Optimize This: Minotaur Fighter

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A couple of months ago I needed to create a new character to play in Wizard of the Coast’s new Encounters program. Since I mostly been playing strikers and leaders lately, I decided that I would create a defender to play for this new program.

What is your job?

Defenders have one primary job within any group, to get into the face of the enemy and to taunt them into attacking you. To help them accomplish this job, the defender needs to be able to do a couple of things. First, they must be able to withstand those attacks. Secondly, they need to be able to punish anyone that ignores them.

While most defenders can do both of these things to some degree, I decided to go with the Fighter class since it can work well in any situation regardless of what players brought to the table. Further, I decided to go with the classic sword-and-board Fighter to boost his defenses. Mechanically, this means a Fighter with the One-handed Weapon Talent.

Optimization on multiple levels

Once I had decided which class I was going to play, it was time to figure out which race to use. I ended up picking the new PHB3 version of the Minotaur for several reasons. First, the Minotaur has the optimal ability score bonuses for a Fighter. They get +2 Strength, and they can choose between +2 Constitution or +2 Wisdom. For my shield fighter I will be using the bonus to Wisdom.

Minotaurs get an additional healing surge; they get a +2 AC bonus against opportunity attacks when they charge; and if they are reduced to 0 hit points, they get to make a free melee basic attack. Minotaurs have the racial power, Goring Charge. This allows them to gore their opponents with their horns and knock them prone. (Str + 4 vs AC: 1d6 + Strength modifier damage and knocks the target prone.) The Str + 4 attack makes it just as accurate as weapon attacks with a +3 proficiency bonus weapon and the One-handed Weapon Talent. (+8 at level 1) Additionally, there is a feat that allows Minotaurs to use Goring Charge as an Opportunity Attacks. This makes Minotaur excellent defenders.

Finally, the Encounters program has reward system called Renown Points. By picking a race or a class from PHB3 you earn 5 Renown Points.

How can your background make you a better defender?

This first season of Encounters takes place in the Forgotten Realms, inside of and under Waterdeep to be exact. The Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide introduced the concept of backgrounds to 4e, and many of the best backgrounds are still specific to the Forgotten Realms.
There are backgrounds that you allow access to new skills, and they usually give you a +2 to that skill as well. The new Windrise Ports background from Dragon #376 is very nice, allowing any character to multiclass into two different classes. For this character, I went with the Akanul background, which grants resist 2 cold, resist 2 fire, and resist 2 thunder.

Optimization Law #1: Thou shalt take an 18 in thine primary ability score!

I am a firm believer that all characters, let me say that again, ALL CHARACTERS should have at least an 18 in their primary ability score. (The Primary ability score is the one that your attacks use.) If possible, you should also have at least a 16 in your secondary ability score. (Your secondary ability score is the one that gives kickers to your abilities. In the case of this Fighter, Combat Superiority gives a bonus to any Opportunity Attacks that you make equal to your Wisdom modifier.) Since the Minotaur gets +2 to Strength and Wisdom, you can get 18 in both of those abilities.

When I originally built this character I only took 12 Constitution. This resulted in my character having only 27 hit points and a surge value of 6. Because of the way bloodied values and surge values are calculated, 27 hit points ended up being a very inefficient amount, leading to my character needing more healing that he should have.

To maximize your surge value, you want your hit point total to be a multiple of 4. I recommend a Constitution score of 13.

STR: 16 + 2 (racial bonus) = 18
CON: 13
DEX: 10
INT: 9
WIS: 16 + 2 (racial bonus) = 18
CHA: 10

Fighters get hosed when it comes to skills

By default they can train 3 skills, and there are only 5 skills on their class skill list. This is the least amount that any class gets.

I tend to group skills into 3 different categories.

Physical skills: Acrobatics, Athletics and Endurance.

Social skills: Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate.

Knowledge skills: Arcana, Dungeoneering, Heal, History, Nature, Religion and Streetwise.

I believe that each character should have 1 skill in each of these 3 categories. This should allow each character to be able to do something in most skill challenges that they may face.

For our Minotaur Fighter I choose: Athletics, Heal and Intimidate.

You may have noticed that I left 4 skills out of the above categories: Insight, Perception, Stealth and Thievery. These are all great skills, and most likely you will want to have at least one person in each group trained in all of them. They are however, more specialized skills, ones that many classes do not gain access to.

Where’s the beef?

Now we get to the real meat of the character. After race and class, feats are one of the key ways to optimize a character, allowing you to add new abilities or to make your character better at their role.

Feats are often the part of character creation that takes me the longest. My process for choosing feats is rather simple, but it can be time consuming. I’ll sit down with the Character Builder open on my laptop and a pad of paper. I’ll look through the list of feats in the Character Builder, noting down any that look interesting to be on the pad of paper.

After that I may also open the Compendium up in my browser and look for any feats that I do not currently qualify for. These usually are feats that have ability score requirements that the character does not currently meet. If the feat is good enough, it can often be worth it to tweak your ability scores to get the feat.

