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Aleron
2008-05-02, 09:09 PM
My group has a bad habit of killing off PC accidentally. Well, more by the healers we have being more concerned about trying to act like a tank/ranged DPS, so I've taken to the habbit of pre-rolling a character or two. Currently I've been looking at building up a Vassal of Bahamut, but it will be the first time for doing that. Here's what I'm looking to do so far, let me know if you think I'm making a horrible mistake somewhere.

So far, lvl 12(Fighter 7/VoB 5) Human

STATS
Str20(18) Dex12 Con10 Int12 Wis17(16) Cha16

FEATS
Exotic Weapon Profency(Great, Falchion), Improved Crit(Great Falchion), Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, Weapon Focus(Great Falchion), Monkey Grip, Power Critical, Sacred Vow, Vow of Obedience

The only two items I have at the moment are the Platnium Armor(un moded) and a +1 Great Falchion(Large). The falchion is just to not have an empty slot on my sheet :)

The game is set in the Eberon Universe and all Eberon Books are fair game, as are the completes, minus Psionics. BoED(Obviously), ToB and PHBII are also in. Any ideas, sugestions?

togapika
2008-05-02, 09:45 PM
Make your armor as awesome as possible. I'd also suggest pumping up your dex to take advantage of the high + max dex bonus
And that's just for starters

Hyozo
2008-05-02, 10:09 PM
Bahamut in Eberron?

Whatever, I'm sure most people here would tell you not to take an odd number of fighter levels, or monkey grip (I don't know how that feat works but from what I've heard, it doesn't). Other than that I don't see any problems.

Bag_of_Holding
2008-05-02, 10:17 PM
Bahamut in Eberron?

Whatever, I'm sure most people here would tell you not to take an odd number of fighter levels, or monkey grip (I don't know how that feat works but from what I've heard, it doesn't). Other than that I don't see any problems.

Bahamut and Tiamat both exist in Eberron, too.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-05-02, 10:22 PM
Bahamut in Eberron?

Whatever, I'm sure most people here would tell you not to take an odd number of fighter levels, or monkey grip (I don't know how that feat works but from what I've heard, it doesn't). Other than that I don't see any problems.Monkey Grip does almost nothing. It allows you to use a 2-handed weapon one-handed. Since 2HF is better than one-handed, the feat is just this side of useless.
Weapon Focus is weak, too, as is EWP for almost any weapon. Drop Cleave/Great Cleave, too, as they only matter when fighting lots of mooks, who you should slaughter anyways. Switch Con and Cha, too, as Cha does nothing for you, but Con=HP. I'd suggest going Warblade or Crusader instead of Fighter, but that's just me.

And yes, Fighter isn't a class, it's a template that comes in even-numbered increments, and can be applied to any build. Odd levels do not exist.

Chronos
2008-05-02, 11:18 PM
Monkey Grip does almost nothing. It allows you to use a 2-handed weapon one-handed. Since 2HF is better than one-handed, the feat is just this side of useless.No, what Monkey Grip does is let you use a weapon designed for a creature one size larger than you, in the same number of hands it would be for a creature of the right size. So a human could wield an ogre's greatsword in two hands, just like the ogre, or an ogre's longsword in one hand, again just like an ogre. There's still a -2 penalty on your attack roll, though, and the increase in damage just doesn't make up for it (you'd be better off using Power Attack, if you want to trade attack rating for damage).

As others have said, there's no reason to take an odd number of fighter levels. Your build would be absolutely better off, with no drawback, replacing that last level of fighter with paladin, or barbarian, or any other full BAB class. You would probably also be better off to replace some or all of the other fighter levels with something else, depending on how many feats you want. You say that Tome of Battle is allowed; I don't know the details on Vassal of Bahamut, but Crusader seems like it should fit well thematically. It would also be good if survivability is a concern (as it sounds like it is), since Crusaders are by all accounts very difficult to kill.

bigbaddragon
2008-05-03, 07:53 AM
I don't know the details on Vassal of Bahamut ...

Its a PrC that requires you slay juvenile (or older) red dragon single handedly. I'm really interested how is level 7 fighter going to accomplish this.

Other than that class gains darkvision 120 ft, lowlight vision, a nice amount of platinum pieces as a present form Bahamut, 3 bonus feats, some bonus damage to melee attacks against evil dragons plus evil dragons take some damage if they hit him (half of these bonuses are permanent HP drain) and the best armor after celestial chainmail.

