I have two builds for your edification, which might also help. One of which is a pure melee build, in point of fact.
The first one is
Takahashi no Onisan. Basically, he uses CW Samurai's 'Mass Staredown' to be able to spam the same effect as 'Never Outnumbered' every round, and the 'Fearsome' enhancement from DotUD to do it as a move action. He also dips Exemplar to Take 10 on Intimidate checks...
The next one is a bit nastier. It's a Dread Necro12/Dread Witch5. Basically, you pick up Aura of Terror spell from SpC at 12th level with Advanced Learning, and cast it with Fell Frighten metamagic. This affects your innate Fear Aura you picked up as a class ability at level 5, and does the following:
* Increases radius from 5' to 15'.
* Increases effect from Shaken to Frightened
* Increases DC of save by 2.
But wait... there's more!
Fell Frighten normally applies the Shaken effect as well,
with no save. Since, unless otherwise specified, fear effects stack (and nothing in Fell Frighten states that it does not), this increases the Frightened effect to Panicked, with the consolation gift of still applying Shaken to everyone anyways, no save!
Due to Dread Witch, not only is the Save DC increased by another 2, but it even busts immunities.
Yea, still getting better...
You've got Rebuke attempts. If you pick up any of the several ways of allowing your spells to count as either arcane or divine (Southern Magician regional feat, for example), you can then go for DMM: Persist, to make your aura that powerful 24/7.
Mind you, this is *in addition* to all the power of a T3 class focusing on negative levels and powerful undead minions... like Slaymates...