Orko, He-Man & Battlecat (a Dragon Fire Mount's Ubermout and it's Ubermount)

[Gruftzwerg]

Welcome to my newest build showcase. After having released a warlock's ubermount build it's now time to showcase a Dragonfire Adept's ubermount build. For that we have some prominence from Enternia over here. And all of em serve as a mount (Orko's rider is an invisible Imp familiar). He-man will ride Battlecat, while being ridden by Orko. And Orko's familiar is riding him. So expect a lot of silliness going on in this triple ubercharger build.

That being said, expect that He-man will attempt to become the strongest human shaped creature there is (dunno if I really hit the record here. let me know if there is any higher STR build in humanoid form out there)

As always, beware of the optimization level and talk to your DM before attempting to play this build. Once the build unfolds, the dmg output is really broken (we are talking about 3 uberchargers here).

Orko's stats:

Race: Human

Region: Cormyr (for regional feat)

Alignment: L-N (for the Imp familiar)

STR: 14 (+5 Wish; + 6 item = 25max)
DEX: 14
CON: 16 (+2 Human Paragon; +5 lvlUp; +5 Wish; +6 item = 34 max)
INT: 10
WIS: 14
CHA: 10

DFA 4 / Human Paragon 3 / Fighter 1 / Waverider 1 / Windrider 10 / Warblade 1

Winrider conversion to 3.5:
The "Appraise Mount" and "Mount Proficiency" abilities can't be replicated in 3.5.
The former because we have standardized stats for mounts/monsters.
The latter, because you don't designate a mount to your Ride skill anymore. There are no penalties for "similar mounts" and "dissimilar mounts" anymore. Sole the +2 Competence bonus to avoid being unseated prevails.
Finally, everybody can now ride unusual mounts (note: not unfamiliar mounts!). You just need to take a -5 penalty on your ride check for that.

Spoiler: Orko's Table

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LVL	Class	BAB	For	Ref	Wil	Skills * = cross class	Feats	Features
1st	Human Paragon	+0	+0	+0	+2	Concentration: 4 Handle Animal: 4 Knowledge (Nature): 4 Ride: 4 UMD: 4	Wild Cohort *Saddleback*	Wild Cohort: Heavy Horse Adaptive Learning: UMD *Human Bonus Feat*
2nd	DFA	+0	+2	+0	+4	Handle Animal: 5 Knowledge (Nature): 5 Ride: 5* (+2) UMD: 5		Breath Weapon 1d6 Dragontouched Endure Exposure
3rd	DFA	+1	+3	+0	+5	Handle Animal: 6 Knowledge (Nature): 6 Ride: 6* (+2) UMD: 6	Mounted Combat	Breath Effect: Frost Breath Scales +2
4th	DFA	+1	+3	+1	+5	Handle Animal: 7 Knowledge (Nature): 7 Ride: 7* (+2) UMD: 7		Breath Weapon 2d6 Detect Magic
5th	DFA	+2	+4	+1	+6	Handle Animal: 8 Knowledge (Nature): 8 Ride: 8* (+2) UMD: 8		Dragonkin
6th	Human Paragon	+3	+4	+1	+7	Concentration: 5 Handle Animal: 9 Knowledge (Nature): 9 Ride: 9 UMD: 9	*Obtain Familiar* (--) Improved Familiar (--)	*Bonus Feat* Breath Weapon 3d6
7th	Human Paragon	+4	+5	+2	+7	Concentration: 6 Handle Animal: 10 Knowledge (Nature): 10 Ride: 10 UMD: 10		Ability Score Bonus: +2 CON Humanoid Shape Summon Familiar: Imp Wild Cohort: Fleshraker
8th	Fighter ACF: Dragonscale Husk ACF: Exotic Shield	+5	+7	+2	+7	Handle Animal: 11 Ride: 11 UMD: 11	Mounted Archery	*Fighter Bonus Feat* Draconscale Husk Exotic Shield: Rider's Shield
9th	Waverider	+6	+9	+2	+9	Handle Animal: 12 Ride: 12 UMD: 12	Bounded Familiar	Waverider Mount: Whale (Cachalot Whale) Mounted Weapon Bonus +1 (trident) Trident Charge
10th	Windrider	+7	+11	+2	+11	Handle Animal: 13 Ride: 13 UMD: 13		Chosen Mount: (our waverider mount) Empathic Link Mount Proficiency Wild Cohort: Tiger
11th	Windrider	+8	+12	+2	+12	Handle Animal: 14 Ride: 14 UMD: 14		Mount Assistance Mount Feat 1
12th	Windrider	+9	+12	+3	+12	Handle Animal: 15 Ride: 15 UMD: 15	Tremendous Charge *Power Attack*	*Bonus Feat* Mount Healing
13th	Warblade	+10	+14	+3	+12	Concentration: 8 (+2) Handle Animal: 16 Ride: 16 UMD: 16		Battle clarity (Reflex saves) Weapon Aptitude Stance: Leading the Charge Maneuvers: Steel Wind Iron Heart Surge Mithral Tornado
14th	Windrider	+11	+15	+3	+13	Handle Animal: 17 Ride: 17 UMD: 17
15th	Windrider	+12	+15	+3	+13	Handle Animal: 18 Ride: 18 UMD: 18	Cleave	Mount Feat 2 Mount Friendship
16th	Windrider	+13	+16	+4	+14	Handle Animal: 19 Ride: 19 UMD: 19
17th	Windrider	+14	+16	+4	+14	Handle Animal: 20 Ride: 20 UMD: 20	*Combat Reflexes*	*Bonus Feat* Mount Link
18th	Windrider	+15	+17	+4	+15	Handle Animal: 21 Ride: 21 UMD: 21	Greater Cleave
19th	Windrider	+16	+17	+5	+15	Handle Animal: 22 Ride: 22 UMD: 22		Mount Feat 3 Mount Luck
20th	Windrider	+17	+18	+5	+16	Handle Animal: 23 Ride: 23 UMD: 23

