I've been playing the following character for about 2.5 years now, and enjoying him a lot. I'm not an uber-optimizer -- I like my characters effective but not min-maxed. He's grown pretty organically in response to conditions within the campaign (Kingmaker, currently working on book 3).
That said, how could I improve this character? His AC seems a little low in particular. He's been the party's primary front-line type for most of our game to date, but he's been having trouble lately, including a death followed by a raise dead scroll.
The stat block:
Telvin Merison
NG medium humanoid (dwarf)
Init +2; Senses darkvision; Perception +14
----- Defense ----- AC 22, touch 14, flat-footed 20 (+7 AC, +2 Dex, +1 natural, +1 deflection, +1 insight)
hp 78 (8d10+32)
Fort +9, Ref +8, Will +5; (+2 vs. poison, spells, and spell-like abilities)
----- Offense ----- Speed 20 ft.
Melee +2 fey bane dwarven waraxe +14/+9 (1d10+6/x3) or +2 fey bane dwarven waraxe +12/+7 (1d10+3/x3), mwk small dwarven waraxe +13/+6 (1d8+1/x3)
Ranged composite longbow (STR+2) +10/+5 (1)
Special Attacks favored enemy (undead +2, humanoid [giant] +4)
Spells Prepared (CL 8th; concentration +11)
1st—longstrider, lead blades, sun metal
2nd—versatile weapon, animal aspect, perceive cues
----- Statistics ----- Str 16, Dex 14, Con 16, Int 14, Wis 16, Cha 11
Base Atk +8; CMB +11; CMD 23 (+4 vs. trip or bull rush while standing)
Feats toughness, two weapon fighting*, endurance*, weapon focus (dwarven waraxe), boon companion, improved two weapon fighting*, leadership
Traits magical knack (ranger), armor expert
Skills
Climb +5, Craft (armor) +6, Diplomacy +4, Handle Animal +9, Heal +7, Knowledge (Dungeoneering) +9, Knowledge (Geography) +6, Knowledge (Nature) +13, Knowledge (Religion) +4, Perception +14, Ride +8, Sense Motive +6, Spellcraft +13, Stealth +11, Survival +14, Swim +5
Languages Common, Dwarven, Terran, Gnome, Draconic
SQ swift tracker, track +5, wild empathy +8, woodland stride
Combat Gear wand of cure light wounds (34 charges), amulet of natural armor +1, ring of protection +1, dusty rose ioun stone, +1 breastplate, +2 fey bane dwarven waraxe, mwk small dwarven waraxe, composite longbow (STR +2), 20 arrows.
Explanatory notes about the stat block:
AC items: ring of protection +1, amulet of natural armor +1, dusty rose ioun stone, +1 breastplate.
HP: rolled 10, 3, 8, 7, 4, 6, 1, 4; includes +8 hp from Toughness; +3 hp from favored class bonus.
Weapon notes: my GM allowed me to equip him with a custom-made smaller-than-normal dwarven waraxe for his off-hand weapon. Stats: 1d8, weighs 4 lbs, crit x3, slashing, counts as a light weapon. Maybe a little cheesy, but in exchange for the privilege he imposed an attack penalty with it for 2 levels (now thankfully past) until Telvin got accustomed to using it.
Hunters Bond: This one is weird. Telvin had an animal companion for some time -- a small cat, Fenrir -- who died horribly just before Telvin hit level 7. He hasn't bothered calling another one, partly because I didn't want a cookie cutter replacement for Fenrir, but also because I took Leadership at level 7 and didn't want to have to manage both a cohort and a critter. To compensate, my GM increased my effective caster level to equal my ranger level, and gave me some bonus spell slots (increase every number on the Ranger spells-per-day table by +1).
Ability scores: these were rolled (4d6 drop lowest); +1 WIS at 4th, and actually it seems I forgot to increase any of his ability scores at 8th. Hmm.
Feats: ranger bonus feats marked with a *.
Skills: Kn (Religion) includes a +1 bonus my GM granted due to story reasons.
The rest of the party consists of:
1) A human barbarian who specializes in the overrun maneuver;
2) An elven illusionist wizard;
3) A gnomeish sorceress with a strong focus on enchantment;
4) An elven ranger (ranged).
5) Telvin's cohort, a human cleric of Milani 6 (merciful healer archetype).
I'd be interested to hear whatever comments or suggestions people have.
How true that is of TWF depends on the number of flat bonuses you're adding to your damage. As a ranger this is primarily going to be the favoured enemy bonus, and any damage buffs you're receiving via the rest of the party.
