Builds that can solo CR equivalent opponents in an Anti-Magic Field

[faceroll]

Can you build a badass normal that can take on the worst the multiverse has to offer (in an AMF)?

I know FR has some "lolAMF" stuff for spellcasters, but that totally defeats the purpose of the exercise.

The tarrasque, I think, can't be defeated in an AMF cage match, cause of the DR, regeneration, high AC, and brutal attack routine. I imagine a dragon would be slightly easier to go toe-to-toe with.

[Psyren]

Most of the ToB stuff is (Ex), so probably that would be involved. (I am no expert.)

[faceroll]

Most of the ToB stuff is (Ex), so probably that would be involved. (I am no expert.)

I think some of the counters would be really important for negating damage, since without magic, your AC is going to be abysmal unless you're a high dex, high wisdom monk (which will be hard to do without magic).

Stacking DR could also be interesting.

[SurlySeraph]

You can do a pretty ridiculous mounted charger without magic, though you can't permanently kill the Tarrasque in an AMF due to the lack of Wish unless you can suffocate it or something.

I'd say dragons would actually be harder, since to avoid being Flyby Attacked to death you'll need either a non-magical means of flying (i.e. Feathered Wing Grafts, being a Raptoran, or a handful of other ways) or a way to deal a lot of damage on a readied action (certain maneuvers).

It's hard enough to get worthwhile high-level AC even with magic, so it would probably be wise to get as many non-magical miss chances (e.g. Cloak Dance) as possible.

I'd go with a ToB build, either a Crusader or a Warblade, built either for charging or tripping. Or both. A level in Cloistered Cleric with the right domains could be worthwhile (Time for Improved Initiative, some others). A Swordsage level for Child of Shadow sounds good, though I can't remember if Child of Shadow is supernatural or not.

EDIT: Two concepts.

First, a Warblade 20 with Martial Study (any Shadow Hand, any Devoted Spirit), Martial Stance (Assassin's Stance, Thicket of Blades), Combat Reflexes, Vexing Flanker, Adaptable Flanker, and Staggering Strike. Using one Warblade bonus feat for Combat Reflexes and ignoring the rest, a human with 2 flaws could take 3 more feats: Robilar's Gambit, Evasive Reflexes, and EWP: Spiked Chain.

Be permanently in Assassin's Stance and Thicket of Blades. Use Adaptable Flanker with your spiked chain so that you can usually flank opponents alone, meaning you can Sneak Attack them alone, meaning every time you hit them Staggering Strike kicks in and limits them to a standard action or a move action that turn.

Robilar's Gambit and Evasive Reflexes lets you take an attack of opportunity or a five-foot step as an immediate action whenever you're attacked. Five-foot-step away from everything. Never get hit. Next time your opponent moves towards you, you get an AoO because of Thicket of Blades. Hit them when they five-foot-step forward to reach you, step away when they try to attack you, repeat.

That's what you do when it isn't your turn. When it is your turn, use whatever strikes you deem best. Mountain Tombstone Strike one round, Feral Death Blow the next is nice, but it's really up to you. Action-denying strikes to stunlock your opponent are another possibility. Its biggest weakness is that it can't flank sufficiently large opponents alone; Child of Shadow Stance would fix that, but it can't be in three stances at once and I don't know of a way other than Thicket of Blades to make AoOs against opponents who take 5-foot-steps.

Second, a Human (2 flaws) Crusader 20 with Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush, Shock Trooper, Leap Attack, Combat Reflexes, Combat Expertise, Improved Trip, Knock-Down, Robilar's Gambit, and Evasive Reflexes.

This uses the same Thicket of Blades/ Robilar's Gambit -> all movement or attacks provoke AoOs -> use Evasive Reflexes to step away trick. It doesn't have the same Staggering Strike lockdown ability, but it can charge for a lot more damage. It also has more resistance to anything that gets through its defenses, due to Steely Resolve and Mettle. It's also a lot more flexible; you could throw in levels of any other full-BAB class and it works just fine.

[faceroll]

Stacking an ability score to AC often gets you pretty high AC. Are the Con to AC builds reliant on Su or Ex abilities?

[Runestar]

I think the tarrasque's dr would be suppressed in an AMF, but its regen would remain. I would go with warblade as well. Probably some combination of stormguard warrior + avalanche of blades + diamond blade nightmare to quickly pump out tons of damage?

[Wings of Peace]

Changeling Barb 1/Fighter 4/Warshaper 2/Soul Eater 1/X could be pretty nasty. Tack on some Incarnum for versatility and you've got a very reasonable number of options for killing opponents. (Forgot that Incarnum doesn't function in an AMF)

Edit: Troll-Blooded Warforged Juggernaut could also be very beastly.

