So, anyone got any good low-level builds?
I'm already aware of the Compilation of Low-Level Builds, which is great, but it's an old (4-6 years old) thread. I think we can do better.
Here're a couple of quirky ones I threw together myself (L1-2 is perhaps a bit too low-level, but hey). Feel free to critique, they're just some wacky ideas I had.
L1: Reckless Crusader
After playing a L1 Crusader for a bit, it seems that for them especially, hitting is more important than, well, pretty much anything else. If you can hit, you can heal and get DR via Stone Bones and so forth, so as long as you have enough HP to carry you through, it's actually better to be reckless. In fact, Reckless.
Sources: Tome of Battle, XPH
Race: Human, but with flaws, anything works.
Class: Crusader 1
Stats: Str > Con > Dex > Int > Wis > Cha*. 14 Dex is recommended, and 13 Int if you want Combat Expertise and future feats. Cha should either be 12+ (for Indomitable Soul at L2) or dumped completely.
Feats: Extra Granted Manoeuvre (L1), Reckless Offence (H)
Manoeuvres: All except Leading the Attack (since it's slightly inferior to Vanguard Strike). The key ones are Crusader's Strike and Stone Bones.
Stance: Martial Spirit
Gear: Reach weapon (glaive/guisarme/ranseur), spiked gauntlet/armour spikes, and the best armour you can afford.
What does it do?
Unless your foe has Power Attack or otherwise hits really hard, you use Reckless Offence to raise your AB at the cost of you AC. The idea is to kill everything before it kills you, and use Crusader's Strike or Stone Bones when you get hurt. Thanks to CS and Martial Spirit, as long as you have a decent health pool, you can last a long time. A nice tactic in a one-on-one fight is to punch them with Douse the Flames then run away, and take the AoO next round.
Variants: With flaws, any race can do this. Dwarf (+Con, -Cha, stability, save bonus, etc), Nezumi (OA, +Con, -Cha, 40ft speed) and Orc (+Str) are good choices, and Wood Elf could work (+Str) if you can eat the Con penalty. With flaws, you also want to pick up Combat Reflexes.
After playing a L1 Crusader for a bit, it seems that for them especially, hitting is more important than, well, pretty much anything else. If you can hit, you can heal and get DR via Stone Bones and so forth, so as long as you have enough HP to carry you through, it's actually better to be reckless. In fact, Reckless.
Sources: Tome of Battle, XPH
Race: Human, but with flaws, anything works.
Class: Crusader 1
Stats: Str > Con > Dex > Int > Wis > Cha*. 14 Dex is recommended, and 13 Int if you want Combat Expertise and future feats. Cha should either be 12+ (for Indomitable Soul at L2) or dumped completely.
Feats: Extra Granted Manoeuvre (L1), Reckless Offence (H)
Manoeuvres: All except Leading the Attack (since it's slightly inferior to Vanguard Strike). The key ones are Crusader's Strike and Stone Bones.
Stance: Martial Spirit
Gear: Reach weapon (glaive/guisarme/ranseur), spiked gauntlet/armour spikes, and the best armour you can afford.
What does it do?
Unless your foe has Power Attack or otherwise hits really hard, you use Reckless Offence to raise your AB at the cost of you AC. The idea is to kill everything before it kills you, and use Crusader's Strike or Stone Bones when you get hurt. Thanks to CS and Martial Spirit, as long as you have a decent health pool, you can last a long time. A nice tactic in a one-on-one fight is to punch them with Douse the Flames then run away, and take the AoO next round.
Variants: With flaws, any race can do this. Dwarf (+Con, -Cha, stability, save bonus, etc), Nezumi (OA, +Con, -Cha, 40ft speed) and Orc (+Str) are good choices, and Wood Elf could work (+Str) if you can eat the Con penalty. With flaws, you also want to pick up Combat Reflexes.
I have a couple low-level stunts which might help. Both require human or similar bonus-feat races to do at level 1, which is when they are by far the most effective.
1) From another thread a couple days ago, you can use Metamagic School Focus (Evocation) and Fell Drain on a level 1 human wizard or sorcerer who knows Sonic Snap. That spell uses a 1st level slot and deals 1 point of damage, no save - but it's guaranteed to apply a negative level on anything you hit, which is downright nasty at low levels. Just be sure to burn the bodies or vacate the area afterwards - you don't want to deal with wights.
