Clawlock, Gestalt Edition (3.5 build help thread)

[Dusk Raven]

I've been toying around with character ideas for a gestalt campaign I'm to take part in, at some point in the future. The parameters for character building, in general, are:


It'll be a party of evil characters, or at least somewhat villainous;
Any source is allowed, and the DM is somewhat flexible - I convinced him to allow a 3rd party PrC, for instance;
Gestalting is somewhat restricted, based on tier (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?266559-Tier-System-for-Classes-(Rescued-from-MinMax)) - tier 1s can only gestalt with tiers 5 and below, tier 2s can gestalt with tier 4s and below, and tier 3s can gestalt with other tier 3s and below. This is more of a personal limitation than something the DM is enforcing, at least at this stage. But given what I'm actually trying to build with this, I'm not exactly worried about power.
Let's not worry about what level we're starting at, this is likely to be a backup character, after all, and thus their starting level can't be predicted. The campaign will, however, go to level 20.


That being said, I'm aiming to make a Clawlock, which takes advantage of a feat from Dragon 358 to turn one's Eldritch Blast into a pair of claws, which, rather absurdly, benefit from boosts to natural weapons and unarmed strikes, which appeals to me since I love making characters with abilities that synergize with each other. Also, instead of just using the claws, I can take take the Beast Strike feat, which lets one apply claw damage to one's unarmed strikes. So, my goal is simple - find a way, with the gestalt rules, to be a decent gish. Thematically, this character is a former holy warrior of some sort who, after being betrayed by the order that raised her and taught her to sacrifice everything for her cause... has picked up the cause of evil instead, and gone a bit feral in the process. Mechanically, there are way too many ways to go about this. Not all of them are, well, good.

Here are some of the options I'm considering for base classes, in addition to Warlock:
Monk: The most obvious option for boosting unarmed strike damage... and the worst class of the lot. They also suffer from the curious restriction of "once you take a level in a class other than this, you can't go back to it," which complicates multiclassing. Speaking of which, I can't just take this as a dip, because that restricts my unarmed damage pretty heavily. If I don't have Monk levels, I can just take Superior Unarmed Strike, which eventually (based on my level) will boost the damage to 2d6, but if I have Monk levels, it merely increases it to the next damage category. Monks do, however, get a unique benefit - their unarmed strikes count as natural weapons and manufactured weapons when it comes to buffs. It's possible to make do without this, of course - I can just use my actual natural weapons, and I wouldn't need to take the Beast Strike feat - but it's easier to work with unarmed strikes than natural weapons, I think, especially if I go into:
Swordsage: from the Book of How-To-Make-Martial-Combat-Interesting, also known as the Tome of Battle. Pros: martial combat that's higher than tier 4, including stuff to do with unarmed strikes. I particularly like the option of using maneuvers that take up a standard action, so I can still do something useful while moving around. Cons: Gets Wisdom bonus to AC while wearing light armor, but not while unarmored, which means it won't synergize with certain Monk PrCs.
Cleric: Mostly for thematic reasons. The character was once a divine caster, after all, but while they might have retrained their Cleric Levels into Warlock, it's also possible for them to keep some Cleric levels. The Demonic domain even gives a bonus to attack rolls and damage with natural weapons... but this character is more likely to have a devil patron instead. Oh well.

Unless I go the simplest route I can think of - Swordsage + Warlock - I'm probably going to need a way of overcoming favored class nonsense. That being said, the simplest way of dealing with that is an Unearthed Arcana feat.

Prestige classes:
Chameleon: In part, for thematic reasons, as part of her training was... well, having such a weak sense of self that she could alter her skillset depending on what other people needed her to be. However, I really like the idea of it, especially for a gish character like this one. Definitely taking a few levels of this, at least.
Fist of the Forest: I mostly looked into this because nature-themed characters are always of interest to me, but this does have some fun features. For starters, they get a rage-like ability that boosts their DEX as well as unarmed strike damage, and gives a bite attack on top of that - and it stacks with, and is greatly enhanced by, a barbarian's (or Chameleon's) rage. They also get to add their CON modifier to AC while unarmored. They also get Uncanny Dodge, and their unarmed strikes count as magic - or, should they already be counted as magic, they become ghost touch weapons. You don't even need to have Monk levels to go into this PrC, although they obviously synergize quite well. That being said, their unarmed strike damage synergizes strangely with other things that boost unarmed strike damage, but doesn't actually limit it in the same way that Monk does, when taking Superior Unarmed Strike. Alternatively, 7 levels of Monk and 3 of Fist of the Forest with the feat, or 8+ Monk levels without the feat, caps the unarmed strike damage out at 2d6, the same as what SUS would eventually give me.
Eldritch Disciple: Only of use if I have Cleric levels as well. It mostly serves as an easy way to quickly build up Warlock abilities, seeing as how this character only became a Warlock later in her adventuring career - not that that matters if I start after that point. It also builds up Cleric abilities, too!
Hellfire Warlock: Automatically on the table for any Warlock build. That being said, I don't think you can use stuff that boosts eldritch blast, or even blast shape/essence invocations, on eldritch claws. The boost in damage would, however, be useful in case an AoE is called for.

