Min/Max Boards

With 290 hp your going to need at least 2 attacks of 160 points of damage each.  And its not that hard to hit a Balor.  In a recent adventure our party encountered a level 35 CR whose AC was 52 (My toon was the best melee fighter in the bunch with 5 attacks starting at +44) and our easy solution to this was have the cleric cast brilliant weapon on us.  So just use a Brilliant weapon and ignore all that armor. 

Now just figure out how to 160 points of damage on an attack and you're golden. 

Its kinda funny this thread came up as our party is facing a Pit Fiend this weekend. 

While Wish/Miracle are extremely powerful the true balance point of these spells is the DM.  I'm not sure about the rest of the gaming community, but we almost fear using these spells and try to find an alternate way of getting what we want as there are hundreds of things that can go wrong.  "I wish for a scroll of Wish"  Poof there's a Devil in front of you with a scroll and a faustian pact ready to sign.  I ask my diety for a miracle that we win this battle and he sends a few solars to tip the scales only to find out these solars want us to join with them in exchange for their help and now we are stuck on some Geas/quest that will probably kill at least half the party on some other plane trying to rescue one of their bretheren. 

In 5 years we've used 1 Wish spell and that was only to undo a Limited Wish spell the archvillain of our campaign used on my character in one campaign and even then it took us nearly an hour of Communing with deities, player discussions, and very careful wording and even then we were surprised it worked with no ill consequenses. 

I'd say if you're "casually" using Wish/Limited wish/Miracle that you need a new set of rules just for them, then the DM should remove them from the game. 

RKV is a gish prestige class, not for tanks. As a tank, you're pigeonholing yourself into an ineffective role.

That being said, if you want to tank you'll want the deepwarden prestige class. Races of Stone, I believe.

The Kusari-Gama is a bad weapon, because you can't PA with it. There's a one handed reach weapon from ...fuck, Secrets of Sarlona? Is it the Spinning Sword? Something like that.

Oh for fuck's sake. I just read your feats. Goddamnit, you're doing it wrong. If you're going to be a tank, you have to give the enemy a reason to even pay attention to you. Hitting for 1d8 +9, you might as well be smiling and offering them blowjobs as they walk past you on their way to the real threat, the fucking wizard.

You need to look at the lockdown threads. They're in the Handbooks section. Here: http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=399.0

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19856162/A_little_Lock_build_for_you...?pg=1 {Old, but good reading}

I can't seem to find the lockdown handbooks within 5 minutes, so fuck it, go find it yourself, or maybe someone here will offer up a link.

Basically, if you can't force the enemy to pay attention to you through tripping, standstill, knockback, fear or some other method, you're fucking doing it wrong. 1d8 +9 is pathetic base damage at level 13, hell, at level 6, and your maneuvers aren't going to offset that by themselves. You can't power attack, you have no Hood tech, no lockdown... You're a fucking hireling, right now. A Town Guard, at best.

Thanks for the "constructive" criticism...i think

I can change this guy 15 different ways.  I went with a shield for the "traditional" feel.  I can easily scrap the feats and take fighter progression feats and slap a Huge sized +2 Impact Greathammer on this guy and dish out 4d6++13 or more damage with 17-20x4 crits (Jovian for 3d6 +13 15-20x2 crits) but I give up reach and AoO to do some of that so I went with this weapon from a recommendation of a friend and its also noted in at least one of those handbooks (which all 3 have a different idea of what is good)  Add in PA and the damage is even higher.  But I tried not to just a build a "fighter".  I could have easily done that. 

And that spinning sword thing I would say is worse than the Kasuri-Gama as you get no STR bonus so are forced to you use PA thus making all your attacks much less effective to do the same damage. 

Also coming late to the party so I didnt' read all 10 pages of posts. 

But why all the hate for fighters?  From what I"ve read most people seem to think they are absolutly useless and those couple of pages should be just torn out of the PHB.  I've seen stuff about not doing much damage but fighters can do a lot of damage.  with 5 attacks per round from Speed or haste its very easy to kill lots of monsters thrown at you in the second round even if you only get one attack on the first.  Yeah you can build a crappy one but If you're going to build a good fighter that does damage its easy to hit for 40 or 50 points of damage per attack with no problems.  at 5 attacks per round that's 200 -250 points of damage not counting crits or AoO which can push this number over 1000 points of damage per round.  I've yet to see a caster have any spell that can do that much damage.  Yes even against undead, constructs, plants and oozes with a few pieces of relatively cheap gear.  And the fighter has feats leftover for controlling the area he is in or gaining some DR for staying power. 


Are fighters the greatest thing since sliced bread and the wheel?  no but give em some credit at least. 

Hmmm...well most of your post is really detailed so I'm just going to focus on the section "Thing's I'd like" and offer some suggestions as I'm not real familair with some of the classes you want to go with or their rules.
 
The main question I have is what is the main thing you want this character to do?

Crusader is great and more is better to a point.  16 levels is about the max you want to go and I'd even say 14 is enough but it looks like you're not going to get anywhere near that as you've multiclassed a lot.  Don't go with Master of Nine as it is hugely intensive for the benefits which are mainly more manuevers known but suck up nearly all your resources to get there.  Ruby Vindicator is great and I've heard great things about it. 

Getting bigger isn't hard.  Enlarge person works great.  There are also a few magic items in the MIC that give you this ability a few times per day that are really cheap. (a pair of bracers of some kind)

When you say extra movement do you mean an extra action or increased speed?  Boots of speed give you haste for 10 rounds/day and Boots of Striding and Springing double your speed.  There's also a feat that increases your speed by 10ft.  And a few other magic items that give Haste a number of times per day as well in the MIC. 

