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DerkDerkistan wrote:

Lovethehunt wrote:

Ulir wrote:

25 bard/5 kc should be an uber buffer!

22 str is enough. You will have 50+ AB with song and curse.

Thanks! That gives me a perfect figure to work with! I'm thinking just enough CHA to cast all the bard spells, so about 16..hm. What do you think about armor? I was wondering if the spellchain was a good idea since it has 0 arcane failure, but I understand that plate swapping is also a option.

Plate-swapping is the worst thing ever. I despise when people just strip naked to cast then click a single button and all of the sudden are wearing full plate as if it is as easy to put on as a T-shirt. There is a set of 0 ASF half-plate. If you want armor, wear that.

I do not like the idea either, but I've heard it mentioned on certain builds and had to list it as an option. I was considering heavily to go the route of wearing the +3 boots with a maximized cat's grace to make use of that spellchain. I'm rather new with building here on Amia and am still learning by what I pick up from the forums and in-game.

+3 dex boots and spellchain works great! I would suggest that, unless you want to DC request other stuff. Chain shirts with 0% asf is pretty common actually. +1 AC from plate, meh, who cares

Chain fits better.

Naivatkal wrote:

It used too, but they removed that.

Ah, really? Welp, back to the drawing board.

Lovethehunt wrote:

I do not like the idea either, but I've heard it mentioned on certain builds and had to list it as an option. I was considering heavily to go the route of wearing the +3 boots with a maximized cat's grace to make use of that spellchain. I'm rather new with building here on Amia and am still learning by what I pick up from the forums and in-game.

The most convenient route for PvM is the zero-fail chainshirts and buffing DEX to 18, unless your DEX is badly dumped.

I had a 6 DEX (Gold Dwarf) Bard who was sufficiently annoying to get to 18 that I set cheese to Full Stilton and crafted all her armours to look as identical as the models allow. If you knew to look for it, you'd see the transition between 0% chainshirt and 45% fullplate, but otherwise I could swap out for the post-rest buffing and Mass Haste top-ups and no-one was the wiser. The downside was that I'd frequently forget to swap back.

Even if you don't care about the RP silliness of unstrapping plates instantly, there really is no excuse for casting naked when it's so easy just to swap for cloth, and the work of mere minutes to craft zero-fail armour to be close enough.

Falling Spider wrote:

Naivatkal wrote:

It used too, but they removed that.

Ah, really? Welp, back to the drawing board.

Why? Dev Crit is still amazingly badass

Uberuce wrote:

The most convenient route for PvM is the zero-fail chainshirts and buffing DEX to 18, unless your DEX is badly dumped.

I had a 6 DEX (Gold Dwarf) Bard who was sufficiently annoying to get to 18 that I set cheese to Full Stilton and crafted all her armours to look as identical as the models allow. If you knew to look for it, you'd see the transition between 0% chainshirt and 45% fullplate, but otherwise I could swap out for the post-rest buffing and Mass Haste top-ups and no-one was the wiser. The downside was that I'd frequently forget to swap back.

Even if you don't care about the RP silliness of unstrapping plates instantly, there really is no excuse for casting naked when it's so easy just to swap for cloth, and the work of mere minutes to craft zero-fail armour to be close enough.

Naughty! Trying to make dressing a free action. Next you'll say you can talk for as long as you wish with the whole world freezing.

quick question i've forgotten. what level can a black guard actually take epic fiendish servant (qualify at 15), but can you actually take it at fifteen or is it sixteen?

Sixteen. The way it's coded, you can ONLY take it on an epic BG feat level. So basically: Reserve BG 16 for Fiendish Servant.

ah okay then thanks for the quick reply.

Okay....here is one for you...I have never really ever played a ranger...so...I was wondering how one would build one out...

Race: Mulan
Levels: Ranger 21/Master Scout 5/Fighter 4

Dual wielder, dex based most likely but str based is acceptable.

First favored enemy will be undead. Then Reptile, Mino..etc...however you want to build it out.

Currently thinking short swords or hand axes, possibly maces.

So...anyone want to give me some suggestions for a 1-30 build out?

You've got it good so far. Try the whole thing and we'll slap you when you go wrong.

With Mulan I'd go STR because of the -1 DEX handicap, mind.

Last edited by Naivatkal on Tue, Nov 29 2011, 20:08 PM, edited 1 time in total.

edit: pulled my q out, since it doesn't really fit here and I don't want to clutter the thread with discussion.

