Min/Max Forum: Storm Shelter

If you have a character sheet template that you would like to share, post it and I'll add it to the index.  Is there a character sheet template you wish someone would make for you?  I take requests.

I can post the format I'm currently using. It's modeled after the original monster statblock but tweaked just a hair for a little category grouping (like putting moving speed/size together). Instead of D&D's ambiguity of half-detailing bonuses I use something like Fort +9 [5b-1a+5r] so I only list the bonuses I need and I can tend to get away with a one letter abbreviation. Since pbps rarely update Skills are simply name, rank, bonus, which is no different than having to validate D&D's "mod" slot anyway. The text size is reduced simply to compact the display down, and I spoiler abilities with short descriptions to help even more, but that come at the cost of having to read some bb code. Anyway, depending on the character, I may also include Senses at the top with movement and Immunity/Resists below AC but this example doesn't do either.

And I've been using a more abbreviated version for stuff like followers since their full combat information is often irrelevant, lower level & less gear means less space, and typical lack of level progression means extra details are just wasted space. All that trim through lets me position the character image to the side rather than above through.

I hope you like them.

Tarrasque
Colossal Magical Beast
Hit Dice: 48d10+528 (888 hp)
Initiative: +7
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares)
Armor Class: 35 (–8 size, +3 Dex, +30 natural), touch 5, flat-footed 32.
Base Attack/Grapple: +48/+81
Attack: Bite +57 melee (4d8+17/18-20/x3) or improvised spear +53 ranged (6d6+25/20/x2)
Full Attack: Bite +57 melee (4d8+17/18–20/x3), 2 horns +52 melee (1d10+8), 2 claws +52 melee (1d12+8), tail slap +52 melee (3d8+8)
Space/Reach: 30 ft./20 ft.
Special Attacks: Augmented critical, frightful presence, improved grab, rush, swallow whole.
Special Qualities: Carapace, continual resurrection, damage reduction 15/epic, immunity to fire, poison, disease, energy drain, and ability damage, nexus of many lives(body outside a body, fortune fate, forceward), regeneration 40, scent, spell resistance 32.
Saves: Fort +38, Ref +29, Will +20.
Abilities: Str 45, Dex 16, Con 35, Int 3, Wis 14, Cha 14.
Skills: Listen +15, Search +9, Spot +15, Survival +14 (+16 following tracks).
Feats: Blind-Fight, Brutal Throw, Combat Reflexes, Epic Destiny(eternal hero), Improved Initiative, Improved Toughness, Iron Will, Martial Study(castigating strike, foehammer, strike of righteous vitality), Martial Stance(thicket of blades) Power Attack, Robilar's Gambit, Snatch.
Environment: Any
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 20
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 49+ HD (Colossal)
Level Adjustment: -
The tarrasque is 70 feet long and 50 feet tall, and it weighs about 130 tons.
The tarrasque cannot speak.

Combat
The tarrasque attacks with its claws, teeth, horns, and tail.
The tarrasque’s natural weapons are treated as epic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

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Like the idea? Help me create a Retrained Monster guide for challenging optimized characters. All you have to do is submit your own in either this thread or your own. Use blue text to mark additions and red to mark losses. Keep things limited to Feats or Spell Lists please. Eventually I'll compile them up into a new guide.

Often we refer to The Gentleman's Agreement in our discussions here. I actually put a good chunk of what I felt was important for my group to know in writing when I ran my last PF Game. During discussions here I sometimes wished to have an easily linkable version to post so I thought I'd write up a copy, and if anyone has any comments or wants to post their own versions I bet we could come up with a pretty good guideline for players across most if not all games and groups.

Rule 0:  The Gentleman's Agreement

Roleplaying games are a cooperative effort between the players and the Game Master with the end goal of everyone having fun. To this end, we need to have an agreement right at the start.

