The Fighterchanter (Fgt12/Brd8)

[Malky]

{Warning : this is the very first build i post, so it might contain errors. Thank you for correcting me if you spot a mistake}

Heya there,

While brainstorming for the future TR of my rogue, i was looking for a solo-able melee build with enough dps to be useful in groups/raids and here is what i found :

Rough sketch
Kensei II khopesh DPS with very decent healing amp
8x Haste boost IV / Power Surge per rest
9x 5m36s 6 dmg/5 atk Inspire Courage per rest {under average here, but well it's not the purpose of the build}
Buffs with Extend:
(16m) Blur, Invisibility, Heroism
(2m48s) Rage, Focusing chant {not sure if rage is 36s+6s/level, no info on ddowiki here}
(1m36s) Haste, Displacement
CSW with Empower Healing for 162 average on self, up to 211 with a 30% healing amp khopesh in offhand
Full ranks in UMD

Teh build

Character Plan by DDO Character Planner Version 3.5.1
DDO Character Planner Home Page

The Fighterchanter
Level 20 Neutral Good Human Male
(12 Fighter \ 8 Bard) 
Hit Points: 330
Spell Points: 350 
BAB: 18\18\23\28\28
Fortitude: 14
Reflex: 13
Will: 10

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
Abilities        Base Stats          Modified Stats
(34 Point)       (Level 1)             (Level 20)
Strength             18                    28
Dexterity            15                    17
Constitution         16                    18
Intelligence          8                    10
Wisdom                8                    10
Charisma              8                    10

Tomes Used
+2 Tome of Strength used at level 7
+2 Tome of Dexterity used at level 7
+2 Tome of Constitution used at level 7
+2 Tome of Intelligence used at level 7
+2 Tome of Wisdom used at level 7
+2 Tome of Charisma used at level 7

                  Starting          Feat/Enhancement
                 Base Skills         Modified Skills
Skills           (Level 1)            (Level 20)
Balance               6                    18
Bluff                -1                     2
Concentration         7                    19
Diplomacy            -1                     2
Disable Device       n/a                    n/a
Haggle               -1                    11
Heal                 -1                     0
Hide                  2                     3
Intimidate           -1                     2
Jump                  8                    20
Listen               -1                     0
Move Silently         2                     3
Open Lock             n/a                   n/a
Perform               3                     4
Repair               -1                     0
Search               -1                     0
Spot                 -1                     0
Swim                  4                    13
Tumble                6                     7
Use Magic Device      3                    23


Feats
Feat (1) : (Past Life) Past Life: Rogue
Feat (1) : (Human Bonus) Power Attack
Feat (1) : (Selected) Toughness
Feat (3) : (Selected) Extend Spell
Feat (6) : (Selected) Weapon Focus: Slashing Weapons
Feat (9) : (Selected) Empower Healing Spell
Feat (9) : (Fighter Bonus) Two Weapon Fighting
Feat (10) : (Fighter Bonus) Improved Two Weapon Fighting
Feat (12) : (Selected) Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Khopesh
Feat (12) : (Fighter Bonus) Improved Critical: Slashing Weapons
Feat (14) : (Fighter Bonus) Weapon Specialization: Slashing Weapons
Feat (15) : (Selected) Greater Two Weapon Fighting
Feat (16) : (Fighter Bonus) Quick Draw
Feat (18) : (Selected) Mental Toughness
Feat (18) : (Fighter Bonus) Oversized Two Weapon Fighting
Feat (20) : (Fighter Bonus) Greater Weapon Specialization: Slashing Weapons

Enhancements
Enhancement: Racial Toughness II
Enhancement: Human Adaptability Strength I
Enhancement: Human Improved Recovery III
Enhancement: Bard Extra Song I
Enhancement: Bard Lingering Song II
Enhancement: Bard Song Magic III
Enhancement: Bard Energy of the Music I
Enhancement: Bard Inspired Attack II
Enhancement: Bard Inspired Damage II
Enhancement: Bard Inspired Bravery II
Enhancement: Bard Warchanter I
Enhancement: Fighter Strength II
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness II
Enhancement: Fighter Extra Action Boost I
Enhancement: Fighter Attack Boost II
Enhancement: Fighter Haste Boost IV
Enhancement: Fighter Critical Accuracy II
Enhancement: Fighter Khopesh Specialization I
Enhancement: Fighter Kensei II
Enhancement: Kensei Khopesh Mastery II

Spells
Spell (1): Expeditious Retreat
Spell (1): Focusing Chant
Spell (1): Detect Secret Doors
Spell (1): Feather Fall
Spell (2): Blur
Spell (2): Invisibility
Spell (2): Rage
Spell (2): Heroism
Spell (3): Cure Serious Wounds
Spell (3): Haste
Spell (3): Displacement

Breakdowns

Those are the numbers with correct gear (+2 tomes, +6 items, +2 exceptionnal item bonus for str&con) so it might get higher as better gear comes by.

