Oversized Weapon Build


Advice


In essence, I'm looking for the ideal combination of feats, class, race, etc. from both Pathfinder and 3.5E for a character to wield the biggest weapons he possibly could. Attack accuracy, DPR, all that is irrelevant. All that matters is the sheer ridiculousness of weapon size he can reach.

Specifically, though, I'd like the following: A Greatsword to be the weapon of choice, with the Monstrous Physique feat from Rite Publishing. 3rd party stuff is okay, as are most things from Pathfinder/3.5E compatible books. Any race would work but preferably one no larger than Huge that'd make a valid PC. It doesn't even matter if the feats or abilities even stack, as I'll houserule them in for additional attack penalties.

We're intentionally looking for stupidly oversized, overcompensationtastic, impractical weapons sizes on a character, and the ability to use them normally, if not accurately.

Thank you for any help!


Half Giant with Monstrous Physique, Lighten Weapon and Enlarge Person cast on them.

Monstrous Physique makes you Large, Enlarge Person makes you Huge. Powerful Build lets you wield a Gargantuan weapon and Lighten Weapon lets you wield a Colossal weapon.

If you are of the mind that Powerful Build and Lighten Weapon don't stack (although Powerful Build says it does stack with other things), use a Trox instead. Start out as Large, Monstrous Physique makes you Huge, Enlarge Person makes you Gargantuan and Lighten Weapon lets you wield a Colossal Weapon.

EDIT: Hm, Enlarge Person doesn't work on Trox. That's ok though. Go Psionic, use Expansion instead. You can augment it to increase your size twice. So, Trox starts Large, Monstrous Phsyique makes you Huge, and Expansion (augmented) takes you to Gargantuan then to Colossal. Now you need to invent a new size category for the size of the weapon that Lighten Weapon would let you use.


I'm not entirely sure how this works (this is something I've been recently mulling over as well), but taking the Exotic Weapon Proficiency for the Bastard Sword... And then start using a Large sized Bastard Sword two handed.

Since you can use a weapon made for a size category larger than you by taking a hit penalty and the weapon bumping up to the next tier of how it's used (one handed weapon to two handed weapon, in this instance). This effectively lets you use what would normally be a two handed weapon, in one hand, then making it bigger to make it a two handed weapon again. That is provided it works this way, which I do have my doubts on.

There is also the Titan Mauler Barbarian Archetype that gets bonuses for using bigger weapons, I believe. So hopefully this could all work out for the Large sized Bastard Sword.


Speak not of the the Weapon that Must Not Be Named!


The best build I've seen utilizing an oversized weapon revolves around the special property of the Sunblade that, despite having the size and impact of a Bastard Sword, is wielded as if it were only the weight and effort category (light) of a Shortsword. A Medium character can wield a Huge light weapon, thus a Medium character could wield a Huge Sunblade as a 2-h weapon. Throw in Enlarge Person and you have a Large character wielding a Gargantuan Sunblade. For frame of reference a Huge Sunblade is about the size of a Cessna's wing and a Garguantuan Sunblade would be the length of the entire wingspan tip-to-tip. You'd have a -4 to attack, but a Titan Mauler could get over that. Furthermore, a Ranger could get access to Lead Blades which would further increase that to the relative damage of a Colossal Bastard Sword.


RaizielDragon wrote:

Half Giant with Monstrous Physique, Lighten Weapon and Enlarge Person cast on them.

Monstrous Physique makes you Large, Enlarge Person makes you Huge. Powerful Build lets you wield a Gargantuan weapon and Lighten Weapon lets you wield a Colossal weapon.

If you are of the mind that Powerful Build and Lighten Weapon don't stack (although Powerful Build says it does stack with other things), use a Trox instead. Start out as Large, Monstrous Physique makes you Huge, Enlarge Person makes you Gargantuan and Lighten Weapon lets you wield a Colossal Weapon.

EDIT: Hm, Enlarge Person doesn't work on Trox. That's ok though. Go Psionic, use Expansion instead. You can augment it to increase your size twice. So, Trox starts Large, Monstrous Phsyique makes you Huge, and Expansion (augmented) takes you to Gargantuan then to Colossal. Now you need to invent a new size category for the size of the weapon that Lighten Weapon would let you use.

