The Warden of Shadows has 211 non-essential skillpoints to distribute as the user sees fit. One majorly recommended skill is Use Magic Device, so that the Warden may utilize magic scrolls to further augment himself. Ranks of Spellcraft will also help with his less-than-perfect Fortitude/Will Saving Throws vs spells.
Special Properties: The Warden of Shadows has a hefty 16d6 Sneak Attack, as well as the ability to Hide in Plain Sight. Most importantly however, is that the Warden of Shadows is so hard to hit, even a natural 20 can miss him. With constant 50% Concealment, Epic Dodge, 71 Parry with 6 Attacks per Round, it is truly hard to hit him.
Item Preference: The Warden's weakpoint is in True Seeing spellcasters. Thusly, he should seek out items to augment his Spell Resistance, Spell Immunities, or Fortitude/Will Saving Throws. After that, emphasis should be placed on equipment that boosts Parry skill, Dexterity, Constitution, or Strength. --------------
Misc. Notes: This build is pretty flexible. There are literally hundreds of leftover skillpoints, and you can fine-tune almost all the pre-epic feats to suit your own needs. I went the dual-wield route to utilize hit-and-hide guerilla tactics, with Improved Knockdown to use against those pesky casters. One could easily replace these with Weapon Specialization in one of the fighter levels, Called Shot, etc.
Epic Dodge can actually be taken three levels sooner, however I believe this to be a bug. Simply because Epic Dodge requires 30 ranks of Tumble according to the description, but it seems to be using adjusted skill, not ranks, for the actual requirement check. At level 24 it's not possible to have 30 Tumble ranks, so I held off until it would be "legal" to do so.
I put the final stat point into Strength since the build has 32 Dexterity at the end, another point would have been fruitless. Of course, it doesn't help in Strength either, except for a few more pounds of carry-weight.
Comments/constructive criticism are most welcome. After all, nobody gets it right the first time!
Edited By Nirrudn on 04/22/04 13:25
Hi, the build sounds interesting but i would love to know what the ab and ac are with say +5 items please.
Thankyou
The AB is variable depending on what pre-epic feats you take. In my specific build, it's something like, eh... let's see. I believe he has a BAB of 26, +11 from Dexterity, so we're at 37 right now. Weapon Focus adds another +1, so 38. So dual wielding two +5 Short Swords would put him at +41. It's definitely not the best AB out there, but his strength isn't in landing blows, it's in avoiding them. I meant for this to be the most "untouchable" Rogue build.
AC in nothing but clothing (or naked) ends up at 29 I believe. I didn't include the AC originally because the build doesn't really use AC for defense. AC is just a "last resort" in this case.
Edited By Nirrudn on 04/29/04 14:48
Hey I am kind of a n00b at building chars, but could somebody clarify this. I was always told by my friends that the parry skill was broken....is it? If not is the skill automatically used in combat like discipline or do i have to activate it?
It's sort of broken, yes. You can only block a maximum of 3 attacks from any one person per round, basically. It's a little more detailed than that, but that's the simple explanation.
If you have 6 attacks (as my build here does) per round, and you're fighting someone with 5 attacks per round, you'll only block 3.
If you're fighting two people with 3 attacks each, you can block them all. If one of them has 4 attacks, you can block 3 from him, 3 from the other guy.
You have to activate it like Power Attack Mode, Expertise, Defensive Casting, etc.
Although my build does sort of get around the Parry limit/bug/whatever-you-wanna-call-it by having alternate ways of avoiding attacks as well.