Uncle-Opustus wrote:

You've got it good so far. Try the whole thing and we'll slap you when you go wrong.

With Mulan I'd go STR because of the -1 DEX handicap, mind.

Yeah, I tried the Dex on him last night and its nto really working well...hrms...

So..I am thinking the dual wield is going to end up going away and he is going to be more a warrior in armor and using kopesh and shield with his animal companion and spells.

Guess that is kinda a twist though...a ranger that isn't dual wielding...lol

(Ramble warning)
Need a great deal of help. I'm not proficient in the character-building area.

I want to be:

Elf-based air genasi that is a ranger (likely 9)/bard (the rest). I want to pursue the path of a horizon walker (The ranger prestige thing which I'm thinking I'll need to make a request for, based on some of the abilities it has/can get, which will likely require DCs for some widgets, which is why I say "pursue" [can I?] instead of "be", but I digress...) I keep hearing that for bard to be "worth it" I'll need at least 20 or so levels (for the song?), so with 9 ranger, that's 21 bard, which is fine, but it can change. I really don't know if it's better for me to be bard heavy or ranger heavy. I'd like 4 attacks per round, how many rangers do I need to screw in that lightbulb?

Things:

I'd like to be dual-wielding melee with curved swords. Curved. Swords. :U

Feats! What should I get? I want to be dodgy (dex based) and fast (bard spells), but I probably wont hit that hard. Not bothered by that, just want survivability.

Stats! Where do I put 'em? I'll need a base 16 CHA, and air genasi subtracts 2. Well, maybe... I'm not sure how much more useful mass haste is over haste haste... I hear parties love it. Also there's that thing where I don't "max" out a stat until later, so how much later could I if I did that? I'll be melee, will I want STR? If so, how much? HOW MUCH CON CAN I FIT IN GUYS.

This is probably me wanting to much, but I can make sacrifices.

Essentially: want melee bard/ranger with buffs + dodgy + fast.

I'm sorry if this is confusing ._. had coffee, can't get thoughts together

*closes eyes, hits submit*

Simeron: Improved two-weapon fighting (ITWF) is independent of dual-wield (which comprises two-weapon fighting and ambidexterity), and there are items with ambidexterity and two-weapon fighting on them. This enables STR plus dual-wield at a reasonably low cost.

To help you get started: Don't take any of the MS levels pre-epic. That will unnecessarily lower your BAB (see wiki article "BAB") and also waste the feat gained on the first MS level. Depending on whether you aspire for Dev or not will determine if you need any of your Fighter levels (and consequently fighter bonus feats) taken pre-epic. Probably you don't need them even if you did. Just take the feats any other STR-based warrior would.

Heurodis: Go Bard20/Ranger10 instead (Ranger gains bonus feats at 5 and 10). Pre-epic level distribution should be Bard16/Ranger4 to get the 4th attack per round. I'll tell you a secret: STR works better. But it's all right like that. Take the feats any melee chap would.

Reemmber that you can now take GREAT STRENGTH on HS Bonus feats (Important)

I'l like to get Dev Crit...just not sure I can manage it. I need a 14 wis for the Ranger spells and I am starting with 12. Means 2 of my points go there.

I do start with a 16 str..but need a 25 for dev..and would like 26..that is 10 points. so that is 12...I'll only get 7 from levels..means I need 5 from feats...O_o...

Tall order there.

Kinda tossing the idea around for a 23 Ranger, 6 Fighter, 1 Rogue at 30 for Tumble and UMD.

23 Ranger gets me a bonus feat, 6 ranger gets me 1 extra also so that would be 2 right there of the 5 I need...and I can take 3 Great Strength post epic along with epic blade thirst.

Any help on the build out would be greatly appreciated..I have NEVER played a ranger out..its always been no more then 9 ranger levels for me...and that isn't going to fit the RP concept here.

He is a Guardian to a priestess, Mulan and he is of the house of Geb (Earth Genasi).

yeah it lowered his Wis and Chr...but its the RP way..and I have a 10 chr and 12 wis now..10 dex.

I didn't see the 1 point of dex ac being worth the loss of 34 skill points.

Well stop thinking about it. Try it on paper, and if it doesn't work out, start again from stratch.