@Aleron: Switch your wis with your dex and your con with cha, you'll need HP and that dex to your ac. Put all three stat bumps into strength, you don't need to put any in wisdom because with 12 wisdom and +2 wisdom item (only 4000 gp) you can still cast 4th level spells from VoB.

Like others said Cleave, Great Cleave, Monkey Grip are traps and not worth it and there are also better feats than Power Critical.

Also there is no need to spend a feat for EWP (Great, Falchion) because even with Imp.Crit/Keen you'll be falling behind in damage output compared to using Greatsword (the math on this is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-56234.html) just look at the few posts at the bottom)

Aleron
2008-05-03, 08:08 AM
Thanks everyone. Cleave/Greatcleave are actually very usefull in the campaigns my DM runs...he likes to overwhelm us, or attempt to, with lots of low level mook to soften us up for the bosses, real characters, ect...last game he threw, literally, about 300 kabolds at us...in a party without any actual Caster AoE :( And as said above, Monkey Grip is to hold onto a Large instead of Medium weapons.

Also the only reason I went with the fighter instead of the ToB classes is for the feats...you right on the levels and to be honest I would have went with an even #, but the pre-reqs for the needed 5 ranks in the Knoledge Religon & Diplomacy...and with them being off class skills for fighter...7 levels was minimum to take, and level 8 didn't seem worth it.

Chronos
2008-05-03, 10:41 AM
Also the only reason I went with the fighter instead of the ToB classes is for the feats...you right on the levels and to be honest I would have went with an even #, but the pre-reqs for the needed 5 ranks in the Knoledge Religon & Diplomacy...and with them being off class skills for fighter...7 levels was minimum to take, and level 8 didn't seem worth it.All the more reason to take something other than fighter for that last level. Paladins, for instance, have Knowledge (Religion) and Diplomacy both as class skills, and so do Crusaders. You could get those skill ranks from paladin 1/fighter 1, or from paladin 2. Then take four fighter levels for feats, and you're good to go. Sure, one level of paladin doesn't get you much, but it at least gets you more than an odd level of fighter.

Sholos
2008-05-03, 12:20 PM
Also there is no need to spend a feat for EWP (Great, Falchion) because even with Imp.Crit/Keen you'll be falling behind in damage output compared to using Greatsword (the math on this is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-56234.html) just look at the few posts at the bottom)

Unless, of course, he wants to use a Great Falchion, optimization be damned.

I agree with dumping some of the fighter levels for something else. Heck, maybe dip into Paladin long enough to grab Divine Grace (only 2 levels) since you've got a decent CHA. Another level gets you Divine Health. So you could go Paladin 3/Fighter 4/VoB 5. That gives you .... 9 feats, I think? Three of which come from the fighter list. Drop Wepon Focus and you're fine, I think (is a +1 really all that useful at this stage?).

Gorbash
2008-05-04, 06:12 AM
And really, how would you kill a Juvenile Red Dragon at lvl 7? My party, 4 lvl 9 characters managed to kill one, and not before we wasted a bunch of resources and 3 of us were down on <15 HP.

FMArthur
2008-05-04, 11:15 AM
Yeah, your DM should do a separate dragon-battle with your character at level 7 before you can use it in the campaign.

Aleron
2008-05-04, 12:18 PM
And really, how would you kill a Juvenile Red Dragon at lvl 7? My party, 4 lvl 9 characters managed to kill one, and not before we wasted a bunch of resources and 3 of us were down on <15 HP.

Yes, well, there's nothing that says beating it on your own can't include bein buffed to all hell before you get there, does it? Who's to say that I didn't manage to get OMFG buffed and happened to find a sleeping dragon(insta crit/cu-de-gra with a Great Falchion :smalltongue: )? An enlarged personed, Bull's strengthed, ect-ect-ect'd lvl 7 against a sleeping dragon I think would do fairly well :)

Gorbash
2008-05-04, 12:38 PM
Riiiiight... Or a thunderbolt struck him in the middle of the battle and left him on 1 HP...

And no, you can't sneak up on a dragon. They have that thing called blindsense + listen and spot in 30s... No matter how buffed you are (with gold that's at your disposal at lvl 7), you don't stand a chance... I really don't think that any optimized character can single-handedly do anything against a creature of CR 10 (and dragons are well above their CR, as we all know), let alone a fighter.

Llewelyn
2008-05-04, 12:44 PM
Maybe the dragon was already wounded when he encountered it, or perhaps he was aiding a Juvenile gold or silver dragon? Seems fitting to me that Bahamut would look kindly on someone coming to the aid of one of his "children"(metallics in this case, not Dragonborn).

