Piggy Knowles
2018-05-20, 12:47 PM
INTRODUCTION
With more than a decade and a half of toying around with 3.5, I’ve accumulated a lot of spare builds and ideas. While I don’t have an active game going right now, I still like to pop open my builds folder and try to refine things. Recently I decided to make a dedicated effort to flesh out some of these builds into full write-ups, and reached out to some friends in the CO community who might be interested in doing the same. In the spirit of Tempest Stormwind’s Weekly Optimization Showcase (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?), I thought I’d showcase the end results here.
The goal is (usually) not to show off any fancy new TO trick, but to showcase effective, playable builds and spur discussion. While each of us has a different build philosophy, in general the intent is to create something that can be played in most groups from level 1 to level 20. Again, the goal is discussion, so feel free to discuss the build, talk about other options, make suggestions or tear it all to shreds. Also, feel free to use anything showcased here in any of your campaigns—and let us know how they work out if you do!
Right now the group consists of myself, Darrin, Akal Saris and Venger, with a couple of other folks hopefully on their way. Typically one of us writes up the build concept and possibly a stub, the others share feedback on Discord or in some of the shared documents we have, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product. I’ll list the build’s main author whenever I showcase a particular build.
Anyhow, to start things off, here’s one of mine: the Buffsader.
http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/37200000/-John-Hannibal-Smith-the-a-team-37241344-350-407.jpg
Buffsader
I love it when a plan comes together…
BACKGROUND
I’m sure we’ve all seen bardic builds using Words of Creation and Dragonfire Inspiration to dish out tons of extra damage. That’s fine and dandy, but what if we wanted something a little more… flexible? Raw damage is great, but sometimes encounters need a bit more finesse. And sometimes you want a character that is comfortable fighting on the frontlines alongside his team, not standing in the background singing.
Crusader is a great start; a White Raven-focused crusader can provide some very useful party support without sacrificing any melee potential. But how can we crank up the party support to 11? How can we provide magical buffs to our party without wasting half the combat casting support spells or dedicating the whole build to persistomancy cheese? Heroes of Battle had a handy answer: the war weaver, a support-focused caster prestige class that allows you to weave magical tapestries that let you boost your entire party in a single action.
The goal here was to create the ultimate combat leader: smart, charismatic, able to turn his entire team into a tactical strikeforce on par with the A-Team. I wanted someone who could fight effectively alongside his team while still providing tailor-made buffs and boosts to his whole party. The end result is a gishy character with +16 BAB, 8th-level maneuvers and stances (hello, Immortal Fortitude) and 5th-level spells, plus some serious party buffing abilities that would put most bards to shame. I don’t usually like gishes unless starting at a high level, since they usually have some really awkward points in their careers, but this build should be playable from 1-20 without any real clunkiness.
THE BASICS
Race: Human. The bonus feat is the draw here, though you can shave a feat off the build if magical locations are allowed (see level one notes), in which case options like gold dwarf and dragonborn become decent alternatives. That said, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; humans are almost ways a top notch choice for a reason.
Build Stub: Crusader 8/Suel Arcanamach 2/Jade Phoenix Mage 5/War Weaver 5
Alignment: This build was written with a lawful neutral alignment in mind, but you can adjust it to fit just about any non-evil choice. Just make sure to modify the maneuver and stance you pick at level 11 and 18 accordingly, and swap out the imp for a familiar with a more compatible alignment.
Build Breakdown
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers/Spells
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Crusader 1
Iron Will, Extra Granted Maneuver
Furious counterstrike, steely resolve 5
Crusader’s strike, charging minotaur, stone bones, douse the flames, leading the attack, martial spirit (s)
This is a fairly standard crusader open, focusing on party support. Iron Will isn’t the most exciting feat but it’s required, and Will saves are important. That said, if you’ll have access to magical locations in your campaign, take Power Attack instead and don’t look back; a few days in the Otyugh Hole will give you what you need.
2nd
Crusader 2
Indomitable soul
Leading the charge (s)
In a melee heavy party, this is the stance I recommend starting every encounter in. The damage boost scales well and it’s a static bonus, meaning that it should be multiplied by effects like Valorous.
3rd
Crusader 3
Keeper of Forbidden Lore
Zealous surge
Mountain hammer
Keeper of Forbidden Lore is a neat little feat from Fiendish Codex with a lot of flavor buried in it. Mechanically it gives you access to spellcraft to help you meet qualifications down the road, but it also aligns nicely with the flavor of the suel arcanamach’s secret knowledge and the unique techniques you’ll pick up down the road as a war weaver and a jade phoenix mage.
4th
Crusader 4
Steely resolve 10
Douse the flames -> tactical strike
Fairly straightforward upgrade, nothing to see here.
