Reverence unto you, forum spirits. A friend of mine invited me to a game next week: straight up level 20, mythic tier 10 characters, 880k, 25 point buy. The purpose? He just wants to kill people with his custom monsters I'm pretty sure - the guy loves to munchkin.
Regardless, I took up the challenge and made a level 20 tier 10 Kensai to throw into the mix, mostly because I'm not very good at optimization and wanted to give it a try. My goal is to survive at least long enough to impressively slay some things, even if I'm not the tightest screw in the game. A couple of notes:
1) Yes, it's a kensai and will stay that way. I know majority opinion is that the Magus is better, but the kensai flavor is cooler. Sorry vanilla magi, it's true. I'm sticking with it even though it's worse.
2) I wanted to incorporate crits into the build because they are fun. They don't have to be everything, but spellstrike's crit modifying thing, free weapon mastery, etc. convinced me to go that route and I'm going to stick with it.
That out of the way, here is what I've come up with thusfar:
STR +9
DEX +6
CON +8
INT +14
WIS +1
CHA +3
Initiative: +32, HP: 293, AC: 60, Touch: 42, BAB: 15
Tiefling: prehensile tail, deathwatch, fiendish sprinter, Resist Cold 5 / Elec 5 / Fire 5
Fort +27 (+2 morale)
Ref +19 (+2 morale)
Will +18 (+2 morale)
Traits: Reactionary, Magical Lineage (Shocking Grasp)
Feats:
L1: Spell Penetration
L3: Greater Spell Penetration
L5: Intensified Spell
L7: Empowered Spell
L9: Power Attack
L11: Combat Expertise
L13: GWF
L15: Improved Critical
L17: Weapon Specialization
L19: Maximize Spellstrike
Magus 1: Weapon Focus (Fauchard)
Magus 5: Extra Arcana
Magus 11: Extra Arcana
Magus 17: ???
Mythic (23):
Mythic 1: Dual Path
Mythic 3: Mythic Combat expertise
Mythic 5: Mythic Power Attack
Mythic 7: Mythic Improved Crit
Mythic 9: Mythic Weapon Spec
Mythic x: Mythic Spell Penetration
Arcana (29)+ black blade (5):
3: Spell Shield
6: Close Range
12: Hasted Assault
15: Prescient Attack
17: Maximize Spell
(ex) Bane Blade
(ex) Ghost Strike
Mythic Paths:
Titan's Bane (makes large creatures FF)
Impossible Speed (+move)
Fleet Warrior (free move before FRA)
Arcane Metamastery (twice to use Empower on everything)
Arcane Metamastery
Channel Power (increase dmg 50%)
Enduring Armor (+13 AC)
Mythic Spell Lore (+10 Mythic Spells)
Extra Mythic Feat (For Spell Pen)
Precision (+5 hit to second and third attacks)
Tier 10: Legendary Warrior (20's grant 1 mythic point, reroll misses vs non-mythic enemies)
The planned action economy is:
1) GO FIRST with 20+32 initiative
2) Knowledge check on the thing to learn weaknesses (+36 to check)
3) Swift action: enhance blackblade with best mods for the thing
4) Move 190' using impossible speed and fleet warrior up to something
5) Attack that FF thing with:
Full BAB (1st) + Full BAB (2nd) + Haste + Spellstrike + Spell + -5 third attack.
Each one is about +35 to hit, for d8+41 dmg +14 dmg against FF targets, with a x4 crit mod on a 15-20 threat pole. All crits auto-confirm, spells on spellstrike do x2 on crit.
If it's a big scary thing, burn 3 arcana to maximize spellstrike and melt it for full damage with disintegrate, vampiric touch, of shocking grasp. The spells will be empowered by Arcane metamastery for +50%, intensified for +50%, maximized if necessary, channeled for +50% if necessary, and made mythic if necessary.
6) Try to finishing thing with vampiric touch to get temp HP, if attacks are leftover throw them at something else in reach.
7) Collect arcana off dead thing/things, mythic power from 20's rolled if any.
8) If hit a second target, use immediate action on Prescient Attack to make it FF next round.
9) Use reach weapon to get AoO on things that move close for melee counterattack, more chances for 20's to give mythic points back and fuel more mythic spells
Next round:
10) If FF thing isn't dead, FRA it and move 190' before or after as necessary. No swift this round, so play conservative. Immediate action Spellshield if necessary to get +14 AC.
Well, how did I do? I have 1 unused feat, and am very open to critiques since this is my first level 20 build ever, and also first caster of any flavor ever. Thanks in advance!
Your Will and Reflex saves are poor. A well rounded 20th level character should have at least 20s unbuffed in each if they want a chance at survival. I imagine mythic characters would probably need higher still.
How should I get them, then?
