I've decided I want to make a charge breaker, the guy that goes in the room first and can survive a few rounds one on one with a dragon, charging cavalier or pounce kitty.
I'm sitting on the idea of a tower shield wielding phalanx fighter with the helpful and bodyguard combo for extra fun. This gets all kinds of fun from readying an action for total cover and immediate bracing. With the extra boost of increasing my allies AC.
But one handing is going to be some pretty small damage, and bodyguard only helps adjacent allies, not the flanking buddy.
So in an effort to fill more than one role (support, debuff, hit soak, damage, social, skills), how would you round out this build?
I was expecting Inquisitor (or Holy Tactician) 3 + Intercept Charge.
DM Livgin wrote: phalanx fighter My first thought is Fighter with the Phalanx Soldier Archetype. You can use a Shield in 1 hand and a Polearm in the other, maybe a Pole Arm with Brace and Reach like a Lucerne Hammer. Take the Quickdraw Feat, and when you get to level 5, you can go around with your pike unreadied, so they'll think they charging in for the kill, you suddenly bristle out and skewer them with your Readied action then you also get an Attack of Opportunity as they try to close inside your Reach, both at double damage on account of the Brace feature of the Lucerne Hammer.
DM Livgin wrote: tower shield... But one handing is going to be some pretty small damage, and bodyguard only helps adjacent allies, not the flanking buddy. Develop a Shield Bashing Build: Take Shield Slam and Greater Bull Rush: if there is anything left of those poor fools that charged you in the first place, then when you Shield Bash them, you also Bull Rush them, back into your Reach.
There is another wicked trick you can play with Shield Slam and Greater Bull Rush. Take Paired Opportunist, and you get an Attack of Opportunity whenever you give your allies one with GBR. Normally, you can't Bull Rush someone into an ally or a wall: if they can't move back, they can't be Bull Rushed farther, but with Shield Slam, you can, and your victim falls Prone. So, get a Flanking Buddy that also has Combat Reflexes. When you take your AoO, make it another Shield Slam, granting another AoO to your buddy and to yourself, looping Attacks of Opportunity every round until your Dex Mod runs out.
I recommend a Heavy, Spiked Shield or a Klar for maxiumum damage, and the Bashing Enchantment of course. Perhaps some levels in Warpriest.
DM Livgin wrote: So in an effort to fill more than one role (support, debuff, hit soak, damage, social, skills), how would you round out this build? Well, I just offered battlefield control. You just mentioned Bodyguard.
Dip 1 level in Cavalier. You can also combine Bodyguard and Paired Opportunist and give out Attacks of Opportunity to your allies whenever they are attacked.
How about some ranged ability?
Make your shield a Quickdraw, Throwing Shield. I already recommended the Quickdraw Feat. Acquire a Blinkback Belt. Throwing a Throwing Shield is a Free Action. The Blinkback Belt will instantly recall the Shield to your Belt after the attack is resolved, then re-drawing it is another Free Action. Since the Core Rulebook specifically empowers the GM to put "reasonable limits" on the number of Free Actions allowed in a turn, you won't really enjoy an infinite-Free-Action-attack loop, but it's still pretty hot. You should be able to get at least 1 bonus attack/round that way, but that is all up to the GM.
Maybe take some Snap Shot Feats, and you will be able to make Ranged Attacks of Opportunity with your Quickdraw Feat and your Throwing Weapons.
I've been wanting to make some kind of build using Close Quarters Thrower.
DM Livgin wrote: hit soak I like layers of defense.
Gain a Miss Chance. I like gaining the Scent Ability, taking the Blindfighting Feat, then carrying around an Eversmoking Bottle. If you are using a Reach Weapon, maybe Tremorsense is better than Scent. A Dwarf can get Tremorsense at the cost of 2 feats.
I like the idea of taking 2 levels in Alchemist to get a Tumor Familiar, and have it drink a Potion of Shield Other or have the Familiar take the Protector Archetype. Tumor Familiars have Fast Healing 5, so they're good for this.
Consider a reach bloodrager with a bloodline familiar that has the protector archetype. The familiar will buff your defenses while sharing your damage.
