Piggy Knowles
2020-09-10, 04:31 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, WhamBamSam, Darrin and daremetoidareyou. Typically one of us writes up the build concept and possibly a stub, the others share feedback on Discord, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product.
For this showcase, we’re doing something a little bit different and showcasing four builds that didn’t quite make the cut: welcome to the Cutting Room Floor!
Special Edition: The Cutting Room Floor
BACKGROUND
You may not believe it based on how infrequently we post these optimization showcases, but our little group stays very active. While not everything we talk about is specifically focused on the optimization showcases, we’re pretty much always tinkering, tossing builds back and forth and coming up with ideas.
Unfortunately, I’ve noticed a bit of a problem. We’ve got at least a half-dozen builds completed and partially written up… but before they get finalized, we get another idea and go off chasing that one! Sometimes this is good - some of my favorite builds are concepts we started, wrote up, got distracted from, and then eventually returned to with some fresh new ideas. But in practice, we’ve got tons of cluttered Google docs full of everything from build stubs to mostly completed write-ups that may never see the light of day.
So, we decided to do a lightning round of showcases called the Cutting Room Floor. This will feature not one but four builds that we put together. These don’t represent everything we’ve been working on in the past few months, but they’re all builds that we thought felt interesting and worth exploring further, even if we didn’t quite develop them as far as some of the previous showcases.
Because we’re doing so many at once, I’ll probably be a bit lighter on the flavor side of the write-ups here, and I’m going to be selfish and not include sources. Please feel free to ask if you want us to source anything, though! As always we’ve basically stuck to Iron Chef rules just to have a general baseline: official sources only, no DragMag unless it was reprinted in Dragon Compendium, no assumed flaws/traits, attempted minimal reliance on items. I hope you enjoy and comment on what we’ve got. I think there’s a lot of fun stuff here.
List of builds this showcase:
Cutting Room Floor: The Happiest SADiest (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618674-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Cutting-Room-Floor-The-Happiest-SADist) (Cha-SAD gish)
Cutting Room Floor: Burn, Baby, Burn (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618675-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Cutting-Room-Floor-Burn-Baby-Burn) (Warmage optimization)
Cutting Room Floor: Bad Touch (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618676-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Cutting-Room-Floor-Bad-Touch) (Dread necromancer gish/debuffer)
Cutting Room Floor: Stomp the Yard (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618679-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Cutting-Room-Floor-Stomp-the-Yard) (Trample optimization)
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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/431937476010180610/753418740002979860/reach-out.png
Bad Touch
Reach out and touch someone...
OVERVIEW
A lot of our builds are actually born out of failed attempts at something else entirely. I’m probably the single biggest culprit of this in our group, and I know I’ve driven the others crazy with how much I jump between builds. I’ll get a basic concept, start building on it, hit on something that seems really fun to add in, bash my head against a wall for a while trying to staple the new idea to the old one, and then scrap the original idea altogether and build around the new concept instead. (It’s why there are probably five times as many partially written-up builds as there are showcases.)
Anyhow, this one come out of us messing around with shadow blend monks. We’d been working on ways to stack different negative effects onto an unarmed strike, and one of the ideas I most liked was using Poison Spell alongside a multi-touch spell like chill touch and Sickening Grasp to slam your opponent with 3+ saves per touch attack. Unfortunately, there was no way to get all of that onto a single build while still maintaining the other aspects we were hoping to include, and after many failed attempts, I decided to take a completely different tack.
See, when looking at all of the different options, I noticed that there were very few classes that got easy access to said multi-touch spells at a low enough level, but one of those options was the dread necromancer. This reminded me of a very old conversation I’d had with A_S, during his old gish party series (still one of my favorite pieces of optimization). We’d been discussing how to make a necromancer gish, and he kept running into the same wall: while you technically COULD do it, the dread necromancer’s spell list just wasn’t suited toward fishing.
But what if we built a gish whose M.O. was touch attacks and debuffs? That’s an area that dread necros excel at, and that gish tactics can augment nicely. Why not go at it from that direction? And since we’re talking about a dread necromancer, what if we focused on another thing dread necros are surprisingly good at: sponging lots of damage? The build itself came together quickly from there, and I quite like the final product.
THE BASICS
Race: Human, natch.
Build Stub: Crusader 1/Dread Necromancer 8/Spellsword 1/Ebon Phoenix Mage 10
Alternate Class Features: Ebon phoenix mage (entirely a flavor swap - a jade phoenix mage works just as well here)
Alignment: Lawful neutral is how this build was envisioned, but most DMs would probably agree that the ebon phoenix mage adaptation should be “any non-good” instead of “any non-evil,” which opens up lawful evil as an option if it’s the sort of thing you’re into.
