Help me minmax a rogue bruser

[Kobold Stew]

p.s.

I agree with you v. Ace on the Rogue 3/ Barb X build--Barb 1 gives you the biggest bump (speed that can add to spell-enhanced speed), and Sneak Attack Dice and upperlevel Rogue abilites are not to be sneezed at.

KS

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

The wand of CLW sounds like a good idea. If nothing else, the Druid can use it on you until your use magic device skill gets better.

It's not necessarily in keeping...

But given the lack of healing, I think AC is likely to be very important early on. I'd start with and use a single handed weapon and a shield. Large shield would give +2 AC, which is nice - but even masterworked you'll take a -1 armour check penalty to skills. Masterwork Buckler/Small Shield would not have a penalty but only gives +1 AC.

Buy a 2 handed weapon, but save it for when you really want that extra damage. At this level it'd be a lot of overkill most of the time, IME.

5 Ranks of tumble and fighting defensively is a pretty good deal too.


If you can start with magical gear. My list would be:

Wand of CLW - 750 GP
+1 Chain Shirt - 1250 GP
Masterwork shield (small, large or buckler) - 150 GP + shield cost
Masterwork Battleaxe - 310 GP
Greatclub - 5 GP
5 javelins - 5 GP
Dagger - 2 GP

Leaving you 28 GP, less the cost of a shield.


Depending on how the cash goes. I love:

Feather tokens - Tree... 400 GP. You get a 5 X 60 X 50 instant tree - there's all kinds of havoc you can raise with these.

 

[kjenks]

Inconsequenti-AL had a good idea with the greatclub. Your druid buddy can enhance it with the Brambles spell now and the Spikes spell later. These spells make it an awesome melee weapon.

Power Attack and Cleave are excellent. At third level, select the Extra Rage feat from Complete Warrior. This lets you rage 3/day, and you'll seldom need more, depending on the campaign.

I suggest you take...
1 Rogue 1 - Power Attack, Cleave
2 Barbarian 1
3 Rogue 2 - Extra Rage

This lets you maximize your skill points better.

After that, it's all about choosing between sneak attack and feats. If you want more sneak attack, take more levels of rogue. If you want more feats, take levels of fighter.

You might be tempted to take one more level of barbarian and two more levels of rogue so you get Improved Uncanny Dodge, but that ability is rarely useful in my experience. If your DM loves throwing rogues at your party, it would be more useful -- for a while, until the enemy rogues become high enough level to overcome your Uncanny Dodge.

For your future growth path, I'd recommend this:

4 Fighter 1 - Improved Initiative
5 Fighter 2 - Improved Bull Rush
6 Fighter 3 - Shock Trooper (Complete Warrior)
7 Fighter 4 - Reckless Rage (Races of Stone)
8 Fighter 5
9 Fighter 6 - Improved Sunder, Combat Brute (Complete Warrior)

Shock Trooper and Combat Brute make you a charging, Power Attacking machine. You can dish out some really big damage in round one with a Shock Trooper/Heedless Charge, then you can do it again in round 2 with Combat Brute/Momentum Swing. Big ouchies.

Aim for Tactical Soldier (Miniatures Handbook) to get even more flanking fun. Sidestep is good, too.

Occult Slayer will help with your vulnerability to enchantments and charms, which will become more important at higher levels. Your rogue levels will give you enough skill points and your fighter levels will give you enough feats to meet the pre-reqs.

For starting gear, I'd recommend...

Wand CLW - 750 gp
Mithral breastplate - 4,200 gp
Greatclub x2 - 5 gp each
Club x5 - free
Backpack - 2 gp

As a tumbling rogue/barbarian, your skills and abilities work best in light armor. Mithral breastplate is the best light armor you can buy, and (depending on your DM) you might not be able to find it later in your adventuring carreer. Hopefully you can get it enhanced to +1, +2, etc. as you gain gold and as you meet spellcasters able to craft arms & armor.

You should have two greatclubs in case one gets sundered, disarmed, whatever. Don't bother with masterwork or magic on them for a while -- if ever -- as long as you can rely on your druid buddy to cast Brambles and Spikes on them for you. If your PC buddy is less than cooperative, take the Leadership feat and get an NPC druid to cast spells for you. And you can ride your druid's horse Animal Companion, too.

You should have some missile weapons -- clubs are free. Later, when you can afford it, get a +1 longbow with your +4 Strength bonus. You might choose a +6 Str bonus to take advantage of your Rage, but that would mean you would take a -2 attack penalty if you're not raging.

 

[Tyrrell]

Power Attack and Cleave are excellent. At third level, select the Extra Rage feat from Complete Warrior. This lets you rage 3/day, and you'll seldom need more, depending on the campaign.

I suggest you take...
1 Rogue 1 - Power Attack, Cleave
2 Barbarian 1
3 Rogue 2 - Extra Rage

After that, it's all about choosing between sneak attack and feats. If you want more sneak attack, take more levels of rogue. If you want more feats, take levels of fighter.

You might be tempted to take one more level of barbarian and two more levels of rogue so you get Improved Uncanny Dodge, but that ability is rarely useful in my experience. If your DM loves throwing rogues at your party, it would be more useful -- for a while, until the enemy rogues become high enough level to overcome your Uncanny Dodge.

