[3.5] The beatstick mentality

[Zaq]

So, I'm gearing up to play a new character in my level 15 campaign. I'm going to be a very dwarfy Incarnum user (either a pure LN Incarnate, or an Incarnate / Ironsoul Forgemaster... any comments on that would be welcome). I'm still working on the specifics of him, and I just realized... I can hardly remember the last time I played a character who actually, you know, attacks. I've been playing pseudocasters for the past year or so, and I just don't have a whole lot of experience with characters who spend a lot of time on the front lines. I know that an Incarnate isn't really a typical beatstick, but still, he's a lot more so than, say, a DFA (my most recent character). I've been so deep into the debuffer/battlefield controller mindset that I've forgotten what it really feels like to be a fightin' man.

What's important to remember about being a frontliner? I mean, I know the basic build stuff (HP good! Hitting good! Beware of casters!), but I feel fuzzy on the the tactical stuff. What am I going to have to keep in mind as a frontliner that I was allowed to forget as a backliner? How do I keep out of "I attack again" territory? I know Incarnates can do it, but suddenly I can't seem to remember how.

I'm going to feel really dumb once people post here, because I'm sure that this will seem elementary once I see it in front of me, but I feel like a refresher on the non-casty lifestyle wouldn't hurt.

[Flickerdart]

5ft steps are the bread and butter of tactical mobility. So are charges - finding a way of full attacking on a charge is wonderful. Since you need to get to the enemy, get the fastest fly speed you can. Miss chance is better than AC. Offense is better than defense. Have ways to get out of grapples. Never neglect your Fort and Will saves. Arrange a way to get yourself to full HP between encounter.

Don't die.

[herrhauptmann]

Custom magic items, even made per rules are incredibly abusive, and should be abused to keep your beatstick alive as long as possible.
Buy a couple of wands and scrolls for the party casters to heal you. The cleric might resent being bandaid box, even after the fight, but he'll hate it a lot less if you hand him a wand to cast out of, rather than expecting him to use his own slots.
How dwarfy can a dwarf character get without Dwarf Paragon (UA)?
Pierce magical concealment (needs blindfight, mageslayer, and might hurt your incarnum abilities but I'm not sure on the last), and a blink effect is way more defensive than spending half WBL boosting AC.

[gallagher]

charge, pouncing, high crit range, reach weapons, and loud roaring, and insults about your opponents mothers

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Battlefield Control is still important. You want to make sure they can't get past you and to the squishy psudocasters.

Combat Reflexes is good, more AoO is a good thing to keep opponents away form your buddies.

You want to be 'Dr. No'. No matter what kind of effect they bring up, you want to be able to tell it 'no'.

To that end, here's some good gear choices:

1) Ring of Evasion. Make sure your Reflex save is good enough, and this is a 'no' to blastomancy.

2) Scarab of Protection. Cheap, and protection vs death effects.

3) Necklace of Adaptation. Also cheap, just say 'no' to Cloudkill/stinking cloud/any other gas. Also get water breathing free of charge.

4) Ring of Freedom of Movement. Just say 'no' to any 'stay put' effect. Ignore Solid Fog, Slow, grapples, Webs, or anything else that tries to get you to stay put.

5) Gauntlet of Rust. Never worry about rust monsters again. 1/day, make your opponent wish he hadn't just swung at you.

6) Efficient Quiver. Because you can hold more than arrows and bows in it. Swords fit in the Bow slots, daggers and other small weapons fit in the arrow slots. Most light weapons fit in the javelin slots. This is useful for carrying around those 'just in case I run into this particular oddball combination needed to bypass DR'.

7) Belt of Battle. Free actions. Very limited in how many you get per day, but can be very critical if used properly.

8) Cloak of Displacement, Minor. This negates sneak attack since you get a Concealment Miss Chance. And you have a 20% chance of not being hit by any given attack. But really, it's for the negating of precision-based damage.

[Endarire]

May Hood inspire you, especially this:

Spoiler

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My Thought Process

For those curious about how I assembled the various pieces for writing this guide, here y' go! This list is not necessarily in the order it happened in my head but is a rough organization of the dragoon's aspects I wanted to include.

-Dragoons are acrobatic fighters that typically use polearms.
-A rogue level would help fill this archetype with Jump and Tumble.
-Conveniently, rogues are proficient with all simple weapons and longspears are simple polearms.
-Rogues have a variant to trade Sneak Attack for a fighter feat.
-Battle Jump is a fighter feat.

-Battle Jump allows me to charge by attacking someone from above but doesn't function with magical flight or levitation.
-Lion Totem barbarian allows me to make a full attack on a charge.
-Vertical Jump checks get ridiculously high for Large and larger creatures.
-Boosting my land speed also increases my Jump checks.
-Expeditious retreat is a level 1 wizard spell and I can get longstrider as a level 1 domain spell.
-The feat Leap of the Heavens treats all standing jumps as running jumps.
-Up the Walls is a psionic feat that allows me to run up and along walls and fall on foes, but it requires 13 WIS.
-Psychic warrior1 gives a psionic or fighter feat, but I need 14 WIS to get a power point.

-Jump checks alone don't negate most falling damage.
-Tumble checks help, but the DCs ramp up quickly.
-Raptorans and Dragonborn negate falling damage, eventually fly, and get +10 racial Jump.
-A Dragonborn water half-orc gets a STR boost and swim speed but a Dragonborn fire elf gets +2 INT and a negligible -2 CHA. A Dragonborn nezumi gets +4 CON, -2 CHA, and a spiffy 40' base move speed as a medium creature for no LA.

