Hi I am looking to build a level 4 for an upcoming session and I am very interested in the idea of building just an HP sponge.
I want as much HP as possible, even potentially at the risk of being completely unviable. This includes using every feat, every archetype that simply boosts hp to the max and when all options are exhausted, then finally work towards actually hitting enemies.
What class, archetype would you recommend? Is there any sample build you can provide to demonstrate the numbers? My goal is at least 100hp at level 4 (preferably 200hp)
Assume crafting is allowed and Default starting gold for the level. The most ive been able to come up with so far is about mid 80s with a barbarian while raging using a con boosting race, Finding Next of Kin trait, and toughness.
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Well 100 hit points at level 4 is hard to do, given that the overall number of hit points earned per level is about 10.
So let’s assume it’s a point-buy system and you start with a con of 20. Barbarian has the largest hit dice pool so let’s go with that. Toughness and Raging Vitality are feats that ultimate grant you an extra 2hp per level (raging vitality gets +2 Con while raging)
So while raging with both of those feats at level 4, with a +2 belt of Con and your 4th level ability point going to con, you’re at Con 29 when raging. Assuming full hit dice at 1st and 1/2 hit dice every level after, plus favored class bonus to HP for barbarian, that’s a grand total of 77 hit points (12+7*3+4+9*4+4)at 4th level. Close to the 100 hp you want but not quite there.
So let’s look at another option. Half orc 2 levels of barbarian and 2 levels of Fighter with the Eldritch Guardian archetype. You gain a familiar, and you can take the valet archetype for the familiar. 20 Con as usual, with the amplified rage and sympathetic Rage feats. Amplified rage is unfortunately not a teamwork feat so you have to take the valet familiar archetype, but with Eldritch Guardian+valet combo you share teamwork and combat feats with your familiar. Sympathetic rage is a combat feat.
So now when you enter rage your familiar can, as a free action, enter a rage too, and since you’re adjacent to your familiar, amplified rage goes off as well. So now you have +8 Con from raging (and +8 Str too which helps). With 21 Con at 4th and a belt of con +2 you are at 31 Con while raging. That puts you at 73 HP at 4th level (12+7+6*2+10*4+2). Sadly less than the first option but just barely, and you can still take toughness and raging vitality at 5th and 7th levels to make up for that. Once you get raging vitality and greater rage, when you enter a rage you will gain a whopping +12 Con!
Go invulnerable rager for a decent damage reduction, get Greater Beast Totem, Superstitious, and maybe Increased Damage Reduction. Grab a vicious enchanted weapon and go to town.
So now for my word of warning: still invest in AC. Your HP can only take you so far, and when you have multiple enemies dealing 75-100 damage per round on you, even with your massive HP you’ll drop fairly quickly.
But you’ll go down in a blaze of glory given that it will take you being completely surrounded to drop.
*edit* with that campaign trait add 4 to the first option and 2 to the 2nd.
Thanks for the input! You mentioned a few things I missed about boosting rage bonuses to con.
I wonder if there is a way to get bonuses to this morale boost kind of like Moment of Greatness
Ive also considered doing something involving Unconquerable Resolve and dipping into any class that can grant temp hp.
Id also think any class that can heal itself for any meaningful damage could contribute at least a little to this number. Health healed means they will have to go through even more health.
Any ideas for Fast Healing as an option and/or DR? With an average of about 81 hp plus some DR and self healing, I think that might qualify
Adding to Syries's excellent advide:
You could also retrain your HP to get maximum amount each level. Takes 3 days per hit point and costs 10*your level*amount of days trained. So at 4th level 120 gp per hit point. Assuming you are barb2/fighter2 and that you get half max hp per level you need to retrain 16 hp. So 48 days and 1920 gp. If you retrain each level you can do it a little cheaper.
Race: Agathion or Archon blooded aasimar, exchange spell like ability to +2 Con on the variant aasimar abilities table. Net Con +4.
Scion of humanity racial trait and then Racial heritage half-orc to get amplified rage and symphatetic rage.
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Well if you're considering self-healing as a way to have more HP than Paladin with Fey Foundling is definitely the way to go. Swift action 1d6+2 per 2 levels is great and keeps you a viable damage dealer throughout, with a d10 hit dice and good AC, you'll be more durable in battle than any other, even a raging barbarian, because you can sustain your HP better. And requires much less investment.
