Piggy Knowles
2019-02-25, 11:26 AM
Sadly not a lot of feedback on the last showcase, but we’ve got another primed and ready for you!
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, the Viscount, Akal Saris, Venger and WhamBamSam, 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.
Buffsader (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?559259-Optimzation-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Buffsader) (PK, ToB/Gish/Party Support)
The Utility Belt (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?560988-Optimzation-Showcase-in-the-Playground-The-Utility-Belt) (PK, Psionics/Stealth/Utility)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless War Mind (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569004-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Eternal-Sunshine-of-the-Spotless-War-Mind) (PK, ToB/Psionics/Melee Damage)
The Melding Pot (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?579458-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-The-Melding-Pot) (Veng, Incarnum/Utility)
A Tome of Battle-focused gish? Surprise, surprise, this one’s another of mine: That’s So Raven.
https://junehunterimages.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/raven-looks-down.jpg?w=676&h=676
That’s So Raven
Quoth the raven: debuffs galore.
BACKGROUND
I don’t know why, but I’ve been building a lot of bards lately. It’s just a really fun class to toy with. I think a lot of people just look at inspire courage and kind of stop there, but there are actually a lot of neat options you can find if you dig a bit deeper.
So it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that when I was trying my best to make a debuffer focused on making the most out of Death Devotion, bard ended up being the class I turned to. It has a lot going for it: Charisma synergy, good skills and a really unique spell list that let me do a lot of fun things. Unfortunately, I also found myself running afoul of the limited number of actions I had in a round. That’s when it all kind of clicked: what if I used divine bard instead of regular bard, and used it as an entry point into ruby knight vindicator?
The final build came together from there. While it has some neat tricks, I’m always especially happy when I get a build where the mechanics and the flavor marry together nicely. Here we combine take two very disparate elements, the light-focused and anti-undead knight of the raven with a shadowy devotee of Wee Jas. While it sounds like a stretch, the two elements actually end up merging well. As a defender of Wee Jas, you are a great respecter of death, and seek to put down those who attempt to misuse negative energy to provide some kind of half-life. You focus equally on the light and the dark and attempt to balance the positive and negative, manipulating those energies to heal with one hand or to sap the life away with the other. And without the light of the sun, how can you cast a shadow?
All in all, this was a fun character to create, and one I really enjoyed putting together.
THE BASICS
Race: Human. The bonus feat comes in handy, as does the avoidance of multiclassing penalties.
Build Stub: Crusader 1/Divine Bard 4/Knight of the Raven 5/Ruby Knight Vindicator 10
ACFs: Healing hymn, inspire awe
Alignment: Neutral good. Ruby knight vindicator actually doesn’t have any alignment restriction, so you could go for chaotic good here if that’s your fit, but neutral good seems the best fit flavor-wise. You do need to be both good and non-lawful, however.
BUILD BREAKDOWN
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers/Spells
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Crusader 1
Combat Expertise, Improved Trip
Furious counterstrike, steely resolve 5
Crusader’s strike, charging minotaur, leading the attack, vanguard strike, douse the flames, martial spiritS
There’s a reason crusaders are some of the best classes to play in low level games: you get a good mix of sturdiness, relevant in-battle healing, damage and party support, all in one nice little package. While you’ll eventually abandon the up close and personal style of attacking in favor of some fancier sword work, things are pretty simple at this level: charge in with charging minotaur, trip when you can, keep your party alive with martial spirit and crusader’s strike, and boost your allies with your White Raven maneuvers.
2nd
Divine Bard 1
Bardic music, bardic knowledge, countersong, healing hymn, inspire awe
Cure minor wounds, any other three 0 level spells
Wait, divine bard? Trust me, it’s the right fit. Divine bard is the only lead-in to ruby knight vindicator that provides access to the spells you need, and as a bonus, does so while allowing you to maintain a heavy Charisma focus and a decent BAB. (This is actually the only level out of all 20 where you lose a point of BAB, and while you don’t care much about iterative attacks, more BAB means more accurate attacks and, eventually, more Power Attack.)
Ordinarily when bard and crusader show up, you expect to see Song of the White Raven and an inspire courage focus. That’s certainly a valid path, but not the one you’re going down. In fact, as inspire courage will never be worth more than a +1 bonus for you without significant investment, you might as well just replace it with inspire awe. While shaken is the most minor of fear effects, the save DC is hard to beat, and in most cases the -2 across the board that most enemies receive for being shaken will be more valuable than the +1 you can give to your allies.
Mostly your 0-level spells can be chosen according to personal preference, but definitely take advantage of the fact that divine bards get access to cure minor wounds. In addition to being a guaranteed way to stabilize allies, your healing hymn bard song also lets you increase the healing power of cure spells by an amount equal to your ranks in Perform. If your DM rules that this applies to cure minor wounds (the ability references gaining a sacred bonus on your roll when casting cure spells, and CMW does not actually roll for HP), this is a serious way to supercharge one of your cantrips.
3rd
Divine Bard 2
Knock-down
Cure light wounds, grease, any 0 level spell
Cure light wounds plays very nicely with healing hymn (and unlike CMW requires no DM adjudication), giving you supercharged out-of-combat healing to go alongside the in-combat healing you get from crusader’s strike and martial spirit. Grease is just an all-around useful spell; while focusing on battlefield control for a melee brute seems odd, your focus will often be more on disabling opponents than raw damage, and this fits right in. It also gives you a way to trigger sneak attack, which will be relevant for you later in the game.
Knock-down is going to be a pretty pivotal feat for your fighting style very soon, but before we even get that far, it’s still a fantastic one-two punch: whack someone with your weapon, get a free trip attempt, and then whack them again when they’re prone.
4th
Divine Bard 3
Inspire competence
Protection from evil, any 0 level spell
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: for my money, protection from alignment is the best defensive buff spell for its level in all of D&D 3.5. A +2 bonus to AC and saves against a wide swath of enemies and a mini-mind blank effect all rolled into a single first level spell? Yeah, I’m down with that.
5th
Divine Bard 4
Whirling blade, glitterdust
And now we hit the single biggest reason for going with divine bard over another divine casting class. Whirling blade is going to be your bread and butter attack spell for the next 15 levels, so let’s take a closer look at it. You hurl your weapon in a 60’ line, using your Charisma in place of your Strength for attack and damage, and it attacks all foes in the line. Some interesting points to note: it only attacks enemies in the area (meaning that you don’t need to go through a lot of awkward positioning shenanigans to avoid hitting your allies), and it counts as a melee attack in every way. You’ll be looking at a lot of different ways to take advantage of that, but right now it means that it triggers the free trip attempt from Knock-down.
