Author Topic: [3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice  (Read 2619 times)

Offline Nytemare3701

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[3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice
« on: February 21, 2020, 11:01:47 PM »
I have been invited to a level 30 tristalt game and pretty much anything goes barring excessive immunities and actual TO (defined here as any build that no longer meaningfully participates in the story, usually due to arbitrary growth).

House rules:
(click to show/hide)
Classes so far, no gestalt track sorting:
Factotum 9
Artificer 30
Grand Creator 10
Maester 1

Bases covered:
- Auto20 on UMD
- Disjunction immunity
- Activate items while silenced/unconscious/dominated
- Spontaneous Crafting

I have 40 unused levels here, and other than getting a stupid amount of dips for random passive effects, I'm at a loss for what to even DO with them. Artifice doesn't really scale with anything except feats and GP.

My game plan is to sit safely on an airship or demiplane and send out a robot that is both expendable AND upgradeable, along with some sort of contingency to recover the bot if (read: when) it is destroyed. Other people are playing One Punch Man, I'm playing Genos (or more accurately the guy who made Genos a cyborg)

Seeing as the DM has confirmed LITERAL tsunami waves of enemies, I'm pretty sure I can take this pretty far without going overboard. I do want to avoid permanently losing resources whenever possible though.

Offline ketaro

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Re: [3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice
« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2020, 02:50:17 AM »
Well, craft construct and make some of the more obscure powerful ones. Like a prismatic golem.

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: [3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice
« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2020, 03:12:20 AM »
Well, craft construct and make some of the more obscure powerful ones. Like a prismatic golem.

Prismatic Golems are kind of terrible though, save for the part where they are incorporeal and magic immune at the same time.

That said, if you stripped one down and made it intelligent, it might be a giant pain in the ass to deal with. I do appreciate the implicit capability to choose their prismatic ability if given intelligence.

Offline ketaro

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Re: [3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice
« Reply #3 on: February 22, 2020, 03:32:10 PM »
Dont they blind ppl and do touch attacks and i should have mentioned fully awakened constructs that you can craft more hd into for free feats

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: [3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice
« Reply #4 on: February 22, 2020, 11:24:08 PM »
Dont they blind ppl and do touch attacks and i should have mentioned fully awakened constructs that you can craft more hd into for free feats

The blind only hits targets with less than 8hd, and the baseline HD for anything with a stat block in this setting is 15HD. This is high epic, so I'm looking for things that can devastate a countryside or go toe to toe with things that deal thousands of damage per round.

Offline ketaro

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Re: [3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice
« Reply #5 on: February 23, 2020, 01:33:47 AM »
Awakened Constructs or Effigies pumped full of HD for loads of bonus feats. Do a 12 headed hydra.

Craft an Effigy of a heavily template stacked version of a monster. Like this Gold Dragon. I've done this epic artificer stuff with a whole army of fun stuff
(click to show/hide)

A greater cadaver collector is a pretty cool construct. Autodamages grappled foes by pinning them to spikes on its back and has a paralyzing breath weapon.

If you have somebody that plays with undead minions, having a shadesteel golem is pretty cool as it has a negative energy damage aoe burst attack centered on itself.

Slaughterstone Behemoths can punch things to do Fort save or Daze (nothing is immune to Daze) and has an AoE stomp to trip.

Clockwork Mender Swarms are fantastic as repair drones.

If a DM is okay with it you can even enchant them with built in armor/weapon abilities. If not, you can still build into them permanent items (or slotless ones) with constant spell effects running for additional buffs to cover any weaknesses and enhance the strengths of your constructs. (Like putting a perm invis sphere on flying robots for transportation)

Nimblewrights are amazing dex/crit based combat constructs that excel in tripping.

You could also craft a bunch of intelligent weapons and give them their own mobility options. Have a bunch of AI controlled gun turrets floating around you at all times.

