Author Topic: PBMC Thread & Build Compendium  (Read 26941 times)

Offline PlzBreakMyCampaign

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Re: PBMC Thread & Build Compendium
« Reply #20 on: January 15, 2015, 11:10:13 AM »
Build 16 Death Attack Done Right

Have you ever wanted to 1 shot anything that isn't a non-magical swarm or one of those rare aberrations without discernable anatomy? Then look no further. Yes siree with just one RAI reading, I've got the build for you!

Quote
Step 0) Client gives you a mark description, time and place. Having the client teleport you a decent distance away is a bonus if you don't feel like doing it yourself with an item or spell (Having a spellcaster level of 11 or 13 gets things done).

Step 1) Fly high for a clear shot. Feathered wings works well.

Step 2) Pump your spot checks so you can see further than the enemy. Cragtop Archer 1 [RoS101] + Dragonsight [SpC73] means you resolve creatures twice as far as your opponent. Add items & buffs to taste. Sample spot distance can exceed the horizon due to flight:
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Step 3) Stay hidden. Persistent Greater Invisibility is unnecessary due to the distance. You can weigh whether or not additional countermeasures are worth while to cancel out certain mindsight builds.

Step 4) Get a really nice long range artillery setup. Let me know if I missed a range increment boosters:
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Step 5) What about to hit penalties? Surge of Fortune [CD128] laughs at such petty details. Minor schemas are your friend.

Step 6) This is where people add damage, right? Sniper's Shot [SpC194] trades a swift action to sneak attack at range.

Step 7) Forcing sneak attack is hard but one of the surest ways to do it = Telling Blow feat [PHBIIp83] + prebuffed Dolorous Blow [SpC70] or Hunter's Mercy [SpC117] & Surge of Fortune [CC128] (I'd say discharging SoF treats your attack roll as a natural 20 but is not an effect related to your weapons' criticals. If your DM disagrees use Hunter's mercy)

Step 8) Get rid of SA immunities that are due to magic: Arcane Archer 2 to standard action fire an arrow with an AMF where it hits will do nicely. Technically you can action economy abuse (like the Heroic Surge feat & Belt of Battle item) to get around casters who might have blocking persistent spells, but that's a very edge case.

Step 9) Get rid of SA immunities due to type: Deathstrike Bracers [MIC93] also requires a swift action so see the above belt of battle.

Step 10) Ignore cover & concealment which is the last thing that can prevent SA: Ghost touch for incorporeals and a seeking ranged weapon. A morphing Rapier of Unerring Direction [MIC55] would work too thanks to being NE.

Step 11) But sneak attack isn't enough to a 1shot of those high HP character so we add Death Attack via Assassin 1

*Step 12) In order to Death Attack at range we have Sniper's Eye [SpC193].
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Step 13) Spend 3 rounds studying your target and buffing yourself  (Deathsight [CM102] isn't necessary)

Step 14) Fire your standard action bow shot (flaming and acidic weapon properties are recommended for regenerating creatures [RC74]) with an AMF ready to balloon.

Step 15) Watch that DC100+ Fort save make your target go pop, RAI never to be raised again (see below)
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Final remarks: the fact that an assassin's Death Attack is not a [Death] effect (referenced in the special abilities section as "Death Attacks"), seems odd to me. Many DMs may rule otherwise as players often suspect this be be an oversight in core. This would prevent raise dead. If so, Deathstrike Bracers should also pierce [Death] effect immunity for the purpose of rider effects on sneak attack or crits (like vorpal). You know that bow that counts as a melee weapon too? Use that weapon and then stick vorpal on it. Now you have a melee decapitating build. It trades being detected for having no save. Certain templates, races, and items hard counter it though.

