Welcome to Guidance, Private Sanctuary’s source for tips and techniques for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, written by Everyman Gamer Alexander Augunas. Today, we’re going to be looking at a stalwart defender build.

Most of the time, when I design a build I do so under the assumption that it’s a build that I’d use. But every once and a while, I think its important to try to build something out of a class (or classes) that I have absolutely no interest in ever playing, whatsoever. Today is one of those kinds of todays. Ladies and gentlemen, today I will be attempting to make a functional build out of the stalwart defender prestige class! Enjoy my floundering!

Build Concept

Here are the options I’m going to be using for my stalwart defender.

• Slayer: This is the class that I plan on getting into stalwart defender with. Between ranger combat style and combat trick, the slayer has an excellent number of bonus feats to work with and also has an excellent ace in the hole in studied combat. Sneak attack is also nice, but I have a feeling that unless someone is flanking with my stalwart defender, I won’t get to use it much.
• Horizon Walker: Zing! I recommend dipping three levels into this awesome prestige class for terrain dominance: desert ability, which makes you immune to fatigue. The hallmark ability of the stalwart defender works like rage, but has less rounds per day, so being able to rage cycle those rounds of defensive stance becomes very important, and a three-level dip in horizon walker is the only way to become to immune to fatigue without taking a hit to your base attack bonus. (Side Note: You can be effectively immune to fatigue if you go paladin 3 and grab lay on hands and the fatigue mercy. I don’t want to shackle this build to Charisma, however, and for a three level investment I’d prefer actually being IMMUNE to fatigue rather than having the ability to clean it off a few times per day.)
• Stalwart Defender: The “champion” of the class, I guess? It has some good abilities, but nothing to really drive home about because of its huge mobility issues. Basically, when you use the “rage” ability the class gives, you’re bared from moving. That’s why I felt the dip in horizon walker to be so necessary; with it, you can essentially turn off your rage with no penalty, move to where you want to be, and turn it back on again, making you much more flexible. This class needed the fatigue or the movement restrictions, but not both.

With all that explaining out of the way, I’m ready to tackle the build! Let’s go!

Early Levels (1–7)

• Classes: Slayer 6 / Horizon Walker 1
• Feats: Combat Reflexes (1st), Shield Slam (Bonus), Two-Weapon Fighting (3rd), Improved Shield Bash (Bonus), Endurance (5th), Shield Master (Bonus), Dodge (7th)
• Abilities: favored terrain: desert +2, slayer talent (combat trick, ranged combat style 2), sneak attack +2d6, studied target +2 (two targets), track +3

If you’re looking to go sword and board, there’s really no better way then to use a ranger combat style. The ability to grab Shield Master, normally an 11th level feat with a massive list of prerequisites, at level 6 is fantastic. For those of you at home who don’t know, Shield Master allows you to use your equipped shield’s enhancement bonus to AC as an enhancement bonus to AC, saving money, and it “ignores all penalties that your shield takes.” This is very dubious wording at best as it isn’t clear what penalties that the feat is talking about, so talk with your GM about how to adjucate this feat until an FAQ happens.

Getting into stalwart defender on-time requires three basic feats: Dodge, Toughness, and Endurance. Endurance is basically a dead feat, but Dodge and Toughness are on-theme for you. Luckily, we can apply the slayer’s three bonus feats towards feats that actually improve our build’s combat ability, and wait until the mid levels for at least one of them. (I chose to hold off on Toughness and you need Endurance to get into horizon walker, but Dodge is pretty much swappable at the levels I recommend.) That is one of the nice things about this build; both prestige classes needing Endurance at least means that the feat is pulling double duty for you.

At low levels, you have all of the bull rushing power you could want, plus Two-Weapon Fighting and a super shield. Honestly we could stick with sword-and-board slayer and have an awesome character, but I promised to use stalwart defender and I’m going to stick with it. Tally-ho, I guess.

Mid Levels (8 –14)

• Classes: Slayer 6 / Horizon Walker 3 / Stalwart Defender 5
• Feats: Combat Reflexes (1st), Shield Slam (Bonus), Two-Weapon Fighting (3rd), Improved Shield Bash (Bonus), Endurance (5th), Shield Master (Bonus), Dodge (7th), Toughness (9th), Power Attack (11th), Improved Two-Weapon Fighting (13th).
• Abilities: damage reduction 1/-, defensive powers (bulwark, halting blow), defensive stance, favored terrain: desert +4, urban +2, slayer talent (combat trick, ranged combat style 2), sneak attack +2d6, studied target +2 (two targets), terrain dominance: desert, terrain mastery: desert, track +3, uncanny dodge

The early part of the mid game is spent going after one, specific ability: terrain dominance: desert. By the time you obtain this ability at 9th level, you’re immune to the fatigued and exhausted condition, which is nice considering that you’re going for stalwart defender. Similar to a barbarian’s rage, you become fatigued if you leave your defensive stance early. I mentioned in my round cycling article that leaving rage to move to someplace more tactically beneficial to you can be a pain in the butt, and its doubly true for the stalwart defender, as they essentially can’t move at ALL while in defensive stance. Being able to pop in and out of the stance without penalty is essential, in my opinion.

