I'm not set on cleric. Frankly I am still pretty unfamiliar with most classes and their interactions. I have only been playing for about 2 years now and for the first year I just played the Psion's Ranger cohort. My first PC that I made myself was full of fail(PHB monk >.<). I would still like the lockdown/trip style that I was going to do with the RKV.
Lockdown/trip tends to be easier to do with some fighter in it to get the necessary feats. Psywar is nice in that regard since it also gets fighter feats, though not as many.
Getting used to a casters tends to be difficult, especially if you have such a large list as clerics do. Starting off as a favored soul instead of a cleric might work to get you into the hang of things but not overwhelm you if you're the type who would agonize over which spells to prepare each day.
Cloistered Cleric always jumps at me, due to Know Dev, but that's only if I keep the cleric aspect. I hadn't really looked at most of the ACFs for other classes until now. Some of the Pally ones look pretty sweet, but I'm not rally familiar with the class in general.
Paladins can take a lot to get off the ground, but they do have some very nice options. Taking the Charging Smite ACF and then going into Power Attack and
Shock Trooper plus add stuff like
Divine Might and the Rhino's Rush spell from Spell Compendium can lead to some nice damage.
Awesome Smite can trip foes as well. One of the things I love about the Charging Smite ACF is if you miss your smite isn't wasted, which sadly isn't on the normal smite. One of the house rules I would use in my games is missing a smite doesn't expend it since that's utterly moronic in my eyes due to it having limited uses per day.
There is also the
From Smite to Song feat which, if it works in your game, can have some nice synergy with the
Devoted Performer feat. Making that build really work requires being comfortable with the classes and their abilities though, so it may not be for you.
Dwarves have an interesting interaction with Knowledge Devotion because they can take the
Ancestral Knowledge feat. If your attacks are based on wisdom through stuff like
Intuitive Attack or
Zen Archery then you've got some decent synergy.
The concept I have in mind has decent spellcasting abilities, if not full casting, for self sufficiency and emergency healing. So if casting is cut from the build, there needs to be something like the crusader's strike healing in place. I suppose magic items *could* fill this, but I'd much rather it be something out of the DM's control.
Keep in mind the Cure line of spells tends to be pretty bad past level 5 or so because they just don't scale well. I've done some math on those before and found that they often have to be both empowered and maximized to be equal to damage spells of the same level. It's not until you get Heal itself that things start working well.
Yeah, I was looking at this to get some of the more useful ones. Now it says in the monk bonus feat that they don't have to meet the pre-reqs, does this include any/all listed, even BAB and fighter levels? Whirlwind+ Spiked Chain at level 3 would be fun. Or Weapon Supremacy at 1.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
Yup, WA and WSup are two of the feats typically taken with that monk variant if it's allowed to take any fighter feat and not need prerequisites. In practice that allowance is unlikely to happen since some see it as overpowered or otherwise broken with respect to playing the game as intended or reasonable, so like I said it's probably best to work with your DM on that one.
I don't really see him as the ranger type, more of a warcamp dweller/ sellsword(chain).
Rangers have plenty of options available to them since they're pretty versatile. The versatility increases with the dragon mag ACFs since you can get some nice spells through Mystic Ranger, or you can go with the strongarm style and be a Power Attack monster by using PA then going into
Favored Power Attack and
Shock Trooper to do nice damage like paladins can with their Charging Smite ACF.
If you don't care for favored enemy, you can use the favored terrain variant from UA/SRD which might work better.
I hadn't thought of that aspect. The Dwarf idea is still very much in infancy. We have a fairly large play group, and sometimes we can't all get together, so we have been starting a few side games that are just for fun, this Dwarf is for one of those. We will all be dwarves from the same city/village, that get bored with life there/want to save the town from giants. This is the game I was thinking of for the Psy War. And now after taking a few moments to look over the Master Race List, there isn't really any that give a bonus to this style. So... for the PsyWar, now I'm thinking a shield dwarf that wields.... shields! Going with a shield charger theme. Along these lines I thought of something. do the effects of Expansion and Enlarge Person stack since they are from different magic sources?
Dwarves suffer from mobility problems, but if your entire party is going to be dwarves then that'll be the status quo it seems.
Optimized shield use might provide you with some ideas for using a shield, although the builds themselves probably aren't viable for you unless you can somehow take the War Hulk prestige class for the second one, which requires being large.
One of the things that might appeal to you is the ability to take
knockback if you were to go with psywar if the DM lets you use expansion to fulfill the prerequisites of being large+ or having powerful build. Combining that with
knockdown is pretty much the de facto way to do BFC on a mundane build. And once again,
Shock Trooper makes an appearance because it's just that useful.
No, Enlarge Person and Expansion do not stack since
Enlarge Person has the line that specifically says "Multiple magical effects that increase size do not stack,." And I just noticed they have a typo in that because that comma shouldn't come before the period.
To keep things simple you could probably go for a psywar build and not have many problems.
The Psychic Warrior Handbook might help you there.
