Need a bit of help finalizing my Warblade!

[Quer]

Hey, I'm playing a high level Warblade for the first time and I'd like some suggestions (I've already read all the handbooks I managed to find).
We are starting at level 13, 110k gp, 32 point buy, all books allowed but no spellcasting classes (either arcane or divine) and only 2 magic items.

Stats: 19, 12, 16, 14, 10, 8

Race: Human

Maneuvers:
Moment of Perfect Mind (DM)(1)
Wall of Blades (IH)(2)
Iron Heart Surge (IH)(3), White Raven Tactics (WR)(3)
Ruby Nightmare Blade (DM)(4), Lightning Recovery (IH)(4)
Elder Mountain Hammer (SD)(5), Pouncing Charge (TC)(5)
Greater Insightful Strike (DM)(6), Iron Heart Endurance (IH)(6)
Finishing Move (IH)(7)

Stances:
Hunter’s Senses (TC)(S)(1), Leading the Charge (WR)(S)(1), Hearing the Air (TC)(S)(5)

Feats:
1: Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush
3: Close-Quarter Fighting
5: Improved Initiative
6: Shock Trooper
9: Improved Critical, ?
12: Leap Attack
13: ?

I'm still missing a couple of feats from the bonus ones the warblade gets but, most importantly, I don't know how to spend my starting gold!

I was thinking about buying a cool weapon, maybe a valorous magebane tiger claw adamantine greatsword/falchion? I would still have money left to buy a belt of giant strength (+6), a mithral full plate and some cool mundane equipment. Are there any magic items that are more useful than those two?

[H_H_F_F]

I'd say recommendations would change depending on your party. Do you have nay idea what the others will be playing?

[Anthrowhale]

Armor class is typically quite difficult to optimize without magic. The best armor you could use with those stats is Reinforced Segmented (Dragon #358) Thaalud Stone (Anauroch) which would give you a base AC of 24=10+13(Armor)+1(Dexterity). It would cost 3300gp and weighs 198 lbs. If you add in a Mithril Heavy Shield +5+animated (50K gp), you'll have an AC of 31. An AC of 31 is good enough to keep monsters from power attacking you, but not good enough to keep them from hitting you regularly by level 13. If you want to really get a good AC, you'll need to take Combat Expertise and Improved Combat Expertise so you can dump your attack bonus to get an AC of 44. At that point, you can't hit anything or do significant damage personally. You _could_ help the entire party's AC if you take Allied Defense (Shining South) on top of that and rely on them to deal damage.

On the other hand, optimizing AC is somewhat incompatible with Shock Trooper. An alternative to AC is just being hard to hit. The best way I know to do that is via the Dragonborn (Races of the Dragon) Telthor (Unapproachable East) templates, which make you incorporeal. You take a +2 level adjustment, reducing you to Warblade 11 and you have no strength, reducing damage. On the upside, you are immune to just about all non-magical sources of damage, are missed half the time by most magical sources, and you can run through most obstacles so charging should be viable in many circumstances. You'll need a ghost touch sword. A Valorous Leap Attack Heedless charge would deal (2d6(base)+1(enhancement)+22(two-handed power attack))x3 ~= 90 which is formidable damage for a single blow. Hitting 3 times in a round via iteratives would be quite devastating.

One other angle to consider in a low-magic setting is healing, which tends to be very slow without magic. Good remedies include the Troll-blooded feat (Dragon #319), the Feral template (Savage Species, LA+1), or the Crusader class.

[Particle_Man]

If you only have two magic items, can you make one of them an intelligent item?

[razorback]

If you only have two magic items, can you make one of them an intelligent item?
In that vein, what about Item familiar (instead of CQF at level 3) and Ancestral Relic to pimp out your weapon of choice?
Make the item familiar with one of the magic teeth from Tome of Magic, the tooth of Leraje to cast GMW for +5 to your weapon?

[Maat Mons]

You've already picked up the best feat from the Warblade bonus feat list, Improved Initiative.

