Help Building a aura-heavy charismatic fighter character 3.5e

[Malphegor]

Been trying to think of how to build a charisma-heavy melee-focused 'military backgroudey' character who has a load of passive auras going on at once, so they can have that running within range.

Auras so that it can be used with the Dilate Aura feat from the fiendish codex (1 or 2, I forget) to double their range once per encounter, which sounds useful.

Mainly interested in this to make a change from a spellcaster character and just be as charismatic as possible while wielding a magic sword, but without stepping on the barbarian's toes as a frontline fighter who does all the damage

I've got a few vague ideas, but wondering what people think or if they have any suggestions for the idea (I think some levels of bard would be flavourful for the inspire courage ability but not sure):


Build idea: The Pendragon
(will probably need filler levels to meet anyrequirements)

Dragonborn or half-dragon Marshall 2 to 8 if nothing else in /Exemplar 2/Dragonlord10

Dragon Lord: adds 4 Draconic Auras from Dragon Magic, plus has some class abilities that are nice. Charisma modifier worth of allies get +5 temporary hitpoints once per day isn't too bad given charisma buffs are fairly easy to get. Easily a entire party has a blob of temp hp for the big fight of the day.


Exemplar: not sure on this one, since marshall can do some of what exemplar does but way less math with a straight bonus.
temporary sacrifice points in a skill, pump that out to allies in range. Some weirdness with characters helping each other that gets silly, and the smaller your allies the more of them can help which is ridiculous and leads to nanite shenanigans with enslaved pixies I guess. "here's how you do this thing. Now help me do that thing far more effectively than I could do on my own"

Marshall: A couple of very hard to choose from auras to pick from, I'm thinking Motivate Ardour as the Major and Master of Tactics would be our main ones just to pump up damage at lower levels in our range of influence


Not sure what else to add to this. Unfortunately focusing on the auras means I haven't really looked at what kind of damage this kind of character would be doing, as I've never really played a fightery character before.

[Eldariel]

Well, you could get some extra from ToB. Marshal 2/Bard 3/Crusader X with Song of the White Raven would be pretty solid for instance; Minor and Major (minor major) Marshal Aura, Bard's Inspire at a swift action, stance progression for Crusader (starting from the Leading the Charge -stance) and then the active effects on Crusader maneuvers (many of the White Raven ones in particular are aura-like as well). You can get a Draconic Aura with feats though those are pretty meh. You could mix in Paladin in some shape or form for the extra Aura (the Aura of Fear Immunity at the very least). Marshal has a few great auras (Motivate Str [combat maneuvers], Motivate Dex [Initiative], Motivate Flanking/Charge [obvious]) though obviously just having multiple Marshals would be better. You could play with the number of levels in Marshal and Crusader a bit; Crusader advances Inspire Courage (which is the biggest single aura-like effect you can have and the most impactful) and gives you new stances while Marshal mostly broadens the Minor Aura options (the Major Auras are fairly uninspiring even with full commitment).

[noob]

Do not forget to use the improved assisting rules.(for each 5 by which you beat the help dc you boost of 2 more the assisted check)

[chainer1216]

Theres also Silverbrow human to get the dragon blooded subtype for no LA.

My version of this character was marshal/crusader with draconic aura feats and a focus on white raven maneuvers.

[Just Caker]

Mythic Exemplar from Complete Champion is probably exactly what you are looking for.

Something like Marshal 2/Dragon Shaman 2/Mythic Exemplar 10/X 6 is probably not a bad place to start.

[Malphegor]

Edit: Something I found out in Races of the Dragon- the Draconic Auras count as Major Auras for Marshal, so it might actually be better to go full Marshal than bother with the Draconic Aura-granting classes


Mythic Exemplar from Complete Champion is probably exactly what you are looking for.

Something like Marshal 2/Dragon Shaman 2/Mythic Exemplar 10/X 6 is probably not a bad place to start.

ooh, mythic exemplar looks nice. just flicked through it, Reikhart stuff is pretty much made to work with a Bard/Marshal very nicely.



(honestly I need to look at mythic exemplar in more characters maybe. One lost spellcaster level for a decent-looking BAB progression with some of the other paragons is very interesting if I wanted to play a Gish more, that's not really one class, it's really 6 classes with the same framework shared between them)


Theres also Silverbrow human to get the dragon blooded subtype for no LA.

Wow, you get a fair bit on Silverbrows. Decent racial fluff, and the featherfall SLA feels like it would normally push a +1 LA on the race. Not sure if I've ever seen a SLA increase as your HD goes up either, that's pretty cool.