Building a Hoplite style warrior

[T.Donovan]

I'm looking to build a melee dps / controller that uses a polearm in one hand and a shield in the other as his weapons.

I was thinking Phalanx Soldier / Infiltraitor, taking the shield feats for free bullrushing and two weapon fighting. Then using enlarge person so that he'd have a reach of 20 feat around him, using his shield to push back anyone close.

The leveling progression would go 3 Fighter, 10 Ranger, 10 Fighter. using the combat styles to pick up the full TWF tree without having 19 DEX, and taking the Dragon favored enemy to use the lunge adaptation (25' threat square yo)

I keep coming across a few issues:

I want to use a heavy shield (3d6+Str+Free Bullrush), but the -4/-4 until level 11 (which shrinks to 0/-4) is really hefty for that

I get the multiple offhand attacks really late (Level 9 and 13 vs 6 and 11)

I am unsure of what other feats to fill outside of the TWF, Shield, and Power attack line.

btw the other weapon would be the Lucerne Hammer, 3d6 when made large

[BadBird]

There's a big difference between a classical hoplite and the later wall-o-death longspear infantry that couldn't do much out of formation. I assume you're probably going for more of a reach-warrior than a classical Spartan, but the build I had in mind for a Spartan hoplite ignored reach and went:

Titan Mauler Barbarian 2 / Master of Many Styles Monk 1 / Guide Ranger X (Two-Weapon Fighting Style).

Titan Mauler 2 allows one-handing a two-handed weapon, gives you rage (Extra Rage feat for more usage), and allows access to basic rage powers as a bonus. Losing 2ab with your weapon is annoying, but then, you're getting +4 strength anyhow when raging.

Master of Many Styles gives you Improved Unarmed Strike, Dragon Style, and potentially another style later. Why unarmed stuff? Because instead of making offhand attacks with your shield, you simply carry a shield while making Monk Unarmed Strike 'offhand' attacks. Unarmed Strike isn't really defined by the game, so you can flavor these attacks as anything you want - punching (with your shield on your fist), smashing someone's head with the haft of your weapon, whatever - and thanks to Monk and Dragon Style, these attacks have hefty strength bonuses and potentially full power attack while avoiding any penalty for a heavy shield. It's also possible to grab Pummeling Charge by level 13 (or as soon as 7 with another level of Master of Many Styles) for a massive crushing charge.

Lastly, Guide Ranger replaces favored enemy with a really, powerful X/day buff. And since you don't need shield feats anymore to make your style work, you can pick up Improved Two Weapon Fighting and eventually Two Weapon Rend with the Two Weapon style.

For enchantment purposes, the Bodywrap of Mighty Strikes is much more reasonably priced than an Amulet of Mighty Fists, and Furious makes it easy to bump up your weapons' enhancement to the all-important +3.

[Argus The Slayer]

MoMs gives up Flurry of Blows, so your Charging Pummel would come very late and still only able to be used with unarmed strikes, which wasn't the purpose of the OP's build. MoM's is awesome for Tiger Pounce (Power Attack penalty is applied to your AC instead of your attack), which is very underrated.

Titan Mauler always sounds cool, but -2 to attacks sucks all the time, and usually isn't worthwhile mathematically.

You aren't going to want to use a Heavy Shield if you want to focus on tripping: every point of CMB is important as you level up when you want to remain really good at tripping: a -4 there would suck. Choose your prioity: do you want to optimize trip, overall damage or your ability to bash? If the answer is trip or overall damage, go with a light shield. If you just want to optimize the shield bash, you can shoot yourself in the foot and go heavy.

Go Fauchard for your tripping reach weapon if you can afford the feat: best weapon available for this build with high damage die and fantastic crit range.

Improved Two Weapon Fighting only requires a 17 DEX (usually 15 plus a +2 DEX/STR belt). 10 levels of Ranger multiclassing just to avoid a 15 DEX seems wasteful to me - and causes you significant delays in getting to ITWF. I would consider going strait Phalanx Soldier, or adding in a couple of levels of MoMS. Barbarian does offer some nice boosts, if you can figure out how to mix it in while maintaining the feats you need to keep boosting trip and TWF.

[T.Donovan]

The reason I don't want to go monk is the theme of this build was for a huge threat range for tripping, AoO's and control, with shield bash for close range repositions.

The shield isn't so much of an issue at small because I was going to use enlarge person permanently, so the damage different between a small and large bashing spiked shield is 2d6 vs 2d8, not the end of the world. the Fauchard is an interesting choice, but the source material is a little esoteric, and the Lucerne Hammer has a higher base, which means when it grow in size the difference is 2d8 vs 3d6.

Also, the 10 levels in ranger isn't for Improved two weapon fighting, its for GREATER two weapon fighting for 3 off-hand attacks, being able to keep my DEX low at 15 vs having to get it up to 19 (especially if the GM rules that items don't make you qualify for feats)

[Imbicatus]

Worship Gorum and take the shield trained trait, that will allow the heavy shield to be treated as a light weapon to save you from non-light penalties. I'd recommend Phalanx Fighter 3/Slayer x. You'll have Studied Target and Sneak Attack boosting both polearm and shield attacks, and access to the sword and board combat style for early access to shield master.

[Kletus Bob]

With enlarge, I would personally only use a Spear and a Quickdraw shield. Quickdraw feat as well as two weapon fighting to go along with the shield bash feat line. You can throw the spear as a Pillum if needed ( Fits the classical era Roman soldier ) and draw your two-handed Lucerne Hammer or longspear. Should solve most of your action economy issues.

I thought I would point out some stuff and why I think 10` reach is enough:
- Reach weapons double your reach (x2), they don`t add +5`.
- In combination with enlarge, you do get 20` but also increase the dead zone to 10`.
- You follow ranged attacks rules when hitting non-adjacent enemy, so while reach can get impressive, cover penalties increase very quickly and you might even be looking at total cover and concealment as well if not having clear line sight ( And if your DM knows how to handle reach as what it is: Ranged attack )
- At higher levels, many enemies can and will make use of acrobatics to get close to you.