As the Game Master, I will endeavor to keep the game fun and fair for everyone. It can be difficult keeping everyone's interests and characters in mind when crafting adventures but I will do my level best.

As the players, if there are problems you need to bring them to me first privately and clearly. It is my job to deal with problems but I can't if someone doesn't tell me about them in a clear manner.

Sometimes players come up with tactics or tricks that are too good and its hard to challenge one player while not accidentally killing everyone else in the party or resorting to unsavory "hard counters" so in the event that comes up and its affecting everyone's fun we'll have a talk about it and come up with a fix that makes everyone happy. Some examples, the player with the mastery of the rules could help the others improve their characters, or if its a combination of feats and rules they might be tweaked and the player given the chance to change his character because the underpinning rules have changed, or if the problem is with a spell or a combination of spells the caster might agree to put them in the closet and only bring them out occasionally so the solution to every problem isn't "I cast polymorph, turn into a Mindflayer, and eat the brains of all my enemies."

To summarize, we all want to have a good time but if your idea of having a good time is ruining every other player's fun then you're not welcome. When problems come up they will be easier to deal with and better solutions will be available if we agree to be flexible ahead of time.

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Credit to CaptRory of MMB

For example, one of my guides is X Stat to Y Bonus.  I'm reserving two posts, 3.5 and Pathfinder.  If two months down the road someone wants a 5E post, I would want that to be post number three in the guide.

Yeah you have to plan your guide's posts like a Wizard plans his Spells.

But there are way to get around that, like having a single discussion thread for all your guides rather than a thread for each.

Full Attack doesn't work, but you can input weapon damage, critical information, Strength, BAB, attack/damage bonuses, one/two handed, and finally select a monster CR. It uses the Optimization by Numbers information and crunches out how many successful attacks it'll take on average to kill the monster at your highest BAB.

Except by "famous" we mean "obscure personal favorites over twenty years old"
And by "optimized" we mean often laughably limited one-trick ponies.
And by "character build" we mean one trick we slapped class levels to.
But this intro is too long already so on to the list.

Pun-Pun: sarrukh out of savage species can add/remove/set ability scores and any other special abilities. Using a +1 la template that grants 11th level wild shape and assume supernatural ability pun-pun takes advantage of this before most wizards cast polymorph.

The Omniscificer: by pretending there are no rules on how to stack effects you manifest several share pain powers so when you're dealt 8 damage you echo two 4 point totals to them whom in turn echo another two sets of 2 back to you causing you to echo two iterations of 1 damage back to them and OMG SQUIRREL! and that's how it's a none diminishing return and infinite then you just use masochism to gain a skill bonus based on damage received.

Jovocian Bomb: jovocs from the second monster manual have a super share pain effect that cannot self-target, by getting around that say by stealing the supernatural ability for a bit with a lot of bs, you can produce an actual working solution for the omniscificer's share pain loop with sadism.

The Terminator: a repost of the save game trick which is about psionic nomad that manifests time hop on a fission sending it into the future then the slave manifests a quickened divination to gain some intel and then use time regression to return to just before it's previous turn. Drastically outdone by using quintessence to send something into the heat death of the universe and forced dream streamlines the process.

The Wish & The Word: it just wishes for more wishes and observes that with a high enough caster level blasphemy can drive none-epic none-evil creatures just as equally as it can get a group of nuns to walk away from you.

Chicken Infested Commoner:

The Maximum Hit Point Tank: it's another consumptive field like combo, this time necroincarnate's harvest soul heart of incarnum to gain a hit point for each of kill-fed essentia pool increase it obtains, runs a bajillion rounds slower than shapechange(shambling mound) & hitting your self with the electricity-based reserve feat.

The Jumplomancer: the exemplar can make a lot of skill checks using his diplomacy bonus, including escape artist, and so the someone decided it's best usage was jumping into people's rear ends.

The (Tauric) Hulking Hurler: this is what happens when your dm allows you to apply the same template six hundred times and then ignore the la because you think the tauric template's +4 is supposed to mean =4.

