What does it take to be effective in melee?

[Sunic_Flames]

Aid Another does not work like that. It only affects the next attack roll (singular) not all of them. It only affects melee combat, too, and the dogs need to be threatening the giant to do it anyways.
Returning thrown weapons are good for one attack per round each, not a full attack sequence. They don't come back until the start of your next turn.
Your damage calculations for round 1 assume a paradox. You are including the benefit of Point Blank Shot while at 100' away. Similarly, you are including the PBS bonus on the damage rolls in round 3 which are melee attacks.
You only get a single standard action in a surprise round, not a full-round action.
Is there any reason that the giant is double moving over to you instead of running? It would only lose its meager +2 Dex bonus. I can't think of any reason that running would not be the proper tactical decision. It's easy to forget about the Run option, but it's there.

Edit: The Storm Giant could also use its 1/day Chain Lightning to blast you and kill your dogs, too, instead of standing 30' away from you like a sucker. Or are we not supposed to consider tactics and spells/SLAs for this experiment? (Seriously, I forget. The testing methods were mentioned a while back in the middle of teh thread and I forget the details and location.)

Carnivore subscribes to both the no tactics, auto attacks only, FINAL DESTINATION and the arena battle fallacies.

[weenog]

Is there anything specific about his build that you'd like to address, Sunic, or are you just bringing attitude?

[BruceLeeroy]

Is it just me, or is the OP saying "Bad builds suck ass at D&D"?

OBVIOUSLY, in a core only setting, it takes some party cooperation to defeat high level encounters. If, for some reason, you are arbitrarily deciding to play like a retard, then something like a storm giant is going to feast on your carcass and use your loot to fund a 6 month certificate course in "Profession: Cooking".

Outside of core, you can (rather easily, if you're an experienced player) make a character than can easily solo level appropriate CRs (barring some exceptions, like prepared wizards, etc).

It seems like you're arguing against the fundamental roles assumed by the game. None of the classes (Shut up, druid) are supposed to be able to go it alone. The action economy, if nothing else, provides a strong incentive for cooperation with a party. You can talk all day about how your uber casting build can handle any encounter, to which I retort: your DM must be taking it easy on you. Even druids can get wtfpwned by a clever DM, using only CR appropriate enemies.

Yes, I'm introducing DM fiat into the discussion. Well, it's the other half of the game, I think it bears mentioning.

[Echoes]

Is it just me, or is the OP saying "Bad builds suck ass at D&D"?

OBVIOUSLY, in a core only setting, it takes some party cooperation to defeat high level encounters. If, for some reason, you are arbitrarily deciding to play like a retard, then something like a storm giant is going to feast on your carcass and use your loot to fund a 6 month certificate course in "Profession: Cooking".

Outside of core, you can (rather easily, if you're an experienced player) make a character than can easily solo level appropriate CRs (barring some exceptions, like prepared wizards, etc).

It seems like you're arguing against the fundamental roles assumed by the game. None of the classes (Shut up, druid) are supposed to be able to go it alone. The action economy, if nothing else, provides a strong incentive for cooperation with a party. You can talk all day about how your uber casting build can handle any encounter, to which I retort: your DM must be taking it easy on you. Even druids can get wtfpwned by a clever DM, using only CR appropriate enemies.

Yes, I'm introducing DM fiat into the discussion. Well, it's the other half of the game, I think it bears mentioning.

No, his point is to try and figure out how melee-types can meaningfully contribute without having to rely entirely on the casters. As has been demonstrated, Team Monster tends to dominate in physical combat, to the point where unless you are literally one-shotting them they will own your ass without magical support.

As far as how easy it is to one-shot something, yes Brute monsters are fairly easy to one-shot outside of core, but spellcasting monsters are not. Especially not without magical support (BFC, buffs, etc).

