need help with a back up character please.

[dna1]

Hello BG's. First thank you for the help with the dragonwrought sorc 

So I need help with a back up character for this sundays game.
ECL 16: 25 point buy. All books availible. 
The party is good, and we are in Ravenloft, trying to fight our way back to our home plane.
Our DM is pretty nasty with some of his monsters. And I know we are going to be fighting some powerful lich, and afew uber dragons in the games to come.

K, so I dont really know what exactly I want. I do know that I dont really want to be a caster. I would prefer some sort of direct damage.
Actually I would like to play some sort of monster class, but I know that generally they are way less powerful then a straight classed out character.
Afew ideas I was thinking about was some sort of hulking hurler, or perhaps some sort of uber grappler?  I do know that I want to be hard to kill, and I want to be able to be of some use in most situations.

So if you kind folks here could please give me a hand with a nice build, and possibly some feats to go with it, that would be very helpful.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Have you considered an iaijutsu factotum?  Lots of direct damage, tons of skills, and your damage is still effective against undead.

[dna1]

I havent even heard of that actually. what book is it from?

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Factotums are from dungeonsacpe.  They have some really nice abilities (including one which gives extra actions per round), and get all skills as class skills.


Iaijutsu focus is a skill from Oriental Adventures that gives bonus damage dice when attacking flatfooted opponents.  It's the ability that lets people in samurai movies rush past each other and then one of them falls down, cut in half.

The iaijutsu master prestige class can get you up to 9 times your charisma bonus on each iaijutsu focus attack, as well as a bunch of miscellaneous benefits. 

[dna1]

isnt there class abilities only active when enemys dont get there dex bonus or what not?

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Flatfooted, actually.  A grease spell, bag of marbles, high initiative, or your choice of manuevers/skill tricks is reliable enough for iaijutsu focus use.  At high levels like that, most combats will be over in a couple of rounds anyway, so being able to deal a lot of damage in the first round is far more useful than dealing half the damage for three rounds in a row.

[KellKheraptis]

You could always play a Hood   Or the Chrono-Legionaire (or both if you can get access to the feats needed...).

[dna1]

im not to familiar with most of this stuff.
what is a hood, and what book is it in?

[Agita]

You could always play a Hood

Et tu, Kell?

Neither Hood nor the Chrono-legionnaire are in any books. They're names of builds. The Hood can be found here (or here, once Endarire gets the port-over done). Not too familiar with the latter, so I'll let Kell elaborate.

[KellKheraptis]

im not to familiar with most of this stuff.
what is a hood, and what book is it in?

A Hood is a Dragoon, 3.5 style, that uses umpteen ways of multiplying charge damage.  As in the last rough one I put together while working on the Neo-Trancer build was hitting for 7d8+1000 something on a charge.  The Chrono-Legionaire is a highly mobile charger, centered around the Slayer PrC and use of teleportation powers.  It's original intent was to be able to reliably take down the Hechatoneiries from the ELH, a CR 57, at level 20.  It succeeded in spades.  Being a charger, it would also do ridiculous damage per hit.  In fact, you could even combine C-L with the King of Smack, using the "Claws" powers and being an Elan to get Rapidstrike/Improved Rapidstrike, owning face with a full attack on each charge.

@Agita : Well, I am working on the port from 339 of the thing, and I volunteered to make a Neo-Trancer.  It's looking more and more like it may well be a psionic build.

[dna1]

chrono legionare sounds pretty cool. what would i need for that build? teleporting + ownage sounds like alot of fun actually.
but keep in mind i only have 16 levels to play with at the moment

[KellKheraptis]

chrono legionare sounds pretty cool. what would i need for that build? teleporting + ownage sounds like alot of fun actually.
but keep in mind i only have 16 levels to play with at the moment

This thread, last post, has the original version of it.  Should be perfectly viable at level 16, too.