With that in mind, whirling blade acts as a combination blasting spell and battlefield control. You’ll throw your weapon in a line, damaging enemies (and with a two-handed weapon and 1.5x Charisma damage, the damage should be respectable) and knocking them off their feet. As this is only a standard action despite hitting multiple enemies, you can stay fairly mobile while doing all of this too. You even get quite a bit of healing out of the deal, too, as successful melee attacks also trigger your martial spirit stance.
Glitterdust also comes along here. The blinding effect is great, of course, especially since your Charisma focus means you should have high DCs, but the fact that this reveals hidden foes is the real draw. If you can’t see your enemies, you can’t hit them, so use this liberally against stealthy or invisible enemies.
6th
Knight of the Raven 1
Fell Weaken
Raven harrier (harry), speak with ravens
Knight of the raven is an incredibly cool prestige class that deserves more love than it gets. With full BAB, turn undead and 9/10 divine casting, plus a lot of flavorful class features, it’s a really fun way to flesh out a divine build. The raven harrier itself is a very cool addition, giving you a celestial raven familiar that doesn’t burn XP when it dies and just replaces itself at dawn every day. It can move through threatened areas or even into an opponent’s space without provoking and distract or otherwise harry them. Right now it provides a -2 to AC to a single enemy; it’s hardly earth-shattering, but it’s certainly nothing to just ignore.
Fell Weaken isn’t terribly useful spell yet, but it will eventually be an excellent addition to your arsenal.
7th
Knight of the Raven 2
Smite undead 1/day
Swift invisibility, bladeweave
As your spellcasting increases, you pick up a pair of swift action spells to round out the attacking style you’re developing. Swift invisibility may seem a bit unnecessary on a build that will eventually be picking up cloak of deception (which is better in every way), but redundancy is good for crusaders; it’s worth always having access to this ability, even after your cloak of deception maneuver is expended. Bladeweave is an especially interesting option: once per round, you can spend a swift action to daze an opponent you’ve hit in melee. So, fire off your whirling blade, damaging as many opponents as possible and knocking them prone, and then force one of them each round to make a Will save or be dazed.
Smite undead is only once per day, but there’s nothing preventing you from using it in your whirling blade routine, essentially allowing you to double up on your Charisma bonus to the attack roll and deal some extra damage. Considering that undead are immune to both sneak attack and daze, this is a handy option.
8th
Knight of the Raven 3
Sun Devotion
Turn undead, raven harrier (baffle), Sun domain (swapped for Sun Devotion)
Turn undead is pretty much required to get full effect out of ruby knight vindicator. You also get the Sun domain. Since you’re not going to have a particularly high cleric level for turning and most of its spells aren’t of great interest to you, the domain itself isn’t particularly useful, so go ahead and swap it out for Sun Devotion as a bonus feat. This lets you spend a swift action to charge your melee weapon up so that it deals extra damage against undead. While this will obviously only be useful if you fight a lot of undead, it works nicely with your whirling blade tactics (especially since many of your other effects won’t work against undead) and is replacing something that was doing nothing for you.
Your raven also gains the ability to prevent enemies from making attacks of opportunity, which can come in handy if you’re struggling to fire off a whirling blade without provoking.
9th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 1
Death Devotion
Child of shadowS
Onto ruby knight vindicator. There’s a whole lot that this class will offer you, including some ways to put that turn undead to good use, but at its most basic level it’s also a great way to advance both your casting and your initiating without sacrificing your offensive prowess. It also adds shadow hand to the schools you have access to. This is nice, because you’re about to pick up an extra stance, and neither thicket of blades nor tactics of the wolf are all that useful to you. Instead, go ahead and grab child of shadow, which will provide you with concealment any time you move more than 10’. As your main attack currently only requires a standard action, this should mean keeping concealment up more or less all the time.
And remember how I said that you’ll be focused more on disabling than on doing crazy damage? Death Devotion is a perfect example of all that. The feat allows you to charge up a melee weapon with negative energy, forcing all who are struck by it to save or gain a negative level. With your Charisma focus, that’s a pretty deadly saving throw, and while you’re capped at 2 negative levels per enemy, that’s still an extremely useful debuff that will be effective against almost every type of opponent. Add that on top of tripping and your bladeweave daze effect, and you’re dishing out a pretty nasty set of effects every time you fling your weapon.
10th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 2
Divine recovery
Cloak of deception, tongues, dispel magic, scrying
Cloak of deception is basically swift invisibility on steroids. And with divine recovery, you can bring it back almost immediately so that you can use it again the following round. You also pick up several nice utility spells here: the ever-useful dispel magic and tongues, as well as the near-broken scrying. Every party should have someone who can scry, and it might as well be you, right?
That said, third level spells open something else up entirely. Remember the Fell Weaken feat you took at level 3? Now you can apply it to whirling blade, so that now you can throw your weapon, and in addition to damaging all enemies in a 60’ line, knocking them down, dishing out negative levels and forcing saves versus daze, you also apply a -4 Strength penalty across the board. This weakening effect should take place BEFORE your trip attempt, too, making that trip more likely to land.
11th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 3
Glibness
Since most of your spell slots will be used by whirling blade, it makes sense to focus the rest of your spells known on utility and emergency buttons. And what provides more utility than glibness? Seriously, even without full ranks in bluff, just this spell and your Charisma focus should allow you to lie your way through almost anything.
12th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 4
Sculpt Spell
Covering strike
Some very nice additions here. Sculpt Spell lets you dramatically change the area of a spell for only a +1 increase in spell level; now your whirling blade should be able to cover most of the battlefield. Thankfully it only hits enemies, so you don’t need to worry about friendly fire. Covering strike is a neat little maneuver that keeps everyone you hit in melee from making attacks of opportunity for three rounds; given that you can likely hit just about every enemy on the battlefield in melee as a full round action, this is quite nice, and gets added on to the long list of nasty things you can do to enemies with your whirling blade.
13th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 5
Armored stealth
Sculpt sound, ruin delver’s fortune, greater mirror image
You actually have pretty good stealth-related skills and can cast in any kind of armor, so if stealth is something you’re into despite your low Dex, armored stealth can be quite nice. The big draw here are the spells, however. In addition to now having the ability to fire off a sculpted fell weakened whirling blade, you also pick up some very nice support spells. Sculpt sound is a nice little utility spell that doubles as anti-caster offense. The other two spells are immediate action gems that are completely and utterly fantastic at keeping you alive in even the most dire of circumstances.
