Earth Dragon (Bard 4/RDD 10/DD 24)

[johannhowitzer]

I'm playing this build now and having a blast. It's a very defensible build, even for people who haven't unlocked any subraces (which I haven't).

Dwarf - Derrzagon
Begins Lawful Neutral

Stats: (starting/subrace/ending)
STR 15/15/46
DEX 12/14/14
CON 16/18/22
INT 14/16/18
WIS 8/6/6
CHA 12/8/10
All points go into STR, except at levels 24 and 28, which go into CON for Epic DR.

Leveling:
1-5 Bard (until RDD becomes available)
6-12 RDD
**Alignment change**
13-20 DD (for the 16 BAB)
21-23 RDD
24-39 DD
**Alignment change**
40 Bard (for skill dump)
**Alignment change**

Skills:
Conc 63, Disc 63, Lore 8 (at level 5), Tumble 40, UMD 43, Spellcraft 40, Spot 1, Perform 15, rest in C-Armor/C-Weapon or whatever you like.

FEATS
Pre-epic: Knockdown, Dodge (before 13), Toughness (before 13), IKD, WF, Improved Crit, Power Attack
Epic: EWF, Armor Skin, DR 1-3, Epic Fort, Epic Reflexes, Cleave, Great Cleave
Legendary: Leg Fort, Leg Reflexes, Great STR x5
(If desired, swap Cleave/Great Cleave for two more Great STR)

It's pretty basic, but I really liked the idea of combining the Bard/RDD's skill-and-strength awesomeness with the DD's durability and Defensive Weave. Lots of DD levels to take advantage of the Weave! DEX at 14 means you can take advantage of Padded Armor if you can find a good one, and also helps with reflexes.

This build gets 24/- DR, fire immunity, high STR, 1392 HP when at CON cap, full Tumble and UMD, and I'm using a scimitar as my main weapon. At level 18 right now, could tank the bandits on the east road solo a few levels ago! To use anything but a simple weapon, you have to wait until level 13, as neither Bard or RDD gets anything but simple weapons. I used a morningstar until 13... weapon focus and improved critical should be taken at levels 15 and 18.

[aommaster1069]

You won't be able to take legendary fort or legendary reflexes without lightning reflexes and great fort. Also, if you want a mix between rdd and dd then go with the Tin Can. It can take plenty of hits and remain standing.

- FyreChyld

[johannhowitzer]

Read the Grimoire, dude - all that's needed for those epic feats is 21st level.

I found the "Tin Can" build you talk about on HGWiki, but the only real difference I can see is lower damage, a little more durability, and a more advanced (but UR) subrace. If you used a Battlerager on this build, they'd look about the same, but I don't have subraces. And I prefer to be able to deal damage anyway.

[Yomi]

I strongly suspect a Tin Can using the non-secret Arctic Dwarf subrace will hit more often and harder than this build, while still having a very good defense. The builds are similar except you're putting things into EDR and cleave rather than pushing str up higher. Hence I'm not following why you're saying the build with noticeably higher ab will do less damage. Battlerager would just lead to even more ab, for more hits and more crits.

Also he is correct on the feats. Legendary save feats are HG specific and won't be in the grimoire. With your build as listed you will be unable to take Legendary Fort and Legendary Reflexes.

[cathedralmaster]

Cleave and Great cleaves are both feats you don't want to take on this mod given the ordinary tactics.

First off, in the LL areas, your not going to find much of anything that's going to die with a single hit so you might as well spend great cleave on something else. As far as regular cleave is concerned, though it's occassionally useful for an extra attack on something, more often than not it will just get you in trouble due to kickback, with you cleaving onto something you'd rather not hit at all.

[Lythe Featherblade]

The tin can has been tweaked and retweaked for this server, so you'll have a hard time improving on it when you haven't seen the game yet.

Epic saves feats you can take, but legendary feats are custom to this server, you WILL need the pre-20 corresponding feats as prerequisits or you won't be able to take them.