Scott Wilhelm wrote: You can also combine Bodyguard and Paired Opportunist and give out Attacks of Opportunity to your allies whenever they are attacked. Please don't start this again. You're literally the only person that believes it works this way.
claudekennilol wrote: Scott Wilhelm wrote: You can also combine Bodyguard and Paired Opportunist and give out Attacks of Opportunity to your allies whenever they are attacked. Please don't start this again. You're literally the only person that believes it works this way. It is literally false that I am the only one who believes it works this way. I can quote at least one person on our thread that agreed with me completely. Anyway, the small number of contributors to that one thread hardly counts as representative of the whole gaming community, or even counts as representative of the community of contributors to these forums. You haven't even begun prove that my position actually is unpopular. And it is obviously false that I stand alone.
But even if I stood and stand alone, that doesn't matter. I comprehensively demonstrated that my proposed use of Bodyguard is legal by RAW, and a PFS player who wishes to use it that way has every right to use it that way. Something being unpopular doesn't make it illegal.
Do you have further evidence? I would like to hear it. Meanwhile, I stand behind my advice.
Does Bodyguard trigger Paired Opportunists?
Get that Bodyguard / Paired Opportunist argument out of my house, i'll host no such discussion.
I like the familiar ideas, it is easy to pick one up with the number of feats fighters get.
After careful consideration, I'm not sold on the Intercept Charge unless you are a full inquisitor. You need to have high perception and initiative to use it consistently. It has reduced value for a reach phalanx soldier that is standing out front anyhow, and should be the first charge target. Switching to inquisitor would help the lacklustre damage, but I'm not sold on their survival.
And yes, the foundation idea is phalanx soldier and tower shield: Immediate action brace, attack of opportunity as they leave threatened (unfeated trip, disarm, or sunder possibly) and then readied action trigger for total tower shield cover when they enter five feet.
A reminder to be civil, and that you may not necessarily like the advice that another player gives. What works for one group may not work for another–please keep this in mind!
DM Livgin wrote: Get that Bodyguard / Paired Opportunist argument out of my house, i'll host no such discussion. I don't want to re-have arguments I have already had, either. That is why I linked to the other thread. That is the place for that argument.
Meanwhile, I stand behind my advice, all of it. My advice is principally for you directly in response to your request, but it is also for all readers with similar questions.
DM Livgin wrote: After careful consideration, I'm not sold on the Intercept Charge unless you are a full inquisitor. You need to have high perception and initiative to use it consistently. It has reduced value for a reach phalanx soldier that is standing out front anyhow, and should be the first charge target. Charge breaking is hard to make good on. Enemies don't always charge, and when they do, they usually don't charge the heavily armored guy with the Reach-Brace Pole Arm and Tower Shield. Under the best of circumstances, finessing the enemy into charging requires a deft hand with the minis.
There is the Antagonize Feat. I think Barbarians have a taunt Ability. If you are taking lots of levels in Inquisitor or Warpriest, you should have some spells that can force a charge. But I don't think even Bards have just the right tool for this job.
DM Livgin wrote: lackluster damage My Pole Arm and Shield builds are not my highest DPR builds, but I hesitate to call their damage lackluster. You are trading some DPR for some tactical tricks. Meanwhile though, both the Shield Bash and the Lucerne Hammer have or can be made to have quite respectable damage. And interestingly enough, because you are dividing your right and left hands between different ranges of reach, neither is your off-hand, and you don't suffer the 1/2 St Mod, even when you are using both at once, say with Great Cleave to hit everyone adjacent to you with the shield and everyone 10' from you with the 'Hammer.
Oh, by the way, that is another feature I would add to my character: Great Cleave using a combination of Reach weapon and Shield bashes to get everyone within 5' and 10' of you. I prefer to Shield Slam my opponents away, but you like Tower Shields. You can use Armor Spikes for your adjacent opponents.
Thanks for the comment Liz. Your stewardship of this community is tireless and we thank you for it.
My experience with PFS so far has been that it is relatively easy to control who gets charged, either standing in front so you are the only legal target, or going first to be the only visible target, PFS that I've seen so far favours more constrained battlefields. They may not want to charge the full plate tower shield polearm, but often it will be the only target. (local group metas may change this if striker heavy.)
