min maxing Weapon supremacy

[AceDragonKing]

Hello, I’m looking for ideas on how to get my damage and to hit bonuses up as high as physically possible forsaking literally everything else. And i know that it’s impossible to know everything about 3.5 so i’m asking for your help incase i miss something

I’m playing a Skarn fighter and my DM is allowing me to use natural weapons for my weapon focus ect. And i want to go the path of fighter since no one goes pure fighter and get weapon supremacy.

Obviously the feats nessesary to get weapon supremacy are a must and so is improved natural attack. maybe even shape soul meld dread carapace. But what am i missing there has to me a bunch more.

Please help and thank you in advance.

[Darg]

Using the arm spines kind of negates some of the benefit of the feat.

If you don't mind dragon content, the kensai variant can give you up to +5 to hit and damage while giving you the ability to gain extra attacks.

Overpowering Attack ACF is nice to take advantage of the take 10. It is also nice for mounted charging with a lance.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Take one level of martial monk. Weapon Supremacy at level 1.

[Biggus]

There's a bunch of stuff about increasing your attack bonus here: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?144321-3-5-Comprehensive-list-of-way-to-augment-attack-roll

[pabelfly]

Person Man has some great advice in his original thread on the subject of boosting accuracy:

"7) Don’t over do it. It's important for any build to be good at hitting things, especially when you expend a resource of some kind (spells, power points, daily abilities, etc). But you don't want to be so good that you hit things 95% of the time every time, because then your DM just ups the AC, hit points, miss chance, and other protections on your enemies in order to challenge you. Figure out the overall power level of the other PCs in your party, and try to be in the same ball park. Keep a couple of tricks up your sleeve for when you absolutely need them, but don’t use them in every combat."

[Darg]

Take one level of martial monk. Weapon Supremacy at level 1.

Martial Monk with Skarn Monk substitution level. The extra AC is really nice when you get access to alternate forms of armor bonuses.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Martial Monk with Skarn Monk substitution level. The extra AC is really nice when you get access to alternate forms of armor bonuses.

I mean, you'll need to spend a few feats to get more essentia for it to keep up with the base AC bonus that monk normally grants. You only get 2 essentia through the Skarn Monk sub levels, and you have to wait for 10th level to get the second one.

But the fact that Defensive Insight grants you an insight bonus to AC is indeed nice.

[pabelfly]

It would be easier to go with a weapon or two to do damage instead of arm spines. Arm spines get one hit per turn. There are ways to maximize around that, but since you've decided to go Fighter 18, you've ruled out nearly all of them.

[AceDragonKing]

It would be easier to go with a weapon or two to do damage instead of arm spines. Arm spines get one hit per turn. There are ways to maximize around that, but since you've decided to go Fighter 18, you've ruled out nearly all of them.

Well i mean i can do the two weapon fighting tree and a amulet of natural attacks and put the speed enchantment on it. for a maximum of like 8 attacks per turn

[pabelfly]

Well i mean i can do the two weapon fighting tree and a amulet of natural attacks and put the speed enchantment on it. for a maximum of like 8 attacks per turn

Natural attacks only get one attack per natural weapon per turn and is explicitly stated in the Skarn's arm spline weapon notes. What are we doing to bypass this limit?

[AceDragonKing]

Natural attacks only get one attack per natural weapon per turn and is explicitly stated in the Skarn's arm spline weapon notes. What are we doing to bypass this limit?

😱…. well i didn’t notice that…. but i would assume it’s simply until you get the bab to do two attacks per turn? 😱😱😱😱😱

Edit: Looking at spinemeld warrior. it implys cause it gives you two weapon fighting and improvised two weapon fighting when using your spines that you can attack multiple times normally. because one lets you make that extra attack and one gives you the second extra attack 🧐

[pabelfly]

😱…. well i didn’t notice that…. but i would assume it’s simply until you get the bab to do two attacks per turn? 😱😱😱😱😱

Edit: Looking at spinemeld warrior. it implys cause it gives you two weapon fighting and improvised two weapon fighting when using your spines that you can attack multiple times normally. because one lets you make that extra attack and one gives you the second extra attack 🧐

It's a specific class that grants you an exception to the rule about one attack per natural weapon per turn. And we can't take Spinemeld Warrior because OP wants to go Fighter 18 for Weapon Supremacy.