Combat Reflexes can be a great feat. But you're not making a lockdown build, so probably not for you.

Endurance sucks on its own, but sets you up to take Steadfast Determination. That's generally a pretty good feat. Moment of Perfect Mind should already have you covered on Will saves, but the "secondary" benefit of not auto-failing Fortitude saves on a natural 1 is still nice.



Is the thing about being limited to 2 items just a character creation limit, or is that going to somehow keep being a thing as you continue playing?

Wings of Flying would help you get those hard-to-reach enemies. Though it would take a 54,000 gp bite out of your budget.

You can just barely afford a Ring of Mental Fortitude. That would give you complete immunity to mind-affecting effects. But at 110,000 gp, you'd be starting not only without a Valorous weapon, but without any weapon... except a 0 gp quarterstaff.

A suit of Greater Blurring armor gives you a 50% miss chance... if you spend a swift action at the start of each battle. It's only 16,000 gp plus the cost of the masterwork armor. One nice thing about picking a suit of armor as one of your two items is that there are some flat-cost abilities you can throw onto it.

A Hathran Mask of True seeing is always an awesome item to have. But with your budget and 2-item limit, it's probably not the best choice.

[Gruftzwerg]

since you went ubercharger I would suggest the following changes:

1. get Pounce via dipping 1lvl Barbarian (Alternate Class Feature)
2. dip a single lvl into unarmed swordsage
3. dip 2 lvls into Drunken Master (needs Dodge , Great Fortitude which solves your feat selection problem^^)
4. get a magic item to fly constantly as second magic item

Drunken Master 2 gives you the "Stagger" ability. Now you can change directions while charging as you see it fit. Further you can avoid all AoO on the way with a single Tumble DC15 roll. This enables you to charge under almost (space/environment) circumstances. Even if the enemy is standing direct next to you at the start of your turn, you can go back and forth or just make a flying looping.
Further since we can fly we can make diving charge attacks for double slash and pricing damage. Together with a valorous weapon that triples the charge damage.
Charge/Dive/Pounce every round for triple damage and always run up to the biggest target first.

btw, Drunken Master also gives you "Drink like a Demon" which is imho the best RP ability in the game. Most adventuring groups will visit taverns in downtimes or to gather information. And you are the undisputed king of all tavern drinking contests. This will earn you some reputation and friends everywhere, which you can consult for information or ask for some help maybe.

[Maat Mons]

Hmm, I went to look for cool flat-cost armor bonuses, but I couldn't find as many as I thought.

Blueshine: immune to rust, 500 gp
Restful Armor: sleep in your armor without penalty, 500 gp
Greater Stamina: +5 enhancement bonus to Fortitude saves, 8,000 gp

Armor occupies the Body body slot, so MIC rules let you add a deflection bonus to AC, an enhancement bonus to natural armor, or energy resistance to it.

If you went with Wings of Flying instead, you could use MIC rules to add a deflection bonus to AC, a resistance bonus to saves, or energy resistance.

If you instead went for some sort of magic belt, you could use MIC rules to add a and enhancement bonus to Strength, or an enhancement bonus to Constitution. There aren't that many great belts though. Belt of Battle, Belt of Hidden Pouches, and Healing Belt are all I can come up with.

Hmm, a Belt of Hidden Pouches with +6 Strength and +6 Constitution would cost 77,000 gp. It wouldn't be the worst choice for one of your two starting items. It covers buffing your two most important ability scores, and it has some minor utility.

But then again, Wings of Flying with +5 saves would cost a pretty similar amount, 79,000 gp. And saves are kind of important. ... And you can't charge what you can't get to. ... And you could add on resistance 5 to Cold and Fire for 8,000 gp, which would to keep comfortable in extreme weather conditions. ... Okay, that last one wasn't as important.

[Quer]

I'd say recommendations would change depending on your party. Do you have nay idea what the others will be playing?

