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So reading through the various feats in the new armour handbook and the mobile bulwark style & tower shield specialist feat got me thinking about the Tower Shield Specialist archetype from Ultimate Combat. So I was wondering whether throwing all these things together would make something fun and viable if maybe not super optimal.
Mobile Bulwark Style
Reqs:Str 13, Shield Focus, TS proficient, BAB +1
Add shield’s AC & enhancement bonuses to CMD vs bull rush & overrun.
When in the style, you can set the edge of total cover as a move action.
Mobile Fortress
Reqs:As above except Str 15, MB Style & BAB +4
Add shield’s AC & enhancement bonuses, halved, to touch AC, only –1 penalty on attack rolls. When in the style grant any adjacent ally total cover against attacks passing through the covered edge.
Mobile Stronghold
Reqs:As above except Str 17, Mobile Fortress & BAB +7
No penalty on attack rolls. When in the style, whenever you use a tower
shield to gain total cover, you (& adjacent allies) also gain partial cover vs spells passing through the set edge. Also when in the style, as an immediate or swift action, gain total cover against a single attack made against you.
Tower Shield Specialist[Feat]
Reqs:Shield Focus, TS proficient, BAB +11 or fighter lvl8
Reduce the armour check penalty for tower shields by 3, if you have armour training class feature, modify armour check penalty and max Dexterity of tower shields as if they were armour.
Tower Shield Specialist Archetype is here
So there's a bit of redundancy between almost all of what Fortress (an a little of Stronghold) gives and what the archetype gives. Tho I think to get the thrid feat in the chain and get penalty reductions & extra AC a little sooner it's probably worth it. Willing to hear other thoughts on that.
Now the Specialist feat is interesting because it helps to considerably reduce the skill check & Dex penalty of a tower shield.
Start: -10 check penalty, +2 Dex.
With Specialist feat: +3 skill penalty = -7, +2
Armour Training 1: +3, +2 = -4, +4
However I'm unclear if armour training is applied to the tower shield stats and then again to the armour's stats. It would seem useless for the Specialist feat to say it can get applied to the shield if it can only be applied to one of them at a time, but also it sounds just a little too good if it does apply to both for a total of +6 off check penalties.
Regardless of the above there are now two choices on how to remove the remove the remaining penalties:
Take armour training 2 to 4 OR Get a mithril tower shield (another +3, +2) & a trait. Allowing for advanced armour training options.
Which is better probably depends largely on what armour is being used on top of the shield, which in turn depends on what type of build I go for. Has to be Str based due to the feat requirements. Beyond that my first thought is perhaps predictably a tank.
I'd say either make a fighter with the Mobile Style or make a Tower Shield Specialist.
Anyway, I've played a TSS before (we assumed that Tower Shield Specialist feat was baseline implied to work without needing it but yannow). I had an immense amount of AC but couldn't do much in terms of damage.
I'd say you should consider Bulette Style and deal a ton of damage while shoving people away and covering ground on the battlefield.
Tower Shield Specialist is going to suck early on, but as time goes it will be better than your typical Sword and Board, since your penalties to hit will go away. I will go ahead and say that getting the complete Mobile Bulwark feat chain will make half of your class features redundant/unable to use together. While the Tower Shield Specialist has some neat defensive tricks (Shield Bonus to Touch AC, Scaling Reflex Save bonus), a lot of the other class features become useless.
Per RAW, the feat and the archetype would stack, because they are an untyped bonus/modification from two different sources (one is a feat, one is a class feature). The feat then goes on to say that if you have the Armor Training class feature, you combine both Tower Shields and Armor ACPs for the purposes of ACP reduction, something that the class feature does not allow (which is hilarious, by the way).
That being said, consider your options; you can either take the Tower Shield Specialist Feat, and get the same benefits of the respective class feature, and then take the Mobile Bulwark feat chain to negate the penalties to hit (and get the primary good stuff from using a Tower Shield), or you can take the Tower Shield Specialist, gain some secondary defensive benefits, have practically 0 ACP, but also have a bunch of loop holes to deal with (such as the Tower Shield Specialist ACP reduction and MDB maximum not actually applying to the Tower Shield through that class feature).