AoO:  Thicket of Blades is probably the best stance for a crusader.  Also some feats that grant AoO are:

Mage slayer (Com Arc) casters can't cast defensively so if they try and cast you get an AoO but you lose 4 spellcasting levels so probably not great for your build
Defensive Sweep  (PHB2)  Adjacent foes that you threaten that don't move during their turn provoke AoO
Supernatural Insticts (fiend codex 2)  anytime a foe you threaten uses a supernatural ability it provokes an AoO

Also look up Countersrike Bracers in the MIC.  You get an AoO twice per day in excess of your maximum whenever a foe misses you as an immediate action

The Kasuri-Gama weapon from the DMG is nice for reach and tripping or just reach.  Its even 1h so you can still use a shield. 

ToB manuevers and stances aren't too hard to understand and master.  Its just different kinds and a lot of reading.  Look at stuff that is useful for your campaign and your build and that compliments other abililites you have.  But yes it is probably the most difficult book to understand (IMO) as it uses somewhat different rules than everything else but its also one of the funnest books to use and play characters from. 

Also no matter what path you end up going with you want 9th level manuevers.  These are insanely powerful IMO.  Tiger claw for example gives you Feral Death Blow that if you hit your foe dies instantly or saves for 20d6 damage and the save is 19+STR mod so it can be quite high.  Other disciplines also have strikes that do massive damage or for Crusader grant you or allies the Heal spell. 

While much of this is probably general advice I hope at least something here was useful and good luck!

 

Well my first suggestion is to get a copy of Fiendish Codex 2 if you don't already have one.  It has a few sample encounters for each level of hell  at the end of their respective descriptions and also what types of Devils each level contains usually. 

Second this sounds like an awesome idea so kudos for what looks like a cool "campaign" 

Next question is what level do you plan your PC(s) to be at each level?  Is this a level 6 thing all the way down?  And I apologize but I'm not famaliar with the term E6 so if I ask a bunch of dumb questions due to ignorance just fill me in. 

Where is this PC going to get new magic items or are they already provided?  Can they leave hell?

So they get a "wish" if they win?  Like the spell?  After all they just basically made a Faustian pact with a devil and usually that means they are going to lose their soul in the end for this.  Some devils would simply bypass the whole "game show" and just grant the wish and then somehow use it against the PC to kill them and take their soul.  Although this probably would be quite entertaining for them and odds are they wouldnt' have to grant as many wishes in the end.  Just keep in mind Devils are basically the masters of Law and know ins and outs of contracts and are well versed in this area having done it since before hell was formed.  (a contract between Asmodeus and the gods of Celestia is actually how Hell was formed and much to these "good" gods chagrin, Asmodeus was much smarter and better at contracts and law then even them and still continues to be winning almost every contract dispute between the two realms). 

As for your main question its hard to say.  Based on what I"ve read and heard about the "teir" system of character catagorization a Wizard or Cleric who is quite creative and well prepared may be able to handle CRs of his own level or even higher.  Other classes may due fine against CRs of their level or a little lower while some classes will be utterly slaughtered.  I'd say start low and you can always raise the CR of the encounter based on how well the character does and if you see you pushed too hard just nerf your rolls or the abilities of that encounter a little till you can adjust it accordingly on the next one.  For example most people consider a Gestalt campaign EL to be +2 or 3 higher than average party level appropriate.  Our party though can easily do this with no problem and for it to really be a challenge the EL typically needs to be almost imposible to overcome normally (+8 CR or higher than average party level) with one of our last big encounters being 16 levels higher than the party (we were 19 and the monster was CR 35).  So while its not a great answer maybe its helpful?

Check out these feats for more AoO

Mage Slayer (ComArc)  Can't cast defensively but knows it on things you threaten
Defensive Sweep (PHB2)  Adjacent foes that don't move away during their turn provoke AoO
Supernatural Insticts (Fiend Cod 2)  If foe you threaten uses Supernatural ability you get AoO

Hey all.  First off any help is greatly appreciated.  This toon isn't perfect but I'm hoping he is "good" to start with.  I'd like to make him "great" though and with your expert knowledge I'm sure that can be obtained. 

The toon in question is a Crusader (ToB).  Its a straight 12 level build designed to use 1h reach weapon and shield and to be the brunt of the attacks against for all of the big bad guys he will have to fight so that the less durable types can do what they do best and not take the beating this guy will.  He also would like to take advantage of Attacks of Opportunity as much as possible (at least that's how he is currently built) as part of his strategy since he doesn't do a huge amount of weapon damage. 

I threw him together over the course of about 4 hours so I'm sure there are some mistakes but I dont' think they are critical ones so if you see them feel free to just let me know and I will do my best to correct them ASAP. 

Standard PHB Races

Ability scores start out with an average of 14 with nothing lower than 10 and only one 18 before adjustments.

Printed WotC sourced allowed and in case of duplicatation of 3.0 and 3.5 use 3.5 otherwise as printed in original source unless DM specifically rejects on case by case basis.

I dont' know what other classes will be played but its a party of 4 counting me. 

HP can be maxed every level with xp buy (so assume maxed HP every level).

We don't track weight as its just a headache.

I'm not sure what else you might need to know so just ask and I'll answer. 

Here's the link to the character sheet.  Some things that aren't crucial are left blank such as item weight, looks, ect.  Right now I'm worried about functional as the person wont' change. 

http://www.thetangledweb.net/forums/profiler/view_char.php?cid=54694


I'm fairly knowledgable but don't know everything so if you would be so kind as if you have a suggestion as a feat, item, ability, or other change to also list what book its in so I can look it up (I think I have all the non campaign specific WotC books). 

Thank you all very much for your knowledge and wisdom.  Any questions you have please feel free to ask.