Martial Commande class

[Elfstone]

So Im playing this game, and I want to have a martial commander. Some one with buffs and a good melee, preferably one with leadership bonuses. I looked at the Marshall, and its not going to cut it. I looked at This class and it looked interesting, but what to do to make it the best possible (feat and skill wise). I have never played a character like this and don't have a firm basis on what to do. Suggestions, comments?

[Urpriest]

Oh gods D&Dwiki the horror the horror...

As a general warning, there are many contributors to D&Dwiki who aren't particularly concerned that their homebrew be balanced or function properly. As such, be careful with anything you get from there. That said, if you find the class reasonable then it might be one of their few counterexamples. Just be wary.

[The Glyphstone]

And that one's....incredibly lackluster. They couldn't even invent any new abilities (or spellcheck), they just took Bardic Music with new names and gave it to the Fighter while ripping out its bonus feats. It's not overpowered, at least.

[mabriss lethe]

Might I suggest a warblade/bard? They're pretty fun.

Also, Marshal is fairly good for judicious dipping, but no more than that.

[Dusk Eclipse]

A white-raven centirc Crusader might be interesting... if not I think I say a ToB rework of the Marshal.. I will try to find a link

[Eldariel]

I can help. But really, the class exists already and it's called Crusader. There's your martial commander right there. You can also take 3-4 levels of Bard along with Song of the White Raven and stack full Inspire Courage on top of that (take Perform: Oratory so it's basically commanding presence or so). And 2-3 levels of the normal Marshal if you feel so inclined for couple of minor auras (which are awesome) and a major aura (which is lackluster).

But Crusader gives you White Raven which boosts allies in various ways, and Devoted Spirit which has some teamwork related maneuvers, and martial prowess. Warblade works too if you want a more martial, less paladinish feel; loses Devoted Spirit, gains more disciples for just being a badass warrior. No Cha-synergy tho but it's rather minor with Crusader too. Warblade, on the other hand, has good Int synergy.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Thanks for the link eldariel, I tried to find it, but my google-fu is specially weak today.

[Elfstone]

I was thinking along exactly those lines; a ToB crusader/marshall. How ever I could only find a few classes that were homebrew and none of them really worked. Thanks for the link, I will check it out, I think I would go Crusader with a few lvs of warblade (they have some nice abilities but non that are geared towards buffing.

[Shyftir]

Might dip dragon shaman for more another potential aura.

[Elfstone]

Thats brilliant.. Since the starting lv is 8 maybe, Dragon shaman 1/Crusader 4/Bard 3? All I need to do now, is decide on feats


Oh and, somehow my computer will not view the thread your link sent me to Eldariel. Or even any of the WoTC forums now... Weird.

[herrhauptmann]

Oh gods D&Dwiki the horror the horror...

HEY! There's nothing wrong with D&D wiki!
A while ago I saw a build for an ultimate archer type. Halfling Fighter 2, rapid shot, a mighty composit bow, lots of arrows, and greater bracers of archery. The author said it would be able to kill a balor if the player was able to hide in some hole that was too deep for the balor to reach with it's whip, and too small for the balor to crawl into.

I mean, nevermind that a level 2 character can't afford the bracers, or the balor would have to spend its time just trying to hit the archer with direct attacks rather than using dominate, or any of its other SLAs.

[The Glyphstone]

HEY! There's nothing wrong with D&D wiki!
A while ago I saw a build for an ultimate archer type. Halfling Fighter 2, rapid shot, a mighty composit bow, lots of arrows, and greater bracers of archery. The author said it would be able to kill a balor if the player was able to hide in some hole that was too deep for the balor to reach with it's whip, and too small for the balor to crawl into.

I mean, nevermind that a level 2 character can't afford the bracers, or the balor would have to spend its time just trying to hit the archer with direct attacks rather than using dominate, or any of its other SLAs.

Please don't scare me like this. :)

[HunterOfJello]

Crusader with the Leadership feat and possibly a Marshall dip.

[Eldariel]

HEY! There's nothing wrong with D&D wiki!
A while ago I saw a build for an ultimate archer type. Halfling Fighter 2, rapid shot, a mighty composit bow, lots of arrows, and greater bracers of archery. The author said it would be able to kill a balor if the player was able to hide in some hole that was too deep for the balor to reach with it's whip, and too small for the balor to crawl into.

I mean, nevermind that a level 2 character can't afford the bracers, or the balor would have to spend its time just trying to hit the archer with direct attacks rather than using dominate, or any of its other SLAs.

Or the fact that he can't deal damage to a Balor due to DR. Durr.

[AslanCross]

Or the fact that he can't deal damage to a Balor due to DR. Durr.

Or that the Balor could just use its Spell-like abilities to turn the character into mush?

[herrhauptmann]

Please don't scare me like this. :)

I wish I was joking.

Or the fact that he can't deal damage to a Balor due to DR. Durr.

Of course he can damage it. He just needs a crit. So 1 in 20 is a crit threat, and 1 in 20 crit threats is confirmed. So 1 in 400 arrows will successfully deal a crit.
He only needs 16 to bypass DR and actually deal damage. With a Might +2 bow, he can make that quite regularly, on a crit. I figure about 50% of the time.
But getting the crits is important, so he has rapid shot. About once every 200 rounds he'll get that crit, dealing 1-9 points of damage, or an average of 5. Since a Balor only has 290 hitpoints, that's only 58 crits. So 23200 attacks, or 11600 rounds. That's 1160 minutes, or 19.3 hours

For a few weeks, I'd hit the D&D wiki every 2 or 3 days, find and remove these builds, or if they were especially hilarious, explaining why they were so bad. But I got bored, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

[Arbane]

Or the Balor could just plug up the hole with something.

[Eldariel]

I wish I was joking.

Of course he can damage it. He just needs a crit. So 1 in 20 is a crit threat, and 1 in 20 crit threats is confirmed. So 1 in 400 arrows will successfully deal a crit.
He only needs 16 to bypass DR and actually deal damage. With a Might +2 bow, he can make that quite regularly, on a crit. I figure about 50% of the time.
But getting the crits is important, so he has rapid shot. About once every 200 rounds he'll get that crit, dealing 1-9 points of damage, or an average of 5. Since a Balor only has 290 hitpoints, that's only 58 crits. So 23200 attacks, or 11600 rounds. That's 1160 minutes, or 19.3 hours

For a few weeks, I'd hit the D&D wiki every 2 or 3 days, find and remove these builds, or if they were especially hilarious, explaining why they were so bad. But I got bored, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Oh yeah, x3. Durr. Don't forget tho, Halfling; 1d6 bows. So with +2 Str bow, you get (1d6+2)*3 or 16.5 average. So...yeah, you just barely scratch it on average crit. .5 damage; so you only need ~580 crits to kill it.

[herrhauptmann]

Oh yeah, x3. Durr. Don't forget tho, Halfling; 1d6 bows. So with +2 Str bow, you get (1d6+2)*3 or 16.5 average. So...yeah, you just barely scratch it on average crit. .5 damage; so you only need ~580 crits to kill it.

Meh, even with my math error, it provides a good example of why the wiki is bad. Rather than shouting "D&D wiki bloweth mightily!"