[3.5] The Toughest You Can Be

[JNAProductions]

Hello! I'm looking for help making a build that just does not die.

Stat array is as follows, arranged to taste:

17, 16, 14, 13, 13, 11

Or 25 Point Buy, on 3.5 rules. So I'm thinking array. :P

Level 9, standard WBL, no homebrew, max HP at 1, average rounded up after that.

My main goal is to make a character that can just look at danger, laugh, and tank EVERYTHING.

Thank you for help!

[gijoemike]

What sources do you have available?

If its any and all printed sources with wealth by level exploits then the solution is the true mind switch aleix (spelling) assassin of yourself. That trick sometimes appears on these boards but pulling it off around lvl 9 is going to be rough.




Also, what does the term tank mean to you?

[JNAProductions]

What sources do you have available?

If its any and all printed sources with wealth by level exploits then the solution is the true mind switch aleix (spelling) assassin of yourself. That trick sometimes appears on these boards but pulling it off around lvl 9 is going to be rough.

Also, what does the term tank mean to you?

Yes, I know a proper tank needs a way of drawing aggro, usually in 3.5 by being threatening enough that they have to be dealt with, while also being hard to put down.

And let's keep it relatively Practical Optimization. I know, not a hard and fast guideline by any means, but something that you could actually see in play at a table.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Probably a Warforged Psion (Shaper) with Adamantine Body, I'd also get the quick trait (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/characterTraits.htm#quick) to make up the speed loss.

Always keep Share Pain active on your psicrystal, its hardness 10 applies to every instance of damage it takes from that. Keep it in a compartment on your person so opponents never have line of sight/effect to it and can't target it directly or hit it with area effects. Have it wear a Healing Belt from MIC which it can use on you during combat if needed.

Buff yourself with Vigor and share it with your psicrystal. Use Psionic Repair Damage and share it with your psicrystal.


If you want dirty tricks:

There's the Astral Construct Power Armor (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=8955.0) trick that makes you invincible while you have an astral construct. Most characters would have breathing issues with that, not a Warforged.

There's the save game trick (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?146470-Psion-Save-Game-Trick&p=8146869) but I'm not sure what the minimum level for that is.

[Twurps]

What's the cheese tolerance at your table. depending on that, the answer can be anything between 'punpun' and 'monks have all good saves'.

For Melee based I think crusader might be a good start. healing maneuvers, delayed damage pool.. maybe couple that with a template with DR like mineral warrior (underdark p96) for +1 you get DR8 and +3nat armor.
You'll want to address your saves as well. I don't like paladin with crusader, but a well timed dip into swordsage for the save replacing maneuvers can be nice. In addition, you might want evasion (probably best from an item?) and maybe even the Fort/will save version of it: Mettle. the issue with mettle is that I don't know of any items that grant it, so you'll need to grab it as a class feature and I don't know any good classes that grant it. (I can only think of Pious templar (CD) without going book diving)

There's feats to add your shield bonus to touch AC. Shield ward (PHII) has a crappy pre-req. I think there's another feat like it, which might not have any pre-req's.

Now can you put all of the above in 1 build by lvl9. Probably yes. But should you want to? probably not. If you want a very viable Crusader build, mix in a bit of cleric, and go Ruby knight vindicator (ToB). You can hardly go wrong with the mineral warrior template, mix in any of the rest above to taste.

Edit: this was in reply to the original post, so sorry for the double questions as I got ninja'd quite a bit. should still be usefull though.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Delay death + beastland ferocity means you can take an infinite amount of HP damage and not care one whit until your spells run out. Of course, this is why you have infinite sources of out-of-battle healing.

That's not until later, though. The above psion build with a single level dip in crusader for healing maneuvers and stance will ensure that you're almost impossible to kill early on.

Best with gestalt, obviously.

Or get a minion with StP erudite manifesting and/or cerebremancer levels to teach you spells and powers to get the above DD+BF combo going.

[Doctor Despair]

For drawing aggro, the most effective tool would be Master of Mockery. Next to that... Goad maybe? It's such a step down though.

