Brute Strength "Assassin"


Advice


Playing in a game this evening, and looking for some helping fleshing out a character. The design is rather simple, with all books available that are not 3rd party. Starting at 8th level with full character wealth. 25pt buy, or 4d6 dropping lowest for stats.

Ive decided to try my hand are a brute strength build as I normally play a crit fisher of some sort. I enjoy rogues but I'm attempting to get away from the more Dex based build.

I decided to go Demon-Spawn Tiefling, with the Variant Over-sized limbs in place of my Spell-like which has been approved by the GM. No feat required here. ID Bloodrager with a single level dip into Oracle for a flavor dip. Building the character with Impact Greatsword, and the Dedicated Phantom to make my sword count as Gargantuan, 6d6. My GM has decided the Dedicated Phantom's skill Dutiful Strike will act as Enlarge person, allowing it and Impact to stack. The help I need is I've never played a brute up front strength based character. I'm unsure of what feats to make the best use of. Power Attack, and Furious Focus seem like a shoe in, but where from here? Maybe Vital Strike for walking up on someone/thing and hammering it with the greatest of greatswords?

A little background on the character and game. We'll be playing in Rise of the Rune Lords, I believe we're in chapter two, just after the sawmill? The character himself is based on a Water Demon, so dipping Oracle for waves, getting Obscuring Mist, and Water Sight to allow for "assassinations" in the mist. its more flavor then a planned mechanic to carry throughout the game.

Dark Archive

It seems like you are too high level for that part of RotRL, but I guess that is up to your dm. Your best bet is power attack, vital strike, and furious focus. Alternately, you could just go straight slayer with similar feats as well as hellcat stealth and hellcat pounce. At 10th level you can get assassinate, and pick up a headsman's blade. Go around chopping of people's heads while stealthing in plain sight.


If you have any dexterity then combat reflexes might be fun with your one big hit style.

The mist assassin was a fairly well known build a while back. It doesn't play very well with others but if you're not planning to actually use that tactic much that shouldn't be a great concern.


avr wrote:
If you have any dexterity then combat reflexes might be fun with your one big hit style.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, but unfortunately, it doesn't work to well with his assassination style.

My first reaction when I see someone first try out a strength character is 'hey, try out a reach user'. Reach tends to favor big hits that make AoOs fantastic, and reach can allow you to get even more hits in than a TWF character.

It might seem weird for an assassin, but if you just take those as 'sudden, small scale murders', then being able to be a circle of death that blocks the door isn't a bad idea. It would be interesting as the brutish back up to more traditional assassins, at least.

Unfortunately, he wants to focus on obscuring mist. Which has a sharp drop off in accuracy once you get past 5' away. So sadly, no reach.

Without reach, combat reflexes isn't usually that amazing without a specific build (like an anti mage lock down build).


lemeres wrote:
Unfortunately, he wants to focus on obscuring mist. Which has a sharp drop off in accuracy once you get past 5' away. So sadly, no reach.

That's what the water sight revelation is for: accuracy will be just fine.


Avoron wrote:
lemeres wrote:
Unfortunately, he wants to focus on obscuring mist. Which has a sharp drop off in accuracy once you get past 5' away. So sadly, no reach.
That's what the water sight revelation is for: accuracy will be just fine.

ah. i never messed with most oracle stuff, so i never realized. that seems much better for dipping than use as the main mystery (since i don't remember anything to melee worthy with water). it seems really, really front loaded with one of the best tactical powers (ism't this basically free goz mask?).

then yeah, forget the greatsword. slash them up with a nice bardiche. same general stats, but you get 1d10 base hit dice in return for reach.

also, that lets you run around with a big freakin' ax. what is more brute strength than that?


I second the Furious Finish feat. You dont have to use it every fight but when you come across that guy, and you really want that guy dead, then let him have a max damage death attack :D
Note that this would work exceptionally well with you since you have such a large damage die, and also note that it maximizes all damage dice, so that would include things like Flaming or Frost.

Also, you can take a Flawed Scarlet and Green Cabochon Ioun stone to ragecycle indefinitely.

Also check out a huge sized Sun Blade (resized for whatever size fits you).
For a normal person the Sun Blade is a huge sized light weapon, they then wield it as a normal sized 2-handed Bastard Sword at a -4 to hit penalty.
Scale it up to fit your needs :)

There should also be a ribbon that makes the weapon count as an increased size but I cant remember what its called

There is also a 1 level dip in Titan Fighter.


Hey guys, thanks for the load of advice, great stuff here.

So last night I did a rough build of the character to be, Tiefling demon-spawn with Over-sized limbs. Our GM told us last night was a try out night, and we could make alterations if we needed before next game. Rolled stats and got 18, 17, 14, 14, 13, 15 at level 8. Currently the setup being 18 (22 racial + stat increase from level), 14, 17, 14 (12), 14, 15 (17).

Over-sized Limbs removes the negatives for fighting with Large weapons, so went with a large greatsword, creating +1 Adamantine Impact Large Greatsword. 7 ID Bloodrager (Dedication Phantom), 1 Oracle, legalistic, Waves Mystery. So this all was working well, I'm hurting on skill points but my character does very little of the talking in the group.

Class progression

Bloodrager 1
Oracle 1
Bloodrager 6

Feats/Traits progression

Deft Dodger

1 Power Attack
1 Skill Focus (Sense Motive)
3 Endurance
5 Lightning Reflexes
5 Furious Focus
7 Extra Rage
7 Diehard

I've debated a few small changes, rather then a single level dip into Oracle, going 3 levels of Cyclopean Seer Oracle. This would get me the bonus to saves a few times a day based on Cha, but the real bonus comes at lvl 3, taking Flash of Insight, and using a feat to get Water Sight. This would allow me to simulate Nat 20 rolls, from what I gathered from research on Flash of insight. Adding this to Furious Finish on an Improved Vital Strike (By the time I have all the requirements), Id be looking at 18d6 Auto-Crit rolling to confirm. I'm just unsure how hard a 3 level dig into Oracle will hurt me.

Flash of Insight:
(Su) Once per day as an immediate action, a cyclops can peer into an occluded visual spectrum of possible futures, gaining insight that allows it to select the exact result of one die roll before the roll is made. This effect can alter an action taken by the cyclops only, and cannot be applied to the rolls of others.

Also I was incorrect, we just finished the Clock Tower last evening, I thought we ended at the sawmill, Sorry :).

Dark Archive

No reason to get lightning reflexes. You are better off with toughness or improved initiative or about anything else.


Unfortunately lightning reflexes comes from lvl 4 ID rager

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