As for your 24/- DR, considering a DD build will have a minimum of 70% physical immunity with easy to get equipment (between gear and LL changes, 5% more than your build), being at a mere 12/- innate (not counting gear) doesn't really hurt the tin can much, while that extra 6AB will be more noticable. Scimitar is nice, but something like light flail has the same crit range, bastard sword has better crits, or you can even go katana for style at the cost of only 1 feat.

Feat wise you need to calculate what you actually come to, too tired to do the math but your fort looks like it'll be very high while your will save could use some boosting.

[johannhowitzer]

Hm. It seems I was wrong about the save feats... but all I did was forget it's Great Fort, not Epic Fort, that unlocks Leg Fort. Oh well, it's been a while since I've been in the game, so I'm not surprised I forgot something like that.

As for cleave/great cleave, I figured that out. Definitely STR is better, but I did mention that in my original post.

For the weapons, light flail has only 20 crit range, while the scimitar has 18-20. Were you talking about the rapier? As this build is so heavily STR-based, I figured I could spare a pre-epic feat and neglect the Bastard Sword. More crit range seemed preferable to slightly more damage - 1d10 is better than 1d6, but only 4 damage more, and that's not even guaranteed. Better crit range greatly increases the chance that my heavy STR-based damage will be doubled! At just +18 STR mod, keen, improved critical, and mundane weapons, the scimitar will deal 623 points of damage per 20 hits, while the bastard sword will deal 611. The higher the STR and weapon damage bonuses get, the more those numbers separate. If I give the weapons a +8 enhancement and three 2d6 damage bonuses each, and bump the STR to its cap (+24), the scimitar will deal 1638 damage per 20 hits, while the bastard sword deals only 1521 damage.

Ironically, high base damage weapons such as the bastard sword are most useful early in the game and for low-STR builds. Once you get past a certain point, crit range and multiplier become far more important.

[Yomi]

No problem on the feats, there's a lot of stuff to remember, plus tons of custom things per class, not to mention quasi-classes. One nice thing about a DD/RDD is they tend to have some slack in pre-epic feats unlike most full RDDs and many others. So it might be possible to sneak one of those feats in there.

On weapons, check out this page on HGWiki: Weapons. It shows the HG modifications in bold, and check out the notes also. Light Flail, Katana, and Whip are both now 18-20/x2, just like rapier. This change was made very recently to get some more variety in weapon selection as those were basically dud weapons most people would pass over, while now they are great alternatives. Bastard Sword is 19-20/x3 which is one of the best ranges available, though you're right it would cost a feat. Doubling the crit range over Battleaxe may be worth it. Dwarven Waraxe is pretty unique in that if you have DD levels it will grant some shield AC, which opens up some interesting build ideas (e.g. full plate str dual axe wielder with AC over 120).

No argument on base damage vs. crit range, and that's exaggerated on HG due to the large quantity of additional damage on the weapons. Personally I totally ignore base damage amount on the weapons. The suggestion about bastard sword and light flail were entirely about the critical range, damage types on the DB weapon, and availability -- not the base damage.

[Yomi]

Another note on weapons. You of course want the best critical range and multiplier (there are threads that go into some detail comparing them). At some point you may want to look at the damage types on the specific weapons though this is more complicated and debatable. I've tried to put the information on HGWiki about damage types for the L29, L35, DB, and Dis weapons to help. The base damage type (slashing, piercing, bludgeoning, multiple) is also important, both in what effect it has on monsters as well as getting Keen (if you can read scrolls, you can self-keen your own slashing weapon).

Rarity is also important to take into account. For many people a good consideration is to use what weapon they have. A DB or L35 weapon with a bad critical range is going to do far more damage than a store bought weapon with a great range due to the ~5x more damage per hit. The most sought after weapons would be rapier, scythe, kukri, and scimitar (handaxe, dagger, kama, and monk gloves close behind). It's usually pretty hard to trade for these and they will go very fast in a loot split. If you used a Katana or Light Flail rather than Scimitar you would get the same critical range but would be a lot easier to obtain either through trading or acquiring in a loot split.

[johannhowitzer]

Thanks for all the heads-up! I had absolutely NO idea that HG had customized the weapon types... though seeming to see such a well-traveled member make such a blatant damage-calculation error made me suspect that might be the case. Now I'm gonna have to try a bastard sword-toting weapon master!