Still, though, not sure OP is able to rebuild his character/change his selected Combat Style/retrain his feats. I, at least, didn't really get that impression from their post. So I'm not sure telling OP they did a Bad Thing by taking the TWF feats with their Combat Style bonus feats is constructive :?.
My advice is to try and get a Belt of Strength onto the character, if they're available. It costs less than boosting one of your weapons, but it'll increase your ability to hit with both of them.
Belt of Strength would make good sense, yes. I'll look into that. Any other gear I should keep an eye out for?
As for the merits of TWF, I'm aware that it's not as advantageous in flat damage output as THF. That's okay. And Anetra is correct, a full rebuild isn't an option. I'm mostly looking for gear suggestions and future feat choice suggestions.
Improved Crit (dwarven waraxe) and Weapon Focus (waraxe) should be on your list of feats to get.
For your next level 10 Ranger feat, I suggest Two-Weapon Rend for a touch of burst damage (for you, it's a free hit!) as compared to Greater TWF since an extra attack at -10 to hit isn't likely to do much
I do have to admit, I am surprised that your DM is allowing you to use a small waraxe to count as a light weapon; at the least this would add a -2 penalty for using an off-sized weapon (unless your DM is cool with it, then rock on!)
Yeah, the GM is cool with the small size weapon. There was a side-quest involved to get it made, and there was an attack penalty for a couple of levels while he was getting used to it. So it'll be hard to replace if I ever lose it.
As for pacing ... we're all adults with full time jobs, and most of us have kids. We manage to meet for four hours once every 2 weeks at best, and sometimes we'll miss a session. So the pace is slow. As one of the few non-married non-parental people in the group, I wish we could pick up the pace a bit, but it doesn't seem likely to happen. Life's complicated.
Power Attack is good, if you can get your Attack Bonus with those waraxes up high enough, and if you can pull of Power Attack I recommend Double Slice over Two-Weapon Rend.
I recommend Double Slice either way, actually. Double Slice is just good for high STR Two-Weapon Fighting.
*
Also, I'm a little ... confused about the damage listed in your stat block.
Quote:
+2 fey bane dwarven waraxe +14/+9 (1d10+6/x3)
This makes sense, you're doing STR(1.5) and have a +2 weapon...
Quote:
or +2 fey bane dwarven waraxe +12/+7 (1d10+3/x3), mwk small dwarven waraxe +13/+6 (1d8+1/x3)
...But it seems like you're doing half strength on both weapons, instead of normal on your main hand and half on your off hand? You should be doing 1d10+5 with that 16 STR, not 1d10+3.
You're right, I made a mistake in the stat block. The damage for attacks with the primary hand axe should do 1d10+5/x3 (+3 Str, +2 magic).
Average damage assuming all four attacks hit:
Current: 2d10+10+2d8+2 = 11+10+9+2 = 32.
With Double Slice: 2d10+10+2d8+6 = 11+10+9+6 = 36.
With Two Weapon Rend: 2d10+10+2d8+2+1d10+4 = 11+10+9+2+5.5+4 = 41.
With Power Attack: 2d10+16+2d8+5 = 11+16+9+5 = 41.
However, the Power Attack comes with a -3 attack penalty attached (assuming I take it next level, 9th) which scales with level. That hurts on top of the -2 TWF penalties. Not to mention it's only half as effective on off-hand attacks.
I'll probably take Double Slice at 9th and Two Weapon Rend at 10th.
Also, I think I need to talk to the party wizard about casting Greater Magic Weapon on my off-hand axe each morning. That'd help.
Power Attack is good if you can get your AB up high enough to still be able to hit while you're power attacking. If you can't, then it's not worth it and you shouldn't take it.
A strength item will help you out a lot. It'll help you to hit, and it will help your damage. Ideally you should get a +4 belt of giant strength, but a +2 belt is still good if +4 is out of your reach.
Don't worry so much about your AC items. They are expensive, and they're not actually going to make that big a difference compared to their cost. If you really want higher AC, focus on increasing your armour, not the amulets, rings, etc; it costs much less.
More important than AC items, though, is going to be a Cloak of Resistance. Get something to boost your saves. It's also a relatively inexpensive item (1000 gold for +1, 4000 gold for +2) but saving throws are extremely important to keeping your character alive, and increasing all of them all at once is very good.
So.
Items in order of importance: +1 Cloak of Resistance -> +2 Belt of Strength -> +2 Cloak of Resistance -> +4 Belt of Strength -> maybe AC items
*
On your party members... are the spellcasters doing any buffing? Do they cast Haste, Good Hope, or the like on you/the party?
