[3.5] Magical Fighter

[Thurbane]

Just a weird thought experiment: using only Fighter for class levels, how "magical" could you make a character?

Cross-class ranks in UMD, Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana) would seem logical.

Feats like Apprentice (spellcaster) and Magical Training?

Feats that give SLAs? Binding feats? Incarnum feats?

This build serves no real purpose, just something stupid I was thinking about one time.

All thoughts and ideas welcome.

Cheers - T

[pabelfly]

There are also various Fighter ACFs that are supernatural abilities, which i think would count as magical for the purposes of this thread. By far my favourite of these would be Resolute, which lets you halve your BAB to add that as a bonus to a Will Save

[Rebel7284]

Extend Spell, Persistent Spell, Minor Schema of Metamagic Item + Wands/Staves of Buff spells = full buff stack

[Metastachydium]

Or you can just pick one of the wilder disciplines and go all in on Desert Wind/Devoted Spirit/Shaow Hand/soem combination thereof. (#SwordsageIsAGish #SoIsCrusader)

[Gruftzwerg]

Cross-class ranks in UMD, Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana) would seem logical.

Feats like Apprentice (spellcaster) and Magical Training?



Add "Flexible Mind" (Dragon Magazine): lets you pick 2 skills as class skills. (requires you to be "chaotic")


If you take both feats, you could even get Knowledge (Religion) ontop (of the 3 skills in your quote).

_________________

other options:

- be a Kobold and get a SLA via Draconic Rite of Passage.

- Sculpt Self

- Ancestral Relic

- Vow of Poverty

[Wildstag]

As far as magical fighter goes, there's a set of Supernatural ACFs from Dragon 355.

At level 1, you can take Armored Savant for a suite of effects (ignore armor weight, armor slows as if one type lighter, +1 dex max, and halved asf). At level 4, you can take Eldritch Grace for evasion against magical effects while lightly or un-encumbered. At level 8, there's Bonded Armor, which melds the armor with you, giving a +1 to AC at 8th, 14th, and 20th levels. You also can don/doff as a full-round action. And then at level 18, you get the ACF Eldritch Juggernaut to get Spell Resistance equal to 11 + your HD while wearing medium or heavy armor.

They can also be taken with the Warrior of Air/Earth/Fire/Water ACF from the same source which burns your 2nd, 6th, 12th, and 20th level bonus feats. But these Alternate Class Features are incredibly mediocre, and a couple are just bad.

[Zombulian]

The Animal Devotion feat grants the option of several supernatural abilities. The most remarkable of them being Hawk’s Flight which grants you a swift action activated Overland Flight effect for 1 minute.

[vasilidor]

The heritage feats from complete mage come to mind. Literally just take feats, get magic.
Edit: also dragon mark feats from Ebberon.

[Telonius]

This wouldn't be Fighter-specific, but any of the Half-... templates that gives SLAs based on level could certainly help make a character more magical.

[DrMartin]

Not fighter specific, but you can get a fiend of blasphemy to transfer its spell like abilities to you. For a fighter-themed implementation, beat the crap out of one with a pointy stick and intimidate them into granting the spells.

Drows get a bunch of feat to expand their repertoire of native spell like abilities

I remember a fun build from this forum which leveraged magical training, precocious apprentice, and I think extra slot with some cheese fondue made of sanctum spells and fighter bonus feats (probably with chaos shuffle) to get 9th level spells before a full caster could, but I am unsure of the details and my search-fu failed me.

[Gruftzwerg]

Not fighter specific, but you can get a fiend of blasphemy to transfer its spell like abilities to you. For a fighter-themed implementation, beat the crap out of one with a pointy stick and intimidate them into granting the spells.

Drows get a bunch of feat to expand their repertoire of native spell like abilities


I would go for a Deepwyrm Half-Drow:
- 3/day—Detect Magic & 1/day—Disguise instead of Faerie Fire
- +0LA
- dragonblooded
- counts as drow for abilities and effect

Enables the drow SLA feat line and you can have Draconic Aura feats.

[Prime32]

Apply the Primordial Giant template (Secrets of Xen'drik) to a half-giantXPH or enekoSoS. For LA +1 that gets you Powerful Build, +2 on Spellcraft and Use Magic Device checks, and your choice of invisibility, invisibility purge or levitate as an at will spell-like ability.




-2 Str, -2 Dex, +4 Int, +4 Cha
1/day - stomp
Effectively Wild Talent as a bonus feat, opening up psionic feats






-2 Str, -2 Dex, +4 Int, +2 Cha
1/day - endure elements, pass without trace



Throw on the Magic-Blooded template for some extra SLAs.