[AceDragonKing]

It's a specific class that grants you an exception to the rule about one attack per natural weapon per turn. And we can't take Spinemeld Warrior because OP wants to go Fighter 18 for Weapon Supremacy.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
(i am the OP btw)

kill me now….. my life is a lie
(i am already lvl 2 and have weapon focus (spines) btw )

[pabelfly]

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
(i am the OP btw)

kill me now….. my life is a lie
(i am already lvl 2 and have weapon focus (spines) btw )

Talk to your DM and see how he thinks the spine weapons will work. If he's going to let you use your spines as regular weapons, getting extra attacks with BAB, problem solved.

If the DM doesn't want to do it, you might consider how you can get more arms and more attacks. See about earning or buying templates that give you extra arms, or getting more arm limb grafted onto your character.

Or you might consider retraining feats and switching to weapons. You can still get Fighter 18 and get decent weapons. You can even pick two levels in something to get pounce or equivalent like Barbarian or Cloistered Cleric (Travel Devotion).

[Fizban]

The best fix for Skarn arm spines is to make them actually work like natural weapons, instead of the broken unintuitive mish-mash they are. You have one on each arm, which should be two attacks, which are both at full bonus (with no other attacks) on a full attack. Presumably this is too shockingly powerful for MoI (hilarious considering how frontloaded so many soulmelds are), but when Darfellan from Stormwrack get a bite, which is better, and there's a variant to give kobolds two claws and a bite, and there are dozens of ways to get yourself a pair of claws, just letting the Skarn spines be actual natural weapons is easiest.

At higher levels you'd want to do unarmed for your iterative "weapon" attacks (Monk dip, or the ever-suggested Unarmed Swordsage suggested variant), and add on your natural weapons at -5: since unarmed attacks don't actually require your arms, you'd get both spines in addition to the unarmed attacks. Or alternatively, get your DM to waive the requirements on Rapidstrike and take that.

[holbita]

I'm a fan of spinemeld warrior, with a way to enchant natural weapons, what you get from the class and an oriental adventures samurai dip for ancestral daisho (assuming your DM allows you to choose your spines as such, shouldn't be too hard as it says in other settings other samurais use different weapons as ancestral daisho and nothing seems more ancestral to a skarn than their spines) you can end up with the equivalent of a +23 weapon that you can TWF with, so.... two +23 weapons! if you cannot make a decent martial character with that... I don't know what you are doing.

Side note: I know many people are against bloodlines, but two levels of bloodline would allow you to get the spines to +6 so you would be able to deal with epic DR

Edit: If you want to ge the weapon supremacy route... may I recommend a combination of warblade, fighter, fighter (sneak attack variant) and/or swashbuckler using the multiclassing feats? that may be a better way to go to get weapon supremacy, I know that is how I do it.

[AceDragonKing]

Alright Guys OP here. I have good news i talked to me DM and he’s letting me use them like regular weapons for the purposes of how many attacks i can do and what not using traditional bab rules for weapons. so i don’t get primary and secondary. But i still need to buff them damage wise using what would work on natural weapons

[Maat Mons]

Well, natural weapons can benefit from Power Attack, in spite of being light weapons. So you could do an ubercharger. Using your DM's houserule, going all-in on the Two-Weapon Fighting tree would let your natural weapons be only slightly worse than a two-handed weapon. The hands chakra bind for Sphinx Claws gives you a sort of pounce ability independent of class.

[pabelfly]

Alright Guys OP here. I have good news i talked to me DM and he’s letting me use them like regular weapons for the purposes of how many attacks i can do and what not using traditional bab rules for weapons. so i don’t get primary and secondary. But i still need to buff them damage wise using what would work on natural weapons

Oh cool. That makes things easier.

So next - you want a way to get a full round of attacks in each turn. You also want 18 levels of Fighter, so we have two levels to sort this out. The two easiest ways to do that are to take a level of Barbarian, or take a level of Cloistered Cleric.

Barbarian gets full BAB, Rage (boosting damage, accuracy and you can also choose a rage variant to get another attack each turn), and Pounce (which lets you make full attacks after a charge).

Cloistered Cleric can trade off domains and get up to three Devotion skills - you're stuck with Knowledge Devotion (which is good since it boosts damage and accuracy), and you want Travel Devotion (swift-action movement). You have a few third choices for a Devotion, and I'd suggest Destruction Devotion, but you can also look at Animal Devotion or Law Devotion (but these need more "Turn Rebuke/Undead" uses to reuse through the day).