Once I have my list of interesting feats complete, I’ll start going through the list sorting them into categories and I’ll begin to rank them. When I rank them its usually as simple as crossing off feats which are not as good as others, and putting stars next to the better ones. I’ll often end up with 2 or 3 stars next to the best feats. I will then decide the order that I plan on taking the feats. Most characters get feats at levels 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. I won’t be going past the heroic tier for this article, but it never hurts to look forward.

Here are the feats that I decided upon.

Level 1: Opportunity Gore: allows you to use Goring Charge as an Opportunity Attack. This is the feat that makes Minotaurs truly dangerous as defenders. If the enemy tries to move around you, or use a ranged attack adjacent to you, you get to attempt to knock them prone.

Level 2: Distracting Shield: if you hit with Combat Challenge, the enemy takes a -2 to attacks. This stacks with the -2 from your mark, meaning if they try to attack someone other than you they are at -4 to that attack.

Level 4: Encouraging Shield: Add your shield bonus to Will. With a heavy shield this adds +2 to Will, and will help you withstand all those attacks your mark will bring onto you.

Level 6: Stout Shield: Add your shield bonus to Fortitude.

Level 8: Weapon Expertise (Heavy Blade): +1 to attacks with heavy blades. Eventually almost every character needs to take an Expertise feat. As you go up in level, enemy defenses increase at a faster rate than your attack bonus. The Expertise feats were added to PHB2 to offset this difference.

Level 10: Weapon Focus (Heavy Blade): + 1 damage per tier with heavy blades. At level 10, this will be +1 damage. At level 11, it will increase to +2 damage.

Here are some of the other feats that I had written down on my list, but didn’t end up making it into the final build.

Shield Push
Mobile Challenge
Forceful Opportunist
Unbalancing Shield
Focused Superiority

Improved Initiative
Weapon Proficiency (Bastard Sword)
Fighter Weapon Specialization

Wary Fighter
Bloodhound Style
Greathorn
Shield Defense
Battering Shield

I have the Powers!

Powers are another key aspect of any character. They define what you can normally do in combat. An optimized character will have powers that help them fulfill their role.

For this character I will be looking for the following types of powers:

• Mark multiple foes
• Move enemies around with push, pull or slides
• Increasing defenses
• Give temporary hit points
• Heal

Level 1 At-Will: Threatening Rush: Threatening Rush is a great defender power. It allows you to attack one creature and mark all adjacent enemies. Threatening Rush can be even better if you are using a reach weapon, which would allow you to attack, and mark via Combat Challenge, an enemy one square away from you and additionally mark all enemies next to you. Threatening Rush can also be used when you are charging. The only down side to Threatening Rush is that it only deals 1[W] damage, no Strength modifier.

Level 1 At-Will: Tide of Iron: allows you to push the target 1 square and then shift into the space they occupied. The ability to control where you enemy is on the battlefield is great. It allows you to do fun stuff like pushing them into pits, or over ledges to their doom.

Level 1 Encounter: Passing Attack: allows you to hit one target, shift a square then hit another target. The second attack even has a +2 bonus. As with Threatening Rush, this is all about the ability to mark multiple opponents. Any time a fighter is are making themselves the target of the enemies, they are doing their job.

Level 1 Daily: Driving Attack: you attack an enemy for 2[W] + Str mod damage, push them a square and shift to follow them. Then you get to attack them again, pushing them another 2 squares and knocking them prone. Driving Attack is Tide of Iron’s big brother.

Level 2 Utility: Shielded Sides: Once per encounter, as a minor action you gain +2 AC and Reflex, and you don’t grant combat advantage due to flanking. You know that turn where you charge out in front of everyone else and mark all of the enemies with Threatening Rush? Use Shielded Sides first.

Level 3 Encounter: Shield Edge Block: As an Immediate Interrupt, you block an attack with your shield. As an effect, the attack takes a -4 penalty. Then you get to bash the target with your shield for 2d6 damage.

Optimization Law #2: Dealing damage on thine enemy’s turn is awesome!

Level 5 Daily: Unexpected Shield Bash: This is an attack that you make with your shield. The +4 to attack is there to offset the loose of your weapons proficiency bonus and enhancement bonus. The attack does excellent damage, and allows you to mark all enemies within 5 squares of you. Now that’s being a defender.

Level 6 Utility: Daring Shot: I almost picked Bodyguard’s Stance here, but decided against because it could be very dangerous and my allies are rarely adjacent to me. I’d rather be flanking with them. So, I went with Daring Shot instead. This is a nice little power that allows you to mark everyone adjacent to you as a minor action one per encounter. You also gain some temporary hit points.

Level 7 Encounter: Come and Get It: This is one of the best defender powers in the game. First you get to pull enemies adjacent to you from 3 squares away, and then you attack them all.

Level 9 Daily: Victorious Surge: There are many good options to choose from at level 9, but I went with Victorious Surge because at least once per day you are going to want/need a free heal.

Level 10 Utility: Fighter’s Grit: You may have noticed that all of the utility powers I have chosen so far have been encounter powers. This is for the simple fact that the more often that you can use a power, the more likely you are to benefit from it. That trend continues at level 10 with Fighter’s Grit. This power allows you to ignore the effects of the Dazed, Immobilized, Slowed and Weakened conditions for 2 turns.

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