splashing

[BOgre]

currently using unbongwah's temp trapmonkey. Learning what makes a toon tick, making some notes for when I start my own build (maybe when I TR...) I use the planner now and again to experiment with things, but I'm missing some key piece of info or something... That is, why do some splashed builds take their splash level at certain particular toon levels. Tihucan's temp build took a couple levels of fighter, but later on, like level 4 or 5 or something like that. I assume that unbongwah's takes rog at level 1 in order to pay the least for openlock and disable, is that right? But why the fighter level at level 4? And why did I take Mobility for my feat there? I mean, tumble AC is a pretty weak reason, unless Mobility is a prereq for something else. I'll re-ask that part of this question in unbongwah's thread, but it's relevant here too. And I've seen some weirder things going on in custom builds as well, like taking a level of fighter early on, then going back and taking another level of fighter later. There must be a reason for it, but I'm overlooking something I guess.
The reason I'd like to know, well, obviously I want to know how iti all works, but when I start to cobble together my own build I don't want to screw up and take the splash at the 'wrong' time, if there is such a thing.
Could someone educate me?

[Splatterfart]

There are only a few situations that would dictate you take a splash of a class at specific levels. These exceptions usually relate to the fact that a 1st level splash of something like Rogue will net you a significantly larger number of "free" skill points or in the case of needing a bonus feat from something like fighter or monk in order to qualify for (X).

More often than not you can freely splash into anything anytime.

[FlyingTurtle]

1. You get 4x skillpoints for your first character level.
2. At each level up, the maximum ranks for a skill that is a class skill for ANY of your classes, is character level + 3. If it is not a class skill for any of your classes, then it is (character level + 3) / 2

Rogue at level 1 is for a few more skill points (reason 1) but actually (2) is also a primary reason, because otherwise it is not easy to get max ranks on disable and UMD by level 20 with only 1 level of rogue.

You have more flex with the fighter level. The reason why it's taken early on that build is because heavy armor benefits you from level 1-10 before you get evasion and before AC becomes hard to keep high.

[karl_k0ch]

In addition to what has been said above:

There are some rogue splashed builds which do not take Rogue at level 1, simply because they only want to max out one single skill (e.g. UMD). And delaying and spreading those Levels allow them to put 8 + Int Mod points into UMD at each of the two levels.
But usually, you'll want to max out more than one rogue specific skill and that is most efficient when getting the huge amount of skill points at level 1.

Splashing always delays your initial progression of your Class. In my opinion, it is useful to take splashes after you got a nice bonus from your main class. For a Ranger, this is for instance after its 2nd level (TWF is granted), after its 6th level (Tier I PrEs unlocked and ITWF and Manyshot available), after its 11th level (GTWF and IPS), and after its 12 Level (Tempest 2).

Why is the fighter splash done that early then?
Both Tempest and AA have pretty demanding feat requirements (3 of them, to be precise), which lock down the feat choices for levels 1, 3 and 6. If you want to take Toughness before level 9, you'll need to splash in a Fighter level to get one of the PrE prereqs and to take Toughness at either of 1, 3 or 6.

For Bards, there are different break points for splashing. To me, the most important one is after level 7, which is where they get the haste spell.

Rogues levels come usually in pairs, because of Evasion (splashes into Ranger or Monk are excluded here, btw). It seems consensus that a good point to take the second rogue level is around Character level 10, where the Traps start to hurt and the Mobs cast spells which can be nasty.

Other things I take into account while splashing, aside from Spell, Feat and PrE progression: Skills. If I have a 16 Bard/2 Fighter/2 Rogue build, I'll put most likely a fighter level before the second rogue level, just because the rogue will contribute more skill points than I need for one level, while the fighter actually lacks them. Since there is a level depending cap (lvl +3) on the maximum amount of ranks, it's not useful to go rogue first and spend excessive skill points on silly things, and then to use the excessive bard skill points (less than the rogue ones) to compensate for the skill-less fighter level.

[Bobthesponge]

OP,

For your specific build I can't tell you why because I don't know it and don't feel like looking it up. The generalities have already been spoken about in earlier posts so it really comes down to what you are getting with the splash and what you are delaying by splashing. There are very few automatics - the only one I can think of is rogue at lvl 1 (anyone who doesn't is just wasting skill points and while they may be fine with it I think it is silly) but most rules can be modified to whatever you are doing at the time. In fact, splashing a level or two later or earlier may not be optimal but rarely breaks the build. Also note that these "rules" can change and updates come out.

For example, for casters the old break point used to be when you got Firewall - with the new spell changes you may want to look into that more deeply. In any case, that is why you see all those 18 wiz/2rge builds start with rge - take wiz for a while - and then pick up rge again at around lvl 10 for the evasion. WF will often wait a little longer until they can get reconstruct.

Hope that helps.

[Kinerd]

Mobility is a requirement for the Tempest Prestige Enhancement.