A Tower Shield Fighter is probably going to be running around with Full Plate and a Tower Shield. That puts your ACP at -16 (10 from Tower Shield, 6 from Full Plate), which is incredibly high. Now, if we make them out of Mithril (Mithril Tower Shield costs 1,000 gold, Mithril Full Plate costs 9,000 gold), the ACP reduces by 3 each (Tower Shield 7, Full Plate 3). Armor Training will reduce that total by 4 at the final rank, assuming you stick with it (meaning Full Plate becomes 0, but the Tower Shield remains at 7). The Tower Shield Specialist feat will reduce that by another 3, and consolidate your Armor and Tower Shield ACPs into one value for reduction for the purposes of reducing ACP via Armor Training (meaning your Tower Shield will take the full ACP reduction to 0, and your Full Plate is back to 3). The Armor Expert trait will reduce your Full Plate ACP by 1, and the Comfort armor property (+5,000 gold) by another 1, leaving you with only 1 ACP from your Full Plate. That's as far as I know to go.
If there is another way to reduce ACP (maybe talk to your GM about getting Comfort on your Tower Shield also?), you can very easily get 0 ACP while running around with a Tower Shield and Full Plate. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until the endgame for that to happen.
Also, with the Mobile Bulwark feat chain, you'll have your full to-hit, have respectable Touch AC, and make a single attack per round go to waste.
I'd suggest you pick up the Armor Master archetype in concert with this if you're wanting to maximize defense. You'll get DR (almost like wearing Adamantine Armor), adding a flat bonus to Touch AC (as well as half your Shield Bonus to AC), and Fortification properties for free (which scale up to complete immunity to Sneak Attacks and Critical Hits).
@Secret Wizard: Bulette style is an interesting style but I don't think it's the type of style I want for this build, thanks tho.
@Darksol the Painbringer: I'll agree that MBStyle makes two of the archetype features (attk penalty removal & touch AC bonus) redundant. And I have now realised the class giving full base is almost certainly worse in the long term than the feat chains giving half of both base and enchantment.
But everything else you get from the class still works as far as I can tell and all the feat abilities also work. What in armour training description says that combining ACP's isn't allowed. And even if it does, presumably this we be a case of the specific (the feat) overriding the general (an ability written before the feats existence)?
Also, aside from the penalty reductions not applying to the shield what loop hole issues are there in the archetype?
Sorry if this sounds like I'm trying to contradict, I just want to see what I'm missing.
But yes going Armour master would be a good way to compliment MBS instead. one reason getting the ACP of the tower shield alone down to 0 would be to use the Shield Brace feat in conjunction. It allows 2handed spears or polearms to be used one handed with a shield, taking the ACP of the shield as a penalty to attack. I rather like the visual of it and it means slightly better weapon damage dice.
@Darksol the Painbringer: I'll agree that MBStyle makes two of the archetype features (attk penalty removal & touch AC bonus) redundant. And I have now realised the class giving full base is almost certainly worse in the long term than the feat chains giving half of both base and enchantment.
But everything else you get from the class still works as far as I can tell and all the feat abilities also work. What in armour training description says that combining ACP's isn't allowed. And even if it does, presumably this we be a case of the specific (the feat) overriding the general (an ability written before the feats existence)?Also, aside from the penalty reductions not applying to the shield what loop hole issues are there in the archetype?
Sorry if this sounds like I'm trying to contradict, I just want to see what I'm missing.
But yes going Armour master would be a good way to compliment MBS instead. one reason getting the ACP of the tower shield alone down to 0 would be to use the Shield Brace feat in conjunction. It allows 2handed spears or polearms to be used one handed with a shield, taking the ACP of the shield as a penalty to attack. I rather like the visual of it and it means slightly better weapon damage dice.
A lot of the abilities you get from TSS is replicated or even amplified through Armor Master and the Mobile Bulwark feat chain. The downside is losing Weapon Training, but quite frankly you lose it with TSS anyway, so not really a loss, and the benefits of Mobile Bulwark are plenty strong enough anyway.
