Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

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Oshido
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Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by Oshido » Wed Sep 13, 2017 1:37 pm

Was thinking on builds yesterday as I am probs going to sacrifice my current toon soon. What I thought about was the above build. Tried a test and realized I can't really fit in the shadow dancer for 16 lvl s and meet the skill requirement for the class while saving a fighter level for epics to take epic weapon spec and disc.
Goal was epic dodge/ epic weapon spec and epic shadow lord.
Was trying fghtr/wm/sd 7/7/16
Would 10/7/13 work? As in is there a huge difference between 13 and 16 sd.
Not sure it's even possible yet and if it's even worth it. Thoughts and tips?
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Opustus
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by Opustus » Wed Sep 13, 2017 2:36 pm

It would, but you'd have to give up 13 ranks of Discipline in order for it to work out, because it's 17 levels until you meet the prerequirements and purely SD from there, meaning you don't get any more Discipline ranks. Maybe it's not the end of the world. No UMD either, but you can get at least Improved Invis off items and ability buffs in potions. It's a very nice concept, though.
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Oshido
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by Oshido » Wed Sep 13, 2017 2:49 pm

Perhaps a good option for Kensai. 13 disc is big but perhaps mitigated by shadow evade and epic dodge. Also can't sneak in epic wep spec but do get 1 Dec from 10 fighter. Race rhough. Human gives some extra skill points. Elf gets some nice dex. Drow with melee magthere though.
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Opustus
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by Opustus » Wed Sep 13, 2017 2:51 pm

You can also grab Epic skill focus: Discipline to help with the deficiency.
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Dalenger
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by Dalenger » Thu Sep 14, 2017 2:25 am

An impossible or at least garbage tier build, I'm afraid.

You're asking to take two classes both with 2+int skill points to cross-class 23 ranks. That's 46 skill points just to get you your first SD level, no earlier than lvl 18. You'd have to have a ridiculous int to manage this (considering all the other skills you also want as fighter, and assuming you still want to max your stealth/SD skills). Int isn't an ability score you should have to worry about as a fighter. Also, no UMD, which is always a pretty sizable problem. No spellcraft either. Being a SD implies you want to run around in light armor/have a good Dex, but being a Fighter/WM implies you want str/con with heavy armor. There's all sorts of reasons these classes don't play nice together.

If you want to be a stealth meleer, there are better ways. Even if you don't want to go the classic 20monk/5rogue/5SD, 5fighter/20SD/5rogue (or something along that path) is very much an option. Or 6monk/4rogue/20SD. Or build ranger-- it's in a bad spot right now, but it will still get you HiPS in 70% of places. Something like 21 ranger, 5 fighter, 4 bard/rogue. All of these are playable builds.
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High Primate
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by High Primate » Thu Sep 14, 2017 6:32 am

To the OP: Why don't you try a 10 fighter/13 rogue/7 WM? It's a great build themed around stealth and prowess as a duelist. It doesn't have any of the SD's gimmicks, but it performs very well and can probably do a lot of the things you want while possibly fitting the RP theme you are going for.

Combining WM with SD is, sadly, cancer.
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WhiskeyGuy
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by WhiskeyGuy » Thu Sep 14, 2017 3:37 pm

On Amia (so it's easier here actually), I made a 12 FTR/10 SD/8 WM. Yes, you cross class skills. I had 16 INT so it wasn't too bad.

In the end, she had better AB than a typical dex wm due to more BAB, 10 levels of SD gave a great DC to her shadow daze, and did incredible damage considering she used a dagger.

It can be done, but the lack of UMD kinda hurts. Go kensai on Arelith and just use potions. Would be a great build IMHO.

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Dalenger
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by Dalenger » Fri Sep 15, 2017 1:06 am

WhiskeyGuy wrote:On Amia (so it's easier here actually), I made a 12 FTR/10 SD/8 WM. Yes, you cross class skills. I had 16 INT so it wasn't too bad.

In the end, she had better AB than a typical dex wm due to more BAB, 10 levels of SD gave a great DC to her shadow daze, and did incredible damage considering she used a dagger.

It can be done, but the lack of UMD kinda hurts. Go kensai on Arelith and just use potions. Would be a great build IMHO.
I'm really wondering where some of your numbers are coming from. Problems I see right off the bat:

16 int barely nets what you'd need, but still doesn't give you any flavor skills outside of hide/MS (such as parry, PP, search), which imo defeats the point of SD. Not to mention, 16 int stat spreads you really hard. More on that below.

Your BAB will be the same as your fighter/WM/rogue counterpart, but your stat will be much thinner spread than any of theirs. Shadow gaze isn't even worth quick-slotting unless your stack 100% on dex, which you won't unless you never intend to do any damage, ever. You'll be in your epics before you even get it, and by then you'll have 10+[your poor dex bonus]+[SD level]=[max DC of ~25]. Find me /any/ epic-level mob or PC that will fail a wis save with a DC that low. Also, its a once-per-day ability. Good luck with that strat.

Your base HP pool will be slightly lower, which I suppose you could argue is balanced by HiPS... but still, you won't be able to dump con. Not that any build should dump con, but a meleer should have at least a half-decent HP pool. And while HiPS is an okay "get me out of here" strat, without monk-speed or haste wands, any PC worth their salt will just pop a TS and chase you down. And all of this hinges on that the PC/mob doesn't break your stealth. Speaking of which...

