Ah! The Dim Mak! - Need Help Building A Character [PF/3.5]

[subject42]

I'd like some help building a character, if you folks are obliged.

What I would like to build is an in-melee combatant that uses touch attacks, rather than weapons or strikes, to wreck his foes.

My first thought was to just use a sorcerer that was piled high with range [touch] spells that do damage and convey status effects, but I think that the lack of HP and BAB might be a bit of a problem.

How would you folks stat this up? We use PF character creation rules with a 29 point buy based on this chart. 3.5 material is allowed, but only when it hasn't been superseded by PF material.

[mootoall]

Forget Touch Attacks. Use no attacks! Play a Dragonfire Adept and you'll never roll an attack die again!

[subject42]

Forget Touch Attacks. Use no attacks! Play a Dragonfire Adept and you'll never roll an attack die again!

But then it's not the Dim Mak. It's just a guy that can breath fire. Also, I plan on taking leadership and having a permanently reduced half-dragon Tibbit cohort that I use as a shotgun.

[tyckspoon]

Touch Attacks, mm? Try..

Exalted Monk/Warblade/Monk of the Enabled Hand (Dragon Compendium PrC.) Take Touch of Golden Ice (BoED), Stormguard Warrior (ToB), and if desired some of the Stunning Fist enhancing feats (Freezing the Lifeblood/Pain Touch/Pharoah's Fist/Falling Star Strike.) Touch of Golden Ice lets you inflict a Dex poison when you punch or touch somebody. Stormguard Warrior lets you trade normal attacks for touch attacks that do no damage (check with your DM to see if he considers 'do no damage' to mean Golden Ice doesn't apply either. It would work in my games, but it's a pretty broad and vague clause) and then do extra damage next round for each touch attack made. Warblade also provides some extra ways to make a touch attack, such as Emerald Razor. Enabled Hand is just a nice basic Monk PrC, advancing Flurry, Unarmed Damage, speed, and AC, while providing a few special abilities that are generally more useful than those the Monk base class gets (low bar there, I know.) The prereqs are kind of annoying.. anyway, it's in there because the 1st level ability lets you make touch attacks a # of times/day based on your Enabled Hand levels. You'd get a lot of freedom in feat and level choices by dropping it.

So, your combats go.. you Flurry a bunch of touch attacks into somebody, doing no apparent damage but slowing their movements, stiffening their joints, and seizing up their muscles (Golden Ice + Stormguard Warrior). Then, next round, you trigger the main strikepoint, and if they're not dead they're paralyzed/blind/staggering around unable to move for the pain (Power Attacking Touch Attack Stunning Fist with the Stormguard Warrior damage bonus + Stunning Fist add-on feat of choice.) Sounds pretty Dim Mak to me.

Edit: This is a really feat-hungry build, and will probably need Flaws and/or a couple of Fighter levels in order to get going at a reasonable level.

[subject42]

Other does touch of golden ice, does any of that have an evil targets only restriction?

[tyckspoon]

Nope!


If you have enough pointbuy/good enough ability scores to work with, it might actually work better on a Fighter/Warblade base. Fighter 2/Warblade 4 would be able to get all the feats for Enabled Hand without Flaws by level 3, grab Stormguard Warrior at level 6 (You could actually go into Enabled Hand by Fighter 2/Warblade 2, but Stormguard requires BAB 6, so you'd delay picking it up until your next open feat at 9) and then go into Enabled Hand and pick up most of the relevant Monk abilities. The main difficulty then would be having to pick up Stunning Fist as a normal feat and greatly delaying your ability to get any of the neat Stunning Fist enhancers.

[true_shinken]

Stormguard requires BAB 6, so you'd delay picking it up until your next open feat at 9

There are a few ways around that, like selling your soul, Legacy Shuffle or dipping Human Paragon.

[herrhauptmann]

Other does touch of golden ice, does any of that have an evil targets only restriction?

Touch of golden ice, technically works on creatures immune to poison as well. Which can open up a huge line of shenanigans on creatures normally immune, like demons/devils/undead.

[Urpriest]

It's probably going to fit less than the proposed build, but just to throw it on the table, Dread Necromancers can be pretty fun as touch-attack stackers.