Armored TWF - high AC possible?

[Aerendil]

smart play

You mean, let the Warforged Barbarian run in first, take out half the enemies, and then die in a horrible fashion as you then save the day with Intimidate and mute your party chat so they don't hear you snickering?

[Hadrian]

You want a mithril breastplate, not a chain shirt. You'll get one more AC out of the deal.

You should have extremely high survivability early on, as the AC requirements are low until you hit gianthold.

If you have the money to afford it, buy potions of bull's strength, cat's grace, etc. until you're high enough level to wear at least +4 items, and buy barkskin and shield of faith potions to give you an extra 6 AC starting at level 5.

Cat's Grace + Barkskin + Shield of Faith can potentially be an extra 8 AC for you.

One last quick point: It would really make a lot of sense to add at least 6 ranger to this build for Tempest. That's another 2 AC, 2 favored enemies, a higher rate of attack, a weak version of ram's might, and two of the three TWF feats for free.

Then your best options seem to be 8 fighter/6 ranger/2 rogue (or monk) or 12 ranger/4 fighter if you want to fit evasion. Personally, I would think the second choice is the superior one although the primary fighter would get one more feat and 1 more str in trade for 1 dex.

[Aerendil]

^^ I had considered the Tempest route, and it's another tempting choice to be honest.
But my train of thought is essentially that if I dip 6 levels into Ranger and 2 into Rogue, I may as well then just go all 9 into Ranger (for Evasion). And if I dip 9 into Ranger, I may as well go 11 (for all the free feats) or 12 (for max. Barkskin).
And then, suddenly, I'm not a Fighter anymore. I'm a Ranger with Intimidate.
Which is not altogether a bad thing, and probably something I'll roll up in the near future anyways (Tempest 12 Ranger / 4 Fighter), but wasn't what I was aiming for with this build.
Essentially I think I can best describe this build as wanting to emulate the STR-build TWF Ranger without actually going Ranger, and substituting my favoured enemies and Ranger spells for... a crapton of feats, and heavy armour.

So at this point I think I'm more keen on Phenx's build and staying pure Fighter (or mostly pure) and going either Halfling or Elf to splurge on dragonmarks. Worst case scenerio, maybe pick up /Rogue2 for Evasion if I can stomach wearing only light armour and/or Wizard1 (if I go Elf) for Extend, and some nice early-level helpers (Shield, Detect Secret Doors, Expeditious Retreat, Tumble, Jump and Feather Fall are all highly useful - although most can be replicated by equipment/potions).

It's just not as easy as I thought, and there's *way* too many choices and not nearly enough time and/or character slots to try them all!

[Hadrian]

It might be a good idea to wait until the new prestige class features come out for fighters.

Right now your description of a fighter TWF trying to emulate a tempest ranger is a bit like the Cincinnati Bengals trying to emulate an NFL-worthy football team. It's just sad to watch the futile effort. Yes, you will get a lot of extra feats, but there is nothing much to choose with them. You'll be able to spend them all to gain a small fraction of what you gave up by not going ranger.

Once the new options for fighters open up, things might be much more even, but you won't know how to build for them until they are relased. Building now might cause you to make choices that are incompatible with those new options.

[The_Phenx]

You mean, let the Warforged Barbarian run in first, take out half the enemies, and then die in a horrible fashion as you then save the day with Intimidate and mute your party chat so they don't hear you snickering?

Lol I prefer the jump in kick a lot of ass... then when I get nicked up enough jump out... which leaves the barbarian all alone who then draws all the aggro and dies, the I pop a dragonmark...and clean up.. res the barbarian.. then snicker..then type in guild chat how gimpy barbarians are.

[EKKM]

It is nice.. but... a 2nd tier shroud clickie (fairly easy to make) accomplishes this with 3 clicks of 1:35 displacement... and you dont waste three feats to get it, the only dragonmarks that are worth much at all are the halfling healing line.

Plus by going halfling you gain +1 ac +1 to hit and access to the halfling luck line for good boosts to your saves, and the halfling guile line for sweet sweet flanking damage and + to hit, and halfling dexterity.

FYI the Elven displacement mark is only second tier, shadow walk is the third.

[Aerendil]

^^ Yeah. I had a feeling Phenx knows this, so I didn't bother pointing that out. But yeah, you're right
It's nice as a pure Fighter to be able to have Displacement quite early on (I picked it up at 6, although I probably could have swung level 3 or 4 if I wanted).

I did toy around with this character concept, though, and got an Elf 5 or 6 Fighter (I forget where I left him off) / 1 Wizard (for Extend + 2min Shield). He did quite well up to this point, unless he has to main tank at which point he crashes and burns. His AC is extremely low for a proper tank (23ish), so having that Shield spell up or using a proper shield is essential.
So it's frustrating, to say the very least, that I need to equip a shield and/or cast Shield spell *and* pop a barkskin potion just to get the same AC as my Dwarven S&B Fighter at a similar level. Grrr

But his AC is especially noticeable in things like Delara's speed runs where it's essential to have Evasion and/or a reasonable AC for the entire run. However, I ran him through Gwylan's and he did wonderfully in there (as I had time to prep buff before certain boss encounters).

As I mentioned in the Ranger forum, if I had to do it all over again I'd probably go with a Ranger/Wizard, or simply level up as a S&B build and not jump right into TWF (as I did with this build).

So from here I'm not sure if I'll just re-roll him once Kensai is announced fully, or whether to keep going (either 10 Fighter / 6 Wizard or 15 Fighter / 1 Wizard, not sure which).

Plenty of fun when he's not tanking though, but that low AC, no Evasion, and no means of self-healing does hurt...

[drachine]

I traded out for Dex enhancements to put my dex at 26 and picked Fighter Armor Mastery II. I wear the chain shirt of crippling. Before this enhancement change my dex was 24. I noticed there was no change to my AC and my max dex bonus remained at 6 so I took it off.

Isn't it supposed to change to 8 now? Why did this not work?

[drachine]

Do these dodge bonuses stack with each other?

[Blazer]

Do these dodge bonuses stack with each other?

All sources of Dodge bonus stack.