For tanking, there's a lot of effects to master. You're best off looking at a sort of DIY Emerald Legion, I'd think.

First and foremost, you'll want to take the feat Troll Blooded and the template Half-Undead(Gheden) (LA+1). That covers all damage except for fire and acid damage. Add on some form of acid immunity (Void Mind at LA+3, or Tainted Blood (Bestiary of Krynn, +1LA)), and some form of fire immunity (most efficiently by paying a druid to cast Mantle of the Fiery Spirit on you to grant you the fire subtype) and you've got immunity to all conventional damage, save for Searing Spell. You can add on a major bloodline to get fire resistance, such as an Efreeti bloodline (also getting Improved Initiative along the way!) Add on Unseeley Fey as well. If you're worried about the Mindflayers in the Voidmind template's fluff controlling you, it can grant you immunity to mental control at will. If you're not, it still grants wings (a critical movement mode to acquire eventually) and can negate fatigue from the Troll-Blooded feat periodically until you get an item to grant immunity to fatigue.

Either Binder dips or two feats devoted to Bind Vestige/Improved Bind Vestige so you can bind Haagenti for immunity to involuntary transformation effects.

After that, I think it's mostly gear.

Sandals of the Vagabond can help with the troll sunlight fatigue feature until you can get that one version of armor of the unending hunt to negate it entirely (or just take a dip in Horizon Walker for the Desert mastery to get immunity to fatigue).

Amulet of Wordtwisting can grant you tongues once per day if you don't have enough skills to learn the languages you need to use Master of Mockery consistently.

You'll want some sort of Mindblank item if you didn't take Voidmind for the free mindblank it grants

A Glaring Eye Graft grants you blindsense out to 30 feet to help with being an effective tank against sneaky folks. While you're at it, you may as well have a Long Arm graft for free reach.

Third Eye Freedom grants freedom of movement

Adding Warning to a weapon of some sort can also help with initiative, as can a Ring of Anticipation

A Ring of Counterspells and a Spellblade can be important for countering any magical dispels tossed your way

The Soulfire enhancement is going to be critical to get for those death effects

Take a visit to the Otyugh Hole for a bonus on your will save, and take Steadfast Determination to make you less MAD and stop you from failing con saves on a 1

After that... add some clay golem grafts, passing all your will saves (hopefully), to get immunity to magic (effectively SR Infinite).

I think that's the best we can do for being unkillable without straight-up abusing some Pun Pun magic combination?

Edit: I suppose that didn't cover old age. Wedded to History is, I think, the only non-magical answer, apart from some really poor PrCs. Being undead/construct won't work, as you need to have a con score to benefit from Troll Blooded.

[Eurus]

Probably a Warforged Psion (Shaper) with Adamantine Body, I'd also get the quick trait (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/characterTraits.htm#quick) to make up the speed loss.

Always keep Share Pain active on your psicrystal, its hardness 10 applies to every instance of damage it takes from that. Keep it in a compartment on your person so opponents never have line of sight/effect to it and can't target it directly or hit it with area effects. Have it wear a Healing Belt from MIC which it can use on you during combat if needed.

Buff yourself with Vigor and share it with your psicrystal. Use Psionic Repair Damage and share it with your psicrystal.

I agree completely, my go-to for a character that I want to outlive the rest of the party is a psion/psywar with a psicrystal and Share Pain+Vigor. How many hit points do you have? Enough. The best part is, it doesn't take that many resources to do, so you can still have a build that does other stuff while still being quite beefy. I like taking a cleric dip for heavy armor and some good domains.

You could even do Psychic Warrior 6/Paladin 2 if you want to get silly. Put everything in Constitution and Wisdom. Take Practiced Manifester, Serenity, and Intuitive Attack. Wear heavy armor or a Monk's Belt, whichever works better for your stats. Laugh with your absurd Fort and Will saves, your refilling temp HP battery, and your armor class that's as high as you care to buff it, then walk through the dragon's breath weapon and bop it in the nose with your stick.