And no, unless you are up against intelligently-played spellcasting monsters (this includes those with large arrays of SLAs), a well-played caster will run roughshod over them barring extremely unfavorable circumstances/luck. The DM has to intentionally stack the deck against you to make non-spellcasters a threat, and even that doesn't guarantee a victory for Team Monster.

DM fiat has nothing to do with it; casters, even in Core, straight-up wtfpwn non-casters.

Also, carnivore, your Core TWF Barb fails against the storm giant. I've spoilered the analysis below.

[spoiler]First, some numbers. Let's compare your HP: 130 (you, assuming average rolls) vs. 199 (giant); AC: 17 (you, assuming haste and raging) vs. 27 (giant). AB: On a charge, you only miss him on a 1 (+24 plus +2 for charging), and he's only going to miss you one a 1 (AB +26). If you don't charge, you need a 3+, so that's a 15% miss rate vs. his 5% miss rate. Finally, let's look at your Ref save. You're sitting at +9 with haste (this is relevant due to Awesome Blow). Now, let's look at the fight.

We'll assume you start 60' away from each other, and neither of you are surprised. You are hasted and raging. The terrain is flat and basically featureless. You win initiative and charge him. He hasn't had a chance to ready an action, so all he can do is make an AoO against you. He deals 34.85 weighted damage. You meanwhile deal 21.88 weighted damage plus 1.25 weighted Con damage. On his action, he uses Awesome Blow and Power Attacks for 5. Even with the -9 to attack, his AB is still +17, meaning he deals 45.35 weighted damage (total 80.2 out of 130) and forces a DC 45 Ref save. You have a 95% chance of failing, whereupon he pushes you back 10 ft. and you are knocked prone. You are now 15 ft. from him and he still threatens you. On your action, you stand up and provoke an AoO, which he takes dealing a weighted 45.35 damage (125.55 out of 130). Either you move and provoke an AoO whereupon he kills you, or he finishes you on his turn.

If you succeed on your Ref save, he moves 35 ft. away from you, accepting the AoO, and the whole thing starts again from the beginning.

That's without him using any of his other abilities. Your one-trick pony fighter (seriously, you spent all of your cash trying to do this one thing, neglecting your defenses entirely) dies inside of 2 rounds against the storm giant and you barely scratched him.

If you had pounce you'd do much better, doing 106.14 weighted damage and 7.45 weighted Con damage on a charge, leaving him at 16.86 hp. At that point, a full attack (with no PA) from him would do 104.55 weighted damage, killing you.[/spoiler]

[Tenebrus]

I've asked this before: how do you fix it?  "It" means giving a melee fighter a meaningful place and potentially staring role in the game.

Is it fixable? 

How does this fight differ using a Swordsage (it's late and I don't want to do the math, nor am I particularly good with ToB classes)?  Is there another way to make melee'ers relevant without ToB?

I'm looking for the simplest, most elegant mechanical solution. 

[lans]

You should add the CR 7 Earth Elemental to the list. Its the pinnacle of melee out of core for that CR.

[LordBlades]

I've asked this before: how do you fix it?  "It" means giving a melee fighter a meaningful place and potentially staring role in the game.

Is it fixable?  

How does this fight differ using a Swordsage (it's late and I don't want to do the math, nor am I particularly good with ToB classes)?  Is there another way to make melee'ers relevant without ToB?

I'm looking for the simplest, most elegant mechanical solution.  

Yes. Ubercharger.

