Min/Max Boards

Genre is a fast-playing party card game for 2~6 people that plays in about 60~90 minutes.  It's a 100% narrative game that has no GM - everybody is responsible for their own character's story AND the blockbuster movie script you write together. 

Every card - from "Sliding Bloody Handprint" to "Fast Zombies" to "Action Sweat!" - gives the Cast a building block to develop the script; Antagonists to fight or flee; Challenges to overcome; Props or Traits to give Characters depth; Relationships for romance, rivalry, bromance; even Death for ... well, for killing folks!

Each turn, use a card to tell a story about your Character, playing it on the Script DM (Development Mat - old gamer humor) or your Character’s DM.  Then, play a second card to involve another Character and give someone else a turn!

Don’t like another player’s story, or have a card that is PERFECT for the situation?  Interrupt by spending Applause and saying “AND!” or “BUT!” to hijack the round and make it your turn again.  But remember – the other players are ALSO the Audience; if you don’t entertain them to gain more Applause, you might find your Character facing Death without a “BUT!” to save ‘em.

Play the right cards, and the Script moves from Act I to Act II, and you can begin to play cards to move your Character’s story forward, too; make Goldy Stripper, your Hardcore Heroine, develop a heart or get your Hopeful Romantic Bobo the Clown into a relationship with that Hot Scientist.

Complete your Character’s development before the Script ends, and nominate others for the final Awards Show: Action Hero(ine), Comic Relief, or Drama King/Queen.

• Shape Soulmeld - Acidic Spittle: Yay for incarnum!  This glob of green deals 1d6 base acid damage, +1d6 per point of essentia.  At the low low cost of 1 feat, it's a deal and a steal!
• Murkdweller: These are a seriously undervalued +0 LA race from Serpent Kingdoms.  They come with a spew that has a DEX (yes, you read that right) based save vs. blindness (only 1 round, though), a +6 (!!) to Dex, +3 natural armor, tiny size, and a free racial WP Finesse feat!  On top of that, they look like grubby little gila monsters!  WIN!
• A Poisonous Bite plus ... Spit Venom: A la either Dragon #313, in which the range depends on your size, or Serpent Kingdoms, which grants a 30 ft. flat, single-target shot regardless of size.  The other, more pertinent difference, is that the Dragon variant BLINDS the target for 2d6 HOURS, whereas the Serpent Kingdoms variant deals your normal poison damage.  Sigh.

The bottom line?  If you're not a creepy little lizard, an Incarnate, or someone with a feat to waste on a soulmeld, you'll need to get you ...

Ways to get bites (heh!):

• Totem-Bound Phase Cloak: Yours for the low, low price of two levels of Totemist!  From Magic of Incarnum; 1d3 Con is nothing to sneeze at.  The save is Con-based, which helps since Totemists use Con for most meldy stuff.
• Animal Devotion: An unfortunately named feat that never fails to bring to mind images of furries.  *Shudder.*  This costs you ONE level of Cleric ('cause casters do it better, damn them), and alls you need to do is swap out your Animal Domain spells and blow a turn attempt to use it.  Same Con damage, but the save is Cha based rather than Con based (handy, since a high Cha will boost your number of turn attempts, too).  Swift action to activate, lasts 10 rounds, and can be used in a number of other, "wonder twin powers - activate!" style lame ways.
• Changing Shape: As always in d20, being NOT yourself is better.  Anything you can change into with a poisonous bite can allow you to take feats that make that bite a ranged weapon.  Granted, if you're a full caster I fail to see why you'd waste your time perfecting the art of the loogie - you could just DESTROY things with spells.  Wild-shaping into a Fleshraker and SPITTING on your foes just seems ... well, like you're just being MEAN.  Kill them and stop humiliating them already.
• Spells: Okay, so it's unfair, but there is ONE exception that I feel deserves honorable mention - the aptly named Blinding Spittle from Magic of Faerun and the SpC.  As advertised, it allows you to spit and blind, albeit at a -4 to hit.  It's arguable whether being able to cast this spell qualifies you for the feat that makes spitting so much fun.  In fact, it even opens up a bit of a meta-game conundrum; if you have a WAND of Blinding Spittle, does the glob emanate from the wand itself (and would thus seem to NOT be viable as a "spit attack"), or does it produce the spell's effect and thus cause the wielder to hawk a loogie?

