Piggy Knowles
2020-09-10, 04:39 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/431937476010180610/753419742441635871/41Z1cOastRL.png
Stomp the Yard
These boots are made for stomping...
OVERVIEW
A lot of times when we’re looking around for something to showcase, one of the first things we do is focus on interesting (but not necessarily good) abilities and riff on them for a while until we find some way to make them fun. It’s in this way that we found ourselves spending a lot of time discussing whether or not it was possible to make trample into something useful.
Trample is a pretty simple ability, turning your movement into area of effect damage. It’s available from fairly low levels via totemist, and if you’ve got good Strength and are large enough to reliably hit most foes, it's pretty decent damage in the low levels, buoyed a bit by the fact that it doesn't require an attack roll. Unfortunately it does not tend to scale well, though, so as satisfying as it is to stomp around smashing things, it's rarely going to be something worth building around.
Still, what fun is it if we give everything up that easily? We decided to look at what different effects and damage riders we could add on top of trample. Here's what we came up with. Hope you enjoy.
THE BASICS
Race: Goliath. Accept no substitutes.
Build Stub: Barbarian 2/Totemist 2/Swordsage 2/Crusader 1/Fighter 1/Death Delver 1/Ruby Knight Vindicator 10. (If playing with LA buyoff, increase crusader by 1).
ACFs: Goliath barbarian, wolf totem barbarian.
Alignment: Non-lawful, may not be true neutral.
Stomp the Yard
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers Known
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Barbarian 1
Extra Rage
Fast movement, illiteracy, mountain rage 1/day
What’s that? A barbarian that doesn’t open things up with lion totem pouncing? It seems almost blasphemous to skip out on it, but you’ll actually start things out with fast movement instead. Without Power Attack and other damage-boosting staples, pounce is unnecessary. Meanwhile, fast movement is a direct and significant benefit for you, especially once your trample shenanigans start kicking in. Mountain rage is a very nice upgrade to standard rage, giving you reach and an additional +2 to your Strength. This brings you up to a 28 Strength when raging, and with three rages a day thanks to Extra Rage, you can dish out some significant damage just by swinging the biggest weapon you can find.
2nd
Barbarian 2
Improved TripB
Improved Trip
Wolf totem barbarian gives you access to Improved Trip (without needing to meet those annoying pre-reqs) in place of Uncanny Dodge. That brings you up to a very impressive +17 trip check when raging.
3rd
Totemist 1
Knock-Down
Wild empathy
Totemist and barbarian seem like they should be natural fits, but you don’t see them together all that often. You’re not necessarily focused on shredding people with natural weapons (though you certainly CAN do that, if you decide to), but a lot of the totemist soulmelds offer other excellent benefits. You’ve got a wide range of options here even without worrying about chakra binds: teleportation, saving throw boosters, immunity to flanking, skill boosters, damage, etc. Sphinx claws will also give you a small competence bonus to Strength-based checks (including tripping), making it a good option no matter what. And since that means you’ll now have a +19 trip bonus, why not take full advantage with Knock-Down? Knock-Down plus Improved Trip is one of the absolute best melee combos for a reason, and it’s particularly good for you.
4th
Totemist 2
Totem chakra bind (+1 capacity)
I do so love how front-loaded the totemist is. With one more level you get the totem chakra bind. Again there are a ton of good options, but one I’d like to pay particular attention to is the shedu crown. Usually when I incorporate shedu crown it’s for the excellent crown meld, but the totem bind is a lot of fun as well. This gives you a very nice version of trample. Move up to 80’, dealing 2d6+13 damage to anything large or smaller in your path. Enemies can make AoOs (at a significant penalty) or try to take reduced damage with a Reflex save, but there’s no attack roll required. Best of all, since it’s still technically melee damage, these trample attacks should still trigger Knock-Down, meaning that not only are you stomping over them with decent damage for the level, you’re also knocking them prone with a +19 trip check and then getting a follow-up attack via Improved Trip. All in all it’s a very nasty combo that should carry you through the lower levels against any grounded opponents.