5th
Crusader 5
White raven tactics
WRT is the gold standard for party buffing via action and initiative manipulation; used properly, you can functionally give someone an extra turn at the low low cost of a swift action. Get it, love it, never trade it.
6th
Crusader 6
Combat Casting
Smite 1/day
Crusader’s strike -> revitalizing strike
You’re about to take two feats that will basically be set on fire in order to meet qualifications. Here’s the first of them: Combat Casting, a big huge trap that is usually worse than just taking Skill Focus (and we all know how great Skill Focus is). Luckily the crusader chassis is robust enough that all you really need is Extra Granted Maneuver; even throwing away several feats in the early game, you should stay competitive thanks to your maneuvers and class features.
7th
Suel Arcanamach 1
Ignore spell failure 5%, tenacious spells
Nerveskitter
Suel arcanamach is a nice gishy class that will give you access to all the buffs you need as a spontaneous, Charisma-based caster. That’s just perfect for a crusader. Mostly you’ll focus on utility buffs that let you and your party do interesting things rather than straight damage boosts, but for now we’ll start with the all-around great nerveskitter. Getting a sizable boost to your initiative every encounter is pretty hard to beat, especially when you add in WRT and eventually war weaver.
8th
Suel Arcanamach 2
Dispelling strike 1/day
Protection from evil, snake’s swiftness
For my money protection from evil is the best defensive buff in the game. Deflection bonus to AC and resistance bonus to saves against the widest class of creatures in the monster manual is nice, but the real money is in the non-aligned effects: complete protection from possession and mental control. It’s not mind blank, but for a first level spell it’s hard to beat. Snake’s swiftness fits in nicely with your general MO of action-granting. In general it’s a neat option to have but not great (trading a standard action casting time for a single attack by one of your allies is situationally useful but generally going to be worse than just using a strike), but it gets a lot better soon...
9th
Jade Phoenix Mage 1
Enlarge Spell
Arcane wrath, rite of waking
Divine surge
And we’ve got another feat to set on fire. It’s alright, I promise this is the last of them. Jade Phoenix Mage will keep your BAB and IL up while continuing to progress your casting and maneuvers, and again fits surprisingly well flavor-wise with the rest of the build. Divine surge is easily the most underleveled strikes in the entirety of ToB; grab it here and don’t look back.
10th
Jade Phoenix Mage 2
Mystic phoenix stance
Resist energy
Time to grab another handy defensive buff. Resist energy is situationally useful… but when you need it, you really need it. The fact that you’ll soon be able to apply it to your whole party in one go makes it significantly better.
11th
Jade Phoenix Mage 3
Law bearer / Fly
Let the bards focus on mindlessly pumping allies with boring +1s. Your buffing is more tactical in nature, and nothing provides more tactical maneuvering than flight. You also grab another devoted spirit maneuver; pick the one that fits your alignment. I’ve always envisioned this build as a lawful crusader fighting hard against the chaotic roots of her forbidden knowledge, so I went with law bearer.
12th
War Weaver 1
Obtain Familiar
Eldritch tapestry
And now we begin dialing things up to 11. Eldritch tapestry comes online immediately, allowing you to weave your party together so that single spells affect them all. You’re capped at your war weaver level for the spell here, but even at first level that still means things like providing your whole party a +5 to initiative as an immediate action. Picking up a familiar gives you even more actions to play with, and also acts as a way to deliver touch spells to your allies who are a bit outside of reach. Plus, since familiars use your BAB, this will be a capable extra combatant once polymorph comes online.
13th
War Weaver 2
Quiescent weaving 1
Enlarge person, haste
You can now cast second level spells through your tapestry. Remember how I said that snake’s swiftness was a neat tactical option but often not worth the action cost? Well, scratch all that; now for the cost of a single action, you’re providing an extra attack to your entire party.
Quiescent weaving is another fantastic ability. This allows you to pre-cast spells into your tapestry and release them later as a move action. You’ll eventually be able to store up to four spells this way, but even with just one, that’s fantastic action economy.
On the buff side of things, you pick up two classic buffs: enlarge person and haste. Not too much to say about them, except that they are two incredibly useful buffs. (Note that enlarge person isn’t labelled harmless, so you can’t cast it through your tapestry; that’s not actually a huge problem, though, as it’s not necessarily something you want to apply to the whole party anyhow.)
14th
War Weaver 3
Queiscent weaving 2
Blur, polymorph
Another defensive buff to cast through your tapestry comes online here, as well as one of the most powerful and versatile buffs in the game: polymorph. You also gain the ability to cast third level spells through your tapestry now, and can cast two at once. Fly and blur is a great choice: you can now open your typical combat with an immediate action nerveskitter and release your quiescent weaving as a move action, giving your whole party +5 to initiative, flight and a decent miss chance. With your standard action, feel free to open up with haste for even more combat-buffing goodness, or soften your enemies with a powerful strike.