You need to spend an Immediate Action to activate benefits of the TSS class feature(s), and you have to do the same for the final Mobile Bulwark feat, which is technically infinitely better since it allows you to entirely negate a single attack of your choice (which is damn huge; see that Disintegrate Ray? It's gone).
Although Armor Training does not specify that it lowers the ACP of only your armor, it is implied through the ability name, the flavor, and probably the intent of the feature, that it's not supposed to apply to Shields as well. Otherwise it'd be called something more like "Defensive Training."
After all, by that logic then Armor Training increases the MDB of your Tower Shield as well, and that's clearly not intended, nor allowed by any GM that I've come across.
The big problem with this stuff is that it will take quite a bit of time for you to get all of that ACP reduction. It costs a lot of money (between magic properties and special materials), requires class feature stuff (which equates to requiring levels), and some feats (which again, requires levels). If you pull this off by, say, 3rd or 4th level, you're going to be sitting at a ridiculous amount of penalties to ACP, because the means to reduce them aren't exactly available to you yet. There's also the concept of penalties to hit not being alleviated until at least 8th level.
I wouldn't be concerned about using a Tower Shield until you actually get a lot of the ACP issues resolved (i.e. crafting Mithril items and getting the Tower Shield Specialist feat); a Heavy or Light shield will be just as good, and not make you absolutely suck when you need to use stuff that's affected by ACP.
Also, I would second the Shield Brace feat, considering how ridiculously overpowered it is, and what you can exploit with it.
Here's a basic feat progression rundown:
1. Shield Focus, Shield Brace
2. Mobile Bulwark Style
3. Power Attack
4. Mobile Bulwark Fortress
5. Shield Specialization
6. Iron Will
7. Mobile Bulwark Stronghold
8. Tower Shield Specialist
9. Greater Shield Focus
10-11. Any Feat
12. Greater Shield Specialization
13+. Any Feat
For weapon recommendations, I'd suggest a Nodachi, as it has good damage dice scaling, a powerful critical multiplier, deals two types of damage, and has some off-beat weapon properties; your to-hit won't be spectacular, but at least when you roll good, and pick up a Keen Nodachi (or take the Improved Critical feat, your call), you'll have a good chance to get a Critical Hit when you do roll good.
As for AC, who knows how high it can get, though I imagine it'll be in the low to mid 40's. 10 Base + 14 Armor + 5 Deflection + 5 Natural Armor + 9 Shield + 4 Dexterity + 1 Insight = 48 AC flat by the endgame, which is fairly high. Touch AC won't be really bad either, since ~26 Touch AC will be tough for a wizard to reliably hit, considering their 10 BAB + 6 or so Dexterity will only result in a 50-50 chance to hit, not factoring in penalties for firing into melee combat and all that jazz. This would be a challenge for a truly optimized melee character. The Ultimate Fighter would still crush him, though.
This can be even higher with Fighting Defensively, Combat Expertise, or by actually acquiring the Dodge feat or actual Natural Armor (there is a way to do so through being certain races and taking certain feats), though these options usually end up reducing your melee effectiveness.
Ah right I had the shield repositioning abilities separate in my head tho looking at it now I don't know why. It is unclear of what use Immediate Repositioning has if not to interrupt attacks (unless you can use it to block AoE's?). But yes the feat chain does it better again, so that's 3 of 5 abilities of TSS shot so there is little point in not taking Armour master instead.
Good point on saving off on actually using a tower shield. While nabbing shield focus makes using a shield a bit more appealing I'd still considering just using the Nodachi (which was also my pick of weapon for this :) ) 2-handed to start with.