5th
Swordsage 1
Quick to act +1, discipline focus (weapon focus)
Mighty throw, moment of perfect mind, shadow jaunt, counter charge, cloak of deception, distracting ember, child of shadowstance
With all the basic pieces of your main melee combo in place, you can start really expanding things at this point. Swordsage may seem like an odd choice alongside barbarian, but it actually adds some unique options that the build can definitely take advantage of. Mighty throw just has good synergy in general with the insane trip checks, in case it is worth more to reposition a foe than to attack. Moment of perfect mind, counter charge and cloak of deception all offer some nice defensive bonuses that can help keep you alive without interfering with your main attacking method. And speaking of that, with the child of shadow stance, you also gain concealment as you go running around the battlefield trampling enemies flat. Distracting ember is just generally useful, and will help you qualify for desert wind maneuvers down the road.
6th
Crusader 1
Large and In Charge
Furious counterstrike, steely resolve 5
Crusader’s strike, douse the flames, tactical strike, charging minotaur, mountain hammer, martial spiritstance
I know I just made a big deal about how great swordsage is for you, and here I am immediately jumping into another initiating class. Crusader just adds some general bulk and helps you qualify for other classes down the road. It also gives you some very nice utility options in case your standard trample tactics aren’t doing it for you. Charging minotaur, mountain hammer, tactical strike: all of these things will certainly not go amiss, nor will the extra little bit of healing you get from crusader’s strike or martial spirit. As for your feat, Large and In Charge is a super fun feat from Draconomicon. It’s basically an improved version of Stand Still, letting you hit enemies who move inside your threatened area, force them backwards a square and keep them from advancing any further this round… and unlike Stand Still, you still deal damage with the attack as well (meaning you can still knock them down). It’s an opposed Strength check rather than a Reflex save, but your opponent does not get any extra bonuses if they are larger than you and you get a boost on the check based on the damage that you deal.
7th
Fighter 1
Combat Reflexes
Bonus feat
A quick dip into fighter nets you Combat Reflexes, which plays well with your impressive reach and is a required feat down the road. Your Dexterity won’t be the highest, but bracers of opportunity are only 2,300gp and it’s worth getting a few sets, considering how often you’ll be making AoOs.
8th
Death Delver 1
Rebuke undead, deathsense
Death delver probably seems like another odd choice, but it adds on rebuking and some divine casting without imposing any alignment requirements. If your DM is either OK with either ignoring alignment requirements or modifying Ruby Knight Vindicator to allow deities other than Wee Jas, you’ll probably get more mileage out of a cloistered cleric dip here, which could also net you a couple of domains and some better spells. That said, the death delver spell list honestly isn’t bad at all, with some nice utility and defensive options for you to cast when you’re not raging around stomping things, and deathsense at will can actually serve as a detection method that is incredibly hard to bypass.
9th
Swordsage 2
Evasive Reflexes
AC bonus
Devastating throw, holocaust cloakstance
Another quick level in swordsage nets you another stance and maneuver. Devastating throw is a straight upgrade to mighty throw, and while it will often be outclassed by your trample schtick, it’s a nice option to have for when you are facing just one foe. Holocaust cloak meanwhile takes advantage of all of the AoOs you’ll be granting while trampling by dealing retributive damage to anyone who attacks you. And Evasive Reflexes further takes advantage of your impressive reach by allowing you to freely reposition yourself if you ever find that more advantageous than taking an AoO. It’s worth checking with your DM if the Evasive Reflexes movement counts as your AoO for that round, because by RAW it does not; I think most tables would assume that it does use your AoO, but if not, it also lets you preserve your attacks of opportunity in a round when necessary while still getting some benefit.
10th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 1
Thicket of bladesstance
And the class that brings it all together. RKV is usually seen as a divine gish, but here it’s just a class that marries all of your disparate abilities together, giving you full BAB and access to all the disciplines that will drive the build, plus some nice extra abilities to help take advantage of them. You start off with a new stance; take the classic thicket of blades, which will help cement your status as a lockdown expert by preventing 5’ steps within your impressive reach.
