OP Characters Collection Thread: Ready for Another Fight!

Sounds like the odds were against Troika for this game.

So a longsword for a small character is two handed and can be wielded with a shield? Tbh, just having the weapons magically resize to automatically fit the character in a fantasy setting is simpler.

 

If you're going for overpowered, you want your melee characters larger (medium size, with Enlarge Person and/or Righteous Might active), rather than small. A halfling or gnome can weild Scather two-handed with the Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Bastard Sword feat in place, though tbh that's a bit if a wasted feat. IIRC, Hill giants have so much level adjust ment that you need about 50k XP to level up from first to second level, which makes them a bit dull to play.
For maximum power/versatility, I'd start with one each of Wizard, Druid and Cleric (I like Pelor, for Good and Sun domains-- enhanced turning, or Moradin: Good and Earth-- access to Spike Stones and Stonekin, though not as essential if you have a Druid too). For a melee fighter I like Rog 3, Swashbuckler X, with Daring Outlaw feat, and a steady supply of Greater Invisibility spells. You can build for melee (Power Attack/Cleave/ Great Cleave chain, Improved Critical, Craven, Telling Blow) and have them use Scather, or dual wielding Keen rapiers or Great Ckeavers, or for Archery (Point Blank/Precise/ Rapid Shot, Craven, Telling Blow etc). A Bard is a good supply of buffs (haste, greater invis, heroism) and debuff/ control spells (early access to Tasha's Laughter) without using Wizard resources to do it, and in the mid-teen levels you suddenly find you can also just mind control people with your secondary arcane caster.
A Dwarven Defender is a niche choice for a PC who won't run from where you put him when fighting Balors, Demon Queens and Dragons, so if you want someone who will just stand still and whack away with a sword that always hits, this works. Barbarian is good for class features that boost damage in combat; Paladin has some useful anti-running away features; Fighters get most feats but it's difficult to use them, all effectively, and IMHO Sneak Attack is the best source of additional melee damage in this game, which means Rogue levels. Be an Assassin, and be self-sufficient for Greater Invisibility spells (ignore the alignment restriction: if Paladins can Coup De Grace magically-held lizard men and LG Wizards can cast Cloudkill into confined spaces, a CG Assassin can do Rogue stuff with a rapier).
Magically-enlarged bloke with a Holy Spiked Chain, high dex, Combat Reflexes and Great Cleave hitting everything that moves with 15'. Find a way to add some Sneak Attack d6s in there too.

Spells: Stinking Cloud (you can't attack or cast spells, and are waiting to be killed).
Cloudkill: you can't stay where you are, or you'll die sooner or later. Available in scroll form as soon as you have the cash, so no need to wait until 9th level.
Spike Stones: you can't move out of that Cloudkill zone, or charge towards your enemy, without taking significant damage. The best damage spell in the game, IMHO. You'll probably struggle to get more than about 10 enemies under even a Widened Fireball of Cone of Cold template, but cast Spike Stones against a large mob, and practically every Bugbear with run through it, suffering damage much greater than than caused by a Fireball. Lasts most of a combat.
Greater Invisibility: you can't see me, which means I get bonuses to hit and my Sneak Attack damage comes into play.
Glitterdust: poor/inexperienced man's Greater Invisibility.
Haste: extra attack. In addition to my Rapid Shot, and the 4 shots I get from having a BAB of 16. Did I mention that I'm invisible and I have 8 dice of sneak attack and the Craven feat?
Honorable mentions: Keen. Never cast this. Makes the threat range of a rapier 15-20, which is more significant still when you consider the Telling Blow feat the wielder has, and their Sneak Attack dice. Mordenkainen's Sword: again, mainly for the Wounding weapon attribute. Because if you are going to fire 6 arrows into that 20th level, Slave-trading NPC each round, why wouldn't you want to cause -3hp per hit dice when you do?

 

Do not forget Web/Entangle in conjunction with Spike stones and or Cloudkill as well as Blade Barrier

 

I guess I need to see if I can figure out how to make enemies not walk straight through obvious hazards as well.

