Piggy Knowles
2020-11-18, 04:19 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. Even when I don't have an active game going, 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 or in some of the shared documents we have, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product.
For this showcase, we’re going to get in touch with our more savage side in the Wolverine!
https://trendingpopculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Mad-Wolverine.jpg
The Wolverine
I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn’t very nice.
BACKGROUND
Oddly enough (considering it ended up as a build with zero wilder levels), this build started as an attempt to optimize wilder. I like wilder in general and think it mostly gets a bad rap, and it doesn’t take much optimization to bypass most of wild surge’s drawbacks for some nice juicy free augmenting. I especially like the shifter sub levels for wilder, and wanted to build off of thatt. The original idea was to make a metamorphosis-based wilder gish that used Shifter Savagery to provide a significant boost to a flurry of natural attacks.
Of course, Shifter Savagery would require not just shifting but rage. We tossed around a few ways of hitting these requirements, but the option we found most compelling was the weretouched master. A wolverine-based weretouched master got an automatic rage ability that tied directly into its shifting, meaning that instead of having to maintain two separate abilities, we could just focus on the shifting side of things to activate Shifter Savagery.
We made a couple of wilder-based build stubs, some of which looked pretty decent, but the more we looked at it, the more we realized the build appreciated a more martial approach. When we were messing around with different versions Venger suggested a Tashalatora PsyWar approach, and that set the gears turning. While psychic warrior proved to be a poor fit, war mind ended up being perfect. It provided full BAB, which was handy for unarmed strikes, and gave 5th-level powers in only 10 levels, giving us plenty of freedom for how we wanted to spend the remaining levels.
The end result is a fun little gish with a particularly savage fighting style, erupting into flurries of unarmed strikes and slashing claws and fangs.
THE BASICS
Race: Shifter, of the razorclaw variety. You could make this work with a longtooth shifter instead, but doing so mostly wastes the fangs attack you get from weretouched master, and you’ll almost certainly either need Extra Shifter Trait to nab claws early or need to bump bloodclaw master significantly earlier, which messes with your maneuver progression.
Build Stub: Warblade 2/Monk 2/Nomad 2/War Mind 10/Weretouched Master 3/Bloodclaw Master 1
Alternate class features: Sleeping tiger monk fighting style, invisible fist.
Alignment: Any lawful.
The Wolverine
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers/Powers
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Warblade 1
Razorclaw Elite
Battle clarity (Reflex saves), weapon aptitude
Moment of perfect mind, wolf fang strike, sudden leap, blood in the waterstance
This is basically the standard tiger claw opener for any warblade. Your Will saves will probably be good enough that you can get away without taking moment of perfect mind, meaning this could be replaced with something like charging minotaur, but charging minotaur will fade in usefulness quickly while moment never goes out of style. Blood in the water may seem like an odd pick for a stance given that you’ll soon be almost exclusively using natural weapons and unarmed strikes, but it’ll pay off. In the meantime, feel free to carry high-crit weapons to take advantage of it early.
2nd
Monk 1
Improved Unarmed Strike, Monastic Training (war mind)
Bonus feat, flurry of blows, unarmed strike
Monk has a natural synergy with any build focused on natural attacks. It can seamlessly work unarmed strikes into its attack routine, getting a full set of iteratives, and then strike with all its natural attacks as a secondary attack. Better still, your monk’s unarmed strike explicitly counts as a natural weapon, so things that improve natural weapons will improve your unarmed strikes as well. Monastic Training is a pre-req for Tashalatora, and otherwise doesn’t do much.
3rd
Monk 2
Improved Initiative, Shifter Ferocity
Bonus feat, invisible fist
The sleeping tiger fighting style gives you Improved Initiative at this level, which isn’t the most exciting feat in the world but helps make up for your average Dex. This level is still quite notable, though: invisible fist is an absolutely incredible ACF, giving you regular invisibility starting at level 2. Even without being a stealthy build, there are numerous advantages to being able to go invisible in combat without wasting your action. I love evasion, but I’d almost always recommend dropping it for invisible fist unless you have a really specific need.
Shifter Ferocity is basically Diehard without the Endurance requirement, and as it is your second shifter feat, it also means you get an extra daily use of shifting. At this point it’s also basically 9 extra hit points, which is quite valuable at level 3 even if it doesn’t really scale well.
4th
Psion 1
Linked Power
Bonus feat, discipline (nomad)
Inertial armor, synchronicity, psionic grease
It may seem odd to go with psion here rather than a more martial class like psychic warrior, but it has one key advantage: nomads get survival as a class skill, allowing you to qualify for weretouched master in the near future. It also provides more power points than an equivalent dip into psychic warrior would even with your mediocre Intelligence, and still grants a bonus feat to nab the always-useful Linked Power. As for your actual powers, inertial armor is great on any monk build, and it’s hard to go wrong with psionic grease. Finally, go ahead and grab synchronicity. Just using it as written on the tin it’s still a great power any time you aren’t planning on full attacking, and with Linked Power shenanigans to circumvent the casting time it can range from somewhere between “really friggin’ good” and “I’m never inviting you back to the table again.” Use with extreme caution.