Bad Touch
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Crusader 1
Dreadful Wrath, Hidden Talent (psionic minor creation)
Furious counterstrike, steely resolve 5
Charging minotaur, stone bones, crusader’s strike, leading the attack, douse the flames, martial spiritstance
Well, it’s hard to start any tank build without the king of all tanks: the crusader comes in to do crusader-y stuff, using stone bones and martial spirit/crusader’s strike and steely resolve to basically never die. Dreadful Wrath and an excellent Charisma put some fear into the hearts of your enemies. And with Hidden Talent, you can also create some injury poisons to (very carefully) apply to your weapons. I wouldn’t recommend going crazy at this level, since you don’t have a particularly easy way to deal with poisoning yourself, but even at 1st level a DC 15 craft DC for something like blue whinnis isn’t out of the question.
2nd
Dread Necromancer 1
Charnel touch, rebuke undead
The dread necromancer is an odd choice for a gish, as it gets almost no buffing spells at all. On the other hand, it does make for one heck of a tank thanks to the ability to dish out at-will negative energy damage, which can easily be converted into healing via Tomb-Tainted Soul or necropolitan. And while the spells aren’t your traditional gish-y buff spells, there ARE some nice options for a brute. Chill touch is not that much better than your charnel touch at this level but gives you a nice solid melee touch attack to throw around, ray of enfeeblement is a great all around debuff and cause fear can straight up end encounters at this level.
3rd
Dread Necromancer 2
Tomb-Tainted Soul
Lich body DR 2
I said that dread necros make for fantastic tanks, right? Two levels in and you’ve got damage reduction and infinite healing via charnel touch plus Tomb-Tainted Soul. Note that if necropolitan is allowed and you’re starting at a high enough level to essentially get it drawback free, it is SIGNIFICANTLY better. Being undead gives you a ton of immunities, most relevantly to poison (letting you go to town with your own poisons), frees up a feat and makes for easier point buy. I like to write these up as though you’re starting from level 1, and builds that rely on necropolitan are tough in the early levels, but it’s a much better option if it’s on the table.
4th
Dread Necromancer 3
Negative energy burst 1/day
You’re not dishing out crazy damage but you’re consistent, ridiculously hard to kill, and love throwing around debuffs with poison, spells and Dreadful Wrath fear. You can also explode in a burst of negative energy once a day for some mini-crowd control. I’d say all in all that’s pretty decent.
5th
Dread Necormancer 4
Advanced learning (parching touch), mental bastion +2
You pick up 2nd-level spells here, which includes some doozies. Command undead is a straight up no-save, just lose against mindless undead (while still being useful against non-mindless foes), and you nab some more debuffs and ways to screw with your foes such as ghoul touch, scare and blindness/deafness. You also add parching touch to your spell list via advanced learning. It may seem like an odd choice, but as a low-level multi-touch spell it will end up being incredibly useful, and unlike chill touch’s negative energy there are almost no immunities to desiccation damage.
6th
Dread Necromancer 5
Poison Spell
Fear aura
And here’s why you took parching touch as your advanced learning: Poison Spell comes online at this level. This nifty little feat from Drow of the Underdark allows you to add a contact or injury poison as a spell component for any melee touch spell. Foes that are hit with the touch spell are also affected by the poison. On its own it’s not bad, a neat way to add a second annoying rider to your spells. Combined with multi-touch spells like chill touch or parching touch, however, it turns a little 1st-level spell into a flurry of save-or-sucks. Now that one dose of poison essentially gets multiplied by your level as every touch you make applies the nastiest poison you can craft (and with psionic minor creation and a maxed out craft check, you should always have some nasty options on hand), in addition to its usual effects.
It’s worth noting that you DO have a 1/20 chance of poisoning yourself every time you do this. This is a complete non-issue if you took my advice and went necropolitan, but luckily even if you didn’t you have a pretty good save against poison thanks to mental bastion (which despite the name protects against a number of bodily concerns, including poison). Overall it’s worth the risk.
Oh, and your fear shenanigans also improve thanks to yet another passive fear ability, the dread necro’s fear aura. This is pretty decent at these levels, especially as a way to help escalate Dreadful Wrath. The DC is tied to your dread necro level and thus won’t scale quite as well as Dreadful Wrath, but it’s still quite handy.
7th
Dread Necromancer 6
Scabrous touch 1/day
Ah, I hate 1/day abilities and I hate 3.5’s disease mechanics, but scabrous touch is definitely on theme and actually not too bad as far as these types of abilities go. Because it has no incubation period, it’s more of an immediate threat than disease typically is. More interesting is the fact that you have 3rd-level spells, which includes some fun ones like vampiric touch, ray of exhaustion and summon undead III (aka the allip summoner).