11th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 2
Divine recovery
Defensive rebuke
Divine recovery is actually one of the biggest reasons you went RKV here instead of another class. By allowing you to recover an expended maneuver by spending a turn or rebuke attempt, you completely bypass the swordsage’s main drawback: the absolutely terrible recovery mechanism. And it becomes especially important now that you have defensive rebuke. This grants you an attack of opportunity anytime someone you strike attacks one of your allies. Combined with trample, this presents a fantastic catch-22 for most enemies. Trample through your foes, knocking them down and positioning yourself so that they have to approach you to counter-attack. If they try to attack you, you can lock them down with Knock-Down attacks and Large and In Charge. If they try to attack your allies, you can either use Evasive Reflexes to freely reposition yourself or, if you’re in range, smack them with an AoO and attempt to knock them down. It’s a very potent technique, and you can spam it every other round thanks to divine recovery.
12th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 3
Extra Rage
Another iteration of Extra Rage increases your rages per day from 3 to 5, ensuring you can always get big and nasty when necessary.
13th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 4
Covering strike
Moving from devoted spirit to white raven, you now have covering strike. This is a nice alternative to defensive rebuke: hit as many enemies as possible with trample, preventing them from making AoOs for a round and freeing up your allies to maneuver as needed. Having both options in your toolkit will rarely go amiss.
14th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 5
Armored stealth
Armored stealth isn’t all that interesting, but it’s there, I suppose. An extra readied maneuver, on the other hand, is always very nice.
15th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 6
Robilar’s Gambit
Rallying strike, press the advantagestance
Robilar’s Gambit should be no surprise on any lockdown tank or anything that focuses on AoOs in general. It’s especially great for those combats when trampling is still an appropriate option, since you can now turn those free AoOs you grant into additional counterattacks of your own. Rallying strike keeps your devoted spirit line high for eventual immortal fortitude qualification and adds a bit more longevity to your build.
But the real money here is press the advantage: now when you shift around via Evasive Reflexes you can move 10’ instead of 5’. That is some serious repositioning, and when combined with defensive rebuke should make sure you are always exactly where you need to be.
16th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 7
Divine impetus
Divine impetus is the main reason a lot of builds take RKV, for swift-spamming shenanigans (and countless discussions about dysfunctional rules). It’s honestly not a centerpiece to this build, but it does allow you to recover defensive rebuke (or another maneuver) and activate it in a single round.
17th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 8
Shadow blink
Swift action (Ex) teleportation with good range is basically never going to not be useful, especially when divine impetus means you can use it even if you’ve already spent a swift or immediate action.
18th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 9
Open Greater Chakra (waist)
Divine fury
Another readied maneuver, and Open Greater Chakra gives you several new options with your soulmeld. Manticore belt for flight and heart of flame for retributive damage are both particularly good options, though they are far from the only ones.
19th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 10
White raven hammer
With a decent focus on white raven built in thanks to covering strike and press the advantage, it makes sense to pick up white raven hammer now that you have 8th-level maneuvers. So many of your abilities are focused on shutting down groups of foes, but white raven hammer allows you completely destroy single prominent enemies with its no-save stunning. It’s a nice complement to the rest of your tactics.
20th
Crusader 2*
Indomitable soul
Immortal fortitudestance
If you’re playing with LA buyoff, you should have an extra level here. In that case I highly recommend another level of crusader, which will give you an additional stance… and with 8th-level stances on the board, that means access to immortal fortitude, which is easily one of the best defensive abilities in all of 3.5. If you don’t have access to LA buyoff it’s not essential, but it makes for a very nice capstone otherwise.
*If LA buyoff is allowed.
