Playable from level 1 - 40 ..PvM Build

Here's a rough character sketch for a dwarven defender 18/wizard 12/palemaster 10

Race: Dwarf
Alignment: LN or LE
Base Attributes
STR 13
DEX 13
CON 18
WIS 8
INT 16
CHA 6

Attribute Bonuses
First 4 attribute bonuses to INT
Next 4 attribute bonuses to CON
Last 2 attribute bonuses to STR

Level Progression
levels 1-10: Wizard
levels 11-14: Pale Master
levels 15-24: Dwarven Defender
levels 25-29: Pale Master
levels 30-36: Dwarven Defender
Levels 37-38: Wizard
level 39: Palemaster
Level 40: Dwarven Defender

Feat Selection
Level 1: Toughness
Level 3: Dodge
Level 5: Maximize Spell
Level 6: Still Spell
Level 9: Silent Spell
Level 10: Empower Spell
Level 12: Extend Spell
Level 15: Weapon Focus (Greataxe)
Level 18: Knockdown
Level 21: Epic Weapon Focus (Greataxe)
Level 24: Epic Prowess
Level 27: Great Strength I
Level 30: Great Strength II
Level 33: Armor Skin, Damage Reduction I
Level 36: Great Strength III
Level 39: Damage Reduction II
Level 40: Damage Reduction III

Final Attributes
STR 18
DEX 13
CON 22
WIS 8
INT 20
CHA 6

21 points of damage reduction, immune to critical hits, access to Elemental Shield, Death Armor and Mestil's Acid Sheath.

Any thoughts? Or improvements?
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Edited By Mithdradates on 04/06/04 00:58:28

Edited By griphook on 06/02/05 14:28

Looks similar to a build that is killing prismatics all over my screen. If you are adept at alignment changes try Bard8/DwD22/PM10. Has higher DR, more AC, higher saves, better BAB, bard song, and most important it has "use magic devices". In my version he became a parry master with level one in all the epic energy reduction. This is a real "wall". Yeah if you take just 10 levels of bard and then 10 DD for your first 20 you'll have a better BAB by a few points, and if you finish off your build with a bard at 38 or 40 you can grab an extra 5 ac from tumble. Also don't you need 15 levels of PM to get epic spells? I know I've had this problem at least on the servers I've played, so you might need to go 11 bard 14 DD 15 PM. It seems like it's worked for you two though, so You'd still get the 18 DD for another 4/- dmg res
With this build you'd still get 10+3+3+3=19 dmg res if you took the epic feats. I'd also suggest dropping a point of con in the beginning and putting it into str, and since you won't be able to get immunity to mind/death spells as you would with a Wiz, I'd suggest not taking Great STR and instead grabbing epic fort/will.
You also won't need to add any to INT since bard spells only go up to 6 anyways. This way you can put your first four into con and then use all the rest for STR.
In the end you lose a few nice buffs with this build, but you get 5 more AC, 3 more BAB, better saves, and a few other bonuses. This would be a really strong PvP build, having trouble primarily with high ac casters and dragon shapes. Fortunately with all the hp this class has and the nice saves, casters should be less of a problem, and because of dmg res/high ac/decent ab, even those damned dragons will be within reach. doesnt this build suffers from an xp penalty
Quote: Posted 12/22/04 05:28:03 (GMT) -- vt_infinity

doesnt this build suffers from an xp penalty
The Wizard/Dwarven Defender/Palemaster? No, because prestige classes don't count when looking at class levels. So this build only has one class to contend with: wizard.

But if the build were Wizard/DwD/Rogue, then yes there would be experience penalties whenever wizard and rogue were more than 1 level apart.

Kaliban. ah ok. thanks! Great strength is nice, but I would still take the auto-still feats over GS. BAB won't be fantastic, so instead of trying to squeeze every point out of strength, i would take still spelling (cast bull's strength), and wear strength-increasing items.
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Edited By Bardan the Slayer on 12/26/04 13:51

I was surprised when I saw that this build was transfered from the excellent character builds thread. I haven't said anything up to this point because I found the discussion interesting. This build had come about from a discussion about how with the damage shield spells a fighter typically took more damage hitting a mage than the mage. Of course since fighters have more hitpoints, they would typically still kill the mage. This lead to the discussion on whether you could make a character whose main offense was just standing there and getting pummeled. To deal with critical hits you needed the 10 PM levels, It's no good if you get dev. critted on the first attack. While damage reduction spells are nice they don't last longer than a round or two and you needed to take some damage for atleast one of the shield spells to work, so epic warding was out. That left natural damage reduction so the Dwarven Defender levels were added. Finally, you wanted a fairly high caster level, so that the shields would do some real damage. This sketch was the result of that discussion. In testing, however, it was quite the dissapointment.

My other thought was some kind of druid/shifter/mage that would focus on an undead form, but what kind of fighter would attack an undead with damage shields up? He'd just run. No, you needed the threat of spellcasting to force the attack. In the end I found my magical marauder build did a much better job than either of these builds, it could cast and fight like a dev. crit. fighter and if threatened by an opponent with dev. crit. it could cast the shield spells and shapeshift into Iron Golem form.
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Edited By Mithdradates on 12/28/04 20:06