Abuse the hell out of craft cost reductions and see if you can apply them to crafting epic spells for mass robot army drops and/or recoveries that aren't easily stopped/prevented by Dispel Magic/Antimagic

Effigy Master certainly ain't worthless if you want to fight armies.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2020, 01:57:02 AM by ketaro »

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: [3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice
« Reply #6 on: February 23, 2020, 04:18:11 AM »
Awakened Constructs or Effigies pumped full of HD for loads of bonus feats. Do a 12 headed hydra.

Craft an Effigy of a heavily template stacked version of a monster. Like this Gold Dragon. I've done this epic artificer stuff with a whole army of fun stuff
(click to show/hide)

A greater cadaver collector is a pretty cool construct. Autodamages grappled foes by pinning them to spikes on its back and has a paralyzing breath weapon.

If you have somebody that plays with undead minions, having a shadesteel golem is pretty cool as it has a negative energy damage aoe burst attack centered on itself.

Slaughterstone Behemoths can punch things to do Fort save or Daze (nothing is immune to Daze) and has an AoE stomp to trip.

Clockwork Mender Swarms are fantastic as repair drones.

If a DM is okay with it you can even enchant them with built in armor/weapon abilities. If not, you can still build into them permanent items (or slotless ones) with constant spell effects running for additional buffs to cover any weaknesses and enhance the strengths of your constructs. (Like putting a perm invis sphere on flying robots for transportation)

Nimblewrights are amazing dex/crit based combat constructs that excel in tripping.

You could also craft a bunch of intelligent weapons and give them their own mobility options. Have a bunch of AI controlled gun turrets floating around you at all times.

Abuse the hell out of craft cost reductions and see if you can apply them to crafting epic spells for mass robot army drops and/or recoveries that aren't easily stopped/prevented by Dispel Magic/Antimagic

Effigy Master certainly ain't worthless if you want to fight armies.

I'm familiar with Effigy abuse as well as shadesteel golems, but my big concern here is having a recoverable, expendable, improvable "proxy", not an army. It's a PbP, so having a ton of extra actions to resolve is a nightmare.

Offline ketaro

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Re: [3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice
« Reply #7 on: February 23, 2020, 06:34:44 AM »
How about looking into an elder eidolon from LoM?

Immunity to magic, fast healing, deflection bonuses to ac and an insanity aura to inflict confusion are some of its goodies.

Sacred guardian is a great template for a construct as well for something durable.

100% get a colossal construct and just have a bunch of clockwork mender swarms living inside it to constantly be ready to repair it in a pinch.

Do none of the collosi golems from epic handbook interest you?

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: [3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice
« Reply #8 on: February 23, 2020, 08:57:24 PM »
How about looking into an elder eidolon from LoM?

Immunity to magic, fast healing, deflection bonuses to ac and an insanity aura to inflict confusion are some of its goodies.

Sacred guardian is a great template for a construct as well for something durable.

100% get a colossal construct and just have a bunch of clockwork mender swarms living inside it to constantly be ready to repair it in a pinch.

Do none of the collosi golems from epic handbook interest you?

I'm familiar with those options, but the mender swarm isn't really a viable option when the constructs in question are going to be taking hundreds of damage a turn.

Colossi bring their own AMF, which is a problem when I'm trying to possess them and give them magic items. Also, being literally colossal makes it hard to interact meaningfully on smaller scales.

The problem I'm running into with ALL the options I've found so far is that they don't mechanically scale well. Ideally, I'd like a template that gives uncapped bonuses based on HD, so upgrading a construct will actually be worth it.

Offline ketaro

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Re: [3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice
« Reply #9 on: February 24, 2020, 03:31:39 AM »
Is there a limit on how many HD you can craft into a construct other than how much money you have? Hundreds of a damage a turn isn't much when the repair bots have thousands plus when everything has templates for fast healing.

Offline awaken_D_M_golem

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Re: [3.5+PF+HB] Epic Artifice
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2020, 05:32:14 PM »
Savage Species Rakshasa racial prog 14, for immunity to anything other than plot devices.
Greater Bestow Curse to remove the easydead oops ability.
Your codpiece is a mimic.