On a more serious note, not really. From my experience, the only non-ToB non-caster melee builds that I've seen in play and were not compeltely outclassed at their own game were different variations of uberchargers (shock trooper, leap attack, battle jump or any combination thereof). Such builds can easily dispatch CR approppriate encounters in 1 turn usually, as long as the respective mosnters are straight up brutes, with no tricks up their sleeve. They do suffer from 2 majr setbacks however:

1. They are one-trick ponys. Let's say you build a fully optimized charging barb (lion totem barb/fighter/frenzied berserker with the whole feat chain: power attack, leap attack, shock trooper, combat brute). It's pretty good at charging enemies to death, but next to worthless when he can't charge, as he's stuck with attacking for [w]+1.5xstr.
2. They fail horribly vs. any sort of decent magical defenses. Unless they have some serious caster backup, such builds can't fly, can't see invisible creatures, can't bypass mirror image and etc. until pretty high level (via either magical items, or the mage slayer>pierce x feat chain). In contrast, any kind of gish deals with mundane melee brutes with similar ease, but it's still a serious threat vs spellcasting enemies.

[weenog]

There's also the Elusive Target > ubercharger problem.

[Runestar]

I've asked this before: how do you fix it?  "It" means giving a melee fighter a meaningful place and potentially staring role in the game.

Is it fixable? 

My answer would be "You can't, nor should you bother to." Simply find players who are happy working as a team and aren't dickish about throwing out buffs. Past lower lvs, casters won't use their lower lv slots much, and shouldn't find it a burden to use cheap spellups on you.

I would argue that pitting yourself in some imaginary race to see who can one-shot the enemy first may actually turn out to be counter-productive, because it makes a mockery of the DM's best attempts at challenging the party adequately. Which then degenerates into an endless cycle of one-upsmanship.

Eg: You deal enough damage to 1-shot my mage, I use non-associated class rules to create casters with quadruple hp and flood them with enough contingencies to nuke Tiamat the instance a fly so much as lands on him. You can decimate my great wyrm dragon on a full-attack, I let it start combat buffed to the gills (bite of the werebear, wraithstrike etc the works).

At this point, it stops being fun. 

[Littha]

I've asked this before: how do you fix it?  "It" means giving a melee fighter a meaningful place and potentially staring role in the game.

Is it fixable? 

My answer would be "You can't, nor should you bother to." Simply find players who are happy working as a team and aren't dickish about throwing out buffs. Past lower lvs, casters won't use their lower lv slots much, and shouldn't find it a burden to use cheap spellups on you.

I would argue that pitting yourself in some imaginary race to see who can one-shot the enemy first may actually turn out to be counter-productive, because it makes a mockery of the DM's best attempts at challenging the party adequately. Which then degenerates into an endless cycle of one-upsmanship.

Eg: You deal enough damage to 1-shot my mage, I use non-associated class rules to create casters with quadruple hp and flood them with enough contingencies to nuke Tiamat the instance a fly so much as lands on him. You can decimate my great wyrm dragon on a full-attack, I let it start combat buffed to the gills (bite of the werebear, wraithstrike etc the works).

At this point, it stops being fun. 

Agreed and there is only going to be one winner in this kind of oneupmanship... the DM... because no matter how awesome you are you are never going to fight off 5 solars at level 10.

[carnivore]

build

Uh, you can't do that with returning weapons.  They return just before your next turn, not just before your next attack.  If there's some errata or whatever changing this, please point it out, as it's something I've wanted to use before and it didn't work.

I'm curious about why you're using axen instead of daggers.  Do you find the extra 1 average damage per attack to be worth more than the higher crit chance, easier concealment, and more common appearance as loot?  Would you still choose throwing axe over dagger in actual play?

is therefore ready to use again in that turn)."
depends on how DM interprets "that turn" ... current turn(when thrown) or next turn ..... there are several other errors in the build, but the concept might be salvageable

Axes vs Daggers ..... it was an Old build that i was trying to modify and see if it would work, but was late for an appointment so i didnt have time to make a lot of changes ... in actual play i would use Daggers

<snip>

you are correct on most of that .... i was trying to reuse and Modify an old build without checking the details(was in a hurry, only had 15 min to post)

Carnivore subscribes to both the no tactics, auto attacks only, FINAL DESTINATION and the arena battle fallacies.

? i dont understand your point 

Also, carnivore, your Core TWF Barb fails against the storm giant. I've spoilered the analysis below.

