What is the worst "logical" build you can think of?

[glmfw1]

Planning for future TRs, I was looking through the various races, classes and enhancement trees.
Some Races and Classes have useful synergies (e.g. gnome, artificer, rogue-mechanic all have crossbow potential) while other classes don't have synergies from one tree to another.
There are good race/class combos, optimal class mixes, and optimal numbers of levels to take in multi-class combos to gain maximum impact.
But what would happen if we did the opposite, choosing classes that don't really work well together, races that don't give them extra benefits, made the wrong level splits... all while making seemingly logical choices from the character's perspective.
What combinations can you think of that a DDO Character might come up with, that make sense to them but just wouldn't work in practice?

[Xanthrawl]

Any Warforged. :-(

[Riddle_of_Steel]

In most cases you need to think like a PnP player who moved over.

So for example let's say you wanted a Melee battle cleric with strong buffing and occasional spell Damage ability. You might think a Half-Orc Cleric (9) Wizard (7) Fighter (4). Think about it you get Raise Dead, you get Stoneskin (and fireball for the LOL's of course) and weapon specialization so you are set.

Sounds reasonable but my God in DDO's world sure it could "work" but almost anything would be better. Hell dropping a level of cleric and taking an extra level of fighter would be better so you could at least take a fighter tier 5 enhancements.

But for sure that split sounds good, even workable but you'd be better off as a h-elf pure fighter with a pally dillante feat or even a pure Dragonmarked Halfling fighter (still bad choices but less bad).

I bring this one up mainly because I bumped into that player back in the day, dropped them a couple of tomes to fix some stat issues they had (of course back when you found 1-3 +2 tomes a life before they heavily monetized tomes) and gave them some "it's DDO not Dungeons and Dragons" advice.

[Riddle_of_Steel]

Any Warforged. :-(

Gotta disagree there. My warforged Arty is hella fun and a solid build!

[AbyssalMage]

What combinations can you think of that a DDO Character might come up with, that make sense to them but just wouldn't work in practice?

Huh? They all work at some level.

Even DC based Half-Orc Sorcerer even works once you have the gear.

[fmalfeas]

Traditional summoner conjurer/druid. In tabletop, they're immensely powerful. In DDO, they have to run on Casual.

[Selvera]

What is undoubtedly the worst character build which I played to date was a Eldritch swashbuckler. And yet I thought it would be good enough to actually TR into the build and level it up far enough that I didn't want to spend the money to get an lesser heart of wood to TR out of it.

So Selvera; what could have possibly have possesed you to think a build like that could have worked?
Well, it comes down to my belief at the time that charimsa to damage in swashbuckler would combine well with charisma as a casting stat for sorcerers; while the universal spellpower boosts from Eldrich Knight would buff up the swashbuckler's sonic damage on critical hits as well as the elemental damage on every attack with a fast attackspeed of single-weapon-fighting. I knew it wasn't going to be a power build, but I thought there was enough synergy there to make a workable character. Swashbuckler only takes 3-4 levels to be effective, which would leave me 16-17 levels of sorc, (elemental imbues only care about sorc levels, not investment in the EK tree). So I could take primarily melee enhancements in bard, and sorc levels for powerful spells and elemental imbues.

What went wrong?
For one, I didn't plan out the build in a build-planner app beforehand, so I overlooked some details such as minimum BAB to take some key feats. Turns out that multiclassing a class with 1/2 BAB with a class that has 3/4 BAB ends up wanting when it comes to required melee feats. This resaulted in me not having Greater Single Weapon Fighting until epics, and I didn't even have improved single weapon fighting until level 15 or 18. This is a significant problem for any swashbuckler build.
Secondly; I discovered that elemental imbues do not scale with spellpower, so I wasn't doing +12d4 damage per attack, I was doing +3d4 damage per attack.
Thirdly; I had planned on using orbs in the offhand, and wearing robes. This might sound pretty swashbuckler-y and sorcerer-y in theory; but it turns out that running a melee with effectively no AC and no PRR, and no free 10% dodge (on someone who doesn't have AC or PRR or dodge pastlives); is rather painful. I certainly had not planned out arcane spell failure, but I think I did end up in light armor at some point.

So by the time these flaws in the build became glaringly apperent, I was level 10+ and fixing it on a multi TR'd character isn't super easy (I think that was her 3rd or 4th life). So I resorted to dropping down difficulties and/or leaching xp off of people who had competent builds until I got to level 20 (sort of playing it like a watered down sorcerer with less damage). That's also the life where I learned that any build can survive EH dailies if you just go into draconic and use the SLA's there with moderate spellpower.

