Theorical build: one level per class.

[Dublock]

I'm just curious, if you could only take one level from one class, how powerful can it be? Since I doubt you can keep up the caster levels enough to make something usable with magic, I guess we are looking for more of a martial build, but you know, magic is always powerful in 3.5

[Flickerdart]

ToB classes are very front-loaded, and since many martial classes share common skill points and class skills, you'll have no problem getting into PrCs. A melee build wouldn't really care.

[BRC]

You would have possibly the worlds worst build. Any caster-level classes would be a waste of levels, and only Full BAB classes will help your martial abilities.

[monty]

1 level of wizard, 4 levels of other classes (preferably ones granting bonus feats). Then take 1 level of each of as many full-casting prestige classes as you can qualify for, starting with ones that don't require spells higher than first. Might be doable, and at level 20, you'd be a 16th level wizard.

[Tengu_temp]

I guess such a build can be a decent melee combatant, as long as you stick to full BAB classes - surely better than CW samurai and fighter. It helps that many classes give you something good at first level.

[MammonAzrael]

1 level of wizard, 4 levels of other classes (preferably ones granting bonus feats). Then take 1 level of each of as many full-casting prestige classes as you can qualify for, starting with ones that don't require spells higher than first. Might be doable, and at level 20, you'd be a 16th level wizard.

Don't forget you can pick up Master Specialist, which you could get into as early as 3rd level (if you took Precious Apprentice).

[SilverClawShift]

I actually had a character that used the one-level per class idea (a starting Bard with severe attention span problems).

The character was surprisingly not useless. I wasn't a vicious killer in the first place, so not excelling in combat wasn't the end of the world for me. Basically, I had so many (weak) options that it was a blast to play, and waffled back and forth between being totally useless, and randomly the most important party member.

We got gear-stripped and jailed at one point, and I had to sneak attack a guard with a ray of frost, mage-hand the keys to myself, fascinated the other guard with a signing bard song long enough to take him hostage with a mind blade, and eventually wound up making myself a distraction while the rest of the team escaped before literally outrunning the guards with barbarian fast movement.

I took Improved Binding, so my one binder level let me snag second level vestiges.
My spellbook/prayerbook (used the same for each) had a ridiculous number of first level spells, both arcane and divine, for my wizard and archivist levels.
The levels of dragon shaman and marshal brought some interesting auras into play.

I'm not trying to pretend it was OPTIMIZED, or even powerful, but it was FUN.

[dspeyer]

A half-elf can do full divine in 17 levels without repeating a class. Here's the progression in classes (and feats).

factotum (iron will)
rogue
wizard (precocious apprentice) (scribe scroll(b))
scout
ranger
swordsage (spell focus(evil))
half-elf paragon (metamagic (b))
ur-priest
divine oracle
mystic theurge (skill focus(knowledge(religion)))
geomancer
seeker of the misty isle
contemplative (energy subsitution)
loremaster
elemental savant
Hierophant (augment summoning)
alienist

For the last three levels, it's probably best to use ToB prestige classes (since all the irreleevant levels count toward available manuevers, and that early swordsage should provide prerequisites). Alternatively, there should be some easy ways to advance wizard casting.

[Olo Demonsbane]

Due to my game's screwed up rules, this is not actually viable, it is often an option. Using max two levels in one class, I made a really powerful character: samurai 2/ranger 2/fighter 1/cleric 1/wizard 1. He rocked.

[Nohwl]

did this idea come about because of my post in that but i wanna be a real arcane caster thread?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I was running a game for some people who loved to front-load classes, so I implemented fractional saves (nerf bat) and fractional BAB (made them viable offensively). They encountered a rival adventuring party of evil NPCs a few times, and came into conflict with them and eventually fought. One was a Halfling and went something like a Rogue 1/ Ninja 1/ Spellthief 1/ Psychic Rogue 1/ Infiltrator 1/ Assassin 1, with TWF Weapon Finesse. Infiltrator is from the Kingdoms of Kalamar player's guide, it gets fast movement and 1d6 sneak attack at level 1. After the epic battle one of the players asked how he was rolling so many dice of damage, I told him the level build and he fell in love with it. With as many prestige classes as there are with +1d6 sneak attack at the first level, I'm sure you could make a build that gets +17d6 at level 18 with Shadowdancer and Darkstalker. Then go Crusader 1/ Initiator PrC 1 and get Aura of Chaos. Just be sure to include Deadly Precision and the <10% of opponents that aren't immune to sneak attack at that level will get destroyed.