But I digress.  I was about to segue into explaining the aforementioned feat that really gets the spit flying, so to speak ...

The two feats that make spitting actually worth a few feats are (drumroll please):

Deadly Spittle and Improved Spit.

No, I did not make those up - they really exist.  In Serpent Kingdoms.  Look'em up.

The first takes your spit attack and turns it into a 15 ft. cone.  Remember how you thought it was neat that you could spit your poison as a touch attack?  Well, now you don't have to roll to hit at ALL!  AND you hit everything in a 15 ft. cone!

The second?  It doubles the range of your spit attack.

And, like most things in WotC books, they didn't think to mention if this applied just to your original attack, or the CONE from Deadly Spittle TOO.

AND you can keep taking it, adding the range of your base spit each time.

See where this is going?

The biggest benefits of spitting are to classes who have a tough time hitting enemies.  Even touch attacks go wrong, sometimes; SPIT never does.  It's the juicy equivalent of a breath weapon, and gives you a guaranteed, area-covering, auto-hit effect that you can apply at will.

Incarnates benefit most, perhaps, as they can spit from first level with Dissolving Spittle and can quickly get themselves a cone that needs no roll to hit.  This makes a skill monkey/support character who doesn't even get REAL spells WAY more worthwhile.

Things that can shape into stuff with poisonous bites (classes and critters) and who have them to begin with can get some mileage out of their poison by spitting.  No need to get in someone's face anymore, and no more worrying just where that nasty oozing monster has BEEN before putting it in your mouth: just step back and SPEW! 

Anything with Sudden Strike, Sneak Attack, or Iaijutsu Focus can, in fact, become DEADLY if the Dragon #313 spit variants in-play.  If you can blind everything on the battlefield, you can CARVE IT UP - especially with Iaijutsu Focus.  More on this later. 

NOTE: Yes, I know, technically the Serpent Kingdoms version is a re-write.  Since the tactic isn't really worth the feats otherwise (at anything but low levels, anyhoo), I support using BOTH - treat them as two different feats.  Call the Dragon Version "Blinding Loogie" and the other "Poisonous Spit," or some such.  It's not broken, since it doesn't come CLOSE to caster-nasty; I'd recommend discussing it at your table and trying to get a ruling that will allow for entertainment AND effectiveness.  You can still spit without the Dragon #313 option, but it won't be useful past 6th (or even before, really - depends on how much others are optimizing in your posse).

A note on races: if you're not wild-shaping into something that has natural venom, you might consider one of the LA templates to pick some up.  Why?  Because Venomfire, the 3rd level Cleric/Druid spell, requires you to have a "natural" venomous attack.  Some DMs might rule that means a bite from Animal Devotion or a totem-bound Phase Cloak wouldn't qualify, which is why having a NATURAL venom would open up your ability to have UN-NATURAL venom count.

