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As long as you keep it updated, I'm sure there will be interest.

First point: The cleric/crusader and I aren't always within range of each other for him to help me out mid-combat. In one of this past week's encounters I ended up being within melee range of a worg, winter wolf, and six (admittedly weak) goblins. Cobb has the most HP out of the party, but also the lowest AC. He depends on knocking his enemies away from him to keep them from taking full attacks. I may switch the healing belt out as I get better defenses. Cobb has only one AoO. No Combat Reflexes, and no dexterity bonus means only one AoO. The healing belt is 750gp and does not provoke AoOs like drinking a healing potion does. It only requires one standard action, and can be used to heal either 2d8 (1 charge), 3d8 (2 charges) or 4d8 (3 charges), and has 3 daily charges.

Second point: I'd buy those, but keep in mind that those boots cost 5500gp, and my current total wealth is only 8160 gp, which is high for a 4th level adventurer. Also, keep in mind the rules for magic items in an E6 campaign: Nothing that requires more than CL6.

--S

CubeKnight wrote:

If you have access to Tome of Magic, get a Tooth of Savnok (I think that was the name), as it allows you to move at your normal speed regardless of armor.

Nice find. It's 2000gp, but I may be able to make room in my budget for it.

--S

Senevri wrote:

Yay for CO Diaries.

I like E6, because I might manage to get someone else to DM an E6 game...

How come you do not have the Charging Minotaur manuver? It will make Dungeon Crashing much more effective...

Alright, so here's the first update post. Cobb's first few skirmishes went pretty well overall. I've learned some things from the battles, and the build (so far) does what I wanted it to do pretty well. The overarching story was that we are attempting to save a village from an encroaching goblin war horde. We needed to attempt to save several key people in order to help defend the town:

#1. The local church has several (low-level) priests, performing a ritual of some sort.
#2. The sheriff of the town needed to be warned to rally the townsfolk.
#3. There was a merchant caravan heading to town, bearing useful items that could be used to fend off the goblins.
#4. A druid in the nearby forest would probably aid the town against the goblins as well if we convinced him to help.
#5. The final battle against the goblin war horde.

This post will cover encounters #1-3.

The first battle was outside of a boarded-up church, in a pretty open field area. There were a few large rocks around, but the church itself was sufficient for my purposes of mayhem and destruction. An advance goblin party led by some gnolls and a Flind were attempting to set fire to the church, while the priests inside performed their ritual. I believe I was able to bash some of the worg riders off of their mounts, and I think I got a single blow (power attack for full BAB, emerald razor) on a gnoll for a combined 46 damage that battle. Low CR Goblins can't do *too* much to Cobb, but they can swarm him under due to lack of AoOs. The goblins were mostly melee, which meant that they didn't have much of a chance against our melee-heavy party.

The second and third battles were a bit more tactical. Our party rescued the town sheriff from a goblin scouting/sabotage party, and our Crusader was able to bull rush a scaffolding down, knocking down an archer and a spellcaster. At one point, Cobb was able to use Steel Wind to attack both a goblin Totemist and a goblin archer and knock them both into walls for a double dungeon crash. Furthermore, since there were so many, Cobb was able to take advantage of the 'if you are bull rushed into an occupied square, you fall prone'.

(Side note: A definite boost to this build would be Shock Trooper. The ability to make directed bull rushes would be a huge benefit. I fully intend on grabbing Shock Trooper at my earliest possible opportunity... level 6 probably)

The third battle showed me Cobb's biggest weakness (and the group's weakness as well). Our group assisted a merchant caravan stuck in a mud bog in the dead of night under attack by worg-mounted goblin archers. The problem? We didn't have much in terms of light sources, meaning we couldn't tell exactly where the arrows were coming from. At that point, Cobb had only 17 AC (Half-plate armor). Cobb spent most of his time following the archers he could see (a lot of double moves), but whenever he threatened them they would simply use the withdraw action and the others we could not see would pelt us with arrows. I think the DM eventually felt sorry for us, and let us kill them. Of our group, Cobb was the only one prepared with a light source (Everburning Torch), which made matters worse. The moral of the story: Spend that 100g for the everburning torch, or get a weapon crystal of illumination or something if your DM enforces visibility rules. It was kind of interesting and frustrating at the same time.

In retrospect, I should have attempted to dismount the archers. Once that happened, I could probably have kept up and squished the lot of them. Cobb does what he is designed for very well. If he has solid objects nearby, he can seriously put out the hurt on whatever he hits. Furthermore, with a good power attack critical hit, he can threaten to outright kill enemies from massive damage (Vera hits for x3 on a critical strike). However, ranged attackers are really his bane. I also learned (the hard way) that reflex saves are also pretty tough for him. More on that when I post again about encounters #4 and #5.

I definitely don't think that Cobb is overpowered. The archers we fought pretty much put me in my place. I heavily recommend to any DMs who think that Martial Adepts are somehow broken (especially at low levels) to just throw archers at them. In the dark. From long range.

--S