Uncle-Opustus wrote:

Heurodis: Go Bard20/Ranger10 instead (Ranger gains bonus feats at 5 and 10). Pre-epic level distribution should be Bard16/Ranger4 to get the 4th attack per round. I'll tell you a secret: STR works better. But it's all right like that. Take the feats any melee chap would.

Thank you. I'll have a good look at feats then. I'm worried about survivability if I go STR based, because I'd lose AC, unless I picked up heavy armor and a shield, which is not what I want for the character.

Oh wait, when I said "take the feats any melee chap would" I meant "take the feats any melee chap would and Extend and Maximise spell".

I see the usefulness of extend, and I was planning on fitting that into my build, but does maximize help defensive casting?

It helps in saving a lot of room in your gear by having self-reliable +5 STR, DEX and CHA. Not to mention you can cast it on others.

Oh! Forgot about that; thanks!

This seemed the better thread over the Lore Thread:

Have we changed poison so it can be applied to gloves, like GMA and Flame Weapon, for unarmed attacks?

If not, is there a particular reason why? It seems reasonable to coat a glove with poison. Course, it would have to rely upon contact with the skin/blood so perhaps that would be a reason why not?

I tried GMWing my gloves recently. Didn't work. Is it supposed to?

Yeah it should. I know it's worked on mine before when someone casted on them (unless I'm crazy, which is probable).

I think it required some sneakiness on our friendly neighbourhood scripterman's part to have GMW work on gloves, so it doesn't work when you cast it right onto the gloves in your inventory, or onto your own character's model in the game.

It does work if you cast on your own portrait on the sidebar, and if you cast on another character in the game.

Not tested the above properly, since I stopped poking at it once I found that portrait casting worked fine.

It works when you cast on your character model, too. It's just directly on the gloves that doesn't work.

Naivatkal wrote:

poison stuff

Wait... when since did anyone use poison in the first place? No, we haven't. Not really any reason for it, just haven't bothered since poisons aren't used anyway.

PaladinOfSune wrote:

It works when you cast on your character model, too. It's just directly on the gloves that doesn't work.

Naivatkal wrote:

poison stuff

Wait... when since did anyone use poison in the first place? No, we haven't. Not really any reason for it, just haven't bothered since poisons aren't used anyway.

If flame weapon did not overwrite poisons and on hit powers did not null them - they would be used.
Poisons are dangerous...

Do 1d8 damage or reduce con by -4?
-4 con on a 1d10 hp char at level 30 = -60 hp and -2 fortitude. (Devilischious!)

Odd, I use a flame weapon scroll, poison vial and assassin widget on the same weapon with my assassin and all of them work just fine. Just wish thered be stronger poisons than just mild ones.

people posted wrote:

Stuff to know

Oooooh... good to know on the poisons!

And yeah, casting Flame Weapon on your gloves doesn't work. I found that out the hard way XD

Running into a quandry on my Monk/Rogue/Ranger build again. I've tweaked things a bit while leveling, but I'm nagged with this question:

Do I really want Great Fort?
Base saves will be Fort 18/Will 17/Ref 29 on an Epic Dodger so... is it really going to make a ton of sense to bump Fort to a measly 20? I figure that can be raised to 25-28ish after gear (plan on trying to push 6 CON on gear, plus potions, plus uni saves maybe) and that really isn't much of a deterrent from Dev Crit. The only reason I can think of to get it would be spells. In that respect 16 Monk nets 26 SR, which is pretty decent though not spectacular, and bumping base Fort to 24 with Great and Epic Fort would probably be a really good idea for spell reasons.

But, then, I'm not sure about DCs and such most of the time. Heh.
Right now I'm looking at a regular (Great Fort) and epic feat (Epic Fort) that I can toy around with. My only other thought for the regular feat is something like Resist Energy... cause everything else seems to be covered.

Taken/Planned Feats: Luck of Heroes, Strong Soul, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus: Unarmed, Toughness, Improved Critical: Unarmed, Blind Fight, Epic Weapon Focus: Unarmed, Defensive Roll [Rogue], Great Dexterity I, Armor Skin, Epic Dodge [Rogue], Epic Prowess [Ranger]

If that character is at all going to be used in pvp you'd want your fort save at least 40 so most dev crits on you only would work on a 1 roll, and wail of banshee as well.

Right, right that's what I was starting to think. Believe I shall let it reside at Great and Epic Fort. Seems to be the best choice, really.

Give us the exact Class setup, Naivatkal?