Swordsage Maneuvers Known
1- Mighty throw, moment of perfect mind, counter charge, distracting ember, child of shadowstance
2- Shadow jaunt, cloak of deception
3- Devastating throw, defensive rebuke, holocaust cloakstance, thicket of bladesstance
4- Covering strike
5- Press the advantagestance
6- Rallying strike
7- Shadow blink
8- White raven hammer
Crusader Maneuvers Known
1- Crusader’s strike, douse the flames, tactical strike, charging minotaur, martial spiritstance
2- Mountain hammer
8- Immortal fortitudestance
The goliath’s generous stat allocation does a lot of the heavy lifting for you stat-wise. In general, prioritize Strength above all else, with a passable Wisdom if you want to cast death delver spells. You can go all the way with a Strength of 18 and rely on items (in particular bracers of opportunity) to shore up things like AoOs, or you can start with a Strength of 16 and go for a more balanced stat spread overall. Either strategy works.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS (before racial adjustments):
28-point buy: Str 16/Dex 14/Con 12/Int 10/Wis 14/Cha 8
32-point buy: Str 18/Dex 12/Con 12/Int 10/Wis 14/Cha 8
Concentration and knowledge (religion) represent your heftiest required investment.
Bracers of opportunity. They’re cheap enough that you should be able to get a few of them even fairly early on, swapping them out as you use them. If you can’t get your hands on bracers of opportunity, you’ll need to instead buy Dex-boosting so that you have a reasonable number of AoOs every combat, which becomes a LOT more expensive.
In general though, you’re a brute and you should equip yourself like one. You’ll want a reach weapon to threaten the largest area possible when under mountain rage.
BUILD SUMMARY
You start strong and you finish strong. The final product ends with +16 BAB (+17 if LA buyoff is used), 8th-level maneuvers, 5 uses of mountain rage per day, totemist soulmelds with the ability to bind to your totem and waist chakras and 4th-level spells off the death delver list. The latter may sound like a throwaway, but it includes a lot of life-saving defensive buffs like death ward, freedom of movement and protection from energy.
Your main melee combo comes online early and continues to ratchet up as you gain levels: pick up trample via the shedu crown, get big with mountain rage and go merrily stomping around. As you run around the battlefield crushing skulls, you get a free Knock-Down attempt with a huge trip bonus followed up by an Improved Trip attack. People can attack you as you run through, but if they do they’ll be slammed with retributive damage from holocaust cloak or heart of fire and counterattacked via Robilar’s Gambit. Everyone whose space you run through will be further locked down by defensive rebuke or covering strike (which you can reliably recover as needed thanks to divine recovery), and even if you’re out of range you can use those AoOs to shift your position via Evasive Reflexes (moving double if you have press the advantage active) until you get right where you need to be.
Nor do you lack options when trampling isn’t ideal: you can stun enemies with white raven hammer or throw them around with devastating throw, you can fly, you can track things with alternate senses, you can teleport around, you can smash things with mountain hammer, you can heal yourself and your party, you can turn invisible and more.
VARIANTS
We played with a LOT of different versions of this build before we settled on one we liked. The basic keys to the build aren’t complex: get big, take a couple of levels of totemist for trample, grab Knock-down and some AoO feats and go to town. We looked at several different ways of turning big and nasty, such as bear warrior (still one of my favorite versions for the visual if nothing else), spellcasting, manifesting and more. A psychic warrior/crusader/totemist can pull this off well thanks to expansion, and if you can stomach the terrible entry feats and the XP/gold costs for all your SLAs (I couldn’t, but some people find that less distasteful than me), a runescarred berserker can actually be pretty potent with this by using righteous might to augment mountain rage. (Normally size-changing magic doesn’t stack, but as mountain rage is (Ex), there’s no issue.)
We also made a few idiot crusader versions around the idea of spamming defensive rebuke every turn. Some of those builds were quite fun as well (and I have a very similar version that can go full idiot by level 9), but in the end using RKV’s divine recovery to refresh it freely was just a much better option overall.
And finally, beyond defensive rebuke you don’t actually need initiating, so feel free to abandon the RKV aspect for something else if you’d rather focus on it. More levels in totemist (assuming no multiclassing penalties) is another good option, for example.