The Twice-Betrayer of Shar: it's a cleric of mystra that uses reach spell to modify touch spells into having a fixed range for persist spell and then overlooks how ocular spell doesn't change the range on the spell cast until after it's fired later.

Nanobots: 200 tiny creatures can share the same space and there are twenty six adjacent spaces next to you, now imagine what the aid other action can do for you.

Chuck E Cheese: by overlooking the fact that footsteps cannot be persisted you generate a large movement speed and use tornado throw to convert movement into damage as exactly as the maneuver tries to tell you to do.

The Emerald Legion: if mind flayers could craft custom magic items without xp costs and given free roam to apply templates they would probably copy Hitler's eugenics program with stuff like half-clay weredire air terrasquaes or something.

The d2 Crusader: pretends the luck domain's ability to set a result of '1' to a '2' actually alters the face that a die so the stance of chaos can deal infinite damage.

H.I.V.E: it's just a build that realized vermin lord lets you become lord of the flies as a sorcerer with a huge charisma score which is pretty much what it was expressly designed to do.

The Shepherd, The Saint, and the Sinner: it's just a build that realized D&D is a multiplayer game where a collective group of the standard four adventurers can share resources, so it used thrallherd to gain leadership instead of asking anyone to play because unnecessary convolution is a goal of optimization.

A bunch of random names: out of boredom someone asked if can you achieve a bunch of 100s for like two minutes a day and called it 100^10 because math was not their strong point. by casting a lot of spells/powers these builds probably, I mean no one actually reads them anyway, did it.

Cheater of Mystra: overlooks the fact that in a church of mystra a cleric gets free matamagic anyway to tell you how get a couple extra turn undead uses for divine metamagic with a minor tangent on how dweomerkeeper ignores material components.

The Lightning Thief: outdated rules text in the phb says you can steal stuff as a free action so just steal your self to move around because only a dm can limit your number of free actions per round and we never play with those.

A Full CoDzilla including a maximum turning pools option: it uses a dm provided artifact called the deck of many things, remember how we don't play with those, and assumes it produces exactly the cards you like by being a trick shuffler in real then throws the word cleric around for some bonus association.

The Basketweaver: the inspiration for this post, it just sits there making baskets as satire of all the I'm-special bs flying around.

The Dream of Metal: an actually very well made and flavored out post that for a brief moment salvaged GitP's reputation and explores what I said about the terminator.

True Dilettante: using embrace/shun the dark chaos and by reading any post listing where to obtain extra feats this thing gets extra feats.

"Festering Anger Lad": it's not even a build, more like someone's quote on a twenty year old "trick" called wand of lesser restoration and festering anger that decided you needed a bunch of class levels to pull it off.

Monty: how to become pun-pun by using plagiarism instead of manipulate form, aka first pass at updating outdated TO.

Tripple Cheesebuger with Onions: it's what happens if you don't read the ardent or southern magician entry, or your spellchecker, and want to achieve three different sources of 9th level casting without using an accelerated-casting class like the game wanted you to do.

Triple 9's: the above but lampshades cheese and uses accelerated-casting but still forgot illthid savant does the same thing without having a human claim he's a blind floating eyeball.

Bubs: optimized handle animal bonus can theoretically turn you into a pokemon trainer if they don't eat you.

New World Record Mount Familiar Companion by HD: I'm not even sure what this is supposed to be, pokemon ruby's rererelease?

Supermount v1, 2, 3, and so on: watch as people show off their breeds and attempt to win best in the show.

Sleeping Raven Infinite Blood Frenzy: look it's consumptive field again, only this time it's combined with the stance blood in the water because footnotes to a consumptive field suggestion list need to become a named build.

Clone Army: if body outside a body creates a fully stocked resource you can abuse then you can spend it's xp to cast wish.

Uberchargers: if you can't build one, you should read a list thread.

