Piggy Knowles
2020-03-25, 12:52 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, 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.
For this showcase, we’ll look at a fighter with a dark side: Dazed and Confused !
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/431937476010180610/692410628307943534/sketch1585153937417.png
Dazed and Confused
”I barely touched you!”
BACKGROUND
Does anyone pay attention to the myriad weapon style feats scattered throughout 3.5? A few of them pop up on builds now and then, often in concert with aptitude weapons to avoid some of their more annoying restrictions, but overall they just don’t pass the smell test: they pretty much all have incredibly annoying pre-reqs, they lock you into a subpar fighting style and often what they give you isn’t even that great.
Dire Flail Smash, from Champions of Ruin, is one of the exceptions to the latter rule. The effect it gives is fantastic: there are very few foes immune to dazing, and while TWF isn’t really ideal, at least the dire flail isn’t the worst weapon to get locked into using. But start trying to build around it and it becomes a lot more annoying. It functionally requires four feats (while it doesn’t list EWP as a pre-req, you can’t take Weapon Focus unless you’re proficient in the weapon) and forces you into a two-weapon fighting style… but then requires two feats that are often downright useless for a TWFer.
Still, when we were talking about lockdown and melee debuffers, it snagged our eye. In particular, we noticed that its effects only require a hit, not damage, meaning it would work nicely alongside Stormguard Warrior for some touch attack dazing. And so we began tossing together several builds that used it. Could we minimize its downsides while also making it more effective? And could we do it at a reasonable level, rather than something that comes online so late that it’s barely worthwhile?
The end result is a fun little Fighter+ build that we all enjoyed making. Hope you enjoy it too.
THE BASICS
Race: Human. This is a very feat-heavy build, so every feat you can cram in there counts. The bonus skill point also lets you dump Int and still meet any necessary requirements.
Build Stub: Fighter 12/Warblade 2/Crusader 2/Samurai 1/Blackguard 3
ACFs: Zhentarim fighter, hit and run tactics fighter.
Alignment: Lawful Evil. You can actually ditch the lawful aspect if you’d like once you’re done with samurai, but LE feels like a pretty good fit regardless.
Dazed and Confused
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers Known
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Warblade 1
Two-Weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus
Battle clarity (Reflex saves), weapon aptitude
Sudden leap, wolf fang strike, moment of perfect mind, punishing stancestance
Standard TWFing warblade open. Wolf fang strike and sudden leap both essentially give you pounce at this level, either by providing free movement or by letting you make two attacks as a standard action. Meanwhile, MoPF will shore up your main weakness throughout this build, while punishing stance provides some excellent bonus damage for the level and qualifies you for Stormguard Warrior down the road.
As for your feats, TWF should be no surprise. Weapon Focus is a required feat, and is nice to eat into the penalty you’ll take for using two weapons (no small matter at this level!). You’ll note that we didn’t include a specific weapon here; with the warblade’s aptitude, you can shift this to whatever you want at any given point. Since you’re a high-Strength build, I’m personally a fan of the quarterstaff at this level. It may sound boring, but it allows you to seamlessly switch between TWF and THF as circumstances permit.
2nd
Samurai 1
Exotic Weapon Proficiency (bastard sword)B
Daisho proficiency
You’re going to need a lot of bonus feats and full BAB to make the early feat timing work here, and unfortunately fighter alone won’t cut it. If you’re playing with flaws you can substitute in any other full BAB class, but if not you’ve got an interesting option: the CW samurai. For some odd reason, instead of just granting you proficiency with the bastard sword in the class weapon and armor proficiencies, you explicitly gain the feat Exotic Weapon Proficiency (bastard sword) at first level. Luckily you’re a warblade, meaning you can take that bastard sword and immediately aptitude it away into something more useful. As I mentioned previously double weapons are always a nice choice. The dire flail will become your weapon of choice in a few levels, but at this point you can pick whatever best suits you and run with it.