[Anthrowhale]

There's a couple of other notions of tough that don't quite match the idea of a tank, but perhaps they are worth mentioning.

A Primordial Giant Half-Giant using the Half-giant racial class at the end of Complete Psionic can use Invisibility as an at-will SLA at ECL 1 with a class level. Coupling this with a class that can do things effectively while invisible (summons/astral constructs...) creates a character that can handle some impressive challenges.

A Hengeyokai (Sparrow) has a +8 size bonus and +6 dex bonus to ranged attacks and AC as well as flight. Surrogate spellcasting makes that work for a spellcaster, although a psion, warlock, or dragonfire adept doesn't even need that.

[flappeercraft]

Something as simple as a human commoner Gheden with the troll blooded feat already takes no damage from anything not fire or acid. Give it the delicious flaw to make all monsters target them over anything else (technically since the PC races appear in MM they are monsters). Take the poison immunity (trollbane) feat to avoid your regeneration getting bypassed with that. By level 8 you should easily also be able to get Deformity Madness and Willing Deformity for full immunity to mind affecting effects. Mantle of the fiery spirit can get you immunity to fire, and acid can be covered by buffs or items. If available, an air variant race from UA can remove your requirement to breathe. The ability to bind naberius is also useful to heal ability damage quick, so a binder dip wouldn't hurt. If you can get half golem in then magic immunity sets in, technically it has no LA and the only cost in the template on MM2 is to have a spellcaster and 500gp.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Something as simple as a human commoner Gheden with the troll blooded feat already takes no damage from anything not fire or acid. Give it the delicious flaw to make all monsters target them over anything else (technically since the PC races appear in MM they are monsters). Take the poison immunity (trollbane) feat to avoid your regeneration getting bypassed with that. By level 8 you should easily also be able to get Deformity Madness and Willing Deformity for full immunity to mind affecting effects. Mantle of the fiery spirit can get you immunity to fire, and acid can be covered by buffs or items. If available, an air variant race from UA can remove your requirement to breathe. The ability to bind naberius is also useful to heal ability damage quick, so a binder dip wouldn't hurt. If you can get half golem in then magic immunity sets in, technically it has no LA and the only cost in the template on MM2 is to have a spellcaster and 500gp.Gheden heal with negative energy, right? If so, take the flaw Infested With Chickens on that first commoner level, the various Corpsecrafter-related feats, and Fell Animate/Fell Drain, and Destruction Retribution, and go cleric until you get (greater) consumptive field. Then apply the above feats to (greater) consumptive field, start producing endless supplies of chickens, and make them undead as you pull them out of your spell component pouch. Now they can attack your foes (with the wight-chickens dealing energy drain), and when they're destroyed, they explode into negative energy, healing you right up and laying the egg hurt on your enemies. Even better, any attempt to turn undead will turn your chickens instead of you, and that still doesn't prevent them from eggsploding when you hurl divine fire around.

[flappeercraft]

Gheden heal with negative energy, right? If so, take the flaw Infested With Chickens on that first commoner level, the various Corpsecrafter-related feats, and Fell Animate/Fell Drain, and Destruction Retribution, and go cleric until you get (greater) consumptive field. Then apply the above feats to (greater) consumptive field, start producing endless supplies of chickens, and make them undead as you pull them out of your spell component pouch. Now they can attack your foes (with the wight-chickens dealing energy drain), and when they're destroyed, they explode into negative energy, healing you right up and laying the egg hurt on your enemies. Even better, any attempt to turn undead will turn your chickens instead of you, and that still doesn't prevent them from eggsploding when you hurl divine fire around.

Corpsecrafter only applies to undead you raise with spells unfortunately. Also healing is pointless if you don't take damage. Plus, Gheden's don't heal with negative energy, they only get reduced damage, kinda like improved evasion for negative energy but only if it comes from spells which further disqualifies the tactic.

Turning part is nice but Gheden's aren't too affected by turning. If they are affected they just take -4 to some stuff and if they would've been destroyed they're stunned instead.

