[3.5] Person_Man's Guide to Optimizing To-Hit

[Person_Man]

Now that WotC is done with publishing official 3.5 material, I’m doing my best to index every major combo. This thread is dedicated to optimizing a character's ability to hit.

General Advice and Tactics:

1) Pick one attribute and have it be the base for all of your offensive abilities. If you have class abilities that depend on one attribute (spells, psionics, binding, meldshaping, blade magic) you should use your primary attribute for that class. This may require you to take an X stat to Y bonus ability in order to get that attribute to apply to your ability to-hit. For example, it's a good idea for Psychic Warriors to take Intuitive Strike, so that he can use his Wisdom bonus to-hit instead of Strength. This will help a great deal when you allocate your attribute scores during character creation, and help you conserve resources when you buy magic items and use buffs. However, this is not always the case, especially at low level. In particular, if you just happen to roll high scores for 3 or more attributes and are playing in a low level campaign, then Multiple Attribute Dependency (MAD) isn’t a big deal. If your class doesn't depend on Save DC's (Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, etc) then the attribute you pick should be Strength for melee builds, Dexterity for ranged builds.

2) Avoid spending resources on small static bonuses. Weapon Focus is not worth spending a feat on. Don't spend money on a +4 Glaive, when you can buy a +1 Spell Storing Wounding Glaive and have a friend cast Greater Magic Weapon on it for you. This also applies to X stat to Y bonus abilities - if you have a Strength of 14 and a Dexterity of 18, it's not worth spending a feat on Weapon Finesse to get a +2 to-hit (though it might be worth it later in your progression when your Dex gets higher). The biggest exception to this guideline is spells. A mid to high level caster can easily accumulate a ton of small bonuses, often without expending any high level spells, buffing himself to insane power levels (ie, CoDzilla).

3) Be very aware of combat modifiers, and use them to your advantage whenever it is reasonably possible. Flank your enemy. Fight from horseback so that you count as being on higher ground. If you have Quickdraw and you're fighting a BBEG, your first attack against him should be with a Net. And so on.

4) A debuff to your enemy’s AC can sometimes be just as good as a bonus to-hit. But not always. Against a single powerful enemy it’s even better, because all of your friends essentially get a bonus to-hit against that enemy as well. Against a group of enemies it’s often worse, as many debuffs only effect a limited number of targets. Debuffs also often allow Saving Throws, making them inhearently weaker then bonuses to-hit, which are always on.

5) At higher levels, your real problem is Miss Chance and other magical protections, not AC. A Pit-Fiend (highest AC in the MM, IIRC) has an AC of 40. So once you accumulate a ECL + 20ish bonus to-hit (including BAB, your primary to-hit attribute, and all the miscellanies bonuses and debuffs) you can move on to optimizing something else.

6) Denying your enemy their Dexterity bonus and/or using touch attacks can make it much easier to hit your enemy. In fact, if you combine these two things, (which is not hard to do even in a core only game – Flame Blade and Greater Invisibility) you often have a 95% chance of hitting your enemy every time you make an attack. But…

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.