Uberdwarf

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I am planning on an Uberdwarf fighter type for use in Hordes.

The manual for Hordes says that Dwarven Defenders work well as Barbarians, but I thought that alignment would conflict?

Actually I wanted to make a fighter basically, with perhaps a rogue level or so for some sneak attack and some Dwarven Defender for some of the Immunity to sneak attack and HP.

Ultimately I want him sometimes dual wielding Dwarven War Axes or Shield combos, but the above also would be nice.

How should I dual class if at all? Would Weapon master be worth it to chuck into the combo?

 

Fighter to Defender is the best way to go I've found since it'll allow another type of class without xp penalty not to mention the bonus combat feats. Weapon master has some 'very' hefty requirements. Why not chuck a few Champion of Torm levels in there just to make it interesting?

 

I played around with a Fighter/Weapons Master/Dwarven Defender. He turned out to be quite a powerful character near the end, but the feat requirements can be brutal at the start.

With a requirement of 6(7 for the war axe) feats the weapon master bit needs a lot of work and none of the required feats count toward the Dwarven Defender class. You'll be looking at around 7th level to qualify for weapons master and 9th or 12th for Dwarven Defender, you can reduce the level for the defender start by taking more fighter levels for the bonus feats.

That said, the character was a fun build to play with. It requires a very dedicated feat selection plan right from the beginning however.

 

Sterntiger. What feats and/or order of obtaining them would you take? How about Stats? Apart from Lawful alignment what other things should I take note of to make it?

 

This is from memory, there may be some errors.

For stats,

Dex 13
Int 13

Concentrate other points in strength and con. You're a meatwall fighter so to heck with Cha. I prefer to keep my Wis at 10 so as to avoid any penalties to will saves.

Feat path was something like
1 WF battle axe and dodge
2 Mobility
3 Expertise
4 Spring attack
6 Whirlwind and Toughness
9 Improved Critical battle axe

Note the reasoning for the battle axe instead of the waraxe is that on average the waraxe will only grant one more point of damage and costs an extra feat.

At this point I think you have all the feats for both prestige classes. You need to make sure you have at least 4 ranks in the intimidate skill.

If you want to take the weapon master first and use a waraxe, at first level take exotic weapons instead of weapon focus, and weapon focus instead of toughness at 6. Then you can take toughness at 9th and start taking defender levels.

I don't remember the exact order of my level up's, but I think it went 6 fighter 1 weapon master 1 defender, after that mix the three to taste.

 

I know this may not be the "uber" build but it is a build I had fun with even though it may be very much cliched.

'Aric' was a dwarven barbarian/ranger. At an early age his family sent him to learn from the clerics of Clangeddin but a drow raid that left his clan destroyed and caused him to grow disillusioned with Clangeddin who could not save his clan. He abandoned the clerics and their structured teaching/fighting methods and went off on his own into the wild.

Are you playing the OC or in a PW or modules? A key to figuring out how you want to build your character will be figuring out how many levels you have to play around with.

You could go a couple of paths with the barbarian build. I went with a 16 str, 14 dex, 17 con, 10 wis, 14 int, and 6 cha (since he lived most of his life primarily in the wild alone). I then bumped con to 22 by level 20. Any additional points go to str. This allowed me to take the damage reduction feats. Having a 14 intelligence let me take improved knockdown and gave me enough skill points to max discipline, heal, intimidate, taunt, listen, and tumble (as a cross class skill). Maxing intimidate was important because I took Terrifying Rage which relies on Intimidate in determining its DC.

A note on Terrifying Rage - it's great. You can get extremely high DC levels by pumping up your intimidate skill. One Barbarian weakness can be a lower AC. However, fighters and rogues tend to have lower Will saves and thus Terrifying Rage negates the AC difficulty by sending warrior types scurrying in fear. This can be negated by mind-immune gear etc. and high magic worlds probably have these (which I'll talk a bit more about below). Mighty Rage and Thundering Rage are also nice. Qualifying for all the rage abilites is tricky unless you plan on playing until really high levels.

You will need to be an epic barbarian for the Epic Rage abilities. Edit - this isn't true. You don't need to be an epic barbarian for Terrifying rage, contrary to the manual. I'm not sure about the others.

Then, the ranger levels give you the favored enemy (elves in my case because of the aforementioned drow episode).

You could also choose to focus in strength rather than constitution and work toward devastating critical; a half-orc might make more sense with that build in mind.

The exact level ratio will depend on personal taste (do you want more barbarian feats, more favored enemies, do you want the free ranger dual-wield feats etc.) Also, it will depend on how many levels you'll be playing the barbarian.

I'm not saying this is a BETTER build than a fighter/wm/DD in a power-sense. It was a fun build though for me and had more of a role-playing flair than I think a dual prestige class build would have for me. You will have fewer feats, won't get the cool weapon master bonuses, and you wouldn't have the same damage reduction capability as the dwarven defender. On the other hand, your rage ability MAY be more useful than the DD defensive stance ability. Defensive stance of course cuts off every time you move.

Keep in mind that you can only improve your stats by +12 so this may negate the benefits of rage and defensive stance if you'll be playing in a high magic world.

And as a sidenote - a couple of things hurt the barbarian as a power class imo, and it's a shame:

1)the ability to re-roll your hit dice. If you don't reroll (cheat) then the added hit points of a barbarian make a much greater relative difference.

2)high magic worlds. (and, it's just my opinion, but low magic seems more fun in a lot of ways anyways). High magic worlds give easier access to items boosting str/con as well as mind-immune items that make the barbarians improved will save in rage less important. These items also negate the effectiveness of Terrifying Rage (but it will still work very nicely with most NPC enemies).

There is a script at the bioware site that will change the barbarian rage bonuses from stat bonuses to attack modifier bonuses. I haven't played with it but I've heard good things about it if you wanted to give it a try.

[ February 15, 2004, 02:23: Message edited by: Laches ]