5th
Psion 2
Burst, detect psionics
Since you’re a nomad, you might as well take advantage of access to burst for some quick extra movement. It’s not essential, but it’s not bad either.
6th
War Mind 1
Tashalatora
Chain of personal superiority +2
Expansion
This isn’t the first time we’ve toyed with war mind in a showcase. It’s got a fantastic mix of useful class features and surprisingly decent psionic powers stapled onto an above-average melee chassis. You’ll qualify without trouble thanks to your nomad dip earlier. Chain of personal superiority gives you a handy little buff to Strength and Con that should stack with your shifting and with any magic items you might have, while expansion is just phenomenal for any melee brute, and doubly so for one focused on natural weapons. Meanwhile, Tashalatora allows you to keep advancing all your relevant monk class features as you proceed through the levels.
7th
Weretouched Master 1
Weretouched I (wolverine)
As great as war mind is, it’s time for a quick hop into weretouched master. While its capstone was errata’d to be significantly less impressive, it still has some nice goodies for those who don’t intend to stick around for the full five levels. Right off the bat you start by growing a set of fangs when you shift, giving you yet another natural attack to take advantage of.
8th
Weretouched Master 2
Reactive Shifting
Wild empathy, bonus shifter feat
Your poor Charisma means you probably won’t be getting much out of wild empathy, but a bonus shifter feat is always handy. Unfortunately you’re a bit shy of being able to qualify for Shifter Savagery or Shifter Multiattack, but Reactive Shifting is super handy, allowing you to shift as an immediate reaction even when flat-footed. Ordinarily you can only shift during your turn, so this lets you shift in response to an attack. As for why that’s particularly helpful, take a look at the next level...
9th
Weretouched Master 3
Shifter Savagery
Weretouched II (wolverine)
And here the stars all align. Weretouched II gives you a wolverine’s rage when you shift, giving you yet another boost to Strength and Con. Activating it is especially easy with Reactive Shifting, as you can shift in response to an attack and immediately activate rage for a nice HP boost. More importantly, having access to rage means you now qualify for Shifter Savagery, the absolute best shifter feat around. Shifter Savagery is basically Improved Natural Attack and Improved Critical, rolled into one and fed on a steady diet of pre-workout and amphetamines. While raging and shifting (and thanks to your wolverine rage, any time you are shifting you should also be raging), your natural attacks increase by in damage as though you went up TWO size increases, and their threat range all doubles. Note that this is ALL of your natural attacks, not just the ones you get from shifting. Oh, hey, don’t forget that your unarmed strike is also a natural attack!
And, of course, now it becomes much clearer as to why you took blood in the water. While 19-20 isn’t the world’s best crit range, a flurry of blows followed by claws and fang will give you quite a few chances to threaten every round of combat, thereby boosting all your future attacks.
10th
War Mind 2
Chain of defensive posture +2
Empty mind
The remaining levels of weretouched master post-errata are alright but nothing to write home about, so it’s time to head back into war mind. Empty mind may seem like an odd choice when you already have moment of perfect mind, but it’s mostly here as a vehicle for Linked Power: as an immediate action low-cost power, you can link it to something like expansion for only 2 PP, letting you spend an immediate action outside of initiative order and then get big on your next turn without wasting any time. And with Tashalatora your unarmed strike goes up here, which combined with Shifter Savagery goes up to a healthy 3d6 before any additional size increases from expansion.
11th
War Mind 3
Enduring body (DR 1/--)
A bit of DR never hurts, does it?
12th
War Mind 4
Shifter Multiattack
Psionic lion’s charge
Shifter Multiattack is so good it almost makes you forget about Shifter Savagery… almost. With this, your secondary natural attacks now come at a -2 instead of a -5. This is exactly the same as standard Multiattack, but as it’s a shifter feat it also increases the duration and frequency of your shifting. Not too shabby. Go ahead and make a flurry of blows, followed by your fangs and claws at -2, all boosted by Shifter Savagery and blood in the water.
Oh, and you get psionic lion’s charge as well. You already had some pseudo-pouncing with Razorclaw Elite or sudden leap plus full attack, but why not go for the real deal? It gets even better when you can augment it, adding on some nice bonus damage to every single attack.
13th
War Mind 5
Sweeping strike
Sweeping strike is amazing and something entire builds have been based around… but honestly it’s not that essential here. It’s still nice to have, letting you hit adjacent foes with your attacks, but the movement restriction means you can’t combine it with pounce or sudden leap. Still, it comes in handy after you close to melee range.
