Yeah, I'm sorry...another character. I'm on a spree lately, I think it's because I feel bad for using so many builds in this guild to help me out with my own. I want to give back to you guys.
Playable from 1-40, PvP/PvM (PvM untested, but I can see no reason why he would falter)
Vitals: Hitpoints: 456 Saving Throws (Fortitude/Will/Reflex): 21/16/21 BAB: 30 AB Calculations: Mundane Greatsword): 49 +5 Greatsword: 54 +5 Greatsword, +12 Strength Item: 60 Dual-Wielding Mundane Daggers: 39/39 Dual-Wielding +5 Daggers: 44/44 Dual-Wielding +5 Daggers, +12 Strength Item: 50/50 AC Calculations: Mundane Full Plate: 29 Mundane Robes: 22 +5 Full Plate: 34 +5 Robes: 27 +5 Full Plate, +5 AC Items: 49 +5 Robes, +12 Dex Item, +12 Wisdom Item, +5 AC Items: 54 +10 While in Improved Expertise +4 with Haste 68 Maximum AC (If you really wanted more AC, you could equip a +5 Tower shield with one Dagger, and have a 71 AC)
Alright, this newest build is based on an organization called The Cassiline Brotherhood, from a trilogy of books called "The Kushiel Legacy", which is written by Jacqueline Carey. I drew some inspiration from a build called, "The Ko'Di Blade Master", made by Avendesora84 (Link Here: Click Here I mostly just referenced her build, and looked at how she did it, and then made my own...I didn't, for instance, copy her build, and then change aspects of it.
Anyway, I should probably explain some of the choices I made. First of all, the Dual-Wielding. I did this purely to imitate the Cassiline Brotherhood, who use their daggers when they don't wish to kill, and then switch to their Greatsword (it might be a bastard sword, but they typically wield it two-handed) when they are forced to kill. Their combat prowess is nearly unmatched, and they've been known to take down entire raiding parties alone, or with little help at all. They're assigned as a Guardian to important people. For instance, the King has two Cassiline Bodyguards who attend him at all times. I took Improved Expertise solely for when I use Daggers. Their aim is not to kill while they wield their daggers, but rather to go purely defensive, then if the enemy doesn't back down, or the person the're assigned to protect is put into danger, they'll unsheathe their sword and unleash death.
I'm usually very adamantly opposed to taking Devestating Critical, but I just thought this build wouldn't be complete without it. His Devastating Critical DC is only 40 without items, and with +12 Strength it's 46, 7 short of the maximum. It's not an amazing DC, but it is good enough for people not wearing a ton of +Fort Save. The Greatsword also crits on a 15-20, at a x3 modifier, with +2d6 damage added on from Overwhelming Critical. If you acquire a Keen weapon, or a Mage/Bard buffs you with Keen, your crit range becomes a very respectable 13-20.
At any rate, I don't have a lot to say about the build. Many of the choices made were for purely Roleplaying Purposes. Two-Weapon Fighting and Improved Expertise being the main.
As always, I'm completely open to Critiques, Comments, or Criticism. However, please don't mention to me that the build would be better without Dual-Wielding and Improved Expertise...I know. =)
<edit>
Oh, here's a skill Variant, if anyone's interested: Drop Spot and Listen, get Hide and Move Silently. If you're equipping Robes, and have a +12 Dex item, you can sneak reasonably well. Not as good as a dedicated Dex Build, but enough to let you go undetected unless someone's -really- focused in Detection. You could sneak in Full Plate, as well...but only people who lack Spot/Listen will miss you, really.
Edited By Acothea on 06/06/06 07:05
Interesting... Pretty much a standard WM overall, but your thematic approach adds a nice touch Good job. _________________ "... C'est un pays plus nu que la terre polaire — Ni bêtes, ni ruisseaux, ni verdure, ni bois!
Or il n'est pas d'horreur au monde qui surpasse La froide cruauté de ce soleil de glace Et cette immense nuit semblable au vieux Chaos; ..."
This might be a silly question, and if so, I apologize. However, I was just thinking, isn't it better to be at level 20 with multiples of 4? If so, might it not make sense to switch your lvl 20 and lvl 21 choices, so that at 20 you are F 12/WM 8?
This might be a silly question, and if so, I apologize. However, I was just thinking, isn't it better to be at level 20 with multiples of 4? If so, might it not make sense to switch your lvl 20 and lvl 21 choices, so that at 20 you are F 12/WM 8?
If there's no difference, then no matter.
Nope, no difference whatsoever. BAB guide _________________ "... C'est un pays plus nu que la terre polaire — Ni bêtes, ni ruisseaux, ni verdure, ni bois!
Or il n'est pas d'horreur au monde qui surpasse La froide cruauté de ce soleil de glace Et cette immense nuit semblable au vieux Chaos; ..."
No change to AB, +1 Ref Save with the preepic FTR 12/WM 8 split though.