Other cheap race options for picking up magical abilities include

Forest gnome (gnome SLAs and illusion resistance + continuous pass without trace + speak with forest animals at will)
Whisper gnome
Dream dwarf (see ethereal creatures, access the Earth Sense feat)
Vecna-blooded template
Necropolitan + Evolved Undead and/or Spellstitched

[Troacctid]

The usual trouble is that none of the feats that give you cool magical powers are fighter feats. So this is a case where you really want generic warrior to be allowed.

My instinct would be to get UMD and go Eilservs Style.

[smetzger]

Spelltouched Feats

[Prime32]

The usual trouble is that none of the feats that give you cool magical powers are fighter feats.
There's some PHB2 fighter feats based around Stunning Fist which give you flashy powers (Fiery Fist, Fiery Ki Defense, Ki Blast), but using Stunning Fist as a non-monk is... yeah.

Ring the Golden BellDrComp is a bit more usable, and can make for an unusual combo with the Shield BearerDr310 fighter variant (which can use their shield in place of unarmed strikes).

[DrMartin]

Looking just a bit over the 3.5 fence, pathfinder has the item mastery feats which are technically open to everyone, but fighters have the better setup to use them fully (high bab, fort save, probably decent con, plus you can pick some for free with advanced training options).

[loky1109]

Nobody mentioned Wild Talent?

[Gnaeus]

Or Martial Study/Stance? Some ToB stuff is non-magical in nature, but there are plenty of overtly magical powers accessible by fighter feats.

Edit: Sorry, didn't see this mentioned above. My bad.

[Metastachydium]

Or Martial Study/Stance? Some ToB stuff is non-magical in nature, but there are plenty of overtly magical powers accessible by fighter feats.

(Technically, I did mention those, even pointing out the worst offenders best disciplines to browse. Also, Wild Talent? Why not Hidden Talent?)

[loky1109]

(Technically, I did mention those, even pointing out the worst offenders best disciplines to browse. Also, Wild Talent? Why not Hidden Talent?)
Because I was barely slept.

[thorr-kan]

I'm going to leave this here:
https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=5111
Pure Fighter that can pull off the role of a Utility caster? BLASPHEMY! [e6]

Might be a fun take.

[Akal Saris]

The heritage feats from complete mage come to mind. Literally just take feats, get magic.
Edit: also dragon mark feats from Ebberon.

Yup, that was my first thought too. I think tht the fey heritage feat line is a lot of fun if you have a bunch of feats to burn.

[bean illus]

Does Touchstone work?

[Vizzerdrix]

Spell stitched undead fighter with aberrant dragon marks springs to mind.

[Coeruleum]

Don't forget Wild Talent. Some of those psionic feats you can take after you do will never run out and are martial-oriented. Go get Cloak Dance, Psionic Dodge, and whatever feats fit your build.

[Trouvere]

Lost Empires of Faerun has the 1st level only feat Godsight which grants read magic, detect magic, detect poison, detect undead and detect evil (or another alignment version instead), as SLAs each 3/day.

[Troacctid]

Spelltouched Feats

Nobody mentioned Wild Talent?

Yup, that was my first thought too. I think tht the fey heritage feat line is a lot of fun if you have a bunch of feats to burn.

Does Touchstone work?

Spell stitched undead fighter with aberrant dragon marks springs to mind.

Don't forget Wild Talent. Some of those psionic feats you can take after you do will never run out and are martial-oriented. Go get Cloak Dance, Psionic Dodge, and whatever feats fit your build.

Lost Empires of Faerun has the 1st level only feat Godsight which grants read magic, detect magic, detect poison, detect undead and detect evil (or another alignment version instead), as SLAs each 3/day.
Boy, this sure is a lot of feats that aren't fighter bonus feats!

[Metastachydium]

Boy, this sure is a lot of feats that aren't fighter bonus feats!

Again, Martial Study/Martial Stance (if Desert Wind/Shadow Hand/Devoted Spirit stuff is not magic, I don't know what it is).

[StSword]

If third party material is up for play, The Book of Iron Might has Arcane Battle feats, specifically designed to allow one to use the fighter class for a supernatural warrior.

Anyone interested in that might want to check it out.

[Remuko]

Boy, this sure is a lot of feats that aren't fighter bonus feats!

OP never said it had to be.

[Rebel7284]

Boy, this sure is a lot of feats that aren't fighter bonus feats!

They are all Fighter Bonus feats after a judicious application of Embrace the Dark Chaos/Shun the Dark Chaos! :smallbiggrin:

But also this:

OP never said it had to be.