If you want it for consumptive field then just use it for the strength tbh. Get a spell component pouch and be done with finite numbers.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Corpsecrafter only applies to undead you raise with spells unfortunately.That's fine.

"Each undead you raise or create with any necromancy spell gains a +4 enhancement bonus to Strength and +2 hit points per Hit Die."

Guess what school Fell Animate/Fell Drain (greater) consumptive field belongs to?


Also healing is pointless if you don't take damage. Plus, Gheden's don't heal with negative energy, they only get reduced damage, kinda like improved evasion for negative energy but only if it comes from spells which further disqualifies the tactic.Tomb Tainted Soul, I guess? Though you wouldn't need it if you were a necropolitan, I suppose. And if a necromancy spell is involved in crucimigration, you could add all of those Corpsecrafter feat tree benefits to yourself if you're the one who casts it. And add Human Heritage to make yourself immune to turning?


If you want it for consumptive field then just use it for the strength tbh. Get a spell component pouch and be done with finite numbers.Says you. I'd prefer to have nigh infinite exploding undead chicken minions, myself, especially ones that deal negative levels and then explode and heal me (or at least not deal damage, while laying the hurt onto foes).

And on another note, an acorn of far travel from an oak tree on a plane that has the stuff you want to make you even harder/more impossible to kill. Like one from the positive energy plane could give your undead abomination nigh infinite stacking temporary hit points, or one from Ysgard could give you free respawns every day. Or one with free metamagic for the spells you cast. Etc.

[Doctor Despair]

Tomb Tainted Soul, I guess? Though you wouldn't need it if you were a necropolitan, I suppose. .

You need a con score for Troll Blooded, sadly

[flappeercraft]

That's fine.

"Each undead you raise or create with any necromancy spell gains a +4 enhancement bonus to Strength and +2 hit points per Hit Die."

Guess what school Fell Animate/Fell Drain (greater) consumptive field belongs to?

Oh, read that wrong originally. However now that I did read that correctly there are two different issues. First of all Greater Consumptive Field is too high a level to be used in a level 9 build unless you're just pulling pazuzu bs or nabbing a candle of invocation for efreet cheese. Standard consumptive field is accessible, however it requires the targets be at 0hp or less to be affected, so you need to not only draw the chickens but also whack em. or whack em beforehand and waste ten years in prep time every time you want to go to combat. You could take leadership and have all your followers be commoners with chicken infested to do this for you though.



Tomb Tainted Soul, I guess? Though you wouldn't need it if you were a necropolitan, I suppose. And if a necromancy spell is involved in crucimigration, you could add all of those Corpsecrafter feat tree benefits to yourself if you're the one who casts it. And add Human Heritage to make yourself immune to turning?

That wouldn't be a bad idea for a necropolitan actually, yeah.



Says you. I'd prefer to have nigh infinite exploding undead chicken minions, myself, especially ones that deal negative levels and then explode and heal me (or at least not deal damage, while laying the hurt onto foes).

I was seeing it more from a perspective of the intention of the post which is tanking, but its not a bad idea out of it



And on another note, an acorn of far travel from an oak tree on a plane that has the stuff you want to make you even harder/more impossible to kill. Like one from the positive energy plane could give your undead abomination nigh infinite stacking temporary hit points, or one from Ysgard could give you free respawns every day. Or one with free metamagic for the spells you cast. Etc.
Ok yeah that's a good one. However why not just straight up ripoff the planar soldiers of mystra (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?499269-Planar-Soldiers-of-Mystra) instead?

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Crusader gives you a bunch of tanking stuff, which has mostly been already mentioned. Healing, delayed damage, counters with your shield, actually incentivizing enemies to attack you so you can take advantage of your tankiness...

Two that haven't been mentioned yet are that they get Mettle (evasion but for Fort and Will), and the 8th level stance Immortal Fortitude, which lets you just say "no" to death three times before needing to reactivate it. You can't get an 8th level stance (due to the levels you get a new stance) without multiclassing or spending a feat, but those are both pretty easy things to do.