3rd
Fighter 1
Power AttackB, Ironheart Aura
Bonus feat, hit and run tactics
As I said, this build needs a lot of feats, so fighter is going to be your bread and butter. Who doesn’t like fighter? It’s a classic for a reason. Power Attack is a required feat that doesn’t necessarily play nicely with TWFing, but is nice alongside a double weapon for you to pick and choose your fighting style: one powerful two-handed attack with one side of the weapon, or a flurry of weaker attacks with both. Ironheart Aura isn’t the most exciting feat in the world but it’s required, and a flat +2 to saves for adjacent allies is always nice.
And since you’ve got a pretty decent Dex thanks to your TWF focus, hit and run tactics from Drow of the Underdark is just a perfect fit. This gives you some nice bonus damage when you attack foes who haven’t acted yet (or are otherwise flat-footed), plus a decent initiative boost, at the cost of some armor and shield proficiencies you weren’t likely to use in the first place. I’d call that a good trade.
4th
Fighter 2
Improved SunderB
Bonus feat
I’m actually a bigger fan of sundering than most, probably because I don’t tend to care that much about loot in most games I play. A lot of enemies are totally useless once their weapon gets sundered, and it’s a lot more reliable than disarming. Anyhow, it’s required for some other feats down the road, so take it and if destroying potential loot doesn’t make you squeamish, it’s a great tactical option to keep in your toolbelt.
5th
Fighter 3
Skill Focus (intimidate)B
Skill focus
Zhentarim fighter is another of those no-brainer ACFs that give something for nothing, in this case a free Skill Focus feat to keep your intimidate checks nice and high despite a mediocre Charisma.
6th
Fighter 4
Dire Flail SmashB, Stormguard Warrior
Bonus feat
Your two main tactical feats come online at once here, with perfect timing. Dire Flail Smash has some painful pre-reqs, but once you get there it’s downright amazing: any time you hit an enemy with both ends of your dire flail, they must make a scaling save based on your Strength or be dazed. Dazed is one of those conditions that are really hard to be fully immune to, so this is just about the best debuff you can apply. Meanwhile, Stormguard Warrior has a lot of interesting options, but for this build the best is by far combat rhythm. This lets you essentially charge up your attacks, making touch attacks instead of normal attacks and dealing no damage in return for a significant damage boost the following round. There’s a lot you can do with this… but in particular, you’re interested in how it interacts with Dire Flail Smash. You see, unlike a lot of similar feats, Dire Flail Smash only requires that you hit, not that you deal damage. So now you can make a flurry of touch attacks against a foe, dazing them and boosting your damage for a killing blow the next turn. Not too shabby...
7th
Fighter 5
Extended intimidation
Again, Zhentarim comes on here to keep your dead fighter levels from being THAT dead, in this case extending the effects of your intimidate to 24 hours instead of just for as long as you stick around. It’s actually pretty useful as far as the social aspect of intimidate goes, even if it doesn’t make much of a difference for the combat aspects.
8th
Fighter 6
Combat ReflexesB
Bonus feat
You’ve got a decently high Dex and Stormguard Warrior. Time to take advantage of both with Combat Reflexes.
9th
Fighter 7
Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
And with Improved TWF, you’re now making four attacks on a full attack.
10th
Fighter 8
Double HitB
Bonus feat
Ah, here we go. It was a pain to get here, but get here we did: with Double Hit, your main melee combo is completely in place. Now when you make an attack of opportunity, you can attack with each weapon (or each side of a double weapon) instead of just hitting once. Combined with the Stormguard Warrior’s combat rhythm and Dire Flail Smash, in practice this means that if someone triggers an AoO you get a pair of touch attacks, after which point your enemy needs to save vs dazing, and you get a +10 damage bonus on attacks the next turn. It’s a really nasty combo, and a tactic that will stay dangerous for the rest of your career.
11th
Crusader 1
Furious counterstrike, steely resolve 5
Douse the flames, white raven tactics, defensive rebuke, mountain hammer, revitalizing strike, martial spiritstance
Since we’ve got some really nasty things we can do on AoOs now, let’s work on developing those a bit. There’s no better option here than crusader, which adds on some much needed longevity, including some decent in-combat healing with revitalizing strike and martial spirit (don’t forget that even combat rhythm touch attacks should trigger martial spirit!). And since you’re high enough to pick 3rd-level maneuvers, it also means you can nab two particularly great options: white raven tactics and defensive rebuke. I doubt WRT needs any introduction at this point, but defensive rebuke in general is a great way for generating AoOs and keeping your allies safe.
