AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - The Official Teach a Man to Fish topic (Build topic):

Very_Svensk wrote:

Bobo_Underhill wrote:

What kind of paladin?

Doesn't matter. What do you think fits a paladin as a random feat?

I saw your post before the edit, btw. It certainly does matter depending on what kind of paladin you're shooting for. You could be going charisma focus for all I know.

Quote:

STR 20/CHA 16
Not Tuigan
Not Dev-critter

Knockdown is an option, of course. Great Fort/Luck of Heroes can be considered too.

Paladin's have ridiculous saves as it is. Knockdown alone isn't viable and most have the impression paladins shouldn't knock people down (One of them is a DM and i wouldn't risk a fall)

Let me reformulate the question.
What would you think is more useful for a random feat on a paladin

#1 - Extra smiting
#2 - Extra turning
#3 - Craft wand
#4 - Brew potion

I personally don't have an issue with KD on a paladin.

I'd do wand, from that lineup.

Fail hats:

Its extend spell.

MoshingChris wrote:

Fail hats:

Its extend spell.

I think we all earned that fail hat right there, how did we not see he was missing extend spell in his pre epic. Props to you Moshing

Haha! Yeah, that's true! It's extend spell - LAWL!

Noted.

As a LN wizard, I have access to most spells and summons. I think I will wind up going with another level of wizard to increase the power of my spells and durations, etc. Evasion sounds good but doesn't really fit Marister's character. He's not very dexterous (at least on his feet) and I wouldn't really want to portray him that way.

IronAngel wrote:

[...]I guess the usefulness of the two feats is pretty comparable? Dragon being somewhat stronger but more situational?

That's a bit euphemistic, but yeah. The dragon is a total arse, though. You can hardly bring it anywhere and even in PvP it seldom manages to do other than make your enemy run between a few trees to get it stuck.

Pure bard, melee dex based build?

I was thinking starting out 18 CHA, and as much Dex as i could handle-- shortsword likely the weapon of choice.

Really looking for the stereotypical "jack of trades" red-mage route here, decent survivability and support... But i've no idea how to do it! Would a wizard/fighter/rogue be better for that?

On a jack-of-all-trades type of bard with no central melee focus, I'd probably go for Strength instead of Dex. Chainshirt is good and looks nice, and as a human you won't afford crazy high Dexterity anyway. You'll save a feat by skipping Weapon Finesse. 20 Str, 13 Dex, 18 Charisma or something is a pretty nice end goal. The damage difference isn't huge, but it's notable especially during your levelling when you're still gathering your equipment and prioritizing Strength over Dex. (Eventually you'll have both maxed, I imagine.)

But you can't really screw up a pure bard. No matter what you build you'll be useful, as long as you pick the Perform ranks for your songs. >_> Another option is 25 Bard and 5 in something else (Ftr, CoT or Ranger most commonly, I imagine), which'll make you stronger on your own but with shorter Mass Haste and slightly weaker songs. Easier to itemize for the Perform requirement, though.

Yeah, well, I'm still trying to find out wether a foppish duelist is best made by going pure bard or toss in 5 levels of fighter. So many choices! Argh.

Just how big is the difference in term of songs and spells? Is it just shorter mass haste and 1 less AC?

Last edited by IronAngel on Thu, May 03 2012, 21:42 PM, edited 2 times in total.

Well shorter everything of course, most notable in the rounds/level spells like Mass Haste (the one you can't even extend) and War Cry.

Here's the tables for Bard Song and Curse Song:
http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Bard_song
http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Curse_song

So yeah, +1/-1 AC is the relevant difference, and some skills.

5 Fighter gives you +6 damage and one more pre-epic feat. (You'd take 4 pre-epic for WS, and then your last at 24 or 27 to get EWS.)

You also get 4 attacks/round. That isn't huge as your AB won't be sky high, but it's still pretty nice.

I have a level 30 Gnome Bard. His highest stat is his Dexterity. So I'll just write about my experience with him.

