Now that the Dragon has been un-crippled with the 1.64 patch, I had renewed enthusiasm to try playing a shifter again.

I just have a quick character creation question:

My choices are:

1) Choosing an extra two levels of shifter and receiving Outsider Shape, Construct Shape and Infinite Humanoid Shape

2) Taking an extra two levels of fighter and having the chance for another 20HP courtesy of Epic Toughness.

I'm assuming that number 1 is by far the wisest course of action here? In either case I will reach an epic fighter (just! in the case of option 1).

One slight issue is that I never had the chance to select power attack (and therefore cleave etc) - I've belatedly realised that this is because my strength wasn't high enough. After spending a couple of hours trying the inns and outs of this build, I don't feel like re-writing out the progression from level 1 just for that - so do you think the likes of cleave etc are worth it? The line of thought that "anything you can kill with one hit isn't a threat anyway" rings true, but in a battle when swamped by fodder it could be pretty handy...so:

3) Should I go back and increase strength to gain these feats (cleave, great cleave), possibly having to take more 'Great Wisdom' feats to compensate for the lower initial wisdom score (and therefore losing out on others).

Thanks guys, as always :D

PS If there's interest, and someone would show me how to do a nice neat little table, I'll post the complete build - I think he'll be quite a melee monster when finished!

[ 10-25-2004, 07:23 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

I've seen quite a few shifter power builds with a few levels of Monk thrown in. Not only do you get a heap of cool monk feats. But your wisdom modifier gets added to your AC.

Cleave can be handy but you won't need it when in dragon form. I think Monks get it for free anyway.

Yeah, I did consider monk and it was tempting, especially as they're so popular. However, I figured that in Undermountain 10AC really isn't much and a lot of shapes come with an AC bonus anyway. Also a lot of the monk feats didn't really seem of much use to me, but maybe that's just my ignorance having never really played a monk...

Plus Fighters get the heavy armour feat for free, as well as martial specialisation and I would be using the armed shapes a lot more (as the bonuses from your own weapons transfer) than the unarmed ones so I assumed the monk would be of less use...

Maybe I should make that question 4:

4) Should I take 21 levels of fighter or monk?

Thanks for the input TDC, much appreciated! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 10-25-2004, 07:38 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

HMMM I would take monk as your shifter would benifit from Robes more than from armour IMOP

Plus I don;t think your weapon specialisation counts towards the shifted shapes or if it does you would need to take a lot of specialisation feats in order to cover the amount of different weapons that your shifter forms use.

If you pump your wisdom and have decent dex you will get insane AC bonuses by using robes and your dragon shapes will take care of your strength.

You may want to check out the Epic builders forum below. Thats where I go when looking for ways to tweak my builds.

http://nwn.bioware.com/guilds_regist....html?gid=8061

Cheers!

Thanks TDC, I'm browsing that now. Monk Shifters make him "twitch" apparently! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I've done another couple of quick builds and the only things I lose out on with the monk are all the various weapon focuses and specializations, although you can get Epic Weapon Focus.

To respond to your question TDC, specializations do transfer across to your shapes, so I had taken maximum specializations in Unarmed Combat (2/3 of the shapes) and the same for Scythe (the Risen Lord) thinking that would be quite good. It comes down to whether the AC bonus from the monk is worth the loss of +6 or so to your attack rolls...

Ahhh Didn't know that they transfered as well. Chalk that one to a learning experence! Thanks!

That +6 to your attack rols would come in handy however you can still take basic weapon specialisations as some of your monk levels (plus you do get cleave, knockdown, imp knockdown)

Also you got your monk speed as well. I got a level 11 monk with perma hast boots and he is zipping around undermountain at the moment :D

Zip Zip! :D

Would you just confirm a rather stupid question for me (but i can't seem to find an answer anywhere) - if you dual a monk into some other class, you still can't wear armour without losing his abilities, correct?


I think I'm going to choose the fighter, if only because I spent so much time tweaking him. Plus, I think it is only armour that transfers to your shapes, not robes. The 50% concealement bonus that the monk gets does look nice however!

Ah well, you can't have everything in a character!

If you wear anything but robes you lose your monk abilities.

IIRC Robes (or anything on the body doll) transfer with a shift.

Don't get me wrong the fighter will do well for you (with the heaps of feats that you will get) but I like the monk as it meshes in rather nicely with the massive wisdom that you need to get dragon shape.