12th
Crusader 2
Robilar’s Gambit
Indomitable soul
Thicket of bladesstance
And the final pieces of the puzzle lock into place. Another crusader level gives you another stance, giving you the fantastic thicket of blades, which prevents enemies from taking five foot steps to get out of your threatened area. Meanwhile you also pick up Robilar’s Gambit, allowing you to take AoOs any time someone attacks you. Combined with your other tactics, you can effectively lock down anyone in melee range: if your enemies attack you they get counterattacked and dazed. If they attack your allies you trigger defensive rebuke and counterattack and daze them. And if they try to move out of your threatened area, you counterattack and daze them. And during all of this, you’re also building up extra damage via Stormguard Warrior to be fully unleashed when your turn rolls around.
13th
Fighter 9
Swift demoralization
This would be the deadest of levels… except that Zhentarim comes into play again, giving you the excellent ability to use intimidate in combat as a swift action. Combined with Skill Focus and the Never Outnumbered skill trick, this is actually a pretty great use of your swift action on turns when you aren’t using defensive rebuke.
14th
Fighter 10
CleaveB
Bonus feat
Another bonus feat brings you Cleave. Always good against crowds (especially with the damage bonuses you get from Stormguard Warrior), and alongside your other feats, it qualifies you for...
15th
Blackguard 1
Imperious Command
Aura of evil, detect good, poison use
...Blackguard! A few levels in blackguard actually provide quite a lot for you. This level isn’t all that useful, though poison use is cute, but even just this one level gives you access to all blackguard spells via wands. And blackguards actually have a pretty good spell list; like assassin, they benefit from being a core option, meaning that their spell list got expanded by the various splatbooks.
Oh, and since you recently picked up swift demoralization, might as well fully reap the benefits with Imperious Command, giving you a swift action multi-target lockdown effect. It’s not as versatile as your dazing trick, since way more enemies are immune to fear, but it’s good crowd control and certainly worth having.
16th
Blackguard 2
Dark blessing, smite good 1/day
Another level and you’ve got evil divine grace and a smite attack. Your Charisma isn’t off the charts, but with items it should be passable enough to get some benefit here.
17th
Blackguard 3
Command undead, aura of despair
And here’s where the money is: command undead and aura of despair. Might as well take advantage of all those saves you’ll be forcing by forcing your enemies to take penalties to them.
18th
Warblade 2
Animal Devotion
Uncanny dodge
Pouncing charge
A dip back into warblade gives you pouncing charge, and between this and sudden leap you can effectively pounce twice an encounter without needing to worry about refreshing maneuvers. Meanwhile, Animal Devotion is just really handy for brutes in general, giving you several on-the-fly options like flight, extra attacks and even some cool options like poison (which you can harvest to take advantage of poison use). Particularly useful for you is the strength bonus. At this level it means a whopping +8 profane bonus to strength for the encounter as a swift action, which not only provides a sizable boost to your attacks and damage but also effectively gives +4 to the DC on your Dire Flail Smash. Combined with your aura of despair, this goes a long way toward making sure even high level foes will remain vulnerable to your main tactic. And since you can power it with command undead, you can keep this going all day long.
19th
Fighter 11
Well, it finally happened: a fully dead level. I tried my best to avoid these, but it’s hard to do on a build with 12 levels of fighter.
20th
Fighter 12
Combat BruteB
Bonus feat
And finish things out with a nice little capstone in Combat Brute. This could easily be Martial Study or Martial Stance for more ToB goodness, but Combat Brute is a very nice damage-boosting option alongside pouncing charge and Stormguard Warrior, and also has some other nice options like sundering cleave.