Half-Orc Fighter (Unbreakable archetype) 4
[20-point buy]
Str: 16
Dex: 10
Con: 16 (18 with racial)
Int: 12
Wis: 12
Cha: 7
Traits: Bruising Intellect, (the one that gives HP, I forget the name)
1: Endurance, Diehard, Nemesis
2: Fight On
3: Toughness
4: Unbreakable (feat from Adventurer's Guide)
40 base HP, 16 HP from Con, 4 from Toughness, 4 from Unbreakable, 4 from favored class, 18 from Fight On, and +8 to Con score to calculate death (from Nemesis), and "26" from Diehard. 68 regular HP + 18 Temp HP + 26 "HP" = 102 HP
The Nemesis feat allows you take two favored class bonuses, as long as one of them is either the HP or the skill point. Half-Orcs count as orcs, and orc fighters can gain +2 Con for the purpose of determining when they die from HP damage. Diehard lets you keep fighting at negative HP until you hit your negative Con score (which is 26 thanks to Nemesis). Fight On lets you gain Temp HP equal to your Con score when you reach 0 HP or less,so that's another 18 HP.
A familiar with the protector archetype is a lot like an additional +50% hp.
Race: Half-Orc
Stats: 20 Con
Level 1: Barbarian (Geminate Invoker)
Feat: Amplified Rage
Bonus Feat: Diehard
Level 2: Fighter (Eldritch Guardian, Mutation Warrior)
Level 3: Fighter (Eldritch Guardian, Mutation Warrior)
Feat: Sympathetic Rage
Level 4: Fighter (Eldritch Guardian, Mutation Warrior)
Hit Dice: 30 hp
Base Con: 20 hp
Amplified Rage (+8 Con): 16 hp
Mutagen (+4 Con): 8 hp
Potion of Bear's Endurance (+4 Con): 8 hp
Valet Familiar (Toad): 3 hp
Favored Class (Fighter): 3 hp
Diehard: 36 hp (Staggered)
Total: 124 hp
Requires 2 round buff time (1st round drink Mutagen, 2nd round drink Bear's Endurance), and for your last 36 hp you'll be staggered and taking -1 hp per round. Still, I think this is the largest pool of hit points you'll get as a level 4 character.
The most HP-durable option if you're including self-healing is probably going to be a Paladin (maybe an archetype, not sure?) using Fey Foundling so that it can Lay on Hands himself as a swift action. The Paladin will also be getting heavy armor.
I'm going to second this idea.
4th level TIEFLING Paladin, HOSPITALER Archetype. 16 Charisma (If your GM lets you take an alternate racial subtype like Demon/Kyton spawn your CHA could be up to 20, but we'll assume 16).
Feats: FEY FOUNDLING and GREATER MERCY.
With 16 CHA you have 5 uses of Lay on Hands (LoH) per day. Each use is giving you 3d6 (via greater mercy) plus 6 (fey foundling) plus 4 (tiefling favoured class bonus) hit points as a swift action. That's an average of 20.5hp per heal, for 102.5hp per day (before actually looking at your hp).
You also get channel energy 6/day. While there are times when 1d6 group healing is good, mostly you'll be using your channels to power your LoH via a MEDITATION CRYSTAL. This effectively gives you another 6 uses of LoH per day.
TLDR: We're looking at (3d6+10hp) x (6+5) ~= 20.5 x 11 = 225.5hp healed per day (before we even look at your CON score).
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Barbarian (Geminate Invoker)
Wow. That’s a lot of hit points.
I’m curious as to why you suggest that archetype though. You don’t gain a Con bonus any faster and you lose out entirely on the strength bonus. With no strength bonus you don’t gain any additional Str bonus from amplified rage either. And considering power attack isn’t even considered until at least level 6 or 7 damage would fall quite a bit.
Barbarian (Geminate Invoker)
Wow. That’s a lot of hit points.
I’m curious as to why you suggest that archetype though. You don’t gain a Con bonus any faster and you lose out entirely on the strength bonus. With no strength bonus you don’t gain any additional Str bonus from amplified rage either. And considering power attack isn’t even considered until at least level 6 or 7 damage would fall quite a bit.
Yeah, I agree it's a sub-optimal choice for anything except the one fact that you get Diehard as a free 1st level feat. As the OP said, they wanted maximum hit points "even potentially at the risk of being completely unviable."
