What shall I do? (badass char) [3.5]

[Apollo1776]

So I'm a power gamer, and I'm going to be playing a power campaign. I rolled some really nice stats (17, 17, 16, 16, 12, 10). Now, I got 10 LA to spend on templates (I am only allowed 1 HD). Best of all, I was told I'm allowed to use Monster of Legend on a non-monstrous humanoid for a measily +2 LA. What to take besides the obvious? Well of course half-fiend and half-celestial! (Black feathered wings? BADASS). So here are my final stats with everything factored in:

Stats

Race: Human
Templates: Half-Fiend, Half-Celestial, and Monster of Legend
STR: 35 (17 + 18)
DEX: 29 (17 + 12)
CON: 32 (16 + 16)
INT: 20 (12 + 8)
WIS: 22 (16 + 6)
CHA: 20 (10 + 10)

Racial Traits

Immunity to Disease and Poison
Daylight at will
Smite Good/Evil 1/day each
Always Hasted
Darkness 3/day
Acid, Cold, Electricity Resist 20, Fire Resist 10.
Bless 1/day
Protection from Evil 3/day
Darkvision 60'
SR 22
DR 10 (the damage, spell reductions and resistances stack for templates right?)
Cast spells as 5th level Cleric with Protection, Strength, and War domains
- Empty Slot for Monster of Legend Ability -

Feats

Multi-Attack
Improved Init.
---
Able Learner (maybe)
Heroic Destiny (maybe)

So now it is the question of what class I want to be. I know what I want to be a pure melee class. I was looking into swordsage pretty heavily, even got everything set up for it, but I'm having second doubts. I am seriously considering barb, but I don't know. Maybe a barb variant. I'm contemplating just using things that drain my hp for extra power. I could also get like a magic device that holds charges of the masochism spell, and grab FB to become even more ludicrous. A fun thought yes?

All I know about for hp-draining for power is:
- masochism spell
- vicious weapons

halp?

[BRC]

Optimize your character for bursting through the wall like the kool-aide man and beating your enemies to death with their own spines.
But besides that.

With a strength score like that, you want to focus on using two handed weapons. Barb seems like almost a waste considering your really high mental stats.

[Forever Curious]

Soul Eater.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Soul Eater.

+1 to that, whats not to love? full bab, all good saves, decent DH, and depending on your reading of the energy drain ability, you may deliver a great amount of negative levels.

[Apollo1776]

+1 to that, whats not to love? full bab, all good saves, decent DH, and depending on your reading of the energy drain ability, you may deliver a great amount of negative levels.

It doesn't apply to humanoids, and I have to be evil (I'm pretty much sure I'm going to be neutral). Not that the last bit would be a problem, I've already broken the alignment deal by being both a half-fiend and half-celestial.

With a strength score like that, you want to focus on using two handed weapons. Barb seems like almost a waste considering your really high mental stats.

I could always throw in a golem template to lower 'em a bit :P. Also, I'd wield a great sword :D

[Eldariel]

How strong do you want to be? With 10 points of free LA, you could do so much more than just Half-Celestial/Half-Fiendish/Monster of Legend; that said, if you specifically want those for the feel, go for it. But know that it's...about ~10-20 points lower than you could get pretty much across the board.

Anyways, melee isn't all that bad with the natural spellcasting you're getting, though sadly you'll miss out on the better buff spells meaning you'll be stuck with sub-100 stats for most of the game. With stats like that though, I'd probably be looking at stacking various ability scores in various things with some dips (see X stat to Y bonus for details), though again, it'd be more optimal to pump two-three stats into 50s and start off with ~30 AC & saves + HP (obviously one of them would be Con) and ramp up to ~60 in a couple of levels with attack to match.


So yeah, classes like Fist of the Forests, Deepwarden, Shiba Protector, Monk, Arcane Duelist and so on should interest you as 1-level dips to add stuff to anything. But as for the core of your character? I tend to agree that the ToB trio is a very good baseline; dealing damage shouldn't be a problem. You might want the Barbarian-dip for Pounce which combines beautifully with various Charge-maneuvers, and Whirling Frenzy from Barbarian.

Soul Eater is decent, but I wouldn't focus on something so easy to counter; pick one level for the Energy Drain attack and focus on kicking ass against opponents you cannot use Energy Drain on with the rest of the levels. Having some area control capability and heavy mobility would be very key, and ways to cheat actions are always gold. Unfortunately, martialists are again getting the short end of the stick there (basically, Ruby Knight Vindicator, Eternal Blade, Thrall of Demogorgon and Factotum are about it for non-magical sources of extra actions aside from Su/Ex Wildshaping). All of those unfortunately also require quite some dedication meaning you'll be able to go for one at most.


Immediate movement and such are likewise a precious commodity and one hard to acquire without casting, but AoO substitutions and ability to increase the size of steps you can take (Press the Advantage/Sparring Dummy of the Master/DC40 Tumble) do help out some.

Overall, I'd maximize my non-actions, stack ability scores and pick up a versatile offense suite; what you do is of course up to you, but doing just that will be my suggestion anyways. How exactly you go about it is of course left to taste.

[Keld Denar]

Yea, you could do WAY better than Half Celestial Half Fiendish. Mineral Warrior is a +1 LA template that gives you nice DR and a massive bonus to your Con. Saint would allow you to abuse a decent Cha score multiple times. Phrenic gives you some nice Psi-Like abilities along with a boost to mental stats.

You are better off in general stacking multiple +1 and +2s than taking one big +4 or more.

[Tinydwarfman]

Yea, you could do WAY better than Half Celestial Half Fiendish. Mineral Warrior is a +1 LA template that gives you nice DR and a massive bonus to your Con. Saint would allow you to abuse a decent Cha score multiple times. Phrenic gives you some nice Psi-Like abilities along with a boost to mental stats.

