Bastard Sword wielding Sacred Fist War Priest

[Claxon]

Yes, you read that right.

Per this thread I was inspired to cheese up a character. It's cheesy as hell to make such a character because of effortless lace in my opinion, but I want to see just how far this can be taken. So I wanted to throw it to everyone and get their opinions.

The basics of the build is a single classed Sacred Fist War Priest who worships Ragethiel. By taking EWP(Bastard Sword), Weapon Focus(Bastard Sword), and Crusader's Flurry you can flurry with your bastard sword.

You also wield a huge bastard sword for 3d8 base damage, which is possible by taking a -2 penalty and wielding as two handed, and using effortless lace to get up to huge. Then by adding enlarge person and impact you get the damage dice up to 6d8.

You also get to take extra advantage of power attack because you are using the bastard sword two handed for bonus damage.

So, how would you all further the build beyond this?

[gossamar4]

problem 1:

Advanced Class Guide wrote:

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Sacred fists are proficient with the club, crossbow (light or heavy), dagger, handaxe, javelin, kama, nunchaku, quarterstaff, sai, shortspear, short sword, shuriken, siangham, sling, and spear. Sacred fists are not proficient with any armor or shields. This replaces the warpriest's weapon and armor proficiency.

- means you neet a feat to be proficient with bastard sword.

problem 2:

weapon special qualities wrote:

Monk: A monk weapon can be used by a monk to perform a flurry of blows.

- means if a weapon does NOT have the monk quality, it can't be used in a flurry of blows

I like your thought process, but I think these are gonna hold it back, by RAW. On the bright side, at 8th lvl, your unarmed strikes are doing same damage (1d10), and then get better after. bastard sword never increase in damage.

You could look at using a temple sword instead.

Temple Sword

Price 30 gp

Type exotic

Heavy blades typically used by guardians of religious sites, temple swords have distinctive crescent-shaped blades, which appear to be an amalgam of sickle and sword. Many have holes drilled into the blade or the pommel so that charms, bells, or other holy trinkets can be attached to reflect the owner's devotion or to serve as foci for prayer or meditation. Monks are proficient with the temple sword.

[Imbicatus]

Crusader's flurry allows you to flurry with non monk weapons.

[Undone]

I have not seen effortless lace but you could already do this before and it was still good.

As usual take fate's favored and focus on self buffing. Human is by far the best option for this (Since you can get all of those feats sooner. and use retraining to reach CF by 5) I recommend strongly that if available you use mystic past life if available for some spells which are silly good.

Additionally the lace does help this build a lot at mid levels (4-9) so it's a pretty darn strong buy.

[gossamar4]

got it, I missed where he said he was taking 3 feats to get the flurry of bastard blows.

- my bad

still not quite sure why you would spend 3 feats to do this. seems like those feats are better spent on stuff that doesn't give you a mere 1d8 to 1d10 boost during a flury, or (as mentioned with unarmed damage progression) lowers your damage down to 1d10.... IMO

It's a fun idea though.

[deuxhero]

Nothing cheesy. Using an effortless lace bastard sword over say... a Kukri means an average of less than (lower crit range) 3 damage on average.

If you REALLY wanted to do something odd, take Erastil and the Hunter's Eye trait, take Crusader's Flurry, Guided Hand, (Improved) Snapshot and Wolf Style Chain (this will require Human with the extra feats FCB): When people aproch you, they provke AoOs which lower their movement and let you trip them... even though you are 15 feet away.

[Avoron]

Wait...I don't have the text of Effortless Lace at the moment. Would it prevent Impact from working, as Impact doesn't work on light weapons?

[nicholas storm]

I don't think you are reading effortless lace correctly. It doesn't say that it reduces the size of the weapon allowing you to wield a huge weapon. It just says that it reduces the attack roll penalty incurred by a wielder who is smaller than the weapon's intended wielder.

[Xethik]

Crusader's Flurry doesn't work with ranged weapons. Oddly, it is hiding in the prereqs, not the benefit.

Effortless Lace reduces the penalty of wielding that is oversized. EWP in Bastard Sword lets you wield it one-handed, meaning a larger one can be wielded two-handed. I think. I don't remember any appropriately sized conditions.

Edit: size continues to increase from leadblades/impact/enlarge person, I assume.
Edit2: I can't read. Not sure how to get to Huge before size buffs.

[LazarX]

Claxon wrote:

You also wield a huge bastard sword for 3d8 base damage, which is possible by taking a -2 penalty and wielding as two handed, and using effortless lace to get up to huge. Then by adding enlarge person and impact you get the damage dice up to 6d8.

The only thing effortless lace allows you to do is reduce penalties, not break the rules. In this case, wield a large bastard sword two handed without the -2 penalty.

It can't reduce the penalty for wielding a huge sword, because there is none, there isn't any penalty because it can't be done, period.

[Undone]

I don't think it's a base huge bastard sword.

[nicholas storm]

I think the only way to wield a huge bastard sword is to be a titan fighter (at first level they get giant weapon wielder)

[Avoron]

Even that doesn't let you, because it only applies to two-handed weapons one size category larger than you.

The only way to wield a huge bastard sword is to become larger than medium.

[Imbicatus]

You can do it as a Goliath Druid, wildshaping into a huge giant.

[Claxon]

It is possible I misunderstood what effortless lace does, I haven't actually seen the text for it, only stuff posted about it. If that is the case you would wield a large bastard sword (at no penalty) and then add enlarge person and impact to get you to 4d8 instead. Still pretty good.

I totally wanted to see if there was something I was missing, and it seems like I may have been. But that's okay, I'm just trying to see what we can do with this concept.

@Imbicatus, I really want to make this character a straight war priest. A goliath druid may be able to become a huge giant, but it will also harm spell and flurry progression.

Anything else I need to address from people's comments?

The main reason to do this is because you can get some fairly decent damage die and flurry with it.

I threw together a simple level 10 character in herolab, and with buffs active and assuming effortless lace just removes the -2 penalty (I don't have that herolab data pack):
17/17/12/12 for 4d8+24
Using shield of faith, divine favor, greater magic weapon, and enlarge person. Strength of 24 with all buffs and magic items.

[Aleron]

Prefer Shizuru with the katana myself for the expanded crit range personally! Still fun though.

[Melkiador]

Giant Hunter's Handbook