15th
War Weaver 4
Practiced Spellcaster
Quiescent weaving 3
Improved invisibility
Practiced spellcaster shores up suel arcanamach’s mediocre caster level nicely, giving much better duration to your buffs and protecting you from random dispels. Improved invisibility comes online as another bit of fantastic utility. You also get the ability to cast fourth-level spells through your tapestry, and add on an additional spell to your weave. How about opening up combat by spending a move action to turn your whole party into flying, invisible mountain trolls?
16th
War Weaver 5
Enlarged tapestry, quiescent weaving 4
Benign transposition, greater mighty wallop, greater blink
And now we max out our war weaver abilities, giving us fifth-level spells and a whopping four spells at once via quiescient weaving. Greater blink is a great defensive choice, giving a huge miss and spell failure chance, reduced damage from area attacks and the ability to phase through solid walls, and should be added to the top of any list of buffs. You also start picking up some general utility spells here in benign transposition (incredible repositioning utility for the level) and the very nice buff spell greater mighty wallop.
17th
Jade Phoenix Mage 4
Empowering strike
Heroics, investiture of the orthon
With war weaver concluded we pop back into JPM for a couple of levels. Investiture of the orthon is a cool spell that ties in nicely with your forbidden lore theme; it always has seemed a bit overly pricey as a fifth-level spell, but by casting it through your tapestry, it can end up being quite nice.
Heroics is a solid spell in general but worth its weight in gold for an initiator, as you can use it to cherry-pick high level maneuvers and stances. Its only drawbacks are that its duration isn't quite where it needs to be for an all day buff (though with a rod of extend it still does well), and that it can't be cast through your tapestry. Heart of air is another option here, giving you a boost to speed, an "oh crap" option in case you lose your flight and providing nice synergy with heart of earth.
18th
Jade Phoenix Mage 5
Improved Familiar
Castigating strike, aura of perfect order (s) / Heart of earth
Trading out your raven for an imp is a great upgrade for you, primarily thanks to commune. Use your imp’s commune ability to get an idea of what to expect for the adventuring day to come, and tailor your buffstacks accordingly. You can also go with Planar Familiar here for a lantern archon, which loses out on the excellent commune but gains a whole host of party buffing abilities. Heart of earth is a nice all day buff, providing you with a decent chunk of temporary HP and the ability to active stoneskin on command. It's even better if you took heart of air instead of heroics last level, as the two spells combine to also provide fortification.
You also grab the excellent aura of perfect order here; who needs to roll the dice and leave things up to chance when you can just take 11?
19th
Crusader 7
White raven hammer
Popping back into crusader for the last two levels gives some nice timing as far as maneuvers and stances go. White raven hammer will almost never go amiss: no-save stunning as an attack rider is huge, especially against big solo foes.
20th
Crusader 8
Steely resolve 15
Immortal fortitude (s), stone bones -> greater divine surge
One advantage to your delayed progression is that you actually manage to get your hands on 8th-level stances without shenanigans. Take immortal fortitude and never look back.
MANEUVERS KNOWN:
1- Crusader’s strike, charging minotaur, stone bones, douse the flames, leading the attack
2- Mountain hammer, tactical strike
3- White raven tactics, revitalizing strike
4- Divine surge
5- Law bearer
7- Castigating strike
8- White raven hammer, greater divine surge
STANCES KNOWN:
Martial spirit, leading the charge, aura of perfect order, immortal fortitude
SPELLS KNOWN:
1- Nerveskitter, protection from evil, enlarge person, benign transposition
2- Snake’s swiftness, resist energy, blur, heroics
3- Fly, haste, greater mighty wallop
4- Polymorph, improved invisibility, heart of earth
5- Greater blink, investiture of the orthon
Keeper of the Forbidden Lore requires an Int of 13, and you will need at minimum a Charisma of 15 to cast your highest level spells. You don’t have to worry about spell DCs, so you don’t actually need to keep Charisma much higher than that, but it does drive bonus spells and abilities like indomitable soul and smite, so going up as high as 20 certainly wouldn’t go amiss. Assuming standard items are readily available and you’re not operating with any funky WBL I recommend hitting 16 naturally; by the time getting to 20 is relevant, the 16k it costs for a +4 item should be a drop in the bucket.