14th
War Mind 6
Enduring body (DR 2/--)
Vampiric weapon
We waffled a lot between claws of the vampire and vampiric weapon. Claws is nice because it works on every single claw attack… but vampiric weapon can be used on your unarmed strike, and with a +11 BAB, flurry of blows and an unarmed strike that does base damage of 3d8 while shifting (more if combined with expansion and/or a monk’s belt), you just get more mileage out of vampiric weapon.
15th
War Mind 7
Great Rend
Chain of personal superiority +4
Another shifter feat will grant you another use of shifting per day, so go ahead and grab one. There are a few decent choices (Extra Shifter Trait in particular almost never goes amiss), but Great Rend is a solid pick for the free extra damage on a full attack routine. Oh, and at this point your penalties for flurry completely disappear, meaning it’s just a free attack with no drawback.
16th
War Mind 8
Chain of defensive posture +4
Energy adaptation
Energy adaptation is purely a defensive power, but it’s a really good one, giving you resistance to every type of energy for a long duration and even eventually opening up the option to manifest it as an immediate action.
17th
War Mind 9
Enduring body (DR 3/--)
Thanks to Tashalatora, greater flurry comes online here, meaning you’re making two extra free attacks without drawback on every full attack.
18th
War Mind 10
Practiced Manifester (war mind)
Chain of overwhelming force
Perfect riposte
Hitting 5th-level powers means you can pick up the excellent perfect riposte, which gives you an AoO when someone attacks and misses you. While you’re not a full counterattack build, combined with vampiric weapon and your massive unarmed strikes, this can get really dangerous fast. Meanwhile, Practiced Manifester is necessary to fully augment some powers, if for example you want to both reduce expansion’s manifesting time to a swift action AND bump yourself up to huge at the same time.
19th
Bloodclaw Master 1
Shifting 1/day, claws of the beast
Dancing mongoose
With your last two levels, it’s worth a quick hop into bloodclaw master. There’s a little blurb on bloodclaw master that explicitly says that instead of getting the somewhat underwhelming bloodclaw master shifting ability, a shifter gets additional uses of its natural shifting. You also get claws of the beast, which allows you to add your full Strength bonus to your claw attacks, making this level easily worth the point of BAB you give up as compared to standard warblade. And with your tiger claw maneuver, go ahead and grab the fantastic dancing mongoose, for two free attacks as a swift action.
(Note that this assumes that Shifter Multiattack will qualify you for bloodclaw master. If it doesn’t, just take another level of warblade here. You end up with the same IL and maneuver layout and an extra point of BAB, but lose a daily shifting use and only deal half Str damage on your claw attacks.)
20th
Warblade 2
Uncanny dodge
Pouncing charge
You could go with a second level of bloodclaw master here, but its superior two-weapon fighting and tiger claw synergy aren’t as good for you as they could be, while another level of warblade means another maneuver. You actually technically qualify for 6ths here, but none of them are going to be as good for you as pouncing charge. While you can always use psionic lion’s charge to pounce, this gives you an extra pounce every encounter without tying up your swift action (which could instead be spent on something like dancing mongoose) or costing you PP.
Warblade Maneuvers:
1- Moment of perfect mind, wolf fang strike, sudden leap, blood in the waterstance
5- Dancing mongoose, pouncing charge
Psion Powers:
1- Inertial armor, synchronicity, psionic grease, burst, detect psionics
War Mind Powers:
1- Expansion, empty mind
2- Psionic lion’s charge
3- Vampiric weapon
4- Energy adaptation
5- Perfect riposte
Shifters have kind of an awkward stat spread. They get a bonus to Dex, which isn’t a priority for this build at all, and a penalty to Charisma and Intelligence. Charisma is a dump stat, but you’ll need at least an 11 and will probably want a 12 in Intelligence. My recommendation would be to dump Charisma and Dex entirely (your natural Dex bonus will keep you from taking any penalties for the latter), get Int up to 12, and then focus on Strength, Wisdom and Con in that order.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS (after racial adjustments):
28-point buy: Str 16/Dex 10/Con 14/Int 12/Wis 14/Cha 6
32-point buy: Str 16/Dex 10/Con 14/Int 12/Wis 16/Cha 6
You’re not really a skillful build, but you’re not the worst either. You’ll need some ranks in survival and knowledge (psionics) to qualify for war mind and weretouched master, but beyond that your requirements are minimal, and you have a positive Intelligence, so you should have some freedom to play around a bit.
You’ll equip yourself like something between a psychic warrior and a monk. A torc of power preservation and some dorjes and cognizance crystals are recommended for basically any psionic character. Meanwhile you’ll want to pick up monk/natural attack staples like a monk’s belt and a necklace of natural weapons.
As far as things that specifically benefit this build, you may want to look into things that harm yourself, from weak area attacks to the vicious weapon enhancement, because it gives you a way to automatically self-trigger your rage instead of making you rely on your opponents attacking you. (You can also just attack yourself, but that wastes an action, and who has time for that?)