I knew I was going to forget something! One will be playing a ranged rogue/shadowdancer, the other chose a spell-less ranger/scout. My initial idea was a swordsage (I just love the flavor of the class so much) but I settled with warblade since I thought we needed someone to act as a "tank".


[...]
This is a lot to take in, thanks!
Warblades are not proficient with heavy armor, are you suggesting a dip in some other class to be able to wear the Thaalud Stone Armor?

My biggest problem right now is that I don't know how optimized my character should be, our DM said the adventure is going to be "highly lethal", but I wouldn't want to be that guy that rolls around with an ultra-cheese build.


If you only have two magic items, can you make one of them an intelligent item?

In that vein, what about Item familiar (instead of CQF at level 3) and Ancestral Relic to pimp out your weapon of choice?
Make the item familiar with one of the magic teeth from Tome of Magic, the tooth of Leraje to cast GMW for +5 to your weapon?

I think so, but since it's a weird setting where magic is basically dead I have to check with our dm first.
Item familiar and ancestral relic sound pretty good, I’ll see if they’re allowed.



Is the thing about being limited to 2 items just a character creation limit, or is that going to somehow keep being a thing as you continue playing?

Wings of Flying would help you get those hard-to-reach enemies. Though it would take a 54,000 gp bite out of your budget.

A suit of Greater Blurring armor gives you a 50% miss chance... if you spend a swift action at the start of each battle. It's only 16,000 gp plus the cost of the masterwork armor. One nice thing about picking a suit of armor as one of your two items is that there are some flat-cost abilities you can throw onto it.

We'll be exploring an uncharted island full of monsters, so I'm not counting on more magical items in the near future, but who knows!

Looking at the MIC and Greater Blurring works just like Blurring (20% miss chance) but lasts longer. Am I missing something?

I definitely want to start with a magical weapon, what's better as a second item? Wings, armor or +6 strength bonus?



Armor occupies the Body body slot, so MIC rules let you add a deflection bonus to AC, an enhancement bonus to natural armor, or energy resistance to it.

If you went with Wings of Flying instead, you could use MIC rules to add a deflection bonus to AC, a resistance bonus to saves, or energy resistance.

I never knew about this rule, it's almost like a revelation lol. Those wings look really tempting, but I'm afraid my dm will shoot it down since it definetly looks like I'm trying to bypass the two starting items rule.
Blueshine and restful seem great, I'll definitely put them on whatever armor I end up with.

[H_H_F_F]

I'd say if you have no spellcasters, flying will be crucial. You can do damage on your own, but with a spell-less party, what you want to get is tactical options, above all. +6 to STR is worthless if you're standing around and looking up at a beholder.

[Anthrowhale]

This is a lot to take in, thanks!
Warblades are not proficient with heavy armor, are you suggesting a dip in some other class to be able to wear the Thaalud Stone Armor?

Hmm, probably not---I had forgotten. In that case, you might go with Mithril Reinforced Mechanus Gear for your armor which provides a +11 bonus. As you can see, I'm somewhat skeptical that you can achieve a high-enough level of AC for it to be worthwhile optimizing, unless you want to go the Allied Defense route.

W.r.t. stacking items, even the DMG says you can do this at an x1.5 cost. The MIC just made this easier for "standard" enchantments.

The flight advice is good but I'd recommend acquiring flight through the dragonborn template instead so you don't "waste" an item on it.

I'd still be worried about healing in your situation. You might want to consider using Martial Study/Martial Stance to pick up some of the Crusader healing abilities. (Or... just go Crusader.)

[H_H_F_F]

The flight advice is good but I'd recommend acquiring flight through the dragonborn template instead so you don't "waste" an item on it.
Human+ DoB is a bad idea. If OP is open to swap race, it could work.