1) Level 30 Bard/Curse song - I cannot adequately quantify the level of awesomeness. "Decent" is certainly not the appropiate term.
2) As a Dex based character, even with all my buffs and using nice Dagger, I found my damage output embarrassing, compared to all the STR builds youre carrying around. Almost a non factor.
3)+Perform skill gear needed to reach 100 Perform really stretched my equipment. I had 33 Ranks, Epic Skill Focus and a nice Charisma score, we're still talking about +50 Perform missing...and that left no room for any amount of +save stuff. Bard AC is great, but without the Epic Gloves of the Minstrel (I never came across a pair), squishy vs spells.

If youre set on Dex, though, one nonpure Bard build I would consider would be Bard20/Shadowdancer10. With Lasting Inspiration and Epic Dodge, two of the best feats available. How can that fail to be awesome? Would be stupidly hard to kill.

There is also the option of Bard20/Arcane Archer10. No Arcane Archer has ever moaned about not doing enough damage.

Blackguard also has great Synergy with Bard, if you like eating babies.

(Bard does get Discipline Iron. Bard gets -everything-!)

IronAngel wrote:

On a jack-of-all-trades type of bard with no central melee focus, I'd probably go for Strength instead of Dex. Chainshirt is good and looks nice, and as a human you won't afford crazy high Dexterity anyway. You'll save a feat by skipping Weapon Finesse. 20 Str, 13 Dex, 18 Charisma or something is a pretty nice end goal. The damage difference isn't huge, but it's notable especially during your levelling when you're still gathering your equipment and prioritizing Strength over Dex. (Eventually you'll have both maxed, I imagine.)

But you can't really screw up a pure bard. No matter what you build you'll be useful, as long as you pick the Perform ranks for your songs. >_> Another option is 25 Bard and 5 in something else (Ftr, CoT or Ranger most commonly, I imagine), which'll make you stronger on your own but with shorter Mass Haste and slightly weaker songs. Easier to itemize for the Perform requirement, though.

Mostly for character, i'm sticking with light armor or clothing; Bards in armor who aren't like.. skalds... kind of rub me the wrong way. Unless it's a fullplate knight with a battlecello.

So is a high AC dex build bard doable if im not overly concerned with my damage output? I could see where throwing in ranger would help me save in a bit of feats if i wanted to DW.

Bards get disciplin Iron. See, that's what too much Star Trek does to you.

QPR wrote:

Bards get disciplin Iron. See, that's what too much Star Trek does to you.

Bards rack-a-disaprin.

Last edited by IronAngel on Thu, May 03 2012, 22:07 PM, edited 1 time in total.

Oh well. I would still go 5 levels in another class, mainly for the reason Cloak mentioned: gearing up to adequate Perform is a chore. Even on my DC-geared 25/5 (though not quite there yet) Bard/Ftr I need to swap gloves between songs and fighting, which is pretty irritating. (I'd do it anyway for the spell slots, though.)

And yes Mercedes, you can do a Dex bard just fine. Kalliniel, the 25/5 I'm talking about, is a Bladesinger using cloth armor and rapier. But he's an elf. His damage per hit is pretty OK (30-65 or something, typically) but obviously not comparable to real DPS-characters. All that AC disappears if you're caught flat-footed though, which is why I kinda wish I could use chain shirt and actually do some damage with Strength. Chain shirts are like the most bardic armor out there, they are travelling warriors and scholars after all, but it didn't fit the concept of a Bladesinger at all. So it's up to you if you want to make life harder for yourself. Either way, you'll still be viable to your party and either way, your DPS will be irrelevant if you're partying up with a bard-buffed WM.

These are Kalliniel's stats at 28 if I remove the racial modifiers:
14 Str
20 (22 for elf) Dex
12 (10 for elf) Con
14 Int
8 Wis
16 Charisma

I'm not sure what I started with, but you can figure it out.

Curse Song
WF
WS
Imp Crit
KD+IKD
Extend Spell
Maximize Spell
Weapon Finesse
Urr... Power Attack? I have no idea why. How the hell do I even have so many feats. I guess Power Attack gives me a nice DPS boost when fighting low AC enemies, and I can hit pretty high effective AB with buffs and Curse Song.