14th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 6
Shadow stride, assassin’s stanceS
You’re really going to take full advantage of the RKV’s access to shadow hand maneuvers. Shadow stride gives you move action [Ex] teleportation, which can get you out of quite a lot of sticky situations. And as for your stance? Well, any time you don’t need the party healing from martial spirit or child of shadow’s concealment (which can only be triggered on a non-metamagic’d version of whirling blade), go ahead and switch over to assassin’s stance for some extra damage. It’s only +2d6, but that’s nothing to sneeze at when applied to more or less every enemy on the battlefield, and it’s about to get even more useful very soon.
But wait, what about the volley rule, which says that when you make multiple attacks in a single standard action, only the first benefits from precision damage? Well, ordinarily you’d run afoul of it… but as a spontaneous caster, any time you apply a metamagic feat to your spell, you increase the casting time to a full-round action and bypass the volley rule’s restrictions entirely. So go ahead, enjoy that +2d6. You’ve got multiple ways of triggering it (the best being cloak of deception), so go crazy.
15th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 7
Staggering Strike
Divine impetus
Spectral weapon
This is another huge level. You may have noticed that we’ve been stacking up quite a lot of swift and immediate action options: covering strike, cloak of deception, swift invisibility, bladeweave, ruin delver’s action, greater mirror image, stance changes… while you can definitely ration them out as needed, there is a lot of competition for that single swift action you get every round. Divine impetus lets you turn all that on its head, allowing you to trade turn undead attempts for additional swift actions.
(Please note that I’m not interested in a debate on whether or not divine impetus functions. Clearly this build assumes that the ability actually works and doesn’t require a standard action to activate. It’ll still function alright even without divine impetus, so if you’ve got an overly pedantic DM, you’ll just have to stick to one swift/immediate action per round.)
Meanwhile, now that you have sneak attack, you also have access to Staggering Strike. Staggering Strike is the final wrench in your toolbox, and it’s one of the best. Now as you fire off your whirling blade, enemies struck by it are damaged, weakened, forced to save versus negative levels, staggered and tripped. Tripping + staggering is an especially nasty little combination, since it prevents opponents from charging and forces them to choose between remaining prone or losing their standard action.
Spectral weapon is your main way of dealing with high-AC opponents. It’s kind of a crappy version of wraithstrike, truth be told, so if you have been training up UMD and have access to chambered wands of wraithstrike, please feel free to replace this with freedom of movement or something else similarly useful. Wraithstrike provides more or less the same effect but allows you to keep your current weapon (with all its wonderful enhancements that you’ve probably spent a lot of money on), and doesn’t offer a Will save to recognize the weapon as unreal. Spectral weapon does have one advantage, however: it lasts for a round per level, meaning it uses up fewer of your precious swift actions every turn. If you’re playing without access to nightsticks to fuel divine impetus, that’s actually pretty significant.
16th
Knight of the Raven 4
Light focus, smite undead 2/day
Delaying your next level of RKV will allow you to pick up 7th-level maneuvers once you do eventually take it, so you’re going to pop back into knight of the raven for a bit.
17th
Knight of the Raven 5
Enduring Life
Raven harrier (falter)
Greater invisibility, greater dispel magic, sirine’s grace
You get some very nice spells here. Greater invisibility and greater dispel magic don’t need much explanation, but I want to look a bit closer at sirine’s grace. Short duration single target buffs like this aren’t my favorite, but what it offers may just be worthwhile. The enhancement bonus to Charisma is likely eclipsed by your items at this level, but you also add a deflection bonus to AC equal to your Charisma. Combined with your heavy Charisma focus and the enhancement to Dexterity (which you’re a lot less likely to have purchased items to enhance) and some other minor benefits, that can be quite notable. It’s not going to be a game-changer, but it can be a nice defensive buff for tough battles.
18th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 8
Power Attack
Clarion call, restoration
Restoration is another of those spells that every party needs access to in some capacity, and since divine bards get access to it, it might as well be you. And as for why you delayed this level… take a look at clarion call. Now if you drop an enemy with any of your whirling blade attacks, you can spend a swift action to let all of your allies move or attack.
Finally, while you’ve been focusing on a myriad of ways to debuff opponents, your damage has been nothing to write home about. Power Attack comes in and fixes all of that. You have a near-perfect BAB, ways of making your attacks as touch attacks, and a big ol’ two-handed weapon. Go ahead and scream “POWER ATTACK!!!!” every time you throw your blade and add on a clean +34 damage to each attack.
19th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 9
Divine fury
Sadly, divine fury is probably never going to get used, as it’s strictly inferior to just about everything else you could do with a turn attempt. It is a free action, though, so I suppose it’s nice to have if you ever do need it.
20th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 10
One with shadow, magic aura, shadow walk, commune, superior resistance
And you finish things out with a final level of ruby knight vindicator, letting you pick up an 8th-level maneuver. While most of the white raven and devoted spirit maneuvers don’t offer much to your fighting style, one with shadow is a very nice counter that can allow you to avoid a wide variety of attacks. It also potentially has some very nice offensive implications as well. Ordinarily when you are incorporeal, the weapons you wield ignore physical barriers. But once those weapons leave your hands, they become corporeal, making this less useful alongside your whirling blade tactics. However, one with shadow specifies that all your gear turns incorporeal as well. Does this bypass the normal restriction that the incorporeal subtype has and allow you to throw a big incorporeal weapon? Ask your DM. If so, it’s an interesting alternative to the otherwise-underwhelming spectral weapon, and combos nicely with Power Attack.
But perhaps more importantly, the final level of RKV also means you get access to 6th-level bard spells. Superior resistance is just a fantastic defensive buff, while commune is something you have special access to as a divine bard. Go ahead and pester Wee Jas for the answer to all your burning questions. And with an extra 5th-level spell, shadow walk remains in-theme with your shadow hand maneuvers and adds some longer distance travel to your short range teleportation. (Oh, and for some reason, you get an extra first level spell here too. Just pick any utility spell; I’m a fan of magic aura, personally.)
1- Crusader’s strike, charging minotaur, leading the attack, vanguard strike, douse the flames, martial spiritS
2- Cloak of deception
3- Assassin’s stanceS
4- Covering strike
5- Shadow stride
7- Clarion call
8- One with shadow
0- Cure minor wounds, any 5 other 0-level spells
1- Cure light wounds, grease, protection from evil, swift invisibility, magic aura
2- Whirling blade, glitterdust, bladeweave, tongues
3- Dispel magic, scrying, glibness, sculpt sound
4- Ruin delver’s fortune, greater mirror image, greater invisibility, spectral weapon
5- Greater dispel magic, sirine’s grace, restoration, shadow walk
6- Commune, superior resistance
You’ve got some hefty stat requirements, unfortunately. Charisma is the main focus; by the time you hit the mid-levels, Charisma will power just about everything offensively. You’ll also want a respectable Strength score to qualify for Knock-down and to drive your trip rolls, and at least a 13 Int for Combat Expertise. Finally, you’ll need at least a 16 Wisdom by level 20 in order to cast 6th-level spells. (This last is easy enough to obtain via items, as a +4 periapt of wisdom isn’t a huge investment by level 20, but it’s something to keep in mind.) Luckily your heavy armor proficiency and the fact that you are a divine caster means you can safely dump Dexterity.
