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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    MindFlayer

    Join Date
    Dec 2012
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    Male

    Default Can anyone help piece these together? (3.5)

    As a bit of low-power theorycrafting, I'm wondering if there's abusable synergy to be had between a number of effects that shift BAB between different values. The effects I'm looking at are the Arcane Duelist's Dextrous Attack, the Slippers of Battledancing, Snowflake Wardance, Power Attack (+ Shock Trooper), (Improved) Combat Expertise, the Battle Dancer's AC Bonus, and Dancing With Shadows. Oddly for theorycrafting, these components actually have a lot of thematic synergy and could be pretty coherent fluff-wise. You could toss the Paladin's Divine Grace in there, but that's not super pertinent to what I'm thinking about.

    Dextrous Attack allows you to subtract up to your BAB from your weapon damage (leaving a minimum of 1 damage) to add that same value to your attack roll. So damage ↓, attack ↑.

    Power Attack allows you to subtract up to your BAB from your attack roll to add to your damage roll. With investment, it can be made to return damage considerably higher than the penalty. So attack ↓, damage ↑↑.

    Shock Trooper allows you to subtract up to your BAB from your AC to add to your damage roll, replacing Power Attack's attack roll penalty. So AC ↓, damage ↑↑.

    Improved Combat Expertise allows you to subtract up to your BAB from your attack roll to add to your AC. So attack ↓, AC ↑.

    Dancing With Shadows allows you to either gain up to your BAB to attack by use of Graceful Lunge (which can translate to getting up to your BAB to AC every turn with repeated use), or up to your BAB in AC without a penalty to attack. So either attack ↑ or AC ↑.

    The build I'm imagining is a dance-focused Kalashtar Bard/Battle Dancer/Fighter or Monk (for feats)/Arcane Duelist. By using these various feats in conjunction with each other it would work almost like Incarnum, having a pool of points that you can shift from offense to defense.

    Having a high Charisma helps out all of these. Slippers of Battledancing let you use Cha instead of Str with one-handed and light weapons for attack and damage. Snowflake Wardance lets you add Cha to attack rolls with non-two-handed weapons. Arcane Duelist and Battle Dancer both add Cha to AC. So you could very feasibly have 2*Cha to attack, Cha to damage, and 2*Cha to AC with which to then shift around using the above effects.

    Is there merit to this? I feel like it could be put together to form a flavorful and capable character with a crazy buffed Charisma, but I'm not 100% seeing it.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Venger's Avatar

    Join Date
    Feb 2011
    Location
    Texas
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    Default Re: Can anyone help piece these together? (3.5)

    While it's an interesting idea, what you have here is the opposite of synergy. You've got half a dozen things all competing for the same resource (your base attack.) it's kind of like having a bunch of options for your swift action. while it's nice to have something to do with it every round, if you've got too much, you can't take full advantage of everything.

    While it's possible to lump up most of these bonuses on cha, your build is still badly mad on some pretty poor stats. that in addition to hopping around in a couple non-full ba classes will make your trick very difficult to do very much with.

    even assuming favorable circumstances and that your gm would houserule each of your things could track your BA separately (e.g. you have 10 points of ba for each thing and could take -10 from power attack, -10 from combat expertise, etc) you still wouldn't really be able to actually do that much.
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