***
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/431937476010180610/753419742441635871/41Z1cOastRL.png
Stomp the Yard
These boots are made for stomping...
OVERVIEW
A lot of times when we’re looking around for something to showcase, one of the first things we do is focus on interesting (but not necessarily good) abilities and riff on them for a while until we find some way to make them fun. It’s in this way that we found ourselves spending a lot of time discussing whether or not it was possible to make trample into something useful.
Trample is a pretty simple ability, turning your movement into area of effect damage. It’s available from fairly low levels via totemist, and if you’ve got good Strength and are large enough to reliably hit most foes, it's pretty decent damage in the low levels, buoyed a bit by the fact that it doesn't require an attack roll. Unfortunately it does not tend to scale well, though, so as satisfying as it is to stomp around smashing things, it's rarely going to be something worth building around.
Still, what fun is it if we give everything up that easily? We decided to look at what different effects and damage riders we could add on top of trample. Here's what we came up with. Hope you enjoy.
THE BASICS
Race: Goliath. Accept no substitutes.
Build Stub: Barbarian 2/Totemist 2/Swordsage 2/Crusader 1/Fighter 1/Death Delver 1/Ruby Knight Vindicator 10. (If playing with LA buyoff, increase crusader by 1).
ACFs: Goliath barbarian, wolf totem barbarian.
Alignment: Non-lawful, may not be true neutral.
Stomp the Yard
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers Known
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Barbarian 1
Extra Rage
Fast movement, illiteracy, mountain rage 1/day
What’s that? A barbarian that doesn’t open things up with lion totem pouncing? It seems almost blasphemous to skip out on it, but you’ll actually start things out with fast movement instead. Without Power Attack and other damage-boosting staples, pounce is unnecessary. Meanwhile, fast movement is a direct and significant benefit for you, especially once your trample shenanigans start kicking in. Mountain rage is a very nice upgrade to standard rage, giving you reach and an additional +2 to your Strength. This brings you up to a 28 Strength when raging, and with three rages a day thanks to Extra Rage, you can dish out some significant damage just by swinging the biggest weapon you can find.
2nd
Barbarian 2
Improved TripB
Improved Trip
Wolf totem barbarian gives you access to Improved Trip (without needing to meet those annoying pre-reqs) in place of Uncanny Dodge. That brings you up to a very impressive +17 trip check when raging.
3rd
Totemist 1
Knock-Down
Wild empathy
Totemist and barbarian seem like they should be natural fits, but you don’t see them together all that often. You’re not necessarily focused on shredding people with natural weapons (though you certainly CAN do that, if you decide to), but a lot of the totemist soulmelds offer other excellent benefits. You’ve got a wide range of options here even without worrying about chakra binds: teleportation, saving throw boosters, immunity to flanking, skill boosters, damage, etc. Sphinx claws will also give you a small competence bonus to Strength-based checks (including tripping), making it a good option no matter what. And since that means you’ll now have a +19 trip bonus, why not take full advantage with Knock-Down? Knock-Down plus Improved Trip is one of the absolute best melee combos for a reason, and it’s particularly good for you.
4th
Totemist 2
Totem chakra bind (+1 capacity)
I do so love how front-loaded the totemist is. With one more level you get the totem chakra bind. Again there are a ton of good options, but one I’d like to pay particular attention to is the shedu crown. Usually when I incorporate shedu crown it’s for the excellent crown meld, but the totem bind is a lot of fun as well. This gives you a very nice version of trample. Move up to 80’, dealing 2d6+13 damage to anything large or smaller in your path. Enemies can make AoOs (at a significant penalty) or try to take reduced damage with a Reflex save, but there’s no attack roll required. Best of all, since it’s still technically melee damage, these trample attacks should still trigger Knock-Down, meaning that not only are you stomping over them with decent damage for the level, you’re also knocking them prone with a +19 trip check and then getting a follow-up attack via Improved Trip. All in all it’s a very nasty combo that should carry you through the lower levels against any grounded opponents.
