Heya, folks.
Well, after years of my DM pestering me, I'm going to do it: I'm going to play a straight, vanilla fighter with a longsword and shield.
The thing is: I want him to actually be somewhat useful, and this is a level 16 campaign. So here's what I'm thinking:
The party is large, and already has two solid damage-dealing front line fighters. The only problem is that they can dish it out, but have a hard time taking it; their ACs just aren't high enough.
Thus, my character. He's going to be a classic "Shield-man," the guy who kept blows off his lord's back in various historical cultures. Offensively, frankly, he's going to SUCK--I don't expect him to ever hit for any significant damage.
Defensively, though, I want to see if I can flout the conventional wisdom that AC is meaningless at higher levels.
At the moment, I know the character's going to have the following feats:
Combat Expertise
Improved Combat Expertise (CW)
Allied Defense (Shining South)
Shieldmate (MHB)
Improved Shieldmate (MHB)
Those form the core of the build. He'll also probably have the following:
Shield Wall (HoB)
Shield Specialization
Shield Ward
Elusive Attack (PHB2)
...and maybe the following:
Titan Fighting (RoS)
Phalanx Fighting (CW)
Now, the question is: how to optimize this? With the rough setup I have above, I'm going to be running at about a 70 AC most of the time, and giving the other front-line fighters a +16 dodge bonus to AC (plus a +3 shield bonus if they don't already have a shield bonus, but I think both of them do.) I'll also be trying to get them to master the Wall of Steel maneuver, which will let me add my shield bonus of +10 to one of them at need.
Not glamorous, not exciting, but useful--I like to think of him as a sort of reverse bard, buffing defense instead of offense.
The question is: how can I take it to the next level? A +16-+19 to AC is nice, but surely I can do better.