of taking it a second time is gaining two inspiration points. Not "two additional inspiration points". If you have gained a dollar by doing X, and then gained two dollars when you have done X twice, the natural interpretation is very obviously that you gained a total of two dollars.

Also, even if you believed the effect was two inspiration points rather than one, the obvious assumption would be that it overlapped, rather than stacked.


The rat bludgeoning plan seems obviously against RAI.

Well, yes. The Factotum is an underpowered class with abilities that are not very good. So you have to do something that is on some level stupid with it to get an effective character out of it. That said, doing something that is not RAI is clearly better than doing something that is not RAW, so it's not like Font of Inspiration is better.


W.r.t. fighter 4, maybe come up with a better plan? The ability to action nova every encounter is the unique power of Factotum. There may be some other way to take advantage of it. Spells clearly seem like a fail since you run out to quickly.

Don't play a Factotum. Their identity is entirely mechanical, so there's no character concept to be served by being one. If you really want to power-game the abilities you do get, your options are the bag of rats or trying to convince your GM that the capstone lets you do stupid nonsense that is sufficiently good to satisfy you.

[Anthrowhale]

Setting aside the profoundly bizarre choice to make an analogy that compares gaining something from the same source twice to gaining things from different source, that is not at all what is being said. The effect of taking the feat once is gaining one inspiration point. The effect of taking it a second time is gaining two inspiration points. Not "two additional inspiration points". If you have gained a dollar by doing X, and then gained two dollars when you have done X twice, the natural interpretation is very obviously that you gained a total of two dollars.

Also, even if you believed the effect was two inspiration points rather than one, the obvious assumption would be that it overlapped, rather than stacked.
As far as I know, stacking rules only apply to checks or rolls. Do you have any citation to the contrary.

Regardless, the damage output can be entirely adequate. Even with FoI linear, you still get 4 bonus standard actions in a round. After throwing in a Belt of Battle you can squeeze out 4 Fell Shot Manyshot Power Shot attacks in the first round of combat (or 3 in a surprise round). With further investment in WBL, the damage output per arrow can be raised to about 40 (=7 base+16 power shot+5 GMW + 13 Strength) for an average of about 160 per Manyshot implying 640 expected damage. 640 damage is well into overkill range.


Well, yes. The Factotum is an underpowered class with abilities that are not very good. So you have to do something that is on some level stupid with it to get an effective character out of it. That said, doing something that is not RAI is clearly better than doing something that is not RAW, so it's not like Font of Inspiration is better.

How about we violate neither RAI nor RAW?

A Factotum is clearly not as powerful as the big spellcasters, but it seems adequate to exceed game expectations.

[DEMON]

It very obviously doesn't do that, and people would realize that if they actually read what the feat says instead of parroting what the rest of the CharOp community thinks it says blindly.

Come on man. That's a bit arrogant.

If the feat said "You can take this feat multiple times. Its effect stacks." or "You can take this feat multiple times. Each time you do, you get 1 more inspiration point.", that would be blatantly obvious. This is questionable at best.

While I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that, given their track record, it is possible that WotC did choose the needlessly convoluted way to state the above, it very much isn't the only interpretation, that needs to be defended with the passion of a burning sun. Poorly written as it may be.


That said, doing something that is not RAI is clearly better than doing something that is not RAW, so it's not like Font of Inspiration is better.

In a general discussion, this is true. After all, RAW's all we got to work with in here, most of the time.

But in a real game, it depends. For me, abusing a poorly written gameplay mechanic, thus sacrificing any semblance of immersion and reason, is less preferable to sensible ruling and adjustment of some clearly broken RAW. And the rat abuse to hoard inspiration points, is beyond silly :smallsmile: YMMV.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Honestly, it's just not a very good class. There's nothing they do terribly well, and while you can take lots of actions, they aren't all that good. You'd likely be better served by looking for some other way of realizing whatever your character concept is.

Thank you. No idea why it's so overrated, just because of the standard action surges. It has nothing particularly amazing to do with them, so...

Anyway, I find Factotum is a great dip. Able Learner feat + it = all skills are 1 rank per skill point. And my favorite class feature isn't cunning surge....it's the much earlier Brains Over Brawn. Int to all str and dex checks and skills all day every day is great if you have a high point buy or amazing rolls to do a MAD build.

I did a Changeling Martial (ie, "feat") Rogue 4 / Factotum 3 / Warshaper 4 build once and it was really fun. Used reach weapons and tripping, plus the usual roguish skills (gotta love that 1st level changeling rogue sub. level), Imperious Command w/ Intimidating Strike and Never Outnumbered skill trick....just a great martial controller type build. Required a lot of good stats, admittedly...Wis was the only dump stat.
Game ended before I could get higher level, but probably would gone back to Rogue or gone into a ToB class afterwards, I guess...

[Goaty14]

A Human Factotum 8/Fighter 4/Psychic Warrior 8

Why not psychic warrior 12 or 10? IIRC, they get fighter bonus feat progression too, so you're not losing anything.

[DEMON]

Why not psychic warrior 12 or 10? IIRC, they get fighter bonus feat progression too, so you're not losing anything.

He would get less feats. And you remember wrong. They get slower progression and don't count for Fighter only feats, FWIW. Also BAB.