Minotaur WM ( Ftr 30 / Wm 10 )

[phalthallus]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but you won't get the extra attacks while holding a shield, unless you take Barbarian with the Shapestrong ability.

So if you don't go with Double Axe, Scythe is another popular choice for mino's wielding a shield. Or you can do as you said and go w/o a shield, though I wouldn't recommend it on a strengthie.

[MurphysLawAgain]

Yiazmat,

A few general points before getting into specifics. I recommend that you read some of the excellent posts (many stickied) about the basics of building HG characters. They will help you avoid the common mistakes and save a lot of irritation. If minotaur is your only subrace I guess you don't have a lot of gear and time on the server. STR tanks are probably the hardest group to play because you have got to have very good gear to survive with them. Even a very good STR build will get massacred in areas like the desert / Sssths without the proper armour, shield, and misc. items.

Getting to the specifics of your post, I doubt if dodge will make that much difference for this char. You are going to get hit a lot by LL critters so avoiding the first attack won't really help that much. Compounding this problem is that you will have relatively low saves & very average HP. I would consider taking a lot less FTR lvls and splashing some CoT to get the save bonus or perhaps Monk in the first twenty lvls to boost your saves that way. Also you have got to get more Con into the build, even if you drop your STR to do it. With more weapon master levels you can get your AB high enough to compensate for a few less points of STR - but too few hitpoints will leave you spending a lot of time dead.

Hope this is reasonable constructive and doesn't put you off trying your own build - but do expect the first few to have very ugly problems. Funky is an expert at designing areas to find the weaknesses in builds and expose them.

Good luck - your going to need it

[fragment]

What Murphy said,

and I seriously, really recommend that you just try it out. Immo such a toon, take it to desert, and then read the combat log.

Taught me a lot w/ my first toon

Regards!

[chainlink]

Trouble is to take it to the Desert you'd have to invest quite a lot of time to get it to Immo status and then find its a lemon. I know I did this in my early days here but I do like to push people in the right direction if I can now. Whilst you can get a load of bonus feats by using Ftr you soon start running out of useful ones (at least on HG). I built my first RDD using a mix of 2 Bard, 8 Ftr and 30 RDD on a Minotaur and with the right gear this build is practically unkillable in the desert, can deal a load of damage (especially to non-critical immune mobs) and has 1498 hps.

[Yomi]

This is pretty similar to one of my first builds (3rd NWN character). Mine was fighter 33, WM 7, but the stats were identical to your suggestion and the concept similar. In my case a Scythe WM. I ought to have at least splashed a monk level in there for evasion since his reflex save is actually not all that bad (at level 48 saves with maxed save gear are 48 fort, 48 reflex, 41 will without any save feats taken). My particular character also shows the sign of a truly poorly thought out build: he took epic toughness feats due to lack of other available choices since I totally winged him.

Up through the immo run, this character was a blast to play. With scythe and high str and ab, he walloped everything with huge damage from level 2 all the way up through immo run. At level 48 it looks like he does 350 or higher crits with blade of the emperor (not hard to get) and 500-600 points with Salacious (level 35 rare scythe). Crit range is 16-20 so these aren't that uncommon to see. Even that base 14 con gives him lots of hp due to fighter levels -- he'll end with more than 1000 hp even with that puny 14 CON. More con wouldn't hurt at all but I'm not sure it's as crucial as Murphy says. If you do take a couple Great CON feats, take them before level 40.

Note that large size critters like minotaurs do get to use large weapon + shield (e.g. scythe plus shield), BUT they don't get the 1.5x str bonus when not using a shield. I've seen some people do WM's of normal (non-large) size alternating between scimitar + shield when AC matters and then scythe alone when they can handle the lower AC so they can get 800 point crits. But that doesn't work with a mino.

The problem was after immo run. Now admittedly my equipment was sub-par, but oh boy he got a licking in LL areas. AC isn't going to be spectacular, but you can probably get it to 115 or thereabouts, though with no conceal and no fancy damage reduction like DD's and Barbs get. Epic dodge is nice and helps in drow. But when 20 deverials are shooting arrows at you it doesn't cut it without some nice AC to back it up. The biggest problem is one shared by lots of str tanks -- you're going to get stoned a lot. If he wasn't stoned, he got imploded. Once rezzed from that, the living sands would kill him. Repeat. He hardly ever got to show off his crits in the desert since he was either dead, stoned, or hiding from the massed arrows. Better equipment and a bit more thought into the build would have helped a lot, but he never had UR gear. This was one of the characters that taught me the importance of (1) good saving throws, and (2) not getting hit so you don't have to make the saves in the first place. Really, what got him was often not getting hit for damage so much as being stoned or insta-killed due to failing a save (hence my thought that 1000hp vs. 1500hp is a smaller issue than saves and avoiding getting hit by sands multiple times a round).

Anyway, it's not a bad concept, and was fun. You will get a lot of comments on your criticals when people see the 300-600 point numbers pop up. But the RDD and DD builds do have some nice perks. My DD str tank sure can't hit anywhere near as hard as the mino F/WM, but he's going to be vertical and still hitting long after the other one has taken a sand nap.

[starlandra]

Try this... I made my mino a 10 fighter 25 WM 5 Harper Scout. The saves were suprisingly good (Str based but reflex is my highest save go figure) She wields a scythe and a tower shield, and gets 7 attacks a round, and has 25% immune to fire acid cold elec, and sonic from Harper Scout secret. Great ab due to WM great crit range 16-20 x5 due to WM, and not feat starved. I can post actual #''s if you are interested but with the levle 35 scythe she hits for 400+ points of damage. Very fun build, and leveled veeeery fast

[chainlink]

Reflex is the primary save for Weapon Masters thats why yours is high I suspect.

[starlandra]

really? lol never noticed that before, that is even better cause those dang sanders and living sands (reflex based) are the only saves in game I have ever had a hard time with.