I am currently working on a potential new character from my RotR campaign in the event my barbarian dies. I am looking for some suggestions for the feats I can take. I am almost debating taking some extra skill focus feats for character development.
1: Unarmed Strike, Power Attack, Shield Focus
2: Improved Shield Bash, Two-Weapon Fighting
3: Improved Initiative
4:
5: Iron Will, feat
6:
7: Shield Slam, feat
8: Greater Shield Focus, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, feat
9: feat
10:
11: Shield Master, feat, feat
12:
13: feat
14: feat
15: Greater Two-Weapon Fighting, feat
16:
17: Improved Knockout Blow, feat
18:
19: feat
20: feat
I am considering picking up Distance Thrower and Improved Iron Will and also the feat that allows me to use my strength for ranged attacks
You may want to delete the duplicate threads that got created due to the website having trouble.
Since you can (I believe) add on feats that you qualify for, I'd suggest picking up things that are prerequisites for multiple other feats. Weapon Focus, Combat Expertise are both ideas, but there's others. Maybe even some other "Improved" combat maneuver feats, so you can dip down into the Greater versions easier.
Don't forget, at 9th level you get greater shield focus for free. You can take any fighter or monk feats (from martial training), so consider weapon focus and weapon specialization, or perhaps a style feat chain.
Your shield is a thrown weapon, so you get your strength bonus to damage already. You also get far shot with your shield.
Since you can use your shield at 7th to make maneuver checks at range, you don't have to take any improved maneuver feats, but if you think you are going to be using any maneuver a lot or want to pull greater (maneuver) out of the hat using martial flexibility, you may want to at least take combat expertise (especially since you don't have to meet the int requirement.)
When playing, make sure you have set choices ready to go for your martial flexibility. Don't slow the game down trying to look up what feats you want to use during the combat, it will annoy the GM. If you find that you are using one feat a lot with martial flexibility, pick up that one as your next permanent feat.
I was considering focusing on the bull rushing feats because of how common it is. I wasn't sure about weapon focus and specialization since I will be dealing damage with both my shield and fists and putting four feats into that seems a little too much.
I will look into more of the feats for weapon flexibility. I figured I was just going to use it for style feats but the combat expertise route is a good idea too.
And I figured out that I need a belt of hurling for the strength for throw attacks
don't forget that you lose brawler's strike. that means you need a heavily enchanted aomf to bypass DR with your punches.
but the thing is:
Brawler's Flurry (Ex):
Starting at 2nd level, a brawler can make a brawler's flurry as a full-attack action. When doing so, a brawler has the Two-Weapon Fighting feat when attacking with any combination of unarmed strikes, weapons from the close fighter weapon group, or weapons with the "monk" special feature. She does not need to use two different weapons to use this ability.
shield is in the close fighter weapon group already. That means that you can do ALL of your attacks with your shield, which due to shield master is much much cheaper to enchant.
a medioum spiked steel shield of bashing means that you would either way need to be like 12 or so level to outdamage it with your fists, and at lvl 12 (exactly the level that unarmed strikes outdamage your shield) you gain the ability to do unarmed damage with it... so you are at all levels either ahead or at the same damage curve.
Belt of hurling is to use your strength for ATTACK. With thrown weapons you use your DEX for attack and STR for damage, the belt makes it so you use STR for both
as for feats, pick up some style feats already! (along with cobat expertise)
dragon style will let you charge through difficult terrain, and give you a bit damage
pummeling style... this one is OP, but you need to check with your DM if you can do it with your shield (i wouldn't allow it). Even if you can't, it is good enough even with your punches
crane style if you want to be defensive
elemental styles for extra damage, etc
BUT
you also have the unique ability of initiating maneuvers from range. You see the wizard? throw your shield to him and blind him so that he can't target you with save or suck. You see the orc reading his weapon? throw your shield to knock him down, so that your casters/archers/etc can pick him up before he even get's close, etc
Brawler get's that many feats alongside martial flexibility due to him being able to do lot of things. Be ready to pick up the correct path for the situation and go!
But to do that more easily, you need to pick up common "building blocks" feats that will block your feat chains otherwise (combat expertise, dodge, etc)
Anything besides bullrushing? Your current feat list is definitively vanilla so it's hard to say 'take this option' because there isn't any focus or theme beyond you've got a shield and some fists and you're going to punch, bash and throw the thing. There are so many ways that can be done that I would prefer more specifics before wasting time tossing together all the possibilities.
If you're going the bashing route, consider either shield slam or the bullrush feats. The two don't benefit one another so my suggestion there is to pick how you want to bullrush and focus on it.
Nothing else to suggest without some sprinkles on this ice cream.
shroudb wrote: don't forget that you lose brawler's strike. that means you need a heavily enchanted aomf to bypass DR with your punches.
but the thing is:
Brawler's Flurry (Ex):
Starting at 2nd level, a brawler can make a brawler's flurry as a full-attack action. When doing so, a brawler has the Two-Weapon Fighting feat when attacking with any combination of unarmed strikes, weapons from the close fighter weapon group, or weapons with the "monk" special feature. She does not need to use two different weapons to use this ability.
shield is in the close fighter weapon group already. That means that you can do ALL of your attacks with your shield, which due to shield master is much much cheaper to enchant.
a medioum spiked steel shield of bashing means that you would either way need to be like 12 or so level to outdamage it with your fists, and at lvl 12 (exactly the level that unarmed strikes outdamage your shield) you gain the ability to do unarmed damage with it... so you are at all levels either ahead or at the same damage curve.
