Character Optimization Part 2: Heroic Low

A lot of players like to plot out their progression all the way to Epic tier. But let’s be honest. Optimization is more about knowing your game than anything else. Different choices have different values based on the game’s power level. A Heroic-tier game that won’t even hit level 10 requires a different mindset than a game that starts at level 15!

Retraining can cover for a lot of sins, but there are a few things you can’t retrain for. Today we’ll start with Low-level Heroic gaming.

When starting from first or second level, you have to be optimized right out of the gate. Forget Paragon Paths, you just want to survive, and kick butt now, not in five or six levels!

In low-level games, having a high primary stat is most important. You want the best chance to hit, and to have your powers pack the biggest punch possible. This means, however, that the rider benefits of your secondary stat won’t be so hot, so don’t set yourself up to rely on them!

At low-levels, forget versatility, you want to be focused and specialized. You have a job to do, so make sure you can do it! For our example of low-level building, let’s focus on The Fighter.

DISCLAIMER: The views presented here are not based on in-game experience, but a logical examination of possible playstyles and environments. If you have found that an option presented here isn’t as good as I think it is, or that something I discount is much better, that’s great! Let me know, and I’ll certainly re-evaluate my builds. This is an exercise in one possible way to approach Character building, and is far from the only way!

First of all, you’re a Defender, so you want to make sure you can Defend! It may be tempting to go with a Guardian Fighter, to optimize your AC, but the fact of the matter is, most enemies at this level can be slaughtered with a few weapon attacks. With this in mind, you likely want a good offense. Great Weapon Fighter shows some promise here, as you’ll quickly rip enemies apart. But how tough are your enemies going to be?

Let’s consult the Monster Manual to find out! Although Monsters have been improved greatly in future volumes, I’m choosing Monster Manual I, as it contains more iconic enemies that you’ll likely face at low levels. The Dire Rat is a level 1 Brute. These are going to be fairly tough opponents, so let’s see what they can do.

Ok, the Dire Rat has 38 hit points, but only has an AC of 15, and his attack is a laughable +4 vs. AC. His damage is a fairly weak 1d6+2, but he does have a disease; filth fever, a level 3 disease. So you definitely don’t want this guy to hit you very often! Suddenly Scale Mail and a Heavy Shield are looking like good options; with an 19 AC, this guy only hits on a 14, a 35% chance of failure.

Not shabby, but with 38 hit points, this guy needs to go down quick. A 20 Strength Fighter could hit the rat 50% of the time with raw strength alone, so a +2 proficiency bonus will likely ensure you won’t often miss. Still, a Broadsword is only going to do 1d10+5; you’re going to need a few hits to take this thing down!

We’re building in a vacuum again, of course; we don’t know how good our Striker is. A Half-Orc Brutal Scoundrel Rogue could simply walk up, flank the rat with you, and deliver 4d6+11 damage to it with Torturous Strike and leave the thing one hit shy of death!

Then again, your Striker could be a Sorcerer throwing 1d10+8 Acid Orbs at the thing, because he thought it would be cooler to take a Burst 3 as his encounter power! So again, know your group!

Different Fighter builds have differing advantages, of course. Great Weapon Fighters are amazing against single enemies, but lose a lot when dealing with minions. Guardian Fighters have high defense and can push their enemies around like nobody’s business, but unless your party is set up to use forced movement, that won’t mean as much.

So which is best for your party? After some thought, I’m going with Guardian; you want to be invincible at low levels, since your Mark’s penalty is still considerable, as is the free hit it can grant (assuming Combat Superiority).

-Yeah, I know, there’s several other builds I skipped over, but I’ll get to them some other time.

So let’s start with stats. You want the highest Strength possible, and you want to have a Wisdom bonus for Combat Superiority. You can use Combat Agility of course, but I’ll discuss that option at a later time.

Constitution is at it’s most valuable at level 1, since each point of Con is another hit point, and you want hit points. Let’s go with 18 Str, 13 Con, 10 Dex, 10 Int, 13 Wis, and 8 Charisma. You can shuffle around the 8, of course, I chose Charisma because mostly all you’d be doing with it is making Intimidate checks. Which are super hard to make in combat (+10 DC against a hostile opponent), so let the Charisma-based guys do that. Not that it’s a bad idea to train Intimidate, if you want the yummy Skill Powers.