BUILD SUMMARY
All told, how does the build end up? Well, with full war mind manifesting, 6th-level maneuvers, +16 BAB and the unarmed strike and flurry of a 12th level monk, you’ve got quite a bit going on. Your unarmed strike routine gives you six unarmed attacks before items/buffs, followed by your claws and fangs as secondary attacks at -2 (and with the claw attacks dealing full Str damage instead of half). That’s nine attacks per round, and you can add in two more via dancing mongoose. When shifting, all those attacks have a doubled threat range and a pair of size increases, meaning that the unarmed strike on its own is doing 4d6 base damage. With expansion that can easily jump to 8d6, or 8d8 with a monk’s belt. Add on your fangs and claws and you’re talking about throwing around as much as 64d8+10d6 in a single full attack just from base damage alone, before even touching on Strength and shifter bonuses, enhancements and magic items, blood in the water, your rend attacks, etc. You have multiple ways of pouncing, as well as perfect riposte for even more off-turn damage. Even factoring in misses, you’re averaging hundreds of points of damage a round. Plus you’ve got multiple defensive abilities ranging from flat AC and DR boosts to gaining resistance 20 against every energy type as an immediate action, vampiric weapon to heal oodles of HP every turn, action abuse via synchronicity… basically, you’ve got a lot going on.
The build is dependent on shifting and raging for Shifter Savagery, but with the ability to shift as a free or immediate action and automatically rage any time you take damage while shifting, this should hardly be a problem. You can shift four times per day without factoring in items, each one easily lasting the entire combat, and can shift reactively in response to an attack. And between shifting, rage, expansion and chain of personal superiority, you will be going into most battles with a +12 Str and +8 Con. Go into combat, get big, let yourself take some damage and go to town.
VARIANTS
I mentioned that this build started out as a wilder, right? That’s still a very feasible option. Shifter wilders are actually quite nice despite the apparent lack of synergy presented by the bad Charisma. Access to egoist discipline powers means getting metamorphosis by level 8, which is excellent, so a shifter wilder will likely be best served by focusing her efforts there. We had a few wilder versions, but I’ll go ahead and share the one that I personally liked the best:
Shifter, Educated Wilder 17/Weretouched Master 3
1 Wilder1- Razorclaw Elite
2 Wilder2-
3 Wilder3- Quick Recovery
4 Wilder4-
5 Wilder5- Expanded Knowledge (expansion)
6 Wilder6- Great Rend
7 Wilder7-
8 Wilder8-
9 Weretouched Master1- Linked Power
10 Weretouched Master2- Shifter Multiattack
11 Weretouched Master3-
12 Wilder9- Expanded Knowledge (claws of the vampire), Shifter Savagery
13 Wilder10-
14 Wilder11-
15 Wilder12- Practiced Manifester (wilder)
16 Wilder13- Expanded Knowledge (perfect riposte)
17 Wilder14-
18 Wilder15- Psicrystal Affinity
19 Wilder16-
20 Wilder17- Expanded Knowledge (fate of one)
Powers known:
1- Offensive precognition, synchronicity, expansion
2- (2nd level power)
3- Hustle, claws of the vampire
4- Metamorphosis
5- Anticipatory strike, perfect riposte
6- Temporal acceleration
7- Personal mind blank, fate of one
8- Fusion
There are other options as well. An egoist version of the metamorphosis-focused build would be able to still hit 9ths for greater metamorphosis even after spending three levels on weretouched. A psychic warrior version will have some issues with BAB and power timing, but gets plenty of feats to build in some strong counterattack options (Combat Reflexes, Robilar’s, etc.), which all plays quite nicely with the general build theme.
For more minor changes, many of the shifter feats can be adjusted. Shifter Savagery is absolutely essential, and Shifter Multiattack should only be dropped if it’s ruled that it doesn’t qualify you for bloodclaw master (in which case you might want to take standard Multiattack), but the others can all be swapped out as desired. There are some other interesting feat options as well. Expanded Knowledge is always a good one. For example, if you’d like to go back toward the original idea and get native access to metamorphosis, the build can pick it up at 18. Martial Study or Stance can also open up more options on the initiating side of things.
SOURCES
Shifter, weretouched master, Great Rend, Shifter Ferocity, Shifter Multiattack, Monastic Training: Eberron Campaign Setting
Razorclaw Elite, Reactive Shifting, Shifter Savagery: Races of Eberron
War mind, psion, psionic powers, sleeping tiger fighting style ACF: SRD
Linked Power, Practiced Manifester, synchronicity: Complete Psionic
Invisible fist ACF: Exemplars of Evil
Tashalatora: Secrets of Sarlona
Warblade, bloodclaw master, maneuvers/stances: Tome of Battle
***
And that’s that! Please let us know what you think in the comments, and what you’d like to see for future showcases!