I agree with grabbing Grtr Focus but since armour master gives fortification I'm less sold on Shield Specialization. True it also will give me a +4/5/6 bonus to CMD (thanks to shield focus & Grtr) which is nothing to sneer at but I just feel like the feats could be spent on better feats. Such as the somewhat naff preqs to get the Stalwart feats (which expressly say they stack with DR from class features) for DR25/- (assuming adamantium armour) at the end game. Or as you say dodge or racial feats, such as tiefling armour of the pit. Or just feats to shore up my will save more or my reflex. And I'm ok with this not being super optimal, sword and board has sadly rarely been that good a choice
Shield Specialization allows you to add your Shield benefits to your CMD, which is very nice (though you can only implement. Greater Shield Specialization may not be needed, but since they nerfed the Jingasa to the ground, having the ability to negate a Critical automatically (reserved for those moments you don't want to leave up to chance, such as by getting critically hit by a Scythe) is significantly more valuable. I will say that the feat becomes useless when you get your Capstone, since you're automatically immune to any Critical hit. That being said, you can apply it as a Fighter Bonus Feat and retrain it to something more important (Missile Shield is attractive, since it's like Deflect Arrows, except with a Shield).
From the Stalwart feat:
This damage reduction stacks with DR you gain from class features, such as the barbarian's, but not with DR from any other source.
Stalwart/Improved Stalwart and Adamantine Armor do not stack, meaning you get either one or the other. Additionally, you'll want Mithril Tower Shields and Armor to cut down on ACP (and increase your MDB). Lastly, Stalwart really only works if you Fight Defensively (which is a -4 penalty to hit for +2/+3 Dodge AC), or use Combat Expertise (with penalties ranging anywhere from -1 to -6, for an equivalent Dodge bonus to AC). Fighting Defensively is damn nice, but can only be worthwhile with the Crane Style feat chain (which means you can't use that with the Mobile Bulwark feat chain unless you have a level in MoMS Monk).
Also, getting the DR from Stalwart requires a 4 feat investment (Endurance, Diehard, Stalwart, Improved Stalwart), for ~6 DR, at the cost of 4 to-hit. Even if it stacks with your class feature DR, it's not worth 4 feats, and a significant penalty to hit whenever you attack. (If you want to make the bad guys have to focus you, you should be able to hit reliably, and deal some decent damage to boot.)
I'd suggest a Human. Presuming 20 point buy, stats should be as follows:
Strength 18 (16 + 2)
Dexterity 13
Constitution 14
Intelligence 10
Wisdom 14
Charisma 7
You'll have decent hit points, acceptable Dexterity, good Strength for to-hit/damage, acceptable Will Saves, and not be a complete moron with skills.
With Human, you can pick up Racial Heritage (Tiefling) and Armor of the Pit for +2 Natural Armor. Although a 2-feat investment, if you were, say, Half-Orc, picking up Ironhide for a +1 Natural Armor bonus, this would follow the same scale, so there is that. There is also the Dodge feat that you can pick up from square 1.
If you're wanting to go that route (start with plain Nodachi, work your way up to adding Tower Shield), here's a modified Feat progression table:
1. Racial Heritage (Tiefling), Armor of the Pit, Power Attack
2. Shield Focus
3. Shield Brace
4. Dodge
5. Iron Will
6. Shield Specialization
7. Mobile Bulwark Style
8. Tower Shield Specialist
9. Mobile Bulwark Fortress
10. Mobile Bulwark Stronghold
11. Greater Shield Focus
12. Greater Shield Specialization
13. Weapon Focus (Nodachi)
14. Weapon Specialization (Nodachi)
15. Greater Weapon Focus (Nodachi)
16. Greater Weapon Specialization (Nodachi)
17. Penetrating Strike
18. Greater Penetrating Strike
19. Improved Critical (Nodachi)
20. Improved Iron Will, Improved Initiative (retrained from Greater Shield Specialization)
I'm not a fan of backloading all of the offensive feats past 13th level, but since offense is a secondary thing for you, I suppose it's okay.