[Gorthawar]

Maneuvers:
Moment of Perfect Mind (DM)(1)
Wall of Blades (IH)(2)
Iron Heart Surge (IH)(3), White Raven Tactics (WR)(3)
Ruby Nightmare Blade (DM)(4), Lightning Recovery (IH)(4)
Elder Mountain Hammer (SD)(5), Pouncing Charge (TC)(5)
Greater Insightful Strike (DM)(6), Iron Heart Endurance (IH)(6)
Finishing Move (IH)(7)

Stances:
Hunter’s Senses (TC)(S)(1), Leading the Charge (WR)(S)(1), Hearing the Air (TC)(S)(5)


I think you have 1 maneuver too much. And concerning maneuvers I'm not the biggest fan of insightful strike / greater insightful strike in this build especially when all your money goes to the weapon and you can't stock up on +concentration items.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I'd go with a large or powerful build race such as Goliath with the LA bought off (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/reducingLevelAdjustments.htm), use Item Familiar (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/itemFamiliars.htm) to make up the xp loss and then some from that.

Gain the ability to fly, either naturally (Dragonborn) or from a non-magic-item (Feathered Wings graft in FF isn't a magic item). Take the feat Improved Flight in RotW if necessary to get good maneuverability. Edit: Being able to fly also allows you to do a dive attack, i.e. any time you charge with a piercing weapon and lose altitude, your damage on the attack is doubled.

Take two levels of Fighter for the Dungeon Crasher ACF in Dungeonscape. Take those right after your first Warblade level, so at Warblade 2 you can pick 2nd level maneuvers.

Take the feat Knock Back in RoS. Hover above your opponent, use Knock Back to bull rush them into the ground on every hit, which adds Dungeon Crasher damage to each of your attacks.

You'll probably want to use a spiked chain and take Knock-Down (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineAbilitiesFeats.htm#knockDown) and Combat Reflexes as well.

An Item Familiar should always be a ring. Always wear a glove or gauntlet over it so opponents never have line of sight or line of effect to it and can't slight of hand it. An item familiar is an intelligent item (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/intelligentItems.htm) which means it's treated as a construct, and constructs can't be destroyed by disjunction. Make it start as a Ring of Protection +1 which you pay full price for, upgrade it yourself to a Ring of Freedom of Movement with a +1 deflection bonus to AC added per MIC p234. Take Leadership for a Cleric cohort who can cast Freedom of Movement for you when upgrading that (or say you had Leadership but hired an NPC Psion (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#spell) to use Psychic Reformation to repick it).

[Eldariel]

You really should get Feathered Wings graft. Cheap as hell flight and Moment of Perfect Mind stops the slip into madness.

I do think a Weapon of Legacy could be another good investment. Those could get you basically everything you need. You'd miss out on some numeric buffs but you could make up for it in the chassis. +1 Valorous is enough so you could pick up stuff like Cunning and enemy location abilities and such (and it's a gift that just keeps on giving).


Oh, and definitely dip 1-2 levels in Barbarian (for Pounce and Whirling Frenzy and potentially Improved Trip from Barb 2) and if you go Barb 1, Fighter 1 or Ranger 1 as the second level to even out your Initiator Level. This opens up Bounding Assault as a full attack charge option which makes life much easier especially in conjunction with Leading the Charge stance.

[Maat Mons]

Sorry, I misremembered the miss chance. I guess I confused it with the Oriental Adventures version of the Displacement armor ability?



I wouldn't view using the MIC rules as "getting around" the two-item limit.

For one thing, it sounds like the limit is in place to make sure magic items are rare and powerful. So people aren't running around with a plethora of cheap or, heaven forbid, disposable items. I think adding the save bonus and energy resistance to the wings makes them feel more like a unique item, something with history that has been passed down through generations.

I was going to try to write some example item lore here, but I was feeling uninspired, and I didn't really know what your backstory is, how you came by the item, and thus what sort of family lineage / heroic organization to associate it with. But wings have long been associated with protection. Baby birds are sheltered beneath the wings of their parents. So the fact that these wings protect you from various nefarious attacks, as well as from extremes of weather seems very appropriate.

