Character build help

[Crow_Nightfeath]

So, I've got this stupid character idea, he's more or less a living voodoo doll. I dont need help with getting the voodoo to work. It's an at will share pain forced, don't worry about how he got it, it's legit enough for the campaign. His personality is he's going to be nuts, and he's going to hurt people who hurt others.

So im looking for class ideas. Barbarian won't really work cause you can't use spell like abilities while raging.

[OgresAreCute]

Jashin-sama!!

Crusader has healing and damage reduction to stay alive in combat.

[DeTess]

So, I've got this stupid character idea, he's more or less a living voodoo doll. I dont need help with getting the voodoo to work. It's an at will share pain forced, don't worry about how he got it, it's legit enough for the campaign. His personality is he's going to be nuts, and he's going to hurt people who hurt others.

So im looking for class ideas. Barbarian won't really work cause you can't use spell like abilities while raging.

It seems like you've got everything for the 'voodoo doll' fluff covered, so what else do you want? You mention barbarian as being not an option because rage interferes with what you want to do, but does that mean you want to play something like a barbarian, or was that a general comment about 'no barbarians please?'

edit: Swordsage'd, and I second the Crusader suggestion for a tanky martial.

[Nifft]

One obvious idea is regeneration: Azure Toughness + Troll-Blooded feats get you that, and a Cleric ally with both of those feats and shield other double the effectiveness.

Fast healing is nice. Lots of ways to get that, mostly from allies.

Temporary HP can help you a lot. Being a Crusader (Tome of Battle) gets you access to a delayed damage pool, which means you die one round later than your forced-share-pain enemy, plus you get access to stuff like Stone Power (at-will temporary HP), plus you get at-will healing strikes, plus you get to punish enemies who don't target you. Actually that may be the best class for this concept.

[Crow_Nightfeath]

So, it appears I have to explain share pain forced a bit, it halves all damage you take after damage reduction and such and sends the other half to the person you used share pain on. If you convert damage into non lethal, like regeneration does, the damage doesn't transfer.

I'm mostly looking for an interesting type class with a good HD. I probably should have been a little clearer on that. Cause I need to make sure I have more Hp than my enemies. I also wonder if I should be finding ways of hurting myself instead of attacking my enemies?

[OgresAreCute]

So, it appears I have to explain share pain forced a bit, it halves all damage you take after damage reduction and such and sends the other half to the person you used share pain on. If you convert damage into non lethal, like regeneration does, the damage doesn't transfer.

I'm mostly looking for an interesting type class with a good HD. I probably should have been a little clearer on that. Cause I need to make sure I have more Hp than my enemies. I also wonder if I should be finding ways of hurting myself instead of attacking my enemies?

I suppose if you hit both yourself and the enemy with an AoE spell or attack, you take 50% damage and they take 150%. Most blasty types probably won't have much hit points though.

[Nifft]

So, it appears I have to explain share pain forced a bit, it halves all damage you take after damage reduction and such and sends the other half to the person you used share pain on. If you convert damage into non lethal, like regeneration does, the damage doesn't transfer.

1/ Why would the transfer happen after the nonlethal conversion, rather than before?

2/ Assuming what you've said is accurate, then just skip the regeneration and take all the other advice -- play a Crusader with a heap of easily-restored temporary HP. You can both dish out damage and force others to attack you in preference to the rest of your party.

3/ Hurting yourself deliberately is a bad idea. Just re-distribute half the damage that will inevitably happen to you in spite of all your reasonable measures to avoid taking damage, and you'll be ahead of the game. But also be sure you're set up to avoid status conditions like paralysis or poison, which can take you out without inflicting any HP damage on you. Smart enemies will target you with those once they know your trick.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Ardent with the Pain and Suffering mantle as Dominant Ideal (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a).

- By far the best way to get lots of hit points is through temporary hit points, and vigor is one of the best ways to get those.
- Physical Power isn't a great mantle, but it does have vigor, true metabolism (fast healing 10, but an 8th-level power), and psychofeedback (reduce ability scores to boost one score).
- Psychofeedback could theoretically get you +20 Constitution (or more, if you have ML boosts), but the conditions are harsh. With the Mind Over Body feat and Persistent Power (an uncoverted 3.0 feat), you might be able to make it work, though.
- The Sangehirn prestige class gets you some fast healing and DR/--, as well as the ability to use some psionic healing powers as touch powers (instead of personal). More importantly, you are required to pick your powers known from a special list (arguably overriding the ardent's normal restrictions). Powers available include vigor, hostile empathic transfer, forced share pain, empathic feedback, psychofeedback, and true metabolism. Decent way to replace the Physical Power mantle, though I think Pain and Suffering is definitely worth it regardless. You want all those powers.
- You can use psionic tattoos (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20031225a) to set up an emergency heal/revive, in case your gambit fails.



Granted Ability: As an immediate action, you can expend your psionic focus to share the pain of the next melee attack that deals damage to you. The attacker takes damage equal to half the damage it deals you.
[...]
3 hostile empathic transfer: Your touch transfers your hurt to another.
3 forced share pain: Unwilling subject takes some of your damage.
4 empathic feedback: When you are hit in melee, your attacker takes damage.
[...]
9 pain affinity field: Negative effects that affect you also affect others.

There's also the retribution armour from Dragon #302, but that's completely unrelated. Expensive, too.


Build stub:
Dragonborn mongrelfolk ardent 13/sangehirn 7
Mantles: Pain and Suffering (Dominant Ideal), Physical Power (primary), Freedom (secondary), Time (secondary)
Feats: Psionic Body1, Mind Over Bodyflaw, Extend Powerflaw, Overchannel3, Persistent Power6, Metapower (Persistent psychofeedback)9
Ability scores: 8/8/22/8/18/8 (28 point-buy: 8/10/16/10/16/12, racial adjustments -2 dex/+6 con/-2 int/-4 cha, two increases in Wisdom.

Your basic trick at level 9+ is a Persistent psychofeedback, which costs 15 power points. You can't pay 15 power points unless you (temporarily) increase your manifester level. You have 9, overchannel gives you +2, so you need another 4. I suggest a bead of karma (20 000 gp). It's not cheap, but it's one item you won't regret having all the way to level 20. Realistically, you can only afford it at level 10+ (it's over half WBL at level 9), so let's assume that for now. The trick works better with even ML anyway.

Manifesting Persistent psychofeedback at ML 16 (for 15 pp) gives you 16 ability burn spread across all your scores (I suggest -4 str/dex/int/cha), and increases your Constitution by 16. You heal ability burn at a rate of 1 + Constitution modifier a day (thanks to Mind Over Body, a Sangehirn prerequisite), so with your new Constitution of 38, that should be 15/day. With Persistent animal affinity (13 pp), you push that up to 17, which is enough to heal all your burn every day. You'll have about 210 hp at level 10, and 50 temporary pp whenever you manifest vigor.

At level 17, you can manifest a Persistent pain affinity field (23 pp), which makes all enemies within 20' suffer all damage and penalties you take. Including ability damage. And yes, if there are three enemies, they all take full damage. There's no sharing here, there's multiplying.

You're completely useless at everything, with an effective 4 str/dex/int/cha, but you have great hit points and lots of ways to share pain about. You can use Extend Power for free on most of your key powers, too.