Warblade Maneuvers Known
1- Sudden leap, wolf fang strike, moment of perfect mind, punishing stancestance
5- Pouncing charge
Crusader Maneuvers Known
1- Douse the flames, martial spiritstance
2- Mountain hammer
3- White raven tactics, defensive rebuke, revitalizing strike, thicket of blades[/sup]
Alright, let’s not beat around the bush: this build is MAD as hell. You’re Strength-primary, but you’ll need a 17 Dex by level 9 to qualify for Improved TWF and Con to keep from dying. You also need Charisma for intimidation and if you want to benefit from command undead and dark blessing, and Wisdom if you want to cast any blackguard spells. It’s a lot. Luckily you can safely dump Int thanks to minimal skill requirements, and the Wisdom requirement is late enough that you can ignore it until you have a boosting item to get you there.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS:
28-point buy: Str 16/Dex 15/Con 12/Int 8/Wis 10/Cha 12
32-point buy: Str 16/Dex 16/Con 12/Int 8/Wis 10/Cha 14
You’ve got fairly minimal skill requirements: other than a handful of cross-class ranks in hide and knowledge (religion) to qualify for blackguard by level 15, all you need to worry about doing is keeping intimidate maxed and taking the Never Outnumbered skill trick. Even with an Intelligence of 8 a human should have no trouble doing this, and can even work on getting 5 ranks in bluff for the synergy bonus (it’s a class skill for your Zhentarim levels). Just don’t expect to do much more.
A dire flail is an absolute must, of course, as is the best possible set of light or medium armor you can afford. Items that boost Strength, Dex or Charisma definitely won’t go amiss either. If you want to access blackguard spells you’ll need to boost your Wis up a bit as well, and wands are definitely your friend. Also, since you’re forced into using a non-reach weapon, anything that can boost your size or otherwise extend your reach will definitely be valuable.
BUILD SUMMARY
No surprise on a build that primarily consists of fighter levels, but you end with +20 BAB and a ton of feats to augment your main fighting style. You can switch between TWFing and THFing freely, since the double weapon you are wielding can also be used as a two-handed weapon when just using one end. In general, once you’ve got the BAB to effectively use Power Attack, you’ll mostly want to THF unless you have some decent bonus damage charged up via Stormguard Warrior. You can make six attacks on a full attack when TWFing to fully take advantage of the bonus damage you’ll generate from Stormguard Warrior, or go full brute with pouncing charge, Power Attack and Combat Brute.
Your main trick comes online early and ramps up throughout your build. With Stormguard Warrior and Dire Flail Smash, you can use combat rhythm to make a touch attack with each side of your dire flail, boosting your attacks the next turn and forcing your enemies to save or be dazed. Better still, thanks to Double Hit, you can do this on an attack of opportunity. And between thicket of blades, Robilar’s Gambit and defensive rebuke, you have lots of ways to generate said AoOs. The save DC is no joke, either: by level 20, assuming level-appropriate Strength-boosting items, you should have a base DC of 31, which you can increase to 35 as a swift action via Animal Devotion, while your foes will be taking a -2 penalty on their saves due to your aura of despair. This means a pit fiend will need to roll a 17 or higher to avoid the daze (or 13 if its unholy aura is already active). And considering that you get the bonus damage from Stormguard Warrior regardless of whether or not they make their save, it’s definitely a scary combo.
VARIANTS
While this version was very heavy on the fighter, we messed around with several other builds that were more focused on being solid initiators. The build definitely takes longer to mature in those cases, but as a trade-off you end up with a good number of high-level maneuvers and stances, so it’s probably worth it overall. We had two versions we strongly considered that closed out with 8th-level maneuvers, one that was primarily warblade-based and one that involved a half-elf eternal blade.
We also fiddled with builds that leaned much harder into the debuffing aspect, stacking on save-debuffing auras to make the dazing particularly deadly. Those similarly came online way too late for our tastes, though with flaws they could be interesting options.
SOURCES
Warblade, crusader, Ironheart Aura, Stormguard Warrior, maneuvers: Tome of Battle
Zhentarim fighter ACF: Champions of Valor web enhancement
Dire Flail Smash: Champions of Ruin
Imperious Command, hit and run tactics fighter ACF: Drow of the Underdark
Double Hit: Miniature’s Handbook
Robilar’s Gambit: Player’s Handbook II
Combat Brute: Complete Warrior
Animal Devotion: Complete Champion
Never Outnumbered skill trick: Complete Scoundrel
Fighter, blackguard, all other feats: SRD
***
And that’s that! Please let us know what you think in the comments, and what you’d like to see for future showcases. Stay healthy out there!