 

Although is Rogue 3/Swashbuckler better than a Whirlwinder Fighter especially when Sneak attacks override enchantment if there's too much of it and knowing it requires more setup and the setup, greater invisibility, precludes it from taking the fighter's tanking role even though it fits best that role since an Elf Rogue/Beguiler/Ranger/Scout for searching secret doors seems very convenient?

Also what's Blade Barrier? https://www.heroicfantasygames.com/ListofSpells.htm

 

Blade barrier.

 

Thing is, whatcha gonna do if you're a greater temple bugbear and some adventurering party drops a spike stones or a wall of fire between you and them, and follows up with a cloudkill right where you are standing? You've already activated your barbarian rage, so you're gonna charge.

Though come to think of it, I have noticed that sometimes if you layer too many area-effect debuff/ battlefield control spells in one place, foes won't enter. Thing is, they don't have any better options than standing around waiting for your spells to wear off/ your wizard to cast a second wave of spells where they are standing.

 

I'd say very definitely better than a Whirlwind fighter. Consider: the prerequisites for Whirlwind Attack are Dodge (+1 AC against a single attack- in this game, the first of a round. This is weak, particularly in a cRPG where if your character dies in combat you are likely to reload rather than roll a new character. By and large, getting hit means that you need to drink a potion, which are in plentiful supply, or burn a spell, which are also plentiful. Is you really want +1 AC, you have enough money to buy it. Oh, and Swashbucklers get a better dodge for free!), Combat Expertise (fight defensively, substracting up to 5 from your attack roll to add the same number to AC. Again, weak, the way not to take damage is to stab your oppenent to death before he does the same to you. Kill now, healing potion later. At higher levels, use money to buy a defending weapon. Money is effectively limitless; feats are finite). Mobility (+4 dodge bonus to AC against attacks of opportunity when moving through threatened space. Potentially useful, but a Daring Outlaw will have a high dex and maxed out tumble skill. They very rarely draw AoOs, and when they do, they heal the damage after the sneak attack damage they won by their flanking manouvre ends the fight quickly). Spring Attack (situationally useful, though in fact, ending your turn out of contact with an enemy has the advantage that they can't then full attack on their turn. I prefer using Quick Draw to go a bow if I've run out of enemies in melee range and still have attacks left- with a bow you can target anyone, now just the next mook in line. Not worth paying the tax of Dodge and Mobility when Quick Draw has no such prerequisites, and has other uses).
As for Whirlwind Attack: seems pretty cool, but again, it's actually pretty situational. Most of the time, as a frontline fighter in this game, you probably want to be focusing on one foe (the most dangerous) at a time until they drop, then moving onto the next most dangerous. I get that it's it's a cool idea to be able to be surrounded and lay out every opponent in one round, but the opportunities in this game are pretty limited: only the goblins on level 1 (with single Ogre) and level 3 (with 2 hill giants) come to mind. Against them, Great Cleave (cost: 3 feats, with Power Attack gaining particular utility in this game if you elect to use the Answering Sword(s), and Cleave being pretty good when you con't yet qualify for Great Cleave) is probably as effective. Otherwise, you'll only really be surrounded if you let that happen: in the Temple, you can use doorways and spells to make your enemy come to you in a queue and arrive already damaged. Later, large bands of melee enemies can surround you in the War of the Golden Skull (if you let them), the Quarry aftermath (somewhat unavoidable) and Hickory Branch (again, kind of depending on your tactics), but they have sufficient hit points that you won't kill everyone in one round, so you really are better off focussing your attacks on one enemy at a time.