I really like and acknowledge the power of the shield slam build, but I'm shying away from it only because there are a finite number of games to be played and a finite number of builds will become seekers. So when I do the shield slam build I intend to do it 100%. Instead of a complimentary add on to the phalanx build.
I've thought about antagonize, a standard action to control it's next attack, that targets intelligent creatures that speak your language. A good one feat add on.
Cleave has received a lot of flack, but I'm glad you mentioned it. Move action to unlash the shield, free action to drop it, free action to grab the polearm in both hands, free action to five foot step into the best position, and as a standard action for two or more attacks at 1.5 strength. It is a good answer to the situation where the group is surrounded by many foes instead of facing one or two powerful ones.
Going back to the Bloodrager, you can use attacks of opportunity and shield slam's free bull rush to interrupt a charge. With a high enough roll, you can push them back so far, they'll take another AoO on their next round trying to get back to you.
You will max out your AoO potential by increasing your reach. The aberrant and black blood bloodlines can increase your reach by 5. You can possibly take this twice by going cross-blooded, but it's questionable. After that, you can further increase your reach with the longarm and enlarge person spells.
Melkiador wrote: Going back to the Bloodrager, you can use attacks of opportunity I haven't dabbled with Bloodrager any, but there is a Sorcerer Bloodline that caught my eye and seems like it would go great with Bloodrager. The Karmic Mutation of the Destined Bloodline lets YOU make an Attack of Opportunity every time you fail a Concentration Check.
Melkiador wrote: shield slam's free bull rush to interrupt a charge. I seem to recall another counter charge Feat, Rhino charge, I think? It lets you have Charge as a Readied Action.
Since Bull Rushing was mentioned again, I guess I should bring up the Spiked Destroyer Feat. A Swift Action Armor Spike Attack as a bonus on top of a successful Bull Rush.
Bloodragers get their own bloodlines. They don't use sorcerer bloodlines.
To be clear I am talking about how the Shield Slam feat gives you a free Bull Rush when you make a Shield Bash. You can make a Shield Bash as your attack of opportunity. Hence, you can stop someone from charging into your threatened area by bull rushing them back out of your threatened area. Bloodrager is simply the currently best option for giving you a really wide threatened area when using a shield bash.
The "weakness" of this build is that it only really stops the turn of a charger, as charge must be in a straight line. If something is using a normal move action, then it can continue its move through your area after it receives the bull rush, unless of course your bull rush also knocked them prone.
claudekennilol wrote: Bloodragers get their own bloodlines. They don't use sorcerer bloodlines. Too bad.
Scott Wilhelm wrote: claudekennilol wrote: Bloodragers get their own bloodlines. They don't use sorcerer bloodlines. Too bad. Not really. Most of the normal sorcerer bloodlines wouldn't have made sense for the class anyway. And there are some really good bloodrager bloodlines like aberrant and arcane.
Another strong contender for "Charge Breaker" is a Monster Tactician Inquisitor with a readied action to summon multiples in front of any opponent that charges.
If you look at 3rd party publishers, there is actually a "breaker" PrC.
I've played it a few times on top of a barbarian.
Melkiador wrote: Another strong contender for "Charge Breaker" is a Monster Tactician Inquisitor with a readied action to summon multiples in front of any opponent that charges. Not legal in PFS.
Pirate Rob wrote: Melkiador wrote: Another strong contender for "Charge Breaker" is a Monster Tactician Inquisitor with a readied action to summon multiples in front of any opponent that charges. Not legal in PFS. You can do the same thing with any standard action summoner.
I'm a little surprised that was banned from PFS.
Melkiador wrote: Scott Wilhelm wrote: claudekennilol wrote: Bloodragers get their own bloodlines. They don't use sorcerer bloodlines. Too bad. Not really. Most of the normal sorcerer bloodlines wouldn't have made sense for the class anyway. And there are some really good bloodrager bloodlines like aberrant and arcane. And it's probably worth dipping 1 level in Sorcerer just to get the Karmic Destined Arcana AoO. And, anyway, a lot of the builds I like also benefit a lot from the Level 1 Sorcerer Spell Swift Girding, so there's that, too, and the ability to use any Sorcerer Magic Wand.
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