Other than that, Strength and Constitution are good priorities for any crusader. I personally like focusing on Con in particular; Strength is nice but the most important thing is that you keep on ticking. Con can also be funneled into greater divine surge as a nice damage engine or used with your immortal fortitude stance to keep you standing long after the rest of the world would have dropped.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAY:
28-point buy: Str 13/Dex 10/Con 14/Int 13/Wis 10/Cha 15
32-point buy: Str 13/Dex 10/Con 16/Int 13/Wis 10/Cha 15
--> Boost Strength at level 4, Cha at level 8 and Con at all other levels
At a minimum, the build has the following skill requirements:
Concentration 9 ranks, jump 4 ranks, spellcraft 5 ranks, tumble 4 ranks, know (arcana) 6 ranks, know (nature) 2 ranks, know (religion) 2 ranks, craft (weaving) 6 ranks
This should be easily achievable with an Int of 13. Beyond that, you have a fair bit of flexibility. Don’t bother investing in craft (weaving) beyond the 6 ranks unless you really feel like it; you only ever need to hit a DC 15 and you can explicitly take 10 on the check. Concentration and spellcraft are always great options to keep high, as are your knowledge skills, which will help you identify the ideal buffs to prepare in a given encounter. Crusader also has some solid social skills and you should have a hefty Charisma focus, so feel free to invest in these if you have skill points to spare.
The biggest difference between this build and your typical crusader is the armor. With only 5% ASF ignored, you’ll want to make sure you can always cast spells. Without getting too cheesy, the twilight enhancement on top of mithril armor and the 5% ACF reduction you get from suel arcanamach means you can wear armor that normally carries a 25% ACF, which should firmly put you within range of most medium armors.
For a weapon, you’ll want something bludgeoning to make the most out of greater mighty wallop. I’m personally partial to flails (higher than usual crit rate for bludgeoning weapons, plus you can use them to disarm or trip in a pinch), though hammers and mauls are always a classic.
BUILD SUMMARY
How do we hold up?
A typical 20th-level bard might spend their standard action at the beginning of combat to give out a +4 to attack and damage via inspire courage. An optimized IC-focused bard with all the relevant goodies is probably giving out closer to +14, with the option of instead providing +14d6 fire damage (and possibly even both at the cost of a second standard action). That’s pretty good, though hardly exciting.
You, on the other hand, can start each encounter providing all of your allies +5 to their initiative, flight, improved invisibility, greater blink and polymorph… while still retaining your standard action to cast an additional spell or use a maneuver. With a little bit of prep you can tailor your buffstacks for the encounters you expect to face. You’ve also got a myriad of other party support options, whether it’s manipulating turn order via white raven tactics to give your party extra turns, providing everyone on your team an extra attack via snake’s swiftness cast through your tapestry or locking down foes with white raven hammer.
The flexibility in particular is notable; having the utility to apply things like resist energy, protection from evil or investiture of the orthon to your whole party is a great way to completely turn the tide of relevant encounters.
On top of all this you are a more than passable melee brute: your damage won’t stand up to an ubercharger but with +16 BAB, 8th-level maneuvers and some incredible defensive abilities thanks to solid defensive buffs augmenting the already-excellent crusader goodies such as immortal fortitude, you more than stand your own. Even without Power Attack, you’re certainly no slouch damage-wise; your offensive maneuvers scale decently, greater mighty wallop is a great damage boost and you have some high-damage options like greater divine surge to end encounters when necessary.
VARIANTS
As referenced above, access to the otyugh hole frees up a feat. There are a few good options here: Power Attack is the obvious choice, but there are also some nice goodies like Minor Shapeshift, Arcane Strike or various metamagic feats as well. Improved Familiar is also non-essential (thanks to the wonders of polymorph and the way your familiar shares your BAB, it will be more than capable of fighting alongside you even if you stick with a raven), so it’s another place where there is room for adjustment.
For a slightly different direction, you could attempt to combine this with bardic music to really become a buffing master. A Song of the White Raven crusader with some bard levels and sublime chord into war weaver could definitely have some potential. The problem is, you start running into the law of diminishing returns: for all that you put into the build, the final product just isn’t that much more useful. You wind up with fewer useful low level spells (which are the meat and potatoes of any war weaver), your bardic music is nice but limited compared to a straight bardsader, and you’ll be constantly competing for actions. It also means a less crusader-y crusader. Still, the allure of picking up some bardic music and perhaps even 9th-level spells is strong, and you can tie in some other neat tricks. (In fact, an earlier draft of the build was a bardic war weaver with healing hymn for supercharged party healing.)
Similarly, for somewhat more flexible casting the build can be reworked as a sorcerer. Slower spell progression means that the build doesn't operate as smoothly in the mid levels, but the pay-off in expanded spell list and lower feat requirements is definitely worth consideration. Both ExLibrisMortis and WhamBamSam have brought up ways to make a sorcerous version work in the thread.
***
So there you have it! I hope you enjoy. Commentary, suggestions and play experience are all welcome, as are ideas for future showcases or ways to improve the format.