By my reckoning, if you go all out for it, you can have Whirlwind Attack by 6th level as a Fighter dedicated to getting it ASAP (it costs 5 feats to have, and while as a Human fighter you get a 5th feat at 4th level, you need to take Spring Attack then because it also requires BAB of +4). Still, by 6th level you can pick up Whirlwind Attack and its necessary feat taxes, and have Power Attack, Cleave and Great Cleave too. At this point, you're attacking with a +1 weapon, a BAB of +6 and your strength bonus, and doing weapon damage + 2x STR bonus if two-handing, or possibly d8 +2d6 holy if using your wife's heirloom longsword. Rogue3/SwashbucklerX picks up Daring Outlaw at level 6, so they have 3d6 sneak attack, +5 BAB, probably using a Rapier +2, and Dex bonus to hit. Likely that you already have 1 pair of glove of dex +2, whereas permanent Str boosts come later. If you want, you can have picked up Cleave by this point (Great Cleave will have to wait until level 9), but if you are human you can have another feat as well. If I'm building a melee monster, I've usually picked up Power Attack and Cleave; if I'm building a Turret, it's Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot and, with Rapid Shot to Follow. Sneak Attack damage goes up to 4d6 at level 7, then 5d6 at level 9, at which point your party wizard should be ensuring that you never go into a big fight without Improved Invisibilty in place. Beyond this, you are crafting Holy Keen weapons with the elemental damage of your choice, and adding Wounding once your wizard hits 13th level. Keen gives a Rapier a 30% threat range. Telling Blow gives you sneak attack damage to criticals even when not invisible or flanking. Triggering sneak attack is trivially easy: if you've built your party around the concept of this character being your main source of combat damage (either as a Turret who stands still and shoots things with a bow, or as a traditional melee fighter), then it stands to reason that your other characters help maximise this. Obviously one way is to have your party wizard (or bard) cast Improved Invisibilty before any big combats; alternatively for a melee Outlaw, have your party spellcasters summon monsters and nature's allies as flankers. By contrast, fighters are burning feats to increase their chances of scoring criticals, and adding samll bonuses to damage (weapon specialisation- requires weapon focus- +2 to damage with a particular weapon, at a cost of 2 feats! Improved Critical- again, limited to the weapon. Just buy the Keen weapon attribute!)
As to tanking, this is actually the easiest (and dullest) party role to replace. Tanking basically requires a good AC, and/or good hit points, and/or a source of damage reduction. Full plate and a big shield is traditional, but actually, the kind of Dex score these guys can rock (start with 18, +2 by 8th/+3 by 12th level, +6 as soon as you reach Verbobonc) and some Elven Chain, ring of protection etc, and you aren't far off. Swashbucklers get d10 HP/level, which is the same as a fighter and better than a ranger, so on average you're 6 hp behind a pure figter because of the 3 levels of rogue. Constitution bonuses are available, and any character is eligible to have Stoneskin cast upon him/her. You can tank with a cleric, who can wear the same armour as a fighter, and can boost HP with bear's endurance and replace them with Cure spells, and with a Wizard with Mage Armour, an Elven shield (no armor penalty to magic IIRC) Blink/Blur/Dosplacement and Stoneskin. Both of these can also tank from the back of the party by summoning a Brown Bear or a Greater Earth Elemental to the front line.
You don't need to tank so much if you are killing off your foes with the kind of damage per hit that sneak attacking gives you. In general, my combats in this game once I hit the temple follow the pattern of enemies struggling to close with me, taking damage and de-buffs on the way from magic and bowfire, and then when they do get near, being dispatched in short order by an an invisible blade. There are a very small number of foes who require you to tank, either becaue they have enough hit points and enough tanking ability themselves that you kind of have to go toe-to-toe for several rounds: notably the Balor (and to a lesser extent the Hezrou) and Zuggtmoy. Pretty much anyone else can be kept at bay and finished off by spells and bowfire if you want to. I recall reading some people successfully fighting even these demons by standing off, distracting them with summoned creatures, and picking them off with enchanted (holy, cold, axiomatic) bowfire and spells.