Jotunblood template for 4 levels would give you over 160 hp if you don't mind not having class levels. 10d10 racial hit die and +5 con(half giant 18 base with +2 from template) plus whatever feats/traits you can cobble together.
The Jotunblood Giant template is a 3rd party published material by Green Ronin, not Paizo.
Additionally, character creation rules don't support templates as a valid option for player characters. Any game that allows templates to be applied to player characters is verging into homebrew territory.
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Half-Orc (Orc Atavism alternate racial for full Ferocity)
Barbarian 1/Synthesist Summoner 3 (FCB +1 HP)
Traits: Finding Haleen, Berserker of the Society
Feats: Toughness, Raging Vitality
Eidolon evos: Ability Increase (CON), Skilled (UMD)
Items: Belt of CON (+2), Scroll of False Life (used with around +20 UMD)
Effectively 125 HP on an average False Life roll, counting Ferocity as virtual HP.
Wow sorry for taking so long to get back to this post. Impressive displays on some of these builds.
That paladin build seems pretty solid. I cant do paladin in this campaign since we are doing an evil campaign, but will consider it for future. I think i regard healing as maybe a little less significant. perhaps half as many hit points since it requires an action and a resource.
Dr and energy resist should be worth more because it happens on its own. So double for that bonus.
Worked up something last night:
Barbarian 2/Fighter 2(unbreakable)
18 con by point buy
Terrapin race for +2 con
Belt of con +2
raging vitality +2 con when raging
Rage +4 con
Feats:
toughness, raging vitality, endurance, diehard(both from unbreakable fighter lvl 1), unbreakable(fighter lvl 2), bonus traits(via antiheroes rules... something better than this???)
Traits:
Finding haleen +1hp/lvl
Finding next of kin +1hp/lvl
warded against nature (drawback for bonus trait)
berserker of the society +3rounds of rage/day
Bonus traits: pragmatic activator(for UMD), dont know of another to take...
Assuming max rolls (via retraining):
12+12+10+10 = 44 base
per level: +9 from con(while raging) +2 from traits +1 FCB +1 from toughness = 52
diehard = +29
False life wand = 7.5 average
Grand total:
132 HP, DR5/Blud, SR 15, Energy resist fire and electricity 5
Equip full plate and a tower shield alone and youre looking at 27 AC
(provided im not missing anything saying i cant do that)
Now that is tanky... but i think we can do better... Any advice on a better feat or trait to take with the bonus traits feat?
Any1 want to take a stab at trying to get to 200 raw hp?
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Also i see a lot of sythesis summoner mentions. What makes them so great? I am not well versed on them
Traits:
Finding haleen +1hp/lvl
Finding next of kin +1hp/lvl
This shouldn't impact your build much, but Finding Haleen is a campaign trait; if you're not playing Legacy of Fire, it shouldn't be available. Worse, Finding Your Kin is the same trait---d20pfsrd just changes the name and drops most of the text for legal reasons. This does not let you take the same trait twice. ;-)
(If you mean something else by Finding Next of Kin, nevermind, but this was all I could find for that.)
they put their eidolon like a suit so they add their hp basically
its early, and this thread was long, however, if you get yourself a familiar, rather than the valet, what about bodyguard? Your familiar gets half your hit points, with a body guard familiar it can take half your damage once you get up a little, effectively increasing your max hp by about 50%
...Traits:
Finding haleen +1hp/lvl
Finding next of kin +1hp/lvl...
Finding Haleen is the official name for the Finding Next of Kin trait. They are the same trait.
Haleen is a licensed character, so her name can't be used outside Paizo products or works licensed by Paizo. This is one of the benefits that Archives of Nethys (http://aonprd.com/) has over the d20pfrd.
Traits:
Finding haleen +1hp/lvl
Finding next of kin +1hp/lvlThis shouldn't impact your build much, but Finding Haleen is a campaign trait; if you're not playing Legacy of Fire, it shouldn't be available. Worse, Finding Your Kin is the same trait---d20pfsrd just changes the name and drops most of the text for legal reasons. This does not let you take the same trait twice. ;-)
(If you mean something else by Finding Next of Kin, nevermind, but this was all I could find for that.)
Ah thanks for this catch! Also i realized they were both campaign traits, meaning I cant use them both