8th
Spellsword 1
Ignore spell failure 10%
Your crusader dip also qualifies you for spellsword, which is quite handy. While you already cast in light armor without issue, ignoring spell failure means you can also pick up a shield for another quick AC boost. Since you’re mostly focusing on touch attacks rather than swinging around a big two-handed weapon, there’s basically no drawback to this.
9th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 1
Sickening Grasp
Arcane wrath, rite of waking
Defensive rebuke
I listed this as ebon phoenix mage, which is really just a fluff shift mentioned in the description of the JPM class. There’s actually no reason you can’t go jade since you’re not evil, but ebon phoenix mage is just a perfect fluff fit so I say go for it. In any case you nab yourself a mini-Arcane Strike (significantly worse than the original, but it’ll do in a pinch) and a 3rd-level maneuver. Defensive rebuke plays up the tanking aspect of the build a bit by forcing enemies to focus on you or eat an additional attack.
As for your feat, Sickening Grasp is probably my absolute favorite reserve feat, making every single touch attack you make sicken foes. Hey, guess who is really good at making touch attacks? Consider now, a lowly 1st-level spell slot can give you a Poison Spell chill/parching touch, making more than a half dozen attacks that damage, sicken, poison and possibly toss out some ability damage as well. That’s not half bad for a first-level slot, no?
10th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 2
Mystic phoenix stance
Mystic phoenix stance is not a bad alternative to martial spirit at all, giving you an AC and CL boost. Meanwhile 4th-level spells come online, which include some great choices. If you didn’t go necropolitan, death ward is a huge defensive buff. Dispel magic, enervation, bestow curse, fear and poison are all powerful debuffs all on their own and most of them also combine well with Poison Spell (yo dawg, I heard you like poison so I put Poison Spell on your poison spell so you can poison while you poison). Heck, it’s not really your main MO but you can even toss out a black tentacles or make some zombies if that’s what you’re into.
11th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 3
Divine surge
Your damage output has not really been a heavy focus, but as you pick up a 4th-level maneuver you can grab the excellent divine surge and toss out a fistful of d6 with your attacks. Combined with arcane wrath, this can actually dish out some very decent damage if you’re willing to devote a spell slot to it.
12th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 4
Fell Drain
Empowering strike
Hey, we’re about due for an upgrade on our crazy touch spells, right? How about Fell Drain? Now they don’t just sicken, poison and dish out ability damage… they drain levels, too! The other goodies you grab at this level are also quite nice. Empowering strike is a very nice one-two punch alongside divine surge: smack someone with divine surge, then follow up the next turn with an empowered touch attack like poison or vampiric touch. And with 5th-level spells you also get your hands on some really powerful options. Greater dispel is for my money the best debuff in the game, but you’ve also got a ton of great offensive options at this level (plus some ridiculously broken ones, like lesser planar binding).
13th
Dread Necromancer 7
Lich body DR 4, summon familiar
It’s worth jumping back into dread necro for another pair of levels. Right away that means a boost to your DR and a familiar. I absolutely love familiars, and they’re even better on a gish or skillful chassis than they are on your standard caster. I’m particularly fond of the imp, with its shapechanging shenanigans and access to a free commune every day, but the ghostly visage is quite cool as well and benefits from your access to at-will negative energy damage.
14th
Dread Necromancer 8
Advanced learning (aura of terror), negative energy burst 2/day, undead mastery
Here we go, the level I’m sure you’ve been waiting for: dread necromancer 8. No, I’m not interested in undead mastery (I suppose you can be a passable animator if you want to be, but that’s not really what your focus is). Instead, you pick up 6th-level spells and another use of advanced learning. Aura of terror is your ideal pick here. This is a very powerful augment to your Dreadful Wrath and fear aura, increasing their DCs by 2, upgrading the condition they grant from shaken to frightened and extending their range (tripling the area in the case of your fear aura).
Oh, and 6th-level spells carry some other nice bonuses with them, such as a little spell called harm. This doubles as heal for you while still being an excellent offensive threat.
15th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 5
Versatile Spellcaster
Law bearer, thicket of bladesstance
With dread necro 8 hit, you can head back to ebon phoenix mage. Once again we run into an issue of stance timing, as neither desert wind nor devoted spirit get a 5th-level stance, but it’s not as if thicket of blades is a BAD choice. Law bearer is one of the better charging maneuvers as well. Meanwhile, Versatile Spellcaster is a great way to extend your higher level spells per day and can even cheese in access to spell levels you couldn’t ordinarily cast.