Spoiler: Warbeast template

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This template can be added with some time and gold investment (via Handle Animal) to Cringer and Adam. Regarding the time.. Note that due to Orko using his wild cohort and special mount, they don't need to be reared, sole trained. The sole lil problem here is the Handle Animal DC (25+HD for Magical Beasts like He-man). Even at lvl 9 that is a DC of 39. For that we will abuse a scroll/wand of Guidance of the Avatar (+20 to a single skill roll): take 10 + 12 ranks + 20 = 42

The template gives some nice stuff:
* Proficiency with light, medium and heavy armor: gives the needed protection without wasting feats.
* gives the rider a +2 circumstance bonus on all Ride checks
* +10 speed: always nice for ubercharger builds
* +1 HD: improves the feat and skill progression.
* +3 STR & CON: He-man and Cringer both welcome this lil untyped bonus.
* +2 WIS: He-man may not be the brightest one (max INT:9) but always has some wise words for the end of the episode (base WIS 14 +2 = 16 max). This is especially true for Cringer (INT:2; WIS: 12 +2 = 14 max).

Spoiler: Animal Cohort: Cringer aka Battlecat

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We start out with a simple Heavy Horse to have a mount for our medium sized human. At lvl 7 we can exchange it to a Fleshraker and ride it as a Kobold (Humanoid Shape).
Finally at lvl 10 we exchange it a last time to get a tiger. With a tiger we have a -9 effective lvl penalty for its progression. Thus it gets up to +5HD, +2 STR, +5NA and Evasion.
We will also add the Warbeast template via Handle Animal to him. The most important things here are the +1HD and the +3 STR.
This gives the tiger 2 ability score increases and 2 feats from the additional HD.
Battlecat now has up to 28 STR (23 +2 +3) without gear.
As feats we will pick Tunnel Fighting first to be able to fight in tight spaces without penalty (e.g inside of buildings). With the other we take Martial Study: Wolf Fang Strike. The latter is sole to access "Sudden Leap" via Tiger Claw Bracers (see items). That allows for a single swift action jump per encounter. As the main mount this is a very nice ability to have, even if it comes very late.
Invest all skillpoints into jump (1 / bonus HD = +6 ranks max).