If you go Cloistered Cleric, see if you can pick up the "Education" feat. It's a first-level feat but if you take it you have all Knowledge skills as class skills, and you can get from +1 to +5 bonus in attack rolls and damage rolls. Even if you put a +1 in most of your six Knowledge skills that relate to monsters (Arcana, Dungeoneering, Local, Nature, Religion, the Planes) that's still a free +1 to attacks and damage and might occasionally be a +2 to attacks and damage.

[Darg]

Spines are natural weapons that work like UAS in that they don't follow the natural attack routine. Natural attacks cannot be used as an off-hand weapon after all. You have 2 arm spines and therefore can make a main hand and off-hand attack. The one attack per round is just like any other weapon at first level and you get "extra" attacks with higher BAB, effects, or TWF.


I mean, you'll need to spend a few feats to get more essentia for it to keep up with the base AC bonus that monk normally grants. You only get 2 essentia through the Skarn Monk sub levels, and you have to wait for 10th level to get the second one.

But the fact that Defensive Insight grants you an insight bonus to AC is indeed nice.

I was replying to the 1 level dip of martial monk. Dipping more than 2 levels prevents getting weapon supremacy unless you go epic.

~~~~~~~~~

Going Warblade 19/fighter 1 would get you weapon supremacy by level 20, but then you would give up stance mastery which is arguably better to have....

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Martial Monk with Skarn Monk substitution level. The extra AC is really nice when you get access to alternate forms of armor bonuses.Just looked over the sub levels, and the first one kind of sucks. A skarn monk without the first sub-level would be able to make more attacks (unarmed flurry + spine attack, as opposed to spine flurry + no extra attack), and you'd have to take 5+ monk levels for the sub-levels to get the insight bonus to AC.

So definitely don't take skarn monk 1 with the sub-level; you're only nerfing yourself.

[Vault756]

Take one level of martial monk. Weapon Supremacy at level 1.

Nah you only get to skip pre-requisites when you take those specific feats listed. Can't skip straight to weapon supremacy.

[Doctor Despair]

Nah you only get to skip pre-requisites when you take those specific feats listed. Can't skip straight to weapon supremacy.

That's definitely the RAI of the ACF. The RAW is a victim of Dragon Magazine's poor proofreading.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Nah you only get to skip pre-requisites when you take those specific feats listed. Can't skip straight to weapon supremacy.Nope. Monk bonus feats don't require prereqs. The martial monk ACF specifically adds all fighter bonus feats to those the monk can take using those prereq-less feats, and neither the original nor the ACF say anything about reinstating prereqs for feats that are added to the list of prereq-less feats.


Lose: -1 skill point per level (and -4 skill points at 1st level); no Knowledge skills as class skills.

Gain: Fighter bonus feat list to choose monk bonus feats (at 1st, 2nd, and 6th level); Intimidate is class skill.

Multiclass Options: This monk can multiclass between fighter and monk with no penalty.


Bonus Feat
At 1st level, a monk may select either Improved Grapple or Stunning Fist as a bonus feat. At 2nd level, she may select either Combat Reflexes or Deflect Arrows as a bonus feat. At 6th level, she may select either Improved Disarm or Improved Trip as a bonus feat. A monk need not have any of the prerequisites normally required for these feats to select them.So if you add additional feats to the feat list, that prereq clause still applies, since the clause applies to the entire list.

[Darg]

Just looked over the sub levels, and the first one kind of sucks. A skarn monk without the first sub-level would be able to make more attacks (unarmed flurry + spine attack, as opposed to spine flurry + no extra attack), and you'd have to take 5+ monk levels for the sub-levels to get the insight bonus to AC.

So definitely don't take skarn monk 1 with the sub-level; you're only nerfing yourself.

? Spines work like UAS and don't follow the rules for making natural attacks. Taking martial skarn monk 1 lets you benefit from monk's belt UAS damage increase on your spines, a free extra attack, and full strength bonus on your offhand spine attacks. Considering OP can't 2hand his spines, getting that extra damage would be nice. He only needs TWF and can get gloves of the balanced hand for a second attack with his off hand. This one level also allows the spines to benefit from gauntlet enhancements and spells that work with a monk's UAS like magic weapon.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