The best way to make this work with a 28-point buy is to start with a Wisdom of 11 and use your level 4 stat boost to increase to 12 in time to take second level spells. However, with 32 point buy you’ll have significantly more freedom.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS:
28-point buy: Str 15/Dex 8/Con 10/Int 13/Wis 11/Cha 16
32-point buy: Str 15/Dex 8/Con 12/Int 14/Wis 12/Cha 16
Your skill pre-reqs are relatively minimal and won’t require any crazy cross-class skill shenanigans. By level 9 you’ll need 4 ranks in hide and intimidate and 8 in knowledge (religion) to qualify for RKV. That’s it for requirements. I would also highly recommend keeping Perform up to par, as it drives the amount you heal with healing hymn and the DC on your inspire awe.
Beyond that, you have a lot of options regarding how you develop your skills. You have a heavy Charisma focus, so going in as the party face is an obvious choice. Use magic device is another excellent option as well, especially if you decide to go with chambered wands of wraithstrike instead of the spectral weapon route.
You absolutely need a two-handed slashing weapon to make this build work. A greatsword is a fine choice, though I’m personally a fan of the scythe. It fits well thematically as an emissary of a goddess of death and a culler of the undead, it keeps up decent damage not far behind the greatsword and it’s a tripping weapon. Plus, you can use it as a sinister but classy walking stick when you’re not playing Xena the Warrior Princess and flinging it across the battlefield. But again, any two-handed slashing weapon (even a reach weapon - you don’t benefit much from reach, but it doesn’t hurt you either) works here. The other option I might consider is the falchion; you can end up making a lot of attacks each round if you’re fighting groups of enemies, and with a falchion and a scabbard of keen edges, that can mean an awful lot of crits.
As a divine caster with heavy armor proficiencies, go crazy with your armor choices unless you’ve decided to go down the stealth route, in which case keep it light until armored stealth comes online.
Charisma is your bread and butter so get every item and tome to boost that as high as possible. You’ll also need to hit a 16 Wisdom by level 20 in order to cast your highest level spells, so a periapt of wisdom will not go amiss.
You may want to go ahead and purchase a wand of whirling blade, especially in the earlier levels, to supplement your spell slots. And if you go down the UMD route, a wand of wraithstrike is an excellent alternative to spectral weapon. If that’s the case, an item of heroics is also great and can be used to access high level maneuvers and stances, and an item of enlarge person or polymorph can go a very long way toward keeping your trip attacks effective even at higher levels. You’ll also definitely want to look into a reliquary holy symbol and nightsticks if they’re available; I’ve never seen a ruby knight vindicator that says, “Yep, I’ve got enough turn attempts, don’t need any more.”
BUILD SUMMARY
With +19 BAB, 6th-level bard spells and 8th-level maneuvers, you should have plenty of options in combat. But let’s be real, you’re here for one thing and one thing only: the whirling blade of death.
With a sculpted Fell Weaken whirling blade, you can fling your weapon across a huge area, striking every enemy (but ignoring allies) within. You use your Charisma for both the attack roll and damage, and as it’s a two-handed weapon, that’s 1.5x returns on the Charisma damage. You can increase this damage further with sneak attack (you have multiple ways of triggering sneak attack and don’t mind the volley rules) and Power Attack. Every hit staggers the opponent, weakens them, dishes out negative levels, trips them and potentially prevents them from making AoOs. You can also force one opponent per round to then save or be dazed.
You also have numerous spells and maneuvers to increase your maneuverability and defensive prowess, including gems like greater mirror image, ruin delver’s fortune and one with shadow, and you can use divine impetus to bypass the standard one per round restriction on swift actions. And against the undead that are immune to many of your debuffs, you have several anti-undead options thanks to knight of the raven. You have serious utility options as well, including scrying, commune and shadow walk. You’re also a passable healer thanks to cure spells, restoration and healing hymn (not to mention martial spirit and the ability to make a ton of melee attacks every round).
VARIANTS
There were a LOT of scrapped ideas along the way with this build. Some of them could be incorporated into the current build structure without a huge rework. For example, defensive rebuke alongside a way of taking advantage of all the AoOs you’ll generate (Evasive Reflexes comes to mind) is a cool idea that could be expanded on. Another option is to develop even more negative effects to stack on, such as poison or Sickening Strike. Other negative effects usually restricted to melee attacks that can be tacked on include Brutal Strike (though this requires exotic weaponry) and Knock-Back. And if you have extra feats, Travel Devotion is a great way to move even when using a sculpted Fell Weaken whirling blade. Or look at feats like Divine Might to get your Charisma to damage yet again, or Craven to add on a sizable damage boost versus sneak attack-vulnerable foes.
As for more dramatic reworks, there are actually a lot of fun things you can do with a whirling blade-focused build beyond what we have here. By using warblade instead of crusader, you can do some interesting things with Stormguard Warrior; both combat rhythm and fight the horde can be triggered via your whirling blade, and effects like Death Devotion trigger on a successful hit regardless of damage dealt and therefore will still work alongside combat rhythm. WhamBamSam also developed an arcane version that uses sorcerer, jade phoenix mage and sacred exorcist that ends with 8th-level spells and gets access to wraithstrike without items. You do lose out on some neat options, most notably divine impetus and the shadow hand line for sneak attack/Staggering Strike, but 8th-level spells is hard to argue with. He also has yet another version that involves Knock Back and dungeoncrasher fighter. And he even started on yet ANOTHER build that takes advantage of the fact that any attack you make while your mount is charging counts as a charge to combine whirling blade with a razored shield to trigger Shield Charge and Shield Slam. (WhamBamSam is incredibly prolific...)
And moving away from Tome of Battle and/or bard entirely, I also have an arcane version that uses scout, unseen seer and Travel Devotion to move around and get accelerated skirmish damage on your sculpted whirling blades. And I have an Int-SAD factotum/chameleon version as well, using Intelligence instead of Charisma and taking advantage of brains over brawn to assist with tripping. Plus I have half a dozen abandoned build stubs involving everything from spellthief to Sword of the Arcane Order rangers.
***
And that’s that! Please let us know what you think in the comments. As for future I actually have a couple of other bards that I feel could be showcase-worthy, as well as an uncanny chameleon that focuses on being even more flexible than normal, a very savage warblade and an exalted archer who can sniff out evil.