Kind of drawing a blank on other options at the moment, mostly because gestalt involves a lot to keep track of. But, at its core, this character is meant to be an natural weapon fighter, possibly unarmed strike fighter as well via the Beast Strike feat. Able Learner is needed at 1st level to go into Chameleon, as is Eldritch Claw. Beyond that, I'm not sure what the best way to go about this is, as I'll need to balance between optimizing Warlock abilities, unarmed strikes, and whatever else goes into this particular gish.

Thoughts?

[A.A.King]

Given that you're using special tier-based gestalt only, what would be the rules with regards to gestating prestige classes? You mentioned Eldritch Disciple yourself, so does that mean you're allowed theurge-like prestige classes in this game? Would you be allowed to gestalt prestige classes or does one side always have to be at least base class?

[Darg]

If you take "In all other ways, a spell-
like ability functions just like a spell" literally, enlightened fist would be a really good one to use.

Enlightened Spirit is a really common warlock combo.

[Buddy76]

Battle Dancer (Dragon Compendium) is a base class with full BAB, unarmed strike damage increase like Monk and adds charisma to AC while unarmored.

If you want Cleric levels, Sacred Fist (Complete Divine) is also worth looking into.

[Troacctid]

If you can get some wild shape going, Eldritch Claws can be used in any form.

[Gruftzwerg]

Have a look at my clawlock build (see signature) for a full optimized non gestalt build.

Enlightened Fist (prc) is almost mandatory since it progresses invocations and monk abilities. You want to get the unarmed strike dmg of a 20th lvl monk.
Alternatively you can max UMD and use a Monk's Belt to get the unarmed dmg of a 20th lvl monk. But you need at least 1 lvl in a class that gives you the monks unarmed strike ability (the belt only gives you the dmg of the monk, not the ability), because that is needed to enhance your unarmed strike like a manufactured/natural weapon.

Beast Strike feat
Combine Eldritch Claws with Beast Strike. Now your unarmed strikes do "2x unarmed + Eldritch Blast" dmg.

A Necklace of Natural Attacks with the Sizing ability is the most important item for a clawlock. Unarmed Strikes are always considered light weapons, despite their size. This allows you to size your unarmed strike up to colossal size if you want (-2 to hit per step size difference). The average dmg increase for Beast Strike is better than a full feated 2h Power Attack.

Since you go gestalt, you still have room for Hellfire Warlock 3.

If you go for Swordsage, the Shadow Sun Ninja prc could be a nice option (or just a 1lvl dip). The first lvl gives you the ability Touch of the Shadow Sun (Su). The first round activated you can make a touch attack and deal negative energy unarmed strike dmg (as standard action). In the next round it can be used to heal an ally (for unarmed strike dmg). If you (e.g Necropolitan template) or someone else in your party is undead, this can be abused for infinite (downtime) heals. Imho a more fitting choice than cleric.

If you should go for the UMD Monk's Belt option (and only dip Swordsage), I would suggest to go for Wild Shape as Troacctid suggested. Add Master of Many Forms (7) to shape into a War Troll.

[Morphic tide]

Hmm... My first instinct is to try to my Psicarnum claw-blender concept as an other side for this, but Enlightened Fist brings up an important opportunity: Filling the other side with Unarmed Swordsage and Beguiler levels (most useful full caster) to accelerate Unarmed Strike progression and have real spell slots to fuel Enlightened Fist with. You can fit a level of Unarmed Swordsage on the Enlightened Fist side at 4th, then take Monk 1 at 5th for the required feats, or vice versa. As Monk damage does not scale past level 20, you want no more than 9 levels of Unarmed Swordsage, and could go for just 4 if preferring a Monk's Belt for the item slot.