STR

28 base (incl. +2 tome, might get higher)
06 item bonus
02 exc. item bonus
08 Power surge
02 Rage
02 Yugo pot
-------------
48 STR


CON

18 Base (incl. +2 tome, might get higher)
06 item bonus
02 exc. item bonus
02 Rage
-------------
28 CON


HPs

020 Heroic Durability
120 Fighter levels
048 Bard levels
180 CON
062 Toughness + enhancements
030 GFL
020 Toughness item
045 Shroud HP item
010 Agents of argo favor
--------
535 hp without pushing it, so probably well over 600 with better gear/yugo pots/madstone love (tedious to manage 1m36s buffs with boots on, so it's either Haste/Disp/CSW or madstone rage i guess)


Healing Amp

3 human enhancements, 10&20% on DT armor -> 1.1*1.2*1.3*1.1*1.2 = 226 %
With 30% amp greensteel in offhand -> 294 %


Cure Superior Wounds on self

24.5 base per cast, 30% enhancements, 50% pot/clickie

Without Empower Healing : 24.5*1.3*1.5*2.26 = ~108 hp per cast
With Empower Healing : 24.5*1.3*1.5*2.26*1.5 = ~162 hp per cast
With Empower Healing and 30% healing amp offhand : 24.5*1.3*1.5*2.94*1.5 = ~211 hp per cast


Noticable gear
Shroud HP item
Shroud Conc opp / 150sp / Disease&blind immunity item
Shroud +6 CHA / +6 CHA skills item to hotswap when UMDing (raise dead ftw)
Torc
ToD rings with +2 exc. STR&CON
DT armor with 2 healing amp runes and... radiance guard maybe, dunno here.
GS khopeshs (Min IIs, Lit IIs)

When solo/short-manning :
Main hand : Rad II khopesh
Off hand : 30% healing amp / Conc opp / Good burst / 15 % neg energy absorption khopesh


That's it for the moment, wayya think of it ? {Yes i know 3 ranks in perform seems weird for a bard splash, but UMD > Fascinate imo}

[maddmatt70]

Nice overall build. I would have gone in a much different direction then you when it comes to the race and self healing focus however. Your spell point pool is going to be rather small (300-400) to be throwing out empower healed cure serious wounds every other second especially if you want to maintain haste/displacement etc. Instead I would just get a good umd which with displacement will be just fine soloing throughout much of the game. What I would emphasize instead of self healing would be stunning. You can get a real high stun dc with a 12 fighter 8 bard go with half orc, dwarf or warforge and put enhancement points into tactics and pick up the stunning blow feat...

[Malky]

The reason for going the human healing amp + displacement way is precisely the mana pool. A WF would need reconstruct to get such a good HP/SP ratio, and reconstruct reqs 11 wizard levels so no kensei 2 here.

Going with 8 cleric would give better heals, but no displacement... so it would have to heal twice as much in most situations.

Just noticed there's no breakdown for SP : 350 base + 200 archmagi + 150 shroud = 700 sp

With Torc, conc opp on item and weapon (those still stack afaik, even if it's not WAI) that's 30sp@5% and 2x 20sp@4% per hit... not to mention the build benefits a lot from mana pots.

Good point on the Stunning blow part, the build can probably Trip fine as it is, but getting stunning blow basically means dropping most of the healing amp if i go HOrc... hmmm dunno really
If i stay human that's 10+20ish(STR)+10(Weapon, prolly offhand so no 30%healing amp/conc opp when stunning, and no kensei love for warhammers as well unless i go full warhammer instead of khopesh) = 40 DC without enhancements (hard to free enough to take them) definately an option, but it also has some drawbacks (no vorpal on warhammers duh!)

Edit: just saw you meant stunning without a weighted weapon. Huu pretty hard on a human and going any other race means 40% less healing per cast... gonna brainstorm to check if it's possible to get a decent (40ish) stunning DC while keeping both khopeshes and human.

