Arelith

I think if you're putting in 5+ fighter levels into spellsword you should have WS/EWS.

How do you manage to get +5 to all three from gear?

Maladus wrote:How do you manage to get +5 to all three from gear?

You have 9 items you can enchant. That s 18 easy stat/uni save enchants

Spellrager. You heard it here first. 22/8

DarknessOfDespair wrote:Spellrager. You heard it here first. 22/8

not as good as it was 4 days ago...

I'd sub 4 barb for the 4 fighter if you're going for a rage-mage. Gets you the style and some small bonuses. Lose 3 feats though.

It was better 4 days ago, I'll give you that lol, when you consider it was a quarterstaff dex build, endgame getting +10 pierce damage on all of hiss APR, plus the double imbues, plus int bonus, plus str bonus etc. Still be fun though, that aint all its about

I'd run monk for a q-staff spellsword, myself. All those attacks.

I love monks, but I just wanted a cold, calculated rage type character, and figured spellsword/barbarian fit it best. Taking most of my barbarian levels pre-epic as well, so I'll have 4 APR, plus essentially dual wielding. Should off set that last attack or two at much lower AB

Orog Spellsword! Viable to get blackguard levels instead of fighter, or should I just go with standard? (Does anyone know if poisons and imbues stack proper?)

One Two Three Five wrote:Orog Spellsword! Viable to get blackguard levels instead of fighter, or should I just go with standard? (Does anyone know if poisons and imbues stack proper?)

Transmutation foci might be enough to get you there, as far as MAD goes. I'd worry about feats, though; Fighter > Blackguard is a loss of ~five feats (No three fighter bonus feats, plus the two BG pre-reqs you probably weren't taking otherwise). Adding divine feats into this makes it pretty chancy in my mind.

Yeah, it's a rough spread. I'd probably skip over the divine feats honestly. The idea sprung from orogs getting power attack, so theoretically I'd only need to pick up cleave.

Feat list looking something like expertise, improved expertise, exotic focus, cleave, blind fight, weapon focus, knockdown? Wizard feats for transmu, greater transmu, and maximize. Man. That's a really, really rough setup. Probably not worth the effort.

I have noticed that people are taking fighter levels but not Weapon Specialization. Is it not worth that much on this build?

Jeloran wrote:I have noticed that people are taking fighter levels but not Weapon Specialization. Is it not worth that much on this build?

weapon spec is just +2 damage, on top of all the damage you get from int and imbue, its negligible.

Since my character was grandfathered into the 4 APR from Spellsword levels before the change (at least I think that’s how it works) I was planning to take a 4th fighter level in Epics to get WS and EWS. Does that still sound like the ideal thing to do? I’m using the 23/4/3 Greenstrel strength build that was posted early in the thread for reference. If there is a better way to do it, what would that be?

Anyone?

The tradeoff you're looking at is basically:
+4 damage > or < +1 epic feat, +1 base attack bonus, +1 Fort save

I would always EWS over the other alternative personally, but then again, I'm just fixated with damage and it may not be correct at all. Go with your heart.

Do people consider the monk or strength variant to be stronger?

Monk.

Bearing in mind that Monks will not benefit from the on hit imbue effect triggering on every APR soon(tm)

Monks lose out on AB, Fighters lose out on APR (and AC)

I'd say more uh.

Dex spellsword/fighter/monk: APR, AC, theoretically damage (although that's academic, losing 7 or so strength damage a hit is made up for by hitting like, a lot, for me) This build also theoretically has BETTER AB- you have the same base AB, but monks lose less on iteratives than everyone else. Monk's just a really good dump class all around.

Str Spellsword/fighter/bard: People hate you way less, you don't have to single-wield one of the ugliest weapons in the game, -twohanding a bastard sword is a top-quality Aesthetic. Uh. Damage, I guess. Your damage is more per hit, hitting less, which is probably better against DR and immunities.

Monk spellsword - no UMD

On top of that you're a dex based single kama wielder with no monk lvls until late epics. Which is masochistic a bit.

I'd say this build has enough drawbacks. The UMD strength based variant seems way more player friendly but I'd take the monk variant any day simply cause of my addiction to movement speed in almost any computer game that involves movement speed.

After the change goes through for only one hit per flurry to apply an effect goes through, would the monk still be better?

Is that a official change in the SS path?
This is the first I heard of it.