World Record for Rebuke: what happens if you read a list thread.

Maximum SA possible (per hit): what happens if you read a list thread.

Maximum Skirmish: what happens if you read a list thread that includes dragon mag.

Maximum Eldritch Blast Damage per hit: what happens if you read a.. just kidding. by illegally retroactively applying legacy champion and claiming la-buyoff applies to none-la levels you can gain an extra eight virtual levels of helfire warlock, except if only applies the bloodline benefit to hellfire and not the legacy champion levels even through it should either apply or not apply to both, forgets uncanny trickster and most other warlock builds deal more without even needing bloodlines or la-reduction.

The MAXED +1sorc casting non-ascended, Non-epic Demilich kobold: pretends you can buy off +8 la pre-epic and each time you buy off a point you are treated as being able to buy off the next one immediately as if you were say a +7er opposed to what the text does say and somehow only takes that logic as far as using the demilich template only rather than every template ever.

The Ultimate Bear Build: it's just a anthropomorphic black bear dire bear wildshaped bear druid / bear warrior with bear puns which is pretty unbearable. It's just a grizzly thread so be prebeared to bear with it.

Darkwing Duck: using wizard afcs it focuses on chaotic spells and with recall and shadowcraft mage so it casts and knows more than a sorcerer on top of getting new spell levels faster them the sorcerer too.

Sevenfold Dancer: sevenfold veil for spell immunity meets spelldancer for metamagics before facebook thought rainbows were cool, now google "ecdysiast" for me.

Paladin-Replacement: soro spends five paragraphs ranting about the paladin as he tries to tell you how great fist of raziel and ordained champion can be.

Risky: perfectly landed it's average damage in the range needed to incapacitate a balor at level 5 so it can be killed in a looney toon fashion to avoid the self-destruct.

Omnielemental: uses stormcaster's 5th level thunderbolt to stun and smite his opponents like an old testament god.

Eeyore: pale master with a schiver tortured soul is immune to damage caused by getting injured or losing your tail.

Summon Mirror Mephit's Rogue Deity: it turns out there is a 5hd deity printed in a web enhancement that would be a perfect candidate if you have simulacrum as a material-component ignoring sla.

Magikarp: you can ditch racial hit dice by failing your saves against energy drain effects, something something party support mumbling experience is a river and your 20th level is better than everyone else's.

Bestow Curse is a great buff: curse away a wilder's enervation, or everyone's memories of you to derail investigations, or how to always appear good to paladins, true dragons get epic spells, immunity to medusa's gaze by being unable to see her, calling everyone your friend and attempting to aid them results in a 50% no-save chance of failure, there are so many useful ways to curse your self.

Mirror Mirror On The Wall: it's not even a build, just a reminder that a mirror of opposition exists because the only thing that can beat pun-pun is four more pun-puns.

Jacky Chan: it's just a warforged warmage/warmage/war wizard/warweaver/warblade/warshaper that makes a man out of you like the bear warrior does but it's a lot harder to come up with puns for it.

Metalwork: an npc crafter than uses the aging curse to learn druid/cleric/bard/paladin/sorcerer spells through child of eberron, prestige bard, silver pyromancer, and rainbow servent  as needed for magical items and custom runestaffs.

Cave Johnson's Monk: extrapolating unearthed arcane's possibility that class major variants can be treated as a new class, bloodline levels are applied to monk, sidewinder monk, chaotic monk, & wild monk for +50% more monk per monk.

Fumbles: it is a druid/rogue/fighter/monk/wizard/ranger/paladin/bard build with a splash of martial adapt/incarnate/binder/barbarian/spellthief/cleric/artificer/psion that delivers 5th level ranger/wizard spells and up to 9th level slas.

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TL;DR: Lots of people posted some things.

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More some day, maybe.

Welcome to the last post in this series (barring later expansions). Here if I have not provoked you to troll my discussion thread I burn your bridges. That's right, I'm using this post as my own FAQ!