With more than a decade and a half of toying around with 3.5, I’ve accumulated a lot of spare builds and ideas. Even when I don't have an active game going, 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 or in some of the shared documents we have, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product.
For this showcase, we’re going to get in touch with our more savage side in the Wolverine!
https://trendingpopculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Mad-Wolverine.jpg
The Wolverine
I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn’t very nice.
BACKGROUND
Oddly enough (considering it ended up as a build with zero wilder levels), this build started as an attempt to optimize wilder. I like wilder in general and think it mostly gets a bad rap, and it doesn’t take much optimization to bypass most of wild surge’s drawbacks for some nice juicy free augmenting. I especially like the shifter sub levels for wilder, and wanted to build off of thatt. The original idea was to make a metamorphosis-based wilder gish that used Shifter Savagery to provide a significant boost to a flurry of natural attacks.
Of course, Shifter Savagery would require not just shifting but rage. We tossed around a few ways of hitting these requirements, but the option we found most compelling was the weretouched master. A wolverine-based weretouched master got an automatic rage ability that tied directly into its shifting, meaning that instead of having to maintain two separate abilities, we could just focus on the shifting side of things to activate Shifter Savagery.
We made a couple of wilder-based build stubs, some of which looked pretty decent, but the more we looked at it, the more we realized the build appreciated a more martial approach. When we were messing around with different versions Venger suggested a Tashalatora PsyWar approach, and that set the gears turning. While psychic warrior proved to be a poor fit, war mind ended up being perfect. It provided full BAB, which was handy for unarmed strikes, and gave 5th-level powers in only 10 levels, giving us plenty of freedom for how we wanted to spend the remaining levels.
The end result is a fun little gish with a particularly savage fighting style, erupting into flurries of unarmed strikes and slashing claws and fangs.
THE BASICS
Race: Shifter, of the razorclaw variety. You could make this work with a longtooth shifter instead, but doing so mostly wastes the fangs attack you get from weretouched master, and you’ll almost certainly either need Extra Shifter Trait to nab claws early or need to bump bloodclaw master significantly earlier, which messes with your maneuver progression.
Build Stub: Warblade 2/Monk 2/Nomad 2/War Mind 10/Weretouched Master 3/Bloodclaw Master 1
Alternate class features: Sleeping tiger monk fighting style, invisible fist.
Alignment: Any lawful.
The Wolverine
Level
Class
Feats
Class Features
Maneuvers/Powers
Notes (Click to Expand)
1st
Warblade 1
Razorclaw Elite
Battle clarity (Reflex saves), weapon aptitude
Moment of perfect mind, wolf fang strike, sudden leap, blood in the waterstance
This is basically the standard tiger claw opener for any warblade. Your Will saves will probably be good enough that you can get away without taking moment of perfect mind, meaning this could be replaced with something like charging minotaur, but charging minotaur will fade in usefulness quickly while moment never goes out of style. Blood in the water may seem like an odd pick for a stance given that you’ll soon be almost exclusively using natural weapons and unarmed strikes, but it’ll pay off. In the meantime, feel free to carry high-crit weapons to take advantage of it early.
2nd
Monk 1
Improved Unarmed Strike, Monastic Training (war mind)
Bonus feat, flurry of blows, unarmed strike
Monk has a natural synergy with any build focused on natural attacks. It can seamlessly work unarmed strikes into its attack routine, getting a full set of iteratives, and then strike with all its natural attacks as a secondary attack. Better still, your monk’s unarmed strike explicitly counts as a natural weapon, so things that improve natural weapons will improve your unarmed strikes as well. Monastic Training is a pre-req for Tashalatora, and otherwise doesn’t do much.
3rd
Monk 2
Improved Initiative, Shifter Ferocity
Bonus feat, invisible fist
The sleeping tiger fighting style gives you Improved Initiative at this level, which isn’t the most exciting feat in the world but helps make up for your average Dex. This level is still quite notable, though: invisible fist is an absolutely incredible ACF, giving you regular invisibility starting at level 2. Even without being a stealthy build, there are numerous advantages to being able to go invisible in combat without wasting your action. I love evasion, but I’d almost always recommend dropping it for invisible fist unless you have a really specific need.
Shifter Ferocity is basically Diehard without the Endurance requirement, and as it is your second shifter feat, it also means you get an extra daily use of shifting. At this point it’s also basically 9 extra hit points, which is quite valuable at level 3 even if it doesn’t really scale well.
4th
Psion 1
Linked Power
Bonus feat, discipline (nomad)
Inertial armor, synchronicity, psionic grease
It may seem odd to go with psion here rather than a more martial class like psychic warrior, but it has one key advantage: nomads get survival as a class skill, allowing you to qualify for weretouched master in the near future. It also provides more power points than an equivalent dip into psychic warrior would even with your mediocre Intelligence, and still grants a bonus feat to nab the always-useful Linked Power. As for your actual powers, inertial armor is great on any monk build, and it’s hard to go wrong with psionic grease. Finally, go ahead and grab synchronicity. Just using it as written on the tin it’s still a great power any time you aren’t planning on full attacking, and with Linked Power shenanigans to circumvent the casting time it can range from somewhere between “really friggin’ good” and “I’m never inviting you back to the table again.” Use with extreme caution.
