Factotum

[BardicDuelist]

I recently acquired Dungeonscape and Cityscape, and the Factotum class strikes me as very interesting. I assume that it is not high powered (since I don't hear of it a lot on optimization threads), but it looks like a decent class to me.

What "tricks" are there to making a good Factotum? How good can they be? Does their Jack-of-All-Trades nature make them useless (like a bard who doesn't buff and make everyone him his friend?).

[Keld Denar]

You fill a roll of the 5th party member. You are incredibly versitile. You have knowledge skills and can ID monsters and find their weaknesses. You have UMD (never leave home without it) so with a small hoard of scrolls and wands, you are almost as versitile as the wizard and cleric, especially for spells that are either non-level dependant or non-DC dependant. You have Diplomacy, and you can trick it out in the same ways a bard can (synergy, magic items, etc). At low levels, before it gets too too dangerous, you can even pick up a reach weapon (longspears are good), tumble, and provide flanks for the other melees. Your roll will primarily be support, that is the nature of the class.

[Redblade]

Well I have heard it described as a one level dip class. If you take it as your first level and able learner as your first feat it makes every skill a class skill.
There is a bit of cheese you can exploit there.

Some good advice in this thread: http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=791436

[Xefas]

I just got Dungeonscape recently as well, and the general consensus says that one should take Able Learner at first level as a feat, and then, if you're planning on taking more levels of Factotum, take Font of Inspiration at every opportunity afterwards. At least, thats what I gleaned from trips to the CO Wizards boards. Considering Factotums already come equiped with everything you need so long as you have the points to spend, I think I agree.

[Person_Man]

There's an excellent handbook for them right here.

Factotum get 1 extra standard action in a turn each encounter starting at 8th level. So Factotum archers with Manyshot are common. Throw in Splitting Arrows and a Speed weapon, and you quickly get an insane number of ranged attacks. Find a way to deal ability damage with your arrows(Wounding, Psychic Assassin, certain weapons or manuevers) and you can kill almost anything quite quickly. Pick up 1d6 of Sneak Attack and the Staggering Strike feat, and you can Stagger every enemy on the first round, limiting them to a single Move or Standard action, giving your team a huge action advantage.

For the same reason, Factotum do very well with Tome of Battle classes/manuevers, as many of them use a standard action.

At 11th level, you gain the ability to bypass SR and DR. Pick up a Rod of Many Wands, and now you can blow away pretty much anything in 1 round. The DR bypassing trick is also particularly helpful for archer builds, as each arrow tends to have low individual damage.

Their capstone ability allows them any Extraordinary ability up to 15th level three times per day, making Factotum 19 quite playable.