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, the Viscount, Akal Saris, Venger and WhamBamSam, 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.
Buffsader (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?559259-Optimzation-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Buffsader) (PK, ToB/Gish/Party Support)
The Utility Belt (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?560988-Optimzation-Showcase-in-the-Playground-The-Utility-Belt) (PK, Psionics/Stealth/Utility)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless War Mind (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569004-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Eternal-Sunshine-of-the-Spotless-War-Mind) (PK, ToB/Psionics/Melee Damage)
The Melding Pot (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?579458-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-The-Melding-Pot) (Veng, Incarnum/Utility)
A Tome of Battle-focused gish? Surprise, surprise, this one’s another of mine: That’s So Raven.
https://junehunterimages.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/raven-looks-down.jpg?w=676&h=676
That’s So Raven
Quoth the raven: debuffs galore.
BACKGROUND
I don’t know why, but I’ve been building a lot of bards lately. It’s just a really fun class to toy with. I think a lot of people just look at inspire courage and kind of stop there, but there are actually a lot of neat options you can find if you dig a bit deeper.
So it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that when I was trying my best to make a debuffer focused on making the most out of Death Devotion, bard ended up being the class I turned to. It has a lot going for it: Charisma synergy, good skills and a really unique spell list that let me do a lot of fun things. Unfortunately, I also found myself running afoul of the limited number of actions I had in a round. That’s when it all kind of clicked: what if I used divine bard instead of regular bard, and used it as an entry point into ruby knight vindicator?
The final build came together from there. While it has some neat tricks, I’m always especially happy when I get a build where the mechanics and the flavor marry together nicely. Here we combine take two very disparate elements, the light-focused and anti-undead knight of the raven with a shadowy devotee of Wee Jas. While it sounds like a stretch, the two elements actually end up merging well. As a defender of Wee Jas, you are a great respecter of death, and seek to put down those who attempt to misuse negative energy to provide some kind of half-life. You focus equally on the light and the dark and attempt to balance the positive and negative, manipulating those energies to heal with one hand or to sap the life away with the other. And without the light of the sun, how can you cast a shadow?
All in all, this was a fun character to create, and one I really enjoyed putting together.
THE BASICS
Race: Human. The bonus feat comes in handy, as does the avoidance of multiclassing penalties.
Build Stub: Crusader 1/Divine Bard 4/Knight of the Raven 5/Ruby Knight Vindicator 10
ACFs: Healing hymn, inspire awe
Alignment: Neutral good. Ruby knight vindicator actually doesn’t have any alignment restriction, so you could go for chaotic good here if that’s your fit, but neutral good seems the best fit flavor-wise. You do need to be both good and non-lawful, however.
BUILD BREAKDOWN
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers/Spells
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Crusader 1
Combat Expertise, Improved Trip
Furious counterstrike, steely resolve 5
Crusader’s strike, charging minotaur, leading the attack, vanguard strike, douse the flames, martial spiritS
There’s a reason crusaders are some of the best classes to play in low level games: you get a good mix of sturdiness, relevant in-battle healing, damage and party support, all in one nice little package. While you’ll eventually abandon the up close and personal style of attacking in favor of some fancier sword work, things are pretty simple at this level: charge in with charging minotaur, trip when you can, keep your party alive with martial spirit and crusader’s strike, and boost your allies with your White Raven maneuvers.
2nd
Divine Bard 1
Bardic music, bardic knowledge, countersong, healing hymn, inspire awe
Cure minor wounds, any other three 0 level spells
Wait, divine bard? Trust me, it’s the right fit. Divine bard is the only lead-in to ruby knight vindicator that provides access to the spells you need, and as a bonus, does so while allowing you to maintain a heavy Charisma focus and a decent BAB. (This is actually the only level out of all 20 where you lose a point of BAB, and while you don’t care much about iterative attacks, more BAB means more accurate attacks and, eventually, more Power Attack.)
Ordinarily when bard and crusader show up, you expect to see Song of the White Raven and an inspire courage focus. That’s certainly a valid path, but not the one you’re going down. In fact, as inspire courage will never be worth more than a +1 bonus for you without significant investment, you might as well just replace it with inspire awe. While shaken is the most minor of fear effects, the save DC is hard to beat, and in most cases the -2 across the board that most enemies receive for being shaken will be more valuable than the +1 you can give to your allies.
Mostly your 0-level spells can be chosen according to personal preference, but definitely take advantage of the fact that divine bards get access to cure minor wounds. In addition to being a guaranteed way to stabilize allies, your healing hymn bard song also lets you increase the healing power of cure spells by an amount equal to your ranks in Perform. If your DM rules that this applies to cure minor wounds (the ability references gaining a sacred bonus on your roll when casting cure spells, and CMW does not actually roll for HP), this is a serious way to supercharge one of your cantrips.
3rd
Divine Bard 2
Knock-down
Cure light wounds, grease, any 0 level spell
Cure light wounds plays very nicely with healing hymn (and unlike CMW requires no DM adjudication), giving you supercharged out-of-combat healing to go alongside the in-combat healing you get from crusader’s strike and martial spirit. Grease is just an all-around useful spell; while focusing on battlefield control for a melee brute seems odd, your focus will often be more on disabling opponents than raw damage, and this fits right in. It also gives you a way to trigger sneak attack, which will be relevant for you later in the game.
Knock-down is going to be a pretty pivotal feat for your fighting style very soon, but before we even get that far, it’s still a fantastic one-two punch: whack someone with your weapon, get a free trip attempt, and then whack them again when they’re prone.
4th
Divine Bard 3
Inspire competence
Protection from evil, any 0 level spell
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: for my money, protection from alignment is the best defensive buff spell for its level in all of D&D 3.5. A +2 bonus to AC and saves against a wide swath of enemies and a mini-mind blank effect all rolled into a single first level spell? Yeah, I’m down with that.
5th
Divine Bard 4
Whirling blade, glitterdust
And now we hit the single biggest reason for going with divine bard over another divine casting class. Whirling blade is going to be your bread and butter attack spell for the next 15 levels, so let’s take a closer look at it. You hurl your weapon in a 60’ line, using your Charisma in place of your Strength for attack and damage, and it attacks all foes in the line. Some interesting points to note: it only attacks enemies in the area (meaning that you don’t need to go through a lot of awkward positioning shenanigans to avoid hitting your allies), and it counts as a melee attack in every way. You’ll be looking at a lot of different ways to take advantage of that, but right now it means that it triggers the free trip attempt from Knock-down.