Cheers, Kail _________________ To hear the sound of Freedom, many gave their lives They fought for you and me Those memories will always live inside us, and now it's our time to be free
If you are willing to sacrifice 1 AB, you could take 6 monk levels, and get the monk bonuses much sooner (tumble, cleave, etc.). Take 4 Monk levels pre-epic, and skip taking Cleave, KD, and IKD. Assuming you drop fighter levels for monk, you lose 2 fighter feats, but get 3 for free, picking up 1 feat net. You also get 6 stunning fists instead of 2 per day, a point of Monk AC (probably useless since you will wear armor), and some monk speed (that's quite useful). You also now get kama proficiency early enough that you could use kamas as you weapon of choice (doesn't fit the RP, I know, but it might be a nice option for someone else making a variant on the build. Also gets 10 attacks per round when dual-wielding kamas). You unarmed damage also goes up in case you ever have to fight unarmed.
If you don't want to drop any fighter levels, you might want to consider something other than monk for the 2 remaining levels. Bard would get you Tumble, UMD, a weak song, and the ability to use all scrolls and wands. Rogue gets you Tumble, UMD, uncanny dodge,lots of other available skills to dump in, and a weak sneak attack.
TM
Bard also has Spellcraft which is quite useful. _________________ "... C'est un pays plus nu que la terre polaire — Ni bêtes, ni ruisseaux, ni verdure, ni bois!
Or il n'est pas d'horreur au monde qui surpasse La froide cruauté de ce soleil de glace Et cette immense nuit semblable au vieux Chaos; ..."
Thanks for the ideas and variants, everyone. =) I'm fond of this build, just because it has meaning to me, so I'm happy with any improvements that can be made to it.
This thought is not only on this build, but on any devasting critical build meant for PvP. The character will face many devasting critters, and to survive you need to be able to resist devastings too. Unless you are lucky to land the first dev. critical hit you will die very fast! Much less than 30 fortitude or PM10 is hazard in a dev. critical world.
Quote: Posted 09/21/06 12:55:58 (GMT) -- blixen71
This thought is not only on this build, but on any devasting critical build meant for PvP. The character will face many devasting critters, and to survive you need to be able to resist devastings too. Unless you are lucky to land the first dev. critical hit you will die very fast! Much less than 30 fortitude or PM10 is hazard in a dev. critical world.
*bump!*
That's only true if you can't get a high enough AC. It's true that Dev. Crit is trouble, but good AC is another solution that works just as well, although there's always a 2.5% chance of failure to that. _________________ CATS!
Quote: Posted 09/21/06 13:19:23 (GMT) -- avarielo
Quote: Posted 09/21/06 12:55:58 (GMT) -- blixen71
This thought is not only on this build, but on any devasting critical build meant for PvP. The character will face many devasting critters, and to survive you need to be able to resist devastings too. Unless you are lucky to land the first dev. critical hit you will die very fast! Much less than 30 fortitude or PM10 is hazard in a dev. critical world.
*bump!*
That's only true if you can't get a high enough AC. It's true that Dev. Crit is trouble, but good AC is another solution that works just as well, although there's always a 2.5% chance of failure to that.
High enough AC makes it 0%, since autohit on 20 does not work for the confirmation roll.
Cheers, Kail _________________ Unto to the darkness I commend my soul Never shall I repent Never shall I be saved
I'll go into the House of Death Before my last breath My enemies all shall die!
Say, do SCV and ED apply to the crit confirmation roll? I'm assuming no, but it'd be scary if they did. _________________ CATS!
quoting the rules from NWNwiki.org:
Critical hit: When you take a swing at your opponent, if your NATURAL (un-modified) to-Hit roll is within the threat range AND your modified roll is a hit (WITHOUT invoking the '20 always hits' rule), then you have scored a critical threat. A re-roll is then made with the SAME to-hit modifiers, and if the re-roll is also a hit, then your swing was a critical hit.
Example: The Fighter has a total to-Hit bonus of +11 (+5 BAB, +4 STR, +1 Wpn Focus, +1 sword). If he rolls (on d20) 1-4 he misses the Goblin's AC:16. If he rolls 5-18 he hits, for normal damage. If he rolls 19 or 20 (within the Critical Threat range of his Longsword), then he hits, and a re-roll is made with the same to-Hit modifiers (+11 vs AC:16)... if the re-roll is 1-4, it's just a normal hit, but if the re-roll is 5-20 (the span he needed to-hit in the first place) then it's a Critical Hit.
Devastating critical: Whenever a character inflicts a critical hit against an opponent, the opponent has to make a fortitude save or die instantly. Difficulty class: 10 + ½ Character level + Strength modifier
So the if the attack is a hit and the dice is within the threat range, you only have to re-roll a hit (not another critical hit). Then if you fail the fortitude save: 1d20 + your save modifier against the dev crit DC you die! You will of course recieve less hits with high AC, but if you recieve a critical hit you die without fortitude or immunity
So lets say you only have 24 fortitude save, and have recieved a devasting critical from a fighter with str 30 (dev crit DC 40), you will have to roll 16-20 to make the save. You will only survive 1 out of 4 devasting criticals from this fighter.