As a final thought, if you want to absolutely maximise the melee damage you can do per round and are happy to use the answering swords to do it, then you need some way to maximise BAB (since this is what you use with power attack), attacks per round (BAB, but also Haste), abd Sneak Attack. I reckon the absolutely optimised way to do this for a notional 20th level character is Rog3/Cleric16/Assassin1, taking the feats Power Attack (+cleave and great cleave) Sacred Outlaw (not in T+, but as noted elsewhere, most excellently made available by Pygmy on this website- Cleric and Rogue levels stack for sneak attack damage); Craven (character level to Sneak attack) and using the spells Divine Power (BAB equals character level, so you can add +40 with Power Attack when two-handed, or +20 if you are going maximum cheese and contriving to dual wield Fragarach and Scather- less strength-based damage per hit, but more hits and full sneak attack based damaged with each one), Righteous Might, Rage (Strength bonus that stacks with other bonuses) and Improved Invisibilty. The final level of Assassin gives an 11th dice of sneak attack damage at 20th level (and conveniently also allows perfect casting of Imp Invis from scrolls or wands because it's on the assassin list). The Deadly Precision feat is pretty weak (reroll sneak attack dice that come up as 1s- it the game, it says will never be 1, which effectively changes sneak attack dice from d6 to d5+1, or from ave 3.5 to ave 4 hp per dice. Be CG and you get unlimited attacks of opportunity in response to taking a hit; be any good and you hit automatically and can power attack for twice full BAB extra damage, plus 20 (Craven) plus 11d5+11 (ave 44) sneak attack per hit. 5 hits a round (4 iterative plus haste). Dual-wielding requires EWP bastard sword and additional TWF feats, not for reducing the to-hit penalty, which these swords ignore, but to maximise the number of attacks per round. Greater TWF exists in this game, not sure if Perfect TWF does (or if you'd have enough feats for it), but I think you could get in 9 attacks per round, all auto-hitting, doing d10 + (ave 44 sneak attack) + 2o (craven) +20 (power attack) +Str bonus (+6 easily with the spells) + 2d6 Holy damage per hit: about 100 damage per hit, 9 times. Enough to take down Zuggtmoy in a single round.

 

I'm convinced with regards to the overpowerdness of Two-Weapon Fighting Answering Swords Swashbuckler. I especially like the role compression of having a Swashbuckler and a Warmage instead of having 2 Fighters. I'm still not convinced with the rest. Fighter 6 can speedrun all the good feats and multi-class into a Strength cleric later on and it would require less levels and no extra mods (since you can also realistically maximize editing the game to whichever you want to make things overpowered) and anything seems overpowered at high levels and with extra perks in this game so the Swashbuckler's better lategame doesn't seem as necessary as the Whirlwinder Fighter's better early game (which doesn't assume the existence of support from high level casters and has better early game through superior two-hander standalone damage and better feat synergy with all the best early game melee feats, the only early disadvantage being the lack of equivalent to +2 Dex items and worse armor from the lower Dex for the very common good Light armors which I assume is to balance out two-handed vs two-weapon) and only seem to be a type of adding more salt to the wound rather than a case of a difference of actually wounding. Both already wound completely fine. This route might be interesting in other DnD 3 based games with these perks though, assuming they exist, since this extra feats and Rogue buffs seem to be a Temple+ only implemented video game feature despite being official. Also makes one realize how there's so much favoritism towards casters, rogues and non-fighter martials in the expanded D&D that inadvertently necessarily shows up in Temple+. Paladin and Monk and non-Favored Ranger also seem to be suffering. Ranger less so since they have Favored, Oversized Two-Weapon Fighting (although irrelevant if she has the Answering Swords), naturally better in-game Light Armor and ranged options anyway.

Also, why Rogue 3 instead of Swashbuckler 2, especially with the Answering Swords? The DnD discussions seem to universally agree that more rogue levels are better than more swashbuckler levels.

 

Rogue3 gets you 2d6 Sneak Attack, Evasion, and more skill points. Plus, you're 1 level away from Uncanny Dodge.

 

The answering swords are overpowered to the point that your class maybe matters less than your alignment being CG.

 