2) This isn't mine, but it's a good one - you can use Precocious Apprentice (Scorching Ray) to qualify for a pretty meaty Firey Burst (Complete Mage fire spell reserve feat) to give you an at-will, 30' range, 5' radius 2d6 fire burst attack (interestingly, it's no-save), and still have a 4d6 Scorching Ray on hand for BBEGs. (If you learn Burning Hands, you can keep the bursts going after toasting the BBEG, and benefit from the secondary effect of Firey Burst). This has the advantage of being almost totally free on your spell slots, which can carry effects like Color Spray or Sleep to end battles, while still packing firepower comparable to a 3rd level warlock by your feats alone.
Neither of these scale all that well, sadly (although the first one can be diversified in interesting manners - I was thinking of adding it to a Snowcasting+Flash Frost Spell high-area, concentration-duration divination effect (Detect Magic, for instance) and creating a DOOM GAZE result), but they work for what they're intended.
The thing about a lot of games is that they're not necessarily going to run all that high, so to a certain extend something which is optimised around a certain level range at the expense of higher play might still be appropriate (hence the wacky Dread Necro, whose Lifebond Vestments are far less useful at higher levels, though not so bad for overnight healing if necessary, I guess).
I also quite like the L2 Totemist. Doesn't really matter what else you do - if you shape Girallon Arms and Rageclaws you can be a pretty mean combatant who can keep fighting down to -10 (or lower, if you splash a point of essentia in the Rageclaws). I kind of want to try a Totemist/Crusader, actually (Girallon Arms + Martial Spirit, with Rageclaws and Steely Resolve to stop yourself getting one-shotted).
There's a more recent version. There's also a repost by someone else that's actually maintained.
I concur that low-level optimization is good. (A few of the showcase builds we've got on the go mature relatively early, in fact, but we still extend it out to 20.)
I have a couple low-level stunts which might help. Both require human or similar bonus-feat races to do at level 1, which is when they are by far the most effective.
1) From another thread a couple days ago, you can use Metamagic School Focus (Evocation) and Fell Drain on a level 1 human wizard or sorcerer who knows Sonic Snap. That spell uses a 1st level slot and deals 1 point of damage, no save - but it's guaranteed to apply a negative level on anything you hit, which is downright nasty at low levels. Just be sure to burn the bodies or vacate the area afterwards - you don't want to deal with wights.
2) This isn't mine, but it's a good one - you can use Precocious Apprentice (Scorching Ray) to qualify for a pretty meaty Firey Burst (Complete Mage fire spell reserve feat) to give you an at-will, 30' range, 5' radius 2d6 fire burst attack (interestingly, it's no-save), and still have a 4d6 Scorching Ray on hand for BBEGs. (If you learn Burning Hands, you can keep the bursts going after toasting the BBEG, and benefit from the secondary effect of Firey Burst). This has the advantage of being almost totally free on your spell slots, which can carry effects like Color Spray or Sleep to end battles, while still packing firepower comparable to a 3rd level warlock by your feats alone.
Neither of these scale all that well, sadly (although the first one can be diversified in interesting manners - I was thinking of adding it to a Snowcasting+Flash Frost Spell high-area, concentration-duration divination effect (Detect Magic, for instance) and creating a DOOM GAZE result), but they work for what they're intended.
Were you the one who created these? If not, do you remember who did?
Were you the one who created these? If not, do you remember who did?
As I mentioned, I did not create the second one, but I don't remember who did. I recall seeing it suggested as a low-level arena/gauntlet build, which is why it jumped out (and why there's such emphasis on stamina and damage), but I don't remember the thread or the author.
I came up with the Fell Drain + Sonic Snap + Metamagic School Focus trick independently, but that was quite recently and I'd be very surprised if I were really the first to do it (Sonic Snap is the lowest-level no-save guaranteed damage effect in the game - the only unusual thing about this trick is that it's usable at level 1, when the negative levels tend to kill and you have no more spell slots than the feat itself allows). The Snowcasting + Flash Frost trick to attach minor damage to an area is obviously not mine (it's the Locate City nuke's trick), nor is linking that to Fell Drain (that's used in some Locate City nuke discussions to mimic a zombie apocalypse or nuclear fallout), so once you've established that a Fell Drain, low-damage, no-save cantrip can kill it's a trivial matter to combine the two. The trick there, of course, is getting the feats for it to work early enough for Fell Drain to still be a killing machine, which I don't think is possible without flaws.
But yeah, that more recent version is actually pretty cool - thanks for the spot!