Preamble
First thing you need to understand is how communication works. Language, whether spoken or oral, is an act of encoding a thought, idea, or experience into a predetermined medium which is then shared and the listener or reader then has to decode the stream of information back into an idea. If you're ever listed on planet Earth, you know how information can change from just one change of hands and we're already at two just trying to handle the rule books here.

A typical argument of the rules is often fundamentally based on the misconceptions in that translation. Be it from not reading the entire energy, not understanding it's context, ignoring valuable information that improves the idea, and even refusing additional clarification to count. This is fundamentally what "RAW" means, someone is inserting their syphilis coated dick into the meaning of an entry and being a total asshat claiming it means something else and you should have a zero tolerance for crap like that.

(back on topic)

Here are some common things I've seen and a quick rebuttal to them for you to use.

Some Stuff You Should Read

1. The FAQ
It has a bad rep because 90% of it's entries stem from people arguing on the forums and sending messages to Ask Wizards, so when a FAQ entry declared one side right the losing side behaved in the typical guttertrash humanity level you'd expect and threw another fit, that one being about how unoffical the FAQ is because they will refute anything that disagree with them be it WotC, the FAQ, you, or Jesus descending from the heavens to bitch slap them.

No matter their comments through, the FAQ is an official part of the game rules produced by the official company on their official page by an officially hired employee (who as an added bonus wrote the books you're probably discussing). Clarifications and additions are simply new rules and even possible changes in context which is no wonder WotC placed it where they did. But remember any anonymous poster's opinion on this, or any other, private forum simply isn't official and any appeal they make to ignore it is just a fallacy designed to ignore rule sources. You should have a zero tolerance for this and not engage in people looking for narcissistic self-validation.

2. Supplements
D&D primarily updates it's rules using additional supplements. Such as the Miniature Handbook adding Swift & Immediate Actions and reconning Quicken Spell to be Swift Action based and virtually every single supplement after that also printed such. Tome of Battle and Libris Mortis both contain updates on the Incorporeal Subtype. Complete Warrior updated PrC rules, Complete Arcane further defined Spellcaster-related Feat/PrC Requirements, Heroes of Horror updated Oriental Adventure's Tainted rules. Complete Mage and such updated Polymorph. Dungeon Master's Guide II updated Monster Entries. The Magic Item Compendium updated all kinds of Magic Item related rules and specific items. The granddaddy of them all is the Rules Compendium which consolidated 99.1% of the rule updates into one manual and further added it's own. Always check for rules updates out of the RC at the bare minimum prior to initiating any rule's discussion.

3. Inherited Rules
Often one such rule, area, or thing, is based on another set of governing rules. Like the Bard's Spellcasting entry states all Bard Spells have Verbal Components, this means even through Mislead it's self lacks a Verbal Component, the Bard will still need to sing as that is part of his means to cast the Spell. Other examples can include things like Strike of Righteous Vitality not working in an Antimagic Field as it is treated as if it were cast by a Cleric which means anything that prohibits Spells applies. Feats cannot be taken twice or stack with it's self unless noted otherwise per PHB 87. Spells have a minimum caster level and Energy Drain can prevent Spell access per PHB 171 and so on. Sometimes "missing text" is actually well documented else where.

4. Errata
The Errata's primary function is correcting printing errors, not updating or clarifying rules, but checking the Errata is still a good thing to do, sometimes a Spell slips past with a forgotten "; See text" or the example text baffles the crap out of everyone reading it. And sometimes, things are based on the misprint rather than what is supposed to be stamped on the page.

5. Do Not Treat The SRD (or pirating websites) As A Rule's Source
The system reference document is not a reprint or rule book or supplement anymore than dndtools is and it contains an abbreviated version of the original rules, often cutting out precious example text needed to fully understand the idea. In the case of the SRD, many web hosts have additionally applied Errata changes or even FAQ entries such as Feather Fall being an Immediate Action while sites like dndwiki or therafimrpg try to sneak their own homerules in. No matter how close a near-copypasta is, you're always at risk it lost things in it's translation.

