Deadliest fighter build

[Treebore]

Since I am talking mainly in the "old" editions, I am referring to equipment. So what equipment do you think made for the deadliest fighter, using only items from the published books, not Dragon. Even though I believe those were pretty much all published in the MAgic Item Compendium.

My favorite was the Gauntlets of Ogre Power/Girdle of Storm Giant Strength/Hammer of Thunderbolts, Ring of Vampiric Regeneration, +5 Armor of Etherealness (Preferably Invulnerable Coat of Arnd), with Boots of Speed was pretty much my favorite. Throw in an item allowing him to cast Anti Magic Shell and I was pretty much set. Preferred a Holy Avenger when I played Paladins.

What were favored item combo's in 3E? What looks good for 4E?

 

[justanobody]

Not in 3e as that is really not "old"...

Maul of the Titans, girdle, gauntlets.

 

[ExploderWizard]

For 3E just give me any decent weapon, a loincloth, a horde of living opponents and:

necklace of adaptation
dust of sneezing and choking

and let the hamburger production begin.

 

[Dax Doomslayer]

For Weapons I'd also throw in there a Vorpal Weapon or Sword of Sharpness and the thing that I think was crazy good was the Cube of Force. I liked the Vampiric Ring of Regeneration better than just the plain ring though.

 

[Treebore]

For 3E just give me any decent weapon, a loincloth, a horde of living opponents and:

necklace of adaptation
dust of sneezing and choking

and let the hamburger production begin.

That is a pretty ugly combo against living opponents in any edition of the game.
Well, I don't know about 4E, haven't bought any of the books yet, just the Starter set. Plus the tile sets. I love those.

 

[Treebore]

For Weapons I'd also throw in there a Vorpal Weapon or Sword of Sharpness and the thing that I think was crazy good was the Cube of Force. I liked the Vampiric Ring of Regeneration better than just the plain ring though.

Those are definitely awesome weapons, however I found with the Ring of Vampiric Regeneration it was more important to deal damage than to cut off limbs and heads. In the long run. Now if you consistently rolled well enough to quickly cut off limbs, etc... its becomes a different story, but that didn't happen often enough.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Since I am talking mainly in the "old" editions, I am referring to equipment. So what equipment do you think made for the deadliest fighter, using only items from the published books, not Dragon. Even though I believe those were pretty much all published in the MAgic Item Compendium.

My favorite was the Gauntlets of Ogre Power/Girdle of Storm Giant Strength/Hammer of Thunderbolts, Ring of Vampiric Regeneration, +5 Armor of Etherealness (Preferably Invulnerable Coat of Arnd), with Boots of Speed was pretty much my favorite. Throw in an item allowing him to cast Anti Magic Shell and I was pretty much set. Preferred a Holy Avenger when I played Paladins.

What were favored item combo's in 3E? What looks good for 4E?

A 13th level elven Ranger, built to spec per UNEARTHED ARCANA...

...who double-specializes with bows...
...who has a STR of 18/00...
...who strikes within 30' (or as close as 6') of a target...
...who has 3 segments of surprise (each segment equalling one round of combat, and allowing triple rate of fire per the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE for missile weapons)...
...who does the maximum damage (16) with every arrow, plus adds the +6 to each shot for strength, plus another +3 for double specialization for a total of 25 points of damage (potentially) per shot...
...who hits with every shot (they have surprise, negating any Dexterity bonus the subject target might get, thanks to specialization they are at a total of +2 for specialization, +3 for double specialization, +1 for bows as an elf, +1 for short range for a total of +7)
...who uses the maximum weapon specialization RoF of 4 shots per round (and we're treating segments as rounds, and per the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE receiving three times the normal RoF for a total of twelve shots per segment)...

...will deal out 900 points of damage at maximum.

I think.

Someone check my math here.

 

[T. Foster]

A 13th level elven Ranger, built to spec per UNEARTHED ARCANA...

...who double-specializes with bows...
...who has a STR of 18/00...
...who strikes within 30' (or as close as 6') of a target...
...who has 3 segments of surprise (each segment equalling one round of combat, and allowing triple rate of fire per the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE for missile weapons)...
...who does the maximum damage (16) with every arrow, plus adds the +6 to each shot for strength, plus another +3 for double specialization for a total of 25 points of damage (potentially) per shot...
...who hits with every shot (they have surprise, negating any Dexterity bonus the subject target might get, thanks to specialization they are at a total of +2 for specialization, +3 for double specialization, +1 for bows as an elf, +1 for short range for a total of +7)
...who uses the maximum weapon specialization RoF of 4 shots per round (and we're treating segments as rounds, and per the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE receiving three times the normal RoF for a total of twelve shots per segment)...

...will deal out 900 points of damage at maximum.

I think.

Someone check my math here.

Dude, lots of errors (and/or rule-breaking) here:

An elf can't have 18/00 strength (max for an elf is 18/75)
The max ranger level an elf with 18/75 strength can attain is 11th
It isn't possible to double-specialize with a bow (or any missile weapon, for that matter)

Therefore the max. damage per shot is 19 (6 for the arrow, +2 for specialization at point-blank range, doubled, +3 for strength)

Surprise doesn't negate Dex AC bonuses (except in crazy 2E-land)
The +1 to hit for bow specialists at short range is in place of, not in addition to, the +2 at point-blank range (i.e. if the target is at point-blank range (6-30'), the bow specialists gets +2 to hit and damage and does double damage; if he's outside of point-blank range but still within short range the bow specialist gets +1 to hit and no damage bonus; if he's at medium or long range the bow specialist gets no bonus to hit or damage)

Since he's only 11th level, not 13th, he only gets 3 attacks per round, not 4

So we're looking at 9 attacks per segment, x 3 segments, assuming each one hits for max damage (19) = 513 damage.

However, since he's an elf, he could potentially get 4 segments of surprise instead of 3, so for the 4th segment we can tack on potentially another 171 points of damage , bringing the grand total up to 684. Not quite 900, but still not too shabby!

Make him a human instead of an elf and we lose that extra surprise segment and +1 to hit (which doesn't much matter since we're assuming every attack hits anyway) but then you can get the 18/00 strength and 13th level, giving 1 extra attack per round (i.e. 3 more attacks per surprise segment) and +3 additional damage on each one, which kicks to total up to a whopping 792.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Excellent, that's Azathoth and Cthulhu down in the first round assuming maximum damage

 

[thedungeondelver]

Dude, lots of errors (and/or rule-breaking) here:

An elf can't have 18/00 strength (max for an elf is 18/75)


We're both mistaken. Elves can have 18/00, per table II.C, p. 8, UNEARTHED ARCANA. But they max out at 11th level (wood) elves in Fighter class. So a little bit me, a little bit you.

It isn't possible to double-specialize with a bow (or any missile weapon, for that matter)

Ah, I misread that - I don't use weapon spec. (or much of anything out of UNEARTHED ARCANA and was going by rough memory. I stand corrected.