With that in mind, whirling blade acts as a combination blasting spell and battlefield control. You’ll throw your weapon in a line, damaging enemies (and with a two-handed weapon and 1.5x Charisma damage, the damage should be respectable) and knocking them off their feet. As this is only a standard action despite hitting multiple enemies, you can stay fairly mobile while doing all of this too. You even get quite a bit of healing out of the deal, too, as successful melee attacks also trigger your martial spirit stance.
Glitterdust also comes along here. The blinding effect is great, of course, especially since your Charisma focus means you should have high DCs, but the fact that this reveals hidden foes is the real draw. If you can’t see your enemies, you can’t hit them, so use this liberally against stealthy or invisible enemies.
6th
Knight of the Raven 1
Fell Weaken
Raven harrier (harry), speak with ravens
Knight of the raven is an incredibly cool prestige class that deserves more love than it gets. With full BAB, turn undead and 9/10 divine casting, plus a lot of flavorful class features, it’s a really fun way to flesh out a divine build. The raven harrier itself is a very cool addition, giving you a celestial raven familiar that doesn’t burn XP when it dies and just replaces itself at dawn every day. It can move through threatened areas or even into an opponent’s space without provoking and distract or otherwise harry them. Right now it provides a -2 to AC to a single enemy; it’s hardly earth-shattering, but it’s certainly nothing to just ignore.
Fell Weaken isn’t terribly useful spell yet, but it will eventually be an excellent addition to your arsenal.
7th
Knight of the Raven 2
Smite undead 1/day
Swift invisibility, bladeweave
As your spellcasting increases, you pick up a pair of swift action spells to round out the attacking style you’re developing. Swift invisibility may seem a bit unnecessary on a build that will eventually be picking up cloak of deception (which is better in every way), but redundancy is good for crusaders; it’s worth always having access to this ability, even after your cloak of deception maneuver is expended. Bladeweave is an especially interesting option: once per round, you can spend a swift action to daze an opponent you’ve hit in melee. So, fire off your whirling blade, damaging as many opponents as possible and knocking them prone, and then force one of them each round to make a Will save or be dazed.
Smite undead is only once per day, but there’s nothing preventing you from using it in your whirling blade routine, essentially allowing you to double up on your Charisma bonus to the attack roll and deal some extra damage. Considering that undead are immune to both sneak attack and daze, this is a handy option.
8th
Knight of the Raven 3
Sun Devotion
Turn undead, raven harrier (baffle), Sun domain (swapped for Sun Devotion)
Turn undead is pretty much required to get full effect out of ruby knight vindicator. You also get the Sun domain. Since you’re not going to have a particularly high cleric level for turning and most of its spells aren’t of great interest to you, the domain itself isn’t particularly useful, so go ahead and swap it out for Sun Devotion as a bonus feat. This lets you spend a swift action to charge your melee weapon up so that it deals extra damage against undead. While this will obviously only be useful if you fight a lot of undead, it works nicely with your whirling blade tactics (especially since many of your other effects won’t work against undead) and is replacing something that was doing nothing for you.
Your raven also gains the ability to prevent enemies from making attacks of opportunity, which can come in handy if you’re struggling to fire off a whirling blade without provoking.
9th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 1
Death Devotion
Child of shadowS
Onto ruby knight vindicator. There’s a whole lot that this class will offer you, including some ways to put that turn undead to good use, but at its most basic level it’s also a great way to advance both your casting and your initiating without sacrificing your offensive prowess. It also adds shadow hand to the schools you have access to. This is nice, because you’re about to pick up an extra stance, and neither thicket of blades nor tactics of the wolf are all that useful to you. Instead, go ahead and grab child of shadow, which will provide you with concealment any time you move more than 10’. As your main attack currently only requires a standard action, this should mean keeping concealment up more or less all the time.
And remember how I said that you’ll be focused more on disabling than on doing crazy damage? Death Devotion is a perfect example of all that. The feat allows you to charge up a melee weapon with negative energy, forcing all who are struck by it to save or gain a negative level. With your Charisma focus, that’s a pretty deadly saving throw, and while you’re capped at 2 negative levels per enemy, that’s still an extremely useful debuff that will be effective against almost every type of opponent. Add that on top of tripping and your bladeweave daze effect, and you’re dishing out a pretty nasty set of effects every time you fling your weapon.
10th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 2
Divine recovery
Cloak of deception, tongues, dispel magic, scrying
Cloak of deception is basically swift invisibility on steroids. And with divine recovery, you can bring it back almost immediately so that you can use it again the following round. You also pick up several nice utility spells here: the ever-useful dispel magic and tongues, as well as the near-broken scrying. Every party should have someone who can scry, and it might as well be you, right?
That said, third level spells open something else up entirely. Remember the Fell Weaken feat you took at level 3? Now you can apply it to whirling blade, so that now you can throw your weapon, and in addition to damaging all enemies in a 60’ line, knocking them down, dishing out negative levels and forcing saves versus daze, you also apply a -4 Strength penalty across the board. This weakening effect should take place BEFORE your trip attempt, too, making that trip more likely to land.
11th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 3
Glibness
Since most of your spell slots will be used by whirling blade, it makes sense to focus the rest of your spells known on utility and emergency buttons. And what provides more utility than glibness? Seriously, even without full ranks in bluff, just this spell and your Charisma focus should allow you to lie your way through almost anything.
12th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 4
Sculpt Spell
Covering strike
Some very nice additions here. Sculpt Spell lets you dramatically change the area of a spell for only a +1 increase in spell level; now your whirling blade should be able to cover most of the battlefield. Thankfully it only hits enemies, so you don’t need to worry about friendly fire. Covering strike is a neat little maneuver that keeps everyone you hit in melee from making attacks of opportunity for three rounds; given that you can likely hit just about every enemy on the battlefield in melee as a full round action, this is quite nice, and gets added on to the long list of nasty things you can do to enemies with your whirling blade.
13th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 5
Armored stealth
Sculpt sound, ruin delver’s fortune, greater mirror image
You actually have pretty good stealth-related skills and can cast in any kind of armor, so if stealth is something you’re into despite your low Dex, armored stealth can be quite nice. The big draw here are the spells, however. In addition to now having the ability to fire off a sculpted fell weakened whirling blade, you also pick up some very nice support spells. Sculpt sound is a nice little utility spell that doubles as anti-caster offense. The other two spells are immediate action gems that are completely and utterly fantastic at keeping you alive in even the most dire of circumstances.
14th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 6
Shadow stride, assassin’s stanceS
You’re really going to take full advantage of the RKV’s access to shadow hand maneuvers. Shadow stride gives you move action [Ex] teleportation, which can get you out of quite a lot of sticky situations. And as for your stance? Well, any time you don’t need the party healing from martial spirit or child of shadow’s concealment (which can only be triggered on a non-metamagic’d version of whirling blade), go ahead and switch over to assassin’s stance for some extra damage. It’s only +2d6, but that’s nothing to sneeze at when applied to more or less every enemy on the battlefield, and it’s about to get even more useful very soon.