5th
Psion 2
Burst, detect psionics
Since you’re a nomad, you might as well take advantage of access to burst for some quick extra movement. It’s not essential, but it’s not bad either.
6th
War Mind 1
Tashalatora
Chain of personal superiority +2
Expansion
This isn’t the first time we’ve toyed with war mind in a showcase. It’s got a fantastic mix of useful class features and surprisingly decent psionic powers stapled onto an above-average melee chassis. You’ll qualify without trouble thanks to your nomad dip earlier. Chain of personal superiority gives you a handy little buff to Strength and Con that should stack with your shifting and with any magic items you might have, while expansion is just phenomenal for any melee brute, and doubly so for one focused on natural weapons. Meanwhile, Tashalatora allows you to keep advancing all your relevant monk class features as you proceed through the levels.
7th
Weretouched Master 1
Weretouched I (wolverine)
As great as war mind is, it’s time for a quick hop into weretouched master. While its capstone was errata’d to be significantly less impressive, it still has some nice goodies for those who don’t intend to stick around for the full five levels. Right off the bat you start by growing a set of fangs when you shift, giving you yet another natural attack to take advantage of.
8th
Weretouched Master 2
Reactive Shifting
Wild empathy, bonus shifter feat
Your poor Charisma means you probably won’t be getting much out of wild empathy, but a bonus shifter feat is always handy. Unfortunately you’re a bit shy of being able to qualify for Shifter Savagery or Shifter Multiattack, but Reactive Shifting is super handy, allowing you to shift as an immediate reaction even when flat-footed. Ordinarily you can only shift during your turn, so this lets you shift in response to an attack. As for why that’s particularly helpful, take a look at the next level...
9th
Weretouched Master 3
Shifter Savagery
Weretouched II (wolverine)
And here the stars all align. Weretouched II gives you a wolverine’s rage when you shift, giving you yet another boost to Strength and Con. Activating it is especially easy with Reactive Shifting, as you can shift in response to an attack and immediately activate rage for a nice HP boost. More importantly, having access to rage means you now qualify for Shifter Savagery, the absolute best shifter feat around. Shifter Savagery is basically Improved Natural Attack and Improved Critical, rolled into one and fed on a steady diet of pre-workout and amphetamines. While raging and shifting (and thanks to your wolverine rage, any time you are shifting you should also be raging), your natural attacks increase by in damage as though you went up TWO size increases, and their threat range all doubles. Note that this is ALL of your natural attacks, not just the ones you get from shifting. Oh, hey, don’t forget that your unarmed strike is also a natural attack!
And, of course, now it becomes much clearer as to why you took blood in the water. While 19-20 isn’t the world’s best crit range, a flurry of blows followed by claws and fang will give you quite a few chances to threaten every round of combat, thereby boosting all your future attacks.
10th
War Mind 2
Chain of defensive posture +2
Empty mind
The remaining levels of weretouched master post-errata are alright but nothing to write home about, so it’s time to head back into war mind. Empty mind may seem like an odd choice when you already have moment of perfect mind, but it’s mostly here as a vehicle for Linked Power: as an immediate action low-cost power, you can link it to something like expansion for only 2 PP, letting you spend an immediate action outside of initiative order and then get big on your next turn without wasting any time. And with Tashalatora your unarmed strike goes up here, which combined with Shifter Savagery goes up to a healthy 3d6 before any additional size increases from expansion.
11th
War Mind 3
Enduring body (DR 1/--)
A bit of DR never hurts, does it?
12th
War Mind 4
Shifter Multiattack
Psionic lion’s charge
Shifter Multiattack is so good it almost makes you forget about Shifter Savagery… almost. With this, your secondary natural attacks now come at a -2 instead of a -5. This is exactly the same as standard Multiattack, but as it’s a shifter feat it also increases the duration and frequency of your shifting. Not too shabby. Go ahead and make a flurry of blows, followed by your fangs and claws at -2, all boosted by Shifter Savagery and blood in the water.
Oh, and you get psionic lion’s charge as well. You already had some pseudo-pouncing with Razorclaw Elite or sudden leap plus full attack, but why not go for the real deal? It gets even better when you can augment it, adding on some nice bonus damage to every single attack.
13th
War Mind 5
Sweeping strike
Sweeping strike is amazing and something entire builds have been based around… but honestly it’s not that essential here. It’s still nice to have, letting you hit adjacent foes with your attacks, but the movement restriction means you can’t combine it with pounce or sudden leap. Still, it comes in handy after you close to melee range.