Anyways, if his DM accepts it, that's more important than if we do. Unless he's also looking for backstory help, anyways.

Gorbash
2008-05-04, 12:48 PM
Well, that definitely sounds more plausible than sneaking up on a sleeping dragon (which doesn't sound very nice, anyway)...

CthulhuM
2008-05-04, 01:12 PM
Thanks everyone. Cleave/Greatcleave are actually very usefull in the campaigns my DM runs...he likes to overwhelm us, or attempt to, with lots of low level mook to soften us up for the bosses, real characters, ect...last game he threw, literally, about 300 kabolds at us...in a party without any actual Caster AoE :( And as said above, Monkey Grip is to hold onto a Large instead of Medium weapons.

Also the only reason I went with the fighter instead of the ToB classes is for the feats...you right on the levels and to be honest I would have went with an even #, but the pre-reqs for the needed 5 ranks in the Knoledge Religon & Diplomacy...and with them being off class skills for fighter...7 levels was minimum to take, and level 8 didn't seem worth it.

Perhaps you should just go fighter 6 warblade 1 then. Throwing on even 1 extra level of warblade at the end will be a big power boost, especially since you'll get to choose 2nd level maneuvers right off the bat.

And if all that about fighting swarms of mooks is true, then you should be wielding a spiked chain. It'll make your great cleaving [i]much/i] more impressive, and as long as you're taking exotic weapon prof you might as well wield a good exotic weapon. You should still probably drop monkey grip, power critical, and Improved Critical, though (Improved Crit is decent on a falchion or even a greatsword - not so much with a spiked chain). I'd replace them with weapon specialization, weapon mastery (http://realmshelps.dandello.net/cgi-bin/feats.pl?Melee_Weapon_Mastery,all), and maybe Leap Attack.

And yes, like everyone else is saying, you get nothing from your wisdom and charisma, so you should probably switch them to stats that will actually help you stay alive. Playing a tank with 10 con in a campaign that already has issues with player death borders on the insane.

Chronos
2008-05-04, 01:54 PM
Maybe the dragon was already wounded when he encountered it, or perhaps he was aiding a Juvenile gold or silver dragon?In which case it's not exactly "single-handedly" defeating the dragon, now is it?

Gorbash
2008-05-04, 02:14 PM
A-HA!

My point still stands, then. It's impossible to do it on your own! So sayeth the book!

Lord Slaw
2008-05-04, 02:48 PM
Well, I'm not even going to go into optimization, since I tend to fail pretty miserably at that. What can I say, I've got that Role-Player's streak that thwarts my every attempt to Power-Game. :smallredface: Aaaaanyway, since everybody else has been giving pretty sound advice mechanics-wise, I'll toss in my hat on flavor.

OK, Monkey Grip isn't exactly a dynamite feat, we all know that. Between two to four extra random damage isn't ever really worth a -2 to attack (heck, Power Attack has a better, more constant exchange rate), but hey, who doesn't like oversized weaponry? :smallwink:

One of my most glorious characters, who, I might add, fits in with your general concept, was a Dragonborn of Bahamut Paladin, focusing on Chromatic Dragonslaying. Monkey Grip, Power Attack, and a few other general combat feats, combined with a Large Dragonbane Greatspear made for a pretty cool (and, I won't lie, effective) combo.

As for your class choices, I am inclined to agree that an odd-numbered level in Fighter is pretty weak mechanics-wise. I'd only do that if I intended on further advancing with Fighter, or no other martial class would really fit the character's persona. Might I suggest some levels in Paladin? If you want to take levels of Fighter in addition to that, you can grab the Knight's Training feat (from the ECS, if I'm not mistaken), but in Complete Champion, the Holy Warrior Paladin variant lets you swap your spellcasting for bonus feats, and if your DM is nice, they might let you expand the pitiful list provided to something more akin to the Fighter bonus feat list. Plus, it fits REALLY well flavor-wise with the whole "Vassal-to-Dragon" bit. If you don't want to go Paladin, Knight is a pretty good choice, too, since it would compensate for your (relatively) low Constitution.

Illiterate Scribe
2008-05-04, 02:49 PM
In which case it's not exactly "single-handedly" defeating the dragon, now is it?

Meh, if the red dragon fights and kills the gold dragon, becoming severely wounded in the process, and Aleron's vassal-to-be comes across it to avenge it, I'd let that count.