I was wondering how I was going to get around that whole issue with the DR and weapon focus, but that helps out a lot. I looked up the bashing enchant and it said that only light or heavy shield can have the ability. Other than my barbarian at the moment, the group is level 7 and that shield would be pretty painful.
shroudb wrote: Belt of hurling is to use your strength for ATTACK. With thrown weapons you use your DEX for attack and STR for damage, the belt makes it so you use STR for both That's what I meant lol I was on my phone at the time and about to go to work so I was rushing through the post.
shroudb wrote: as for feats, pick up some style feats already! (along with cobat expertise)
dragon style will let you charge through difficult terrain, and give you a bit damage
pummeling style... this one is OP, but you need to check with your DM if you can do it with your shield (i wouldn't allow it). Even if you can't, it is good enough even with your punches
crane style if you want to be defensive
elemental styles for extra damage, etc
BUT
you also have the unique ability of initiating maneuvers from range. You see the wizard? throw your shield to him and blind him so that he can't target you with save or suck. You see the orc reading his weapon? throw your shield to knock him down, so that your casters/archers/etc can pick him up before he even get's close, etc
Brawler get's that many feats...
I had originally considered using the martial flexibility for the style feats to change up for what I would need in the current situation. I really hadn't looked through all the style feats to weed out the good and the bad, but I may just go with pummeling style and talk to my GM about it. He's pretty open about most of our builds in this campaign.
I figured that the shield throwing was more a tool to disable people before you got into combat with them. I was only considering Distance thrower for the sake of getting more range before taking any negatives for it.
Dark Immortal wrote: Anything besides bullrushing? Your current feat list is definitively vanilla so it's hard to say 'take this option' because there isn't any focus or theme beyond you've got a shield and some fists and you're going to punch, bash and throw the thing. There are so many ways that can be done that I would prefer more specifics before wasting time tossing together all the possibilities.
If you're going the bashing route, consider either shield slam or the bullrush feats. The two don't benefit one another so my suggestion there is to pick how you want to bullrush and focus on it.
Nothing else to suggest without some sprinkles on this ice cream.
I had a character idea in mind, but I didn't really realize how many feats the Shield Champion gained. I was thinking of playing a disruptive tank. I was planning on going bull rushing to get as many knock backs as possible but it might be good to go with tripping too. I am playing on trying to be the tank with this character but I want to do more than just taking the hits and punching opponents back.
To add a twist to the situation, the campaign is a mythic campaign, but I would like to be able to use this character in a non-mythic campaign if the opportunity arises for me to use it in another campaign
Heavy shield IS medium shield.
Just weird wording.
(It says light and medium while the only shields in the game are buckler, light, heavy, tower)
shroudb wrote: Heavy shield IS medium shield.
Just weird wording.
(It says light and medium while the only shields in the game are buckler, light, heavy, tower)
Ah okay. The wording can get confusing sometimes. Thank you for the clarification
Babbling Bazzar wrote: To add a twist to the situation, the campaign is a mythic campaign, but I would like to be able to use this character in a non-mythic campaign if the opportunity arises for me to use it in another campaign Why hello there fellow Mythic Brawler! I'm currently building a Brawler for the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path (after my ranger died an unceremonious death). A few things I'm looking at that you might want to consider.
Weapon finesse and mythic weapon finesse. Unarmed strike and light shields both fall under the weapon finesse umbrella, so you can drop all those stat points in Dex to crank up your AC and damage at the same time. It's a little muddy if you apply your Dex mod to the damage rolls of your shield throws, but my DM agreed that it would apply.
If you're going Guardian, look at Retributive Reach and Everready. Increases your range for threatening AoO and adds your tier to all AoOs. Now look at Improved Trip, Greater Trip, Vicious Stomp, and Ki Throw. Anything without reach that approaches you, you can trip with the AoO, get an AoO for the trip, throw it into an adjacent square, and get another AoO for Vicious Stomp.
Here's my problem though, a lot of demons have wings, which makes them immune to trip. So while this build will be devastating against ground opponents, it'll be useless against a lot of demons, especially later in the game as they get bigger and more flying demons show up. The alternative I'm looking at it is using the human Martial Versatility feats to get Focus/Spec/Critical etc. to apply to Shield attacks and unarmed strikes to just make my attacks more threatening in general.
One other thing I'm looking at is the epic damage reduction Tier 3 ability. The SRD says this in the monster abilities section:
Quote: A few very powerful monsters are vulnerable only to epic weapons—that is, magic weapons with at least a +6 enhancement bonus. Such creatures’ natural weapons are also treated as epic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. Question for the room, does this rule also apply to PCs? Meaning if my Mythic Brawler has epic damage reduction, do his fists count as +6 weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction?
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