ESF: Perform
EWF
EWS
Lasting Inspiration

Still got room to pick Armor Skin at 30. As a human, you'll have one extra feat to work with.

EDIT: Where the hell is my Blind Fight? Do I need to rebuild him AGAIN? O_o

What's this problem with perform? Why do you need so much of it, and how does taking 5 in another class work around the problem?

Thanks for the input, Bard's a little different than what i'm used to.

Mercedes wrote:

What's this problem with perform? Why do you need so much of it, and how does taking 5 in another class work around the problem?

Thanks for the input, Bard's a little different than what i'm used to.

As you can see in the tables I linked above, the Perform requirement increases with each level of Bard Song. If you don't meet both the Bard level requirement and the Perform requirement, you'll get the benefit of a lower level song instead. 100 Perform and 25 Bard levels will give you the Bard Song level 25 even if your Perform would allow for more, whereas 75 Perform and 30 Bard levels will give you the level 25 Bard Song because that's all your Perform is enough for. Past level 16, every level in Bard increases the requirement by 5 points.

A level 30 Bard needs a Perform skill of 100 to get the awesome +7 AC song rocking. You can only have a maximum of 33 Ranks, and with Epic Skill Focus and 18 Charisma, your Perform check is only going to be ...uhh.... 53, effectively. So a level 30 Bard needs to carry around 47 points worth of Skill Increased:Perform equipment.

If you only take 25 levels of Bard, you only need a Perform score of 75 to be able to sing at your best. Your song isn't as nice (Only +6AC), but you have a lot more room on your gear for other stuff. +22 Perform and Universal Saves+eleventy, or something like.

I personally don't feel what you gain from the extra levels are worth the loss, both in terms of gear strain and in terms of replacement class abilities. If I made my gnome again, he'd be a Bard/Shadowdancer.

IronAngel wrote:

As you can see in the tables I linked above, the Perform requirement increases with each level of Bard Song. If you don't meet both the Bard level requirement and the Perform requirement, you'll get the benefit of a lower level song instead. 100 Perform and 25 Bard levels will give you the Bard Song level 25 even if your Perform would allow for more, whereas 75 Perform and 30 Bard levels will give you the level 25 Bard Song because that's all your Perform is enough for. Past level 16, every level in Bard increases the requirement by 5 points.

I get it, I get it; thanks for those tables! Am I correct in assuming that a caster bard just hangs back with a lot of CHA and buffs/debuffs, taking caster feats and slinging their limited selection of spells?

You don't make a caster bard.

No, the spells they have, buffs aside, are nowhere near good enough to be a real caster. Bear in mind that the best they can do is mediocre level 4,5,6 spells fired of a mediocre casting stat being used against critters balanced to be able to challenge Epic Wizards, Clerics and Druids with 30-40 casting stats, level 9 spells and Epic Spell Focus feats. It's just not going to fly.

Iron, if you rebuild him, get rid of maximize spell and take blindfight, you don't need maximize as a bard. Unless you're using it to max cat's/bull's/and endurance or something.

Instead of power attack, grab blindfight. Armorskin for your 30 feat.

A 'caster bard' has a bunch of charisma, and not much of anything else. They just sing, buff, then join the fray like any other non-mage.

So I'm thinking about making a lawful evil gold dwarf rogue/fighter/blackguard of Abbathor. I think I'll go for a 10/4/16-build, but I'm not entirely sure about what feats to take, or how to stat him. I'm currently thinking about starting out like this:

STR: 16
DEX: 6
CON: 14
WIS: 14
INT : 12
CHA: 14

And then I'll probably put the points I'll gain as I level in strength. Other than that, though, I'm not sure if I'll make him a dual-wielder or have him use a shield. Also not entirely sure what feats to take, other than power attack, cleave and the epic fiendish servant.

ILoveIceCream wrote:

Iron, if you rebuild him, get rid of maximize spell and take blindfight, you don't need maximize as a bard. Unless you're using it to max cat's/bull's/and endurance or something.

STOP saying maximize isn't useful on a bard!