My view as stated is that Whirlwind fighter is pretty situation-specific, based on having played that game countless times and knowing what battles you have to fight. As stated, my view is that Whirlwind Attack can be a trap: is you can't drop the enemies surrounding you with one hit each, you are better systematically focusing all your attacks on the most danger foe, then the next, then the next. If you can drop them all with one attack each, then Great Cleave (whose tree is 3 feats long, all of which are useful) will do, especially if you are using the answering sword(s), and thus never need to worry about missing. Actually, if using the answering swords, having a CG alignment, as many HP as possible, and a Stoneskin spell, and a really poor AC will probably do it for you.
Answering Sword shenanigans aside, as far as I can see in this game, the way that Fighters maximise their damage in this game is by maximizing strength, maximizing attacks (from BAB), judicious use of Power Attack (also from BAB, arguably a bit cumbersome in this game to be optimizing from round to round), weapon enchantments. All of these are available to characters with Rogue levels (though admittedly you can't put as much into Str as you also need to focus on Dex), plus, you can also get sneak attack damage. Power Attack adds up to BAB (or 2x BAB, if two-handed weapon), but you have to sacrifice some of your chance to hit. (Rogue 3, Swashbuckler X lags by 1 level in BAB compared to a pure Fighter). Craven gives you character level to damage provided you are sneak attacking. Sure, you have to team up with a flanker, or a caster of some sort, but in a CRPG where you build your team, you can either do that, or know that you won't, and do something else instead. It doesn't have to be invisibility, either: move your sneak attacker to follow the party druid in the initiative order, and use Summon Nature's Ally to port in flankers at just the right moment. Telling blow gives sneak attack damage to critical, which can be 30% of the time using a Keen rapier.
Put another way, I think that if "gain +1d6 sneak attack" were a feat the Fighters could take, multiple times, I think it would be worth spending 2 or 3 feats on as a fighter or ranger on the way to mid-teen levels, and probably more valuable than some other common feats (such as Dodge). Rog3/SwashbucklerX with the Daring Outlaw feat gives you almost full BAB progression, full Sneak Attack progression (which is the most reliable form of additional melee damage in the game), at the expense of some feats that don't do as much or do it as reliably. Any other sources of existing damage (boosting STR, using an always-hit sword and maxed-out Power Attack, Haste, Weapon enchantments, etc) are also available at minimally reduced effectiveness compared to a Fighter.

 

The extra feats (and spells) available via Temple+ are all brought in from official 3.5 D&D sources (the implementation of the Answering swords in this game, ported across from 1st Ed AD&D where power attack didn't exist being an exception-- there aren't to my knowledge 'official' D&D3.5 'always hit' weapons that invite you to set Power Attack to Max and do huge amounts of guaranteed damage at will). It's not like I'm advocating artificially setting your strength to 99 at character creation.
You're absolutely right that D&D is heavily skewed towards full casters, at the expense of mundane characters (Google 'Jaronk tiers' for more). I've no doubt that if you search online, Rog3/Swashbuckler X + Daring Outlaw is considered inferior to pure Rogue in tabletop D&D 3.5, but that's because you are sacrificing some of the versatility of the rogue to be more like a Fighter (notably, Use Magic Device isn't a Swashbuckler class skill, and in tabletop, if you can be a caster then an ability that let's you pretend to be a caster is the next best thing), and you also give away other Rogue skills and skill points. But in this game, none of that matters: the only chest that you *have* to open is the one Brother Smyth asks you to that gives access to the arena quests, and that happens sufficiently early that you can get by on your level 3 open lock skill, high dex; the only pickpocketing you have to do is Mickey (and you can intimidate him or punch him unconscious or buy the Orb from him if you don't have the skill to pickpocket him). So, might as well focus on combat ability.
In tier terms, Fighters and Swashbucklers are generally considered tier 5 (have one job: combat; do it less well than higher tier classes despite those classes not having it as their 'main thing'). Rogues are tier 4 (do one thing quite well, but overshadowed by higher tiers - for example, wizards who cast knock, fly, charm person or other spells that make the Rogue's skill checks pale into insignificance).
For reference, tier 1 is Wizards, Clerics and Druids, who by dint of their access to the full list of spells for their class can basically solve any encounter on their own, possibly in several ways. Tier 2 is Sorcerors and Favored Souls, who can't know all the spells, but can still solve anything with the spells they do know. Tier 3 includes Bards, Beguilers, who can do their one thing pretty well, and also have the versatility to be relevant at most other times too.
Clearly, in this CRPG, versatility isn't such a big issue (there's no flight, no wildshaping into an eagle or mouse, no turning invisible to spy and get more information, and clairvoyance/clairaudience benefits the whole party), and it's more about the team (so the wizard is more likely to cast greater invisibility on the rogue to let him contribute more).