For your future growth path, I'd recommend this:

4 Fighter 1 - Improved Initiative
5 Fighter 2 - Improved Bull Rush
6 Fighter 3 - Shock Trooper (Complete Warrior)
7 Fighter 4 - Reckless Rage (Races of Stone)
8 Fighter 5
9 Fighter 6 - Improved Sunder, Combat Brute (Complete Warrior)

You misunderstand my intentions. The characer will be a rogue from here on out (baring the possibility of a prestige class). The level of barbarian is so the character can be a rogue with 40' movement and rage who sneak attacks with a great axe (or strength adjusted composite longbow).

Aim for Tactical Soldier (Miniatures Handbook) to get even more flanking fun. Sidestep is good, too.

Occult Slayer will help with your vulnerability to enchantments and charms, which will become more important at higher levels. Your rogue levels will give you enough skill points and your fighter levels will give you enough feats to meet the pre-reqs.

Are both tactical soldier and sidestep from the miniatures handbook? I don't think that anyone in my group has a copy available.

occult slayer sounds good as this character will never have a great will save. Is that a feat? If so where can I find it?

thank you for your input.

 

[Tyrrell]

But given the lack of healing, I think AC is likely to be very important early on. I'd start with and use a single handed weapon and a shield. Large shield would give +2 AC, which is nice - but even masterworked you'll take a -1 armour check penalty to skills. Masterwork Buckler/Small Shield would not have a penalty but only gives +1 AC.

Buy a 2 handed weapon, but save it for when you really want that extra damage. At this level it'd be a lot of overkill most of the time, IME.

5 Ranks of tumble and fighting defensively is a pretty good deal too.

If you can start with magical gear. My list would be:

Wand of CLW - 750 GP
+1 Chain Shirt - 1250 GP
Masterwork shield (small, large or buckler) - 150 GP + shield cost
Masterwork Battleaxe - 310 GP
Greatclub - 5 GP
5 javelins - 5 GP
Dagger - 2 GP

Leaving you 28 GP, less the cost of a shield.

These sound like solid suggestions. I might drop the +1 on the chain shirt for 1000 and invest in a STR adjusted composite longbow and arrows. I'll be with two rangers I imagine that we'll frequently be outdoors and want to engage foes at range and force them to come to us.

 

[Tyrrell]

Power Attack and Cleave are excellent.

I just worked out how good power attack is for the character (at start). I was surprised to learn that I do greater average damage power attacking when I need a thirteen or lower to hit when not sneak attacking or an 11 or lower if I get the sneak attack (I didn't include crits in my analysis crits will make power attacking an even better deal). That's substantially better than 3.0 power attack. I was thinking that power attack was a useless speedbump on my way to cleave it turns out not to be so.

 

[Random Hero]

Power Attack!

Power attack my favorite feat for a two-handed fighter/melee character with a decent attack bonus. Even if you only power attack for 2, you get +4 to damage. Now that's a worthy endeavor!!

There are a lot of people that still think power attack is just a stepping stone/obstacle to get to cleave/great cleave, so don't feel bad...

Now you know better!!

P.S. Goliath all the way!

 

[maggot]

If you are going mostly rogue, eventually power attack won't be that good of an option. When you deal +5d6 damage with a strike (and let's face it, if you are a rogue, you had better be sneak attacking), taking -2 to hit to deal another +4 damage isn't that good of an idea. You are already dealing +17.5 on the average from sneak.

You can pick up power attack for the initial charge, it is quite effective.

But if you are a rogue, the idea is to get as many sneaks as possible, and this means two-weapon fighting. For single attacks, you want that 1-1/2 stregth bonus, so you want either quick draw so you can shift between wielding a battleaxe two-handed, and wielding a handaxe in the other hand, all without losing the iterative attacks. You can replace battleaxe/handaxe with longsword/shortsword if you want. The other option is to spend the quickdraw feat on an exotic double weapon like the two-bladed sword. Or if you are really feat starved, you can save a feat and just go with quarterstaff. At high levels the extra +1 damage from two-bladed sword won't matter so much, but the reduced crit range will always hurt.

Unfortunately, to continue in the two-weapon fighting arena, you need a high dex. And since you want to tumble, you'll want to wear light armor, so you'll want a high dex for both of those as well.

 

[Tyrrell]

If you are going mostly rogue, eventually power attack won't be that good of an option. When you deal +5d6 damage with a strike (and let's face it, if you are a rogue, you had better be sneak attacking), taking -2 to hit to deal another +4 damage isn't that good of an idea. You are already dealing +17.5 on the average from sneak.

I was picking up power attack in order to get cleave. i was happy to see that it is at least occasionally useful now.

 

[Caliban]

I was picking up power attack in order to get cleave. i was happy to see that it is at least occasionally useful now.

Power attack is excellent for a high strength rogue. There are many times (especially at higher levels) that you will be fighting opponents who are immune to sneak attacks. Being able to deal extra damage without sneak attack makes you much more versatile, and harder to shut down.

I play an 11th level rogue with a 22 strength, and power attack has come in handy quite often when fighting undead, constructs, plants, oozes, and incorporeal creatures.

And when you have a someone drop an improved invisibility and enlarge person on you, power attack, cleave, and combat reflexes can be pretty impressive.