• Murkdwellers (SK): The undisputed kings of spit, these tiny critters are made of win.  The key element is that they come equipped with a natural spit, allowing them to grab Deadly Spittle and start spewing cones from 1st level.  Add on Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot as flaws, and they've got Improved Spit by 3rd, allowing all sorts of fun early in the game.
• Shinomen Nagas (OA, Dragon #318): The Greensnake naga is a +1 LA, 1 HD, +4 Dex, +2 Str, +1 AC, and poisonous spit (1d3 Con)!  Yay!  Now here's the catch - if you're playing a Dragonfire Adept, you DON'T want Dragon #318, because it makes these guys into Monstrous Humanoids, and thus removes them as options for your 6th level invocation, Humanoid Shape.  If they're humanoid (which is still how they're listed on the Master Monster List on the WotC site, mind yo), you can become a Cobra Naga at 6th to grab a nice fat 1d8 Con poison with secondary damage (yay!).  On the other hand, they work GREAT if you ARE using #318 as playable characters, especially if you play a female - they get to turn their snake tail into legs, making them look just like regular folks and not too weird for the average adventuring party!
• Mongrelfolk (RoD): +4 to starting Con goes a long way towards helping out a meldshaping spewer.  Plus, being ugly as sin and kind of mutated sort of goes with the flavor.
• Azurin and Dusklings (MoI): Both start with a bit of extra essentia, and Azurins also get a handy feat just like other humans.  Azurin > Duskling, but Dusklings do LOOK cool, so your call.
• Water Orcs (UnA): +4 Str, +2 Con - what's not to like?  Plus, you can work the whole "water critter" angle with the spitting.  I always imagined these guys looking like big humanoid orcas, like that thing from Lilo and Stitch (wow, I cited a Disney movie ... I feel dirty).
• Lesser Drow (FR-CS): Good for any spider-based spitting purely for style points, but also for Clerical spitters (females have Cleric as a favored class, which leads to a fun combo or two).  Finally, the Drow Fighter sub level can make for fun with blinding and spitting, and Drow Druids get a fun substitution that lets them turn into spiders - whee!
• Kapak or Venom Draconians (Dragonlance, BoK): Both of these 2 HD dragons get a +2 LA, making them ECL 4 (ow).  In return, Kapak get a 1d6/1d6 Dex poison and Venom a Con version of the same, along with +1d6 Sneak Attack, Gliding, and some minor bonuses.  Not terrible, but don't write home about them.
• Anthropomorphic Vipers: Tiny snake men!  Okay, so the LA is a boner - +2 for the small one who has 1 HD (and thus can start with a class level ... he does get WP Finesse, though ...), and the Large size one (don't get too excited - it's Large with a -8 Str) has 3 HD despite its +0 LA.  Murkdwellers win.
• Aranea: Use Savage Species to play them as a class.  Sure, like everything with an LA, they suck compared to things without one and don't come CLOSE to comparing with casters.  Then again, I DO hope you've gotten the idea by now that we're not looking into spitting stuff because it's more effective than casting.  The fun thing about Araneas is that you can amp up their webs, too, making you super-annoying: web'em, poison'em, rinse and repeat.
• Yuan-Ti Tainted One: They have a poisonous "kiss," which a reasonable DM will take pity on you for (after all, you'll be paying a +2 LA for the questionable privilege of a crappy poison, and if your kiss is poison your spit sure OUGHT to be, right?).  The LA sucks, but they can turn into snakes, opening up some fun options!  EDIT: If anyone can point me at the most updated version of this build, I'd be obliged - can't seem to find it!

Something to consider: if you're not going to have natural poison or shape into something with a natural poison, you won't be able to make use of Venomfire.  Might make it worth sucking it up and taking an LA when making a character who won't be shifting.

You're going to need something else to do once you've coated people in your loogies.  Sometimes you'll be dealing with poison or acid immunity (which will be less annoying if you're just spitting blindness, which would be WAY better!), sometimes you won't want to hit your friends (they're always griping when you accidentally poison them even though you clearly TOLD them to get out of the way ...) - no matter how you cut it, you will need to be able to do other stuff.

There are a few options for the non-caster (I'm not bothering to explain what to do if you're a caster - figure it out yourself):

• Wands: UMD is your friend.  Use to get Venomfire going on your spew, or just cast fun area de-buffs like Caustic Mire or Web and the like.
• HIDE!: Nothing is more obnoxious than being undetectable, then popping out, spewing, and disappearing.  Do this all day and you'll REALLY annoy your foes.
• FIGHT!: As long as you can't spew, use a weapon.  Mostly, though, spitting is for classes who can't hit, so consider your options.  Ranged > Melee, unless you're blinding people and using Iaijutsu Focus.
• BREATHE!: DFAs get halistosis to back up their loogies.  Consider Entangling Exhalation from the Draconomicon - breathe to slow'em down, then spit a bunch of venom on them while they slog along.  Good times!
• CAST/INVOKE!: Remember, your primary identity is as a spitter - don't get all caught up in casting and forget who you are.