Speaking as someone who rolled a pure fighter on what could loosely be described as a dare...
Yeah. This could be interesting.
My current build can, in my estimation, go toe to toe with my paladin despite being a few levels under her, and is expected to continue doing so until spells like Holy Sword start coming into play. Pierre is insanely susceptible to magic, and he has no way to buff himself without the potions I never buy, but from Vallaki to Port-a-Lucine, he has shown an ability to match Eliniel's best self-buffed AC, get a good chunk of her HP, and deal a good chunk of her average damage per round. Now that El's finally gained a third attack, the numbers have skewed somewhat in her favor, but at level 20, I think it plausible that he could still survive a duel with her or her sister - provided that they both had the same access to external buffs. (Also, he'll be able to fire a gun once per round.)
However, Pierre lacks El's ability to support her party with healing and other buffs, and is only capable of matching her endurance because he's spread his stats out to take literally every fighter feat except Overwhelming Critical, plus Agrippa, plus all the Parry boosts he could find. He's had to dump Wisdom to put all his other ability scores high enough for the assorted fighter feats. And the only justification I could think of for a duelist in chainmail was for him to be a Dementlieuse commoner with enough of an education to maybe sort of pass as an elegant swashbuckler in front of a less cultured audience.
A combat form build... TBH, it feels like a PrC, in that it gives a lot, takes a lot, and doesn't seem to make much sense if you don't go all-in on it.
It'll definitely have a lot of stopping power, in a number of interesting ways. Elemental immunities could be pretty potent - we're basically talking about blocking the first 20 points of any elemental attack, before accounting for items. +5 Universal saves are almost on par with a paladin's Divine Grace... until the paladin buffs their CHA to Mount Celestia. +5 AB/damage is also sort of like Divine Might, but better and worse at the same time. The AC, speed, and APR buffs are basically like a Haste spell, and I'd be surprised if the speed/APR weren't mutually exclusive with those of Haste. They've got an impenetrable stoneskin, and if I'm not mistaken about what adamantine armor does, they don't need it or its -2 DEX penalty anymore. And then there's the regeneration, like a stronger form of Sacred Healing.
Potent stuff. But it does have something of an opportunity cost.
Let's review the required feats and ability scores:
12 WIS
13 CON
13 DEX
12 STR
13 INT
Dodge
Resist Energy
Blind-fight
Toughness
Of those, Pierre's build (the only successful pure fighter build I know... and also the only pure fighter build I know, period) has:
16 STR/DEX/CON
14 INT
Toughness
So there'd necessarily be a fair bit of shifting around if we wanted to insert Combat Form into his. He needs to get 3 feats, and then he needs to get another 9 feats. He also needs to get up to 12 WIS. Can he do it?
He can lose all his gunslinging feats. That's 4 feats, 5 if he doesn't want any exotic weapons of any kind. The most plausible stat change is dropping CHA for WIS, which also takes care of all the CHA feats. That's 8-9 out of 12. Arguably, Back to the Wall is less useful if he already expects to receive its benefits during any battle it might be useful in, so maybe 9-10 feats. But now we're running low on feats. It could be argued that Diehard can be replaced by a Ring of Resilience (and, in fact, it currently
is), that Natural Healer is a lot less useful when he's probably going to end each fight with pretty solid HP, and that Endurance is safe to drop once no other feats require it. If we argue all those points, then he's got all 12 feats taken care of, and can still have exotic proficiency.
This is where things get dicey. Gunslinging is fun, and a few good bullets could probably make short work of a lot of things. But putting guns aside, Pierre doesn't seem to be losing any of the things that made him so amazing in his early, pre-gun levels, and he doesn't seem to have lost that much in the late levels either (aside from no longer qualifying as a dashing swashbuckler). He's still got Armor Skin, he's still got Greater Specialization, Agrippa, Improved Knockdown, Improved Disarm... the works.
Is it a feasible build?
As a fighter, he gets 5 feats in his last 4 levels. He has only 3 feats that
must be taken in that period. Very few of his early feats have been swapped out, so there's no risk of having an empty feat slot in the early levels. That seems to pass my test.
In summary: Adapting Pierre's build to use the combat form feats would cost him guns and leadership capabilities, in exchange for coming closer to Eliniel's damage and saves, and giving him the following advantages over her:
- Automatic haste
- +2 maximum AC (my projections previously put him as having a -3 maximum theoretical AC compared to her)
- 20 elemental DR
- Can't be flatfooted
- Automatic True Seeing
- Blindfight (unless El grabs that on a later level, not sure if she will)
- Automatic indestructible Stoneskin
- Automatic caster-only Sacred Healing, with extra +2 regen
- Dodge
- +10 Parry, to really increase the odds of riposting
(For comparison, these are the disadvantages I can think of right now: )
- No Holy Sword means no +5 weapon with on-hit dispels
- Divine Might adds around +10 virtually-unblockable damage per hit (on the other hand, Form!Pierre's auto-haste may or may not give him an extra attack over her, and a significantly higher chance of landing blows)
- All of the advantages go away a lot faster than El's divine powers should run out (but only for the one encounter...)
- Divine Grace is still about twice as strong as Combat Form
- Sacred Healing heals the whole party
- If relying on an external buffer, Divine Favor can offset most of the damage/AB buff
Yeaaaaah, maybe it's a little too potent. I love it, and my first thought was "I think I wanna roll up an elven warrior with that stuff", but now that I've had a chance to properly map out the feat requirements, I can see that it can act as a sizable buff to what is
already a fairly effective alternative to Eliniel's reliance on divine blessings. On the other hand, there's still room for it to be a lot less of a buff in the right circumstances, mostly related to DM events or prolonged PvP encounters. It could really swing both ways - I know my opinion has while writing this!