? Spines work like UAS and don't follow the rules for making natural attacks. Taking martial skarn monk 1 lets you benefit from monk's belt UAS damage increase on your spines, a free extra attack, and full strength bonus on your offhand spine attacks. Considering OP can't 2hand his spines, getting that extra damage would be nice. He only needs TWF and can get gloves of the balanced hand for a second attack with his off hand. This one level also allows the spines to benefit from gauntlet enhancements and spells that work with a monk's UAS like magic weapon.If the skarn spine is treated like a natural attack, you definitely get more out of the normal monk than the skarn racial sub-level, since you get more attacks and more damage that way.

[Darg]

If the skarn spine is treated like a natural attack, you definitely get more out of the normal monk than the skarn racial sub-level, since you get more attacks and more damage that way.

You'd get one extra attack at a -5 that does less damage. The description of the spine already says you can use it in the off hand. Natural attacks can't be used as an off hand attack. The OP also says that the DM adjudicated it as a weapon rather than a natural attack.

If it were adjudicated to function like a natural attack, I don't see how a single attack per round would benefit from weapon supremacy all that much. You don't have a "pair" of weapons to benefit from rapidstrike either.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

You'd get one extra attack at a -5 that does less damage. The description of the spine already says you can use it in the off hand. Natural attacks can't be used as an off hand attack. The OP also says that the DM adjudicated it as a weapon rather than a natural attack.

If it were adjudicated to function like a natural attack, I don't see how a single attack per round would benefit from weapon supremacy all that much. You don't have a "pair" of weapons to benefit from rapidstrike either.Just because it's a weak option (unarmed strike flurry+secondary spine attack) doesn't mean it isn't better than an even weaker option (spine attack flurry+nothing).

[Darg]

Just because it's a weak option (unarmed strike flurry+secondary spine attack) doesn't mean it isn't better than an even weaker option (spine attack flurry+nothing).

So you are going to ignore the fact that the first option isn't a possible option?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

So you are going to ignore the fact that the first option isn't a possible option?Uh, yes? It's like if I gave you the the choice between $10 and $15, and you only got one, is that really even a choice? You're literally being given a choice between "X" and "X+Y." At least, as RAW and without houserules. Not sure why you take issue with that.

[pabelfly]

OP's DM has adjudicated that spine weapons gain extra attacks through BAB.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

OP's DM has adjudicated that spine weapons gain extra attacks through BAB.Um, yes? XXXXXXXX


It's like if I gave you the the choice between $10 and $15, and you only got one, is that really even a choice? You're literally being given a choice between "X" and "X+Y." At least, as RAW and without houserules. Not sure why you take issue with that.

[Darg]

Um, yes? XXXXXXXX

That's the opposite of what the RAW says though...


Natural Weapon (Spines): A skarn can make one attack with his arm spines each round, either with his primary hand or with his off-hand (taking the normal penalties for fighting with an off-hand weapon). This attack deals 1d6 points of piercing damage; if it is used as an off-hand weapon, the skarn may add only one-half his Strength bonus to the damage roll. A skarn can't attack with his spines and a weapon wielded by the same arm in the same round. If a skarn makes a spine attack with an arm carrying a shield, he loses the shield's bonus to AC until the start of his next turn.

It literally tells you that that it doesn't work like a normal natural weapon.

[AceDragonKing]

That's the opposite of what the RAW says though...



It literally tells you that that it doesn't work like a normal natural weapon.

OP here, my DM is allowing me to use it like a normal weapon for how it interacts with bab. but i have to buff it the way that natural attacks get buffed aka improved natural attack and things like melee weapon mastery which don’t specify

[Darg]

OP here, my DM is allowing me to use it like a normal weapon for how it interacts with bab. but i have to buff it the way that natural attacks get buffed aka improved natural attack and things like melee weapon mastery which don’t specify

Your DM's ruling was the reason why I mentioned taking the skarn monk substitution level as it would let you treat your spines as if they were monk unarmed strikes. This includes benefiting from effects that only work on manufactured weapons. Plus, it also gives you the benefit of getting your full strength bonus when using your spines as an off-hand weapon in case you decide to go the TWF route (if you did I would recommend skipping ITWF and just purchase some Gloves of the Balanced Hand).

One other thing you could do is take 1 level of Kensai which would make your spines magic weapons and would allow them to be directly enchanced like normal weapons saving you a neck slot item (amulet of natural attacks).