In either case, one can start with a Crusader as the first Initiator levels to key to the backstory and, more importantly, offer Devoted Spirit and White Raven Maneuver access for the later bundle of Swordsage levels. You'll want either Swordsage 1 or 4 to hit at IL 9, to get 5th-level Maneuvers efficiently, with Swordsage 1 giving you six Maneuvers at once and Swordsage 4 letting you learn one 5th-level Maneuver and trade for a second 5th. However, getting it at Swordsage 1 without prior Initiating would require sixteen other levels, and Crusader 3 would bring that down to a still-high ten previous levels.

To optimize the raw progressions, I'll be aiming for Swordsage 1 constituting IL 5 to have it access 3rd-level Maneuvers, giving a lot of the defining Maneuvers of various Disciplines. If starting off with Crusader 3, then Swordsage 1 will come at level 6 after Crusader 3/Beguiler 2; this means going Warlock 4/Monk 1 on the Enlightened Fist "side", or possibly slotting in a Barbarian level for Pounce. Then we repeat Beguiler +2/Swordsage +1 until reaching the desired total Monk level, replace Beguiler proper with full-BAB PRC(s) of preference once available if your table/chatroom/thread/whatever is ignoring the rule about not having two PRC levels simultaneously.

However, the Enlightened Fist direction has a major, downright fatal, issue: It doesn't progress Eldritch Blast. At all, and those extra d6s are a lot more than Unarmed Strike damage is without resorting to very gratuitous RAW-dubious cheese like Sizing. Hellfire Warlock and Enlightened Spirit are the main directions to scale that via PRC, and neither progresses things outside Warlock (and Enlightened Spirit is a redemption arc with a Good requirement...), so it's quite a bit better to have hard Warlock levels for scaling and use Enlightened Fist for Beguiler casting the way the PRC is supposed to work so it actually has slots to fuel Arcane Rejuvenation with.

[Darg]

However, the Enlightened Fist direction has a major, downright fatal, issue: It doesn't progress Eldritch Blast. At all, and those extra d6s are a lot more than Unarmed Strike damage is without resorting to very gratuitous RAW-dubious cheese like Sizing. Hellfire Warlock and Enlightened Spirit are the main directions to scale that via PRC, and neither progresses things outside Warlock (and Enlightened Spirit is a redemption arc with a Good requirement...), so it's quite a bit better to have hard Warlock levels for scaling and use Enlightened Fist for Beguiler casting the way the PRC is supposed to work so it actually has slots to fuel Arcane Rejuvenation with.

EB gets die progression with the arcane caster progression of enlightened fist. Unlike other casters, they and dragonfire adept get casting progression as long as you get spellcaster level progression. This means they receive full blast/breath die and invocation progression on a class like greenstar adept. An eldritch disciple could take hierophant levels and have full progression on the warlock side and improve caster level on the divine caster side.

[Dusk Raven]

An addendum to the original post - I'm also considering Factotem, fitting with the theme of versatility and this character being whatever her party and/or patron requires of her. As was mentioned in another thread, Factotem gets a little better with gestalt if you pair them up with something that can make better use of the additional standard actions. However, it doesn't synergize terribly well with anything else I've considered, since it uses INT, which is the only ability score I can really dump with this idea...


Given that you're using special tier-based gestalt only, what would be the rules with regards to gestating prestige classes? You mentioned Eldritch Disciple yourself, so does that mean you're allowed theurge-like prestige classes in this game? Would you be allowed to gestalt prestige classes or does one side always have to be at least base class?

I'm not entirely sure how PrCs work in that system, I suppose it depends on which base class they're building off of. I do, however, seem to recall finding a rudimentary tier system for PrCs somewhere, I'll have to look for that again. Also, theurge-like PrCs are allowed, and PCs can only gestalt with one PrC at a time, the other class must be base.


Battle Dancer (Dragon Compendium) is a base class with full BAB, unarmed strike damage increase like Monk and adds charisma to AC while unarmored.

If you want Cleric levels, Sacred Fist (Complete Divine) is also worth looking into.

Just took a look at it. It actually looks pretty good (compared to Monk, anyway), and Charisma is likely to be something I use more than Wisdom - although, alternatively, I could just dip it while also taking Unarmed Swordsage, and get both WIS and CHA to AC.

