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The Weapon Master prestige class has a number of special features that improve your abillity to land critical hits and the damage that those do.
It's therefore a good idea to maximize that potential when building your character.

The most obivious way to do this is by increasing your number of attacks (and thereby the number of chances for a critical hit). The only way we can do this is by using either two weapons or a double weapon.

Abillity Scores:
STR 16 (good for a fighter and you need high strengh for the Epic critical feats)
DEX 15 (minimum for Improved Two Weapon Fighting)
CON 14 (as high as we can afford)
WIS 8 (Wisdom is unimportant)
INT 14 (13 is minimum for Expertise, the extra point is most useful here, for one more skill point per level.)
CHA 8 (Charisma is unimportant)

And start as a Fighter.

Using two weapons:
pro: you save a feat (exotic weapon proficiency).
con: you must either use two small weapons (and therefore deal less damage) or two medium weapons (and suffer attack penalties) or somehow manage to get 3 extra feats to effectively wield two different weapons.

Feats:
Lvl 1: Dodge, Expertise, Mobility
Lvl 2: Weapon Focus
Lvl 3: Two Weapon Fighting
Lvl 4: Spring Attack
Lvl 5: -
Lvl 6: Whirlwind Attack, Weapon Specialization

Switch to Weapon Master at Lvl7

Lvl 9: Ambidexterity
Lvl 12: Improved Critical

Switch to back to Fighter at Lvl 14

Lvl 15: Improved two weapon fighting, feat of your choice actually.

This is also a good option if you want to use a race other than human, in that case take Mobility as you Lvl2 feat, Weapon Focus at Lvl3 and take Two Weapon Fighting at Lvl12, Improved Critical at Lvl15

Using a double weapon:
pro: good damage and critical potential.
cons: you need to take Weapon Proficiency Exotic.

Feats:
Lvl 1: Dodge, Expertise, Mobility
Lvl 2: Weapon Proficiency Exotic
Lvl 3: Weapon Focus: Two-Bladed Sword
Lvl 4: Spring Attack
Lvl 5: -
Lvl 6: Whirlwind Attack, Weapon Specialization

Switch to Weapon Master at Lvl7

Lvl 9: Ambidexterity
Lvl 12: two weapon fighting

Switch to back to Fighter at Lvl 14

Lvl 15: Improved two weapon fighting, Improved Critical

Going from lvl 15:
advance as a fighter, be sure to always increase you strengh.
Take Epic strengh every chance you get
(21, 24, 27) and increase your strengh by 1 at 24.
This should set you up for taking Overwhelming Critical at lvl24 and Devastating Critical at 27.

adding more classes:

Rogue:

How to multiclass:
Take a level of Rogue at Lvl 17 or 12 (if you do that take the final level of Weapon Master (7) as level 16).
Be sure to have enough skill points saved by that time to max Tumble and Use Magic Item.
Timing it this way will let you get 20(15 if you do it at lvl12) ranks in those skills.

What you get:
Sneak Attack (+1D6)
Seeing as you are able to sneak attack more often than not, this comes in handy.
Increased AC, for every 5 ranks in tumble you get +1 AC Bonus, no matter your armor.
Use Magic Device skill.
Use (almost) any magical item in the game.
Evade

What you lose:
One point of base attack bonus as long as you take only one or two Rogue levels, more if you take more as well as a fighter bonus feat.

Worth it?
Imho, definitly.

Variation: taking more Rogue levels:
take one more Rogue level at levels 22 and 27 to reap the maximum benefit from Tumble and UMD.
In this case you also won't be able to chose Devastating Critical at Lvl27 and that's a bit of a downer, but since by then you will allready be in the final parts of the game, it's not that bad.

Champion of Torm:

How to multiclass:
Start at lvl 16. The important thing to consider is to multiclass when you have an even number of fighter levels, since otherwise you'll miss out on one of you bonus feats.

What you get:
Saving throw bonuses (up to +5 on all saves).
All the other CoT features need a high charisma, which you don't have.

What you lose:
Nothing.
Well, you do lose the chance of multiclassing to Rogue.

Worth it:
If you don't go with anything else, yes.