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.
For this showcase, we’ll look at a fighter with a dark side: Dazed and Confused !
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/431937476010180610/692410628307943534/sketch1585153937417.png
Dazed and Confused
”I barely touched you!”
BACKGROUND
Does anyone pay attention to the myriad weapon style feats scattered throughout 3.5? A few of them pop up on builds now and then, often in concert with aptitude weapons to avoid some of their more annoying restrictions, but overall they just don’t pass the smell test: they pretty much all have incredibly annoying pre-reqs, they lock you into a subpar fighting style and often what they give you isn’t even that great.
Dire Flail Smash, from Champions of Ruin, is one of the exceptions to the latter rule. The effect it gives is fantastic: there are very few foes immune to dazing, and while TWF isn’t really ideal, at least the dire flail isn’t the worst weapon to get locked into using. But start trying to build around it and it becomes a lot more annoying. It functionally requires four feats (while it doesn’t list EWP as a pre-req, you can’t take Weapon Focus unless you’re proficient in the weapon) and forces you into a two-weapon fighting style… but then requires two feats that are often downright useless for a TWFer.
Still, when we were talking about lockdown and melee debuffers, it snagged our eye. In particular, we noticed that its effects only require a hit, not damage, meaning it would work nicely alongside Stormguard Warrior for some touch attack dazing. And so we began tossing together several builds that used it. Could we minimize its downsides while also making it more effective? And could we do it at a reasonable level, rather than something that comes online so late that it’s barely worthwhile?
The end result is a fun little Fighter+ build that we all enjoyed making. Hope you enjoy it too.
THE BASICS
Race: Human. This is a very feat-heavy build, so every feat you can cram in there counts. The bonus skill point also lets you dump Int and still meet any necessary requirements.
Build Stub: Fighter 12/Warblade 2/Crusader 2/Samurai 1/Blackguard 3
ACFs: Zhentarim fighter, hit and run tactics fighter.
Alignment: Lawful Evil. You can actually ditch the lawful aspect if you’d like once you’re done with samurai, but LE feels like a pretty good fit regardless.
Dazed and Confused
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers Known
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Warblade 1
Two-Weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus
Battle clarity (Reflex saves), weapon aptitude
Sudden leap, wolf fang strike, moment of perfect mind, punishing stancestance
Standard TWFing warblade open. Wolf fang strike and sudden leap both essentially give you pounce at this level, either by providing free movement or by letting you make two attacks as a standard action. Meanwhile, MoPF will shore up your main weakness throughout this build, while punishing stance provides some excellent bonus damage for the level and qualifies you for Stormguard Warrior down the road.
As for your feats, TWF should be no surprise. Weapon Focus is a required feat, and is nice to eat into the penalty you’ll take for using two weapons (no small matter at this level!). You’ll note that we didn’t include a specific weapon here; with the warblade’s aptitude, you can shift this to whatever you want at any given point. Since you’re a high-Strength build, I’m personally a fan of the quarterstaff at this level. It may sound boring, but it allows you to seamlessly switch between TWF and THF as circumstances permit.
2nd
Samurai 1
Exotic Weapon Proficiency (bastard sword)B
Daisho proficiency
You’re going to need a lot of bonus feats and full BAB to make the early feat timing work here, and unfortunately fighter alone won’t cut it. If you’re playing with flaws you can substitute in any other full BAB class, but if not you’ve got an interesting option: the CW samurai. For some odd reason, instead of just granting you proficiency with the bastard sword in the class weapon and armor proficiencies, you explicitly gain the feat Exotic Weapon Proficiency (bastard sword) at first level. Luckily you’re a warblade, meaning you can take that bastard sword and immediately aptitude it away into something more useful. As I mentioned previously double weapons are always a nice choice. The dire flail will become your weapon of choice in a few levels, but at this point you can pick whatever best suits you and run with it.
3rd
Fighter 1
Power AttackB, Ironheart Aura
Bonus feat, hit and run tactics
As I said, this build needs a lot of feats, so fighter is going to be your bread and butter. Who doesn’t like fighter? It’s a classic for a reason. Power Attack is a required feat that doesn’t necessarily play nicely with TWFing, but is nice alongside a double weapon for you to pick and choose your fighting style: one powerful two-handed attack with one side of the weapon, or a flurry of weaker attacks with both. Ironheart Aura isn’t the most exciting feat in the world but it’s required, and a flat +2 to saves for adjacent allies is always nice.
