How To Build a Weapon Master


The Weapon Master prestige class has a number of special features that improve your abillity to land critical hits and the damage that those do. It's therefore a good idea to maximize that potential when building your character.

The most obivious way to do this is by increasing your number of attacks (and thereby the number of chances for a critical hit). The only way we can do this is by using either two weapons or a double weapon.

Abillity Scores:
STR 16 (good for a fighter and you need high strengh for the Epic critical feats)
DEX 15 (minimum for Improved Two Weapon Fighting)
CON 14 (as high as we can afford)
WIS 8 (Wisdom is unimportant)
INT 14 (13 is minimum for Expertise, the extra point is most useful here, for one more skill point per level.)
CHA 8 (Charisma is unimportant)

And start as a Fighter.

Using two weapons:
pro: you save a feat (exotic weapon proficiency).
con: you must either use two small weapons (and therefore deal less damage) or two medium weapons (and suffer attack penalties) or somehow manage to get 3 extra feats to effectively wield two different weapons.

Feats:
Lvl 1: Dodge, Expertise, Mobility
Lvl 2: Weapon Focus
Lvl 3: Two Weapon Fighting
Lvl 4: Spring Attack
Lvl 5: -
Lvl 6: Whirlwind Attack, Weapon Specialization

Switch to Weapon Master at Lvl7

Lvl 9: Ambidexterity
Lvl 12: Improved Critical

Switch to back to Fighter at Lvl 14

Lvl 15: Improved two weapon fighting, feat of your choice actually.

This is also a good option if you want to use a race other than human, in that case take Mobility as you Lvl2 feat, Weapon Focus at Lvl3 and take Two Weapon Fighting at Lvl12, Improved Critical at Lvl15

Using a double weapon:
pro: good damage and critical potential.
cons: you need to take Weapon Proficiency Exotic.

Feats:
Lvl 1: Dodge, Expertise, Mobility
Lvl 2: Weapon Proficiency Exotic
Lvl 3: Weapon Focus: Two-Bladed Sword
Lvl 4: Spring Attack
Lvl 5: -
Lvl 6: Whirlwind Attack, Weapon Specialization

Switch to Weapon Master at Lvl7

Lvl 9: Ambidexterity
Lvl 12: two weapon fighting

Switch to back to Fighter at Lvl 14

Lvl 15: Improved two weapon fighting, Improved Critical

Going from lvl 15:
Advance as a fighter, be sure to always increase you strengh. Take Epic strengh every chance you get (21, 24, 27) and increase your strengh by 1 at 24. This should set you up for taking Overwhelming Critical at lvl24 and Devastating Critical at 27.

adding more classes:

Rogue:

How to multiclass:
Take a level of Rogue at Lvl 17 or 12 (if you do that take the final level of Weapon Master (7) as level 16). Be sure to have enough skill points saved by that time to max Tumble and Use Magic Item. Timing it this way will let you get 20(15 if you do it at lvl12) ranks in those skills.

What you get:
Sneak Attack (+1D6): Seeing as you are able to sneak attack more often than not, this comes in handy.
Increased AC, for every 5 ranks in tumble you get +1 AC Bonus, no matter your armor.
Use Magic Device skill: Use (almost) any magical item in the game.
Evade

What you lose:
One point of base attack bonus as long as you take only one or two Rogue levels, more if you take more as well as a fighter bonus feat.

Worth it?
Imho, definitly.

Variation: taking more Rogue levels:
Take one more Rogue level at levels 22 and 27 to reap the maximum benefit from Tumble and UMD.
In this case you also won't be able to chose Devastating Critical at Lvl27 and that's a bit of a downer, but since by then you will allready be in the final parts of the game, it's not that bad.

Champion of Torm:

How to multiclass:
Start at lvl 16. The important thing to consider is to multiclass when you have an even number of fighter levels, since otherwise you'll miss out on one of you bonus feats.

What you get:
Saving throw bonuses (up to +5 on all saves).
All the other CoT features need a high charisma, which you don't have.

What you lose:
Nothing.
Well, you do lose the chance of multiclassing to Rogue.

Worth it:
If you don't go with anything else, yes.

Assassin

How to multiclass:
Be sure to have have 8 Ranks in Hide and Move Silently, which is no problem even with cross class skills
At lvl16 take your first level of Assassin and stick with it till lvl25, when you will be Fighter 8, Weapon Master 7, beyond that (if you're playing HotU at least) you can expect to earn another 2 lvls, which should be fighter levels (for the BAB and the bonus feat).

What you get:
Death attack, which is just like a Rogue's sneak attack, but better.
Tumble and Use Magic Device as class skills, just like a Rogue.
Some spell like abillities (Ghostly Visage, Improved Invisibillity, Darkness)
Save bonus vs. Poison.
Uncanny Dodge 1-3

What you lose:
+3 Base Attack compared to taking those levels as a fighter, a number of bonus feats.
Also, unlike a Rogue, you do not get evasion, but that abillity can readily be aquired through magical items.

Worth it:
You can still manage to get Overwhelming Critical at lvl 27, but all in all you lose 3 Epic feats compared to the fighter route.

Other options might be Blackguard, Shadow Dancer (starting at lvl 17), Barbarian or Paladin.

The Blackguard doesn't offer anything usefull (thanks to your low charisma) that the assassin wouldn't do better, the shadowdancer offers nothing at all to our primary concept and what it does offer (damage reduction mostly) can easily be obtained via magical items.
The Barbarian would bring us Rage (which is nice), faster movement (nice) and Uncanny Dodge.
The Paladin finally brings some imunities and a host of abilllities that depend on charisma and are therfore pretty useless to us.

Aremah has an interesting comment to this build:
[quote="Aremah"]Also, I know this probably has been argued before, but I believe going Fighter 12/Weapon Master 28 is more beneficial that Fighter 33/Weapon Master 7, especially when dual wielding (with Improved Two Weapon Fighting - where you get 6 attacks, or 7 when hasted). I'm talking about very similar builds, of course - it's just the decision of separating the levels between the two.

The F12/WM28 character loses out on 5 fighter bonus feats (2 pre-epic) in total and gets slightly lower Fortitude saves, but gains +6 to attack (the WM gets +1 to attack with the chosen weapons at levels 5, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 27, contrary to what the manual says) and better Reflex saves. If a F33/WM7 character were to offset the AB with Epic Prowess (3 of them), he'd still come out with 3 AB less than the F12/WM28 one, the other feats would effectively be the same, and the gain in Fortitude saves in the first case is smaller than the loss in Reflex saves.

Of course, this does not factor in addidng a third class, and I'll admit,
Fighter/WeaponMaster is the only multiclassing I've done in 3E games. I've always been a fan of pure classes, but recently I'm seeing more and more viability in 3 class builds (including prestige classes, of course). I was just wondering whether you've thought if your build with Rogue levels could be made better switching the balance from Fighter to Weapon Master.[/quote]

Thanks to everybody who had comments and corrections to offer, it's appreciated.

Submitted By: t. a. j.