Author Topic: Anti-Natural weapons  (Read 2055 times)

Offline Xelights

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Anti-Natural weapons
« on: August 31, 2014, 10:10:52 AM »
Hello lovely people,

I am currently participating in a rockhard D&D 3.5 campaign where most enemies are nonhumanoid or undead.
The GM has suggested we minmax our next characters in an attempt to beat this campaign.

Besides the normal holy wiffwaff against undead creatures that the other players are going with, A bigger simularity between almost all of the enemies is that they almost all use some sort of natural weapon attacks. It might be interesting to design a character specifically to counter natural weapons.

I am looking for magical items, spells and feats in particular that counter natural weapons.

Core & Supplementals 3.5
pointbuy 32 Character level 6 & starting gold 13k, allowed to purchase any magical item with it.

Thanks in advance!

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Anti-Natural weapons
« Reply #1 on: August 31, 2014, 12:44:24 PM »
There are quite a lot of effects that damage or otherwise harm anyone who hits you with natural weapons, like the spell Balor's Nimbus. Many of them are pretty low level and/or personal (and so can be made Persistent). So I'd suggest making a DMM: Persistent Cleric. You can also use your 1 or 2 "leftover" Turns/Rebukes to actually Turn/Rebuke undead (or dragons, elementals, etc, depending on your domains). :D
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Offline Maat Mons

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Re: Anti-Natural weapons
« Reply #2 on: August 31, 2014, 04:06:38 PM »
Natural attacks generally can't overcome material-based DR.  Mineral warrior (Underdark, p97) could be good then.  That gives you DR 8/adamantine for +1 LA. 

Pitspawn armor (Dungeon Master's Guide II, p278) deals 1 point of damage to anyone who strikes you with a melee weapon.  It costs +600 gp.  Interestingly, the damage bypasses all DR. 

Hamatula barbs (Planar Handbook, p78) deal 1d8 damage to anyone striking you (except with reach weapons).  It costs +2 to the effective armor bonus. 

A lightning tunic (Magic Item Compendium, p114) doesn't function continuously, but it could deal 2d6 electricity damage to attackers much of the time. 

Offline faeryn

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Re: Anti-Natural weapons
« Reply #3 on: August 31, 2014, 09:59:04 PM »
Based on the previous 2 posts it would appear your best options for countering Natural Attacks is to just build to harm non-reach melee attackers....

This would leave you open to Breath, Gaze, and other ranged sources of Natural Attacks though... Energy resistances would counter most breath and some gaze attacks...

Honestly... I don't think there really is anything you can do to specifically counter natural attacks... You could however, if you know what type of enemies you'll encounter a lot, grab a level or more in Ranger and select that enemy type as your favored enemy... see if your DM will let you take a broad classification for favored enemy such as "Beast" rather than specifying a type of Beast to reduce the number of ranger levels you'd need.

There's a selection of Feats to improve the functionality of Favored Enemy as well. Including one that imposes a save-or-die effect on favored enemies that you Sneak Attack. And another one that reduces your target to a single Move or Standard action if they fail a save after you deal 1 or more points of damage to them.

If you have the feats to spare as well then you can just take the feat Extra Favored Enemy multiple times rather than continue levels in ranger.

Offline zook1shoe

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Re: Anti-Natural weapons
« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2014, 11:49:33 PM »
Large and In Charge and a ghost touch reach weapon could keep nearly every undead baddie out of normal reach, and thus immune to natural weapons
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