I'm trying to come up with a character that can function as a self-healing tank for an upcoming campaign. The fluff that I am trying to build around is a character who has acquired a reputation for himself of being basically immortal, mostly by virtue of not dying despite continuously sustaining massive injuries.
-characters are 32 point buy, no flaws, no traits, retraining is probable
-Virtually all 3.5 materials are permitted, with Dragon Mag, Pathfinder, and other unofficial sources allowed only after DM review. I believe only pisonic classes are out, in that they simply don't exist in this campaign, but feats and materials might be allowed.
-I will likely be a member of a 3 person party, possibly 4, and I know that one other player is playing a Tinkerer (from Warcraft tabletop campaign setting)
-The campaign is entirely home-brewed, with lots of "steampunk" elements (hence the Tinkerer), and material borrowed from Iron Kingdoms. The basic background is that spellcasting is greatly feared by the general populace, and spellcasters are almost never seen, with the few that are widely known being very tightly monitored and controlled by this mysterious, secretive Illuminati-esque council of unknown figures. Where the party will factor in all this he hasn't said, but he asked nicely that the players not be spellcaster classes nor classes that function as spellcasters (wizard, sorcerer, cleric, druid, artificer, beguiler, etc... even specifically called out factotum). This is where it gets tricky because he also feels alchemist from Pathfinder is fine, because it's "alchemy not spells". I cautiously pointed out to him that it's entirely flavor, and that I could do something similar by making a golem building artificer, re-flavored as entirely non-magical steampunk, and that in the end the alchemist actually does duplicate spells, but... here we are.
-He's said repeatedly that he wants the game to be "low-magic", but after asking him exactly what that means I get the feeling he means to say, "low wealth". For the time being I'm assuming there are magic items but they will be difficult to find/acquire.
If I can't be an Azurin, I"ll probably go human. Either way the end result will be pretty close.
Where I'm getting stuck is finding a balance between the crusader "tank-ness" and the incarnate "self-reliance/independence from magic item-ness".
I initially thought to being mostly with crusader for the healing strikes, battlefield control stances, with Stone Power at low levels, with a minor incarnate dip for Therapeutic Mantle, Air step sandles, and Astral Vambraces, and for the extra utility. Then I realize I'd like to take advantage of the things like Vitality Belt, the Cobalt Power feat, and possibly Incarnum Weapon which requires more and more of an investment in Incarnate, until I reach the point where I swing almost entirely the other way and just dip Crusader for the stances and maneuvers and lose out on the fun, tanky, things like Furious Counterstrike, and Steely Resolve, at which point I'm not even really a tank any more, nor am I a significant threat to the enemies because I have no BAB and can't do anything but take hits and not die, so I start from scratch and then.... arrrgh
I'm trying to arrive at a point where I can perform necessary tanking duities, mostly in the vein of punishing enemies that don't attack me, keep myself alive when they do attack me, and still be a somewhat competent melee threat when the tanking might not necessarily be called for.
Thanks in advance for reading through all that, and for all the help.