16th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 6
Firebird stance, ebon phoenix master
Firebird stance isn’t as overall useful as mystic phoenix stance, but it’s nice to have in your back pocket for the times you run into fire attacks (and bleh, writing a bunch of these up in series really drives home how repetitive my descriptions can get - sorry!). These last five levels can be replaced with abjurant champion if you’d prefer to hit 9ths without relying on Versatile Spellcaster cheese, but dread necro 9ths are actually nothing to really write home about, so we went with a straight phoenix mage finish.
17th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 7
Rallying strike
If you did end up going the minionmancy route then you may want order forged from chaos here to give those zombies some free movement, but rallying strike is a nice solid balance between tanking and party support. As for spells, I think the higher level spells of the dread necro are mostly not super exciting; you’ve got some powerful save or dies but they all get kind of repetitive.
18th
Jade Phoenix Mage 8
Sanctum Spell
Quickening strike
Hang on, I see you walking away at the sight of Sanctum Spell. It’s not what you think, I promise!
Quickening strike is always handy, especially on a spontaneous caster that normally is locked out of Quicken Spell. Sadly the spell you’d likely most want to quicken, aura of terror, is just past the 5th-level limit… but hey, Sanctum Spell to save the day! Here you’ll use it for the opposite reason it’s usually seen, having it effectively lower a 6th-level spell to 5th-level in order to allow it to qualify for quickening strike.
19th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 9
Shield counter
Hey, remember that shield we encouraged you to pick up, oh, 12 levels back? It pays off nicely here with shield counter, perhaps the best ToB parry-style counter. Most similar counters require you to make an opposed roll with what you’re attempting to counter, but shield counter merely requires you to hit your opponent with a shield bash to dodge the attack. Not only does this generate an off-turn attack, but against the majority of foes whose attacks you’ll want to avoid, their AC will be significantly lower than their attack rolls despite the attack penalty you take.
20th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 10
Emerald immolation
I’ve said it elsewhere in this very showcase, but as far as capstones go, there might be some that are better than emerald immolation, but there are very few that are anywhere near as cool.
Maneuvers/Stances
1- Charging minotaur, stone bones, crusader’s strike, leading the attack, douse the flames, martial spiritstance
3- Defensive rebuke, thicket of bladesstance
4- Divine surge
5- Law bearer
6- Rallying strike
7- Shield counter
Charisma drives your spells and fear aura, Constitution keeps you ticking and Strength keeps you swinging. You’re not a skillmonkey and have only one skill you care about, and Wisdom and Dex are basically dump stats for you.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS:
28-Point Buy: Str 14/Dex 10/Con 15/Int 10/Wis 8/Cha 16
32-Point Buy: Str 14/Dex 12/Con 16/Int 10/Wis 8/Cha 16
You don’t get a ton of skill points, so it’s good that you don’t particularly need them. Concentration and a smattering of knowledges will cover basically all of your requirements. Just keep craft (poisonmaking) maxed out and you’ll be fine.
Boost that craft skill, and your rebuking checks while you’re at it, and dress up like a gish. I don’t know, I’m tired!
BUILD SUMMARY
You end up with +16 BAB but just shy of 9th-level spells. Of course, dread necromancer’s 9th-level options are pretty disappointing overall, and you can always use Versatile Spellcaster cheese to access them if you really want to, so this isn’t actually a big blow.
Instead of using your gishy chassis to enchant your sword, you use it to get up close and personal, stacking on negative effect after negative effect. You have multiple passive fear effects that automatically trigger any time you do anything remotely offensive, and can receive an excellent boost via aura of terror. A Fell Drain Poison Spell parching touch at will give you a flurry of touch attacks that drain levels, poison foes, sicken them and force them to save or eat some ability damage… and that’s just a 3rd-level spell. This is a combo that comes online early and stays decent any time you’re up against non-immune foes. Of course, when you ARE facing immune foes, you’re far from helpless. You’re a full caster with access to greater dispel for magical defenses, and by far the most common creature type immune to your shenanigans is the undead… something you are uniquely suited to dealing with really, really well. And on the tank side of things, you have infinite healing as early as level 3, plus damage reduction, the crusader’s delayed damage pool and maneuvers like defensive rebuke and shield counter.
VARIANTS
You can run a variant with abjurant champion 5 over the last 5 levels of ebon phoenix mage. This will cost you a feat and quickening strike, but you’ll gain native access to 9ths without Versatile Spellcaster abuse and won’t lose any maneuvers. As I mentioned in the write-up I’m not a big fan of the dread necro’s spell list at 9, so I went with the EPM version, but it’s definitely a valid option.
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And there you have it! Feel free to comment, discuss or check out one of the others!
