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We all know the 1-2 level dip, Fighter to grab extra feat(s), Lore/Nature Oracle to get CHA to AC, Medium with the Spirit Focus feat to get +2 Attack/+4 Damage, Paladin for CHA to Saves, Rogue with Evasion, etc.
I am thinking of some concepts that would be pretty good as something that would benefit from investment in levels.
Here are a couple of examples:
- The Spiritualist Investigator. For Wisdom-based characters, at Level 3, you get a reroll AFTER failing a Saving Throw. At level 4, you would use a point from the pool (which is Class Level + WIS, which is pretty high), to add you WIS as AC (Insight). Inpiration Dice is also in play.
- The Kraken Caller Druid. At level 4, you obtain Wild Shape, but can use Wild Shape to alternatively gain 2 Tentacle as natural attacks while retaining your original form. Add Shaping Focus into the mix, and it will allow you to gain 4 Tentacles for 80 minutes, 3/day. This can be quite useful for those who focuses on a Natural Attack build. (Sidenote: You can also use a Strong Jaw wand for all of those those attacks for a literal pool of dice)
What other ideas do you all feel that might be interesting?
Famously, gunslinger is a 5-level long class. Once you have dex to damage you're better to go elsewhere. Trench fighter, where allowed, is a quicker version of the same thing.
Once you have wild shape on your druid (probably level 4), the shaping focus feat might give you enough wild shaping that you can go and grab a martial class (es) to take full advantage of it.
Weapon master fighter 3-4 can be a solid component of a multiclass character.
3-5 levels of rogue depending on archetype/unchained (e.g. underground chemist 4) can be useful.
A cavalier 4 with the horse master feat might be best to multiclass into something else if they're not that fond of their 8th level order ability.
What about the dreaded 20 level dips?
Psychic (mutation mind) 3: Gain psychic casting, +4 enhancement bonus to Str at level 1 (1 minute per level) and a physical upgrade like DR 2/-, claws, darkvision or +10 move speed (only at the same time as the Str bonus). You can pick up further upgrades by the Extra Amplification feat. Faith discipline provides you with spontaneous cure spells, self-perfection adds Wis to AC (with the same restrictions as for a monk) and rebirth makes you a bit of a knowledge box. A fourth level improves the dip by 2nd level casting and another minute of Str bonus and physical upgrades.
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3 levels of Unchained Monk gets you 4 bonus feats (counting Improved Unarmed Strike and Stunning Fist), boosted unarmed damage, unarmed strikes counting as magic, Wis to AC, Evasion, +10" movement, and a Ki Pool.
A 4th level adds a ki power, still mind, and +1 AC. A 5th level adds a style strike and purity of body.
I've become a big fan of Brawler dips. Brawler's Cunning makes a lot of builds work while still dumping INT. Unarmed Strikes, a bonus feat at 2nd, Martial Flexibility!, and at 3rd maneuver training. Several of the archetypes are good as well and have good abilities that trigger at 3rd level.
For levels of Druid plus Shaping Focus grants 24h/day in Wildshape, which can be a medium humanoid elemental wielding a weapon who can speak.
Four levels of Weapon Master grants Weapon Training that can use Gloves of Dueling for +3's and can pick up two Advanced Weapon Training feats, for things like Fighter's Finesse, Trained Grace, Defensive Weapon and etc.
Four levels of Sacred Fist can grant swift-action +3 Favor plus Flurry of Blows plus the means to grab Crusader's Flurry plus +1 WIS AC.
Four levels of Whirling Dervish Swashbuckler grants DEX-to-damage, Swashbuckler stuff, and also +4 Precise Strike.
Four levels of Scarred Rager grants their Rage cycle thing, plus Reckless Abandon +2 with no downside, and also +4 Strength Surge or Lesser Elemental Rage with swift action.
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Four levels of Weapon Master grants Weapon Training that can use Gloves of Dueling for +3's and can pick up two Advanced Weapon Training feats, for things like Fighter's Finesse, Trained Grace, Defensive Weapon and etc.
