It's not over till Stumpy Sings (Bard 18/DwD 22)

[avatthee]

This is my first build that i have posted and want to see if anyone can suggest improvements, I havent seen any other Dwarven warchanter builds so far and hope this makes a good example to start from. I realize if i had Alethian Dwarf the Build could be so much better.

Dwarven Warchanter - It's Not over till Stumpy sings

18 Bard/22 Dwarven Defender

"Derro"
- FC: Sorcerer
- CON -2, CHA +3, SR18, free feat: Blind Fight, speaks Undercommon

Stats:Base,[Derro]
Str:16 [16]
Dex:14 [14]
Con:12 [10]
Wis: 8 [8]
Int: 12 [12]
Cha: 13 [16]

Level Progression

Put all stats on Strength

1. Bard: Toughness
2. Bard
3. Bard: Dodge
4. Bard
5. Bard
6. Bard: Skill focus Intimidate
7. Bard
8. Bard
9. Bard: Weapon Focus Mace
10. Bard
Change Alignment to Lawful good
11. DD
12. DD: Improved Crit Mace
13. DD
14. DD
15. DD: Power Attack
16. DD
17. DD
18. DD: Cleave
19. DD
20. DD
21. DD: Great Cleave
22. DD
23. DD
24. DD: Great Str, Epic prowess
25. DD
26. DD
27. DD: Great str II
28. DD: Overwhelming Crit
29. DD
30. DD: Great str III
Change alignment to Neutral Good (become more chaotic)
31. Bard
32. Bard
33. Bard: Curse Song
34. Bard
35. Bard
36. Bard: Lasting inspiration
37. Bard
38. Bard
Change alignment to Lawful good
39. DD: Epic Weapon focus
40. DD: Devastating Critical

Skills:
Perform
Tumble
Discipline
Craft Weapon or Armor your choice

Spells

Take all the Dwarven Warchanter spells, most useful are displacement which can be used in full armor and also war cry which can also be used this way.

Any suggestions or improvements would be nice.

End Note:
This build gets three Dwarven Warchanter epics, these are Chant of Battle (+16 GMW), Chant of Steel (Girding of The Faithful) and Chant of Countering (Death of Magic).

Edit: Test Build shows that with chant of battle, bard song, war cry, and if i manage a +10 bull strength then i have 70 ab.

After having full +12 to str, great strength feats to full, maxing out strength in legendary levels and with legendary ab added i could potentially have 90+ ab, then with a bard song from a proper bard character i could have roughly 100 ab.

[avatthee]

I decided since no-one posted that this might be worth trying, however for a bit of a challenge I am building it in hardcore, so far it is lvl 13 and kicking butt, it has first 6 lowbie tags and ice orc dragon and cesspool (hehe, attacked wrong dragon by accident but it all worked out)

[simpetar]

Interesting build, but something does not look right to me:

1. I tried this build in test halls and during the creation did not get enough stat points to raise charisma to 14 (17)... which is a minor problem, since you need only 16 base to get the epics, but you know...

2. I might be wrong, but does Dodge feat require 13 base dexterity? You can certainly get it for free from drinking something, but i) you will have a free feat to spend, which one would you take? ii) if you are playing this build in HC, it is literally impossible to get the thing in early levels.

3. Your calculations of AB seem a way too high IMHO. In the end you should have 93-94 AB fully buffed (= 17 pre-epic + 10 epic + 15 legendary + 7 weapon foci + 20 song/ instruments/ buffs + 3 starting str + 5 pre-legendary str + 5 legendary str + 6 str from gear + up to 4 from Great Strength feats maintain this feat progression + 1-2 craft weapon). There will be no difference between you and "proper bard character" in the terms of your AB, because all buffs (Warcry, Instruments, song etc.) are capped at +20. Your party mates will love you however for Instruments and Girding.

4. What will be your defense? Are you going to use heavy armors and tower shields or robes (and relying on EV)?

5. What will be your saves? I did not see any save supporting feats which scares me a little. Would it help to splash one pally level maybe?