With more than a decade and a half of toying around with 3.5, I’ve accumulated a lot of spare builds and ideas. While I don’t have an active game going right now, I still like to pop open my builds folder and try to refine things. Recently I decided to make a dedicated effort to flesh out some of these builds into full write-ups, and reached out to some friends in the CO community who might be interested in doing the same. In the spirit of Tempest Stormwind’s Weekly Optimization Showcase (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?), I thought I’d showcase the end results here.
The goal is (usually) not to show off any fancy new TO trick, but to showcase effective, playable builds and spur discussion. While each of us has a different build philosophy, in general the intent is to create something that can be played in most groups from level 1 to level 20. Again, the goal is discussion, so feel free to discuss the build, talk about other options, make suggestions or tear it all to shreds. Also, feel free to use anything showcased here in any of your campaigns—and let us know how they work out if you do!
Right now the group consists of myself, Darrin, Akal Saris and Venger, with a couple of other folks hopefully on their way. Typically one of us writes up the build concept and possibly a stub, the others share feedback on Discord or in some of the shared documents we have, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product. I’ll list the build’s main author whenever I showcase a particular build.
Anyhow, to start things off, here’s one of mine: the Buffsader.
http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/37200000/-John-Hannibal-Smith-the-a-team-37241344-350-407.jpg
Buffsader
I love it when a plan comes together…
BACKGROUND
I’m sure we’ve all seen bardic builds using Words of Creation and Dragonfire Inspiration to dish out tons of extra damage. That’s fine and dandy, but what if we wanted something a little more… flexible? Raw damage is great, but sometimes encounters need a bit more finesse. And sometimes you want a character that is comfortable fighting on the frontlines alongside his team, not standing in the background singing.
Crusader is a great start; a White Raven-focused crusader can provide some very useful party support without sacrificing any melee potential. But how can we crank up the party support to 11? How can we provide magical buffs to our party without wasting half the combat casting support spells or dedicating the whole build to persistomancy cheese? Heroes of Battle had a handy answer: the war weaver, a support-focused caster prestige class that allows you to weave magical tapestries that let you boost your entire party in a single action.
The goal here was to create the ultimate combat leader: smart, charismatic, able to turn his entire team into a tactical strikeforce on par with the A-Team. I wanted someone who could fight effectively alongside his team while still providing tailor-made buffs and boosts to his whole party. The end result is a gishy character with +16 BAB, 8th-level maneuvers and stances (hello, Immortal Fortitude) and 5th-level spells, plus some serious party buffing abilities that would put most bards to shame. I don’t usually like gishes unless starting at a high level, since they usually have some really awkward points in their careers, but this build should be playable from 1-20 without any real clunkiness.
THE BASICS
Race: Human. The bonus feat is the draw here, though you can shave a feat off the build if magical locations are allowed (see level one notes), in which case options like gold dwarf and dragonborn become decent alternatives. That said, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; humans are almost ways a top notch choice for a reason.
Build Stub: Crusader 8/Suel Arcanamach 2/Jade Phoenix Mage 5/War Weaver 5
Alignment: This build was written with a lawful neutral alignment in mind, but you can adjust it to fit just about any non-evil choice. Just make sure to modify the maneuver and stance you pick at level 11 and 18 accordingly, and swap out the imp for a familiar with a more compatible alignment.
Build Breakdown
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers/Spells
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Crusader 1
Iron Will, Extra Granted Maneuver
Furious counterstrike, steely resolve 5
Crusader’s strike, charging minotaur, stone bones, douse the flames, leading the attack, martial spirit (s)
This is a fairly standard crusader open, focusing on party support. Iron Will isn’t the most exciting feat but it’s required, and Will saves are important. That said, if you’ll have access to magical locations in your campaign, take Power Attack instead and don’t look back; a few days in the Otyugh Hole will give you what you need.
2nd
Crusader 2
Indomitable soul
Leading the charge (s)
In a melee heavy party, this is the stance I recommend starting every encounter in. The damage boost scales well and it’s a static bonus, meaning that it should be multiplied by effects like Valorous.
3rd
Crusader 3
Keeper of Forbidden Lore
Zealous surge
Mountain hammer
Keeper of Forbidden Lore is a neat little feat from Fiendish Codex with a lot of flavor buried in it. Mechanically it gives you access to spellcraft to help you meet qualifications down the road, but it also aligns nicely with the flavor of the suel arcanamach’s secret knowledge and the unique techniques you’ll pick up down the road as a war weaver and a jade phoenix mage.
4th
Crusader 4
Steely resolve 10
Douse the flames -> tactical strike
Fairly straightforward upgrade, nothing to see here.