I've seen this quite a bit, and it confuses me for a couple of reasons. First, why four levels, when Weapon Master gets Weapon Training at 3rd level?
Second, how do you get being able to take the Advanced Weapon Training feat twice when the feat is limited to once every 5 Fighter levels? I genuinely want to understand what I'm missing, because I've seen similar a suggestions in a lot of different places on the boards, and they've never added up to me.
EDIT: Nevermind. I just saw the special section at the bottom of the feat. That's a nice bonus for taking an extra level of Weapon Master.
EDIT AGAIN: This time with a question. So you pull off getting two Advanced Weapon Training feats by using the Fighter's ability to swap their bonus feats? So hit 4th level, use your 4th level bonus feat on Fighter's Finesse, and swap your level 2 bonus feat for Trained Grace?
If you timed it so that you hit level 4 Weapon Master at character level 5, could you then take Advanced Weapon Training 3 times? Once with your 5th level feat, then twice with bonus feats (ignoring the once per 5 fighter levels restriction)?
If you timed it so that you hit level 4 Weapon Master at character level 5, could you then take Advanced Weapon Training 3 times? Once with your 5th level feat, then twice with bonus feats (ignoring the once per 5 fighter levels restriction)?
I don't think so, since only taking it as a bonus feat overrides the once-per-five-levels thing. As far as I can see, to take it as a regular feat still requires at least Fighter 5. The language is a little hazy though.
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Hmmm... The first line of the special section says, "Fighters that have the weapon master archetype can select this feat beginning at 4th level." It doesn't say as a bonus feat. Just that they can select it.
The part about taking it as a bonus feat allows you to ignore the "once per 5 Fighter levels" restriction.
So if you were a Wizard (or whatever) 1/Weapon Master 4, then I think it would be legal to spend your regular 5th level feat to take it. You could then use your 6th level bonus feat to take it again, and ignore the restriction. I'm just not sure if you could use both your 5th level regular feat and your 4th level bonus feat, because there's not really an order of operations on selecting feats when you level.
Anyway, it's convoluted enough, I probably would t try it. It just got me wondering if there were any combinations of three Advanced Weapon Training options that would be interesting to pull off.
We can go back to listing dips now.
I did a 3 level Warpriest dip on a character. Got me Fervor 4/day (with a 16 WIS), 4 first level spells (usually Divine Favor), 4 orisons, 2 blessings, Martial Weapon Proficiencies, Weapon Focus, Favored Weapon Proficiency, and a bonus feat at 3rd level. A 4th level gives an extra use of fervor, enhancements through Sacred Weapon, Channel Energy, and 2nd level spells. A 5th level gives an extra 1d6 Fervor, 1d8 sacred weapon, and an extra 2nd level spell.
I think the text stating "Fighters that have the weapon master archetype can select this feat beginning at 4th level" is there to negate the "Fighter level 5th" prerequisite, so that when you combine that text plus the stuff about using bonus feats for it, a Weapon Master can start using bonus feats for it at Fighter 4. I don't think it negates the 1/5levels restriction with regular feats.
It was stated somewhere by the person who wrote the Advanced Weapon Training stuff that for most purposes, Gloves of Dueling count towards your Weapon Training feature when using Advanced Weapon Training features. So besides the options that don't reference the bonus at all, there are plenty of things that are useful with a +3.
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Inquisitor 5. Spells, bane, judgments, good skills and saves. Great for a class that can go full blown Cuisinart.
4 levels of oath of vengance paladin gets you lots of smites, and awesome saving throws...
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* samurai(1) prior to paladin: gets Mount at 1st level, katana/wakizashi access.
* One level each of fighter[dragoon] and cavalier[gendarme] to accelerate heavily-armored beast-riding tank concepts.
* barbarian[urban](1or2or4): so good in martial TWF and archery builds I'm frankly amazed it hasn't been nerfed.