Next is Race. Ideally, we’d want to boost Strength and Con, making the Goliath or Minotaur a solid choice. But there are other considerations. For example, Dragonborn gives you a nasty Minion-destroying encounter power as a Minor Action! It’s not hard for a Fighter to get all his enemies in a Close Blast 3 either. So that’s a definitely good choice for low level play.

Dwarves aren’t bad either, and Dwarven Resilience is equally awesome at this level. Plus, their stat mods are a slightly better fit than the Dragonborn’s +2 Charisma!

Human shines as well. While you probably don’t need another at-will, the bonus Feat is phenomenal here.

Longtooth Shifter is a nice option, because once they are Bloodied, they get Regeneration 2 (which at level 1 is at it’s most powerful), plus a hefty damage boost. And Str + Wisdom is pretty good as well.

Now another consideration for races is their Feat support. But we’re not dealing with a lot of Feat slots right now, so I’ll save that for higher-level builds. Dragonborn is calling to me here; an extra encounter power is very useful, and that one is pretty sweet. Plus, Dragonborn get a slightly bigger Healing Surge, which may come in handy.

Now the +2 Charisma doesn’t do much, turning an 8 into a 10. I’m not sure what we’ll do with it, but I’m going to swap Int and Charisma here, and get a 12 Cha. It may open up some options at Paragon tier, if nothing else. I know that seems counter to the exercise; we’re optimizing for low Heroic-tier, but it doesn’t hurt the build any.

So now we have 20 Str, 13 Con, 10 Dex, 8 Int, 13 Wis, and 12 Cha. We’ll base the breath weapon on Strength, but now we have a choice of elemental type. I’m going to go with Acid; the resistance isn’t as common, and there are some enemies that you’ll want Acid to fight.

Backgrounds can be an important choice, but without knowing which ones the DM will be using, I won’t assume we’ll get any cool ones. Looking at the skill list, the obvious choices are Athletics, Endurance, and Intimidate. I say Endurance because there are some nice Endurance Skill powers available for Defenders. I’m going to suggest another option, however, by using a Background to add Perception to the list. True, there will be characters better at it than you, but it’s better to have a chance of noticing something than not, especially for a Defender.

While there are nice Intimidate Skill Powers, and we have a 12 Cha, I’m going with Athletics, Endurance, and Perception for now. Heal is also a nice Skill for low level play, but hopefully someone else will have it, since the person most likely to be needing Heal checks is, well, you!

Feats, so many choices, and we only get one. Ideally, we want a Feat that grants more than a +1 bonus, and isn’t too situational. Superior Weapons are nice, but the damage isn’t too much greater at to be worth it just yet.

Quickly going over the list, I see the following gems:

-Bolstering Breath. So this makes your encounter Racial not only not damage allies, but give those allies a +1 to hit. It’s kind of Leader-ish, but worth considering.

-Dragonborn Frenzy. +2 to damage rolls when bloodied isn’t bad.

-Enlarged Dragon Breath. Blast 5, wow! But hopefully we won’t need it at low levels…

-Glorious Victory. Free surge after killing a foe once per encounter? This could be pretty good.

-Draconic Combat Challenge. Dragonborn really have some great Feat support! +3 Acid damage when using Combat Challenge is pretty nice, but it may be better for higher levels.

-Dragonclaw Mark. This lets you do bonus damage to a Marked enemy with your Breath. Also nice, but only once per encounter.

These are all good choices, but for low-levels, you’re going to be using your Exploits a lot. So I’m going to take a look at Style Feats, which grant some nice bonuses to your At-Wills.

-Bloodhound Style. Instead of a push, Tide of Iron can Slow an enemy until the end of your next turn. That’s pretty solid; reducing an enemy to Speed 2 can mean a lot more than force movement, and you get a choice!

