Monday, May 16, 2011

Sword & Board City Ranger Demon Hunter Vampirate

The vampirate thing is made up (or it is until Ryan GNCs).  If parts of this entry seem disjointed, it's because this is getting a severe edit after I consulted the Pathfinder boards and learned some things about the nuances of shield bashing, and specifically how the Shield Master feat is seriously broken, and how (if the SRD is accurate) letting a 6th level ranger have access to it is mindboggling.

Broken feature #1:  "You do not suffer any penalties on attack rolls made with a shield while you are wielding another weapon."  I originally took this to mean the feat eliminates the armor penalty to OH attacks made with a shield.  What it actually does is that plus eliminating two weapon fighting penalties during shield bash attacks (edited to remove OMGCAPS when I realized the penalty still applies to the MH attack).
Broken feature #2:  "Add your shield’s enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls made with the shield as if it were a weapon enhancement bonus."  Point 2a) This means you can save money by not enchaning shield spikes separately as a weapon.  Point 2b) Or it means you can double-up on enchantments, overloading the spikes with offensive stuff and leaving the shield enchantment as a straight +whatever.  At E6 levels it won't make a huge difference, since I'm loosely guessing equipment caps are at +2, which means the most benefit this could translate to is using +2 on the shield and +1 +flaming (or whatever element you want) on the spikes, making it a sum total +2 +flaming on attacks.  But that's still a free +1 to hit.
Str:  18 (16+2 human) [10]
Dex:  18 (17+1 level) [13]
Con:  12 [2]
Int:  10 [0]
Wis:  12 [2]
Cha: 8 [-2]

Not necessarily thrilled with building all these low-int low-cha combat characters, but I guess I'll have earned it after Norben.  At least I avoided making that charisma a 7.  As a melee character the strength is important, but I also needed at least a 17 dex to make the prerequisite for improved two weapon fighting, and if you're at 17 you might as well use that extra point to make it an 18.  I'd have liked to go higher on the wisdom, but I guess that'll be for a stat item down the road.

Class: Ranger
Race: Human
Archetype: Urban Ranger
Combat Style: Sword & Shield
H1: Two Weapon Fighting (-2/-2 for MH/OH attacks, just using as a pre-req)
L1:  Shield Focus (+1 shield AC)
R2: Improved Shield Bash (Retain shield AC while using shield as weapon)
L3:  Weapon Focus: Long Sword
L5:  Weapon Focus: Light spiked shield
R6:  Shield Master (No armor penalty on attack rolls w/ shield, add shield enhancement bonus to attack/damage)
E7:  Improved Two Weapon Fighting (Extra OH attack)

The L5 selection is just to make the math easy for now.  There's a ton of dex-linked and shield-linked feats to take in addition to general ones, beyond the usual strength-based combat feats.  Power Attack, Double Slice, Dodge, Shield Slam, etc.

Favored Enemy: Outsider (Evil) +4, Humanoid (Human) +2
Favored Terrain: Urban

Equipment: +1 Longsword, +1 spiked light shield, +1 Brigandine armor (the SRD suggests this may not appear in actual PF source books, so I'll have to check on that), +1 deflection item

To hit:
6 BAB
4 STR
+1 enhancement
+1 weapon focus
= +12

Damage:
4 str
1 enhancement
= +5 (3)

+10 [1d8+5]
+12 [1d4+3]
+5 [1d8+5]
+7 [1d4+3]

AC:
10 base
5 armor
1 armor enhancement
4 dex
1 shield
1 feat-shield
1 shield enhancement
1 deflection
= 24

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