Build me a fighter worthy of glorious death!

[Nail]

In a situation like that, outnumbered 50 to 1, if the PCs decided to fight, I'd have them grappled to Hell and hung from the nearest tree without a single dice roll.

Uhmm.......aren't you the same guy who was complaining about the control-freak DM in the psion/fighter thread? Sounds like you two are from the same mold.

 

[Parlan]

In a situation like that, outnumbered 50 to 1, if the PCs decided to fight, I'd have them grappled to Hell and hung from the nearest tree without a single dice roll. A little House Rule of mine states that if the situation is too stupid to be believed (eg., a level 20 Fighter cutting down 2billion peasants with Great Cleave in one round), the LOGICAL outcome will be enacted instead. I give very specific examples of this, including Monks getting grappled to Hell by 5-6 guardsmen REGARDLESS of the level of the Monk. I don't care how good you are, but when you are buried by bodies, you are BURIED.

It's rulings like this that make people hate playing Ftrs and other non-casters.

DM: Your Ftr 20 can't kill 500 peasants, that's not LOGICAL!! PC1, you're just dead. PC2, what are you doing?

PC2: Well, my Wiz20 has Fly and Haste running so I'll just fly straight up about 20' out of reach and drop an empowered fireball on the peasants. That'll expose the BBEG hiding amongst them. I'll drop a quickend Magic Missile on him. Rinse and repeat for the next few rounds (I have enough spells to do this 3 or 4 times). Maybe summon a demon to hunt down any survivors. Then I guess I'll cast Wish and Raise the Ftr. Frankly, he's not worth the XP loss, but he kept me alive for levels 1-10.


It seems like everytime "logic" gets invoked it's an excuse for gimping a non-magical ability. If a Ftr 20 (w/ Wpn focus, Wpn specialization, GWF, GWS, Whirlwind Attack etc.) wanted to beat on those peasants like xylophones, and take them out while simultaneously playing the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth, then dammit, slap a -20 on his attack rolls and let him try!!!

At high levels especially, logic should rarely come into play.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

It seems like everytime "logic" gets invoked it's an excuse for gimping a non-magical ability. If a Ftr 20 (w/ Wpn focus, Wpn specialization, GWF, GWS, Whirlwind Attack etc.) wanted to beat on those peasants like xylophones, and take them out while simultaneously playing the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth, then dammit, slap a -20 on his attack rolls and let him try!!!

For the record, Beethoven's Fifth only has a -10 penalty.

 

[Rackhir]

For the record, Beethoven's Fifth only has a -10 penalty.

I believe that it's the "Goldberg Variations" than have a -20 penalty.

 

[Nail]

For the record, Beethoven's Fifth only has a -10 penalty.

Thank goodness I have a monitor squeegee near my computer screen.

 

[Rackhir]

And on the topic of the thread.

Perhaps 2 lvs of fighter for the extra feats? Any Spiked chain character is going to be pretty feat intensive. You are going to want at a minimum, EWP: Spiked Chain and Combat reflexes (for more AoOs). Whirlwind attack requires quite a number of feats for that chain, - Combat Expertise, Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, Whirlwind attack. You require most of those feats for Shadowdancer anyway.

So Human would be a good base for the extra feat. You'll have 4 from levels (1,3,6,9). Two levels of fighter would get you just enough feats for EWP,CR and the 5 feats for WA.
So Ftr2/Rog5/SD 2-4 lvs. If you went to 12, you might want to add power attack.

Alternatively you could go for a ranger based build, if you wanted to emphasize the dual weapon aspect. You would need like 6 lvs of ranger though to get the TWF and Imp TWF feats. which would restrict the number of rogue levels you could take, but Rng6/Rog3/SD2 would still work quite well and would have some significantly different abilities than your typical SD build.

 

[Whimsical]

Sauron mowing through an elven army in the beginning of the Lord of the Rings movie is my new iconic mental image for what an epic level fighter would be like.

In the myth-reality of D&D, peasant mobs just can't take down high level characters. Just like peasant mobs can't take out dragons. That is why the D&D world needs heroes.

Obviously, I don't subscribe to the "spellcasters can be godlike manipulators of reality, but nonspellcasters are limited to realworld physics" mentality. I prefer cinematic/romantisized physics for my fantasy games.

 

[Whimsical]

Oh, and if you are playing under a DM that has the "mob rule," simply have your highest CHA character hire a peasant army to automatically mob incapacitate almost all of your NPC adversaries. This was shown in the Knights of the Dinner Table comic. "Let's go mob a dragon!"

 

[Caeleddin]

Whimsical - It only applies to like creatures (humanoids in this case) of similar sizes. How many great epics have powerful warrior-kings being dragged off their horses and butchered in the middle of a battlefield? They were superhuman, yes. They probably killed in excess of 50:1 in a single combat, alone and without help. That's superb in anyone's books. I explain it to my players usually to train them into the mindset that sometimes running is NOT cowardly and is a legitimate tactic. As I have said, I used a mob tactic only ONCE in all my years of DM-ing.

What it does is that it keeps players on their toes, to make them aware that if they act like an Evil Overlord, they might get a bit of a mobbing problem. It encourages jaw-jaw instead of whack-whack. The question "does it look like we can take them?" is a legitimate question because of this House Rule and I encourage them to ask. Most of the time (except that once), the answer is "if you want to, but aren't you the good guys here?"

Players, just like DMs, can get arrogant. I prefer to tell them right off the bat that creating enemies everywhere is not a good idea, instead of hammering them as the DMG suggests. It helps to tone down their excessive behaviour and avoid problems later like having to strip the Paladin of his abilities because the PLAYER got too big for his own boots.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I give very specific examples of this, including Monks getting grappled to Hell by 5-6 guardsmen REGARDLESS of the level of the Monk. I don't care how good you are, but when you are buried by bodies, you are BURIED.

I've seen an unarmed man fight off 5-6 coppers at a time, and he wasn't even interested in running. Seems to me you might want to get a little bit more exposure before you make blanket "this is impossible" statements. Most GMs simply are not qualified in every aspect of what a game covers - that's what the rules are there for.

As to the thread topic... The biggest thing that we need is how much the bad guy knows about the good guys. A rogue/shadowdancer spiked chain wielder is a pretty easy build, but one that will be effective against a party on their own is another matter.