-Each round I get a standard, move, and swift action.
-Charging is a full round (standard & move) action.
-Most the time I'm not using my swift action.
-The Travel Devotion allows me to move as a swift action a certain number of times per day.
-Taking 1 cleric level can get me the Travel Devotion and another domain, plus a bunch of other stuff.

-Battle Jump when properly set up allows me to down most foes in one hit.
-Valorous weapons, the feat Headlong Rush, and a Halberd of Vaulting increase my charge damage and thus my Battle Jump damage multiplier.
-If I had more attacks each round, I could down more foes.
-Combat Reflexes, Cleave, Great Cleave, haste, and Whirling Frenzy grant more attacks.

-I need some means of boosting my Will and Reflex saves.
-Moment of Perfect Mind is a level 1 warblade maneuver and Action Before Thought is a level 2 Warblade maneuver.
-I can get those maneuvers with 1 warblade level if I take Warblade at 5 or later.
-Evasion is handy to have for negating area damaging effects.
-I already have a rogue level.
-Rogue2 provides spiffy synergy.

-I want my allies to contribute as well.
-They can only contribute if they get a turn.
-White Raven Tactics is a level 3 warblade maneuver that gives an ally within 10' another turn.

[Keld Denar]

If you have effective caster support, rely on delay. Don't move and make a single attack (or charge without pounce) when you see foes. Talk to your casters. Generally, and I'm sure you know this, crowd control works best if you aren't in the middle of it. Let your wizard friend Solid Fog one of the trolls before you engage the other. Give your team ample time to buff you, if they plan to.

I played a high level (13-15) melee character without pounce in Living Greyhawk, and often times, I'd spend the first round of combat in delay with my melee weapon out. My friend's wizard would drop an EBT or a Solid Fog or similar large scale CC spell. Then, in the 2nd round, assuming the non-CCed enemies didn't charge me or otherwise close (and suck up AoOs from my reach weapon, and a full attack), the caster would Dim Door me, him, and our other melee character up inside of the enemies reach. At that point, fully buffed, our 2 full attacks could pretty much drop anything up to Balor size. From there, we'd adapt to however the CC unfolds and mop up. We dominated numerous LG modules using this relatively simple strategy. It works.

If you don't have pounce, and you probably won't as an Ironsoul Forgemaster, its all about manevuering so that you have action advantage over your foe. Make your foes come to you, or wait for your allies to bring you to them so that you can always make a full attack. Anything less and you are giving your opponent the advantage of the first full attack, and that is foolish. Clever use of simple mobility spells like Benign Transposition (probably quickened or modified with a Circlet of Rapid Casting) can mean the difference between your fighter doing 40-50 points on a single attack and 150-200 damage on a full attack. Thats a lot of damage for a 1st level spell!

[Person_Man]

There's several schools of thought on what a melee build should do:

1) Kill. When all of your enemies are dead, you've won. Potential Combos: Power Attack/Charge, lots of attacks, high unarmed or natural weapon damage, ability damage, precision damage, poison, Dungeoncrasher.

2) Debuff: If an enemy can't act normally, their attacks will be ineffective. Potential Combos: Daze, Fear, Ability Damage, Poison, Disarm, Sunder, Sleight of Hand, and other status effects.

3) Lock-Down: If an enemy can't move normally, they can't move away from you, making it easier for you to kill them and harder for them to kill your friends. Potential Combos: Trip, Daze, Stand Still, Grapple, getting a large threatened area, creating difficult terrain, some debuff effects.

4) Keep Away: If enemies can't get or stay close to you, they can't hit you. Potential Combos: Knockback, tactical movement, creating difficult terrain, Ride By Attack.

5) Tank: If you have high defenses, who cares if your enemies hit you? Potential Combos: High hit points, AC, Saves, Touch AC, DR, SR, ER, Evasion, Mettle.

Except for tanking, each of these is covered in great detail my Melee Combo Guide and the links within it (note to self, write guide to tanking).

While people tend to specialize in one area or another, a true strategist can switch tactics based on the situation, as long as he has the resources available to do so (note, this is why casters tend to be so powerful).

As an Incarnate, your best option will be pure Tanking, with Lock-Down and/or Keep Away as your secondary goal(s). Your goal is essentially to be a hard target to hit and a damage sponge, so that the other people in your party can kill your enemies. If you're a Ironsoul Forgemaster, you trade some of your defense for an awesome Daze attack.

Either way, you won't be that effective at dealing damage. But that's not a huge deal given all of your other options.

[Fax Celestis]

5ft steps are the bread and butter of tactical mobility.

Absolutely. For this reason, I recommend taking Combat Reflexes and {Evasive Reflexes. Link scrubbed. Please don't link there - or to any other sites that provide full text non-OGL material}.

[big teej]

when in doubt, smash it, set it on fire, whack it with your axe, crush it in a death bear hug, kick it, stab it, slash it, bludgeon it, crack it, snap it, break it threaten to make a trophy rack out of it, actually make a trophy rack out of it, LOOT IT!


see also: -any violent action-


my personal favorite is "I look at -noun- in a perplexed manner for a moment"

-group pause-

" I hit it with my axe"

(barbarian)

[Choco]

As many have mentioned already, offense is MUCH better than defense in 3.5, so I usually play the "keep hitting it until it stops moving" type of characters, as opposed to the damage sponges. Battlefield control is usually the domain of the casters (in our group anyway) so I just focus on redecorating the area using the enemy's vital bits.