And since you’ve got a pretty decent Dex thanks to your TWF focus, hit and run tactics from Drow of the Underdark is just a perfect fit. This gives you some nice bonus damage when you attack foes who haven’t acted yet (or are otherwise flat-footed), plus a decent initiative boost, at the cost of some armor and shield proficiencies you weren’t likely to use in the first place. I’d call that a good trade.
4th
Fighter 2
Improved SunderB
Bonus feat
I’m actually a bigger fan of sundering than most, probably because I don’t tend to care that much about loot in most games I play. A lot of enemies are totally useless once their weapon gets sundered, and it’s a lot more reliable than disarming. Anyhow, it’s required for some other feats down the road, so take it and if destroying potential loot doesn’t make you squeamish, it’s a great tactical option to keep in your toolbelt.
5th
Fighter 3
Skill Focus (intimidate)B
Skill focus
Zhentarim fighter is another of those no-brainer ACFs that give something for nothing, in this case a free Skill Focus feat to keep your intimidate checks nice and high despite a mediocre Charisma.
6th
Fighter 4
Dire Flail SmashB, Stormguard Warrior
Bonus feat
Your two main tactical feats come online at once here, with perfect timing. Dire Flail Smash has some painful pre-reqs, but once you get there it’s downright amazing: any time you hit an enemy with both ends of your dire flail, they must make a scaling save based on your Strength or be dazed. Dazed is one of those conditions that are really hard to be fully immune to, so this is just about the best debuff you can apply. Meanwhile, Stormguard Warrior has a lot of interesting options, but for this build the best is by far combat rhythm. This lets you essentially charge up your attacks, making touch attacks instead of normal attacks and dealing no damage in return for a significant damage boost the following round. There’s a lot you can do with this… but in particular, you’re interested in how it interacts with Dire Flail Smash. You see, unlike a lot of similar feats, Dire Flail Smash only requires that you hit, not that you deal damage. So now you can make a flurry of touch attacks against a foe, dazing them and boosting your damage for a killing blow the next turn. Not too shabby...
7th
Fighter 5
Extended intimidation
Again, Zhentarim comes on here to keep your dead fighter levels from being THAT dead, in this case extending the effects of your intimidate to 24 hours instead of just for as long as you stick around. It’s actually pretty useful as far as the social aspect of intimidate goes, even if it doesn’t make much of a difference for the combat aspects.
8th
Fighter 6
Combat ReflexesB
Bonus feat
You’ve got a decently high Dex and Stormguard Warrior. Time to take advantage of both with Combat Reflexes.
9th
Fighter 7
Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
And with Improved TWF, you’re now making four attacks on a full attack.
10th
Fighter 8
Double HitB
Bonus feat
Ah, here we go. It was a pain to get here, but get here we did: with Double Hit, your main melee combo is completely in place. Now when you make an attack of opportunity, you can attack with each weapon (or each side of a double weapon) instead of just hitting once. Combined with the Stormguard Warrior’s combat rhythm and Dire Flail Smash, in practice this means that if someone triggers an AoO you get a pair of touch attacks, after which point your enemy needs to save vs dazing, and you get a +10 damage bonus on attacks the next turn. It’s a really nasty combo, and a tactic that will stay dangerous for the rest of your career.
11th
Crusader 1
Furious counterstrike, steely resolve 5
Douse the flames, white raven tactics, defensive rebuke, mountain hammer, revitalizing strike, martial spiritstance
Since we’ve got some really nasty things we can do on AoOs now, let’s work on developing those a bit. There’s no better option here than crusader, which adds on some much needed longevity, including some decent in-combat healing with revitalizing strike and martial spirit (don’t forget that even combat rhythm touch attacks should trigger martial spirit!). And since you’re high enough to pick 3rd-level maneuvers, it also means you can nab two particularly great options: white raven tactics and defensive rebuke. I doubt WRT needs any introduction at this point, but defensive rebuke in general is a great way for generating AoOs and keeping your allies safe.
