I have a lvl 15 sheild fighter, and I have all his feats up to lvl 10 picled so I have to pick another 5 high lvl feats. Need some suggestions.
I All ready have the following
1.combat expertise
Power Attack
Trip Impact
2.Sheild Focus
3.sheild Speacalize
4.sheild bash improved
5Furrys fall
6.vital strike
7.trip greater
8.felling smash
9.devastating strike
10 ?
11. Improved vital
12?
13?
14?
15?
Offensive feats. I'd personally drop the Vital Strike and Devastating Strike feats in favor of things like Weapon Training, Weapon Specialization, the Greater version of both of those, and Advanced Weapon Training. Also, Advanced Armor Training is an option, if you're going for a defensive build. Penetrating Strike and its Greater version are also options. I'm not seeing Trip Impact as a feat anywhere. Instead of Combat Expertise, you should take Dirty Fighting. Shield Master (the feat) should be on your list of things to consider. Two-Weapon Fighting is a viable build for shield-based Fighters, so Two-Weapon Fighting, its Improved and Greater version, Double Slice, and Two-Weapon Rend are also on the table.
Also, Shielded Fighter is not the best archetype to be a Fighter with a shield anymore. Regular fighter, using Advanced Armor and Advanced Weapon Training, is probably better.
Maybe you should reconsider your build? Or perhaps state your build intent.
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I have the trip in order to get my felling smash. That allowes me to trip foes when i power attack as well get another attack when I trip them. I dont wana get into the math but if I hit all my attacks including trips I can do over 100dmg in one full turn of attacking
Vital strike is so I can do massive dmg to enemies I CAN NOT trip, Like large creatures and such. With this I can do over 50Dmg with one hit.
I'm trying to go for a knight sheild and sword build. The sheild fighter gives me very good bonus to my sheild attacks that I like.
ArthusLionHeart wrote:
Vital strike is so I can do massive dmg to enemies I CAN NOT trip, Like large creatures and such. With this I can do over 50Dmg with one hit.
*Ahem*, Vital strike most of the time is quite lackluster, specially for one handed weapons.
Two weapon fighting + shield amster are the typical feats for offensive, and missile and ray shield can improve your defense. Also, a feat to improve saves is mandatory for fighters.
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In my Reign of Winter campaign I have a lvl 13 shield and board fighter who is shining through almost every combat. Her feats are:
Two-Weapon Fighting, Improved Shield Bash, Step Up, Power Attack, Iron Will, Improved Bull Rush, Spiked Destroyer, Shield Slam, Combat Reflexes, Stand Still, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, Greater Bull Rush, Shield Master, Advanced Weapon Training (Smash From the Air), Bashing Finish.
She usually controls the enemy with high AC and 5' steps plus bull rushes to avoid receiving full attacks. With Smash from the air and Combat Reflexes she can negate ranged attacks and Stand Still forces melee enemies to attack her (the other party members are a ranged skirmisher ranger, a witch and an abjurer wizard).
Advanced weapon training (Weapon Mastery): Cut from the Air and Smash from the Air.
Advanced armor training: Armored sacrifice and Armor specialization: Breasplate.
When she needs to go full damage against enemies with Damage Reduction, she usually drops her shield and goes with a Two-Handed Power Attack.
I reccomend the stumbling bash and toppling bash feats from armour master's handbook. Stumbling is enemies take a -2 to their AC for a round after your shield bash, and toppling is get a trip check as a swift after you shield bash an enemy at -5 to the cmb (-3, when you count the AC penalty from stumbling bash)
If it's allowed at your table, I also reccomend Defensive Expertise from Pathfinder, which lets you apply your shield bonus to your touch AC.
ArthusLionHeart wrote: Trip Impact What is Trip Impact? Did you mean Improved Trip?
If you want a sword and board character with Tripping, I recommend you use Throwing Shield. Throwing Shields are Trip Weapons, and you pretty much will never suffer a chance of being tripped by a catastrophically unlucky roll, which you have to consider.
Invest in a Blinkback Belt, and your shield will instantly teleport back to your your 'Belt after your attack is resolved. If your Throwing Shield is a Quickdraw Throwing Shield, and if you also take the Quickdraw Feat, re-drawing your shield is a Free Action. Theoretically, since throwing a Throwing Shield in the first place is also a Free Action, you might have an infinite Free Action Attack loop and win at D&D. But GMs are specifically empowered to put "reasonable limits" on the number of Free Actions allowed in a turn. But you should be able to use the combo to get at least 1 bonus attack/round.