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, WhamBamSam, Darrin and daremetoidareyou. Typically one of us writes up the build concept and possibly a stub, the others share feedback on Discord, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product.
For this showcase, we’re doing something a little bit different and showcasing four builds that didn’t quite make the cut: welcome to the Cutting Room Floor!
Special Edition: The Cutting Room Floor
BACKGROUND
You may not believe it based on how infrequently we post these optimization showcases, but our little group stays very active. While not everything we talk about is specifically focused on the optimization showcases, we’re pretty much always tinkering, tossing builds back and forth and coming up with ideas.
Unfortunately, I’ve noticed a bit of a problem. We’ve got at least a half-dozen builds completed and partially written up… but before they get finalized, we get another idea and go off chasing that one! Sometimes this is good - some of my favorite builds are concepts we started, wrote up, got distracted from, and then eventually returned to with some fresh new ideas. But in practice, we’ve got tons of cluttered Google docs full of everything from build stubs to mostly completed write-ups that may never see the light of day.
So, we decided to do a lightning round of showcases called the Cutting Room Floor. This will feature not one but four builds that we put together. These don’t represent everything we’ve been working on in the past few months, but they’re all builds that we thought felt interesting and worth exploring further, even if we didn’t quite develop them as far as some of the previous showcases.
Because we’re doing so many at once, I’ll probably be a bit lighter on the flavor side of the write-ups here, and I’m going to be selfish and not include sources. Please feel free to ask if you want us to source anything, though! As always we’ve basically stuck to Iron Chef rules just to have a general baseline: official sources only, no DragMag unless it was reprinted in Dragon Compendium, no assumed flaws/traits, attempted minimal reliance on items. I hope you enjoy and comment on what we’ve got. I think there’s a lot of fun stuff here.
List of builds this showcase:
Cutting Room Floor: The Happiest SADiest (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618674-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Cutting-Room-Floor-The-Happiest-SADist) (Cha-SAD gish)
Cutting Room Floor: Burn, Baby, Burn (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618675-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Cutting-Room-Floor-Burn-Baby-Burn) (Warmage optimization)
Cutting Room Floor: Bad Touch (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618676-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Cutting-Room-Floor-Bad-Touch) (Dread necromancer gish/debuffer)
Cutting Room Floor: Stomp the Yard (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?618679-Optimization-Showcase-in-the-Playground-Cutting-Room-Floor-Stomp-the-Yard) (Trample optimization)
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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/431937476010180610/753418740002979860/reach-out.png
Bad Touch
Reach out and touch someone...
OVERVIEW
A lot of our builds are actually born out of failed attempts at something else entirely. I’m probably the single biggest culprit of this in our group, and I know I’ve driven the others crazy with how much I jump between builds. I’ll get a basic concept, start building on it, hit on something that seems really fun to add in, bash my head against a wall for a while trying to staple the new idea to the old one, and then scrap the original idea altogether and build around the new concept instead. (It’s why there are probably five times as many partially written-up builds as there are showcases.)
Anyhow, this one come out of us messing around with shadow blend monks. We’d been working on ways to stack different negative effects onto an unarmed strike, and one of the ideas I most liked was using Poison Spell alongside a multi-touch spell like chill touch and Sickening Grasp to slam your opponent with 3+ saves per touch attack. Unfortunately, there was no way to get all of that onto a single build while still maintaining the other aspects we were hoping to include, and after many failed attempts, I decided to take a completely different tack.
See, when looking at all of the different options, I noticed that there were very few classes that got easy access to said multi-touch spells at a low enough level, but one of those options was the dread necromancer. This reminded me of a very old conversation I’d had with A_S, during his old gish party series (still one of my favorite pieces of optimization). We’d been discussing how to make a necromancer gish, and he kept running into the same wall: while you technically COULD do it, the dread necromancer’s spell list just wasn’t suited toward fishing.
But what if we built a gish whose M.O. was touch attacks and debuffs? That’s an area that dread necros excel at, and that gish tactics can augment nicely. Why not go at it from that direction? And since we’re talking about a dread necromancer, what if we focused on another thing dread necros are surprisingly good at: sponging lots of damage? The build itself came together quickly from there, and I quite like the final product.
THE BASICS
Race: Human, natch.
Build Stub: Crusader 1/Dread Necromancer 8/Spellsword 1/Ebon Phoenix Mage 10
Alternate Class Features: Ebon phoenix mage (entirely a flavor swap - a jade phoenix mage works just as well here)
Alignment: Lawful neutral is how this build was envisioned, but most DMs would probably agree that the ebon phoenix mage adaptation should be “any non-good” instead of “any non-evil,” which opens up lawful evil as an option if it’s the sort of thing you’re into.