Assassin

How to multiclass:
Be sure to have have 8 Ranks in Hide and Move Silently, which is no problem even with cross class skills
At lvl16 take your first level of Assassin
and stick with it till lvl25, when you will be Fighter 8, Weapon Master 7, beyond that (if you're playing HotU at least) you can expect to earn another 2 lvls, which should be fighter levels (for the BAB and the bonus feat).

What you get:
Death attack, which is just like a Rogue's sneak attack, but better.
Tumble and Use Magic Device as class skills, just like a Rogue.
Some spell like abillities (Ghostly Visage, Improved Invisibillity, Darkness)
Save bonus vs. Poison.
Uncanny Dodge 1-3
(look here]

What you lose:
+3 Base Attack compared to taking those levels as a fighter, a number of bonus feats.
Also, unlike a Rogue, you do not get evasion, but that abillity can readily be aquired through magical items.

Worth it:
You can still manage to get Overwhelming Critical at lvl 27, but all in all you lose 3 Epic feats compared to the fighter route.

Other options might be Blackguard, Shadow Dancer (starting at lvl 17), Barbarian or Paladin.

The Blackguard doesn't offer anything usefull (thanks to your low charisma) that the assassin wouldn't do better, the shadowdancer offers nothing at all to our primary concept and what it does offer (damage reduction mostly) can easily be obtained via magical items.
The Barbarian would bring us Rage (which is nice), faster movement (nice) and Uncanny Dodge.
The Paladin finally brings some imunities and a host of abilllities that depend on charisma and are therfore pretty useless to us.

Aremah has an interesting comment to this build:

Aremah wrote:Also, I know this probably has been argued before, but I believe going Fighter 12/Weapon Master 28 is more beneficial that Fighter 33/Weapon Master 7, especially when dual wielding (with Improved Two Weapon Fighting - where you get 6 attacks, or 7 when hasted). I'm talking about very similar builds, of course - it's just the decision of separating the levels between the two.

The F12/WM28 character loses out on 5 fighter bonus feats (2 pre-epic) in total and gets slightly lower Fortitude saves, but gains +6 to attack (the WM gets +1 to attack with the chosen weapons at levels 5, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 27, contrary to what the manual says) and better Reflex saves. If a F33/WM7 character were to offset the AB with Epic Prowess (3 of them), he'd still come out with 3 AB less than the F12/WM28 one, the other feats would effectively be the same, and the gain in Fortitude saves in the first case is smaller than the loss in Reflex saves.

Of course, this does not factor in addidng a third class, and I'll admit, Fighter/WeaponMaster is the only multiclassing I've done in 3E games. I've always been a fan of pure classes, but recently I'm seeing more and more viability in 3 class builds (including prestige classes, of course). I was just wondering whether you've thought if your build with Rogue levels could be made better switching the balance from Fighter to Weapon Master.

Thanks to everybody who had comments and corrections to offer, it's appreciated.

(off track: please delete the Build: Critical Bill thread, since it is now superflous.)

I've taken the liberty of adding this guide to the Strategy Guides section of the NWN site. So, you can view it at http://www.gamebanshee.com/neverwintern ... master.php as well.

Cheers.

Congratulations t.a.j I was kind of hoping to get my build submitted as the first Weapon Master strategy to appear. Oh well. I'll be posting very soon in a separate thread, so people can comment on both without confusion (Baedden, you reading this? ).

EDIT: Whoa! Just noticed my comment is there as well.

Yep, I gotcha, Aremah. Head to that same link I gave t. a. j. You'll now find all three guides up in the Strategy Guide section.

Seriously, thanks for the great effort, guys.

*Jumps with joy*

But why are the letters in my guides so freakishly huge? Could you quickly fix that (and perhaps add breaks to the initial stats of the musha shugyo - class, race, etc. - they were a few lines but turned into one hard to read paragraph for some reason)?

I fixed the coding omission that turned that one section into a paragraph, but I don't know what you mean about the letters being freakishly huge. They all look normal to me - exactly the same font as on the forum.

Seriously? I see them twice as big as the forum font, the font in the walkthroughs/guides, etc. (t.a.j's guide is fine as well). This is confirmed by two other people.