As for Sacred Fist, I had thought about it, but it looks like I'm primarily going to be building up Warlock and whatever unarmed martial class I take.


If you can get some wild shape going, Eldritch Claws can be used in any form.

...That's good to know, I hadn't thought about that. Funny thing is, I'd looked at Warshaper earlier, though I didn't think it was likely that I'd be able to qualify. That being said, thanks to my own tier restrictions, the only way I can think of to get Wild Shape would be a Wild Shape Ranger. I'll add it to the list of possible builds, however -- while it won't quite work for the character concept I have in mind, something Planar Wild Shape Ranger + Fist of the Forest + Warshaper + Other classes like Nature's Warrior would make for a good alternate Clawlock build if I decide to drop the current "fallen hero" idea and go more towards "feral hellspawn."


Have a look at my clawlock build (see signature) for a full optimized non gestalt build.

Enlightened Fist (prc) is almost mandatory since it progresses invocations and monk abilities. You want to get the unarmed strike dmg of a 20th lvl monk.
Alternatively you can max UMD and use a Monk's Belt to get the unarmed dmg of a 20th lvl monk. But you need at least 1 lvl in a class that gives you the monks unarmed strike ability (the belt only gives you the dmg of the monk, not the ability), because that is needed to enhance your unarmed strike like a manufactured/natural weapon.

Beast Strike feat
Combine Eldritch Claws with Beast Strike. Now your unarmed strikes do "2x unarmed + Eldritch Blast" dmg.

A Necklace of Natural Attacks with the Sizing ability is the most important item for a clawlock. Unarmed Strikes are always considered light weapons, despite their size. This allows you to size your unarmed strike up to colossal size if you want (-2 to hit per step size difference). The average dmg increase for Beast Strike is better than a full feated 2h Power Attack.

Since you go gestalt, you still have room for Hellfire Warlock 3.

If you go for Swordsage, the Shadow Sun Ninja prc could be a nice option (or just a 1lvl dip). The first lvl gives you the ability Touch of the Shadow Sun (Su). The first round activated you can make a touch attack and deal negative energy unarmed strike dmg (as standard action). In the next round it can be used to heal an ally (for unarmed strike dmg). If you (e.g Necropolitan template) or someone else in your party is undead, this can be abused for infinite (downtime) heals. Imho a more fitting choice than cleric.

If you should go for the UMD Monk's Belt option (and only dip Swordsage), I would suggest to go for Wild Shape as Troacctid suggested. Add Master of Many Forms (7) to shape into a War Troll.

I will look at that build. I see you even added Forest of the Fist to it!

Enlightened Fist looks interesting, but a lot of their features require spellcasting, so I'd be missing out on those features -- namely, Arcane Fist and Arcane Rejuvenation (though, hilariously, they don't specify "arcane spells" so a Cleric dip would work with them!). I also doubt that Hold Ray can be used with Eldritch Blast, as awesome as that would be, although I'll certainly attempt to convince my DM that it should.

Speaking of which, I'm unwilling to use stuff that I personally wouldn't allow as a DM. I'm generally pretty lenient as a DM, but in D&D 3.5, more than in any other system, I have considerable contempt for RAW, and I almost always favor RAI. There are many, many instances in 3.5 where the devs simply didn't consider what would happen if you combined certain rules, so I have to do their thinking for them. For instance, I wouldn't allow Beast Strike + Eldritch Claw to apply Unarmed Strike damage twice, since to me, an Eldritch Claw is really a magical claw plus an unarmed strike, so it makes little to apply unarmed strike damage twice if you just punch someone. Or to apply the damage twice in any situation.

As for sizing up one's unarmed strikes... I am not entirely sure how that would work, though there may be other cases of increasing the effective size of one's unarmed strikes, so I might be able to use that as precedent.

I don't think Hellfire Warlock would increase Eldritch Claw damage. Unlike Eldritch Glaive, Eldritch Claw isn't a blast shape, it's a separate ability that uses the damage from Eldritch Blast, and specifies that you can't use your normal Eldritch Blast ability while using it. That being said, Hellfire Warlock does get other abilities, and the damage boost would be useful if I ever decide to use an AoE rather than simply claw someone.