[spoiler]First, some numbers. Let's compare your HP: 130 (you, assuming average rolls) vs. 199 (giant); AC: 17 (you, assuming haste and raging) vs. 27 (giant). AB: On a charge, you only miss him on a 1 (+24 plus +2 for charging), and he's only going to miss you one a 1 (AB +26). If you don't charge, you need a 3+, so that's a 15% miss rate vs. his 5% miss rate. Finally, let's look at your Ref save. You're sitting at +9 with haste (this is relevant due to Awesome Blow). Now, let's look at the fight.

We'll assume you start 60' away from each other, and neither of you are surprised. You are hasted and raging. The terrain is flat and basically featureless. You win initiative and charge him. He hasn't had a chance to ready an action, so all he can do is make an AoO against you. He deals 34.85 weighted damage. You meanwhile deal 21.88 weighted damage plus 1.25 weighted Con damage. On his action, he uses Awesome Blow and Power Attacks for 5. Even with the -9 to attack, his AB is still +17, meaning he deals 45.35 weighted damage (total 80.2 out of 130) and forces a DC 45 Ref save. You have a 95% chance of failing, whereupon he pushes you back 10 ft. and you are knocked prone. You are now 15 ft. from him and he still threatens you. On your action, you stand up and provoke an AoO, which he takes dealing a weighted 45.35 damage (125.55 out of 130). Either you move and provoke an AoO whereupon he kills you, or he finishes you on his turn.

If you succeed on your Ref save, he moves 35 ft. away from you, accepting the AoO, and the whole thing starts again from the beginning.

That's without him using any of his other abilities. Your one-trick pony fighter (seriously, you spent all of your cash trying to do this one thing, neglecting your defenses entirely) dies inside of 2 rounds against the storm giant and you barely scratched him.

If you had pounce you'd do much better, doing 106.14 weighted damage and 7.45 weighted Con damage on a charge, leaving him at 16.86 hp. At that point, a full attack (with no PA) from him would do 104.55 weighted damage, killing you.[/spoiler]

not really ... it relies on an Ambush(he would have to be hidden(possibly Invisible)) ... thus he gets 2 rounds: Surprise Round, and he gains Initiative on the first ..... also these builds are demonstrating that the "Non-Spellcasting Tank" can be relatively effective in his role, but more work needs to be done to keep him alive


some of the builds i have posted are rushed ... but the goal is to try to find ways to make Non-Spellcasting Melee viable in a CORE setting ..... usually the goals for threads like this is not just to poke holes in builds that are submitted, but to actually work together to find ways to make something work..... i really wish someone else would offer some ideas/builds as to how it might be possible for a "Non-Spellcasting" Melee character in CORE only setting could Survive and contribute to a Party ..... with a Parties support, all of the builds i have presented could survive and contribute meaningfully

 

[Sunic_Flames]

Is there anything specific about his build that you'd like to address, Sunic, or are you just bringing attitude?

I did cover the problems with his build. Making a character specifically to counter a specific opponent, and that does not work in any criteria or parameters outside of that, and that still only works in a no tactics, auto attacks only, FINAL DESTINATION environment.

[Lycanthromancer]

Agreed and there is only going to be one winner in this kind of oneupmanship... the DM... because no matter how awesome you are you are never going to fight off 5 solars at level 10.

Betcha I could at level 1. Core only.

But only with a wizard.

[weenog]

Agreed and there is only going to be one winner in this kind of oneupmanship... the DM... because no matter how awesome you are you are never going to fight off 5 solars at level 10.

Betcha I could at level 1. Core only.

But only with a wizard.

How many rounds of efreeti summoning are we assuming before the solars arrive?  I'm not sure how much of a chance you'll have after the solars start shooting.

[Lycanthromancer]

Agreed and there is only going to be one winner in this kind of oneupmanship... the DM... because no matter how awesome you are you are never going to fight off 5 solars at level 10.