14th
War Mind 6
Enduring body (DR 2/--)
Vampiric weapon
We waffled a lot between claws of the vampire and vampiric weapon. Claws is nice because it works on every single claw attack… but vampiric weapon can be used on your unarmed strike, and with a +11 BAB, flurry of blows and an unarmed strike that does base damage of 3d8 while shifting (more if combined with expansion and/or a monk’s belt), you just get more mileage out of vampiric weapon.
15th
War Mind 7
Great Rend
Chain of personal superiority +4
Another shifter feat will grant you another use of shifting per day, so go ahead and grab one. There are a few decent choices (Extra Shifter Trait in particular almost never goes amiss), but Great Rend is a solid pick for the free extra damage on a full attack routine. Oh, and at this point your penalties for flurry completely disappear, meaning it’s just a free attack with no drawback.
16th
War Mind 8
Chain of defensive posture +4
Energy adaptation
Energy adaptation is purely a defensive power, but it’s a really good one, giving you resistance to every type of energy for a long duration and even eventually opening up the option to manifest it as an immediate action.
17th
War Mind 9
Enduring body (DR 3/--)
Thanks to Tashalatora, greater flurry comes online here, meaning you’re making two extra free attacks without drawback on every full attack.
18th
War Mind 10
Practiced Manifester (war mind)
Chain of overwhelming force
Perfect riposte
Hitting 5th-level powers means you can pick up the excellent perfect riposte, which gives you an AoO when someone attacks and misses you. While you’re not a full counterattack build, combined with vampiric weapon and your massive unarmed strikes, this can get really dangerous fast. Meanwhile, Practiced Manifester is necessary to fully augment some powers, if for example you want to both reduce expansion’s manifesting time to a swift action AND bump yourself up to huge at the same time.
19th
Bloodclaw Master 1
Shifting 1/day, claws of the beast
Dancing mongoose
With your last two levels, it’s worth a quick hop into bloodclaw master. There’s a little blurb on bloodclaw master that explicitly says that instead of getting the somewhat underwhelming bloodclaw master shifting ability, a shifter gets additional uses of its natural shifting. You also get claws of the beast, which allows you to add your full Strength bonus to your claw attacks, making this level easily worth the point of BAB you give up as compared to standard warblade. And with your tiger claw maneuver, go ahead and grab the fantastic dancing mongoose, for two free attacks as a swift action.
(Note that this assumes that Shifter Multiattack will qualify you for bloodclaw master. If it doesn’t, just take another level of warblade here. You end up with the same IL and maneuver layout and an extra point of BAB, but lose a daily shifting use and only deal half Str damage on your claw attacks.)
20th
Warblade 2
Uncanny dodge
Pouncing charge
You could go with a second level of bloodclaw master here, but its superior two-weapon fighting and tiger claw synergy aren’t as good for you as they could be, while another level of warblade means another maneuver. You actually technically qualify for 6ths here, but none of them are going to be as good for you as pouncing charge. While you can always use psionic lion’s charge to pounce, this gives you an extra pounce every encounter without tying up your swift action (which could instead be spent on something like dancing mongoose) or costing you PP.
Warblade Maneuvers:
1- Moment of perfect mind, wolf fang strike, sudden leap, blood in the waterstance
5- Dancing mongoose, pouncing charge
Psion Powers:
1- Inertial armor, synchronicity, psionic grease, burst, detect psionics
War Mind Powers:
1- Expansion, empty mind
2- Psionic lion’s charge
3- Vampiric weapon
4- Energy adaptation
5- Perfect riposte
Shifters have kind of an awkward stat spread. They get a bonus to Dex, which isn’t a priority for this build at all, and a penalty to Charisma and Intelligence. Charisma is a dump stat, but you’ll need at least an 11 and will probably want a 12 in Intelligence. My recommendation would be to dump Charisma and Dex entirely (your natural Dex bonus will keep you from taking any penalties for the latter), get Int up to 12, and then focus on Strength, Wisdom and Con in that order.
SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS (after racial adjustments):
28-point buy: Str 16/Dex 10/Con 14/Int 12/Wis 14/Cha 6
32-point buy: Str 16/Dex 10/Con 14/Int 12/Wis 16/Cha 6
You’re not really a skillful build, but you’re not the worst either. You’ll need some ranks in survival and knowledge (psionics) to qualify for war mind and weretouched master, but beyond that your requirements are minimal, and you have a positive Intelligence, so you should have some freedom to play around a bit.
You’ll equip yourself like something between a psychic warrior and a monk. A torc of power preservation and some dorjes and cognizance crystals are recommended for basically any psionic character. Meanwhile you’ll want to pick up monk/natural attack staples like a monk’s belt and a necklace of natural weapons.
As far as things that specifically benefit this build, you may want to look into things that harm yourself, from weak area attacks to the vicious weapon enhancement, because it gives you a way to automatically self-trigger your rage instead of making you rely on your opponents attacking you. (You can also just attack yourself, but that wastes an action, and who has time for that?)
