The Left Fist of Gond - F(10), C(13), WM(7)

Fighter 10 / Cleric 13 / Weapon Master 7 by Steelsamurai 21:04, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Description
From a roleplay standpoint, the Left Fist of Gond is the fraternal twin sister of the |The Right Fist of Gond, when conceived they were Planetouched and destined to bring balance wherever they go. Their patron deity is Gond, he of the hammer, which they carry and use to dispense their particular brand of religious zealotry.

Both have trained and dedicated themselves to their weapon and their patron, following slightly different paths in combat and worship of their deity. The Right Fist is a tankbuster, and this build has chewn through most of the Battle of the Builds, defeating many (most) of the other power builds very rapidly, in some cases in under 10 seconds. The Left Fist is a magekiller, optimized to go after the Blood Scholar and others of his ilk, though some human piloting is required in order to do so. Even being optimized to take on spellcasters, she is easily capable of defeating tanks like Thuggernaut, due to quadruple value criticals with Epic Divine Might and her Cleric level being high enough to cast Word of Faith which greatly improves hit chances vs. a tank.

I built the twins out of an attempt to get something useful out of the Weapon Master class, and the high critical output of the WM features strongly in this build, and it is not out of the question to see over 300-400 melee damage generated in one round against a fully armored and buffed powerbuilt opponent (with a bit of luck). In fighting other WM builds this one seems to chew through them with no problems and without breaking a sweat.

Also, I think critical hits are cool and it makes me happy to see enemies go down in a flurry of *Critical Hit!*.

Advantages:


 * Fully buffed, +59 attack, 72AC -or- +56 attack 75AC by flipping the combat expertise mode. High attack, high defense, have your cake and eat it too.


 * High damage output, using Epic Divine Might. It's built to crit, if it hits, it hits hard for 4x on a 17-20 roll, with physical, divine and magical damage from buffs, a crit will land for 190+ points against a buffed enemy. See image of the Left Fist vs. Divine Dragon with three crits landing in the same sequence.


 * Has additional toy of Disarm added to the repertoire.


 * Has flexibility in the spell buildout on the cleric side if you want to role play.


 * Build starts off as an offensive minded fighter/cleric, and is useable throughout the build, should never be gimped and probably no multiclassing penalty since the fighter and cleric levels alternate. It gets Divine Might and Divine Shield quickly and with a high Charisma score, these two powers serve in place of a lack of spells due to low wisdom, until some wisdom buffing equipment can be found.


 * It is easy to make minor adjustments in stance from defensive to offensive by switching to two handed use of the warhammer and putting the shield away (more drastic) and by enabling or turning off combat expertise (tilts you +3/-3 on AC/Attack). A harder to hit enemy that is not much of a threat can be dealt with then without having to resort to spell buffs.


 * 13th level Cleric plus Silent Spell allows for a large number of spell mantles through spell levels 5,6,7. By carrying 13 mantles, she has enough to endure all of the Greater Breach, Bigby's Forceful Hand, and following Missile Storms of the Blood Scholar. By the time he's shot his wad, she's just finished running out of Spell Mantles, and he's a sitting duck.


 * Prepped and ready to kill tanks and mages with one equipment set, and one spell loadout, without any changes.

Disadvantages:


 * Low wisdom for a Cleric restricts spells until wisdom buffing can be found.


 * Not very strong at detecting stealth compared to other power builds, and the clerical spells don't seem to help much though they should according to descriptions.


 * AI doesn't seem to take a lot of advantage of the disarm skills which are very powerful, but underselected by the computer when it plays vs. things in the pack (which go nuts on disarm, guess they're using different AI sets for the player's build). Many enemies when going to pick up their weapon are flat footed with much lower AC, which allows great chances for critical hits (the triple critical above is from one such instance of disarm followed by an attack on a flat-footed enemy).


 * Naked strength of 23 equates to equipped strength of 32, and will lose shoving matches against melee characters similarly equipped with knockdown and strength in the 33-40 range. Building for Divine Might doesn't allow for more power.


 * Relatively low constitution makes for kind of a lightweight build as a fighter, but this is more than balanced out by the extreme damage output.


 * AI doesn't know how to use spell mantles very well, so an overwhelming arcane caster will take it down AI to AI.


 * Spontaneous Conversion lets you build out as a warrior cleric and still be of some use to your party as a healer.

Character Creation
Race: Aasimar: the charisma and wisdom bonuses help get this off the ground, since we need to hit required stats on Strength and Charisma of 21 each (Epic Divine Might). We also need Intelligence and Dexterity to hit 13 each to qualify as a Weapon Master. If building with a human it might be possible to go with a lower constitution and/or wisdom to make the whole thing work, or one can take more epic bonuses and sacrifice some of the feats at the end of the build. Elves would also be a good choice, anything with bonus strength or charisma, with negatives in constitution, the only stat we don't care about.

Background: I take Devout for the +1 will save. Every nickel counts.

