One-man-army build help

[Matrota]

Trying to make a character with similar motives and prowess to Milza (https://youtu.be/D6oIUZ9XVHo?t=49) from Grancrest Senki, someone who will become the "fangs of the emperor" one day. Kinda of like a mix of a personal assassin, a secret militant force, and a one-man-army. We're starting at level 8. It's 3.5e with pathfinder content available at DM discretion. All official books and dragonmags. We can take 3 flaws, and use a forgiving dice rolling system for ability scores (typically end up with a sum total of 78-86 when scores are combined).

I was thinking of playing a drow and using level buyoff since they gain decent spell resistance, and if I intend to play a one-man-army type of character I need good defenses. Since the setting is a large war I expect to run into a lot of nonmagical mooks, so being able to use magic to obliterate enemies isn't necessary or what I wanna go for. I'm more thinking a melee/mundane character with high defenses and high damage. I realize how broad and nondescript that is. If it were possible, supreme cleave would be a great thing to attain, but I don't thing frenzied berserker is something I wanna pursue with this build. Dervish fits the aesthetic pretty well, but I don't know what I should do to lead up to it. Whirling frenzy barbarian would be nice for the extra attack and AC bonus, but this would probably be a dex-based build over strength so the strength buff would be wasted. What would y'all go for?

Our DM also permits a homebrew improved weapon finesse feat that allows you to add dex to damage instead of strength, but it's precision damage so it doesn't affect undead, constructs, plants, etc.

[Karl Aegis]

You want to look at a binder. Pact Augmentation lets you get DR enough to deal with common troops.

[SoraWolf7]

It's probably not as feasible, but he moved like a Dervish would and I'm seeing Cleave with the way he continued from one quick mook-cut-down to the next. He even had a scimitar instead of a longsword or rapier like those who were fighting him.

Edit: And now I see you mentioned Dervish already... it also kinda looks like he picked up Snap Kick in there, so maybe... I'd suggest maybe a Monk or a Swordsage to fit the motif of that.

[Metahuman1]

Honestly, I'd suggest a DMM: Persist cleric (Perhaps of a concept, say, loyalty to the crown or something.) with judicious use of spells and items, you can easily acquire a massive enough bonus to your attack roll to hit and damage that you can one shot anything, and have an insane reach. You can wade into combat and just wreck.


Spells can make you sneaky when you need to assassinate too.

[emeraldstreak]

High AC = still get hit 5% of the time

High DR = still get pinned


DMM:Persist cleric is a good idea. It's possible to do with "less", but only if you can identify&address build weaknesses.

[Zaq]

If you’re truly fighting nonmagical stuff, Incarnate with the Astral Vambraces can get you rather more DR/Magic early on than is easy to get from other sources, and thanks to the flexible nature of soulmelds, you can just shape something else if you end up scaling past the point where the Vambraces are useful. That’ll mostly just be good for defense, though; Incarnates are cool and have good tricks but get very little army-killing power.

Crusaders are, of course, about as resilient as you get without wreathing oneself in abjurations.

[TalonOfAnathrax]

Warlock is good for a one-man army/assassin. You can make yourself incredibly stealthy, hard to target (Flyby Attack and Hide in Plain Sight) and have endless AoE attacks with high damage, especially if you can take some Dragonfire Adept invocations.

[ExLibrisMortis]

[...] Incarnate with the Astral Vambraces [...]

Crusaders [...]
A build I bring up a lot that uses both of these classes. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21292714&postcount=5)

[Andor13]

Well, he didn't really seem that powerful in the clip, more like a high level character vs a bunch of mooks who don't know they are in a level based system. He seemed like a dex based warrior type whose primary deal was being faster than the guys he was fighting.

Maybe you can play a Warblade, and ask your GM if you can bring in the Riven Hourglass (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/disciplines-and-maneuvers/riven-hourglass-maneuvers/) school from Pathfinder, which is very powerful, but excellent for simulating ludicrous speed.