Oh, and Crusaders are proficient in "all shields", which presumably includes the exotic shields in Races of Stone.

EDIT: Just noticed that this is for a level 9 build. Mettle doesn't come online until 13th level, and Immortal Fortitude until significantly later. I still think Crusader is a good class for this, though.

[Wildstag]

It'll be criticized for its use of Vow of Poverty, but I've been fond of using a Barb2/Ftr2/Warshaper4/FistOfTheForest1 by level 9. Use a Hengeyokai to get +2 con in hybrid form, and with those stats, you could have a +3 dex mod, +7 con mod, VoP, crit/SA immunity, fast healing, and rage to get Con-mod to +9. It counteracts the -2 AC from Rage while getting you to 29 AC. You can have 30 AC (rookie numbers) with a +2 in Con from the VoP enhancement bonus.

I used this in my sig-link Vongur, who also went Primeval. And since the stat boosting your AC is also boosting your HP, you end up with immense hp values. Before rage you get +72 from con mod. Other barbarian PrCs are good too since most of them will give a Constitution boost.

[Rebel7284]

If you want to focus on just being tough, there is the build of:
Mongrelfolk with Dragonborn and optionally Mineral Warrior templates going into:

X2or 3/Stoneblessed 3/Fist of the Forest 1/Deepwarden 2/Dwarf Paragon 3/

You really want Steadfast Determination.

Finish with stuff like Bear Warrior/Warshaper or Warblade for some fun concentration based maneuvers or whatever you want to do after you Con is in the stratosphere.

Takes a bit of finagling to get all the skills and feats perfectly right, but you are definitely the toughest nut around.

[rel]

There are a lot of non-hp status effects like sleep, unconscious, paralyzed, wis drained, etc.
Consider an undead race for broad immunities to a lot of the more common riders.

In terms of classes, magic generally offers the best options for everything including defense. By 9th level, any of the full casters can give you solid survivability in most situations if you build for it and play carefully.

[Menzath]

In a similar vein, was this thread
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?571186-quot-My-name-s-Tommy-and-I-m-a-TOUGH-guy!-quot

Although the requirements posted were a bit different, those ideas should still be very viable.

[Demidos]

I didn't see any mention to this, but Savage Species Ghost levels are great for what you're trying to do. At the 3rd level of ghost, you gain Rejuvenation, which makes you respawn in 2d4 days after dying to any effect, as long as you can make a DC 16 level check. With a few luckstones of Phaant (roll an extra die, take the best result, 1,000 gp), you effectively only permanently die 25% of the time, and less every time you level up. I'm currently playing this almost exact build in a campaign, and so far it's been going great.

Other build perks and notes:

3 levels of savage species ghost gives you telekinesis at 12th CL every 1d4 rounds. This gives you combat manuvers or 1d6 damage/level.
1 level of marshal gives you your charisma to combat manuvuers, dex checks (including init)
Jotunbrud gives you some nice bonuses to combat manuvuers.
Dungeoncrasher (alternate fighter feat) gives your bullrushes some pretty decent damage, plus you can get improved init and some other decent feats. Zhentarim goes well with your high charisma to make a fear / intimidate type build with a fearsome breastplate.
The Dreadful Wrath feat terrifies foes near you.
Swift concentration allows you to have two instances of telekinesis running concurrently.
Some feats and spells increase undead hitpoints when ressurected under those effect (desecrate iirc? maybe unhallow?) see if you can get those boosts.

These lead you to the oddly satifying build of Marshal 1/Dungeoncrasher Zhentarim Fighter 5/Ghost 3/DZ Fighter +. Feel free to sprinkle in martial initiators etc. as desired, or really take any classes -- most of your power comes from ghost and clever use of feats. By the time you reach level 15, you will be completely immune to death. Work with your DM to ensure this doesn't overwhelm the campaign, but in most fast-paced high level campaigns ressurection is cheap anyway, so it is simply more flavorful than most builds.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Ghost also segues well into thrallherd, since you'll always have ready access to thralls.