I'll have a +2 morale bonus from Lord's Banner, but haven't found anything else to buff them with. Already included is a +1 circumstance from an Ioun stone, not included is the +1 luck bonus from Prayer which Crown of Conquest will give me after my first crit.
Draining my high stats for an extra 1 or 2 on the saves doesnt seem like it's going to help enough to be worth it, so what do?
Pointing out a problem without a solution is barely useful.
Well the obvious one is to squeeze in Iron Will somewhere at the least. I'm not familiar with the Mythic rules yet so I can't help you there but there are probably some mythic saving throw booster.
There may not be much you can do. Some classes just have lowish saves.
Seems like swapping your Cha and Wis scores wouldn't make you lose anything, and it'd be all gain.
Assuming what you meant was that your stats are:
Str: 28
Dex: 22
Con: 26
Int: 36
Wis: 12
Cha: 16
What benefit do you get from having your Int that high besides extra spells per day? Seems like it might be to your benefit to siphon off some of that and add it to your Str, Dex, and Con for a bit of extra survivability. You only NEED 16 if you're using the pure damage route with Shocking Grasp, since all a high Int gives you is more spells and higher spell DCs (which aren't a factor for you really). You could do just fine dropping that to ~28 at most.
I made one typo up there: it's -3 CHA, not +3...one keystroke to completely mess it up.
To answer your INT question: kensai adds INT to initiative, AC, damage vs FF, AC again from spellshield, rounds for haste duration, number of AoO per round, +hit with arcane accuracy...a lot of things.
Also, at mythic 10 high spell DCs are a must...those spells MUST go through, since I imagine there wont be time for second chances.
Stat array:
STR 28
DEX 22
CON 26
INT 38
WIS 12
CHA 5
Ah, crap. Forgot you were a Kensai, DOY.
I think you need to go Dexer honestly. Kensai benefits from Dervish Dance more than any other Magus simply for the fact it doesn't get armor so there is no reason not to go bonkers with your dex.
This will let you dump Str to a degree, or at least as low as your Wis is currently. At the end your stats should look like this:
INT / DEX > CON / WIS > STR > CHA
By reworking you vastly hep your Will And Ref bonuses too. Cmd will take a hit, but just wild arcana into spells that fix that issue.
I think you need to go Dexer honestly. Kensai benefits from Dervish Dance more than any other Magus simply for the fact it doesn't get armor so there is no reason not to go bonkers with your dex.
This will let you dump Str to a degree, or at least as low as your Wis is currently. At the end your stats should look like this:
INT / DEX > CON / WIS > STR > CHA
By reworking you vastly hep your Will And Ref bonuses too. Cmd will take a hit, but just wild arcana into spells that fix that issue.
I was just experimenting with that myself and came to a similar conclusion. Basically, because there is no such thing as mythic piranha strike, I will lose 4 dmg per hit and 32 dmg per critical by switching over to DEX from STR.
However, I can also get my DEX up to +11, with which weapon finesse and mythic weapon finesse will recover the lost 4 dmg per hit and even give me +4 higher hit chance than before. My Reflex goes up to 24, and my AC also gets a nice +5 boost it didnt have before.
I can also drain out from INT because, after thinking about it, those last 6 points in INT only bought me three spells and some spell DC...putting them in DEX gets a lot more mileage out of them, especially considering neither shocking grasp nor vampiric touch offers the target a save anyway. It may make Disintegrate more difficult to hit with, but I'll just have to make sure I use it on low Fort targets.
TL;DR: drain INT and STR for more DEX, get Reflex, AC, +hit at the expense of 3 spells, +2 spell DC, and 170 crit dmg instead of 200.
If you keep at least 13 Str you can keep Power Attack too, which should help.
If you keep at least 13 Str you can keep Power Attack too, which should help.
You're right, I'd keep the damage, at least. Where I'm torn now is what weapon to take...
I was using a small fauchard for the reach before, which traded a -2 to hit for hopefully more AoO with a reach weapon. Now that I have to use a finesse weapon, I'd either have to make it a tiny fauchard and take a whopping -4 to hit, or switch to a rapier or wakizashi and lose the chance to put those 14 AoO per turn to use.
Seems so wasteful to get that many AoO for free without ever using them.
I think you need to go Dexer honestly. Kensai benefits from Dervish Dance more than any other Magus simply for the fact it doesn't get armor so there is no reason not to go bonkers with your dex.
This will let you dump Str to a degree, or at least as low as your Wis is currently. At the end your stats should look like this:
INT / DEX > CON / WIS > STR > CHA
By reworking you vastly hep your Will And Ref bonuses too. Cmd will take a hit, but just wild arcana into spells that fix that issue.
A side note on this: mythic weapon finesse allows you to add dex to damage with your finesse weapon, scimitar or not, so it allows a few more options.