Spoiler: Waverider's Mount: Adam aka He-man

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We pick a Cachalot Whale as base animal here and name it Adam (turns into a Magical Beast!). Note that the waverider mount allows SLA to be shared (which is special compared to how share spell works for familiars and animal companions). This allows Orko to share Humanoid Shape with Adam to transform him into a Human (He-man). Note that Humanoid Shape keeps your ability scores. Since Adam's/He-man's progression is a bit overloaded, I made a separate table for him. (you can also have a separate Humanoid Shape for "Adam" if you want the fluff to be able to switch between him and He-man).

CLVL = Orko's character lvl
A. HD = Adam's total HD, 12 base and +1 from Warbeast (Note: as magical beast HD = BAB)
STR = Strength total; 35 base +3 from the Warbeast template
AC = Adam's Armor Class total in humanoid form (includes +1 DEX)
Waverider total bonuses
Windrider total bonuses
Ability Score increases from HD is also totaled to keep the same format
* = Mount Bonus Feat from Windrider

CLVL	A. HD	Feats	Features	STR	AC
9	15	Weapon Prodiency: Bastard Sword	+2 STR; +2HD; +2NA; INT:6 Improved Evasion Share Spells Eempathic Link Share Saving Throws	40	13
10	17		+2 STR; +2HD; +4NA +1 STR @ 16HD	43	17
11-13	19	Mounted Combat *Power Attack*	+3 STR; +4HD; +4NA; INT:7 Speak with creatures of its kind	44	19
14	21	Cleave	+2 STR; +4HD; +6NA +2 STR @ 20 HD	45	21
15-16	23	*Close Quater Fighting*	+4 STR; +6HD; +5NA; INT:8 Fast Movement	46	22
17-18	25	Gr. Cleave	+4 STR; +6HD; +8NA +3 STR @ 24 HD	49	24
19	27	*Combat Reflexes*	+6 STR; +8HD; +6NA; INT:9 Spell Resistance	51	25
20	29	Spirited Charge	+4 STR; +8HD; +10NA +4 STR @ 28 HD	52	27

Adam's He-man's Skills:
The main skill to push is Ride to defend Battlecat from attacks. (+17 ranks)

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Spoiler: LVL 1-6

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We start out as a simple horseman with some natural affinity to using magic items (UMD is a class skill for all classes).
Saddleback allows to always take-10 for Ride checks. But the real deal is that every round we can reroll a failed Reflex save with a Ride roll for either one or both (Orko & his mount).
Soon Orko unlocks his draconic breath weapon. Endure Exposure protects his allies from his breath. Detect Magic and Identify at will are always handy. Mounted Combat allows Orko to make a Ride check once per turn to avoid a melee attack against his mount.

Spoiler: LVL 7 & 8

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We exchange the horse temporary for a fleshraker. To be able to ride it, we will turn into a Kobold via Humanoid Shape. Finally we summon an Imp as familiar. It will serve as rider for Orko (note the shared skill ranks for familiars). For the meanwhile this will be our combat formation.

Dragonscale Husk provides Orko with a nice armor bonus (counts as medium armor, but doesn't have any arcane spell failure %). It starts with a +6 armor bonus, which increases up to +10 on the later leves. It also provides up to 10 resistance against acid, cold, electricity, and fire at later levels. Pick blue dragon for your scale color to match Orko's skin color.

With a Rider's Shield Orko can share his shield bonus with his mount.

Spoiler: LVL 9-12

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We get a Cachalot Whale as a new mount and name it Adam. With Humanoid Shape we can compress his stats unchanged into a humanoid form. As He-man he sole wields a Bastard Sword (if you wanna ignore the full and go for power, pick a lance instead).

The fleshrake gets now exchanged to a tiger. Cringer/Battlecat can now serve as mount for He-man.