12th
Crusader 2
Robilar’s Gambit
Indomitable soul
Thicket of bladesstance
And the final pieces of the puzzle lock into place. Another crusader level gives you another stance, giving you the fantastic thicket of blades, which prevents enemies from taking five foot steps to get out of your threatened area. Meanwhile you also pick up Robilar’s Gambit, allowing you to take AoOs any time someone attacks you. Combined with your other tactics, you can effectively lock down anyone in melee range: if your enemies attack you they get counterattacked and dazed. If they attack your allies you trigger defensive rebuke and counterattack and daze them. And if they try to move out of your threatened area, you counterattack and daze them. And during all of this, you’re also building up extra damage via Stormguard Warrior to be fully unleashed when your turn rolls around.
13th
Fighter 9
Swift demoralization
This would be the deadest of levels… except that Zhentarim comes into play again, giving you the excellent ability to use intimidate in combat as a swift action. Combined with Skill Focus and the Never Outnumbered skill trick, this is actually a pretty great use of your swift action on turns when you aren’t using defensive rebuke.
14th
Fighter 10
CleaveB
Bonus feat
Another bonus feat brings you Cleave. Always good against crowds (especially with the damage bonuses you get from Stormguard Warrior), and alongside your other feats, it qualifies you for...
15th
Blackguard 1
Imperious Command
Aura of evil, detect good, poison use
...Blackguard! A few levels in blackguard actually provide quite a lot for you. This level isn’t all that useful, though poison use is cute, but even just this one level gives you access to all blackguard spells via wands. And blackguards actually have a pretty good spell list; like assassin, they benefit from being a core option, meaning that their spell list got expanded by the various splatbooks.
Oh, and since you recently picked up swift demoralization, might as well fully reap the benefits with Imperious Command, giving you a swift action multi-target lockdown effect. It’s not as versatile as your dazing trick, since way more enemies are immune to fear, but it’s good crowd control and certainly worth having.
16th
Blackguard 2
Dark blessing, smite good 1/day
Another level and you’ve got evil divine grace and a smite attack. Your Charisma isn’t off the charts, but with items it should be passable enough to get some benefit here.
17th
Blackguard 3
Command undead, aura of despair
And here’s where the money is: command undead and aura of despair. Might as well take advantage of all those saves you’ll be forcing by forcing your enemies to take penalties to them.
18th
Warblade 2
Animal Devotion
Uncanny dodge
Pouncing charge
A dip back into warblade gives you pouncing charge, and between this and sudden leap you can effectively pounce twice an encounter without needing to worry about refreshing maneuvers. Meanwhile, Animal Devotion is just really handy for brutes in general, giving you several on-the-fly options like flight, extra attacks and even some cool options like poison (which you can harvest to take advantage of poison use). Particularly useful for you is the strength bonus. At this level it means a whopping +8 profane bonus to strength for the encounter as a swift action, which not only provides a sizable boost to your attacks and damage but also effectively gives +4 to the DC on your Dire Flail Smash. Combined with your aura of despair, this goes a long way toward making sure even high level foes will remain vulnerable to your main tactic. And since you can power it with command undead, you can keep this going all day long.
19th
Fighter 11
Well, it finally happened: a fully dead level. I tried my best to avoid these, but it’s hard to do on a build with 12 levels of fighter.
20th
Fighter 12
Combat BruteB
Bonus feat
And finish things out with a nice little capstone in Combat Brute. This could easily be Martial Study or Martial Stance for more ToB goodness, but Combat Brute is a very nice damage-boosting option alongside pouncing charge and Stormguard Warrior, and also has some other nice options like sundering cleave.
