Improved Eldritch Heritage, Mutable Flesh, and Mighty Strength

[Cao Phen]

Using Improved Eldritch Heritage, grab the Shapechanger bloodline ability, Mutable Flesh.

A Cleric, Oracle, Paladin, or Warpriest of Trudd can use the Mighty Strength spell.

With that, once per day you can have your character gain +8 Strength for hours.

It is obtainable at Level 11, but can be useful for higher level games.

Another idea is to get 5 levels in Wizard to gain Idealize arcane discovery from Champions of Balance, which increases the bonus by 2.

[Rylden]

Wizard can only select Idealize at 10th level.

Pairing the idea comes online at earliest 17th level. Not sure a paladin would ever have the chance to get the +2 from Idealize. Paladins dont cast 4th levels until 13th. Warpriest would be in the same situation, not gaining the bonus until 20th. This is of course assuming your games end at 20, or before. Thats pretty late in the game to be waiting on a +10 enhancement bonus. Its also not going to stack with any belt of strength.

[David knott 242]

If you can spare the feats, you could go for VMC Sorcerer with the Shapechanger bloodline. Then you can get one Transmutation spell per day with a 10 minutes per level duration at 7th level and bump it up to 1 hour per level at 9th level.

Or, if what you care about is the final result rather than gaining the hours per level duration as soon as possible, you could consider VMC Wizard. You would then be able to improve that enhancement bonus from Mighty Strength to +10 at 15th level and +12 at 20th level. You can't spare the 10 actual wizard levels needed to qualify for the Idealize arcane discovery to gain Idealize any other way.

If you are able to gain a 2nd sorcerer bloodline (taking one via VMC Sorcerer and the other via the Eldritch Heritage feat chain), you can gain a +6 inherent bonus to strength by 17th level -- of course, doing that would use up nearly all of your feats.

[Calth]

Cant really see any benefit of going this path over Orc bloodline. Unless you aren't going to ever buy a strength belt, which is unlikely because dispels are a thing and the combo doesn't come online til mid-levels.

[David knott 242]

Belts of Giant Strength only go up to +6.

But there are many ways to build up your character's strength with or without these belts. The key question is which of these methods give the best benefits for their cost.

[Calth]

David knott 242 wrote:

Belts of Giant Strength only go up to +6.

But there are many ways to build up your character's strength with or without these belts. The key question is which of these methods give the best benefits for their cost.

It was more that +2 strength or so over the belt isn't really worth 3 feats worth of investment along with a specific deity choice. Orc bloodline at least gets you a more expensive/rarer bonus type. I mean, a +1 tome costs more than adding +6 str enhancement to any belt. If I was going to spend 3 feats, I cant imagine going this route over the orc route.

I guess you can consider both, but even then 3 feats and a daily 4th level spell is a lot for basically 1.5ish feats worth of benefit and 54k gold max.

[Kurald Galain]

Calth wrote:

I guess you can consider both, but even then 3 feats and a daily 4th level spell is a lot for basically 1.5ish feats worth of benefit and 54k gold max.

Yes, I came to the same conclusion. An extra point of strength is effectively a +1 to hit and damage. This is better than weapon focus, but then weapon focus is not that great a feat anyway. With all the flashy and versatile feats available, would you really spend three of them on something like weapon focus?