5th
Crusader 5
White raven tactics
WRT is the gold standard for party buffing via action and initiative manipulation; used properly, you can functionally give someone an extra turn at the low low cost of a swift action. Get it, love it, never trade it.
6th
Crusader 6
Combat Casting
Smite 1/day
Crusader’s strike -> revitalizing strike
You’re about to take two feats that will basically be set on fire in order to meet qualifications. Here’s the first of them: Combat Casting, a big huge trap that is usually worse than just taking Skill Focus (and we all know how great Skill Focus is). Luckily the crusader chassis is robust enough that all you really need is Extra Granted Maneuver; even throwing away several feats in the early game, you should stay competitive thanks to your maneuvers and class features.
7th
Suel Arcanamach 1
Ignore spell failure 5%, tenacious spells
Nerveskitter
Suel arcanamach is a nice gishy class that will give you access to all the buffs you need as a spontaneous, Charisma-based caster. That’s just perfect for a crusader. Mostly you’ll focus on utility buffs that let you and your party do interesting things rather than straight damage boosts, but for now we’ll start with the all-around great nerveskitter. Getting a sizable boost to your initiative every encounter is pretty hard to beat, especially when you add in WRT and eventually war weaver.
8th
Suel Arcanamach 2
Dispelling strike 1/day
Protection from evil, snake’s swiftness
For my money protection from evil is the best defensive buff in the game. Deflection bonus to AC and resistance bonus to saves against the widest class of creatures in the monster manual is nice, but the real money is in the non-aligned effects: complete protection from possession and mental control. It’s not mind blank, but for a first level spell it’s hard to beat. Snake’s swiftness fits in nicely with your general MO of action-granting. In general it’s a neat option to have but not great (trading a standard action casting time for a single attack by one of your allies is situationally useful but generally going to be worse than just using a strike), but it gets a lot better soon...
9th
Jade Phoenix Mage 1
Enlarge Spell
Arcane wrath, rite of waking
Divine surge
And we’ve got another feat to set on fire. It’s alright, I promise this is the last of them. Jade Phoenix Mage will keep your BAB and IL up while continuing to progress your casting and maneuvers, and again fits surprisingly well flavor-wise with the rest of the build. Divine surge is easily the most underleveled strikes in the entirety of ToB; grab it here and don’t look back.
10th
Jade Phoenix Mage 2
Mystic phoenix stance
Resist energy
Time to grab another handy defensive buff. Resist energy is situationally useful… but when you need it, you really need it. The fact that you’ll soon be able to apply it to your whole party in one go makes it significantly better.
11th
Jade Phoenix Mage 3
Law bearer / Fly
Let the bards focus on mindlessly pumping allies with boring +1s. Your buffing is more tactical in nature, and nothing provides more tactical maneuvering than flight. You also grab another devoted spirit maneuver; pick the one that fits your alignment. I’ve always envisioned this build as a lawful crusader fighting hard against the chaotic roots of her forbidden knowledge, so I went with law bearer.
12th
War Weaver 1
Obtain Familiar
Eldritch tapestry
And now we begin dialing things up to 11. Eldritch tapestry comes online immediately, allowing you to weave your party together so that single spells affect them all. You’re capped at your war weaver level for the spell here, but even at first level that still means things like providing your whole party a +5 to initiative as an immediate action. Picking up a familiar gives you even more actions to play with, and also acts as a way to deliver touch spells to your allies who are a bit outside of reach. Plus, since familiars use your BAB, this will be a capable extra combatant once polymorph comes online.
13th
War Weaver 2
Quiescent weaving 1
Enlarge person, haste
You can now cast second level spells through your tapestry. Remember how I said that snake’s swiftness was a neat tactical option but often not worth the action cost? Well, scratch all that; now for the cost of a single action, you’re providing an extra attack to your entire party.
Quiescent weaving is another fantastic ability. This allows you to pre-cast spells into your tapestry and release them later as a move action. You’ll eventually be able to store up to four spells this way, but even with just one, that’s fantastic action economy.
On the buff side of things, you pick up two classic buffs: enlarge person and haste. Not too much to say about them, except that they are two incredibly useful buffs. (Note that enlarge person isn’t labelled harmless, so you can’t cast it through your tapestry; that’s not actually a huge problem, though, as it’s not necessarily something you want to apply to the whole party anyhow.)
14th
War Weaver 3
Queiscent weaving 2
Blur, polymorph
Another defensive buff to cast through your tapestry comes online here, as well as one of the most powerful and versatile buffs in the game: polymorph. You also gain the ability to cast third level spells through your tapestry now, and can cast two at once. Fly and blur is a great choice: you can now open your typical combat with an immediate action nerveskitter and release your quiescent weaving as a move action, giving your whole party +5 to initiative, flight and a decent miss chance. With your standard action, feel free to open up with haste for even more combat-buffing goodness, or soften your enemies with a powerful strike.
