Hello all!
I am wanting to make a character that is as tough as nails! Enemies of this character will have to try their very best to take them down. My vision is that of a character with decent hp, armor, saves, and some ability to heal or mitigate damage in various ways. Covering many or all bases seems to provide the best long-term safety, because you never know what you might come up against and it is always good to have a remedy for any given situation.
My initial thought is that a paladin or an inquisitor are excellent choices, perhaps a cleric as well. These builds should not only be defensive in nature, but have the ability to hold their own against foes as well. If you can't kill your enemy there is really no point in simply delaying your own inevitable demise, right?
Let's build a character that just won't quit!
The Diehard feat chain, which would require you to be a half orc.
that druid that just resurrects in like a week.
Paladin+Life Oracle with Fey Foundling makes you incredibly hard to kill and heals all your friends pretty solidly too.
I'm a huge fan of the Reincarnated Druid too, they're hilarious.
Paladin+Life Oracle with Fey Foundling makes you incredibly hard to kill and heals all your friends pretty solidly too.
I'm a huge fan of the Reincarnated Druid too, they're hilarious.
Can you provide a link for the fey-foundling? Thanks!
Ok I know that paladins can use LoH as a swift, are there other classes that can do similar things while also attacking?
Ok I know that paladins can use LoH as a swift, are there other classes that can do similar things while also attacking?
death(or one of it's subs) domain cleric can channel to damage living while healing himself for the same amount. walk into a room filled with enemies... only one comes out.
How about a character that takes 3 damage for every single physical hit of 50 damage? 0 damage for less.
Ok I know that paladins can use LoH as a swift, are there other classes that can do similar things while also attacking?death(or one of it's subs) domain cleric can channel to damage living while healing himself for the same amount. walk into a room filled with enemies... only one comes out.
I am wondering if this ability would be incompatible with the paladin code if I were to multiclass, and if this channel would be able to stack with the paladin channel offered by archetypes?
Getting the Death Domain on an LG character would be difficult at best in the first place. I'm not sure it's possible to get the Domain, be able to channel negative energy, and not break away from LG.
I wonder if I played it as a sort of lawful executioner? I would be a champion of good, acting lawfully and in good manner, but bringing death to the enemies of good. If a GM would allow it, is there anything in the rules indicating that this would not be permissible?
The concept works. Getting the Death Domain and channeling negative energy, though, is much harder.
The problem is, negative channeling is only available to evil Clerics, Clerics of evil deities, or neutral Clerics of neutral deities who choose it. If you're Neutral or Evil, you're not a Paladin. You're also locked into a tiny set of deities to worship (Magrim or Anubis; two Empyreal Lords grant the domain but are LG or NG so no channel negative). And, finally, if you do get it, your negative channeling will be really weak, since it won't stack with Paladin channeling.
All of that said I can't even find the ability in question.
Ah, that makes sense.Thanks for the reply. LoH as a swift is still a beastly ability, considering you can self-cast as a swift, and as a paladin you ought to have the best if not close to the best saves in the game, heavy armor, and d10 hp.
Add in Racial Heritage to grab Steel Soul(dwarf feat) and Glory of Old(dwarf trait). Skyrocket those saving throws!
A Protector Nycar familiar (really a lot of the Improved Familiars) will basically reduce all your damage taken by half at 5th, and even more at 11th. A Bodyguard animal companion can also provide similar help.
Scott Wilhelm, take a look at Protector, it'll simplify your Tumor familiar plan quite a bit.
Nycars and other improved familiars cannot be Protectors. Protector replaces the speak with animals of its kind ability, and improved familiars do not gain that ability.
Once you are 5th level, you simply need to summon an outsider and have a little chat with it. For a simple exchange you end up with +4 to natural armor, fire resistance 30, regeneration 5, and a few more cool abilities. With regeneration it becomes awfully hard to die.
What does it cost? Only your Soul. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Ok I know that paladins can use LoH as a swift, are there other classes that can do similar things while also attacking?
While 3rd party and psionics, a 3rd level Vitalist can do a touch attack to drain hps 1/rd. This can be done in addition to damage (if you do it as a unarmed strike holding the charge), but regardless that would require a dip in Monk, Unarmed archetype Warpriest, Brawler, etc.
"As a touch attack, the vitalist may deal a number of hit points in damage to the target equal to his vitalist level + his Wisdom modifier and heal an equal amount of damage. The vitalist may share any healing from this effect over his collective, even if he himself would not be eligible for the healing"
Instead, just do a full attack sequence of drain health then sword attack (assuming TWF or +6 BAB or Haste).