[Feithlin]

Nice build. I had a similar idea but less focused on healing with his own sp. That seems a good option if you can get at least a torc (perhaps you already have it since you base it on a TR).
The only problem I see in your build is your Perform skill: inexistant, which makes you loose a big ability of bards. When I planed mine, I had similar issues with the skills. To resolve it I planed to take a bard level every 2 fighter levels, but the result is annoying as it delays both PrE. Another course would be to go full Fighter then switch to Bard. At first I did like you, Bard then Fighter, but that didn't work, I couldn't get all the skills I wanted, and didn't want to put more points in Int.

Edit: When I say full Fighter, I mean 1st level Bard then 12 Fighter levels ofc.

[Feithlin]

Another option could be to use Helf instead of Human. You would loose 3rd Healing amp. tier and a feat, but you could gain Rogue dilettante line, for +3d6 SA, which is a nice add to dps (even in solo, since you seem to already have Rad II khopeshes).

[Malky]

For the perform skill : i plan to only use Inspire Courage, which has a req of 3 ranks of perform... more ranks on that build would only allow the use of fascinate but would also require to drop umd completely, so it's a matter of choosing between umd and fascinate. I'll take umd.

For stunning blow, i'd need to drop one feat and the only 2 i can reasonably drop are mental toughness and quick draw. Mental toughness is a wasted feat for casters, but when you only have 600ish sp, adding another 105sp is really good. I'd probably drop quick draw if i went the stunning blow path.

For stunning blow to be at least semi-reliable in epics i'd need all 4 ranks of fighter stunning blow tactics, i.e. 10 APs

Bard Extra Song I : 1AP (was a filler)
Bard Energy of Music I : 1AP (was mostly a filler)
Bard Lingering Song I&II : 3AP (not really a filler but 8x4min Inspire Courage is still plenty, the DR5/- song is back to 1m48s tho)
Bard Song Magic II&III : 5AP

Total 10 AP, let's see the collateral damage now :

CSW (with 10% from enhancements instead of 30%) : 137 hp
CSW with 30% HA offhand : 178 hp

About 15% less healing per cast, noticable but not build-breaking i hope.

Now what i'll buy with that loss (and with better gear req'd too)

STR breakdown :

26 Base
03 Tome
07 Epic Belt of the Mroranon
02 Exc. bonus on ToD ring
01 Exc. bonus on new GS khopesh design (30% HA / conc opp / +1 exc. str / holy)
03 Greater Might of the Abishai (3 items)
08 Power surge
02 Rage
02 Yugo pot
02 Ship buff (forgot that one of previous breakdown, but it's not really 'sustainable' per se)
--------
56 STR (bonus +23)

Stunning blow DC

10 Base
23 Str bonus
02 Kensei bonus
04 Enhancements
--------
39 sustainable DC

40 with madstone rage or store pot
42 during +6 psionic str clickie
43 with store pot and clickie

End result ? It's possible to get a 40ish stunning blow DC while staying human without giving up too much self-healing, but it requires a +3 str tome and 4 epic items (that i would probably have farmed anyway).

Now : how reliable can a 40DC stunning blow be in epics ? (no, rogues don't even think of stunning blow when making their build)

[EKKM]

Personally, I'm not a big fan of max STR on a uild like this. You drop it to 16, you lose +1hit and +1 to damage per hit and put 2 points into INT and 4 into charisma. You then have enough skill points to get perofmr/fascinate and get +2 UMD and more spell points.

I realize +1 hit/dam is significant, but in a build that appears to be aimed at solo or shortman questing the tradeoff is worth it IMO.

[Malky]

I don't even need to drop str for that Feithlin already pointed out that putting all bard levels (except the first one) after fighter levels give well enough points to max perform, umd, balance and concentration (Edit: while dropping useless stuff like tumble i had to put points into because i put all bard levels first in the character planner). But the question is : do i need it ?

If i go with stunning blow, i have to drop both lingering song & extra song. It means that i have 8 songs per rest, and fascinate will only last 24s... go figure. Not to mention that getting the stunning blow DC to an acceptable level while keeping my healing amp stuff fills pretty much all my gear slots... i don't think i'd have a free slot to put a +15 perform item into without giving out something probably more important (Edit: hotswap'ing an item would work tho, it's just a little bit more tedious )

If i don't take stunning blow it's a totally different story... but i'm very very tempted to take it

Btw the main purpose of that build is to *be able* to solo/shortman well while still being useful in epics/high end content. If you had to pick between stunning blow and fascinate, what would be your choice ? (Edit: i'm kind of wrong here since it's possible, i just dunno if a few 24s fascinates will change much (prolly yes for shortmanning and no for epics/raids))

[Malky]

Gonna rewrite the build with both stunning blow and max ranks in perform tonight, keep the comments coming it's becoming better and better