Building a Warder.

[CGNefarious]

So I'm building a Zweihander Sentinel Warder as the main tank for my four man group and I'm having trouble deciding what disciplines to go with. It was a 20 point buy and my stats are as follows.

Spoiler: Stats

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Str: 14 (15 -1 age)
Dex: 8 (9 - 1 age)
Con: 14 (15 - 1 age)
Int: 20 (17 +1 age +2 racial)
Wis: 9 (8 +1 age)
Cha: 8 (7 +1 age)

Currently I'm looking at going with Golden Lion for the teamwork synergies (my character is a general type and I thought it fit thematically) and Scarlet Throne to give me some decent offensive options. I would then use my class features and the counters from each discipline for my tankiness. The question I have is would I still be an effective tank like this? Or should I drop one of my disciplines to pick up Iron Tortoise? I've never played a Warder before, so I honestly don't know if I can still be a good enough tank without focusing my maneuvers on tanking as well.

Thoughts?

[Vhaidara]

You generally pick 2 disciplines to focus on.

Zweihander Sentinel, in my mind, favors using normal control methods (Stand Still and Trips) since you can grab a reach weapon. I would use Iron Tortoise for your offense (it's actually pretty good for it) and Golden Lion support.

Personally, I would say join the Empyreal Guardians and grab Silver Crane. Silver Crane has a solid mix of offensive damage strikes and healing maneuvers. Then you have Golden Lion to further enhance you ally's actions.

[Sayt]

The Hussar and Piercing Thunder discipline is also very good for Warders. You trade out some AC and a few feats to get vastly improved maneuvering, and your mount can drive you around while you defensive focus, and the Piercing Lance's focus on polearms/spears means you get even greater reach.

[CGNefarious]

Hussar and Piercing Thunder are still in playtesting and not allowed in the game I'm playing. I do like the idea for Silver Crane though. It's something I had briefly thought about before, but didn't linger too much on.

It never occurred to me to take Improved Trip. I never use combat maneuvers (not surprising since I normally play casters) but it seems like a solid idea. Should I consider getting a trip weapon, or does that really even matter much?

[Azoth]

I have a normal Warder who focuses on Iron Tortoise and Silver Crane, while fighting sword and board. I will say this much, you will pretty much never use a skill for AC counter to save yourself. It is too easy to push your AC above your skill modifiers.

Now Warning Roar from Golden Lion has saved my buddies bacon a fair number of times. If you do pick up Silver Crane, which I highly recommend because it is incredibly effective at keeping your buddies standing to finish a fight, remember to check with your DM in regards to an enemy's alignment. Sacred Damage does +50% against Evil aligned enemies. It is damage, healing, and detect evil rolled into one nice neat bundle.

Reach trip weapons are awesome on Warders as they expand your Zone-Of-Nope when you defensive focus to regain maneuvers.

[Vhaidara]

It never occurred to me to take Improved Trip. I never use combat maneuvers (not surprising since I normally play casters) but it seems like a solid idea. Should I consider getting a trip weapon, or does that really even matter much?

Not in PF. The Trip property on a weapon basically means you can disarm yourself if you fail the trip

I have a normal Warder who focuses on Iron Tortoise and Silver Crane, while fighting sword and board. I will say this much, you will pretty much never use a skill for AC counter to save yourself. It is too easy to push your AC above your skill modifiers.

Well, considering that Iron Tortoise gives you an Attack Roll AC replacer, that's a different story. Also, you don't have to declare the counter until you see what the enemy rolls, because you can't counter if they get a nat 20.

[Feint's End]

IS there are reason for maxing Intelligence over all the other stats? Seems like a pretty bad idea to me.

Something like:
str 16 (15-1+2)
dex 12 (13-1)
con 14 (15-1)
int 16 (15+1)
wis 11 (10+1)
cha 8 (7+1)

Above stats make you much better at fighting and you don't really gain that much from extremely high intelligence.

[Ilorin Lorati]

Mostly the same reason why you'd want to max it on any caster: the higher your Int, the higher your maneuver DC. Assuming you're not making full attacks at any point, the only portion of your attack bonus you actually need to care about is your highest attack bonus since that's what 90% of your maneuvers will be using solely, and it's easy to keep up with enemy AC without raising that to incredible heights. At low levels you're right though, to start you may want to have a bit higher Str.