Bad Touch
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Crusader 1
Dreadful Wrath, Hidden Talent (psionic minor creation)
Furious counterstrike, steely resolve 5
Charging minotaur, stone bones, crusader’s strike, leading the attack, douse the flames, martial spiritstance
Well, it’s hard to start any tank build without the king of all tanks: the crusader comes in to do crusader-y stuff, using stone bones and martial spirit/crusader’s strike and steely resolve to basically never die. Dreadful Wrath and an excellent Charisma put some fear into the hearts of your enemies. And with Hidden Talent, you can also create some injury poisons to (very carefully) apply to your weapons. I wouldn’t recommend going crazy at this level, since you don’t have a particularly easy way to deal with poisoning yourself, but even at 1st level a DC 15 craft DC for something like blue whinnis isn’t out of the question.
2nd
Dread Necromancer 1
Charnel touch, rebuke undead
The dread necromancer is an odd choice for a gish, as it gets almost no buffing spells at all. On the other hand, it does make for one heck of a tank thanks to the ability to dish out at-will negative energy damage, which can easily be converted into healing via Tomb-Tainted Soul or necropolitan. And while the spells aren’t your traditional gish-y buff spells, there ARE some nice options for a brute. Chill touch is not that much better than your charnel touch at this level but gives you a nice solid melee touch attack to throw around, ray of enfeeblement is a great all around debuff and cause fear can straight up end encounters at this level.
3rd
Dread Necromancer 2
Tomb-Tainted Soul
Lich body DR 2
I said that dread necros make for fantastic tanks, right? Two levels in and you’ve got damage reduction and infinite healing via charnel touch plus Tomb-Tainted Soul. Note that if necropolitan is allowed and you’re starting at a high enough level to essentially get it drawback free, it is SIGNIFICANTLY better. Being undead gives you a ton of immunities, most relevantly to poison (letting you go to town with your own poisons), frees up a feat and makes for easier point buy. I like to write these up as though you’re starting from level 1, and builds that rely on necropolitan are tough in the early levels, but it’s a much better option if it’s on the table.
4th
Dread Necromancer 3
Negative energy burst 1/day
You’re not dishing out crazy damage but you’re consistent, ridiculously hard to kill, and love throwing around debuffs with poison, spells and Dreadful Wrath fear. You can also explode in a burst of negative energy once a day for some mini-crowd control. I’d say all in all that’s pretty decent.
5th
Dread Necormancer 4
Advanced learning (parching touch), mental bastion +2
You pick up 2nd-level spells here, which includes some doozies. Command undead is a straight up no-save, just lose against mindless undead (while still being useful against non-mindless foes), and you nab some more debuffs and ways to screw with your foes such as ghoul touch, scare and blindness/deafness. You also add parching touch to your spell list via advanced learning. It may seem like an odd choice, but as a low-level multi-touch spell it will end up being incredibly useful, and unlike chill touch’s negative energy there are almost no immunities to desiccation damage.
6th
Dread Necromancer 5
Poison Spell
Fear aura
And here’s why you took parching touch as your advanced learning: Poison Spell comes online at this level. This nifty little feat from Drow of the Underdark allows you to add a contact or injury poison as a spell component for any melee touch spell. Foes that are hit with the touch spell are also affected by the poison. On its own it’s not bad, a neat way to add a second annoying rider to your spells. Combined with multi-touch spells like chill touch or parching touch, however, it turns a little 1st-level spell into a flurry of save-or-sucks. Now that one dose of poison essentially gets multiplied by your level as every touch you make applies the nastiest poison you can craft (and with psionic minor creation and a maxed out craft check, you should always have some nasty options on hand), in addition to its usual effects.
It’s worth noting that you DO have a 1/20 chance of poisoning yourself every time you do this. This is a complete non-issue if you took my advice and went necropolitan, but luckily even if you didn’t you have a pretty good save against poison thanks to mental bastion (which despite the name protects against a number of bodily concerns, including poison). Overall it’s worth the risk.
Oh, and your fear shenanigans also improve thanks to yet another passive fear ability, the dread necro’s fear aura. This is pretty decent at these levels, especially as a way to help escalate Dreadful Wrath. The DC is tied to your dread necro level and thus won’t scale quite as well as Dreadful Wrath, but it’s still quite handy.
7th
Dread Necromancer 6
Scabrous touch 1/day
Ah, I hate 1/day abilities and I hate 3.5’s disease mechanics, but scabrous touch is definitely on theme and actually not too bad as far as these types of abilities go. Because it has no incubation period, it’s more of an immediate threat than disease typically is. More interesting is the fact that you have 3rd-level spells, which includes some fun ones like vampiric touch, ray of exhaustion and summon undead III (aka the allip summoner).