Edited By blixen71 on 09/21/06 16:46
Quote: Posted 09/21/06 16:28:43 (GMT) -- blixen71
quoting the rules from NWNwiki.org:
Critical hit: When you take a swing at your opponent, if your NATURAL (un-modified) to-Hit roll is within the threat range AND your modified roll is a hit (WITHOUT invoking the '20 always hits' rule), then you have scored a critical threat. A re-roll is then made with the SAME to-hit modifiers, and if the re-roll is also a hit, then your swing was a critical hit.
Example: The Fighter has a total to-Hit bonus of +11 (+5 BAB, +4 STR, +1 Wpn Focus, +1 sword). If he rolls (on d20) 1-4 he misses the Goblin's AC:16. If he rolls 5-18 he hits, for normal damage. If he rolls 19 or 20 (within the Critical Threat range of his Longsword), then he hits, and a re-roll is made with the same to-Hit modifiers (+11 vs AC:16)... if the re-roll is 1-4, it's just a normal hit, but if the re-roll is 5-20 (the span he needed to-hit in the first place) then it's a Critical Hit.
Devastating critical: Whenever a character inflicts a critical hit against an opponent, the opponent has to make a fortitude save or die instantly. Difficulty class: 10 + ½ Character level + Strength modifier
So the if the attack is a hit and the dice is within the threat range, you only have to re-roll a hit (not another critical hit). Then if you fail the fortitude save: 1d20 + your save modifier against the dev crit DC you die! You will of course recieve less hits with high AC, but if you recieve a critical hit you die without fortitude or immunity
So lets say you only have 24 fortitude save, and have recieved a devasting critical from a fighter with str 30 (dev crit DC 40), you will have to roll 16-20 to make the save. You will only survive 1 out of 4 devasting criticals from this fighter.
But if the target AC is high enough you ar enever gonna reroll a hit, since autohit on a 20 ain't working on the confirmation roll). _________________ Heavy metal Or no metal at all Whimps and posers Leave the hall!
Quote: Posted 09/21/06 15:54:35 (GMT) -- avarielo
Say, do SCV and ED apply to the crit confirmation roll? I'm assuming no, but it'd be scary if they did.
No, I don't believe they do. The confirmation roll is not actually another swing, so ED and SCV shouldn't come into play (and I'm quite sure they don't). _________________ It's rogue, dammit, ROGUE!!!
Quote: Posted 09/21/06 16:28:43 (GMT) -- blixen71
So lets say you only have 24 fortitude save, and have recieved a devasting critical from a fighter with str 30 (dev crit DC 40), you will have to roll 16-20 to make the save. You will only survive 1 out of 4 devasting criticals from this fighter.
To further illustrate Kail's point, let's assume your attacker has a +50 AB and your AC is 75. He can only hit you on a 20 roll (autohit). A roll of 20 is always a threat to crit. Now, he rolls the confirmation. Highest roll he can get is a 20, which is not good enough to hit your AC. Therefore the confirmation roll fails and the hit is not a critical (a roll of 20 is not an autohit on the confirmation roll). As a result, your opponent can never roll a crit on you and thus cannot land a Dev Crit (unless he finds some way to lower your AC, such as Taunt and/or Curse Song). _________________ It's rogue, dammit, ROGUE!!!
Yes of course 25 AC higher than attackers AB is difficult to hit, actually almost untouchable, but I have'nt seen a devasting crit build with AC 75 yet!
I was taking about devasting critical builds defending against other dev critters here, and the aspect of dev-crit builds having defence against dev criticals). In that case an AC equal to the attacker AB is considered an very high AC I would say.
If your AC is equal the AB of the attacker, and the attacker has 4 attacks pr round you will recieve 2.6 hits pr round in avarage, and 0.8 criticals pr. round in avarage against an 15-20 threat range. Thats 4 savingthrows against death every 5 rounds. Now you must have the fortitude or you'll be dead in seconds.
I've been doing some calcs in spreadsheet and here is the formula that calculate an attack's chance to deal a critical hit, and the chance to kill instantly if you have devastating critical. Inputs variables: AC = AC of defender AB = AB of the attack T = The weapons threat range in points (19-20 T=2, 15-20 T=6 etc) DDC = Devastating critical DC of the attacker F = Fortitude save modifier of the defender
R = 21-AC+AB (the hitrange on the d20, max 19, min 1) M = T if R>T M = R if R<=T M = 0 if AC is 21 or more higher than AB M is adjusting threat after confirmation roll C = DDC-F (the failrange on the d20 to save devastating critical, max 19, min 1)
The attack's percentage chance to score a critical: PCR = R*M/4 The attack's percentage chance to kill instantly: PDCR = PCR*C/20
Use this to see how different variables affect the criticals
Edited By blixen71 on 09/22/06 08:12
We know that Devastating Crit is strong to the point where it's bootleg. But since you dropped the comment on this build, which attempts to get AC as high as possible, it's notable to point out the problems with getting crits on certain AC totals. _________________ CATS!
As I said in my initial post here this was a general thought about devasting critical meant for PvP, not this build in particular. So maybe this discussion should be in the general section
Good job.