I was thinking Supermassive sized. But, yeah, that all sounds great. Thanks, you and the others managed to get these answers in much faster than I'd have ever imagined.

Now, next question- what should the range on a Supermassive greatsword be? I was thinking it'd be long enough to practically act as a line attack.


So, if you take the Half Giant with Monstrous Physique and Lighten Weapon, and use the augmented Expansion, you get a Gargantuan character that can wield a weapon that would be the next size above Colossal (let's call it Colossal+1) normally. So he can wield a Colossal+1 Sunblade as if it were a light weapon. Which means he can wield a Colossal+3 Sunblade as a 2-handed weapon. Add in Lead Blades to make the damage equivalent to a Colossal+4 Sunblade. Add the Impact magic weapon ability and it deals damage equivalent to a Colossal+5 Sunblade.

So, a Medium Sunblade deals 1d10, so a Large deals 2d8, which means a Huge deals 3d8. The weapon size chart fails us here, but if we assume each size increase just adds another d8, then we have the following:

Huge->Gargantuan->Colossal->Colossal+1->Colossal+2->Colossal +3->Colossal+4->Colossal+5

would be

3d8->4d8->5d8->6d8->7d8->8d8->9d8->10d8


RaizielDragon wrote:

So, if you take the Half Giant with Monstrous Physique and Lighten Weapon, and use the augmented Expansion, you get a Gargantuan character that can wield a weapon that would be the next size above Colossal (let's call it Colossal+1) normally. So he can wield a Colossal+1 Sunblade as if it were a light weapon. Which means he can wield a Colossal+3 Sunblade as a 2-handed weapon. Add in Lead Blades to make the damage equivalent to a Colossal+4 Sunblade. Add the Impact magic weapon ability and it deals damage equivalent to a Colossal+5 Sunblade.

So, a Medium Sunblade deals 1d10, so a Large deals 2d8, which means a Huge deals 3d8. The weapon size chart fails us here, but if we assume each size increase just adds another d8, then we have the following:

Huge->Gargantuan->Colossal->Colossal+1->Colossal+2->Colossal +3->Colossal+4->Colossal+5

would be

3d8->4d8->5d8->6d8->7d8->8d8->9d8->10d8

That's stupendous for damage, but I'm looking for actual size of the weapon. I want the character looking completely idiotic but still somehow upright with the weapon. Accuracy and damage are nice, but not the focus.

That said... yeesh. Nobody needs that much damage on a basic attack. There's hurting the enemy's body but that thing would do enough damage to physically hurt their feelings.


Well it's still a Gargantuan creature wielding a Colossal+3 sized weapon. It just deals the damage of a weapon two sizes larger than that.


Just for reference, a Colossal+1 Greatsword would weigh 256 pounds and a Colossal+3 Sunblade would also weigh 256 pounds. A Colossal+2 Bastard Sword would weigh 384 pounds.


the biggest weapon i can think of off-hand is the sun blade--you can wield a huge-sized one with a medium character (albeit at a crazy penalty, but hey)


Here's a different approach to effective weapon size that I don't see come up much, the Beaststrike Club.

The key part here is that it counts as both a natural and a manufactured weapon for the purposes of spells that enhance it. So you could make it large, then tack on things like the +1 step for burning a Wild Shape, casting both Lead Blades and Strong Jaw, taking Improved Natural Attack, etc.

It's not a greatsword, but you could potentially make a really big stick that hits like an even bigger stick.


Just as an update, I found a thread where someone explained that the dice progression is extrapolated a bit further under the "Improved Natural Attack" feat, and also explained that each size increase is basically about a 50% increase, rounded down to the nearest even number of dice. I know you said damage wasn't the main goal here, but if you are going to jump through all the hoops to wield the equivalent of a Colossal+3 weapon, and increase it to the equivalent of a Colossal+5 weapon damage, then you might as well get your efforts worth.

So, my previous damage progression: 3d8->4d8->5d8->6d8->7d8->8d8->9d8->10d8

Would actually be: 3d8->4d8->6d8->8d8->12d8->18d8->26d8->38d8.

And, just for fun, toss in Vital Strike, Improved Vital Strike, and Greater Vital Strike, so you can take a Standard Action to do 152d8 damage.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Oversized Weapon Build All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Advice