[monty]

Don't forget you can pick up Master Specialist, which you could get into as early as 3rd level (if you took Precious Apprentice).

That's a questionable trick, though, so I was assuming it wasn't allowed. If you can do that, though, you'll still get 9th level spells by 20, which is always nice.

[Aquillion]

If you go with full BAB classes you won't completely suck. The hard part for a full BAB route is meeting the prerequisites of all those PRCs. Many of these classes won't grant many skill points, and feat prerequisites will add up fast unless you're careful to overlap.

Alternatively, you could go skill-monkey, focusing on classes that grant lots of skill points; take Factotum and Able Learner at first level. A major advantage of skills is that you can easily make them up later -- you can take a 4-skill point class one level, and an 8-skill point one the next. You won't be able to max everything, but with decent int you should be able to at least get a few good tricks. Using the rules for partial BAB is essential.

This would be particularly dependent on Iaijutsu Focus -- with Iaijutsu Focus, you have a source of bonus damage that will scale like a class feature with level, even though you can't commit to any class long enough to develop one 'real' class feature. Perhaps add a level of Master of Masks and focus on being something like Haberdash The Masked; there are some variants of that that can benefit from a lot of dips.

Lion Totem Barbarian (complete champion) for Pounce, Binder for Soulmelds, maybe Bear Warrior so you can turn into a super-buffed bear whenever you rage bear and make that rage useful... if you can get a way to use it more than 1/day, at least.

Bear Warrior has the advantages of really easy entrance requirements (just Rage, Power Attack, and +7 BAB), and it turns the weak rage you get while grabbing Pounce into something really useful (+8 str, +4 con, +2 dex, and... oh, yes, you're a black bear.) And it's super-frontloaded. But you may need to waste a feat on Extra Rage to get anything out of it in more than one fight a day (note: it was errataed to work whenever you rage, not just 1/day, so ignore what Crystal Keep says; it's wrong.) Unfortunately clashes with some of the Skill Monkey tricks, though... but what the heck, this class is probably going to be a bag of tricks. 4 skill points, which could be problematic, but at least it's not 2.

[Darth Stabber]

Played a build like this once before, it was a lot of fun.


Stats(Rolled)for lvl 1/20
Str 14/14
Dex 16/18
Con 13/14
Int 15/16
Wis 13/14
Cha 14/14

Classes(in Order)
Ranger, warblade(ToB), Barbarian, Duskblade(PHBII), Crusader(ToB), Swashbuckler(UA), Psychic Warrior(XPH), Fighter, Swordsage(ToB), Rogue, Soulknife, Totemist, Incarnum Blade(MoI), Horizon Walker, Bear Warrior(CWar), Pyrokineticist(XPH), War Shaper(CWar), Dread Commando(HoB), Binder(ToM), Knight of the Sacred Seal(ToM).

Bag of tricks:
3 sets of martial maneuvers, Arcane spells in armor, immune to fatigue, critical hits and precision damage, Turn into a bear 1/day, Psionic powers, Bind soulmelds, bind vestige, mindblade and firelash(and some twf), 1d6 sneak attack, 1d6 sudden strike, and +1 to party initiative amoung others


Bherent, The Unsure.
Human, Follower of Kord.
Always sure that every new class is his calling in life, and gets bored very quickly. He loves melee combat but never has been able to decide how he wants to go about it. The end result is a warrior versed in the basics of many ways to hit people with a sharp object, and while he may not have mastered any of them, but has learned enough of each of them to be able to hold his own, given that no one can really predict what he is going to do next. As far a feats go many were metagameily chosen for prestige class qualification, but given the randomness of those it still looks very chaotic. Through the Partial Bab variant rule in UA I managed to still eek out a 18 BAB, if I hadn't I would really need push my feats and skill points harder to get into more PRCs in order to maintain a Decent Bab.



This character was actually inspired by an episode of Will and Grace when Jack decides to go to nursing school, and gets Will and Karen to pay for it, but as soon as they do they find that he has given up on nursing and now wants to be a surfer.

[Darth Stabber]

Binder for Soulmelds

Incarnates, Soulborns, and Totemists bind soulmelds, Binders bind Vestiges.

[Person_Man]

Actually, a 2 level per class build would be quite potent at mid levels. Something like Totemist 2/Binder 2/Marshal 2/Crusader 2 would have 4 or more continuous effects to boost it.

Also, if you DM doesn't allow partial BAB, then the problem from heavy multi-classing can be solved by a Skillful weapon enhancement (Complete Arcane) which sets your BAB at 3/4 your character level as long as you attack with just the Skillful weapon. Not great, but good enough to get by.