15th
War Weaver 4
Practiced Spellcaster
Quiescent weaving 3
Improved invisibility
Practiced spellcaster shores up suel arcanamach’s mediocre caster level nicely, giving much better duration to your buffs and protecting you from random dispels. Improved invisibility comes online as another bit of fantastic utility. You also get the ability to cast fourth-level spells through your tapestry, and add on an additional spell to your weave. How about opening up combat by spending a move action to turn your whole party into flying, invisible mountain trolls?
16th
War Weaver 5
Enlarged tapestry, quiescent weaving 4
Benign transposition, greater mighty wallop, greater blink
And now we max out our war weaver abilities, giving us fifth-level spells and a whopping four spells at once via quiescient weaving. Greater blink is a great defensive choice, giving a huge miss and spell failure chance, reduced damage from area attacks and the ability to phase through solid walls, and should be added to the top of any list of buffs. You also start picking up some general utility spells here in benign transposition (incredible repositioning utility for the level) and the very nice buff spell greater mighty wallop.
17th
Jade Phoenix Mage 4
Empowering strike
Heroics, investiture of the orthon
With war weaver concluded we pop back into JPM for a couple of levels. Investiture of the orthon is a cool spell that ties in nicely with your forbidden lore theme; it always has seemed a bit overly pricey as a fifth-level spell, but by casting it through your tapestry, it can end up being quite nice.
Heroics is a solid spell in general but worth its weight in gold for an initiator, as you can use it to cherry-pick high level maneuvers and stances. Its only drawbacks are that its duration isn't quite where it needs to be for an all day buff (though with a rod of extend it still does well), and that it can't be cast through your tapestry. Heart of air is another option here, giving you a boost to speed, an "oh crap" option in case you lose your flight and providing nice synergy with heart of earth.
18th
Jade Phoenix Mage 5
Improved Familiar
Castigating strike, aura of perfect order (s) / Heart of earth
Trading out your raven for an imp is a great upgrade for you, primarily thanks to commune. Use your imp’s commune ability to get an idea of what to expect for the adventuring day to come, and tailor your buffstacks accordingly. You can also go with Planar Familiar here for a lantern archon, which loses out on the excellent commune but gains a whole host of party buffing abilities. Heart of earth is a nice all day buff, providing you with a decent chunk of temporary HP and the ability to active stoneskin on command. It's even better if you took heart of air instead of heroics last level, as the two spells combine to also provide fortification.
You also grab the excellent aura of perfect order here; who needs to roll the dice and leave things up to chance when you can just take 11?
19th
Crusader 7
White raven hammer
Popping back into crusader for the last two levels gives some nice timing as far as maneuvers and stances go. White raven hammer will almost never go amiss: no-save stunning as an attack rider is huge, especially against big solo foes.
20th
Crusader 8
Steely resolve 15
Immortal fortitude (s), stone bones -> greater divine surge
One advantage to your delayed progression is that you actually manage to get your hands on 8th-level stances without shenanigans. Take immortal fortitude and never look back.
MANEUVERS KNOWN:
1- Crusader’s strike, charging minotaur, stone bones, douse the flames, leading the attack
2- Mountain hammer, tactical strike
3- White raven tactics, revitalizing strike
4- Divine surge
5- Law bearer
7- Castigating strike
8- White raven hammer, greater divine surge
STANCES KNOWN:
Martial spirit, leading the charge, aura of perfect order, immortal fortitude
SPELLS KNOWN:
1- Nerveskitter, protection from evil, enlarge person, benign transposition
2- Snake’s swiftness, resist energy, blur, heroics
3- Fly, haste, greater mighty wallop
4- Polymorph, improved invisibility, heart of earth
5- Greater blink, investiture of the orthon
Keeper of the Forbidden Lore requires an Int of 13, and you will need at minimum a Charisma of 15 to cast your highest level spells. You don’t have to worry about spell DCs, so you don’t actually need to keep Charisma much higher than that, but it does drive bonus spells and abilities like indomitable soul and smite, so going up as high as 20 certainly wouldn’t go amiss. Assuming standard items are readily available and you’re not operating with any funky WBL I recommend hitting 16 naturally; by the time getting to 20 is relevant, the 16k it costs for a +4 item should be a drop in the bucket.