With Tremendous Charge Orko can abuse He-Man's super high STR modifier for his dmg rolls with a lance on a mounted charge.

Bounded Familiar is a nice defensive option. 1/day you can save your familiar from dying to HP dmg by taking it instead. And the familiar can do the same for Orko 1/day.

Spoiler: LVL 13-20

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We get a small but very nice selection of maneuvers for Orko.
Iron Heart Surge is a nice panic button and is just priceless.
Both Steel Wind and Mithral Tornado are standard actions that can be used during a mounted charge. Note that the mount uses the charge action and that the rider sole counts as charging. The rider can spend his actions as he wants and still count as charging. Thus these maneuvers can be excecuted during a mounted charge. Steel Wind allows to attack 2 enemies at full BAB and Mithral Tornado all enemies around you. Note that neither one excludes itself from Cleave procs (like the Whirlwind feat would do as example). Kill the squishy enemies first and stack all cleave attacks on the biggy for the total overkill.

And while we are at Cleave, both He-man and Orko get Greater Cleave. This will ensure that everything in reach will die.

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Spoiler: Gear/Items

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10 Wish scrolls (for Orko)
Share +5 to STR & CON with He-man and Battle Cat (and even your unnamed Imp familiar if you want).


+6 STR & CON item (for Orko, He-man & Battle Cat)
Together with the insight bonus from wish, He-man can push his STR score to a total possible maximum of 63.
That is a +26 STR modifier and a 2h dmg bonus of +39! Combined with a BAB of +29 He-man should always hit his target. There should still be some room for Power Attack, while still hitting every attack. The CON is nice for the extra HP and Orko's breath DC.


+2 Knight's Sword >> +5 Valorous (He-man)
This is a special bastard sword that deals double damage on a mounted charge. Valorous adds another charge multiplier.
Combined with Spritited Charge and a flying dive, He-man can get up to a x5 charge damage multiplier.


+1 Griffonlance of Goring >> +5 Valorous (Orko)
Buy a Griffonlance of Goring for Orko to get Spirited Charge for free. Improve it to +5 and add the Valorous special ability (another charge multiplier)
Since Tremendous Charge has a minimal chance to destroy the lance (in our case a natural rolled 1 on the save), consider talking to your DM if Riverine or Auroroum as material can bypass that problem. By strict RAW they don't, but the fluff implies they should. Otherwise have a bottomless bag filled with spare lances..^^

+5 Valorous Necklace of Natural Attacks (Battle Cat)
see above


Riding Boots (for Orko & He-man)
Gives +5 competence bonus to Ride and Ride-By-Attack. The extra mobility after a charge is nice. Also provides another charge multiplier with lances. Orko can get up to a x6 multiplier for his lance (lance x2; Spirited Charge x3; Riding Boots x4; Valorous weapon x5; flying dive/charge x6).


Battle Bridle (attached to Orko for his Imp familiar)
Gives the Imp familiar "Mounted Combat" and thus allows it to make Ride checks to avoid a melee attack per turn against Orko. Remind you that Orko shares his skill ranks with his familiar.


Tiger Claw Bracers: Sudden Leap (Battlecat)
These give access to the Sudden Leap maneuver which allows for a swift action jump each encounter. As the main mount in our combo, this is a nice mobility item.


Phoenix Cloak (mainly for Orko but also optional for Battle Cat)
Fly all day with perfect maneuverability. If you buy also one for Cringer, this enables the trio to make diving charge attacks for another charge multiplier.


+5 Full Plate (optional for "Battle Armor He-man" ^^)
Pick any material (mithral/adamantine/..) you like since He-man has sole 13 DEX. Add any amor special abilities you like.


Barding - Mithral Breastplate +5 (Battlecat)
For a tiger it is more like a blackplate I guess^^.


Wands
Besides from "Guidance of the Avatar" pick anything you like. Our invisible Imp familiar can also use these to buff allies while remaining hidden/invisible.