-Arkhosian High Style. If you miss on Reaping Strike, use your Breath as a free action. I’ll have to think about this…

-Arkhosian Fang Student. +2 bonus to hit a bloodied foe with Footwork Lure. Not shabby.

-Ironstar Student. This one sounds nice, giving your opponent a -2 to attack rolls until the end of your next turn when you use Reaping Strike. But you have to have Combat Advantage, and you need to use a flail or a mace.

I think though, I’m going to go with Shield Defense, which grants a +1 untyped bonus to AC and Reflex whenever I hit with a power that requires a shield. Now, onto powers.

My first at-will is a no-brainer, since I took Shield Defense. Shield Feint grants a very nice +3 power bonus to my next attack roll against an enemy. It activates my Shield Defense, and is a nice set-up attack. And if nothing else, I can chain it with itself against an enemy that’s hard to hit! Next is Cleave, simply because it’s very nice at dispatching minions, and 5 damage to a secondary target isn’t bad either.

There are a lot of nice encounter powers, but I think for level one we need something that can really hurt an opponent. Covering Attack, Insightful Strike, Lunging Strike, and Steel Serpent Strike are all good choices. I’m going to go with Steel Serpent Strike because slow and cannot shift pretty much means an enemy is going to sit there or trigger your mark…and they don’t want to trigger your mark!

Your choice of Daily is important; after all, you only get to use it once. That means it’s either got to kill an enemy outright, or create a nice momentum shift for you.

-Brute Strike. 3 [W] + Str damage. Nothing fancy, but it really doesn’t need to be!

-Comeback Strike: free healing is nice, but as a daily? I’m not so sure.

-Lasting Threat. Brute Strike with a permanent Mark that cannot be overridden. Oh yeah!

-Villain’s Menace. It doesn’t do any more damage than Steel Serpent Strike, but it grants a +2 power bonus to attack rolls and a +4 power bonus to damage rolls for the rest of the fight. This is really nice for long, protracted battles.

At level 1, you probably don’t need Villain’s Menace, so I’m going with Lasting Threat. But retraining into Villain’s Menace later on is a definite option, and one worth considering!

I could have taken some multi-target powers, but I figure between Breath and Cleave, you’re doing pretty good; better to have some serious pain for hard targets.

And that’s pretty much it for level 1. Get yourself a Heavy Shield, Scale Mail, and a solid one-handed weapon. Of course, that only leaves you with 15 gp for a weapon. You could be cute and try to grab a Longsword or Battleaxe and have no equipment, but go with the mace. You’ll be able to upgrade quick, or possibly you can borrow some money from one of your “friends” for an upgrade.

So here’s what we have so far:

level 1

Dragonborn, Fighter

Build: Guardian Fighter

Fighter: Combat Superiority

Fighter Talents: One-handed Weapon Talent

Dragonborn: Dragon Breath

Dragon Breath Key Ability: Dragon Breath Strength

Dragon Breath Damage Type: Dragon Breath Acid

Background: Geography – Forest (Perception class skill)

FINAL ABILITY SCORES

Str 20, Con 13, Dex 10, Int 8, Wis 13, Cha 12.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES

Str 18, Con 13, Dex 10, Int 8, Wis 13, Cha 10.

AC: 19 Fort: 17 Reflex: 12 Will: 11

HP: 28 Surges: 10 Surge Value: 8

TRAINED SKILLS

Perception +6, Endurance +4, Athletics +8

UNTRAINED SKILLS

Acrobatics -2, Arcana -1, Bluff +1, Diplomacy +1, Dungeoneering +1, Heal +1, History +1, Insight +1, Intimidate +3, Nature +1, Religion -1, Stealth -2, Streetwise +1, Thievery -2

FEATS

Level 1: Shield Defense

POWERS

Fighter at-will 1: Shield Feint

Fighter at-will 1: Cleave

Fighter encounter 1: Steel Serpent Strike

Fighter daily 1: Lasting Threat

ITEMS

Heavy Shield, Scale Armor, Mace

Join us next time when we’ll discuss levels 2, 3, and beyond!

Continued in Part3: Heroic Medium

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