It starts out melee, but you can shoot it at 7th.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/vitalist
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Half orc Barbarians (Invulnerable Rager) with diehard and lesser celestial totem and the fast healer trait combined with a 20 starting con and tourmaline sphere ioun stone are obnoxious to drop. Moreso if you took the stalwart feats. You have excellent hp, copious amounts of ever increasing Dr/- can increase hp and general combat ability with rage and at least one good save. The will and reflex can be adjusted with feats and traits and stat selection. I have one in pfs who just eats damage continuously. It gets better if you also have ferocious tenacity so you can negate damage when you're in the negatives via spending rage rounds. Also, when healed, you heal for sooo much.
Oh yeah, fey foundling helps push you over the top, too. :)
Sorry Starbuck,
Steal Health is a supernatural ability and so takes a standard action. You can't combine it with a full attack. You can deliver it with an unarmed attack, but it's then against normal AC. You don't need Improved unarmed to do it, though a little monk or brawler increases your damage.
However, you didn't mention the cool thing about Steal Health. It's supernatural untyped damage and so pierces all resistances.
A high level full caster has a boatload of immunities and looks at death as a minor convenience. With spells like Clone (especially if you can negate the cost), Astral Projection, Contingency, mugging a sturdy body with magic jar, etc. They are pretty much impossible to kill played correctly.
I'm currently working on a Half-Orc Order of the Beast Daring Champion as the final boss of my campaign.
The fight starts with the Boss and a hostage wearing a Cursed set of rings of friendshild (the curse is that one party can't turn the efffect off), with the boss' ring mounted in a Ten Ring Sword. This makes the sart of the fight about disarming them (I just realised that Subtle Blade ruins this, I'll have to fix that)
After being disarmed the Half-Orc turns the fight into a battle of attrition, using feats like Redirect Attack (which doesn't waste an action), Divert Harm (which uses an immediate action), Snatch arrows (which doesn't use an action) and Opportune Reposte (which uses AoOs). being able to ignore/redirect hits from opposition is the goal here.
Once he gets to the final stage of Unstoppable Ravager, he begins to burn Panashe and challanges to deal 3x his level to damage on top of normal damage, to keep alive.
This build is made to take the lives of PCs though (I have no intention of continuing this story, so I don't mind killing PCs in the final battle, if they atleast contributed to the final victory)
Which level do you want/need to be?
Most unkillable character I have ever thought about is Half-Orc Goliath Druid. Be evil, take damnation feats, gain immunity to 2 elements that turn off your regeneration. Die hard + regeneration that cannot be turned off = Nearly unkillable creature.
AMF is your only demise. All other ways that could kill you are really debatable.
For this build I would go STR=CON>WIS>DEX>INT>CHA.
Oh and have fun fighting at minus infinity negative hitpoints.
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Also, how about a Miss Chance? Get Scent. Take Blind Fighting, and carry around an Eversmoking Bottle. You will be Blind along with everyone else, but between Scent and Blind fighting, you will be very functional.
ifrit race can take Firesight
the magical Goz mask can work for non ifritsi also like taking any 2 weapon\weapon and shield bash fighting style and add condoctive to the weapons then taking 2 levels of souldrinker would let you net a lot of temp hp as they stack . and of course every 1st hit with a weapon each round give a negetive level to the target. it tend to wreck their ability to fight real fast.
i built a tripping warior using the familier cacodaemon you get as a valet and taking the team feat that let you roll trip twice and take the higher roll. send him into the enemies area invisible(to threat he need to be in the same space. but he's small enough to not get any panilties. and he has a nice dr incase they see him) then just trip and hammer the target. for every 2 hits or 1 critical you also gain 2 soul points. can be used to cast and regain later true strike and the like to max out hitting proc. in normal fight i was stacking up temp hp very fast ending most fights with +35~ temp hp the minimum. then again i did get to play a kasatha with multi weapon fighting and 4 conductive triping weapons
There was a pretty fun thread a while back about something like this. Linky
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Taking the first 40 damage off of a single attack, then dividing the remaining damage by 4, resulting in the damage you actually take is pretty strong. Adding to that fast healing or regeneration and you have yourself a pretty durable character.
As far as I know Oracle of Heavens 20 has no permanent way of dying, you just keep coming back, yeah final revelation, gg.
There are a couple of capstone abilities that do that.
The ghoram race comes prebuilt with a clone ability.
The end game abilities are nice, but I am really wanting to experiment from lvls 1-15 or so. That's where the vast bulk of gameplay will be and I don't want to build a character that gets his or her best death aversion abilities too late in the game.