You are better off in general stacking multiple +1 and +2s than taking one big +4 or more.

+1. Try some better templates. Maybe a Feral Lolth-touched White Dragonspawn Half-Minotaur Quasilycanthrope Monster of Legend Mineral Warrior. And that's only 8 LA. Holy crap.

[Eldariel]

+1. Try some better templates. Maybe a Feral Lolth-touched White Dragonspawn Half-Minotaur Quasilycanthrope Monster of Legend Mineral Warrior. And that's only 8 LA. Holy crap.

Make it Saint. Though I'd probably use Half-Dragon in there just for the Wings; Half-Minotaur makes you big enough. And White Dragonspawn is a bit less impressive in non-Sorc builds especially when you gotta deal with the whole "being a thrall to Dragon"-part. Much like Voidmind, really.

[Tinydwarfman]

Make it Saint. Though I'd probably use Half-Dragon in there just for the Wings; Half-Minotaur makes you big enough. And White Dragonspawn is a bit less impressive in non-Sorc builds especially when you gotta deal with the whole "being a thrall to Dragon"-part. Much like Voidmind, really.

Yeah, but saint has some harsh role-playing requirements, and I don't think it would fit in with that many other templates. At least this has some kind of epic freak of nature monster motif going for it.

[Apollo1776]

Make it Saint. Though I'd probably use Half-Dragon in there just for the Wings; Half-Minotaur makes you big enough. And White Dragonspawn is a bit less impressive in non-Sorc builds especially when you gotta deal with the whole "being a thrall to Dragon"-part. Much like Voidmind, really.

Half-fiend actually is an option, since I can split up the +16 based on which creature I choose to model it as. Lolth-touched sounds awesome, half-dragon sounds cool too.

So how about half-fiend (using glabrezu as model so +8/+8 to str/con) lolth-touched half dragon monster of legend. I kind of don't want to get rid of the half-fiend because it does have some really nice effects aside from ability modifiers.

This leaves me with stats:

STR: 51
DEX: 22
CON: 43
INT: 16
WIS: 18
CHA: 16

Pretty good if I make a barb.

[Eldariel]

If you're Half-Fiend, I wouldn't bother with Half-Dragon too; the combination gets a bit redundant. I'd instead add:

Feral
Half-Minotaur
Mineral Warrior

As an example in those slots. Mineral Warrior loses fly-speeds, but just apply it first and Half-Fiend then to work around that. Then you'll have Burrow, Fly and normal movement; pretty good. You're at home anywhere. Also, nice physical bonuses.


And y'know what I said about stat stacking? That's a good idea. Also, Barbarian doesn't give you terribly much outside few level dips so I'd main another class and take Barbarian for Rage and Pounce as a dip. If you'd manage to stack major Wis too, you could get pretty decent Monk 1/Swordsage N/Barbarian 1/Swordsage N/Fist of the Forests 1/Deepwarden 2/Shiba Protector 1/Swordsage N. Gets you Wis, Con and Con to AC, and Wis on To Hit and Damage (and Wis to damage on Strikes which you should mostly use; also, Mineral Warrior gives you Con to attack once per day) in addition to Strength. Toss Master of the Nine on top of that if you feel like it.

If you're not base-Dwarf, just add 3 levels of Stoneblessed as desired to qualify. So...yeah. Solid basic ability stack. Few hundred points per turn should be a breeze around level 10, more if you use Shock Trooper/Leap Attack/Valorous. Bounding Assault + Pounce means attack can be done basically anywhere from anywhere and has Wis from Insightful Strikes too. And...yeah. Have fun with that.

[Apollo1776]

Thanks guys, so far its been awesome.

So I can't use white dragonspawn or anything from dungeon or dragon magazine (better stay away from online stuff, though that really just cuts out quasilycanthrope).

I made a Feral Mineral Warrior Lolth-Touched Half-Dragon Voidmind Brass Golem Half-Minotaur Monster of Legend. My stats:

Str: 65
Dex: 16
Con: 44
Int: 9
Wis: 14
Cha: 10
Natural AC: 27

More of a smash stuff barbarian type of guy that I was trying to make. Not really my style of playing (my guys tend to have at least some BRAINZ!), but fun to make (and my DM would never let me play this). I'm really thinking about taking it and replacing voidmind and mineral warrior with saint (again I like playing smart characters). And rid myself of brass golem. This would let me be a class that uses mental and physical stats (the ones I tend to like).

[Glimbur]

Saint is really rough because it's a template you can lose. You might want to dodge it for that reason.

[Escheton]

Now, how about going intbased on top of the awesome str
phrenic and half-fiend monster of legend and some other +2, insectile comes to mind. Multi-attack and 6 arms is nice.
You dont automatically get more attacks according to the insectile template...doesnt say multi-attack cant fix that. Nice awareness bonusses and tremorsense I think. Cant be flanked...
Half-fiend probably isnt as good as it would otherwise be if you already have MoL. Though the stats and wings are nice.
Half giant, half dragon gives wings and large size, though has different stats, and I dont have them on hand so couldnt tell you which right now.


at least 3 lvls of factotum, any martial adept class , 3 wizard, jade phoenix mage 10

for non crusader you need to invest 2 feats though

always first due to getting both int and dex to init. Int to all str and dex checks. Lotsa fun stuff there. And make any str check ever, against anything by getting both int and str to the check.
great bab progression good hd on average. Lotsa spells and maneuvers for versatility and some +int mod to stuff a couple of times per encounter.

Dont just be awesome, be brilliant.