Please Help Me With My Necromantic Swashbuckler

[Empirate]

I'll suggest something different.

Divine casters have a much, much easier time doing a number with necromancy than (most) arcane casters: they get Rebuke Undead, they get Desecrate, they get to use an Inflict Light Wounds wand or cast Harm, later on. Dread Necromancers can do these things (not Desecrate unless you fiddle around a bit), but they're straight up worse for versatility.

Swashbucklers are basically just tricky, flashy warrior types. No need to use the class of the same name, which incidentally doesn't really allow you to do cool, flashy things anyway. But what class does? Initiators do, and Swordsages are the swashiest of those.

Now it's time to mix and match:

Swordsage 2/Cleric 2/Crusader 1/Ruby Knight Vindicator 10/[full divine caster] 5.

Focusing RKV on Swordsage maneuver progression, you get all kinds of neat, swashbuckler-y stuff to do in combat, BAB 16 (full BAB with Divine Power, of course), and 8th level divine spells, with some nice Wis synergy tacked on for good measure. Practiced Spellcaster bumps your CL up to 20. Corpsecrafter feat line makes your undead minions powerful. White Raven maneuvers can be cherrypicked to help your pale buddies in combat, while not detracting from your own actions. Mix RKV levels with [full divine caster] levels to get the maneuvers you want at the levels you want. Burn turn/rebuke undead uses to fuel swift actions and get your most-beloved maneuvers back, nullifying the Swordsage's weak points. All in all, quite a measure of goodness, if not totally optimized.


See? You don't have to suck moose testicles with three levels of Swashbuckler, just to 'build to a concept'.

[SleepyShadow]

You, good sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. I am definitely using this, thank you very much Empirate.

[mechatarrasque]

I'll suggest something different.

Divine casters have a much, much easier time doing a number with necromancy than (most) arcane casters: they get Rebuke Undead, they get Desecrate, they get to use an Inflict Light Wounds wand or cast Harm, later on. Dread Necromancers can do these things (not Desecrate unless you fiddle around a bit), but they're straight up worse for versatility.

Swashbucklers are basically just tricky, flashy warrior types. No need to use the class of the same name, which incidentally doesn't really allow you to do cool, flashy things anyway. But what class does? Initiators do, and Swordsages are the swashiest of those.

Now it's time to mix and match:

Swordsage 2/Cleric 2/Crusader 1/Ruby Knight Vindicator 10/[full divine caster] 5.

Focusing RKV on Swordsage maneuver progression, you get all kinds of neat, swashbuckler-y stuff to do in combat, BAB 16 (full BAB with Divine Power, of course), and 8th level divine spells, with some nice Wis synergy tacked on for good measure. Practiced Spellcaster bumps your CL up to 20. Corpsecrafter feat line makes your undead minions powerful. White Raven maneuvers can be cherrypicked to help your pale buddies in combat, while not detracting from your own actions. Mix RKV levels with [full divine caster] levels to get the maneuvers you want at the levels you want. Burn turn/rebuke undead uses to fuel swift actions and get your most-beloved maneuvers back, nullifying the Swordsage's weak points. All in all, quite a measure of goodness, if not totally optimized.


See? You don't have to suck moose testicles with three levels of Swashbuckler, just to 'build to a concept'.

im counting your CL as 15, with practiced is 19... what am i missing?

[Empirate]

What you're missing is that I obviously miscalculated. Duh!

 

[SleepyShadow]

That's alright. I still like your idea. Does anyone have any recommendations for the unidentified divine casting class? I was thinking perhaps Master of Shrouds.

[Empirate]

Master of Shrouds is a decent PrC that can be quite powerful at the beginning of your career. But you either have to put off RKV goodness by a good deal if you try to enter MoS early, or your MoS summonses won't be that useful if you enter it later on. I'd rather just take something that's a generally nice divine caster - Divine Disciple for the bonus domain, or Contemplative for the same reason. Divine Oracle gives some defensive bonuses that come rather late, but is still an OK PrC to consider.

Hmm, you'd probably be able to go Contemplative 1/Divine Disciple 4 to top off the build, and snag two bonus domains, albeit late.

[Billy]

how about a swiftblade?

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=333

there is a handbook and everything

[Empirate]

There's always a handbook.