Offline PlzBreakMyCampaign

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Re: PBMC Thread & Build Compendium
« Reply #21 on: January 15, 2015, 11:13:46 AM »
Build 17 All Base Core Class Caster Lists

Steal [DoF141] wrymling small 4RHD, +2con&cha, +3nat, 60'? line 1d6 acid BW DC13, alternate form, acid immune, +10save poison, 16SR, sorc CL1, 60', 150'(avg)fly, 30'swim

Go 3str, 3dex, 20con, 14int, 14wis, 20cha (or 18wis, 12cha if using SAD caster nerf)

DoEp15 Half-Dragon Form means 18str, 10dex, 12con plus medium humanoid physical stats, form+4 nat, 2d4claws, 1d6bite, breath weapon as per size max 12 dice.
DoEp30 Child of Eberron: druid, survival, arcane druid casting but no cleric casting
DoEp31 Loredrake: +2sorc levels, d10 RHDs

Have a Major bloodline and thanks to the "ruling" on Souther Magician, the fact that a spell is divine or arcane does not change when a caster casts the spell as one or the other. Therefore our dragon casting druid or cleric spells is still 'casting divine spells' even though he casts them as arcane. Most people will find the RAW a bit silly, so feel free to throw on Southern Magician if you don't take that interpretation. Feel free to add Arcane Preparation or Battle Blessing or .

Be NG and Buyoff the 2 LA (faster if using fixed 3.5e's mundane buffs)

4HD / Sorc 1 / Prestige Bard 2 / Prestige Ranger 1 / Rainbow Servant 1-4 [CD54] / Sacred Exorcist 1 [CD57] / Silver Pyromancer 1 [FN150] / Rainbow Servant 5-10

Grants 9th level spells (non fixed 3.5, obvious) if you take the a Savage Species ritual to gain the (kobold) subtype so you can have a certain greater ritual (or just level-draining a RHD).

Or you can just settle for a 3.5-fixed 7th level spells:
4HD / Sorc 1 / PrC Bard 2 / Prestige Ranger 1 / PrC Paladin 1 / Rainbow Servant 3 / Sacred Exorcist 1 / Rainbow Servant 4-10

Now just by level squared in gp to buy knowstones [DragMag333p36] for almost any spell you want to cast. Blow as much of your WBL as you want. You're basically a recaster that can BUY spells known. If being a VoP chameleon with higher level spells but fewer slots bothers you, you could bust of some cheese: item + aberrant wildshape + Assume Supernatural Ability = Beholder Mage 1 instead of Sorc 1. Now you know all teh spellz rather than 40+WBL. You're still limited on slots though 50+stats (w/ spellcasting prodigy)+item familiar+rings of wizardry if going Beholder Mage isn't as many as you'd think. Even if you manage 102 slots, you're still looking at a 3% "yes" rate compared to the size of your spell list (or x3 that if using the 3.5-fixed source-split spell lists). Obviously I'm exluding TO like recharge magic or an illithid savant munching on a mind mage with a pp recharge setup.

Since you can free access to the sorc(22+2160 spells), cleric (1228 spells, 673 non-wizard), druid (876, spells, 534 non-wizard and 171 of those are cleric spells), bard (553ish spells, 120 of which aren't in the previous lists), ranger (248 spells, 32 of which aren't in the previous lists) and paladin (175 spells, 48 of which aren't in the previous lists not including the 2 paladin+ranger only ones), this accounts for 3,400 spells (or about 85.9% of all spells). I'm using my already posted Sorted 3.5 Spells here. Fun fact: 876 druid spells, 248 are not covered in any of the other main lists. To give you an idea, the Healer list is 56 spells long and the Assassin list is 125.

The largest remaining list is the Sanctified list at 36 spells. So from this character's point of view, the sanctified unique list is longer than the ranger one. You did take Arcane Preparation, right? I really wish Excel could handle more rows. Nevermind it was a relic of the 2007 compatibility I was using. So if we don't count the Articer list (which is the only non-arcane, non-divine list I know of) at 46 spells, the next largest unique list is the OA shaman at 29, the Corrupt list at 25, and the assassin list at 16. Also keep in mind that the numbers are only trustable to about a dozen. Don't blame me, I'm just the compiler. For instance my spreadsheet lists 13 ur-priest only spells, which I doubted so I looked up Lifeward and sure enough, it wasn't properly listed under cleric.

Offline PlzBreakMyCampaign

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Re: PBMC Thread & Build Compendium
« Reply #22 on: January 15, 2015, 03:03:44 PM »
Build 18 The Only Truenamer Build You Should Ever Try

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Offline PlzBreakMyCampaign

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Re: PBMC Thread & Build Compendium
« Reply #23 on: January 15, 2015, 03:03:57 PM »
Thread: Psycarnum Infusion + Midnight X ROUND 3

The Story:
So I was doing some min-maxing on an actually playable Vampire. I needed an optimal way of becoming undead besides the ghost progression, necropolitan, or dry lich. Dread Champion was in my bag of tricks. So I wanted some early entry psionics.