* cleric[travel/community](1): awesome drop-in to any Jack-of-all-trades martial build, as well as any barbarian or bloodrager who is not a Scarred Rager (or whose GM is wise to their broken nonsense and bans them).
* ranger(1or2): Excellent dip for otherwise straight fighters to give them some skills and auto-activation healing wands and Instant Enemy or Lead Blades if they've time to pop off a wand-buff.
4 levels of oath of vengance paladin gets you lots of smites, and awesome saving throws...
This also allows for Summon Monster 9 to be cast quite early thanks to the Bracer's of Celestial Intervention along with Extra Lay On Hands feats.
Additionally, while not an investment in and of itself, the Hunter class LOVES investing into other classes since the class gains very little from leveling beyond 16 and the existence of Boon Companion encourages exactly 4 levels in another class. Half-Orc Barbarian 4/Hunter 16 is quite strong thanks to Amplified Rage, Pack Flanking, and Ferocious Mount. However Hunter can also gain advantages from 4 levels of many other classes.
One level of Sohei is enough for prerequisite free Mounted Skirmisher and armored flurry, two gets another free feat, four gets ki pool with bonus attacks and Monastic Mount. Very, very strong mounted combat stuff.
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One level of Sohei is enough for prerequisite free Mounted Skirmisher and armored flurry, two gets another free feat, four gets ki pool with bonus attacks and Monastic Mount. Very, very strong mounted combat stuff.
Sohei can form the core of any number of overpowered builds (e.g., they're better archers than Zens). By RAW they can still get away with flurrying in armor (even though the designer said it wasn't his intention, that's never been reinforced by FAQ or revision). Throw in cavalier4 and the Horse Master feat, and their mount is literally impossible to screw with. Throw in vanilla fighter5 and they'll be flurrying with a significant fraction of weapons in the game.
Swashbuckler can be quite nice for a lightly-armored character - 3 levels gets you Precise Strike for +3 precision damage, Charmed Life, Nimble (+1 dodge to AC), and a nice suite of deeds. 2 more levels gets you improved crit and an additional +1 to hit and +3 damage (including precise strike) as well as a bonus feat on top of it.
Not only that, swashbuckler has some fantastic archetypes, notably Mouser for those Small-sized melee characters.
Oradins famously want 4-level dips in both Life Oracle and Hospitaler Paladin.
Skald can be a solid 3-4 level dip for the barbarian that wants to get her allies in on the raging fun.
5 levels of reincarnation Druid for effective immortality
So this thread is giving me great ideas. but I had a question
We all know the 1-2 level dip, Fighter to grab extra feat(s), Lore/Nature Oracle to get CHA to AC, Medium with the Spirit Focus feat to get +2 Attack/+4 Damage, Paladin for CHA to Saves, Rogue with Evasion, etc.
With respect to that above part about Oracles i saw this posted in a thread about frontline tanks
Paladins are pretty good at being tanky. With a 3-4 level dip or VMC in life oracle you make a global damage sponge for your team.
Why is the 3-4 level dip better than the 1 lvl I already had planned for my paladin? is there a class feature I'm just not seeing?
So this thread is giving me great ideas. but I had a question
We all know the 1-2 level dip, Fighter to grab extra feat(s), Lore/Nature Oracle to get CHA to AC, Medium with the Spirit Focus feat to get +2 Attack/+4 Damage, Paladin for CHA to Saves, Rogue with Evasion, etc.
With respect to that above part about Oracles i saw this posted in a thread about frontline tanks
Paladins are pretty good at being tanky. With a 3-4 level dip or VMC in life oracle you make a global damage sponge for your team.Why is the 3-4 level dip better than the 1 lvl I already had planned for my paladin? is there a class feature I'm just not seeing?
You can only have as many life links going as you have oracle levels. So you want/need either as many oracle levels as the number of other members of your party, or VMC which sets your effective oracle level to character level -6 (so at 9th level lets you cover the rest of your party).