But wait, what about the volley rule, which says that when you make multiple attacks in a single standard action, only the first benefits from precision damage? Well, ordinarily you’d run afoul of it… but as a spontaneous caster, any time you apply a metamagic feat to your spell, you increase the casting time to a full-round action and bypass the volley rule’s restrictions entirely. So go ahead, enjoy that +2d6. You’ve got multiple ways of triggering it (the best being cloak of deception), so go crazy.
15th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 7
Staggering Strike
Divine impetus
Spectral weapon
This is another huge level. You may have noticed that we’ve been stacking up quite a lot of swift and immediate action options: covering strike, cloak of deception, swift invisibility, bladeweave, ruin delver’s action, greater mirror image, stance changes… while you can definitely ration them out as needed, there is a lot of competition for that single swift action you get every round. Divine impetus lets you turn all that on its head, allowing you to trade turn undead attempts for additional swift actions.
(Please note that I’m not interested in a debate on whether or not divine impetus functions. Clearly this build assumes that the ability actually works and doesn’t require a standard action to activate. It’ll still function alright even without divine impetus, so if you’ve got an overly pedantic DM, you’ll just have to stick to one swift/immediate action per round.)
Meanwhile, now that you have sneak attack, you also have access to Staggering Strike. Staggering Strike is the final wrench in your toolbox, and it’s one of the best. Now as you fire off your whirling blade, enemies struck by it are damaged, weakened, forced to save versus negative levels, staggered and tripped. Tripping + staggering is an especially nasty little combination, since it prevents opponents from charging and forces them to choose between remaining prone or losing their standard action.
Spectral weapon is your main way of dealing with high-AC opponents. It’s kind of a crappy version of wraithstrike, truth be told, so if you have been training up UMD and have access to chambered wands of wraithstrike, please feel free to replace this with freedom of movement or something else similarly useful. Wraithstrike provides more or less the same effect but allows you to keep your current weapon (with all its wonderful enhancements that you’ve probably spent a lot of money on), and doesn’t offer a Will save to recognize the weapon as unreal. Spectral weapon does have one advantage, however: it lasts for a round per level, meaning it uses up fewer of your precious swift actions every turn. If you’re playing without access to nightsticks to fuel divine impetus, that’s actually pretty significant.
16th
Knight of the Raven 4
Light focus, smite undead 2/day
Delaying your next level of RKV will allow you to pick up 7th-level maneuvers once you do eventually take it, so you’re going to pop back into knight of the raven for a bit.
17th
Knight of the Raven 5
Enduring Life
Raven harrier (falter)
Greater invisibility, greater dispel magic, sirine’s grace
You get some very nice spells here. Greater invisibility and greater dispel magic don’t need much explanation, but I want to look a bit closer at sirine’s grace. Short duration single target buffs like this aren’t my favorite, but what it offers may just be worthwhile. The enhancement bonus to Charisma is likely eclipsed by your items at this level, but you also add a deflection bonus to AC equal to your Charisma. Combined with your heavy Charisma focus and the enhancement to Dexterity (which you’re a lot less likely to have purchased items to enhance) and some other minor benefits, that can be quite notable. It’s not going to be a game-changer, but it can be a nice defensive buff for tough battles.
18th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 8
Power Attack
Clarion call, restoration
Restoration is another of those spells that every party needs access to in some capacity, and since divine bards get access to it, it might as well be you. And as for why you delayed this level… take a look at clarion call. Now if you drop an enemy with any of your whirling blade attacks, you can spend a swift action to let all of your allies move or attack.
Finally, while you’ve been focusing on a myriad of ways to debuff opponents, your damage has been nothing to write home about. Power Attack comes in and fixes all of that. You have a near-perfect BAB, ways of making your attacks as touch attacks, and a big ol’ two-handed weapon. Go ahead and scream “POWER ATTACK!!!!” every time you throw your blade and add on a clean +34 damage to each attack.
19th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 9
Divine fury
Sadly, divine fury is probably never going to get used, as it’s strictly inferior to just about everything else you could do with a turn attempt. It is a free action, though, so I suppose it’s nice to have if you ever do need it.
20th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 10
One with shadow, magic aura, shadow walk, commune, superior resistance
And you finish things out with a final level of ruby knight vindicator, letting you pick up an 8th-level maneuver. While most of the white raven and devoted spirit maneuvers don’t offer much to your fighting style, one with shadow is a very nice counter that can allow you to avoid a wide variety of attacks. It also potentially has some very nice offensive implications as well. Ordinarily when you are incorporeal, the weapons you wield ignore physical barriers. But once those weapons leave your hands, they become corporeal, making this less useful alongside your whirling blade tactics. However, one with shadow specifies that all your gear turns incorporeal as well. Does this bypass the normal restriction that the incorporeal subtype has and allow you to throw a big incorporeal weapon? Ask your DM. If so, it’s an interesting alternative to the otherwise-underwhelming spectral weapon, and combos nicely with Power Attack.
But perhaps more importantly, the final level of RKV also means you get access to 6th-level bard spells. Superior resistance is just a fantastic defensive buff, while commune is something you have special access to as a divine bard. Go ahead and pester Wee Jas for the answer to all your burning questions. And with an extra 5th-level spell, shadow walk remains in-theme with your shadow hand maneuvers and adds some longer distance travel to your short range teleportation. (Oh, and for some reason, you get an extra first level spell here too. Just pick any utility spell; I’m a fan of magic aura, personally.)
1- Crusader’s strike, charging minotaur, leading the attack, vanguard strike, douse the flames, martial spiritS
2- Cloak of deception
3- Assassin’s stanceS
4- Covering strike
5- Shadow stride
7- Clarion call
8- One with shadow
0- Cure minor wounds, any 5 other 0-level spells
1- Cure light wounds, grease, protection from evil, swift invisibility, magic aura
2- Whirling blade, glitterdust, bladeweave, tongues
3- Dispel magic, scrying, glibness, sculpt sound
4- Ruin delver’s fortune, greater mirror image, greater invisibility, spectral weapon
5- Greater dispel magic, sirine’s grace, restoration, shadow walk
6- Commune, superior resistance
You’ve got some hefty stat requirements, unfortunately. Charisma is the main focus; by the time you hit the mid-levels, Charisma will power just about everything offensively. You’ll also want a respectable Strength score to qualify for Knock-down and to drive your trip rolls, and at least a 13 Int for Combat Expertise. Finally, you’ll need at least a 16 Wisdom by level 20 in order to cast 6th-level spells. (This last is easy enough to obtain via items, as a +4 periapt of wisdom isn’t a huge investment by level 20, but it’s something to keep in mind.) Luckily your heavy armor proficiency and the fact that you are a divine caster means you can safely dump Dexterity.
