Martial thoughts, and wanderings.

"She was nothing. A pretty girl in armor stolen from daddy's salle, or at least we thought. She was five feet tall with long silver hair, metallic silver hair. We came in for our tribute, like usual, and she was sitting there with her feet up on the table singing some bar ditty with the lushes in the bar. Rostar got something in his craw about the look she gave us as we kicked in the door. Like something rancid had crawled out of her sandwich.  She stood up, pulled out her rapier and a piece of paper. "

"It was a writ! The sheep paid one little girl to bring in 9 men." The bandit said. 

"One gang..one me." She said as she drew a slender rapier and stood on guard. 

One of the things I've discovered is that Martials have an awesome amount of variety at high levels that I didn't know of too clearly. I have two fighter types. The first is my Tower Shield fighter, Rhea Silvermane, champion of the Ruby Phoenix Tournament. She's tough, hard to hit (I've been a bit lax in this department but she typically has an AC in the high 30s and with combat expertise, fighting defensively can get higher.
What I learned in that module was that as good a fighter as she is as a tank, her true strength is 'set up artist' as I fell in love with Dirty Trick after earning the nickname 'The Bard Beater'. Now she's a pretty specialized build, with favorite class bonuses alternating between a variety of CMD bonuses and hp/skill points (due to Fast Learner). She has an effective +28 CMB for Dirty Trick and things like Quick Dirty Trick and Superior Dirty Trick (Staggered).
Which makes her a nasty opening throat punching fighter perfect for 'set ups' for the sneaky types, breaking massive amounts of attacks from other foes. One attack from a Brine Dragon instead of several. Making the caster she just closed in on consider recovering from said throat punch to clear the staggered or risk getting hammered by her hitting them as they gesture to cast a spell.

Lesson learned: A tank can offer more reasons to focus on her than hitting them. A fighter who can stagger, blind (then trip/disarm/bullrush/ect). Note, the trip, disarm ect.. all that comes AFTER you blinded the foe. To avoid the aoe that untrained use of these maneuvers.
A tank doens't have to be have a hard hitting weapon monster to keep attention focused on her. Maneuvers while not always as good as a good thump with a magic sword can let the rogues, wizards and such set up some really awesome moves. Not to mention you can find it a lot easier to restrain and capture. Killed enemies are good for loot, but a properly motived (and tied up) foe can be very very informative.

The other high level martial I have is Callie Del Noire, my Inspired Blade 11/Paladin 2. She's an explorer for the society in the Emerald Spire. I know swashbucklers are nasty, and the Inspired Blade in particular is a very nasty mix if used properly. Callie is an AoO monster with a dex of 23, allowing for 7 AoOs, and has in several feats to make her very flexible with Needle her adamantine rapier.
With Weapon Versatility (Undead Slayers book) she can hit with any manner of damage with it, Fencing Grace (Advanced Class Origins) gives her dex as her damage bonus, Agile Maneuvers gives her dex to her CDM, Rapier Training gives her a 'free' Weapon Focus/Specialisation (and eventually greater versions of each) along with Improved Critical with her rapier. Granted against other martial at that level she doesn't do AS much with a single hit as the other martials in the party (d6+11+11 precision doesn't scale up as much as d8 or d10 + 1.5 strength (x3 or x4) but she hits very consistently and cries way more often. Against a NORMAL foe of 2-3 attacks she can undo a lot of hits and get in a 'free' attack with one parry. With a 1 in 4 chance of threatening and an addition +4 to confirm means she has nearly a 50% chance to confirm. Death of a thousand stings is pretty awesome. Now that she's 13th each crit also inflicts a 2d6 bleed each turn till they make a heal roll (full round action) or use magical healing.


Reasons learned: Dex focused melee is epically awesome. Callie could be a LOT worse than she is. She's one point of Dex from being able to do Eight attacks of opportunity a round! (of course to do that she'd have to crit on the parry) She crits 20% more than most characters with her BAB, simply due to her mono-focus on a rapier. POTENTIALLY, assuming one parry hitting and 4 attacks (courtesy of Haste or similar effects) could equal to 10d6 bleed a round on a foe (if they are vulnerable to bleed and all 5 attacks crit). Not likely but if it does happy she gets to hammer a persistent bleed that is HUGE, and recover 5 panache points.
Downside: Dex fighter, like Str fighter tends to be focused HUGELY on one state. That means you lose points on that, and even her huge saves in the mid to high teens can be effect, and you're screwed. The other big point is a LOT of her damage is based on crits and precision damage. You can't crit a critter that means for her: no + swashbuckler level precision damage, no bleed damage or recovering of panache. (Fun note: A LOT of things in Emerald Spire are elemental or amorphous. I have gone entire levels with no crits to refresh my panache.)

The point: High level martials are nasty and can be generalized (just hit, move, repeat) or specialized.

Specialized Builds I've seen:
-The flurry of missiles: Archer builds at high level are an awesome damage build. You can put four/five arrows downrange thanks to things like Rapid Fire, Multi-shot. Add in things like Cluster Shot makes for a nasty hit against DR. You can literally stack (with a good hit) a 100+ hp shot that is blipped in as one nasty damage dealing mass rather than several 20+ hp shots.
-The Weapon Master: There are two types of this. The massive specialist who is focused around one blade. There are dozens of examples on this. Callie is very much one of these. She does everything with Needle. She hits hard, has some 'tricks' courtesy of things like her class Rapier Training ability, feats (Critical Focus, Weapon Focus, Weapon Versatility, and more). Damage on this sort of character can be impressive. The other type is the 'I pick up a weapon and am a master' types. Best example I can think of is Garet Jax from Wishsong of Shannara. This is where a fighter is top end for the a build. You got weapon training groups, which is like weapon focus/greater weapon focus/specialization for entire SETS of weapons. As the splat book and expansions come out you can add even more tricks to the basket. Examples include Defensive Weapon Training (+2/3 dodge to AC bonus vs a weapon group...), Martial Versatility (Humans only) gives you the ability to add feats from one weapon to all weapons in the group. That means like putting weapon focus/specialization (lesser/greater) to ALL weapons in the group.
The Wall: The armor monster who is impossible to hit because of all the AC bonuses set up on her. You got dodge bonuses, insight, luck, deflection, enchancement, armor and so on.

Now this is basically just the layout to what I'd like to detail later on. A Martial build guide, and yes I have yet to layout my Alchemist and Gunslinger guide into something less rambling that I had done before. But I am going to try more this year than last year. (Where my posts died off after August (SORRY)