Author Topic: How would you optimize an arcane duelist?  (Read 4540 times)

Offline CE2JRH

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How would you optimize an arcane duelist?
« on: October 17, 2013, 03:16:38 PM »
I'm planning on playing one in an upcomming game. The goal is to be not-awful until level 17 and then ruin a single enemy around. This is mostly a joke build, and the DM knows it.

https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20030224a

I want to enter after level 6, and I want to take the class straight through from there.

For entry, I'm thinking:

Paladin 2/Hexblade 4 provides 2* cha to saves,
But Paladin2/Duskblade 1/Warblade2/Crusader1 can offer the following maneuvers:

Warblade 1: IL: 2.5: Moment of Perfect Mind, Steel Wind, Punishing Stance, one other
Warblade 2: IL: 3.5: Wall of Blades
Crusader 1: IL: 3.5: Shield Block, Crusader's Strike, Mountain Hammer, Stone Vise, and Battle Leader's Charge, or something.

Stats: Cha>>>Str>>>Con>>>Dex>>>Int>>>>Wis
2 Hander, you've got cha to saves + AC and the level 3 power attack loop. It's not good, but does anyone have any better suggestions for a straight entry into Arcane Duelist?

Offline JaronK

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Re: How would you optimize an arcane duelist?
« Reply #1 on: October 17, 2013, 03:38:59 PM »
Their crit stacking ability works great with on crit effects... consider a Keen Enfeebling Rapier, for example.  Also, Duskblade is a pretty natural entry.  But basically, rock out the crit effects.  With a Keen Rapier and False Keenness, you've got a 12-20 critical threat range.

Consider going Necropolitan and then going with the Eviscerator line of feats from Libris Mortis, as well as using a Warblade dip for Blood in the Water.

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Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: How would you optimize an arcane duelist?
« Reply #2 on: October 17, 2013, 03:42:01 PM »
SorO has a build several builds using that here.
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Offline Iainuki

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Re: How would you optimize an arcane duelist?
« Reply #3 on: October 18, 2013, 12:45:17 PM »
Arcane duelist is not a terribly well-constructed class so you have rules and math weirdness all over the place.  It's a 3.0 class and in 3.0, Improved Critical and keen stacked.  Are you in a 3.0 game, and if not, how is your DM handling the issue?  If you can stack Improved Critical, keen (or rather a scabbard of keen edges), and false keenness, it might be worth doing something with criticals.  Unfortunately, I can't actually tell you how false keenness interacts with dexterous attack because the text contradicts itself.  It says, "if the arcane duelist uses this power in conjunction with the dexterous attack power, the damage dealt by a critical hit is reduced by the weapon's critical multiplier," then, "thus, the arcane duelist wielding a rapier and using dexterous attack to reduce the damage by 4 on her rapier has it reduced by 12 if she scores a critical hit using this power," when a rapier has a critical multiplier of x2 so you ought to lose 8 damage if you believe the first sentence.  Ask your DM how they intend to make this actually work.  If you believe the first sentence, using false keenness with dexterous attack is a bad idea because the penalty on criticals more than cancels the bonus damage you gain.  If you dexterous attack for 9 with a glaive and Power Attack for 18, you then lose 27 damage when you critical because of false keenness, which means your criticals do less damage than your ordinary attacks barring other sources of damage, not to mention you're also losing attack bonus from using false keenness in the first place.  You'd be better off just using Improved Critical, keen, or both and ignoring false keenness altogether.  If you want to optimize criticals, you have to ignore dexterous attack, find some other source of bonus damage that's multiplied by criticals, and then find some bonus to confirming criticals.  Power Critical is always available, but you ought to be able to find something cheaper than that since 3.5 hands out critical confirm bonuses like candy because they don't really do anything except for very, very weird characters.  One last odd aspect of false keenness is that, discounting dexterous attack, it adds more damage to weapons with high multipliers and low ranges, because you subtract the range but not the multiplier from your chance to hit.  Unfortunately, using weapons with high multipliers when optimizing criticals is a bad idea because it increases your damage variance so much.

As for ability scores, there's very little reason to put Cha first with these builds since all you're getting from it is saves and AC, which will leave you with high defenses but unable to contribute in combat because you won't hit often enough or do enough damage to make enemies care.  If you want Cha synergy, you need some ability that gets attack bonus or damage from it like Snowflake Wardance (FB) or marshal's minor auras (MH).  One smite a day doesn't count.  Str should go first.
« Last Edit: October 18, 2013, 04:17:43 PM by Iainuki »

Offline BearsAreBrown

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Re: How would you optimize an arcane duelist?
« Reply #4 on: October 18, 2013, 09:26:15 PM »
Omnislash is a Full Attack Action, not a Full Round. Combo it with Telflammar Shadowlord or that Horse Shadow thing from FR and go nutso.