Of course, I bust out the Prerequisite Handbook and Early Entry Handbook. Looking up psionics I see Midnight Augmentation as the main method.

The Problem:
I double-check the text when I'm calculating the ECL I need to get in (ECL3 entry, but I could probably push it to ECL2 if needed  Big Grin) when I noticed that I didn't have a method for breaking the investable-essentia cap.

That was weird. I remember people not having that problem with much dirtier tricks. So I naturally looked to my Dirty Tricks Handbook Fixes to see if it had been entered and therefore I would have fixed it. Then all I would have to do is trace the part that's broken RAW to see what's up.

I hadn't fixed it. This was even stranger because I know I had taken a look at these things. Well that's okay. I'll just recreate the trick and then fix it, submitting the fix myself. But I didn't see it working. So I dug up this thread. Echoes didn't explain any PP recharging, but did have this to say about T_G's old trick: "you never invest essentia into Midnight Metamagic." Which is true, but misses the point. The quotes are: "is treated as if it had essentia invested" for psycarnum infusion vs "Once per day you can invest essentia into this feat and chose a particular psionic power / one or more spells...." Notice the second choice that you make: spells or powers. Psicarnum Infusion does not allow you to make choices the choices to make those chosen spells/powers into essentia receptacles.

For azure talent no choice language is there, so you can at max get 12pp for free upon blowing your focus. This is great for utility spam, but lacks high offense or defense. This means its not "dirty" enough of a trick to fix.

The Reason the Free Metamagic Doesn't Work As Expected:
Midnight Augmentation mostly works, so we'll look at it first. PCI doesn't allow you to chose powers. If you use it before have to tripped the 1/day limitation to first invest essentia into a power, then there is no "that power" to have a pp augmentation reduction apply to. So you have to trip the 1/day limit and then spread 0 pp to all of your powers known. There is no minimum 1 point of essentia per power restriction like there is on midnight metamagic. Now when you PCI, free pp reduction, assuming the "as if" language gets around the "essentia invested ... cannot be altered," which I think it does (thanks to the ROUND TWO thread at BG)

Sure, you can't do the psionic combo two turns in a row for a combat power, but you do have a little bit of a buffer on running through all your pp in a five minute work day. Its only good for that and stretching augmentations 5 beyond your ML. The only time it "doesn't" work is when you just gained a power known that day (level up or chirurgery) but have already done your 1/day motions. I'm purposely ignoring Bestow Power, as should any DM who wants to have psionics without glaring pp recharge possibilities.

Midnight Metmagic again doesn't allow chosing spells, so we have to trip the 1/day limit to chose spells that can become receptacles. But we have to invest a minimum of essentia for a metamagic feat (like extend). Assumably the "you can apply the effect of different metamagic feats to different spells" language allows us to 'change our minds' about what known metamagic feat is going to be fueled once PCI virtually maxes the essentia invested.

This means a caster with a significant amount of spells to buff with metamagics will quickly run out of essentia: its easy to get far more spells to buff than it is essentia to cover even the minimum investment of 1. Since casters using midnight metamagic won't want more than 14 levels of Incarnate (when the essentia rate goes from 1 to 2), the only way to generate a large amount is Necrocarnate 1 (or 10 for 6x the absorption speed) or leadership, assuming your DM lets you pick the follower's race.

The Bottom Line:
It requires enough care, investment, and points of failure that I see no problem with allowing this trick. The fact that the casting time doesn't change makes it hard to stack other metamagic feats (thanks to the "simultaneous" nature of metamagic application). It requires even more effort to get a decent buff routine, and although slightly more powerful than DMM+stacking nightsticks/Firre+Metamagic Song/Incantatrix/Tainted Sorcerer or Scholar+naberius/Spelldancer (non-evocation or necromancy)+undead, its far more interesting.









Offline PlzBreakMyCampaign

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Re: PBMC Thread & Build Compendium
« Reply #32 on: January 15, 2015, 03:06:56 PM »
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