There's still the problem of your heavy armor completely killing your stealth skills. You won't be able to put enough in dex to make light armor worthwhile. You won't be able to dump str (if anything, it needs to be as high as possible) as you won't be able to lean on sneaks or magic weapon to buffer your damage as most good dex builds would.

TL;DR
Your stat spread is something like STR/DEX/int/con/(wis)/(cha), which is flat impossible (not to mention, btw, now your will sucks). Your BAB is the same as most melee builds, but your actual AB will be lower as your str is abysmal. Similarly, with low str and no sneaks, your damage is poor, even with WM criticals. You'll have to decide between heavy/medium armor (which will kill your stealths) or light armor (which, without proper dex, will kill your AC). Your HP poor if flat lower. You don't have room for any flavor skills (outside of stealths). Spellcraft isn't a 100% must for most builds, but it certainly hurts not to have those extra saving throws, which you won't. Oh, and you have no UMD, so that +4STR/+4CON/+4DEX that everyone else is getting? Not to mention 50% concealment, sanctuary, time stop, harm, bonus AC, DR... etc. Yeah, you get none of that. The only thing this build isn't is pre-epic feat starved, but that goes for nearly any build with fighter. All of this nets you HiPS, which honestly isn't even that important if you know how to corner stealth.

TL;DR TL;DR
If you really want to play this build, go right ahead. Just know that it will be very difficult.
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Baron Saturday
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by Baron Saturday » Fri Sep 15, 2017 7:49 am

WM doesn't do as much for dex-based builds, so it's kinda... mediocre to pair with SD. Especially when you're sacrificing so many skill points. I'm gonna throw out an oddball build here, but you might enjoy it.

Rogue 8/BG 5/SD 17. You very nearly get the fully upgraded Shadow, which (with Epic Shadowlord) would feature 9/+6 DR, 9 regen, 77% concealment, and gives you 9d6 sneak attack while near it. You get another 1d6 sneak from blackguard and 4d6 from rogue for 14d6 total. Your shadow evade lasts a whopping 5 minutes, and shadow daze has a DC of ~40. UMD from rogue, and since BG bull's strength stacks with potted bull's, you're looking at a max strength of well over 20, which is quite nice for a dex-based character. For progression, I'd do Rogue 1-7, SD 8-15, Rogue 16, BG 17-20, SD 21-29, BG 30.

Alternately, could replaces BG with fighter for the extra feats/weapon specialization. You'd lose 1d6 sneak and the option to doublebuff your strength, and also like a bajillion coolness points.
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Astral
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by Astral » Fri Sep 15, 2017 1:03 pm

Baron Saturday wrote: Alternately, could replaces BG with fighter for the extra feats/weapon specialization. You'd lose 1d6 sneak and the option to doublebuff your strength, and also like a bajillion coolness points.
And then you can just do the classic 6 fighter, 6 rogue, 18 sd (classic since summon rework, I mean).

So to the OP: as others have mentioned above. there's 0 synergy between sd and wm. You want to replace the SD with 13 rogue (and you get the strongest powerbuild in Amia, just saying) or you can replace the wm with 5-6 rogue.

10 fighter, 7 wm, 13 rogue seems like a really nice build on paper even in arelith because of the modified parry mode (riposte can crit) so it will want to either parry or sneak and be -guarded. in both cases it's gonna do wonders against most living creatures.
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Oshido
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by Oshido » Fri Sep 15, 2017 2:46 pm

Thanks for all the brainstorming. Ya basically answered my questions. I suppose a lot of this depends on what kind of reward I get from sacrifice. Speaking of. Tiefling is 1 ecl with no stat buffs and 2 ecl with bloodline that doesn't count towards gifts. So I can take 1 major gift and 1 minor correct? I like either the rogue heavy wm or the shadow dancer heavy build. Been in the hospital for weeks now as my youngin was diagnosed with lukemia out of the blue. This gives me something to take my mind off things if even for a few minutes.
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Dalenger
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by Dalenger » Fri Sep 15, 2017 3:29 pm

Oshido wrote: So I can take 1 major gift and 1 minor correct?
I'm not sure what you're asking here. You can only activate one gift per character. If this wasn't the case, people would farm minor awards and then stack 10 of them on the same character, then farm them to 30 in a week.

Look at me, being confused. It's early.
Oshido wrote:Been in the hospital for weeks now as my youngin was diagnosed with lukemia out of the blue.
I'm sorry to hear that. Hopefully things work out for the better. In either case, be sure to seek professional help if you really find you can't take your mind off of recent events.
Last edited by Dalenger on Fri Sep 15, 2017 5:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Lorkas
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Re: Fighter/weapon master/shadow dancer

Post by Lorkas » Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:47 pm

I'm not sure what you're asking here. You can only activate one gift per character. If this wasn't the case, people would farm minor awards and then stack 10 of them on the same character, then farm them to 30 in a week.
You're confusing Gifts and Awards here. You can only have one Award per character, but you can have multiple gifts, depending on the ECL of the race.

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