There is a problem with using a Range Weapon with Tripping: you can only make Attacks of Opportunity into squares you Threaten, and "Threaten" is a melee attack thing. The fact that Throwing a Throwing Shield is a Free Action, you should have no problem using it to Trip someone adjacent to you without provoking an AoO yourself, then just use your longsword to make your AoO. But it is a shame to Trip someone at Range and not be able to use Greater Trip to score that AoO. At least a partial solution is Snap Shot Feats. Take Rapid Shot, Snap Shot, and Improved Snapshot, and you Threaten with your shield at a range of 10'.
A problem with Tripping is that you can't Trip creatures more than 1 size bigger than yourself. Invest a 3 level dip in Inquisitor or a 1 level dip in Cavalier, and take Harder they Fall. Harder they Fall is a Teamwork Feat that will let you Trip and Bull Rush creatures regardless of Size.
Speaking of Bull Rush, Shield Slam is an obvious choice for a sword-and-board fighter: Free Bull Rush with every Shield Bash. If you take Greater Bull Rush, all your allies get an Attack of Opportunity with every Bull Rush. With Paired Opportunist--another Teamwork Feat--you get an AoO, too. This opens the door for a wicked tactical trick, with a Flanking buddy, your AoO can be yet another Sheild bash, triggering more Attacks of Opportunity, yours would be a shield bash…
The stuff suggested so far sounds great. I wish my 19th level Viking could go back and take some of it! He has all the Vital Strike feats since he's in a Mythic game and Mythic Vital Strike is very good. If that's not available I probably wouldn't bother with Vital Strike on a "shield fighter" though. If your idea is to use it together with Felling Smash you should probably double check to be sure that will work since Vital Strike usually can't be combined with anything that would make it fun and effective (since it requires its own special standard action)
Shield Slam can be pretty decent even if you don't want to invest in Improved Bull Rush since it uses your attack roll as the CMB result for the free bull rush attempt. If you're using the Combat Stamina system you can also use Shield Slam to perform other maneuvers (disarm, resposition, trip, or sunder) for 2 stamina points (pretty cheap)
If you're really into tripping and don't mind being a bit of a one-trick pony you could take IUS, Combat Reflexes, and Vicious Stomp so that you'd get two AoOs when you knock somebody prone. I have that combo with another PC who uses a heavy flail. He also has Enforcer so that he gets a free Intimidate check on the enemy he stomps on and Hurtful so he gets a free attack as a swift action when the foe becomes shaken. It is brutally effective, and the unarmed strike + intimidate + swift attack combo provides kind of a "mini-pounce" even against stuff which can't be tripped (which gets to be a lot of stuff at higher levels)
Devilkiller wrote: Shield Slam can be pretty decent even if you don't want to invest in Improved Bull Rush since it uses your attack roll as the CMB result for the free bull rush attempt. Are you saying that because Shield Slam uses the same Attack Roll as the initial Attack, it doesn't enjoy the bonuses from Improved and Greater bull rush?
Improved Bull Rush wrote: you receive a +2 bonus on checks made to bull rush a foe. IBR & GBR give you your bonuses only on Combat Maneuver Checks, but on all checks made to Bull Rush a foe. And the Bull Rush following Shield Slam is indeed a check made to Bull Rush a foe, even if it does use the same raw number on the die roll. I'm confident you get to add the bonus.
But honestly, even if you didn't, I'd still recommend it. Even if GBR doesn't give you your +4, it still gives your allies their Attacks of Opportunity, and if you get to use Paired Opportunist, you get the AoOs, too, and that is impressive.
I was thinking a way to go after that would be to take Hamatula Strike. If your Shield is a Spiked Shield, and your main weapon were a Piercing Weapon such as a Morning Star or Halberd (Phalanx Soldier Fighter Archetype), Then each of your weapons would give you an Instant Grapple Check, inflicting Armor Spike Damage if you are wearing them. So your Attack Routine would be Halbers +Grapple, Shield Bash + Grapple + Bull Rush, triggering a Swift Action Armor Spike Attack, another Grapple, and triggering Attacks of Opportunity.
The rules say, "Any opponents hit by your shield bash are also hit with a free bull rush attack, substituting your attack roll for the combat maneuver check". If you substituted the attack roll for the check then I'd think there was no check to gain a bonus on. If that's the case then Improved Bull Rush wouldn't help you much here though triggering AoOs with Greater Bull Rush could be very useful, especially if you took Paired Opportunists with an ally so that you'd both get an AoO at +4 to hit.