EDIT: I think I've found it. In t.a.j's and other guides, the very beginning of the actual guide, there are the following tags:

<span class="gb13"> for the whole guide
<span class="gb13bold"> for the title

Both closed by </span> of course.

And these are missing completely from my guide.

I know I'm being slightly anal about this, but I'm somewhat a perfectionist, and if you could do me the favor of putting those in there (making "One Who Is Tossed About, Like Waves In A Sea" bold, centered and not all capital) I would be very grateful.

OK, I hope that worked. Let me know if you want anything else changed.


Cheers.

*Jumps with twice as much joy*

Nah, it's fine now. Thank you

No problem. Now get on that sorc guide. I'm working on one myself, hoping I can figure out how to manhandle Mephi with an RDD as well as I could with my Ranger build. I'm eager to see your thought process on building an effective sorc.

I can tell you that withouth a guide.

All you need to know for a sorcerer (wizard) in the end-game of HotU is:
Black Blade of Disaster.

Been playing sorcerer most of all chacters in my numerous playthroughs

I want to get to level 10 RDD for this build, though. I think you mentioned once that you were able to get to level 28 - which I would need to do in order to cast level 9 spells and still get to level 10 RDD - but I've never been able to do that. If I solo, will I be able to reach 28 more easily?

For one thing, I don't create "effective" chars as in effectiveness is not the main factor. If I can get a character to go along with the idea concept and become a killer, it's just an added bonus. The mahotsukai is going to be highly hooked on the concept of a black magic summoner (the Legend of the Five Rings system has some cool entries on maho) and will probably involve the Wizard and Palemaster classes, so as far as effectiveness goes - we'll see.

That's cool. I know you are more into role playing than power gaming. That's why I'm eager to see your builds. They complement my "here's how to beat the game if you're having trouble" builds. I've also noticed that - being a perfectionist - you look at the rules with a more critical eye than I do. That's all I meant - that I was expecting more threads like the Weapon Master ones where you were getting an exact sense of the parameters of the Weapon Master abilities. And that I was looking forward to them.

Originally posted by Baedden
I want to get to level 10 RDD for this build, though. I think you mentioned once that you were able to get to level 28 - which I would need to do in order to cast level 9 spells and still get to level 10 RDD - but I've never been able to do that. If I solo, will I be able to reach 28 more easily?

My lastest time through the entier NwN series was with a Paladin/CoT, and he soloed allmost all of the original NwN and most of SoU (Just can't play withouth Deekin) and reached an end level of 28.

A sorcerer, if he solos just as much should be able to gain minimum the same amount of exp, because of the NwN XP rules which awards "weaker" classes with more XP.
Without soloing, my sorcerer managed to gain L16 at the end of the original NwN.

But you have to play through the prior games (or award yourself the equvialent XP through console or similar) to attain that level. If you start with a fresh character in HotU, you will start at level 15, and I doubt you can gain enough for 13 more levels.

However, I would not recommend the RDD prestige kit as a multiclass class for a "pure" spellcaster. It is only a fluff class as I see it (yah, I'm a half dragon with wings) for spellcasters due to no spellgain at levels. I multiclassed my sorcerer as a RDD and regretted it dearly (Became something like 22Sorcerer/5 RDD - give or take). If you wish to go RDD - I would either recommend it via a fighterish build - or a battle bard type character.

Originally posted by Baedden
That's all I meant - that I was expecting more threads like the Weapon Master ones where you were getting an exact sense of the parameters of the Weapon Master abilities.

That you're going to get for certain Unfortunately, it takes a lot of time to fine-tune everything.

EDIT: Fixed my builds (turns out I didn't take the Constitution requirements for Damage Reduction into consideration and for some reason - even though I knew there were none - I gave my pre-epic Weapon Master bonus feats). I changed the builds, did some extra quality-assurance research and edited the posts in my other thread.

Baedden, would you be so kind as to make appropriate changes in the Strategy Guides? Note that some of the text has changed as well, not just feat progression, so it'll probably be easiest to just copy-paste the whole thing again.

EDIT2: Thanks