Maximise is the most important feat a Bard can take bar curse song. Its even more important that Extend Spell.

I imagine I'll pick up that tanky Earth Genasi Gnome Ranger I planned last December. Just checking that my build is in order:

Quote:

Ranger 20 pre-epic into Ranger 25/Fighter 4/Rogue 1.
17 Str -> 18 Str
18 Con -> 22 Con
10 Dex
14 Int
12 Wis -> 14 Wis
6 Cha

Feats:
Blind-Fight
WF
Imp Crit
Expertise (I like it and it's probably very handy to draw aggro and let the pet do the dirty work.)
KD/IKD
Toughness

Epics:
Armor Skin
Bane Of Enemies (by lvl 27, meh)
Epic Damage Reduction III
EWF
Weapon Specialization
EWS

And 6 Favored Enemies, of course.

If I keep 14 Int, I have enough for:
33 AE
33 Discipline
33 Spot
30 Tumble
30 UMD
+1 optional skill maxed. I was thinking Heal, since I can't invest in just one stealth skill and Listen is probably redundant.

Aside from the fact that a Strength-focused ranger without EDR would probably be more effective (and boring), would you say this build is as optimal as it gets?

I may use daggers if there are cool models, or just go for Handaxe and forget about dual-wielding.

I'm told badger is actually the tanky companion, so using it with a tanky ranger seems kinda redundant. What would be the sturdy DPS version of the above build? Probably still 18 Con, but no EDR? How much should I invest in Strength? Just swap it around for 18 Con, 22 Strength?

You could survive with 12 con even and focus on higher str. My ranger has 6 con and still around 300 hp. But a beefy ranger lasts longer than a scrawny one

You would have around 48 ab with 22 str. Likely a bit more (with epic prowess).

Ulir wrote:

You could survive with 12 con even and focus on higher str. My ranger has 6 con and still around 300 hp. But a beefy ranger lasts longer than a scrawny one

You would have around 48 ab with 22 str. Likely a bit more (with epic prowess).

It's an Earth Genasi gnome that looks like a treestump and is probably harder to move, so I kinda want that to show in his beefiness. Not sure if dropping to 16 Con really gives me much more of anything, since it's only 4 points and taking Str up is 3 points. Wisdom is 2 points.

Would a normal DPS build look exactly the same feat-wise, save for picking Epic Prowess, maybe Epic Fort and something else (7th Favored Enemy?) at epics?

Could this even work as a two-hander? Warhammer might look great.

Hello all. Me and the wife has decided to start up here. She will play a straight forward warrior and I just know she will run ahead bashing at thingies.
So its once again my job to keep her alife.
I am thinking about a pure Ffolk Druid, aiming for caster only, since it got a rather tasty pet and all the zoo buffs here (and spot aswell?)
So, 19 in starting WIS and +7 at lvl-ups, rest, dunno, maybe high'ish CON?

1: Toughness and ? (human feat)
3: SF: Evocation
6: Great Fortitude
9: Extend Spell
12: GSF: Evocation
15: Maximise Spell
18: Silent Spell
21: ESF: Evocation
23: Auto Quicken1?
24: EMD: Air Elemental?
26: Auto Quicken2?
27: Greater Ruin
29: Auto Quicken3?
30: Epic Skill Focus: Spot?
Is this terrible? (its been awhile), I'm worried about lack of discipline, UMD, saving throws and Haste mostly and what pet should I go for? (I like pigs), can they be GMW/FW'ed btw? Are Animal Empaty worth taking?

Also: about the warrior build: She tends to be shieldless and be a STR build, she will always have me and my pet beside her (unless I die of course). With a twohand weap. WM lvls come to mind, right? So its the old erhmm,,20Fighter/7WM/3rogue, or?, and what race, it should fit my Ffolk so Human at least I would think?

You should grab empower spell instead of silent spell. You will gain more from that. 28 druid/1 ran/1 rog always works. Very neat build. The ranger and rogue level in late epics for max disc, 30 tumble and UMD. The ranger feat can be used for epic spell focus, which is great.