Hat of Many Spells (fluff option for Orko)
Presto's hat from the animated series. It's basically a rod of wonders with some extra gadgets (exchange a prepared spell to one from spellbook and some free meta). The main purpose here is to resemble Orko's mischievous magic.


Crown of the North Wind (alternative optimized hat option for Orko)
Allow Orko to use the secondary effects of some metallic dragons for his own breath (either paralyze, sleep or weakened).

Perl of Speech (Battlecat)
For the fluff. But remind you that the INT:2 is still limiting here.

Final Words

I hope you enjoyed this silly build. He-man can achieve up to 63 STR. Imho a fitting score for the title strongest man of the universe. And the best part is, Orko can abuse the STR too. Add Charge multipliers all over the place and you get some broken damage output.
Battlecat, He-man and Orko can all avoid a melee attack per turn with a Ride check made by the rider. Orko's rider is invisble all day long and doesn't take any offensive actions to remain invisible. Imho a safe combo.
And since CON is the mainstat of the build, Orko and his familiar have some decent HP values. Same goes for He-man with his 29HD.

As always, an update may follow and I would appreciate any kind of feedback. Let me know what you think about the build.

[Chronos]

A couple of slight quibbles:
1: The maneuver that Battlecat takes is called "Sudden Leap", not "Tiger Leap". Also, it has a prerequisite of one Tiger Claw maneuver, so you'll need another Martial Study in there somewhere.

2: This appears to rely on the interpretation that, for shared spells (or spell-like abilities), you can choose different parameters for the recipients (in this case, a Medium form for He-Man, and a Small form for Orko, on Humanoid Shape). Not a big deal, since I think that's the most common interpretation, and I agree with it, but worth mentioning, I think.

3: It looks like Humanoid Shape is the only reason that Dragonfire Adept is in this build. OK, it's a good invocation, and you do get a couple of other utility options from it (basically, Burning Hands and Detect Magic at will), but it feels like kind of a waste to have a class whose primary feature adds basically no power nor flavor. Now, if you found a way to include Fly-By Breath, that would be something.

[Gruftzwerg]

A couple of slight quibbles:
1: The maneuver that Battlecat takes is called "Sudden Leap", not "Tiger Leap". Also, it has a prerequisite of one Tiger Claw maneuver, so you'll need another Martial Study in there somewhere.

2: This appears to rely on the interpretation that, for shared spells (or spell-like abilities), you can choose different parameters for the recipients (in this case, a Medium form for He-Man, and a Small form for Orko, on Humanoid Shape). Not a big deal, since I think that's the most common interpretation, and I agree with it, but worth mentioning, I think.

3: It looks like Humanoid Shape is the only reason that Dragonfire Adept is in this build. OK, it's a good invocation, and you do get a couple of other utility options from it (basically, Burning Hands and Detect Magic at will), but it feels like kind of a waste to have a class whose primary feature adds basically no power nor flavor. Now, if you found a way to include Fly-By Breath, that would be something.

1. Guilty in both cases.. I've taken note for the update. I guess I will move Sudden Leap onto Tiger Claw Bracers and pick another Tiger Claw maneuver to qualify for it.

2. Not really an issue. Since we can cast Humanoid Shape at will, there is no reason to not use separate instances of the ability. This also bypasses the 5ft range limitation that normal sharing has.

3. I've played with the idea to make more use of the DFA at some point, but in the end I did focus on the ubermount part. And yeah, Humanoid Shape is the sole reason for the DFA here. It's a unique ability and I don't know of any other option here. The sole other options are Wild Shape or Polymorph based and thus would overwrite your original stats and we want to avoid that here to keep the high STR of the Whale. And abilities based on Alter Self wouldn't work either here (due to the type limitation). Thus I had to stick to the DFA here.


Thanks for your keen eyes and your feedback :)
I hope you enjoyed the build.

[Chronos]

If you can't do more with DFA, maybe do less? All you really need is one level, plus prestige classes that advance spellcasting. There have to be some good ones available.