Additionally, remember that the rules in MIC don't allow for just any arbitrary hodgepodge of abilities the was that the guidelines in DMG do. So allowing the very specific additions on the table in MIC doesn't open the door to all effects a player could ever want being shoehorned into a single item.



Going dragonborn for innate flight is an interesting option. But it might be a tad to magical for this campaign setting. No one is born a dragonborn. You have to go through a magic ritual of transformation.

Raptoran might work better. They're just a +0 LA race with wings. Nothing about them relies on magic.

Or, I guess you could play as a silverbrow human and take the pair of feats that give you dragon-style wings that you can fly with. But silverbrow humans gain a racial spell-like ability, so I don't know if that conflicts with the low-magic setting.

[Darrin]

Maneuvers:
Moment of Perfect Mind (DM)(1)
Wall of Blades (IH)(2)
Iron Heart Surge (IH)(3), White Raven Tactics (WR)(3)
Ruby Nightmare Blade (DM)(4), Lightning Recovery (IH)(4)
Elder Mountain Hammer (SD)(5), Pouncing Charge (TC)(5)
Greater Insightful Strike (DM)(6), Iron Heart Endurance (IH)(6)
Finishing Move (IH)(7)

Stances:
Hunter’s Senses (TC)(S)(1), Leading the Charge (WR)(S)(1), Hearing the Air (TC)(S)(5)


Elder Mountain Hammer requires two Stone Dragon maneuvers as prereqs. If you're using it mostly for non-combat dungeon redecorating, then the non-elder Mountain Hammer should be sufficient. Hearing the Air is actually a Diamond Mind Stance, so you may be short on Tiger Claw prereqs to take Pouncing Charge, unless you're counting Pouncing Charge as self-qualifying, or replaced a prereq earlier. Also, Warblade 13 gets 10 maneuvers, but you have 11 listed here, so unless you're taking Martial Study at 6th/9th, I think you may have an extra maneuver?

I'm not quite sure I'd take Finishing Move at 13th, although that might depend on how much damage you can dish out on a full attack and how much the other meatbags in the party are depending on you for DPS. I like Quicksilver Motion (another way to Pounce), and Clarion Call is also available.



Feats:
3: Close-Quarter Fighting


Eh? What is this for?

EWP: Jovar (Planar Handbook) might be good here. It's pretty decent for crit-fishing, even better if you can get a Heavy version (MoF p. 179) with Strongarm Bracers (6000 GP, MIC): base damage is 3d8. If you can't get the Strongarm Bracers, a medium-sized heavy jovar is nothing to sniff at: 2d8 base damage, 18-20 crit.

If that's not to your taste, I'd consider taking Improved Trip here, with the idea of taking Knock-Down (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineAbilitiesFeats.htm#knockDown) (SRD version) later. You'll want to check with your DM if they are going to hand-wave the "Sword & Fist" errata. (The 3.5 SRD version did not include the errata, and was published after Sword & Fist, so it supercedes the S&F version.)



9: Improved Critical, ?
12: Leap Attack
13: ?


After Improved Initiative, Combat Reflexes is usually my second choice for WB Bonus Feats. This lets you take Robilar's Gambit later (12th or 15th level), and that could lead to taking Stormguard Warrior for Channel the Storm/Combat Rhythm shenanigans.

The other WB bonus feats worth considering: I personally prefer Quick-Draw, as I detest losing a move action if I need to pull out a weapon to do something cool. Blade Meditation is good if you're stacking up multiple strikes in a single discipline (Ruby Nightmare Blade, Insightful Strike, etc.). Stone Power is also good for tanking or shrugging off environmental damage (lava, extreme heat/cold, etc.). If none of those work for you, take Blind-Fight for the reroll on concealment.

As far as spending your GP goes... if you're limited to just two items, I'd look at how much you can stack on a large-sized heavy jovar + Strongarm Bracers (adding on an armor bonus and armor enhancements).

[Anthrowhale]

Eh? What is this for?

I expect: a freedom of movement alternative.