Otherwise it looks good. 26, 28 or 30 base wis in the end and you are good.

20 ftr/7 wm/3 rog works well, another option with +3 AB is 10 ftr/19 wm/1 rog or bard, or 12 ftr/13 wm/5 ms (former harper scout. Check classes and feats for details). Pure human works fine. Perhaps a genasi would suit her.

I'm just going to quickly point out that you lack Quicken Spell feat pre-epic and you can only get your first rank of Auto Quicken at level 27 when you hit 30 spellcraft. You would have to get AQ1 at level 27, AQ2 at level 28 and AQ3 at 30. I'd also somehow replace that Toughness feat with the Quicken Spell feat, if you still wanted to go for the auto quicken route.

Also, as Ulir pointed out, going for 28 Druid 1 ranger 1 rogue yields the best results, since druids get a decent amount of skillpoints innatively. But as always, do as your RP dictates.

And conjuration focus, rather than evocation focus is the way to go on a druid, provided your after power.

Both work. Evocation and conjuration. Evocation is more important I would say, but you can get equal fun out of conjuration spells, although there aren't that many at your disposal. Stonehold, grease, SoV and healing spells (against undead) are valuable though.

Evocation is flamestrike, earthquake, and firestorm, the latter two are argueably two of the most powerful spells in the divine spellbook, but given the Amia changes, bombardment is quite potent. This, and the potential for epic spell focus conjuration to give you an actually useful dragon thingy, and an everlasting Sirrush to boot make it what I would consider the better choice of the two.

Implosion.

Evocation is faaar better a choice than Conjuration.

We're talkin' druid...

Yeah, Tormak fails at reading. Evocation is still the best, however. Sunburst and Earthquake are both incredibly potent spells and form the main meat of a druid's arsenal. Conjuration isn't a bad choice, mind, between Storm of Vengeance, Stonehold and Bombardment, but it still doesn't compete.

Thanks for the imputs.
The quto quicken feats was mainly something I stole from a post some pages back, I dont know how usefull it actually is. I could take 3 x conjuration instead maybe? Knowing myself I tend to stick to a few trusted high lvl offensive spells though.
28/1/1 combo would solve the discipline problem and gain me an extra feat, aswell as high tumble and UMD, if its not looking down on its worth a thought I guess.
As for the warrior, the 10f/19wm/1rogue would lack epic weap spec, right?, She would surely like 19 wm lvls but maybe 12/16/2 is actually better? A genesi might work along good with a druid, will have a look at them.
Btw: That master scout class looks jummy indeed, but is sadly way to complicated for her taste, she only plays to do something with me, but I simply cant get her to be interested in much more than a simple "you point, I bash" concept..
Btw2: repeating the questions: Are Animal Empaty worth the points and can the pet be GMW'ed/FW'ed?

So how about this for a sturdy DPS ranger:

Earth Genasi/Gnome
20 Ranger going 25/4/1 Ranger/Fighter/Rogue

18 (24) STR
16 CON
8 DEX
14 INT
13 (14) WIS
6 CHA

Blind Fight
KD
IKD
Toughness
Expertise
Weapon Focus: Dagger
Improved Critical: Dagger

Armor Skin
Epic Prowess
Epic Weapon Focus
Weapon Specialization
Epic Weapon Specialization
Bane of Enemies
Epic Skill Focus: Spot(/Discipline?)/Epic Fortitude

7 Favored Enemies.

Animal Empathy
Discipline
Spot
Tumble
UMD
+1 optional. Heal, cross-class Spellcraft? Not interested in stealth or traps, this isn't that kind of a ranger.

Questions:
Is Extend Spell really useful for a ranger? I get 25 turns of Blade Thirst, and that's well above the rest timer. How about Craft Wand? I considered dropping Expertise since my companion will be the primary tank, but I kinda like the idea of being an immovable tunnel defender.

What about the leftover feat? ESF: Spot or Discipline, Epic Fort, or something else?

Should I drop one Favored Enemy in favor of another epic feat? I can pick Epic Prowess on a Ranger bonus feat level, for example. I just don't know if I really need anything more.