The best way to make this work with a 28-point buy is to start with a Wisdom of 11 and use your level 4 stat boost to increase to 12 in time to take second level spells. However, with 32 point buy you’ll have significantly more freedom.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS:
28-point buy: Str 15/Dex 8/Con 10/Int 13/Wis 11/Cha 16
32-point buy: Str 15/Dex 8/Con 12/Int 14/Wis 12/Cha 16
Your skill pre-reqs are relatively minimal and won’t require any crazy cross-class skill shenanigans. By level 9 you’ll need 4 ranks in hide and intimidate and 8 in knowledge (religion) to qualify for RKV. That’s it for requirements. I would also highly recommend keeping Perform up to par, as it drives the amount you heal with healing hymn and the DC on your inspire awe.
Beyond that, you have a lot of options regarding how you develop your skills. You have a heavy Charisma focus, so going in as the party face is an obvious choice. Use magic device is another excellent option as well, especially if you decide to go with chambered wands of wraithstrike instead of the spectral weapon route.
You absolutely need a two-handed slashing weapon to make this build work. A greatsword is a fine choice, though I’m personally a fan of the scythe. It fits well thematically as an emissary of a goddess of death and a culler of the undead, it keeps up decent damage not far behind the greatsword and it’s a tripping weapon. Plus, you can use it as a sinister but classy walking stick when you’re not playing Xena the Warrior Princess and flinging it across the battlefield. But again, any two-handed slashing weapon (even a reach weapon - you don’t benefit much from reach, but it doesn’t hurt you either) works here. The other option I might consider is the falchion; you can end up making a lot of attacks each round if you’re fighting groups of enemies, and with a falchion and a scabbard of keen edges, that can mean an awful lot of crits.
As a divine caster with heavy armor proficiencies, go crazy with your armor choices unless you’ve decided to go down the stealth route, in which case keep it light until armored stealth comes online.
Charisma is your bread and butter so get every item and tome to boost that as high as possible. You’ll also need to hit a 16 Wisdom by level 20 in order to cast your highest level spells, so a periapt of wisdom will not go amiss.
You may want to go ahead and purchase a wand of whirling blade, especially in the earlier levels, to supplement your spell slots. And if you go down the UMD route, a wand of wraithstrike is an excellent alternative to spectral weapon. If that’s the case, an item of heroics is also great and can be used to access high level maneuvers and stances, and an item of enlarge person or polymorph can go a very long way toward keeping your trip attacks effective even at higher levels. You’ll also definitely want to look into a reliquary holy symbol and nightsticks if they’re available; I’ve never seen a ruby knight vindicator that says, “Yep, I’ve got enough turn attempts, don’t need any more.”
BUILD SUMMARY
With +19 BAB, 6th-level bard spells and 8th-level maneuvers, you should have plenty of options in combat. But let’s be real, you’re here for one thing and one thing only: the whirling blade of death.
With a sculpted Fell Weaken whirling blade, you can fling your weapon across a huge area, striking every enemy (but ignoring allies) within. You use your Charisma for both the attack roll and damage, and as it’s a two-handed weapon, that’s 1.5x returns on the Charisma damage. You can increase this damage further with sneak attack (you have multiple ways of triggering sneak attack and don’t mind the volley rules) and Power Attack. Every hit staggers the opponent, weakens them, dishes out negative levels, trips them and potentially prevents them from making AoOs. You can also force one opponent per round to then save or be dazed.
You also have numerous spells and maneuvers to increase your maneuverability and defensive prowess, including gems like greater mirror image, ruin delver’s fortune and one with shadow, and you can use divine impetus to bypass the standard one per round restriction on swift actions. And against the undead that are immune to many of your debuffs, you have several anti-undead options thanks to knight of the raven. You have serious utility options as well, including scrying, commune and shadow walk. You’re also a passable healer thanks to cure spells, restoration and healing hymn (not to mention martial spirit and the ability to make a ton of melee attacks every round).
VARIANTS
There were a LOT of scrapped ideas along the way with this build. Some of them could be incorporated into the current build structure without a huge rework. For example, defensive rebuke alongside a way of taking advantage of all the AoOs you’ll generate (Evasive Reflexes comes to mind) is a cool idea that could be expanded on. Another option is to develop even more negative effects to stack on, such as poison or Sickening Strike. Other negative effects usually restricted to melee attacks that can be tacked on include Brutal Strike (though this requires exotic weaponry) and Knock-Back. And if you have extra feats, Travel Devotion is a great way to move even when using a sculpted Fell Weaken whirling blade. Or look at feats like Divine Might to get your Charisma to damage yet again, or Craven to add on a sizable damage boost versus sneak attack-vulnerable foes.
As for more dramatic reworks, there are actually a lot of fun things you can do with a whirling blade-focused build beyond what we have here. By using warblade instead of crusader, you can do some interesting things with Stormguard Warrior; both combat rhythm and fight the horde can be triggered via your whirling blade, and effects like Death Devotion trigger on a successful hit regardless of damage dealt and therefore will still work alongside combat rhythm. WhamBamSam also developed an arcane version that uses sorcerer, jade phoenix mage and sacred exorcist that ends with 8th-level spells and gets access to wraithstrike without items. You do lose out on some neat options, most notably divine impetus and the shadow hand line for sneak attack/Staggering Strike, but 8th-level spells is hard to argue with. He also has yet another version that involves Knock Back and dungeoncrasher fighter. And he even started on yet ANOTHER build that takes advantage of the fact that any attack you make while your mount is charging counts as a charge to combine whirling blade with a razored shield to trigger Shield Charge and Shield Slam. (WhamBamSam is incredibly prolific...)
And moving away from Tome of Battle and/or bard entirely, I also have an arcane version that uses scout, unseen seer and Travel Devotion to move around and get accelerated skirmish damage on your sculpted whirling blades. And I have an Int-SAD factotum/chameleon version as well, using Intelligence instead of Charisma and taking advantage of brains over brawn to assist with tripping. Plus I have half a dozen abandoned build stubs involving everything from spellthief to Sword of the Arcane Order rangers.
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And that’s that! Please let us know what you think in the comments. As for future I actually have a couple of other bards that I feel could be showcase-worthy, as well as an uncanny chameleon that focuses on being even more flexible than normal, a very savage warblade and an exalted archer who can sniff out evil.