Your starting AC is going to suck. But, eventually, you'll be running around with over 50 AC (10 Base + 5 Deflection + 7 Natural + 14 Full Plate + 4 Dexterity + 1 Dodge + 1 Insight + 11 Shield = 53 AC, 26 Touch AC, 43 Flat-footed AC), even higher CMD (10 Base + 10 Strength + 20 BAB + 4 Dexterity + 6 Shield + 5 Deflection + 1 Dodge + 1 Insight = 57 CMD), as well as have acceptable saving throws (23 Fortitude, 16 Reflex, 19 Will), and have about +30 on attacks (20 BAB + 10 Strength + 5 Weapon + 2 Weapon Focii - 6 = +31/26/21/16 to hit), dealing 2D8+42 damage per hit (Impact Nodachi average 8 damage, 15 Strength, 18 Power Attack, 5 Weapon, 4 Weapon Specs = 50 damage per hit), and have a 15-20/X2 multiplier.
The average Balor will have +31 to hit on his primary attack, which means he has to have a Natural 20 in order to hit you with any of his melee attacks.
This is not including party buffs like Heroism, Haste, etc. which can increase your AC and to-hit even higher.
True adamantium doesn't stack but that's only a loss of DR3/-. I suppose hoping to get to lvl 20 for DR22/- for only -4 attk is kinda dumb. Point distribution priority looks good. Depending on party composition and how skill competent I wasn't to be I may swap human for Oni-spawn(+2 Str & Wis, -2Cha) and just be the mostly unlikeable fighter.
I may rearrange feats so not all the offensive stuff is back loaded, my focus may be more to AC but as I have to reach level 8 or so to be able to use the tower shield well, I need to live that long.
Thanks for all your help this will pretty much be the build I go for and I don't think i spotted impact so thanks for pointing it out.
Tiefling will save you a feat (the Human bonus one, so a wash), and give you more/better stats, so certainly worth picking.
The downside with re-arranging the feats is that you will be delaying things like your Mobile Bulwark style feat chain, which does save you some to-hit, and being able to negate any single attack 1/round, even spell attacks and such, is really powerful. I feel bad for delaying it, but frontloading more of the AC is preferable.
Also, the Impact property is a +2 property in Ultimate Equipment. Here's the description:
This special ability can only be placed on melee weapons that are not light weapons. An impact weapon delivers a potent kinetic jolt when it strikes, dealing damage as if the weapon were one size category larger. In addition, any bull rush combat maneuver the wielder attempts while wielding the weapon gains a bonus equal to the weapon's enhancement bonus; this includes all bull rush attempts, not only those in which a weapon is used, such as Bull Rush Strike, Shield Slam, or Unseat.
I'd like to offer an alternative.
Class: Fighter
Archetype: None
Race: Human
Traits: Defender of the Society, Armor Expert
20 pt buy: S16 D13 C14 I10 W12 CH10
Racial: +2 STR
Progression:
1. Shield Focus, Mobile Bulwark Style
2. Power Attack
3. Advanced Armor Training feat: Armored Juggernaut
4. Mobile Bulwark Fortress, +1 DEX
5. Weapon Training: Whatever, Advanced Weapon Training feat: Versatile Training (max two skills of your choice)
6. Shield Specialization
7. Mobile Stronghold, Advanced Armor Training: Armored Master: Secured Armor
8. Tower Shield Specialist, +1 STR
9. Advanced Weapon Training: Armed Bravery, Advanced Armor Training feat: Armor Specialization (O-Yoroi)
10. Advanced Weapon Training feat: Defensive Weapon Training
I just noticed that they finally added the Advanced Armor Training from the Armor Master's Handbook. Woot!
Adjusting the Dodge feat to Shield Brace, and then taking that 3rd level feat to become Advanced Weapon Training (Armor Specialization) is damn nice, since it gives you a better, scaling bonus to AC (up to +5 AC for a feat, no less), compared to Dodge's +1 AC that sucks nuts and doesn't build unto anything.
@Secret Wizard: I gain a lot of options with Adv.W training to increase saves & AC instead of (or as well as) using feats. But Ithe loss of 4 points of DR/-, free fortification and immunity to sneak & crit aint nothing (MBStyle gives +5 to Touch AC at the end game which is only one less than Deflective Shield) and some of those freed up feat slots get used getting back the DR and such, might still be a fair trade tho. More options to consider, thanks very much you've both been very helpful.
Why not get both though?
Get both what?