8th
Spellsword 1
Ignore spell failure 10%
Your crusader dip also qualifies you for spellsword, which is quite handy. While you already cast in light armor without issue, ignoring spell failure means you can also pick up a shield for another quick AC boost. Since you’re mostly focusing on touch attacks rather than swinging around a big two-handed weapon, there’s basically no drawback to this.
9th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 1
Sickening Grasp
Arcane wrath, rite of waking
Defensive rebuke
I listed this as ebon phoenix mage, which is really just a fluff shift mentioned in the description of the JPM class. There’s actually no reason you can’t go jade since you’re not evil, but ebon phoenix mage is just a perfect fluff fit so I say go for it. In any case you nab yourself a mini-Arcane Strike (significantly worse than the original, but it’ll do in a pinch) and a 3rd-level maneuver. Defensive rebuke plays up the tanking aspect of the build a bit by forcing enemies to focus on you or eat an additional attack.
As for your feat, Sickening Grasp is probably my absolute favorite reserve feat, making every single touch attack you make sicken foes. Hey, guess who is really good at making touch attacks? Consider now, a lowly 1st-level spell slot can give you a Poison Spell chill/parching touch, making more than a half dozen attacks that damage, sicken, poison and possibly toss out some ability damage as well. That’s not half bad for a first-level slot, no?
10th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 2
Mystic phoenix stance
Mystic phoenix stance is not a bad alternative to martial spirit at all, giving you an AC and CL boost. Meanwhile 4th-level spells come online, which include some great choices. If you didn’t go necropolitan, death ward is a huge defensive buff. Dispel magic, enervation, bestow curse, fear and poison are all powerful debuffs all on their own and most of them also combine well with Poison Spell (yo dawg, I heard you like poison so I put Poison Spell on your poison spell so you can poison while you poison). Heck, it’s not really your main MO but you can even toss out a black tentacles or make some zombies if that’s what you’re into.
11th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 3
Divine surge
Your damage output has not really been a heavy focus, but as you pick up a 4th-level maneuver you can grab the excellent divine surge and toss out a fistful of d6 with your attacks. Combined with arcane wrath, this can actually dish out some very decent damage if you’re willing to devote a spell slot to it.
12th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 4
Fell Drain
Empowering strike
Hey, we’re about due for an upgrade on our crazy touch spells, right? How about Fell Drain? Now they don’t just sicken, poison and dish out ability damage… they drain levels, too! The other goodies you grab at this level are also quite nice. Empowering strike is a very nice one-two punch alongside divine surge: smack someone with divine surge, then follow up the next turn with an empowered touch attack like poison or vampiric touch. And with 5th-level spells you also get your hands on some really powerful options. Greater dispel is for my money the best debuff in the game, but you’ve also got a ton of great offensive options at this level (plus some ridiculously broken ones, like lesser planar binding).
13th
Dread Necromancer 7
Lich body DR 4, summon familiar
It’s worth jumping back into dread necro for another pair of levels. Right away that means a boost to your DR and a familiar. I absolutely love familiars, and they’re even better on a gish or skillful chassis than they are on your standard caster. I’m particularly fond of the imp, with its shapechanging shenanigans and access to a free commune every day, but the ghostly visage is quite cool as well and benefits from your access to at-will negative energy damage.
14th
Dread Necromancer 8
Advanced learning (aura of terror), negative energy burst 2/day, undead mastery
Here we go, the level I’m sure you’ve been waiting for: dread necromancer 8. No, I’m not interested in undead mastery (I suppose you can be a passable animator if you want to be, but that’s not really what your focus is). Instead, you pick up 6th-level spells and another use of advanced learning. Aura of terror is your ideal pick here. This is a very powerful augment to your Dreadful Wrath and fear aura, increasing their DCs by 2, upgrading the condition they grant from shaken to frightened and extending their range (tripling the area in the case of your fear aura).
Oh, and 6th-level spells carry some other nice bonuses with them, such as a little spell called harm. This doubles as heal for you while still being an excellent offensive threat.
15th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 5
Versatile Spellcaster
Law bearer, thicket of bladesstance
With dread necro 8 hit, you can head back to ebon phoenix mage. Once again we run into an issue of stance timing, as neither desert wind nor devoted spirit get a 5th-level stance, but it’s not as if thicket of blades is a BAD choice. Law bearer is one of the better charging maneuvers as well. Meanwhile, Versatile Spellcaster is a great way to extend your higher level spells per day and can even cheese in access to spell levels you couldn’t ordinarily cast.