Alignment: Neutral. Gond of the Warhammer is a Neutral god, and these two builds are patterned to serve him. Also, people can't protect vs. neutral alignment which is like carrying a permanent buff with you and is a benefit to going with Divine Champion over Paladin or Blackguard. However, going Neutral opens you up to getting some smiting action handed down your head by Paladins, all the more important to hit them before they hit you. A similar build to this would be possible by dropping cleric and going with one of those two for a good/evil roleplay.

Stats: Not much flexibility, you need to end up with Str/Ch at 21, and Int/Dex at 13, and they have to hit these numbers at the right time in the build to unlock WM in particular.

Key Feats: Divine Might, Epic Divine Might, Divine Wrath (DC5), and Ki Critical (WM7). Almost feat in this build is pretty essential to making the overall concept work though. The use of Silent Spell does two things in this build, first by the bonus feature of casting while silenced, but second, it lets us bring spells from "good levels" of Cleric to those that have crappier choices. So every level then has a nice compliment of useful tools.

Skills
We need +4 intimidate to open up Weapon Master. Beyond this, the best build I think will start with 4 in intimidate and then use the minimum required on each level until we get a Cleric level open where we can dump into Spellcraft and Concentration. I built with Concentration 30 (important to get your buffs and spells off point blank), Tumble 16, Spellcraft 20 (+2 saves, plus need to identify what is being cast at you if you want to buff against it), Intimidate 4 (required), Spot 16. This suggested build doesn't use Taunt, but that is certainly an option. I'd have gone higher but with no rogue/bard to open things up and short on feats due to WM's ridiculous requirements, this was the best I figured I could do.

Weapons
It is possible to build this out two-handed with a Greataxe, which would be pretty scary damage wise. Since the buffed defense is very high at 75, without a shield it would still sit at a respectable 62, and make for monster damage and better accuracy. However, it would be less survivable probably. The reliance of this build on criticals means it always has a puncher's chance unless it comes against someone who is critical resistant. Even so, high accuracy and divine damage tends to overcome these builds. The choice of warhammer may seem odd in a world that loves swords, but the warhammer is a perfect weapon for this task. The higher multiplier and lower range works perfectly with enemies that are hard to hit, where a larger range will not necessarily help you in damage output. It is possible to choose the Dwarven Waraxe which has a similar damage profile to the Warhammer, but is 1-10 x3 (x4 WM) instead of 1-8 x3 (x4 WM), so capable of more damage.

Since this is an exotic weapon, it would mean an extra feat, however since this build picks up Weapon Focus through the War domain, this can be gotten around by shifting to Gorm Gulthyn as deity (Lawful Good). That would bring protection from a Paladin bonking you, but people would be able to cast Protection vs. Good. All in all it might be a better tradeoff, but my concept wasn't for an axeman with these two.

Spells
The spell loadout is very important for play both by human and by AI. Basically you don't want to give the AI anything stupid it will cast for 5 points of damage, and you don't want to give it useless buffs that will waste time. We need a lot of spell mantles because of tough mages as well, and that impacts some of the great buffs (like Divine Power). I want with this to have one loadout that is general purpose and not tweaked on a per-fight basis.

I am recommending:


 * L0: Resistance x6
 * L1: Entropic Shield, Bless, Divine Favor x4, Protection vs. Alignment
 * L2: Aid, Entropic Shield (Silent), Bless (Silent), Divine Favor (Silent) x3
 * L3: Blindsightx2, Silence (Silent) x2, Lesser Restoration (Silent)
 * L4: Least Spell Mantle x4, Divine Power, Death Ward
 * L5: Battletide, True Seeing, Lesser Spell Mantle x3, Least Spell Mantle (Silent)
 * L6: Battletide (Silent), Lesser Spell Mantle (Silent) x3, Stone Body
 * L7: Word of Faith x3, Spell Mantle x2

Blade Barrier might be a good choice in there but it's crashing my NWN2 so I couldn't test it. Blindsight is good as it prevents penalties from fighting in darkness, and vs. invisibility. Word of Faith has no save and cracks open turtles.

Equipment
For BotB, the specs on the equipment choices are:


 * Mithril Full Plate, 28SR, 35HP, Regen+8
 * Boots of Hardiness, Reflex+9, Con+9, Dex+8
 * Bracers of Armor +10
 * Keen Warhammer +8, +5d6 electricity, +7 Vamp (Keen is very important!)
 * Adamantine Tower Shield +8, Regen+8, 35HP
 * Cloak of Movement +8, Char+9, Acid buffs.
 * Ring of Major Cold Resist, +L7 Cleric, Cold Save, Fire Save
 * Ring of Major Sonic Resist, +L7 Cleric, Elec Save, Acid Save
 * Girdle of Holy Might, Str+9
 * Natural Armor Amulet +5, 40/Elec, 40/Fire, Wis+9
 * Watchman's Helm