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A dwarven Drunken Master Dex Monk. He has crazy saves - especially vs spells - very high AC - high touch AC (I have a PFS level 4 version with a 27AC & a 21 touch AC) - and high perception & initiative so unlikely to be flat-footed often. With an 18 Con to grab Swift Drinker with - he'd have very solid HP.
He wouldn't have an in-combat heal ability - but past the first few levels he's almost impossible to stop from running away due to movement speed and eventually Abundant Step. At that point he can just chug booze and use Wholeness of Body to heal up in a minute or less - then run right back into the fight.
Offense? Mediocre - but that wasn't what this thread was going for. :P
My version goes online at level 7.
Nilbog
Just won't die from normal combat. Gotta heal them to death.
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Is there a pathfinder version of the 3.5 mettle feat? That was pretty darn cool, it was basically evasion for will and fort saves.
It wasn't a feat. (Everyone and their kid brother would have taken it.) It was a class ability of the Hexblade class & Pious Templar prestige class. I don't think anyone else had it.
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Is there a pathfinder version of the 3.5 mettle feat? That was pretty darn cool, it was basically evasion for will and fort saves.It wasn't a feat. (Everyone and their kid brother would have taken it.) It was a class ability of the Hexblade class & Pious Templar prestige class. I don't think anyone else had it.
Ahh, that's right. I had an LG character who was a mutt of classes; fighter 4, rogue 2, barbarian 2, ranger 2, templar 3, holy liberator 3. He had insanely good saves (28/20/18), was immune to fear, charm and compulsion, and had evasion and mettle. He was pretty hard to kill.
A level of maneuver master monk to pick up Crane Style, a level of Unbreakable Fighter for Endurance and Die Hard, and Invulnerable Rager straight down the board. At 5th level, take Stalwart (feat). Take the superstition rage power. Preferably human to pump up your saves with superstition. Then take the Defensive Strategist trait so you can't be caught flat-footed for going after an enemy and so you can go into a rage to avoid some horrendous effect using a Headband of Havoc.
At level 8, for example, you can have a decent AC (not fantastic really, but you can invest), DR 7/- (3/- for barbarian and 4/- for fighting defensively in Crane Style). Your saves will be boosted by 5 (or 6 if you use the Headband of Havoc to boost it) against spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. All just for taking a -2 to attack (which rage replaces) and having to be buffed before the rage.
Compared to, say, a typical CR 10 dragon, you mitigate half (or a little better) the damage it can do with melee assuming each attack lands, your base saves are +9/+4/+4, so you avoid its breath and stuff the vast majority of the time. Which I might advocate a second level of monk for Evasion and some other cool stuff, but that's for another discussion.
I could draw up a build, but you get the idea. This character is a tough cookie to crack. And the best part? DR focus makes it so that healing is less necessary. Just keep raging, my superstitious friend. Oh, and if you're having trouble with the monk into barbarian thing, your other trait can be Adopted (Enlightened Warrior).
10th level Beast Bonded witch. Done.
Won't die, or won't stop coming back? The self-reincarnating druid is good for the latter.
The hardest to take down (assuming you put yourself in harm's way rather than avoiding it as a caster should) would probably be a tiefling paladin with fey foundling (tiefling for the alternate favored class bonus).
@petty alchemy, look at that third post.
A character that won't die, not one that won't die permanently... :P
A level of maneuver master monk to pick up Crane Style, a level of Unbreakable Fighter for Endurance and Die Hard, and Invulnerable Rager straight down the board. At 5th level, take Stalwart (feat). Take the superstition rage power. Preferably human to pump up your saves with superstition. Then take the Defensive Strategist trait so you can't be caught flat-footed for going after an enemy and so you can go into a rage to avoid some horrendous effect using a Headband of Havoc.
At level 8, for example, you can have a decent AC (not fantastic really, but you can invest), DR 7/- (3/- for barbarian and 4/- for fighting defensively in Crane Style). Your saves will be boosted by 5 (or 6 if you use the Headband of Havoc to boost it) against spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities. All just for taking a -2 to attack (which rage replaces) and having to be buffed before the rage.
Compared to, say, a typical CR 10 dragon, you mitigate half (or a little better) the damage it can do with melee assuming each attack lands, your base saves are +9/+4/+4, so you avoid its breath and stuff the vast majority of the time. Which I might advocate a second level of monk for Evasion and some other cool stuff, but that's for another discussion.
I could draw up a build, but you get the idea. This character is a tough cookie to crack. And the best part? DR focus makes it so that healing is less necessary. Just keep raging, my superstitious friend. Oh, and if you're having trouble with the monk into barbarian thing, your other trait can be Adopted (Enlightened Warrior).
I like this build because it would still deal some decent damage. I think it's pointless to build a defensive character without the ability to kill the guy hitting you...