You didn't mention target level(s), available books, etc.
Pretty much all books are available, though I'd prefer to avoid FR/Eberron specific stuff, Dragon, or UA (cloisered cleric seems fine) and I've banned ToB and incarnum.
As for Ordained Champion, the initial character worships Moradin, but I've been operating under a "4e gods and 3.5 gods aren't necessarily the same even if they share the same name" rule, so changing over to Heironeous should be fine, though a bit less dwarfy. I'd probably want to throw in something that incentivizes light/no armor though, with Monk being the default choice.
Add feat that allows Greataxe as a monk special weapon.
Is there a particular feat that does this, or are you suggesting homebrewing one?
Let's assume you put the best score from the elite array, 15, in wisdom, add the 2 ability increases from being at least 8th level to wisdom, and buy the best periapt of wisdom a 9th level NPC can afford, +2. That gives a wisdom score of 19, meaning a +4 to ac from monk.
Since +4 AC is also what a chain shirt gives, I don't see monk as advantageous. A couple of levels of swordsage might be good though.
What would be nice would be a way to trade combat style for something that still requires light armor but benefits a two-handed weapon wielder. Does anyone know of a variant like that?
You could go Monk 1/Cleric X with a domain that gives Mage Armor (Force, Spell) - that way he'll get a slightly better AC with no armor on. Get the Spontaneous Domain variant if he needs to cast Mage Armor several times a day.
(Btw, Avengers can't wear light armor nowadays if they want their bonus.)
It took me a while to understand what you wanted, since it goes against how we usually think.
You could go Monk 1/Cleric X with a domain that gives Mage Armor (Force, Spell) - that way he'll get a slightly better AC with no armor on. Get the Spontaneous Domain variant if he needs to cast Mage Armor several times a day.
(Btw, Avengers can't wear light armor nowadays if they want their bonus.)
Mage armor would shore things up, and I can easily claim that the ambiguous dwaren deity the character worships is a proponent of some sort of runecrafting Spell or Force domain areas. It's a pity that the character couldn't flurry with a greataxe, but this might at least make the archetype viable.
While I'm aware that Avengers are restricted to cloth if they want to use Armor of Faith, I feel like light armor still holds close to the feel of the class when converted to 3.5. Since light armor isn't necessarily very obvious, the look of the character and its mobile fighting style can remain intact.
Just looked up Shadowbane Stalker from Complete Adventurer, and it actually looks pretty good for the flavor I'm looking for. Ninja for the sneak attack dice would also serve to make going unarmored work, and War domain on a cleric could give the greataxe.
With this, I'm looking at something like Ninja 1/Cleric 4/Shadowbane X, maybe trading out cleric levels for rogue or more ninja for sneak attack, additional sudden strike, or ghost step.
Actually no. This Avenger is the non-Evil Assassin, which WotC made when they realized that people wanted to play assassins (cause they're cool) and that they had painted themselves into a corner with their overly restrictive alignement rules.
And the 4e Avenger is different because...?
Because they are divine rather than arcane, because they hit you in the face with big weapons rather than sneaking in shadows, because they don't know anything about poison?
There's an Assassin class in 4E, and the 3.5E AvengerAssassin is closer to that.
Because they are divine rather than arcane, because they hit you in the face with big weapons rather than sneaking in shadows, because they don't know anything about poison?
There's an Assassin class in 4E, and the 3.5E AvengerAssassin is closer to that.
Just to be clear, I think the class itself is probably supposed to be Slayer-of-Domiel-ish. 4e Avengers do sneak (hence the cloth armor), and while they're divine rather than arcane, 3.0 Assassins were arcane primarily because they needed some reason to have magical abilities and their flavor made divine patrons implausible. Big weapons were almost certainly included because they had a lack of big-weapon strikers (and 4e Assassins are also big weapon strikers anyway). The thing is, Slayer of Domiel and the like are part of what motivated the 3.5 Avenger. People were complaining that certain material, in particular the Book of Exalted Deeds, was just the stuff already designed for evil but with good tagged on to it, and that's precisely what the joke of the 3.5 Avenger was apropos of. 4e's Avenger is similarly a combat style and image already covered by things like Assassin and Rogue, just flavored Divine, and I think that its name was an intentional allusion to the 3.5 Avenger and its motivation.
I'm not planning to use the 3.5 Avenger for this character...for one, it's a joke class, and for another, the Shadowbane Stalker does that flavor with built-in divine gish support. I just thought it was interesting to see this connection. Sort of like when I realized where all the White Raven 4e maneuver names came from.