Talk:The Right Fist of Gond - F(8), DC(8), WM(7), C(7)

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I suspect strongly that the performance mentioned in BotB is down to casting all the buffs (just) BEFORE the fight. In practise they don't last long enough to run around with, and most non- or low-caster builds would attack before the buffs were cast, probably disrupting them as concentration will easily be broken by any high strength character. Moreover the caster level is so low that any Dispel Magic would strip away the buffs.

You have to remember that even the best AI is very limited and will fail to respond appropriately much of the time. Elysius is working on BotB AI though and I reckon it will be a much tougher challenge once he stops auto-buffing of short term buffs.

Thorsson 22:36, 11 June 2008 (UTC)ThorssonThorsson 22:36, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Power Build?

Weapon Master with a warhammer? Two round buffs? Caster level shit? When did "power build" become "any random shit I threw together and happens to work some of the time"?
I propose toning this down to "melee build" maybe even "divine spellsword" but not "power build". --El Nora 23:52, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

...

The war hammer is an awesome weapon in the hands of a weapon master. I'm not sure you read any of the explanation about the weapon choice so maybe it is a waste of time to try to paraphrase for you again. The war hammer is a 1 in 20 of doing 3x damage. In the case where you can only hit an opponent 1 time in 20, your damage output is much higher than that of a long sword that is going to do 2x damage 2 times in 20... since one of those critical possibilities needs to hit first in order to do the damage. So off the bat, vs. a hard to hit opponent, the war hammer is out damaging the long sword considerably. When you are facing opponents who are easy to hit, then things change somewhat.

Furthermore, when dealing with regeneration the value of a knockout blow is much higher than whittling away at someone. If you can hit 100% of the time for small damage you will never out do someone's regeneration, if you hit 1 time in 100 for 100% damage you kill them. Those are the extremes. When dealing with a weapon master, the potential of the 4x damage and dumping out divine damage on that quadruple, gives a very real opportunity for a knockout blow. This build and Left Fist have gone in and killed an opponent on the first round by scoring two criticals. Have a look at the pictures.

This is just a spurt damage melee power build. Yes, a lot of the damage and so forth is coming from the benefit of stacking on a lot of buffs at the beginning... also with the mages, a lot of their unkillability comes from the fact that they start the game with 5-8 layers of defensive spells that they have the benefit of getting on without any disturbance.

If you go into the mod and play this against the others, you will find that it outperforms the other melee builds, falls easily to the big sorcerers, but it was never meant to go against sorcerers. The game is flawed in that the choice of items is a subset of what is in the game, and tilts everything to the sorcerers. Making yet another version of a sorcerer casting Bigby's or something else that is unresistable because the mod doesn't let you have the items meant to resist it, isn't particularly fun.

[edit] Errors in the Character Progression chart:

For one, Weapon Master has an extra level and Divine Champion is missing one when compared to the title and body of the article (The chart is F(8), DC (7), WM (8), C(7) for its class distribution). Level 28 is probably at fault - the listed class for the level is Weapon Master and the feat listed is "Divine Champion;" it probably should be a Divine Champion level.

The chart is also missing a few feats which are required for the build. Level 2 (Fighter level 1) is missing the feat "Power Attack," which is needed to take Divine Might next level as per the chart. Similarly, level 24 is missing Greater Weapon Focus, which is a prerequisite for Epic Weapon Focus four levels later on as the chart has it.

Way too vulnerable to mords/greater dispel and shadow simulacrum. You have to remember that a high end armored caster with divine shield up has close to 80 AC and critical hit immunity. How are you going to win when all your buffs get stripped away? You also won't beat any epic dodging sneakers. They can wait out your buffs in stealth and then kill you without ever letting you rebuff.

...

Thanks for pointing out the errors.

It is not possible to be a complete swiss army knife with all builds, and the intent of this build was not to do so. It is a melee fighter, as are some of the others in the pack.

As for the matter of stealthers, for the most part, those with uber stealth skills have the option of waiting out everyone.