When you're in melee with the barbarian, do the two of you flank? Also, what type of weapon do they use (is it high crit)? If the two of you are frequently flanking with one another, you may want to consider the Outflank teamwork feat, to increase that +2 flanking bonus to +4. Outflank would also give you Attacks of Opportunity any time your flanking partner scores a critical hit -- good with Combat Reflexes if that barbarian has a high critical weapon and a good likelihood of confirming.
Agreed. That's next on my shopping list, followed by a cloak of resistance.
Anetra wrote:
Don't worry so much about your AC items. They are expensive, and they're not actually going to make that big a difference compared to their cost.
Reluctantly, I think you're right. I think the armor I've got -- a vanilla +1 breastplate -- is likely the best I'm going to get. My DEX is too low to really make a mithral one worth it, and I don't have proficiency with heavy (which would kill evasion anyway once I get it next level). I'm tempted to take a level of fighter to get heavy armor proficiency, and then look into mithral full plate. But I'd really rather stay straight ranger.
Anetra wrote:
... are the spellcasters doing any buffing? Do they cast Haste, Good Hope, or the like on you/the party?
The sorceress uses Haste, but doesn't have any other buff spells. The player is fairly inexperienced, and the GM made a PC for her which is heavily focused on enchantment spells (fey bloodline, etc) that have proven largely useless in actual combat.
The wizard does a lot of summoning. I think he's had as many as four summons going at once. He used to buff our monk with mage armor, prior to said monk's unfortunate death a couple of sessions ago.
My cleric cohort keeps a lot of buffs prepped -- communal protection from evil, communal resist energy, to name a couple of the more useful ones. There's no cost to keeping those prepped, since they can be spontaneously converted into healing spells at need.
Anetra wrote:
When you're in melee with the barbarian, do the two of you flank?
Not yet. The barbarian has been in play for two sessions, and we haven't really had any straight melee in that time. We fought some manticores, who were of course flying and therefore not flank-able. We also fought two pelludas (separately, both random encounters). In those fights we both tried to avoid close melee because the creature was covered in spines that poison you every time you hit it in melee. Shooting those from far away seemed like the way to go.
Anetra wrote:
Also, what type of weapon do they use (is it high crit)?
Heavy flail. 1d10, 19-20x2.
Anetra wrote:
... you may want to consider the Outflank teamwork feat.
That's a good suggestion. The barbarian has a trait that gives him extra attacks of opportunity per round, since he's using a combo of feats/rage powers that tends to provoke them. I'll talk to the barbarian's player about it. Thanks!
Be careful about heavy armour, wearing it will negate your Combat Style feats as well. If you do go for it, make sure it's mithral fullplate - don't switch up to heavy armour until you can get that beauty, because it won't be worth it to lose your dual wielding, and it's not worth your while to pay for any other type of heavy armour to be mithral.
Multiclassing into fighter could be very good. If you took the Weapon Master archetype, would your two dwarven waraxes both count as the same "weapon type" for its purposes? Do you get your Weapon Focus bonus on both of them, or only on your main hand?
If it works for both of them, the Weapon Master archetype will be killer for you. Take four levels in it, to get Weapon Training 1 with your waraxes and Weapon Specialization. Then get Gloves of Duelling, which will bring your Weapon Training up to a +3 bonus. You'll net yourself +3 to hit and +5 damage with both of them. Flat damage boosts are <3 for dual wielding.
I would do more about your AC. Dealing damage is cool - but AC will keep you alive...
+2 Armor (+3000)
+2 dex belt (4000)
Jingasa of the fortune soldier (5000) +1 luck to AC (ultimate equipment)
+3 armor (+5000)
+2 ring of pro/amulet of nat armor (+6000)
+4 Armor (+7000)
+5 Armor (+9000)
Use feats to get more dam, and then try to get your AC up - raise dead cost money that could have been used for raising your AC.
Saves is just as important as AC - so +1 for cloak of res.
And remember you can get a belt with both dex and str.
Now you have your cohord - who could cast magic vestment - but buying and armor get's better faster.
I would swap out toughness and improved two weapon fighting for combat expertise and two weapon defense, or combat expertise and if your dm allows it, off-hand parry.
Good choice of taking the leadership feat. So worth it, especially for that campaign.
Have you looked at the Skyseeker prestige class? It continues many of the ranger abilities and at 4th level in it lets you use ranger abilities in heavy armor.
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