5th
Swordsage 1
Quick to act +1, discipline focus (weapon focus)
Mighty throw, moment of perfect mind, shadow jaunt, counter charge, cloak of deception, distracting ember, child of shadowstance
With all the basic pieces of your main melee combo in place, you can start really expanding things at this point. Swordsage may seem like an odd choice alongside barbarian, but it actually adds some unique options that the build can definitely take advantage of. Mighty throw just has good synergy in general with the insane trip checks, in case it is worth more to reposition a foe than to attack. Moment of perfect mind, counter charge and cloak of deception all offer some nice defensive bonuses that can help keep you alive without interfering with your main attacking method. And speaking of that, with the child of shadow stance, you also gain concealment as you go running around the battlefield trampling enemies flat. Distracting ember is just generally useful, and will help you qualify for desert wind maneuvers down the road.
6th
Crusader 1
Large and In Charge
Furious counterstrike, steely resolve 5
Crusader’s strike, douse the flames, tactical strike, charging minotaur, mountain hammer, martial spiritstance
I know I just made a big deal about how great swordsage is for you, and here I am immediately jumping into another initiating class. Crusader just adds some general bulk and helps you qualify for other classes down the road. It also gives you some very nice utility options in case your standard trample tactics aren’t doing it for you. Charging minotaur, mountain hammer, tactical strike: all of these things will certainly not go amiss, nor will the extra little bit of healing you get from crusader’s strike or martial spirit. As for your feat, Large and In Charge is a super fun feat from Draconomicon. It’s basically an improved version of Stand Still, letting you hit enemies who move inside your threatened area, force them backwards a square and keep them from advancing any further this round… and unlike Stand Still, you still deal damage with the attack as well (meaning you can still knock them down). It’s an opposed Strength check rather than a Reflex save, but your opponent does not get any extra bonuses if they are larger than you and you get a boost on the check based on the damage that you deal.
7th
Fighter 1
Combat Reflexes
Bonus feat
A quick dip into fighter nets you Combat Reflexes, which plays well with your impressive reach and is a required feat down the road. Your Dexterity won’t be the highest, but bracers of opportunity are only 2,300gp and it’s worth getting a few sets, considering how often you’ll be making AoOs.
8th
Death Delver 1
Rebuke undead, deathsense
Death delver probably seems like another odd choice, but it adds on rebuking and some divine casting without imposing any alignment requirements. If your DM is either OK with either ignoring alignment requirements or modifying Ruby Knight Vindicator to allow deities other than Wee Jas, you’ll probably get more mileage out of a cloistered cleric dip here, which could also net you a couple of domains and some better spells. That said, the death delver spell list honestly isn’t bad at all, with some nice utility and defensive options for you to cast when you’re not raging around stomping things, and deathsense at will can actually serve as a detection method that is incredibly hard to bypass.
9th
Swordsage 2
Evasive Reflexes
AC bonus
Devastating throw, holocaust cloakstance
Another quick level in swordsage nets you another stance and maneuver. Devastating throw is a straight upgrade to mighty throw, and while it will often be outclassed by your trample schtick, it’s a nice option to have for when you are facing just one foe. Holocaust cloak meanwhile takes advantage of all of the AoOs you’ll be granting while trampling by dealing retributive damage to anyone who attacks you. And Evasive Reflexes further takes advantage of your impressive reach by allowing you to freely reposition yourself if you ever find that more advantageous than taking an AoO. It’s worth checking with your DM if the Evasive Reflexes movement counts as your AoO for that round, because by RAW it does not; I think most tables would assume that it does use your AoO, but if not, it also lets you preserve your attacks of opportunity in a round when necessary while still getting some benefit.
10th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 1
Thicket of bladesstance
And the class that brings it all together. RKV is usually seen as a divine gish, but here it’s just a class that marries all of your disparate abilities together, giving you full BAB and access to all the disciplines that will drive the build, plus some nice extra abilities to help take advantage of them. You start off with a new stance; take the classic thicket of blades, which will help cement your status as a lockdown expert by preventing 5’ steps within your impressive reach.