16th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 6
Firebird stance, ebon phoenix master
Firebird stance isn’t as overall useful as mystic phoenix stance, but it’s nice to have in your back pocket for the times you run into fire attacks (and bleh, writing a bunch of these up in series really drives home how repetitive my descriptions can get - sorry!). These last five levels can be replaced with abjurant champion if you’d prefer to hit 9ths without relying on Versatile Spellcaster cheese, but dread necro 9ths are actually nothing to really write home about, so we went with a straight phoenix mage finish.
17th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 7
Rallying strike
If you did end up going the minionmancy route then you may want order forged from chaos here to give those zombies some free movement, but rallying strike is a nice solid balance between tanking and party support. As for spells, I think the higher level spells of the dread necro are mostly not super exciting; you’ve got some powerful save or dies but they all get kind of repetitive.
18th
Jade Phoenix Mage 8
Sanctum Spell
Quickening strike
Hang on, I see you walking away at the sight of Sanctum Spell. It’s not what you think, I promise!
Quickening strike is always handy, especially on a spontaneous caster that normally is locked out of Quicken Spell. Sadly the spell you’d likely most want to quicken, aura of terror, is just past the 5th-level limit… but hey, Sanctum Spell to save the day! Here you’ll use it for the opposite reason it’s usually seen, having it effectively lower a 6th-level spell to 5th-level in order to allow it to qualify for quickening strike.
19th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 9
Shield counter
Hey, remember that shield we encouraged you to pick up, oh, 12 levels back? It pays off nicely here with shield counter, perhaps the best ToB parry-style counter. Most similar counters require you to make an opposed roll with what you’re attempting to counter, but shield counter merely requires you to hit your opponent with a shield bash to dodge the attack. Not only does this generate an off-turn attack, but against the majority of foes whose attacks you’ll want to avoid, their AC will be significantly lower than their attack rolls despite the attack penalty you take.
20th
Ebon Phoenix Mage 10
Emerald immolation
I’ve said it elsewhere in this very showcase, but as far as capstones go, there might be some that are better than emerald immolation, but there are very few that are anywhere near as cool.
Maneuvers/Stances
1- Charging minotaur, stone bones, crusader’s strike, leading the attack, douse the flames, martial spiritstance
3- Defensive rebuke, thicket of bladesstance
4- Divine surge
5- Law bearer
6- Rallying strike
7- Shield counter
Charisma drives your spells and fear aura, Constitution keeps you ticking and Strength keeps you swinging. You’re not a skillmonkey and have only one skill you care about, and Wisdom and Dex are basically dump stats for you.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS:
28-Point Buy: Str 14/Dex 10/Con 15/Int 10/Wis 8/Cha 16
32-Point Buy: Str 14/Dex 12/Con 16/Int 10/Wis 8/Cha 16
You don’t get a ton of skill points, so it’s good that you don’t particularly need them. Concentration and a smattering of knowledges will cover basically all of your requirements. Just keep craft (poisonmaking) maxed out and you’ll be fine.
Boost that craft skill, and your rebuking checks while you’re at it, and dress up like a gish. I don’t know, I’m tired!
BUILD SUMMARY
You end up with +16 BAB but just shy of 9th-level spells. Of course, dread necromancer’s 9th-level options are pretty disappointing overall, and you can always use Versatile Spellcaster cheese to access them if you really want to, so this isn’t actually a big blow.
Instead of using your gishy chassis to enchant your sword, you use it to get up close and personal, stacking on negative effect after negative effect. You have multiple passive fear effects that automatically trigger any time you do anything remotely offensive, and can receive an excellent boost via aura of terror. A Fell Drain Poison Spell parching touch at will give you a flurry of touch attacks that drain levels, poison foes, sicken them and force them to save or eat some ability damage… and that’s just a 3rd-level spell. This is a combo that comes online early and stays decent any time you’re up against non-immune foes. Of course, when you ARE facing immune foes, you’re far from helpless. You’re a full caster with access to greater dispel for magical defenses, and by far the most common creature type immune to your shenanigans is the undead… something you are uniquely suited to dealing with really, really well. And on the tank side of things, you have infinite healing as early as level 3, plus damage reduction, the crusader’s delayed damage pool and maneuvers like defensive rebuke and shield counter.
VARIANTS
You can run a variant with abjurant champion 5 over the last 5 levels of ebon phoenix mage. This will cost you a feat and quickening strike, but you’ll gain native access to 9ths without Versatile Spellcaster abuse and won’t lose any maneuvers. As I mentioned in the write-up I’m not a big fan of the dread necro’s spell list at 9, so I went with the EPM version, but it’s definitely a valid option.
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And there you have it! Feel free to comment, discuss or check out one of the others!