Beginning at 10th level, we start moving into stalwart defender itself. Initially, you only get the opening stance ability, but as you move through this defense-oriented class some cool powers make themselves available. First, you have bulwark and halting blow. I’m normally not a huge fan of armor check penalty, but this ability allows you to effectively add your armor check penalty to your Bluff DC against feint attempts and to your CMD against Acrobatics checks to move through your threatened area. Halting blow allows you to outright stop anyone who tries to move through your threatened area as long as you hit them; its like Stand Still, but better against big monsters. (Bigger creatures often have higher CMDs than ACs, meaning this ability will activate more often against big opponents.)

Feat-wise, this build needs to take Toughness at 9th level to qualify for stalwart defender at 10th. After that, taking a long-overdue Power Attack is a must, and at 13th level I budgeted in Improved Two-Weapon Fighting. Shield Master makes this feat insane, so there’s no reason not to grab it up as soon as possible.

With that, we’re onto the end game!

Endgame (15+)

• Classes: Slayer 6 / Horizon Walker 3 / Stalwart Defender 10
• Feats: Combat Reflexes (1st), Shield Slam (Bonus), Two-Weapon Fighting (3rd), Improved Shield Bash (Bonus), Endurance (5th), Shield Master (Bonus), Dodge (7th), Toughness (9th), Power Attack (11th), Improved Two-Weapon Fighting (13th), Greater Two-Weapon Fighting (15th), Furious Focus (17th), Diehard (19th)
• Abilities: damage reduction 5/-, defensive powers (bulwark, halting blow, fearless defense, smash, mighty resilience), defensive stance, favored terrain: desert +4, urban +2, improved uncanny dodge, last word, mobile defense, slayer talent (combat trick, ranged combat style 2), sneak attack +2d6, studied target +2 (two targets), terrain dominance: desert, terrain mastery: desert, track +3, uncanny dodge

Alright! End game, the stalwart defender actually has some great abilities for us to play with. The first one is a defensive power called smash, and this defensive power is so good that I wouldn’t be surprised if you opted it to talk it at stalwart defender level 2 and bumped back halting blow and bulwart. Basically, smash lets you make a free attack with your shield at a –5 penalty while you’re in defensive stance. That’s it. It stacks with haste. Stacks with all of your Two-Weapon Fighting nonsense. Stacks with everything. Assuming that you have at least a +1 bashing spiked shield, you’re looking at an extra attack for 2d6 damage, and considering the attack is only at a –5, you actually have an okay chance to hit with it. A liberal reading of Shield Master (which is a feat in need of some wordage revisiting anyway) could indicate that the feat allows you to ignore this penalty, but I’d talk it up with your GM first and foremost.

Aside from smash, fearless is also awesome, as your Will save isn’t great and giving you immunity to one of the most common types of Will saves while in defensive stance is excellent. From there, I also like mighty resilience, as the ability to negate one critical hit per defensive stance is great. Combine that with the jigasa of the fortunate soldier and you’ve got two NO CRITS one combat per day, and one NO CRITS in every other combat you face. Pretty awesome.

Feat wise, the build grabs Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, Greater Two-Weapon Fighting, and then sort of forgets what to do with itself. The lack of bonus feats on this build at high levels is annoying, but what you get out of it is pretty good. Except for one, obvious thing: the lack of rounds of defensive stance. The stalwart defender feels very strapped for defensive stance rounds to me, giving you the number attributed to a 1st-level barbarian initially, and getting you up to the number associated with a 10th level barbarian by the end. I truly feel that the first few levels of this prestige class are going to hurt because of a lack of rounds of defensive stance per day, but at least with our dip you can cycle them fairly effectively.

And that’s my stalwart defender build! As you might be able to tell, I’m not a big fan of this class because it has some serious limitations for rather petty results. The lack of bonus feats doesn’t help this class either, and like any AC-focused build you run into the problem of actually getting your foes to focus on you. Being able to bash your foes around the battle field with your shield will hopefully make you threatening enough (or annoying enough) to warrant some attacks in your direction, and the fact that you have a full base attack bonus with this build is pretty great too. Sadly, this build starts to come into its own too late for 90% of PFS games, which is a shame. This is a cool class, but its not one that really figures out what it wants to be good at besides “keep me alive.”

If you have any questions or comments, leave’em in the comments section! I’m always looking to leave my comfort zone, so if you have a build suggestion or theme for Iconic Design, leave it to me in the comments and I’ll see what I can do for you. Until next week, however, I’m signing off!

Alexander “Alex” Augunas has been playing roleplaying games since 2007, which isn’t nearly as long as 90% of his colleagues. Alexander is an active freelancer for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and is best known as the author of the Pact Magic Unbound series by Radiance House. Alex is the owner of Everyman Gaming, LLC and is often stylized as the Everyman Gamer in honor of Guidance’s original home. Alex’s favorite color is blue, and his favorite Pathfinder Race/Class combination doesn’t involve the stalwart defender. Sorry.