Also, I want to commend the use of scrolls of Wish rather than tomes, here: It'd never occurred to me before that you could Share Spells to put the inherent bonus on multiple critters. Very efficient.

Oh, and it strikes me that Battlecat is the weak point in this build. A wild cohort tiger is going to be a lot tougher than, say, an ordinary horse, but still a lot more fragile than the rest of your stack. This is made worse by the fact that he's the only one that looks like a mount, and "target the mount" is a standard tactic. Sure, the Mounted Combatant feat will help, but I don't know if it'd be enough.

[Gruftzwerg]

If you can't do more with DFA, maybe do less? All you really need is one level, plus prestige classes that advance spellcasting. There have to be some good ones available.

Easier said than done..^^

I already did go for 3 Human Paragon levels to fulfill the requirements (+5 BAB, skills).

And as said, I did wanted to focus on the ubermount aspect of the build. Thus 1lvl dip into waverider (for the mount that works with SLA and progresses with character lvl and not prc lvl) and 10 lvls into windrider for the maximum progression for He-man.
This left me with 2 lvls to play with. And one of those lvls needed to be full BAB, so that I could enter my PRC without to much delay (so that it still fits into 20 lvl).
And since the feat slots are already in use, I couldn't find any full bab + casting progression prc that a DFA qualifies for (the DFA has even lesser options than a warlock here.. maybe the main reason why it turned out this way..).

Sadly the build sits very tight and leaves not much room for changes. (Unless you wanna cut on the ubermount aspect).

Also, I want to commend the use of scrolls of Wish rather than tomes, here: It'd never occurred to me before that you could Share Spells to put the inherent bonus on multiple critters. Very efficient.

I always use this combo in my showcases whenever it is possible (familiar, animal cohort, special mount, dvati...).
But to be honest I never got to use the combo in actual play. We barely play at higher lvls and I play very rarely casters.
If you get into the position to make use of it, go for it. A wish scroll barely costs more than the same tome. It saves a lot of money and/or gives your familiar some free stats, depending on your intentions and point of view.

Oh, and it strikes me that Battlecat is the weak point in this build. A wild cohort tiger is going to be a lot tougher than, say, an ordinary horse, but still a lot more fragile than the rest of your stack. This is made worse by the fact that he's the only one that looks like a mount, and "target the mount" is a standard tactic. Sure, the Mounted Combatant feat will help, but I don't know if it'd be enough.

Yeah I know, but this is imho very convenient for several reasons:

1. While the wild cohort rules are silent about this, I assume that you can get a new one withing 24h of prayer like with a normal animal companion.

2. If He-man should die, we have to wait a freaking "year and a day" to get a new one. While he is very beefy with his high CON and higher HD than the rest of the party, anything that draws attention away from him is kinda welcome.

3. We also don't want Orko (your character) or his familiar (loose XP and wait a year..^^) to be focused and killed. Thus Battlecat is the sacrifice token here. (sorry at the battlecat fans out there^^).

Finally, keep in mind that the build is very good at playing rocket tag. Anything in reach will die at the end of a charge. As soon as Orko gets his turn on the very first combat round, there are a lot of enmies going to die, narrowing the odds that the enemy can still prove a threat to him.
Also note that at the time the build gets the tiger, it is still within the lvl range of the party, thus not so weak as one might think. It's the later levels where Battlecat's progression starts to lack. But as that point the build is already a broken ubercharger.

edit: added the "h" for "24h"...^^

[Gruftzwerg]

Update:

1. Moved Sudden Leap onto Tiger Claw Bracers (see items) and took another tiger claw maneuver instead to meet the requirements for it.

2. Added suggestion for a riverine and aurorum lance for Orko, due to Tremendous Charge having the possibility to destroy the lance (on a natural rolled 1 Fortitude save for this build).

3. Changed He-man's sword base into a "Knight's Sword" for another mounted charge multiplier.

4. Added Pearl of Speech for Battlecat.

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Just a bugfix and some minor changes.

I still hope for some more feedback :)