I am terrible at builds, But: (Build advice)

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HeyLadyOfDecay
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I am terrible at builds, But: (Build advice)

Post by HeyLadyOfDecay » Mon Oct 17, 2022 8:22 pm

I wanted to make a Shadowdancer/Red Dragon Disciple.

Without being absolutely terrible.

So far:

-My base attack is absolutely horrible. (But to be frank, All my builds ever made suffer this, Causing me to mainly play characters that
hide behind summons.) base attack 19. Attack bonus +35.

-I must admid I made it a dual wielder, But it only comes with a minor loss.

-Yes, I don't like pre-chewed builds with limited choice of weapons to arrive at max effect. (in this case I went for dual wielding Katanas

So, Any chance this all can somehow still work?
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Re: I am terrible at builds, But: (Build advice)

Post by MRFTW » Mon Oct 17, 2022 9:33 pm

HeyLadyOfDecay wrote:
Mon Oct 17, 2022 8:22 pm
So, Any chance this all can somehow still work?
I dearly hope for someone to prove me wrong below, but I really think Bard / SD / RDD is going to be firmly in the camp of 'RP build'.

You will be able to survive most things fine due to stealth and SD shadow, but when it comes to actually killing anything you will probably have to get creative.

Either way, best of luck.

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Re: I am terrible at builds, But: (Build advice)

Post by Good Character » Mon Oct 17, 2022 10:00 pm

Here's the real issue: you're shoehorned into starting bard. A 3 feat-investment to dual-wield (i.e. ambidexterity, two-weapon fighting, improved two-weapon fighting). Along with that you'll need the usual blindfight, weapon focus, improved critical, expertise, and improved expertise. Given you only get 7 feats pre-epic you'll have to burn an epic feat to fit one of these feats in.

You'll need in the epic levels: armor skin, epic weapon focus, and ESF: Discipline (as likely this is a DEX-based build). You'll also want epic prowess due to how poor this base AB is.

This build is essentially impossible unless you dump some essential feats. It also awkwardly requires you to cross-class spellcraft in epic levels unless you want even lower base AB.

Assuming a base attack bonus of 19, your total attack bonus will only ever realistically (I use that term loosely) hit 40. You'll be missing the half to the majority of your attacks after your first few epic levels.

19 base + 15 ability modifier + 1 w. focus + 2 ew. focus + 1 e. prowess + 4 enhancement weapon - 2 dual-wielding = 40.

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Re: I am terrible at builds, But: (Build advice)

Post by Baron Saturday » Mon Oct 17, 2022 10:47 pm

There's a lot of tricky stuff to juggle here. Because of the class prereqs, your only option is bard/sd/dd.

Unfortunately these don't fit together terribly neatly. You need 5 bard levels to qualify for dragon disciple because of the 8 lore prereq, and 7 bard levels to meet the prereqs for shadowdancer. Since these are all 3/4 AB classes, that means that, pre-epic, you want to take them in multiples of 4 to max your AB, which as you noticed, this combo is already starved for. That means 8 levels of bard by level 20, which only gives you 22 levels to allocate between SD and DD. Which in turn means you have to choose between DD 10 (when you officially become half-dragon and get a bunch of goodies) and SD 13 (which is the earliest you can take the Epic Shadowlord feat).

Speaking of feats, you need a lot of them if you want to dual-wield (which you do, because your damage output is distinctly meh):
  • Dodge
  • Mobility
  • Ambidexterity
  • Two-Weapon Fighting
  • Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
  • Weapon Focus
  • Epic Weapon Focus
  • Blind Fight
At a bare minimum. You probably also WANT:
  • Epic Prowess (because you need every ounce of AB you can squeeze outta this build)
  • Blinding Speed
  • Epic Dodge
  • Knockdown
  • Expertise/Improved Expertise
  • Toughness
  • As many Great Dex feats as possible
Problem is, you only get 7 pre-epic and 4 epic feats. I'd probably pick epic prowess, blinding speed, and epic dodge from the wants, but I'm sure an argument can be made for the others. This means katana is a no-go, since you don't have a spare feat for exotic proficiency.

Level-wise I'm leaning towards 8 Bard/10 DD/12 SD. Start with 7 bard, then 8 SD, 4 DD, and your last bard at 20 for a UMD dump. 21-23 in SD gets you HiPs, 24-26 in DD, 27 in SD for a tumble dump, and DD the rest of the way. For race, you want something with +2 dex. You'll also want a +2 dex gift for a starting dex of 21. Every ability score increase goes into Dex, so you'll end up with 28, which can be buffed to 40. That should net you a dual-wielding AB of 41 or 42 (if you get a +4 weapon). Which, to be clear, is still bad, but you have HiPs to flatfoot enemies, so that can help, and can get another +2 from flanking. Unfortunately your damage will be pretty lackluster, since you have no sneak attack. The +8 str from DD will help a bit there.

That's the best I've got. It'll function well enough in PvE, and in PvP... well, HiPs remains OP, though possibly not OP enough to compensate for what this build delivers. I'm sure this is full of holes, so those who are more up-to-date, please feel free to point 'em out.

Oh, last but not least, you'll need either a major award or 30 RPR and a willingness to play a kobold in order to take DD.
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HeyLadyOfDecay
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Re: I am terrible at builds, But: (Build advice)

Post by HeyLadyOfDecay » Tue Oct 18, 2022 12:12 am

I think I'll just stick with magi and summons. >.<
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Re: I am terrible at builds, But: (Build advice)

Post by Cabarcos » Tue Oct 18, 2022 8:34 am

I think it depends mostly on what you expect to get with it. Your idea will not be very powerful but it can be very funny for you.
I'm playing with a rogue/ranger and my build it's halfway between powerful and RP. It will end with 18 Strength and 18 Dexterity, no expertise, so... not for those weak of heart. Still, I'm soloing most of the dungeons. As a rogue, you have a lot of tricks, and no risk of death means no fun for me.
If you like to make that build, why not?
It could be rubbish, but it will be your rubbish if you get my meaning.

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Re: I am terrible at builds, But: (Build advice)

Post by toftdal » Tue Oct 18, 2022 11:19 am

So, yes - this is going to be painful ^^ The feats have already been covered, but I'd suggest a little different way of leveling:
5 bard
3 RDD
1 Bard (to get hide enough)
8 SD
3 RDD
Epics
5 SD (to get epic Shadowlord)
4 RDD (for the wings)
1 bard/SD

And to address one of the above: RDD does get both discipline and spellcraft. I'd definitely go strength-based, tho - have the shadow handle the enemies.

(and if you want the wings early: 5 bard -> 10 RDD -> 1 bard -> 4 SD -> 9 SD -> 1 Bard)

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