BUILD SUMMARY
All told, how does the build end up? Well, with full war mind manifesting, 6th-level maneuvers, +16 BAB and the unarmed strike and flurry of a 12th level monk, you’ve got quite a bit going on. Your unarmed strike routine gives you six unarmed attacks before items/buffs, followed by your claws and fangs as secondary attacks at -2 (and with the claw attacks dealing full Str damage instead of half). That’s nine attacks per round, and you can add in two more via dancing mongoose. When shifting, all those attacks have a doubled threat range and a pair of size increases, meaning that the unarmed strike on its own is doing 4d6 base damage. With expansion that can easily jump to 8d6, or 8d8 with a monk’s belt. Add on your fangs and claws and you’re talking about throwing around as much as 64d8+10d6 in a single full attack just from base damage alone, before even touching on Strength and shifter bonuses, enhancements and magic items, blood in the water, your rend attacks, etc. You have multiple ways of pouncing, as well as perfect riposte for even more off-turn damage. Even factoring in misses, you’re averaging hundreds of points of damage a round. Plus you’ve got multiple defensive abilities ranging from flat AC and DR boosts to gaining resistance 20 against every energy type as an immediate action, vampiric weapon to heal oodles of HP every turn, action abuse via synchronicity… basically, you’ve got a lot going on.
The build is dependent on shifting and raging for Shifter Savagery, but with the ability to shift as a free or immediate action and automatically rage any time you take damage while shifting, this should hardly be a problem. You can shift four times per day without factoring in items, each one easily lasting the entire combat, and can shift reactively in response to an attack. And between shifting, rage, expansion and chain of personal superiority, you will be going into most battles with a +12 Str and +8 Con. Go into combat, get big, let yourself take some damage and go to town.
VARIANTS
I mentioned that this build started out as a wilder, right? That’s still a very feasible option. Shifter wilders are actually quite nice despite the apparent lack of synergy presented by the bad Charisma. Access to egoist discipline powers means getting metamorphosis by level 8, which is excellent, so a shifter wilder will likely be best served by focusing her efforts there. We had a few wilder versions, but I’ll go ahead and share the one that I personally liked the best:
Shifter, Educated Wilder 17/Weretouched Master 3
1 Wilder1- Razorclaw Elite
2 Wilder2-
3 Wilder3- Quick Recovery
4 Wilder4-
5 Wilder5- Expanded Knowledge (expansion)
6 Wilder6- Great Rend
7 Wilder7-
8 Wilder8-
9 Weretouched Master1- Linked Power
10 Weretouched Master2- Shifter Multiattack
11 Weretouched Master3-
12 Wilder9- Expanded Knowledge (claws of the vampire), Shifter Savagery
13 Wilder10-
14 Wilder11-
15 Wilder12- Practiced Manifester (wilder)
16 Wilder13- Expanded Knowledge (perfect riposte)
17 Wilder14-
18 Wilder15- Psicrystal Affinity
19 Wilder16-
20 Wilder17- Expanded Knowledge (fate of one)
Powers known:
1- Offensive precognition, synchronicity, expansion
2- (2nd level power)
3- Hustle, claws of the vampire
4- Metamorphosis
5- Anticipatory strike, perfect riposte
6- Temporal acceleration
7- Personal mind blank, fate of one
8- Fusion
There are other options as well. An egoist version of the metamorphosis-focused build would be able to still hit 9ths for greater metamorphosis even after spending three levels on weretouched. A psychic warrior version will have some issues with BAB and power timing, but gets plenty of feats to build in some strong counterattack options (Combat Reflexes, Robilar’s, etc.), which all plays quite nicely with the general build theme.
For more minor changes, many of the shifter feats can be adjusted. Shifter Savagery is absolutely essential, and Shifter Multiattack should only be dropped if it’s ruled that it doesn’t qualify you for bloodclaw master (in which case you might want to take standard Multiattack), but the others can all be swapped out as desired. There are some other interesting feat options as well. Expanded Knowledge is always a good one. For example, if you’d like to go back toward the original idea and get native access to metamorphosis, the build can pick it up at 18. Martial Study or Stance can also open up more options on the initiating side of things.
SOURCES
Shifter, weretouched master, Great Rend, Shifter Ferocity, Shifter Multiattack, Monastic Training: Eberron Campaign Setting
Razorclaw Elite, Reactive Shifting, Shifter Savagery: Races of Eberron
War mind, psion, psionic powers, sleeping tiger fighting style ACF: SRD
Linked Power, Practiced Manifester, synchronicity: Complete Psionic
Invisible fist ACF: Exemplars of Evil
Tashalatora: Secrets of Sarlona
Warblade, bloodclaw master, maneuvers/stances: Tome of Battle
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And that’s that! Please let us know what you think in the comments, and what you’d like to see for future showcases!