Warblade Maneuvers Known
1- Sudden leap, wolf fang strike, moment of perfect mind, punishing stancestance
5- Pouncing charge
Crusader Maneuvers Known
1- Douse the flames, martial spiritstance
2- Mountain hammer
3- White raven tactics, defensive rebuke, revitalizing strike, thicket of blades[/sup]
Alright, let’s not beat around the bush: this build is MAD as hell. You’re Strength-primary, but you’ll need a 17 Dex by level 9 to qualify for Improved TWF and Con to keep from dying. You also need Charisma for intimidation and if you want to benefit from command undead and dark blessing, and Wisdom if you want to cast any blackguard spells. It’s a lot. Luckily you can safely dump Int thanks to minimal skill requirements, and the Wisdom requirement is late enough that you can ignore it until you have a boosting item to get you there.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS:
28-point buy: Str 16/Dex 15/Con 12/Int 8/Wis 10/Cha 12
32-point buy: Str 16/Dex 16/Con 12/Int 8/Wis 10/Cha 14
You’ve got fairly minimal skill requirements: other than a handful of cross-class ranks in hide and knowledge (religion) to qualify for blackguard by level 15, all you need to worry about doing is keeping intimidate maxed and taking the Never Outnumbered skill trick. Even with an Intelligence of 8 a human should have no trouble doing this, and can even work on getting 5 ranks in bluff for the synergy bonus (it’s a class skill for your Zhentarim levels). Just don’t expect to do much more.
A dire flail is an absolute must, of course, as is the best possible set of light or medium armor you can afford. Items that boost Strength, Dex or Charisma definitely won’t go amiss either. If you want to access blackguard spells you’ll need to boost your Wis up a bit as well, and wands are definitely your friend. Also, since you’re forced into using a non-reach weapon, anything that can boost your size or otherwise extend your reach will definitely be valuable.
BUILD SUMMARY
No surprise on a build that primarily consists of fighter levels, but you end with +20 BAB and a ton of feats to augment your main fighting style. You can switch between TWFing and THFing freely, since the double weapon you are wielding can also be used as a two-handed weapon when just using one end. In general, once you’ve got the BAB to effectively use Power Attack, you’ll mostly want to THF unless you have some decent bonus damage charged up via Stormguard Warrior. You can make six attacks on a full attack when TWFing to fully take advantage of the bonus damage you’ll generate from Stormguard Warrior, or go full brute with pouncing charge, Power Attack and Combat Brute.
Your main trick comes online early and ramps up throughout your build. With Stormguard Warrior and Dire Flail Smash, you can use combat rhythm to make a touch attack with each side of your dire flail, boosting your attacks the next turn and forcing your enemies to save or be dazed. Better still, thanks to Double Hit, you can do this on an attack of opportunity. And between thicket of blades, Robilar’s Gambit and defensive rebuke, you have lots of ways to generate said AoOs. The save DC is no joke, either: by level 20, assuming level-appropriate Strength-boosting items, you should have a base DC of 31, which you can increase to 35 as a swift action via Animal Devotion, while your foes will be taking a -2 penalty on their saves due to your aura of despair. This means a pit fiend will need to roll a 17 or higher to avoid the daze (or 13 if its unholy aura is already active). And considering that you get the bonus damage from Stormguard Warrior regardless of whether or not they make their save, it’s definitely a scary combo.
VARIANTS
While this version was very heavy on the fighter, we messed around with several other builds that were more focused on being solid initiators. The build definitely takes longer to mature in those cases, but as a trade-off you end up with a good number of high-level maneuvers and stances, so it’s probably worth it overall. We had two versions we strongly considered that closed out with 8th-level maneuvers, one that was primarily warblade-based and one that involved a half-elf eternal blade.
We also fiddled with builds that leaned much harder into the debuffing aspect, stacking on save-debuffing auras to make the dazing particularly deadly. Those similarly came online way too late for our tastes, though with flaws they could be interesting options.
SOURCES
Warblade, crusader, Ironheart Aura, Stormguard Warrior, maneuvers: Tome of Battle
Zhentarim fighter ACF: Champions of Valor web enhancement
Dire Flail Smash: Champions of Ruin
Imperious Command, hit and run tactics fighter ACF: Drow of the Underdark
Double Hit: Miniature’s Handbook
Robilar’s Gambit: Player’s Handbook II
Combat Brute: Complete Warrior
Animal Devotion: Complete Champion
Never Outnumbered skill trick: Complete Scoundrel
Fighter, blackguard, all other feats: SRD
***
And that’s that! Please let us know what you think in the comments, and what you’d like to see for future showcases. Stay healthy out there!