[Ralmeth]

A transmuter focused Wizard...My last PnP character was from 2nd edition, and he was a Dual Classed Fighter 7 (Fighter first) / Magic User 13, with a focus on transmutation spells. The build worked great as the 7 levels of Fighter gave him good hit points, and the ability to melee competently. The Magic User (now Wizard) of course was pretty powerful once he started getting up in level. The transmutation focus was to mess with the DM and bypass as much as possible. However in DDO transmutation has been neutered, rightfully so, as otherwise it would be THE spell school of choice that could be used to cheese your way to a quick victory in most quests...Think: Cast DDoor straight to the end, cast passwall under the red name and when they fall in, dispel passwall, collect loot and XP.

[LeoLionxxx]

Off the top of my head:

Warforged
12 lvs of Sorcerer, for nuking things and healing with repair spells
6 lvs of barbarian, for HP and survival; turns on rage in emergencies
2 lvs of Druid so he can turn into a bear, for the CON boost and fun

Seems pretty terrible to me

[mr420247]

Epic wf dps caster ya thats bout the worst there is

Aasimar cleric or human clonk maybe is the new op

Frog implosion undeath 2 destructions and maybe a r10 epic turn undead

[Kulothar]

During Beta my toon was a WF Cleric. At this time WF had all of the defects and none of the benefits. The consept was that the caster could heal me while I healed the group. The reality was all of my sp and plat went to heal myself.

[mr420247]

I rem playin the heal bot all wf barb teams screaming heal meeeh fun times

[cdbd3rd]

Soloist Enchanter.

[glmfw1]

What is undoubtedly the worst character build which I played to date was a Eldritch swashbuckler...

Awesome

[glmfw1]

During Beta my toon was a WF Cleric. At this time WF had all of the defects and none of the benefits. The consept was that the caster could heal me while I healed the group. The reality was all of my sp and plat went to heal myself.

I've always wondered at WF hirelings with healing powers... great for keeping you alive until they die because healing them takes so much effort!

[glmfw1]

Huh? They all work at some level.

Even DC based Half-Orc Sorcerer even works once you have the gear.

But if (s)he multi-classed as a Cleric (for some healing power, because Clerics get heals by default) and Fighter (for melee ability), because Sorcs are too squishy, and went for an 8/7/5 split (meaning (s)he was quite good and each thing) in theory, then you get a nice mix of lack of stat synergy (Cha/Wis/Str) and can accidentally gimp the fighter levels by picking deity based on nature of the faith or lvl 6 feat rather than favoured weapon.
Rolling dice for stats PnP style could still make this work (I once had a level 1 with 4 18s, a 16 and a 12 due to incredible luck on roll 4d6 and drop the lowest 6 times), but with point-buy, the gearing to get the right stats/skills etc to make it viable would be horrendous!

[Pyed-Pyper]

sun elf cleric

[mr420247]

Sun elf clerics make real clerics mad ok intel ups no wis no charisma

Sdks suck but they don't make me mad

Give sdks level drain immunity or harm necro heals vampirisim they would be fun

[Xanthrawl]

Gotta disagree there. My warforged Arty is hella fun and a solid build!

Mine was too, before Reaper. RIP Warforged.

[glmfw1]

sun elf cleric

As a Gold (Sun) Elf Cleric (Morninglord) of Lathander in PnP, I had a ton of background info to explain why I was worshipping a human God rather than an elven one (it made sense, given some bits of Realmslore, but I was still an unusual case). As the Pool of Radiance computer game had the "Blade of Lathander" as a weapon, the DM ruled that I could use a Longsword as my main weapon and still be true to my faith.
Roll on DDO and they have taken Class abilities from the Morninglord speciality priest kit/prestige class and put them into the racial tree of a group of elves whose favoured class is Wizard, then made them Morninglords of Amaunator, despite Morninglords who apparently got spells from Amaunator (formerly dead sun god) during the thing between 3.5 and 5 still following him as Lathander (god of the dawn). As elves, they got left with their racial proficiencies in rapiers longswords and bows, but got given Heavy Maces in their racial tree. Elves have long enough racial memories to not even think of him as "Amaunator" and humans should be saying "why can't we be clerics of one of the most popular human Gods?".
All in all, probably the most nonsensical and least iconic bit of deliberate character design work in DDO.