Help with a Midnight Fighter build

[Unkabear]

A group of us play in a Midnight campaign and my friend is having some trouble. He likes to play fighters but his current character is not living up to his expectations, and perhaps quite soon may not be living. He built him as a front line fighter, but he is finding that without a decent AC the GM is power attacking his way through his HP remarkably quickly. I did notice the build me a tank threads and though there are good suggestions over there the Book of 9 Swords is not available to us.

My friend would like to make a fighter that is viable in combat as a front line fighter, but we are limited by the Midnight setting somewhat. That and our GM likes to start our characters with little equipment and/or put us in situations where it is taken away or destroyed. All of the classes in the Midnight setting are available and we may be able to swing the knight from the PHBII as well as some PrC's and classes from the Complete settings & DMG. Anything that has a spell list though is out. A list of those levels can be found here, http://darknessfalls.leaderdesslok.com/character_main.htm

As for Feats almost any source is available including a good deal of 3rd party feats.

What he is looking for is a low armor (high AC) decent fighter build that can stand toe to toe with some heavy hitting monsters.

The rest of the party consists of a elfling wildlander archer, a dwarrow fighter/rogue, a gnome charismatic, a snow elf defender, a erenlander(human) rogue (me), a Dwarf fighter/tunnelrat, himself a erenlander fighter, and a smattering of NPC's of low level who mainly stay back with the elfling and fire bows. We are all round 11 or 12th level, and if his character dies and he brings a new one in the character would most likely be at level 10.

Magic is out. My friend does not understand the Midnight Magic system yet and so he is steering away from that rout. And for those not familiar it is easier just to stay away from classes that have any magic progression.

Any suggestions you could offer would be great. I could help him build a rogue, but toe to toe fighters are well out of my area of expertise.

 

[pallandrome]

While not your Typical toe-to-toe fighter, try going all monk. Pick up Improved Toughness, Combat Reflexes, and Weapon Proficiency Glaive. With careful ability point expenditure, he should have a decently high AC, without worrying a bit about his equipment, and once he gets to take Improved Trip, he'll be able to use those nifty Attacks of Opportunity to keep a large number of baddies at bay.

Of course, since I know next to nothing about the setting, I could be incredibly wrong about if monks are availible...

 

[Unkabear]

The Monk class as it is is not in the Midnight setting the Defender is. It is similar to a monk but without all the eastern mystisism fluff. That could work...But I am not sure how common glaives are in the world. So far we havn't ran across too many of them. He may be able to start with one. But as said that doesn't mean that the GM will allow him to begin play with it or we would be able to find the darned thing if it is with his stuff.

Are there any decent ac feats out there. I did find the quickstaff that gives you +2 to your combat expertise bonus. ie -1 bab = +3 ac when wielding a staff. Is there anything else out there that can help stack this up?

 

[pallandrome]

As to the Glaive thing, really, any reach weapon will do. I just prefer the glaive since it does 1d10 and is x3 for crits, which is nice.

For good defensive feats, Improved Toughness is nice, and is a great HP boost in later levels. Mobility, of course, is wonderful if you plan to be very mobile. If you have a lot of feats to spare, consider taking the Fey Touched feats, along with Fey Skin. DR is a tanks best friend, after all...

 

[Krafen]

The armor and shield specialization feats in PHB2 might help.

 

[nittanytbone]

If equipment (read heavy armor) and spells are not available, you want to go the high dexterity route.

With 18 dex, you can get by just fine with nothing heavier than a chain shirt and buckler (or even studded leather). Combat Expertise or 5 ranks in tumble (fighting defensively) help as well.

With these constraints, I'd suggest something like:

Rogue 1/Swashbuckler 3/Ranger 2 or Fighter 2

Rogue gets you trapfinding, SA+1d6, and lots of skill points.
Swashbuckler gets you free Weapon Finesse and INT to damage.
Ranger gets you free TWF and keeps skills (read Search) high; Fighter 2 useful just for the feats.

The only real hole here is the weak Will save; I'd suggest squeezing in Iron Will to compensate.

This is a classic TWF, high dex/high int build.

 

[atomn]

One thing that may help is if the player can accept that Midnight isn't typical D&D, that it's a much more brutal setting and the normal heavily-armored, heavily-armed frontline fighter isn't going to work as well (with all of the restrictions on owning equipment and the availability of equipment). If he doesn't want to deal with all of the downfalls that the Midnight Fighter has, the suggestion of a Defender is a good one because he won't be impeded by the lack of equipment.

 

[Deset Gled]

In that situation, I would be temped to take Improved Combat Expertise and Power Attack, and constantly max out both. You may not hit very often, but when you do it will hurt, and you'll have a pretty darn good AC as well.

I don't know if it's available in the Midnight setting, but Dwarven Defender gets a lot of nice defensive abilities when in their defensive stance. Of course, you have to be a dwarf.

 

[brehobit]

Don't know the world but...
It looks like a dwarf ironborn defender would be a good tank. Lots of AC (assuming the sources stack, I can't really tell). Insurgent Commander also looks like a good PrC.

Mark

 

[Unkabear]

In that situation, I would be temped to take Improved Combat Expertise and Power Attack, and constantly max out both. You may not hit very often, but when you do it will hurt, and you'll have a pretty darn good AC as well.

I don't know if it's available in the Midnight setting, but Dwarven Defender gets a lot of nice defensive abilities when in their defensive stance. Of course, you have to be a dwarf.

We had a Dwarven Defender and he worked out great when we could bottle neck the opponents...but that was a small fraction of the battles and when his armor got thrashed it was only because he was Ironborn and could heal quick that he survived at all as it was common to see him in the negatives by the end of battles. I think the irony was that we managed to get him a set of armor two sessions (he went without armor for a year) before he died horribly.

The ICE & PA combo may be the way to go for what he is looking for. How well would the Dervish work in this situation? I am thinking reach weapon power attacking Dervish?