[Darth Stabber]

Taking a caster lvl is not so bad, Just remember to pick spells that don't have saves or buff spells, Even SR is going to be a pain in the butt. But a lvl in cleric would no be so bad, even sorc(might actually be better than wizard for this application), but Warrior type classes are going to have to be your bread and butter or you won't live long enough to see the concept in action. If you are not using partial bab rules, you are going to have every feat and skill point accounted for, leading me to make the recommendation to take rogue @ first lvl, for the skill point, and plan for upto lvl 20. @ epic lvls when all your saves and BAB go to a same across the board rate you may then feel free to take all the other non full bab classes that you can find that still help melee, keeping in mind that you still need to be carefull about skills and feats to continue being able to take prestige classes, Heck @ Epic start trying to build up a wizard or Cleric casting progression if you can get some early prestige classes (making your skill point and feat budget even tighter, given that you now have an entirely different set of feats that enable said classes). Still @ epic makesure that, if you get spells, that you focus on spells that don't target the enemy so you can avoid SR and saves (orbs usable but pidly damage compared to what you can hopefully do in Melee), because lets face it you are never going to be batman, it won't happen.


List of 3.5 Full BAB base classes

Spoiler

Show

Core
Fighter
Paladin
ranger
Barbarian

ToB
Crusader
Warblade

CWar
Hexblade
Samurai
Swashbuckler

PHB2
Knight
Duskblade

MoI
Soulborn

UA
Paladin Variants

So that's 12 classes that you don't have to meet any prereqs for, and some of them are alignment related which means that you will end up loosing some abilities from some of them if you go into others given that you will have to change you alignment. (e.g. Barbarian to Knight). That means a minimum of 8 Prestige classes that you have to qualify for to maintain a full bab, however if you loose 1-3 it is not a huge issue.

non-full bab classes worth considering
Rogue
Binder(ToM)
Incarnate(MoI)
Totemist(MoI)
Scout(CAdv)
Spell Thief (CAdv)
Ninja (CAdv)
Swordsage (ToB)

Maybe full bab I don't remember
Scout(CAdv)
Martial(MH)
Sohei(OA)

Full BAB Prestige Classes that I remember being workable
Incarnum Blade(MoI) - Really easy Prereqs
Bear Warrior(CWar) - fairly easy Prereqs, cool effect
Horizon Walker(DMG) - Fairly easy requirements + good
Dread Commando(HoB) - Tougher Requirements, but mobility isn't that bad is it
Knight of the Sacred Seal(ToM) - Don't remember to much about the class other that you pretty much need a lvl of binder for it to any good.
Dragon Slayer(Draconomicon) - I seem to remember the requirements being rough but doable
Warmind(XPH) - some knowledge skills and a power point, doable
Corrupt avenger - Really easy but requires that you are using the taint rules and have taint yourself

Thats what i can think of off the top of my head. I still strongly recommend the you try to get the partial bab rules allowed.

[ericgrau]

I did something similar just for fun but with 1-2 levels per class.

In the end I got a 15 level dwarf build with:

• +11 BAB but +13 AB (and that's before rage)
• d8 HD average
• Saves: fortitude 20 + cha + con (!), reflex 8 + cha + dex, will 6 + cha + wis (not including rage bonuses). Note that even his reflex and will saves are very good, while his fort save is simply uber. I already added the dwarf's +2 racial bonus and +1 from con bonus but subtracted 1 for his racial cha penalty.
• Every single skill is a class skill, average of 3.6 skill points per level
• +3 AC
• All feats burned to meet pre-requisites. Sorry.

And the following special abilities (among many others):

• Rage 1/day, Fatigue Immunity
• Smite Good 1/day (add cha to attack roll, +1 damage)
• Sneak Attack +2d6 and +2 to +3 strength damage
• Can tumble even in heavy armor (dwarf)
• Hide in Plain Sight.
• Trapfinding.
• Track
• Can use scrolls/wands from the assasin list with a fairly easy caster level check for the scrolls and auto-success on the wands
• Poison use.

[Tubercular Ox]

did this idea come about because of my post in that but i wanna be a real arcane caster thread?

Actually, when I had the idea a couple years ago, I'd assumed it was some sort of coming of age thing and never mentioned it. I would think everyone would wonder about it after a few months of seeing build after build with 5 or more classes, including 3 prestige classes that require every feat, skill point, and class feature to be carefully tuned towards meeting the prerequisites.

I even added the rider: The more prestige classes in such a build, the more amusing it would be.