6. Rules Of The Game, Ask Sage, & Ask Wizards
The archive is a little out dated from some of D&D's updates but the articles take the time to explain and break down several things to help you understand some of the more complicated things better. Ask Sage/Wizards are separate entries that were not for one reason or another did not make it into the FAQ but likewise serve as an official answers, explanations, and opinions on the matter.

Using this FAQ
As I am always reminding people, read the books. The better you understand them the better off you'll be and drawing bad conclusions and making an even worse mistake of arguing them will simply lead to a more stressful environment here. And your 14 year old mind hell bent on being a social justice warrior and fighting "the man" may think that's good. It's really not.

Hhhheeeelllllllloooo readers in the far flung future! Welcome to another article in my series where I talk circles around my self and pretend someone reads it. Today's subject is all about that master race. And no I'm not talking about your PC. D&D is about as racist as you can get while still legally having fun with your clothes on and today we're going to touch on a few of my favorites and the most game breaking ones to request in place of your gestated level choice. So let's get started shall we?

Preamble
When you start looking at monsters as Races you really get this feeling them some have unfair advantageous. Like your typical Illithid is a 9th level Psion except it also has a ton of At-Will Psi-Like Abilities and enhanced combat abilities piled on top of better HP/Skills and someone was like that's totally CR 8. 8? Am I kidding you? Nope, it's CR 8. Of course, for Players it's total Effective Character Level (ECL) is 14 and you won't be buying that Level Adjustment (LA) off. But it makes a great minion to add to your stock.

(back on topic)

P.S. We're doing this top 8 style!









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Abusing them

1. Dominate Monster
A dominated minion will follow all kinds of none self destroying commands and it can be used to instantly obtain them in combat. There isn't really much to be said here other than focus on increasing your Save DC and make sure you order them to never cast Protection From youralignment.

2. Programmed Amnesia
Find a monster, beat it nonlethally until it passes out, make it your pet, then use it to fight others. It's like being a Pokemon trainer! Programmed Amnesia (aka the 3.5 version of mind rape++) is a much more permanent solution for captivity since you can rebuild the creature's memories to being your best friend and owes you for saving it's life ten thousand times, oh and it's a Lawful Good kind of guy. It has some limits of course since it is a Mind-Affecting attack (kind of useless on undead) and severe changes can be undone with the lower level Break Enchantment Spell. For this reason I'd suggest picking monsters who are close to your own goals, like if you are killing bad guys try to snag a good-aligned Dragon with a strong sense of justice.

3. Ice Assassin
Oh this spell is so powerful. You can create a clone of any target you have a DNA sample of and it obeys your every command. But if left to it's own choices it'll try to murder the original it's copied from so use at your own risk for self-duplication. Obliviously the is an extremely powerful method of building the ranks of your all-powerful legion but if you need a lower level alternative check out Core's Simulacrum. The copy is 1/2 HD but several creatures have abilities far beyond the normal scope of their CR.

Reserved For Another Class Some Day.

Hello and welcome to number four where I talk twice as much number two as normal. Today's subject is Completely Divine, or comes out of Complete Divine. One of the two. It's an accelerated Spellcasting PrC people often forget about.

Preamble
Divine Crusader is a nice PrC honestly. Very well balanced and if you read the very first post this is one such stigmata I was talking about, the auto-assumption that mundanes don't get nice things even through they do. By arbitrarily limiting mundanes to no-spells to perpetuate a worthless debate and fearmongerling high levels of play things like this PrC simply pass unnoticed.