Cheers
simpetar

[avatthee]

Ok simpetar knock me off my high horse, well thanks for posting, yes dodge requires 13 dex so i noticed i fized that when i actually built him lol, think i put some other changes which will be reflected in opening post.

thx for posting and yes i will be using heavy armor as all decent warchanter buffs are non somatic, your right about the ab i think but would have been nice to let me think i had a high ab, my saves will obviously not be anywhere near as good as other characters but hopefully they can at least be high enough for areas other than hells, obviously the paladin level would correct saves by about 9 more but i would lose a feat, some damage reduction and the ability to have dev crit before legendary (still feat argument just backed up a bit).

Anyway thx for info,
Avat

[fragment]

The reason that you don't see any warchanter builds around is, they are unplayable at the moment. When you go with strength, you get low AC, low saves, mediocre damage reduction and a laughable crit immunity ability, and in exchange you get a mediocre song that does not benefit from lasting inspiration and stays for - 10 rounds. An idea I had was to make a tin can that could "pre-curse" mobs, to make it safer for the real bard to curse them, but in fact my caster bard can hold her own better than that character I made back then. Another option would be to go with dex, but that competes with a dexer bard, who will do everything better that the dex warchanter.

So ... to give this a positive twist, play that character. Really, play it. I'm serious, it will teach you most of what you need to know. Learn all his faults (there are several), feel all his pain. Notice what the low AC does to you. You have no damage reduction either. Your saves suck. Your song is worthless. What do we do about critical hits? Or, hint, hint, about the few skill points? Try to shuffle things in the build to solve each of the faults, and in the end, notice how you can't fit all of them in at once.

[simpetar]

fragment said:

Learn all his faults (there are several), feel all his pain. Notice what the low AC does to you. You have no damage reduction either. Your saves suck. Your song is worthless. What do we do about critical hits? Or, hint, hint, about the few skill points? Try to shuffle things in the build to solve each of the faults, and in the end, notice how you can't fit all of them in at once.

This will be a challenge over challenges if you play the toon in HC

acaos said:

Warchanters are scheduled to get a rework in a DM meeting very soon. We'll probably re-envision the entire quasi and consider offering existing warchanters (all approximately two of them) some limited reinc or something.

Acaos

...so do not lose hope!

[avatthee]

Ok to set things straight, yes we have less skill points than your average character however enough for the main skills we take which are discipline, perform and tumble, any left over points could go into craft armor to try for another AC. Currently my Ac doesn't look too bad, its not up to the high standard of a hells character but thats not really going to be easy anyway with a base race.
Yes my saves aren't fabulous but again i am playing this in HC so it isn't going to hells, also if i were to get aleithian dwarf i could take less great strength feats before 40 allowing for roughly same strength as derro build however able to compensate feat loss and able to take paladin for better saves.

Currently at lvl 40 it will have -9 to its possible saves if had taken paladin, this my seem alot to you hells players who pick up every save but this is a build in progress, nothing is definitive so it can be improved and after warchanters get the remake we might be able to scrape a few more saves or a better song out of this character. (wouldn't mind a special warchanter secret like a super battle song hehe.)

[killerted]

Salamander works well for this build. I have a Warchanter using this and it works well. Has dodge free. +2 bonus to int and a good +6 to str. Obviously its a bur race but seems a good subby for warchanter and not to hard to get hold of. Ted

[Klipkap]

This Quasi appeals to me, but as has been mentioned is difficult to play to high levels as it stands. Any progress on an upgrade?

Some questions (from an iffy builder, so there may be fatal flaws) on the presented build [please excuse the mix of build discussion and quasi comments/wishes]:

1) I presume dwarven weave and the Natural armour bonus are still available if DwD is the control class. This means that maximising STR is critical. So why the 14 Dex at creation - which uses 6 ability points? Not required for the epic critical feats as far as I know.

[Unfortunately for some reason Stoneguard is not available to quasi's. What a pity because the whole concept of Dwarven Warchanter seems to point towards a self-buffing tank.]

2) If this indeed points to a STR tank, I start to question the Ovm and Dev crit route. Its nice if tanks can hit, but isn't that secondary to their staying alive and thus drawing the attention of the mobs and rezzing fallen comrades, the latter being expected to do the REAL damage? This route costs 5 feats. Can a point be made for rather taking Strong Soul, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, and the latter two's Epic equivalents or two other Epic feats?

