Class Articles: The Totemist Part 2

Section 2: Basic Chassis

So, the basic chassis of the Totemist...

d8 Hit Die

3/4 BAB

4 + Intelligence bonus skill points per level

Skill list: Concentration, Craft, Handle Animal, Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (Nature), Knowledge (The Planes), Listen, Profession, Ride, Spellcraft, Spot, Survival, Swim

Proficient only with light armor, proficient with all shields (except Tower Shields)

Proficient only with simple weapons

Good Fortitude, Good Reflex, Poor Will saves

Hit Die: d8 for a melee class? Hmm, could be better...but fortunately, the bulk of your class features are based on your Constitution, so you'll end up with a good amount of Hit Points anyway. There are also Soulmelds that boost your HP; overall, you probably won't be too far behind d10 and d12 Hit Die classes in terms of hit points.

BAB: One of these days Wizards will learn that Full BAB isn't such a horrendously powerful thing that only dedicated melee classes like Fighters get it. (They fixed this sort of in Tome of Battle—Warblades and Crusaders get Full BAB despite having all sorts of neat tricks that Fighters and Barbarians don't—though they still insisted on Swordsages having only ¾ BAB...hrm...) Fortunately, the fact that you use mostly Natural Attacks—which you can spam regardless of BAB—and the fact that you can buff those Natural Attacks with Essentia sort of makes up for this.

Skills: A skillmonkey class this is not. I'm a little surprised Totemists don't get Climb or Jump as class skills, but thanks to your Soulmelds it's not such a big deal. For any Totemist build I would recommend pumping either the perception skills (Listen, Spot) or Knowledge skills.

Weapons, Armor, and Shields: Yup, light armor only on a dedicated melee class. However, this actually isn't that bad—Your only critical stats are Strenght and Constitution, so you can afford to put the rest into Dexterity if you'd like. At later levels, get yourself a Mithril breastplate—Mithril breastplates count as light armor, and breastplates are only 3 AC short of full-plate anyway. Overall, you should only be a few AC points behind tankier classes like Fighters. As for weapons...where we're going, we won't be needing weapons, only Mr. Left and Mr. Right (and Mr. Big Pointy Teeth, and our two other Mr. Lefts, and our two other Mr. Rights, and...). Totemists need weapon proficiencies the way Monks need weapon proficiencies; they don't. Hooray for Natural Weapons!

Saves: As with other melee classes, you've got Good Fortitude saves—awesome! You've also got Good Reflex saves—that's...still awesome but not quite as awesome as having good Will Saves. That said, DMs might be willing to throw more Reflex saves at you precisely because Reflex saves tend to be less about “Make the save or your character dies right now” than Fortitude and Will saves. In any case, having 2 Good saves is certainly having just 1 Good save.

And that's the basic chassis for the Totemist. The ¾ BAB is a bit puzzling, and the d8 might seem odd on a melee class, but you've got Soulmelds to make up for that. You've got plenty of skillpoints despite not being a skillmonkey class (though you don't have very many worthy skills to spend them on...), a good enough armor proficiency, weapon proficiencies that you don't really need, and two Good saves. A nice little loadout for a melee class.