[Keld Denar]

Bear Warrior is EX, IIRC.

Ranger1/Barb2/Fighter2/Deepwarden2/FotF3/BearWarrior1/Warshaper4/doesn'tmatterbecauseyoualreadyatetheirface5 would work. Imp Grab to the face and rawk out with your natural +50ish grapple mod and Con to AC twice with a massive bear Con score. AMF means no FoM or Dim Door to safety.

[Wings of Peace]

Bear Warrior is EX, IIRC.

Ranger1/Barb2/Fighter2/Deepwarden2/FotF3/BearWarrior1/Warshaper4/doesn'tmatterbecauseyoualreadyatetheirface5 would work. Imp Grab to the face and rawk out with your natural +50ish grapple mod and Con to AC twice with a massive bear Con score. AMF means no FoM or Dim Door to safety.

I've failed to see something that you made me realize Keld. Full AMF means no Freedom of Movement, is there room in that build for some Black Blood Cultist?

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Unfortunately, Bear Form is (Su).

[Wings of Peace]

Unfortunately, Bear Form is (Su).

That still means we could make a viable Otherworldly Changeling Barb 1/Fighter 4 (Generic Warrior if available)/Warshaper 2/Soul Eater 1/Black Blood Cultist 8/Fighter 4

[Morph Bark]

Bear Warrior is EX, IIRC.

Ranger1/Barb2/Fighter2/Deepwarden2/FotF3/BearWarrior1/Warshaper4/doesn'tmatterbecauseyoualreadyatetheirface5 would work. Imp Grab to the face and rawk out with your natural +50ish grapple mod and Con to AC twice with a massive bear Con score. AMF means no FoM or Dim Door to safety.

Is a Bear Warrior's bear form an Ex ability then? I thought all form-changing stuff was at least Su.


Also, must this be about ANY CR-equivalent opponent, or a specific one?

[Starbuck_II]

Can you build a badass normal that can take on the worst the multiverse has to offer (in an AMF)?

I know FR has some "lolAMF" stuff for spellcasters, but that totally defeats the purpose of the exercise.

The tarrasque, I think, can't be defeated in an AMF cage match, cause of the DR, regeneration, high AC, and brutal attack routine. I imagine a dragon would be slightly easier to go toe-to-toe with.

Soulknife/Soulbow with a few levels in martial adepts to boost damage/options. Soulknifes keep their magic weapons in an antimagic field as a class feature.

[Malbordeus]

theres a spell in the Lords of madness called invoke magic. its one of teh wizard/sorceror 'lol' responses to an AMF

[faceroll]

Changeling Barb 1/Fighter 4/Warshaper 2/Soul Eater 1/X could be pretty nasty. Tack on some Incarnum for versatility and you've got a very reasonable number of options for killing opponents. (Forgot that Incarnum doesn't function in an AMF)

Edit: Troll-Blooded Warforged Juggernaut could also be very beastly.

Soul Eater's level draining is Su isn't it? Is Warshaper not Su?

[Godskook]

Soulknife/Soulbow with a few levels in martial adepts to boost damage/options. Soulknifes keep their magic weapons in an antimagic field as a class feature.

Congratulations on finding the one "bypass AMF" option this thread would consider reasonable.

[JaronK]

Pretty much any charger can still rock out quite effectively. Shield chargers most of all due to being able to keep charging repeatedly.

JaronK

[Morph Bark]

Pretty much any charger can still rock out quite effectively. Shield chargers most of all due to being able to keep charging repeatedly.

JaronK

There are sword-and-board builds that are generally accepted to be viable? Elaborate please, as I've heard prettymuch just "you gotta be a TWF-er" or "you gotta be a THF-er" when it comes to melee builds (excluding caster builds).

[gbprime]

Or for those of you whose DM's aren't comfortable with Tier 1 stuff...

Fighter (Thug and Simple variants), PrC into Scarlet Corsair.

Round 1 - get in position, use move action feint to sneak attack once.
Round 2 - use Corsair Feint to attack 4 times, the first being a sneak attack.
Round 3 - use previous round's successes and Einhander feat to attack 4 more times, the first being a sneak attack.
Round 4 - use move action feint to sneak attack once.
Round 5 - use Corsair Feint to attack 4 times, the first being a sneak attack.

And every attack, sneaks and otherwise, has an extra 1d6 involved from Deadly Defense feat.

What you don't have with this build is lots of AC. But if you're willing to trade 2d6 of sneak attack damage, you could pick up 4-5 levels of Citadel Elite (Sharn), which gives you class level in AC bonus. Combined with 2 for Einhander and 5 for Combat Expertise, you're looking at an AC of 31-35 with no magic whatsoever. (Dex plus mithril breastplate)

[Kansaschaser]

That's easy, just play your normal Wizard build. For any spell that you want to function inside an Anti-Magic field you would just need to cast Invoke Magic. Granted, it's a 9th level spell and it costs a 1,000 gp gem. But it's do-able.