The snag with having any large amount of Rogue in your pre-epic build is that, funnily enough, it keels your Fortitude. Whereas Monk advances all its saves each level you take pre-epic and it has the same BAB progression as rogue, so there's no reason you would want to take Rogue as a class pre-epic unless you are going to have more than ten levels of Rogue overall.

Here's the setup. And I didn't know that Selmak. Don't saves progress normally, it's just BAB that is shot in the foot?

01: Rogue(1): Luck of Heroes, Strong Soul
02: Monk(1): {Cleave, Evasion, Improved Unarmed Strike, Stunning Fist}
03: Monk(2): Weapon Finesse, {Deflect Arrows}
04: Monk(3): DEX+1, (DEX=19)
05: Monk(4)
06: Rogue(2): Weapon Focus: Unarmed
07: Monk(5)
08: Monk(6): DEX+1, {Knockdown, Improved Knockdown}, (DEX=20)
09: Rogue(3): Toughness, {Uncanny Dodge I}
10: Rogue(4)
11: Monk(7)
12: Monk(8): DEX+1, Improved Critical: Unarmed, (DEX=21)
13: Monk(9): {Improved Evasion}
14: Rogue(5)
15: Monk(10): Blind Fight
16: Monk(11): DEX+1, (DEX=22)
17: Monk(12)
18: Rogue(6)
19: Rogue(7)
20: Rogue(8): DEX+1, (DEX=23)
21: Rogue(9): Epic Weapon Focus: Unarmed
22: Rogue(10): Defensive Roll
23: Rogue(11)
24: Rogue(12): DEX+1, Great Dexterity I, (DEX=25)
25: Monk(13)
26: Monk(14)
27: Rogue(13): Armor Skin, Epic Dodge
28: Monk(15): DEX+1, (DEX=26)
29: Monk(16)
30: Ranger(1): Epic Prowess, {Dual Wield}

Char is currently level 17, so will be getting 18 next. That's why I wanted to double-check on the final pre-epic feat lol
Also, yes, I know the progression is a little weird but that's fine. Screwed up a little and put an extra Rogue level in pre-epic.

Yar, see here about base saves.

With no ill-effect, you can take the two monk levels at 25 and 26 and put them in the build before 20. That will net you an additional +1 to Fort and Will, leaving your Reflex save as it is. It's not much, because there's not a lot of wiggle room, but it's something.

Ahhhh well I learned something new! lol

That will drop BAB by 1, though, so that is unfortunate.

I think the +1 BAB is more important, especially given the char. Feel free to tell me that's crazy, though ^_^

Nah, I didn't spot that. With 3/4 BAB progression, you always want to take a multiple of 4 levels if you can. If you had been willing to take Epic Dodge at 29, you see, and before getting as far as along as you have, you could have gone 16/4 pre-epic with better saves and same BAB.

Yep, exactly. I kinda herped a derp and took five Rogue levels in pre-epic when I built out the char... I would have preferred to take all her Monk levels in pre-epic but oh well.

Silly me

You can always de-Level

Yeah but that Rogue level was four levels ago and it's be hard enough to level lately. Can never seem to consistently find people on :/

I'm not that worried, it's just 1 Fort.

Naivatkal wrote:

Yeah but that Rogue level was four levels ago and it's be hard enough to level lately. Can never seem to consistently find people on :/

Blame Minecraft, Skyrim and all the other games people play when they're not logged on to Amia. I haven't seen the servers get close to full for weeks... mind you, I'm almost never looking to see, so there you go.

My complaint would be that you can find people but they have a few alts that they keep switching to in order to try and please everyone, which is impossible. I can understand having alternate characters to keep things from getting dull, but honestly at some points it's like watching someone abuse a vortex manipulator to finish their history report.

I wouldn't worry too much. Hells, if I had actually thought about the 3/4 BAB progression I wouldn't have taken ten levels of Rogue pre-epic.

Yah yah, I know not griping just saying haha

Also, lol BAB haha

Any fun ways of combining Knight Commander with something else than just Bard?

Paladin, Cleric (any war god yum yum), Barbarian. It works with rangers.

Blackguards!

Cleric 24 / KC 5 / Bard 1. It's theoretically awesome.

Sorcerer 23 / KC 5 / Rogue 2

Cleric 23 / KC 5 / Rogue 2

Paladin 23 / KC 5 / Rogue 2

Anything that gains epic feats every three levels is pretty much ideal for it.

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