Sadly, Shadow Sun Ninja requires one to be good, and this character is very unlikely to still be good by the time she joins the party... although, there's nothing in the PrC's description about what happens when you're no longer of good alignment, and I could very well say that she was good at the time she went into the class, though presumably she would be unable to advance further in it.

I don't think I'll go for Wild Shape with this particular build, as mentioned. For this idea, I'd rather focus on either general Warlock abilities, martial manuevers via Swordsage, Cleric spellcasting, or general versatility through Chameleon. Wildshaping seems like something I'd have to commit to.


Hmm... My first instinct is to try to my Psicarnum claw-blender concept as an other side for this, but Enlightened Fist brings up an important opportunity: Filling the other side with Unarmed Swordsage and Beguiler levels (most useful full caster) to accelerate Unarmed Strike progression and have real spell slots to fuel Enlightened Fist with. You can fit a level of Unarmed Swordsage on the Enlightened Fist side at 4th, then take Monk 1 at 5th for the required feats, or vice versa. As Monk damage does not scale past level 20, you want no more than 9 levels of Unarmed Swordsage, and could go for just 4 if preferring a Monk's Belt for the item slot.

In either case, one can start with a Crusader as the first Initiator levels to key to the backstory and, more importantly, offer Devoted Spirit and White Raven Maneuver access for the later bundle of Swordsage levels. You'll want either Swordsage 1 or 4 to hit at IL 9, to get 5th-level Maneuvers efficiently, with Swordsage 1 giving you six Maneuvers at once and Swordsage 4 letting you learn one 5th-level Maneuver and trade for a second 5th. However, getting it at Swordsage 1 without prior Initiating would require sixteen other levels, and Crusader 3 would bring that down to a still-high ten previous levels.

To optimize the raw progressions, I'll be aiming for Swordsage 1 constituting IL 5 to have it access 3rd-level Maneuvers, giving a lot of the defining Maneuvers of various Disciplines. If starting off with Crusader 3, then Swordsage 1 will come at level 6 after Crusader 3/Beguiler 2; this means going Warlock 4/Monk 1 on the Enlightened Fist "side", or possibly slotting in a Barbarian level for Pounce. Then we repeat Beguiler +2/Swordsage +1 until reaching the desired total Monk level, replace Beguiler proper with full-BAB PRC(s) of preference once available if your table/chatroom/thread/whatever is ignoring the rule about not having two PRC levels simultaneously.

However, the Enlightened Fist direction has a major, downright fatal, issue: It doesn't progress Eldritch Blast. At all, and those extra d6s are a lot more than Unarmed Strike damage is without resorting to very gratuitous RAW-dubious cheese like Sizing. Hellfire Warlock and Enlightened Spirit are the main directions to scale that via PRC, and neither progresses things outside Warlock (and Enlightened Spirit is a redemption arc with a Good requirement...), so it's quite a bit better to have hard Warlock levels for scaling and use Enlightened Fist for Beguiler casting the way the PRC is supposed to work so it actually has slots to fuel Arcane Rejuvenation with.

As Darg mentioned, Enlightened Fist actually does increase Eldritch Blast progression. Warlocks actually get a good deal with regard to PrCs that boost arcane spellcaster level. They just can't make use of any features that actually require spells.

As for the rest... Tome of Battle stuff is still new to me, sadly, but I'll do my best to read up on it and decide what I'd be getting, as well as how initiator levels add up. I doubt I'll need Monk levels if I'm going Swordsage -- depending on how many Monk features the unarmed variant gets, or at least how well I can persuade my DM into giving it Monk features. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?245493-Unarmed-Swordsage) Crusader is tempting, however. That being said... I have Favored Class shenanigans to worry about. Despite the multiclass XP penalty being one of my least favorite rules in 3.5, so far as I know we're still using it. I should assume that we are also using the rule where if you stop taking levels in Monk, you can't go back to it. So, I've got to figure out how exactly this character was built, level by level, while keeping the previously mentioned rules in effect... anyway, unarmed Swordsage, and Battle Dancer, don't have the Monk's unique downside in effect, but otherwise, if I have a build with 3 or more classes, two of them are going to have to be within 1 level of each other. Either that, or I take the UA feat that grants an additional favored class. Some regional feats offer Cleric as an additional favored class, those might be fun to reflavor...