Betcha I could at level 1. Core only.

But only with a wizard.

How many rounds of efreeti summoning are we assuming before the solars arrive?  I'm not sure how much of a chance you'll have after the solars start shooting.

Doesn't matter, really. Those flowing-time planes are quite handy for that.

Also, I need a new schtick. I am apparently quite predictable.

[weenog]

It's the wizard restriction that did it.  What are you going to do at level 1 with a wizard that you can't do with another good caster that's that powerful, if not sell the spellbook and buy something nice?

[Lycanthromancer]

It's the wizard restriction that did it.  What are you going to do at level 1 with a wizard that you can't do with another good caster that's that powerful, if not sell the spellbook and buy something nice?

See: Scroll of planar binding.

Or better yet, simulacrum. None of that messy binding stuff.

[Senevri]

uh... a level 10 solo _shouldn't have a chance against a CR 13 opponent (outside some insanely favourable circumstances).
A level 10 party should. Was the assumption that an all-melee party of fighting men? ( really, favourable terrain + archery would solve this problem. )

Completely no magic is just a stupid presumption in D&D.

Presuming 4 good melee guys.... (fighter, ranger, barbarian types)
Attack bonus at level 10 should be around... +16 minimum, and up to... +22 or so?

VS. storm giant: Get into close without detection ( say, potion of invisibility ), drink a potion of True Strike and DISARM the giant. Who can't now make attacks of opportunity and provokes if attacks.

Next, another guy SUNDERS the armor.

Now the fight is manageable.

Of course, the Rogue just stealthed until she found the giant's lair, then poisoned it's chow and coup'd it in it's sleep.

[weenog]

uh... a level 10 solo _shouldn't have a chance against a CR 13 opponent (outside some insanely favourable circumstances).
A level 10 party should. Was the assumption that an all-melee party of fighting men? ( really, favourable terrain + archery would solve this problem. )

Completely no magic is just a stupid presumption in D&D.

Presuming 4 good melee guys.... (fighter, ranger, barbarian types)
Attack bonus at level 10 should be around... +16 minimum, and up to... +22 or so?

VS. storm giant: Get into close without detection ( say, potion of invisibility ), drink a potion of True Strike and DISARM the giant. Who can't now make attacks of opportunity and provokes if attacks.

Next, another guy SUNDERS the armor.

Now the fight is manageable.

Of course, the Rogue just stealthed until she found the giant's lair, then poisoned it's chow and coup'd it in it's sleep.

You're aware that storm giants have natural slam attacks and substantial Fortitude save bonuses, resist attempts to disarm their greatswords at +40, and that armor can't be sundered, right?

[Senevri]

I am now.  I really should've spotted the Armor thing, though, especially as it has come up before.

Still, the slam deals much less damage, although getting an AB high enough might be tricky. +22 attack, +2 charge, +2 flanking, +2 aid another and +2 invisibility... still only nets a 50% chance of success at disarm, even using a True Strike potion. Well, presuming a party of 5, the Aid Another can go up to +8, but that's still a 20% fail chance.

It really doesn't have any other sunderable equipment, unless you go straight for the weapon ( which may be a good idea, and more likely for a Barbarian to do than disarm, really. )

Not sure why I should care about Fort save. Oh, the rogue poison thing, as well as CDG. Sorry, I guess I was thinking of PF, where multiple dosages of poison increase the DC by 2 each time.

Still, the CDG DC should be quite nasty by default. say, 5d6+3d12+9+10. (presuming STR 10 and bull's strength) Axe is a traditional giant-slaying weapon, after all.
So, an average DC of 56, and a worst-case DC of 27. We really want DC 37, so increasing axe damage by 3.3 points is optimal.

'tis true that a party of melee only fighting men are in a tricky situation, though. Of course, they're in a situation which favors both (as the giant is a melee monster for it's level as per usual).