Something like this could be interesting for an Eldritch Guardian or a mounted PC who shares teamwork feats with a mount via a saddle. If Bull Rushing the enemy out of his current square provokes an AoO but you trip him as part of the AoO would he fall prone in the current square or the one you were bull rushing him into to begin with? If the former that would keep the enemy within your melee reach and maybe even allow another Shield Slam plus double AoO combo. I guess a somewhat similar effect could be achieved by Shield Slam, double AoO, 5 foot step, Shield Slam, double AoO (even against stuff immune to tripping, which is a pretty big group)
Devilkiller wrote: If you substituted the attack roll for the check then I'd think there was no check to gain a bonus on. The attack roll is the check made to Bull Rush the foe. The PC who spent the slot to take the Feat should get the bonus he paid for.
Are you not checking the results of that die roll against your opponent's Combat Maneuver Defense? How is the Shield Slam Bull Rush Attack not "a check made to Bull Rush a foe?"
Again, Improved Bull Rush grants a bonus to all checks made to Bull Rush a foe, not just that Standard Action Bull Rush Combat Maneuver Check.
Devilkiller wrote: triggering AoOs with Greater Bull Rush could be very useful, especially if you took Paired Opportunists with an ally so that you'd both get an AoO at +4 to hit.
Something like this could be interesting for an Eldritch Guardian or a mounted PC who shares teamwork feats with a mount via a saddle.
I was thinking rather you dip 3 levels in Inquisitor. Solo Tactics will let you benefit from Paired Opportunist as if your allies had it. They get the AoOs from GBR. You get the AoO from PO as if they also had PO. They don't get the +4, but you do. Solo Tactics works for all your Teamwork Feats, not just the one bonus Feat, so in case you run into a creature that is too big for Bull Rushing and Tripping, you can take Harder they Fall. If your allies Aid you, you get to keep Bull Rushing and Tripping them as if they had Harder they Fall, too.
Devilkiller wrote: even allow another Shield Slam plus double AoO combo. I guess a somewhat similar effect could be achieved by Shield Slam, double AoO, 5 foot step, Shield Slam, double AoO My thinking exactly. If you had another party member who also had an Attack of Opportunity Build, and you had your opponent Flanked or backed up against a wall or something, you could loop Slams and Attacks of Opportunity. A little sad that they officially nerfed the Bashing Enchantment and the Klar, before they did, the Bashing Klar would do 2d6 instead of 1d6. But you still get the loop, and you can make sure your last hit on the loop is a swing of your Earthbreaker for 3d6 after you bufffed it with Lead Blades. In practice, you probably won't lose the bonus damage on more than 1 or 2 of your Attacks of Opportunity, and that's only in those sweet situations when you have that loop going on.
A thing I was thinking of building on top of this was Hamatuala Strike. I first thought of this for use with Thunder and Fang, but how about for a Phalanx Soldier with a Light, Spiked Shield and a Halberd? With Hamatula Strike, you get Grapple your opponents with each piercing attack and do Armor Spike Damage. So that's Halberd + skewer/Shield Bash + skewer + Bull Rush + Attack of Opportunity + skewer again! You'll shred everyone to pieces.
Devilkiller wrote: a mounted PC who shares teamwork feats with a mount via a saddle. If Bull Rushing the enemy out of his current square provokes an AoO but you trip him as part of the AoO would he fall prone in the current square or the one you were bull rushing him into to begin with? If the former that would keep the enemy within your melee reach and maybe even allow another Shield Slam plus double AoO combo. I guess a somewhat similar effect could be achieved by Shield Slam, double AoO, 5 foot step, Shield Slam, double AoO (even against stuff immune to tripping, which is a pretty big group) You can use Shield Slam or Merciless Rush to make your opponents fall Prone, but remember making your opponents go Prone is not quite the same thing as Tripping them. In particular, you don't get an AoO off of Greater Trip whenever your opponent falls Prone, only when you, yourself Tripped them. On the other hand, Vicious Stomp does trigger whenever your opponent Falls prone, including when you yourself Tripped him.
Also remember that the Throwing Shield is a Tripping Weapon. This is how you really use a Blinkback Belt. Take Improved Snapshot so you Threaten within 10'. You 'Slam your opponent away. You AoO them with your Hammer. Then you take your Free Action Attack with your Throwing Shield to Trip them, then use your Throwing Shield again for your Attack of Opportunity via Greater Trip.
I still think "substitute" means you use the attack roll instead of making a check, but we'll surely never agree on this and might as well not debate it too much. If you really do get the +2 or +4 bonus this could make the Combat Stamina trick for Shield Slam even more useful though. Since the trick allows you to make a free Trip attempt instead of a free Bull Rush all the usual Trip effects would apply. If you're not actually tripping I guess you could still use Vicious Stomp (if you have lots of feats) though the idea of stomping on somebody while you're mounted might seem odd (potentially kind of funny if you're on a flying mount and you sort of bounce up and down on the prone enemy)
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