[stack]

I wouldn't push everything into INT. You need to be able to hit a hurt things. Intelligence helps on maneuvers that have saves and on getting you more AOOs, plus in recovering maneuvers. I wouldn't push it past 16 on a point buy unless it was very generous and would put it below strength if rolling.

[CGNefarious]

So you think I should drop my Int down to 16. Is there a reason I would boost Str over Con? As a tank wouldn't Con be higher on my priority list?

If I'm reading Defensive Reach right, I don't even need to get a reach weapon. I can stick with my greatsword and still trip foes who try to pass around me.

Also, are there any feats I should seriously look at? I'm going with the Imp Trip line. I'll likely take Extra Marks and Advanced Study further down the line. But that leaves a lot of open slots. Any suggestions?

[Vhaidara]

Well, Elric's guide is pretty solid for its feat recommendation.

As far as Str vs Con, I would say go for the Strength. You have a d12 HD, and your defenses focus on not getting hit (high AC, counters) and have Silver Crane to spot heal if you need it.. The tank class that needs a high Con on top of his d12 is the Zealot, because they tank through a Shield Other effect

[CGNefarious]

Yeah, I've been following his guide. That's why I thought Con > Str. Honestly it feels kind of weird dropping my Int down 4 points when it's my main ability. Maybe that's just a side effect of always playing casters. Maybe I'll drop it down two and go with the following stats.

Spoiler: Possible new stats.

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Str 14 (15-1)
Dex 12 (13-1)
Con 14 (15-1)
Int 18 (15+1+2)
Wis 11 (10+1)
Cha 8 (7+1)

My Str doesn't increase, but by AC goes up by two and my Will saves by one. I can always get a belt of giant strength as one of my first items, and I'll take Discipline Focus as a first level feat for extra damage. I'm also taking toughness to beef up my early hit points since I've been told it's a high mortality game. With these stats I'm not as min-max-y and I'll only have one dump stat, which is good because I hate dumping stats. Having an AC of 20 at level one would be great, so I'll probably go ahead and go with these stats. And the 11 wisdom fits my character a lot better than 9. I think this should probably work and make my character more balanced.

[Azoth]

The only real upside on high Int that hasn't been already mentioned is that it gives a few more marks/day that you can use. It is easy to run out of them if you don't spend them wisely. Took me a little bit to get the feel for them so I had enough to last an entire day.

As for trip feats the four you need to snag are combat expertise, imp trip, greater trip, and fury's Fall. You get combat reflexes for free. I would still recommend a guisarme over great sword for this kind of build. Snag some spiked gauntlets and call it a day.

[CGNefarious]

Well our original DM had to dip out and one of the other players stepped up into the DM spot. We're now just three players (Aasimar Synthesis Summoner, Human Gunslinger, and my Warder), but on the plus side we got to reroll stats. And I happened to roll very, very well. I got 18, 18, 17, 17, 17, 16 on my rolls, and wound up trading one of my 17's for the Gunslinger's 13, giving me 18, 18, 17, 17, 16, 13 to work with. I'm middle aged, giving me minuses to all my physicals and a plus to all my mentals. I put my human +2 into intelligence, giving me final stats as follows.

STR 17
DEX 16
CON 16
INT 21
WIS 17
CHA 14

I am definitely going with Golden Lion and Silver Crane for the pseudo Paladin vibe, and the DM even gave me a once a day channel energy (with some extra buffs) as a blessing from Al'asadriel and to help out with our lack of healing. I also went with Martial Power instead of Toughness or Combat Reflexes to help me survive the early levels. I'm not sure how well that's going to work with the more aggressive style of the Zweihander, but I need it for Improved Trip anyway, so I might as well have it now when it'll benefit me the most. Here is my character sheet. Let me know what you guys think and if there's anything I can do to improve upon my build.

[stack]

I would recommend putting the +2 in strength rather than INT unless you are loading up and maneuvers with saves. Attack, damage, and CMB will benefit.

[CGNefarious]

I had considered doing that to get +1 attack and +2 damage, but I thought the bonus to saves, skills, attacks of opportunities, and healing from Silver Crane would probably be better. Though looking back through Silver Crane it seems that won't make much of a difference in the long run. I might be better off going with 19's in both Str and Int. It'll play to the more aggressive style of the Zweihander as well and make sure I'm not useless in fights.