Other than that, Strength and Constitution are good priorities for any crusader. I personally like focusing on Con in particular; Strength is nice but the most important thing is that you keep on ticking. Con can also be funneled into greater divine surge as a nice damage engine or used with your immortal fortitude stance to keep you standing long after the rest of the world would have dropped.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAY:
28-point buy: Str 13/Dex 10/Con 14/Int 13/Wis 10/Cha 15
32-point buy: Str 13/Dex 10/Con 16/Int 13/Wis 10/Cha 15
--> Boost Strength at level 4, Cha at level 8 and Con at all other levels
At a minimum, the build has the following skill requirements:
Concentration 9 ranks, jump 4 ranks, spellcraft 5 ranks, tumble 4 ranks, know (arcana) 6 ranks, know (nature) 2 ranks, know (religion) 2 ranks, craft (weaving) 6 ranks
This should be easily achievable with an Int of 13. Beyond that, you have a fair bit of flexibility. Don’t bother investing in craft (weaving) beyond the 6 ranks unless you really feel like it; you only ever need to hit a DC 15 and you can explicitly take 10 on the check. Concentration and spellcraft are always great options to keep high, as are your knowledge skills, which will help you identify the ideal buffs to prepare in a given encounter. Crusader also has some solid social skills and you should have a hefty Charisma focus, so feel free to invest in these if you have skill points to spare.
The biggest difference between this build and your typical crusader is the armor. With only 5% ASF ignored, you’ll want to make sure you can always cast spells. Without getting too cheesy, the twilight enhancement on top of mithril armor and the 5% ACF reduction you get from suel arcanamach means you can wear armor that normally carries a 25% ACF, which should firmly put you within range of most medium armors.
For a weapon, you’ll want something bludgeoning to make the most out of greater mighty wallop. I’m personally partial to flails (higher than usual crit rate for bludgeoning weapons, plus you can use them to disarm or trip in a pinch), though hammers and mauls are always a classic.
BUILD SUMMARY
How do we hold up?
A typical 20th-level bard might spend their standard action at the beginning of combat to give out a +4 to attack and damage via inspire courage. An optimized IC-focused bard with all the relevant goodies is probably giving out closer to +14, with the option of instead providing +14d6 fire damage (and possibly even both at the cost of a second standard action). That’s pretty good, though hardly exciting.
You, on the other hand, can start each encounter providing all of your allies +5 to their initiative, flight, improved invisibility, greater blink and polymorph… while still retaining your standard action to cast an additional spell or use a maneuver. With a little bit of prep you can tailor your buffstacks for the encounters you expect to face. You’ve also got a myriad of other party support options, whether it’s manipulating turn order via white raven tactics to give your party extra turns, providing everyone on your team an extra attack via snake’s swiftness cast through your tapestry or locking down foes with white raven hammer.
The flexibility in particular is notable; having the utility to apply things like resist energy, protection from evil or investiture of the orthon to your whole party is a great way to completely turn the tide of relevant encounters.
On top of all this you are a more than passable melee brute: your damage won’t stand up to an ubercharger but with +16 BAB, 8th-level maneuvers and some incredible defensive abilities thanks to solid defensive buffs augmenting the already-excellent crusader goodies such as immortal fortitude, you more than stand your own. Even without Power Attack, you’re certainly no slouch damage-wise; your offensive maneuvers scale decently, greater mighty wallop is a great damage boost and you have some high-damage options like greater divine surge to end encounters when necessary.
VARIANTS
As referenced above, access to the otyugh hole frees up a feat. There are a few good options here: Power Attack is the obvious choice, but there are also some nice goodies like Minor Shapeshift, Arcane Strike or various metamagic feats as well. Improved Familiar is also non-essential (thanks to the wonders of polymorph and the way your familiar shares your BAB, it will be more than capable of fighting alongside you even if you stick with a raven), so it’s another place where there is room for adjustment.
For a slightly different direction, you could attempt to combine this with bardic music to really become a buffing master. A Song of the White Raven crusader with some bard levels and sublime chord into war weaver could definitely have some potential. The problem is, you start running into the law of diminishing returns: for all that you put into the build, the final product just isn’t that much more useful. You wind up with fewer useful low level spells (which are the meat and potatoes of any war weaver), your bardic music is nice but limited compared to a straight bardsader, and you’ll be constantly competing for actions. It also means a less crusader-y crusader. Still, the allure of picking up some bardic music and perhaps even 9th-level spells is strong, and you can tie in some other neat tricks. (In fact, an earlier draft of the build was a bardic war weaver with healing hymn for supercharged party healing.)
Similarly, for somewhat more flexible casting the build can be reworked as a sorcerer. Slower spell progression means that the build doesn't operate as smoothly in the mid levels, but the pay-off in expanded spell list and lower feat requirements is definitely worth consideration. Both ExLibrisMortis and WhamBamSam have brought up ways to make a sorcerous version work in the thread.
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So there you have it! I hope you enjoy. Commentary, suggestions and play experience are all welcome, as are ideas for future showcases or ways to improve the format.