Offline Iainuki

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Re: How would you optimize an arcane duelist?
« Reply #5 on: October 19, 2013, 07:21:03 PM »
The general problem with wanting to get into arcane duelist ASAP is that all the base classes that have actual synergy have 3/4 BAB (like most of the good classes in the game).  That said, if you want to do it, there are only two base classes with full BAB and arcane casting, hexblade and duskblade.  Hexblade sucks in general and particularly sucks for arcane duelist since almost none of its features do anything for melee.  Duskblade doesn't suck in general, but all of its non-spellcasting features help its casting and arcane duelist doesn't advance casting, so you want 1 level of duskblade to meet arcane duelist's prereqs and then to move on to other classes that will help you do damage in melee or improve your utility.  If there were some PrC that you could enter at 6th level with its own arcane casting and full BAB, that would also work, but I don't know of any such PrC.  You can easily fill out the rest of the classes by asking, "What base classes don't totally suck and have full BAB?"   The list is barbarian, crusader, ranger, and warblade, with maybe fighter as a 2-level dip and swashbuckler as a 3-level dip (barring a certain combination feat with rogue, which is out here because it has 3/4 BAB).  The goal, then, is to use those class levels to optimize either dexterous attack with Power Attack or false keenneess, with an eye to doing damage with flurry of swords.

Route #1: Dexterous attack, Power Attack, Leap Attack, Shock Trooper, Combat Brute, and pounce.  You're already planning to use Power Attack, so why not increase Power Attack returns?  You don't strictly need Shock Trooper since with dexterous attack you're going to be Power Attacking to the limit of your BAB anyways, but with Shock Trooper you can get high attack bonus and damage; if you do take it, you might as well ignore Cha because your AC's going to be minimal anyways.  To support the feats you'll need fighter 2.  Barb 1 with the lion totem ACF (CC) is the best and probably only way to get pounce.  Ranger doesn't do anything for this build, so the other 2 levels should probably be warblade or crusader.  If you're into futzing with weird races, you can use raptoran (RW) or a dragon-blooded race (DM) with the feats Dragon Wings and improved Dragon Wings (RDr 100) to do the same thing with dive attacks, though swinging the feat costs will be brutal.  For utility, you'll have to lean on skills and an appropriate stance, probably hunter's sense if you can meet the prerequisite.

1: barbarian; Power Attack
2: fighter; Dodge
3: fighter; Mobility, Improved Bull Rush or Improved Sunder
4: duskblade
5: warblade or crusader
6: warblade or crusader; Leap Attack
7: arcane duelist
8: arcane duelist
9: arcane duelist; Combat Brute or Shock Trooper

If you're human, you can build up to the top feats sooner.

Route #2: dexterous attack/Power Attack with TB stuff.  TB classes don't have particularly outstanding damage except for swordsage, but you can try to pile up bonuses.  Standard-action strikes and the dexterous attack/Power Attack combination don't work well with only two exceptions, diamond and ruby nightmare blade, but you can't get those without taking Martial Study at high levels.  Crusader 4 for furious counterstrike and steely resolve 10 will get you some damage, as will punishing stance.  The route with the highest potential damage is Stormguard Warrior but as always Stormguard Warrior has a lot of problems.  For channel the storm, you need Combat Reflexes and ways to make enemies provoke AoOs, which don't fit naturally into this build.  You have Dodge so Karmic Strike isn't as painful as for most characters, but it and Robilar's Gambit are still very limiting as strategies since they only help against enemies that hit you in melee and straight-up trading hits with monsters is usually not a good idea.  For combat rhythm, you need the ability to spam attacks, which for this character probably means TWF and in turn conflicts with the dexterous Attack/Power Attack combination.  There are ways around this (Oversized TWF), but they still end up losing reach and costing lots of feats.   Note that all of these approaches except combat rhythm rely on your getting hit, penalize your AC, or both, so are anti-synergistic with getting Cha to AC.  Crusader and warblade also don't do much to help your utility.  Your build is probably going to want to be crusader or warblade 1/duskblade 1/the other of crusader or warblade 4.

Route #3: false keenness, Improved Critical, some form of keen, TWF, blood in the water, and proc-on-critical-abilities.  Your goal is to stack up blood in the water as fast as possible because it's your primary damage source.  You almost certainly want to dual-wield kukris unless you plan to include Power Attack and Oversized TWF with scimitars or rapiers, though that gets quite feat-intensive.  Warblade 3's battle ardor is an easy bonus to critical confirmation if you have good enough Int, but you may still want Power Critical or something else.  The big choice is whether you go warblade 1/duskblade 1/warblade 4 or ranger 2/warblade 3/duskblade 1.  Ranger will give you some extra utility from better skills and free Track plus TWF and a favored enemy, while warblade 5 will give you another stance, more maneuvers, and a bonus feat that will be less directly useful.  Staggering Critical (DU) is a great feat to take later.  You'll need to find ways to get criticals on monsters normally immune to them, like deathstrike bracers or greater demolition and truedeath crystals from the MIC.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2013, 03:51:34 PM by Iainuki »

Offline JaronK

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Re: How would you optimize an arcane duelist?
« Reply #6 on: October 21, 2013, 03:01:21 PM »
Note that Enfeebling and Blood in the Water both work even against crit immunes, so that's a good start for False Keenness based strategies.

JaronK