One of the things I like about this is the limitation to one Domain. Heroes and such in comics, novels, shows and films don't "do it all" and instead of a limited repertoire of super powers. Hulk has strength and protection, Wolverine has claws and regeneration, Naruto has Shadow Clones and Rasengas, Jace the Planeswalker is limited to mind control and illusions. Chuck has downloaded government secrets for skill boosts. What can break the game is being able to rewrite reality and acquire information with no effort and this is a pain to narrate around and is the chief reasons people avoid high levels. A Divine Crusader on the other hand gains exactly 9 different Spells by ECL17 and these 9 "talents" or "powers" all share a set theme. Like Iceman a DC can create snow, cool people off, create ice, and even in full swing he can cause nearby blizzards. But without expanding his list, "Iceman" isn't summoning the angels from the book of Revelation one round and reversing gravity the next.

(back on topic)

Here is the lineup of your superhero resistances.

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Abusing the Superhero

1. Additional Domains
Contemplative (CD) grants an additional Domain, Ordained Champion (CC) grants the War Domain if you lacked it and is a prime perfect pick, Sovereign Speaker (EB:FoE) loses caster levels (not a big deal mr accelerated caster) but grants an additional Domain out of the Sovereign Host for each level taken. However, you cannot choose two Domains offered by the same Deity. Example concludes you cannot choose Strength, War, and Good all because Dol Dorn offers all three. So as you get up there in levels in this PrC you'll become intimately familiar with the Sovereign Host. Lastly, Domain Staffs (MiC) can substitute Divine Spell Slots for any Spell within the Staff.

2. Prestigious Classes
Your Class Features suck, so what? The Cleric gains nothing too. You have no reason not to PrC out for better Class Features. AS noted, you can obtain 9th level Spells by ECL 16 using this Class so you've even got some ley way if you want to choose PrCs that are not quite full-progression, of course until ECL 15 you're behind everyone else, but you don't play a DC to be a pure caster, you play an DC to be a seven level long competent combatant that picks up spellcasting.

3. Ordained Champion
I gotta be honest this bears a second and specific mention. Full-BAB 7 / ED 1 / Ordained Champion 5 / Anything +7. You pick up Turn-Undead & Spells (and more spells!) to Smite Creature, freebie access and Quickened War Domain. It's not "versatile game breaking spellcaster" expanding, rather I'm a meleer with special abilities and I can use magic to augment punching you in the face.

Using Superhero
Obliviously this is a more of a late game PrC so you'll need to define your background and be able to rely on it during low levels of play. Think of it as Lelouch vi Britannia was a brilliant leader and tactician prior to being able to dominate minds, Spawn was a highly skilled marksmen before getting his necrosuit, Captain America is just a reoided up jock with a moral compass and military training. These guys were heros before they were superheros (or anti- like the punisher/spawn). You'll be a Superhero that isn't defined entirely based on his super-powers.

Crusader 5 / Solder of Light 2 / Divine Crusader 1 / Ruby Knight Vindicator 10 / Contemplative 1 / Warblade 1
Cha to Saves, Crusader healing while attacking, full on RKV progression for stealth and Devoted Maneuvers, an additional Domain and Warblade polishes things off with 5th level Iron Heart & Tiger's Claw boosts.

Bard 4 / Crusader 4 / Divine Crusader 1 / Sublime Chord 1 / Mystic Theurge 9
Requires Mother Cyst so Sublime Chord has a 2nd level Spell to cast for Mystic Theurge. Overall, Dragonfire Crewsader with a late bloom of full Arcane/Divine access. Primarily meant to play catch up if everyone else is playing full casters.

Monk 9 / Divine Crusader 1 / Ordained Champion 5 / Contemplative 1 / Anything 4
An interesting downplay of things full of potential abuse. Perpetual Full-Concealment & Blink and enormous Unarmed Damage with +1d6 vs Evil (see matrix monk). Coupled with the ability to burn Spells for bonuses to Bonuses to damage, channel Spells/Turns for empowered attacks, you even apply Quickened to Divine Power for Free.