11th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 2
Divine recovery
Defensive rebuke
Divine recovery is actually one of the biggest reasons you went RKV here instead of another class. By allowing you to recover an expended maneuver by spending a turn or rebuke attempt, you completely bypass the swordsage’s main drawback: the absolutely terrible recovery mechanism. And it becomes especially important now that you have defensive rebuke. This grants you an attack of opportunity anytime someone you strike attacks one of your allies. Combined with trample, this presents a fantastic catch-22 for most enemies. Trample through your foes, knocking them down and positioning yourself so that they have to approach you to counter-attack. If they try to attack you, you can lock them down with Knock-Down attacks and Large and In Charge. If they try to attack your allies, you can either use Evasive Reflexes to freely reposition yourself or, if you’re in range, smack them with an AoO and attempt to knock them down. It’s a very potent technique, and you can spam it every other round thanks to divine recovery.
12th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 3
Extra Rage
Another iteration of Extra Rage increases your rages per day from 3 to 5, ensuring you can always get big and nasty when necessary.
13th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 4
Covering strike
Moving from devoted spirit to white raven, you now have covering strike. This is a nice alternative to defensive rebuke: hit as many enemies as possible with trample, preventing them from making AoOs for a round and freeing up your allies to maneuver as needed. Having both options in your toolkit will rarely go amiss.
14th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 5
Armored stealth
Armored stealth isn’t all that interesting, but it’s there, I suppose. An extra readied maneuver, on the other hand, is always very nice.
15th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 6
Robilar’s Gambit
Rallying strike, press the advantagestance
Robilar’s Gambit should be no surprise on any lockdown tank or anything that focuses on AoOs in general. It’s especially great for those combats when trampling is still an appropriate option, since you can now turn those free AoOs you grant into additional counterattacks of your own. Rallying strike keeps your devoted spirit line high for eventual immortal fortitude qualification and adds a bit more longevity to your build.
But the real money here is press the advantage: now when you shift around via Evasive Reflexes you can move 10’ instead of 5’. That is some serious repositioning, and when combined with defensive rebuke should make sure you are always exactly where you need to be.
16th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 7
Divine impetus
Divine impetus is the main reason a lot of builds take RKV, for swift-spamming shenanigans (and countless discussions about dysfunctional rules). It’s honestly not a centerpiece to this build, but it does allow you to recover defensive rebuke (or another maneuver) and activate it in a single round.
17th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 8
Shadow blink
Swift action (Ex) teleportation with good range is basically never going to not be useful, especially when divine impetus means you can use it even if you’ve already spent a swift or immediate action.
18th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 9
Open Greater Chakra (waist)
Divine fury
Another readied maneuver, and Open Greater Chakra gives you several new options with your soulmeld. Manticore belt for flight and heart of flame for retributive damage are both particularly good options, though they are far from the only ones.
19th
Ruby Knight Vindicator 10
White raven hammer
With a decent focus on white raven built in thanks to covering strike and press the advantage, it makes sense to pick up white raven hammer now that you have 8th-level maneuvers. So many of your abilities are focused on shutting down groups of foes, but white raven hammer allows you completely destroy single prominent enemies with its no-save stunning. It’s a nice complement to the rest of your tactics.
20th
Crusader 2*
Indomitable soul
Immortal fortitudestance
If you’re playing with LA buyoff, you should have an extra level here. In that case I highly recommend another level of crusader, which will give you an additional stance… and with 8th-level stances on the board, that means access to immortal fortitude, which is easily one of the best defensive abilities in all of 3.5. If you don’t have access to LA buyoff it’s not essential, but it makes for a very nice capstone otherwise.
*If LA buyoff is allowed.