[Tyndmyr]

That's easy, just play your normal Wizard build. For any spell that you want to function inside an Anti-Magic field you would just need to cast Invoke Magic. Granted, it's a 9th level spell and it costs a 1,000 gp gem. But it's do-able.

Eh, forget that. Expensive and spell intensive. Initiate of Mystra if a mystic theurge or you want divine, or Iot7V if you want pure arcane.

[Prime32]

There are some (Su) transformation abilities where only the process of changing is a magical effect - the form itself is not.

There are sword-and-board builds that are generally accepted to be viable? Elaborate please, as I've heard prettymuch just "you gotta be a TWF-er" or "you gotta be a THF-er" when it comes to melee builds (excluding caster builds).

Wield the shield in two hands.

[Tyndmyr]

Animated shield? Nothing wrong with shields, provided they aren't gimping your damage output. Also, you've got bucklers, which are okish, and tower shields have their uses. I don't generally bother with actually holding anything in between, though.

Slap on a dastana and a shield, and enchant em both, and you can get some pretty decent AC. Feel free to abuse defending weapons and the like as well.

[jpreem]

Buy a flying mount and a lance. Optimize for charging. Should do quite nice wiht a lot of CR monsters( whose su and sp abilities are shut down).
Or is buying a mount not solo enough?
Then you'll just have to charge alone :D. You'll lose flying and spirited charge extra damage, but thats kinda it.

[Diarmuid]

Surly, the biggest problem with your build is going to be dealing with anything with reach, which both of the OP examples have in spades (dragon depending on age, but if he's talking Tarrasque I'm guessing we're not talking about baby dragons.)

Nor does it have any ability to deal with grappling.

[SurlySeraph]

You need to make a touch attack to start a grapple, which provokes an AoO due to Robilar's, so you can evade the attempt with Evasive Reflexes. Doesn't work against things with more natural attacks than you have AoOs if you haven't staggered them, but otherwise it works fine unless you're too far within something's reach to 5-foot-step out of its reach. In which case trying to find a way to work in Close-Quarters-Fighting would be nice.

Agreed on reach. I'm trying to think of non-magical ways to extend reach that are easy to fit in, and mostly drawing a blank. Warshaper, maybe?

[true_shinken]

Wield the shield in two hands.

Final Justice!

[Tyndmyr]

Agreed on reach. I'm trying to think of non-magical ways to extend reach that are easy to fit in, and mostly drawing a blank. Warshaper, maybe?

Willing deformity: Tall.

[Eldariel]

Frenzied Berserker tends to be able to go toe-for-toe with almost anything. Between being immortal (until the Frenzy runs out anyways), having an extra attack, insane Strength (and thus attack bonus), insane Power Attack results and all that good jazz, they get the job done. Of course, not slaughtering everyone else is a bit more hairy.

Swiftblade under persistent Haste (their Haste is Extraordinary on higher levels) can definitely be a fearsome opponent for basically anyone without magic; having 50% miss chance alone is simply an insane advantage when magic is removed from the equation, not to mention all the other goodies they get from Haste.

Eternal Blade can be quite scary without magic except for the fact that their Blade Guide is listed as a Su-ability (which is sorta silly since it's an auxillary creature altogether). But if we sidestep that, they could definitely work. If not, a Master of the Nine is nothing to scoff at.


Yeah, Closer-Quarter Fighting is a near-must. And ToB charges allow approaching without AoOs. Or stacking a ****ton of aberrant feats but I guess that's besides the point.

And yeah, the Con-stack of Fist of the Forests and Deepwarden is Ex. No, it's not nearly enough to get a respectable AC without magic. Most stat boosts are magic-based too so you simply won't get that high AC without magic. Really, something with Elaborate Parry like Dervish probably does better on that department.

[true_shinken]

Dancing With Shadows + Arcane Duelist sounds very nice for this.

With BAB 16 and an elven courtblade, your damage potential for Dexterous Attack will be 16. So, let's consider your routine with Dancing With Shadows and Dexterous Attack:
Turn 1: Improved Combat Expertise; -16 attack, +16 defense
Turn 2: Improved Combat Expertise + Graceful Lunge + Dexterous Attack + Power Attack; +0 to attack, +16 to defense, +16 to damage
Turn 3: Improved Combat Expertise + Lingering Defense; +0 to attack, +16 to defense
Turn 4: Improved Combat Expertise + Graceful Lunge + Dexterous Attack + Power Attack; +0 to attack, +16 to defense, +16 to damage
Repeat turns 3 and 4 until you defeat whatever you are fighting.