[Berserk Monk]

This reminders me of the webcomic Goblins where one of the characters decided to take 1/11 of all the classes in the PHB at first level.

[Tubercular Ox]

No one knows where Versatile Turning is from? Did he just make it up?

[Narmoth]

There are some prestige classes who can be taken at very low levels.
I was able to send a paladin to grey guard after lvl 2. (had to wait for lay on hands)

[Aquillion]

No one knows where Versatile Turning is from? Did he just make it up?

It appears to be an ability of this homebrew class: Here.

[Eloel]

I'll try a
Monk 2/Ranger 1/Fighter 2/Barbarian 1/Reaping Mauler 2
build in arena.
I'll report the results.

[jcsw]

Well, if we're doing this with partial BAB and flaws...

Illumnian (Aeshkrau)

Rogue 1 - Improved Sigil (Krau), Iron Will, Able Learner
Sneak Attack Fighter 1
Ninja 1
Factotum 1
Swashbuckler 1
Wizard 1
Ur Priest 1
Mystic Theurge 1
Master of Masks 1
Geomancer 1
Shadow Sentinel 1
Unseen Seer 1
Assassin 1
Swordsage 1
Shadow Sun Ninja 1 - Kung Fu Genius
Warblade 1
As many Divine Casting PrCs you can qualify for 5

7d6 Sneak Attack and 1d6 Sudden Strike
Int Synergy
Etc.

(Yes, this abuses the improved sigil feat.)

[Asema]

I tried making a build of this type. I think it succeeded.

Some text in the description is from outside of the SRD. I believe it consists Fair Use.

[RebelRogue]

This reminders me of the webcomic Goblins where one of the characters decided to take 1/11 of all the classes in the PHB at first level.

Sir Vorpal Kick'Asso!

[Darth Stabber]

Assuming partial bab, here's a lvl 8 build That I would love to try.
Human

Starting Stats(32 point buy)
Str 12
Dex 15
Con 14
Int 14
Wis 12
Cha 12

Classes
Rogue
Soulknife
Scout
Spellthief(+1 dex)
Ninja
Sword Sage
Ranger
Dread Commando(+1 Dex)


Feats
Able Learner
Midnight Dodge
Mobility
Weapon finesse

so @lvl8 a +6bab, +5d6 of various sneak attack like stuff, a reflex save of doom, and no limits to alignment yet.

After that:
Duelist (feat: TWF)
Fighter(Feat: Combat reflexes)
Shadow Dancer
Pyrokineticist(+1 dex, feat: endurance{yuck})
Horizon Walker(subterranean Mastery)
Psywar (Feat: Speed of thought, power: bite of the wolf)
Totemist(Feat: Tomb Tainted Soul)
Dread Necromancer(+1 dex)
Cleric(Trickery and Travel domains)
Barbarian(Feat: Cloak Dance)
Swashbuckler
DuskBlade(+1 dex)

Skills needed
Hide - Maxed
Move silently - Maxed
Perform(dance) - minimum 5 ranks
Concentration - minimum 8 ranks
Craft alchemy - minimum1 rank
Knowledge(geography) - minimum 8 ranks
Knowledge(psionics) - minimum 2 ranks
Tumble - minimum 5 ranks(probably Maxed)


In total
+17/+12/+7/+2 BAB, saves good all over, some decent hiding ability augmented by hide in plain sight and cloak dance, Two Weapons, and natural weapons on call during emergencies, Darkvision 60ft, Soulmelds, 1st lvl arcane spells, 1st lvl divine spells, Rage 1/day, random AC bonuses, 5d6 various sneak attack type stuffs, unlimited out of combat healing, 50ft move speed(60 if i cast longstrider) etc.... I really would like to play this character now, He amuses me greatly

Any thoughts, help, or verbal abuse?

[Darth Stabber]

And With Totemist lvl I can bind kruthak(unsure of the spelling here) gaountlets for a +4 to hid and move silently and an additional +2 per invested essentia, so like +8 when full, nice. Then bind something to the other slot and my stealthy killing machine is ready to go. Would firelash allow me to use sneak attack and such @ 15 ft range, And how does it work as far as attacks of opportunity, I mean if i can't use them both, then I still have the weapon if the off hand to make the attack with (would I still have off hand/twf Penalty since i am not makeing the attack with the fire lash.

[woodenbandman]

Cloistered Cleric would be a great dip, don't forget about that. Knowledge/Travel/Law Devotions in one level, then go Rogue, Then do martial classes for a while until you qualify for Ur-Priest, then dip caster classes for a while.