Swordsage Maneuvers Known
1- Mighty throw, moment of perfect mind, counter charge, distracting ember, child of shadowstance
2- Shadow jaunt, cloak of deception
3- Devastating throw, defensive rebuke, holocaust cloakstance, thicket of bladesstance
4- Covering strike
5- Press the advantagestance
6- Rallying strike
7- Shadow blink
8- White raven hammer
Crusader Maneuvers Known
1- Crusader’s strike, douse the flames, tactical strike, charging minotaur, martial spiritstance
2- Mountain hammer
8- Immortal fortitudestance
The goliath’s generous stat allocation does a lot of the heavy lifting for you stat-wise. In general, prioritize Strength above all else, with a passable Wisdom if you want to cast death delver spells. You can go all the way with a Strength of 18 and rely on items (in particular bracers of opportunity) to shore up things like AoOs, or you can start with a Strength of 16 and go for a more balanced stat spread overall. Either strategy works.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS (before racial adjustments):
28-point buy: Str 16/Dex 14/Con 12/Int 10/Wis 14/Cha 8
32-point buy: Str 18/Dex 12/Con 12/Int 10/Wis 14/Cha 8
Concentration and knowledge (religion) represent your heftiest required investment.
Bracers of opportunity. They’re cheap enough that you should be able to get a few of them even fairly early on, swapping them out as you use them. If you can’t get your hands on bracers of opportunity, you’ll need to instead buy Dex-boosting so that you have a reasonable number of AoOs every combat, which becomes a LOT more expensive.
In general though, you’re a brute and you should equip yourself like one. You’ll want a reach weapon to threaten the largest area possible when under mountain rage.
BUILD SUMMARY
You start strong and you finish strong. The final product ends with +16 BAB (+17 if LA buyoff is used), 8th-level maneuvers, 5 uses of mountain rage per day, totemist soulmelds with the ability to bind to your totem and waist chakras and 4th-level spells off the death delver list. The latter may sound like a throwaway, but it includes a lot of life-saving defensive buffs like death ward, freedom of movement and protection from energy.
Your main melee combo comes online early and continues to ratchet up as you gain levels: pick up trample via the shedu crown, get big with mountain rage and go merrily stomping around. As you run around the battlefield crushing skulls, you get a free Knock-Down attempt with a huge trip bonus followed up by an Improved Trip attack. People can attack you as you run through, but if they do they’ll be slammed with retributive damage from holocaust cloak or heart of fire and counterattacked via Robilar’s Gambit. Everyone whose space you run through will be further locked down by defensive rebuke or covering strike (which you can reliably recover as needed thanks to divine recovery), and even if you’re out of range you can use those AoOs to shift your position via Evasive Reflexes (moving double if you have press the advantage active) until you get right where you need to be.
Nor do you lack options when trampling isn’t ideal: you can stun enemies with white raven hammer or throw them around with devastating throw, you can fly, you can track things with alternate senses, you can teleport around, you can smash things with mountain hammer, you can heal yourself and your party, you can turn invisible and more.
VARIANTS
We played with a LOT of different versions of this build before we settled on one we liked. The basic keys to the build aren’t complex: get big, take a couple of levels of totemist for trample, grab Knock-down and some AoO feats and go to town. We looked at several different ways of turning big and nasty, such as bear warrior (still one of my favorite versions for the visual if nothing else), spellcasting, manifesting and more. A psychic warrior/crusader/totemist can pull this off well thanks to expansion, and if you can stomach the terrible entry feats and the XP/gold costs for all your SLAs (I couldn’t, but some people find that less distasteful than me), a runescarred berserker can actually be pretty potent with this by using righteous might to augment mountain rage. (Normally size-changing magic doesn’t stack, but as mountain rage is (Ex), there’s no issue.)
We also made a few idiot crusader versions around the idea of spamming defensive rebuke every turn. Some of those builds were quite fun as well (and I have a very similar version that can go full idiot by level 9), but in the end using RKV’s divine recovery to refresh it freely was just a much better option overall.
And finally, beyond defensive rebuke you don’t actually need initiating, so feel free to abandon the RKV aspect for something else if you’d rather focus on it. More levels in totemist (assuming no multiclassing penalties) is another good option, for example.
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And there you have it! Feel free to comment, discuss or check out one of the others!