3) Another option to 14 Dex might be to boost Con - that is if you want a DwD tank (the second D = Defender, not attacker). This perhaps opens up the route to an extra 20% physical DR via Legendary Battle Hardened, but needs to be balanced against STR, for instance the cap to Nat AC. Sounds unlikely as a goal though, rather than maximising saves.

4) Finally the Warchanter spells: This guy seems destined to wear plate mail. Sure he can strip off for long-term buffs. This means that his offensive/battle spells should have no somatic component. Unfortunately a few of the warchanter spells do have this component. Additionally the caveats placed on EV points towards heavy flail as the weapon, but this in turn conflicts with the Tank objective. Displacement would be a nice substitute for, say, Hold Monster. Would Amplify (no somatic) add to listen in terms of ability to pierce enemy concealment? And now for my ultimate wish - True Strike with no somatic component (chuckles) as an offensive fillip for this defending singing wall.

[fragment]

I can answer some of that.

1) The natural armor bonus tops out at 20, like every other AC bonus, so a strength modifier of 20 is enough to fullfil that requirement. That's satisfied with a modified strength of 50, but aiming for at least 52 strength is wise to get 40 base strength. That's ridiculously low, of course, which leads to the next point,

2) devcrit especially makes only sense when the character reliably hits within crit range, which I don't think a warchanter can do. On the other hand, you'll have problems with both AC and damage reduction as well, I think you can't really expect to be the leading tank as well, the guy that can tank N uncursed hell mobs unbuffed for some time.

3) Dex 13 is a requirement for dodge, which is a requirement for dwarven defender. Also, when you go with Dex 14, you get 4 or so more AC in medium armor. Dex 14 allows you to double-demi and still wear the thid shield, which caps at dex 19. So Dex 14 is generally a good choice, on a tank.

4) You don't use buffs in plate, especially not EV. It is degraded in heavy armor or shield. Another problem is, if you need to rebuff after a rez, you'd have to take off the plate, which you can't do mid-fight. So you can't depend on your buffs anyway.

[Klipkap]

Many thanks Fragment - much appreciated.
Duh - I realise the dodge-DwD link only later when I tried to build a Warchanter.
The more I tried the more I realised why so few people play this quasi-class - it really does have some serious burdens.

[avatthee]

Well only things you seem to have missed fragment are small so i will pick up on them now:
The crit range of the dwarf is not bad, admittedly not the range of a weapon master with 10-20 but the warchanter has a respectable 13-20 with feats and keen i think.

Yes you can use buffs in full armour and shield if they are non-somatic, these means they are only verbal and not subject to arcan spell failure, unfortunately the bard only 2 worth casting are displacement and war cry but both are very effective for the warchanter.

I am soon to build an aleithian dwarf version which should be better however i may change the build to a different type of warchanter rather than a crit hitter, maybe go for more AB less damage or a pally level for the saves.

Avat

[sithdad]

Just thought you may want to recall this:
Warchanter:
-Ethereal Visage (full mage conceal if offhand is empty or wielding a two-handed weapon; 5% conceal penalty on top of bard penalty if any items in offhand)

Bard:
Level 5 - Ethereal Visage
- Casters clad in armor heavier than clothing or wearing a shield will cast the standard version.
- Duration is multiplied by 10 at CL20.
- Receives +1%, +2%, or +5% concealment for GSF/ESF/LSF Illusion. Concealment is capped at 85%.
- Bards with less than 30 base Cha receive 5% less than the listed concealment below.

So, wearing a shield and would not only negate the HG specific EV but it would also lower it by another 5%. So, in order to cast you would need Auto Still spell feats or wear robes. With a gimped version of EV in robes and shield you're not gonna do well at all. I envision this class as a Str version of a Dex bard but without wearing heavy armor. Dwarves are not agile and quick. They are slow, sturdy and strong. Of course, I could be completely wrong in all of this since I don't make my own builds.

[avatthee]

Yes of course EV gets gimped thats why you cast displacement, admittedly you get more conceal from EV if you are in robes and stuff but diplacement is 50% conceal which can be cast on full armour while wearing full armour.
Avat