Thanks for the aid so far! Good to know that I've got options, even if it's still a headache to go through them all. I'm also getting an idea of what magic items to take. Monk's Belt seems very good for this, as it lets me shave off a few Monk/Unarmed Strike Class levels from the build. Another item I'd previously learned of was the Beast Claws from Savage Species - admittedly, they're better for attacking with the "natural weapons" mode rather than unarmed strike, as they have a +2 enhancement bonus that way, so they're probably more useful at early levels where I don't have much in the way of iterative attacks. They still boost claw damage by 1d6 each, though.

[Darg]

The rules definitely get a little sketchy on how SLA interact with spell benefits. CArc doesn't clarify what the actual difference is other than they aren't spells. So what is the difference of functioning like spells and being spells? The name? At the very least, if it functions like a spell then touch SLAs benefit from the holding the charge rule which is explicitly for spells. What is the difference between a rule for spells and an ability that has rules for spells? I don't see any personally and WotC never gave any either. In fact, they flat out encourage use of the CArc PrCs that only provide benefits for spells with a warlock. It flat out let's you apply sudden metamagic to your SLAs even though those feats specifically mention spells as the beneficiary.

The way I see it, if there isn't a difference made to specifically have a difference then there isn't a difference. Spell focus vs ability focus as an example. Metamagic vs meta-SLA. Sudden metamagic works because there is no sudden meta-SLA and no other disqualifying factor such as slot cost. Spell penetration works because there is no SLA penetration. SLAs do not possess all the qualities of spells, but they function like spells according to the rules. The only differences between them that WotC explicitly enforce are those that are qualitative, not definitive.

[Heavenblade]

This build can be pretty neat with the grappling blast feat, and a black blood cultist on the other side of the gestalt. at 8th level, every grapple check you make gets double EB damage + essence. You can take Spider shape or hellspawn grace for a more grapple oriented form (which would go well with warshaper if you have enough levels after black blood cultist). also combos well with a binder to get Zagan as a vestige for grapples, in addition to nebarius for hellfire warlock.

alternatively/In addition, flee the scene is pretty sweet with shadow pounce if you go the unarmed route.

[Gruftzwerg]

@ Enlightened Fist
yeah, the abilities don't work with warlocks sadly. But as it has been mentioned it is (irrc) the sole prc that progresses warlock invocations/blast and monk abilities.
And as I said, either this PRC or you can go for UMD + Monk's Belt to pretend to be a "higher lvl monk" when activating the item = dmg of "UMD -20(penalty for the roll) + 5 (Belt)" lvl monk. Since warlocks (lvl 4) can take 10 on UMD rolls, you can easily predict the outcome: 10 - 20 + 5 + ranks + bonuses = UMD modifier -5.
This means a UMD mod of +25 is enough to hit like a 20th lvl monk (achievable before lvl 20).

@Drunken Master
I've missed to mention it in the post, but it is part of my clawlock build. I would highly recommend to dip 2 lvls into it to get the Stagger ability. It allows you to change directions while charging and avoid any AoO on the way for a single tumble DC15 roll. With this, you can charge every turn in almost any space. Run back and forth or make a looping (if you can fly) to charge at foes that stand right next to you. This assures that you can always charge and have constantly charge multipliers (valorous weapon enhancement, flying dive, sandals of the tiger leap= x4).

@Chameleon
A 2 lvl dip combined with 12 lvl in base warlock is very strong. You get basically all crafting feats and can pick The Dead Walk as downtime invocation via Extra Invocation. If you intent to be flexible and become the party crafter go for it. Craftlocks can be very strong with some minor adjustments. (warning high abuse potential..!)

@Beast Strike
While I can see your concerns regards balancing, note that optimized dmg is the least problem a DM can face. Things like Planar Shepherd or Incantatrix are much more problematic by the design of their abilities itself. So, imho is it really that wise to penalize the less problematic optimization choices in the game (dmg)? On the other hand I barely play so optimized builds myself since our table keeps powerlvl mostly low.^^ But I would still suggest BS because this way you get extra attacks from high BAB which Eldritch Claws don't offer. You can still cut down the dmg optimization elsewhere, e.g. by using less charge multipliers and don't use Sizing.
Imho a 2 lvl dip into Chameleon is much more of a problem for a DM to deal with than Beast Strike. Further you need to combine it with other things (Sizing) to make it worth/(problematic). The resources invested should justify the dmg output which is in line with other ubercharger builds (in regards to "investment > outcome").