Extend spell isn't too terribly handy for a ranger. It certainly makes life a bit easier, but not to a great enough extent to seriously consider taking it. The craft feats rarely serve for other purpose than RP and supplying others with neat tricks. The only builds I would ever consider taking it for self-serving purposes would be gimmick bards. But if you enjoy the idea of your gnome being a bit of a tinkerer, go for it.

Expertise is a truly hideous feat. It's not bad or anything, the thought of it just revolts me: you trade offence for defence. Your point as a ranger is to dish out damage like crazy, ho! Or whatever, do as you please. I am too biased to give you a decent piece of advice concerning Expertise. It's just icky.

If you're not interested in stealth or traps, then cross-class Spellcraft is definitely the way to go. And hum, have you considered taking Dev? A ranger can't avail it perfectly due to having an insanely high damage output, but still, it's not too bad.

Fionavar: 16/12/2 is generally better than 19/10/1, indeed. With the latter you sacrifice EWS for one extra AB. Taking rogue pre-epic would be just silly as it ends up costing you the AB you get from WM 19, in effect, rendering a couple of levels useless.

Not really seeing why that Gnome/Genasi needs that much Con personally.

Well, I don't know. I figure it's nice to have high HP and decent fort saves, and it certainly fits the concept of a tough-as-nails treestump. High health has never hurt anyone.

What else could I even pick up? With the Con bonus, it doesn't cost me any extra points to get to 16, so dropping it even by 4 doesn't really net me much anything. 1 point at the cost of two to Wis (since it's -2) so I can put all my points in Str during levelup, leaving me at 25 Str, and 2 leftovers to waste on Dex that will easily be buffed to fullplate requirements anyway. And I would have to spend one epic feat on Great Strength. Without ridicilous minmaxing, I couldn't aim for 28 Str anyway.

So potentially +1 AB/damage at the cost of +2 Fort and 60 HP, and an epic feat (+10 Spot/Discipline, probably). Not sure it's worth it.

I can see it working with Devastating Critical (not that it's any good on daggers), but even then I'd have to drop KD, IKD and Expertise (or Craft Wand) to even get the pre-epic requirements. At epics, I would drop Epic Prowess, Epic Skill Focus and one Favored Enemy to get Overwhelming Critical, Devastating Critical and Great Strength.

What would you take in place of Expertise, Opustus? Power Attack is the only melee feat I could pick, I guess. Luck of Heroes?

EDIT:
A comparison of the two possibilities.

Quote:

18 (24) STR
16 CON
8 DEX
14 INT
13 (14) WIS
6 CHA

Blind Fight
KD
IKD
Toughness
Expertise
Weapon Focus: Dagger
Improved Critical: Dagger

Armor Skin
Epic Prowess
Epic Weapon Focus
Weapon Specialization
Epic Weapon Specialization
Bane of Enemies
Epic Skill Focus: Spot(/Discipline?)/Epic Fortitude

7 Favored Enemies

Quote:

18 (26) STR
12 CON
10 DEX
14 INT
14 WIS
6 CHA

Blind Fight
Toughness
Weapon Focus: Dagger
Improved Critical: Dagger
Power Attack
Cleave
Great Cleave

Armor Skin
Epic Weapon Focus
Weapon Specialization
Epic Weapon Specialization
Bane of Enemies
Overwhelming Critical
Devastating Critical
Great Strength

6 Favored Enemies

The builds actually have the same AB, since the latter can't afford Epic Prowess. Unless I leave it at 5 Favored Enemies, I guess. Reptilians and Giants due to being a gnome, humans and elves for being the main civilized (read: PvP) danger to gnomes, and then outsiders for pretty much mechanical reasons.

They seem to be pretty much in balance. I would probably do the latter and switch Toughness for KD. Despite your small size, there's a surprisingly large quantity of things to knock over. Also, I'd sacrifice an FE for ESF Spot.

Much to knock over but almost nothing that you will be able to knock over. To little AB And your small statue will make it even less possible.

The Official Teach a Man to Fish topic (Build topic):

Who is online