Min/Max Boards

Metamagic Specialist Sorcerer 6/Force Missile Mage 5/Argent Savant 5/Abjurant Champion 4

You have MAGIC MISSILE. You have SHIELD FOR DAYS. You have MAGE ARMOR, at least until you swap it out for GREATER LUMINOUS ARMOR! Congratulations! You are a force to be reckoned with!

But wait, there's more!

When someone thinks that they've got a shot at you, you can flash your WINGS OF Cover! If you're surrounded, unleash WINGS OF FUCKING FLURRY! Confound your enemies by PREPARING EXPLOSIVE RUNES TODAY! When someone with SR comes along, you can go bowling with ORB OF FORCE! Tell melee brutes to take a hike with Forcewave! Take a bite out of crime with MANYJAWS! Floor your enemies with HOWLING CHAIN! Engulf your foes with MAW OF CHAOS! Unleash a MACROSS MISSILE MASSACRE with your GREATER ARCANE FUSION ARCANE FUSION SPELLSURGE OF MAGICAL MISSILY DEATH.

You can even go RECURSIVE on that BITCH with ARCANE FUSIONS IN ARCANE FUSIONS. DON'T BELIEVE ME?

Quote from: TOB Errata

Quote

Page 96 – Arcane Fusion [Addition] Include clause, “If applying a metamagic feat to a spell, use the adjusted spell level and casting time for purposes of determining eligibility for Arcane Fusion.”

Yo dawg. I heard you liked MAGIC MISSILE, so I put some MAGIC MISSILE in your MAGIC MISSILE so you could MAGIC MISSILE while you MAGIC MISSILE. Step aside, TWIN and REPEAT SPELL! SANCTUM SPELL for ALL OF THE MAGIC MISSILES!

Magic Missile. For when you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.

This may be an old question but I couldn't find a discussion on it anywhere. So say that somehow I'm a Dusk Giant. I'm the DM or I don't care that the Dusk Giant has no LA and isn't suited for play or I permanently polymorph into one or what have you. This would effectively make my ECL seven or plus LA whatever. Some static number. Then I go eat a village or two and get up to 24 racial HD from it's consumption ability. What happens if I gain a negative level and the level gets permanently drained?

From the SRD:

A character who loses a level instantly loses one Hit Die. The character’s base attack bonus, base saving throw bonuses, and special class abilities are now reduced to the new, lower level. Likewise, the character loses any ability score gain, skill ranks, and any feat associated with the level (if applicable). If the exact ability score or skill ranks increased from a level now lost is unknown (or the player has forgotten), lose 1 point from the highest ability score or ranks from the highest-ranked skills. If a familiar or companion creature has abilities tied to a character who has lost a level, the creature’s abilities are adjusted to fit the character’s new level.

The victim’s experience point total is immediately set to the midpoint of the previous level.

Do I immediately gain a ton of experience? What happens if I then lose all my racial HD from starving? I'm not losing any experience so would the racial HD just slowly replace itself with class levels as I lost them?

Here discuss this thing if you're bored or just stare blankly at this page as your body decays drawing you ever closer to the eternal abyss whatever you feel like.

SorO, I think the point of this entire thread was to show optimization of a specific strategy. I don't think that anybody's goal was to say that it was better than charging, or even to compare the two at all. I don't even believe that the point was to comment on how good or bad the strategy was. It was just to show optimization of a strategy, regardless of how effective it is in comparison to anything else.

So, while everything you said is correct, it did not progress, nor comment on the content of the thread.

Now there are plenty of ways to add more attacks to the build that allow for more bull rushes. We could replace war blade with dervish, but we would need a shield that dealt slashing damage.

There are some fun finds in the Ravenloft material.

From Van Richten's Arsenal:

The viper bite weapon mod allows administration of a liquid with a hit. Specifically, if you beat an opponent's touch AC then the liquid splashes out on the target and on all adjacent squares. This occurs even if you wouldn't actually hit your target with your attack. If you beat their full AC it only affects the target. It specifically states that you can load any kind of liquid into the weapon, but when you hit it's treated as if you had hit them with a flask of the liquid, which somewhat limits it's usefulness.

The spell insight grants a +10 insight bonus to spot and search checks for 1 round/level. It's a second level spell.

The spell awaken guilt is a third level spell that renders the target flat footed and unable to take any actions at all for 1d6 minutes. It's touch range, and mind affecting, and can also change your alignment to the opposite of what it was? But this is left up to the DM.

The deconstruct spell lowers a construct's DR by ten points.

The diminish undead spell lowers an undead's turn resistance by 3.

The eternal slumber spell, among other things, removes a lich from it's body.

The shackle spell paralyses (sort of) a creature with no save. 3rd level spell.

The epiphany spell allows another saving throw against an evil spell or profane effect. I have no idea what constitutes a "profane effect."

The binding weapon enhancement is a +3 weapon ability that can be applied to a slashing or piercing metal weapon. It turns non-elemental/fey/outsider/incorporeal creatures into ghosts when you kill them with the weapon.

The heartseeker weapon enhancement is a +5 weapon ability that instantly kills the target on a critical hit. It has a short and vague list of immune creatures, and outsiders get a fortitude save, but everyone else is insta dead.

The ivory amulet of the beast gives you the lycanthrope template while worn.

A ring of reversion will return anything to it's original body with no save. The body must be within 50 miles.

A soul searcher medallion gives true seeing, as well as revealing the true alignment, active curses, illusions, shape shifting, magical dweomers, and so forth? (Whatever that means).

A bed of meditation can give an "effective" +10 bonus to intelligence and wisdom for one hour per use.

A censor of warding prevents undead with SR less than 16 from entering a structure. Why? No idea.

The Medallion of Set gives any character a dread familiar. It's like a familiar, but way too loyal.

Catalytic Poison alters a poison to affect only one creature.

Corporeal Purgative can transfer all diseases from one target to another.

Spiritual Purgative does the same, but with curses.

Essential Cogulant stores the soul of a dying or recently dead creature and allows it to be placed into another body.

A philosophical child is a nearly exact copy of any creature that you take a tissue sample from. Under your control entirely. Forever. Broken broken broken.

Enlightened child is the same thing, but gives three bonus abilities off of a list that includes immortality, the ability to liquefy itself, and EX alter self at will.

The portents feat grants a free augury once per day. The only requirement is a 15+ wisdom score.

The pistoleer prestige class grants the ability to shoot around cover with gunpowder weapons.

From Van Richten's guide to the walking dead:

The composite walking dead template allows combining some abilities from a couple of creatures onto another.

It has a ritual section that states if an hour long ritual (with apparently no cost) is conducted before casting animate dead, then the undead gains 1d4+1 intelligence and +1 turn resistance. This intelligence increases by 2 per century the undead lives, to a maximum of +6 from three centuries.

The reign undead skill allows you to make a check to control uncontrolled mindless undead.

The bind undead feats allow you to spend Xp to permanently bind undead to your will, while removing them from your animation and/or control pool.

The bind salience feat to permanently add salient abilities to undead. Some of the salient abilities are pretty wild. For instance, leaping grants an unnamed +30 bonus to jump checks, and doubles jumping distance. Deathless warrior grants nigh immunity to damage. Other near abilities include spawn creation and telepathy. Someone could honestly write an entire handbook just on salient abilities.

From champions of darkness:

The manipulator prestige class grants a funny bardic music ability based off of diplomacy. And you gain it all at first level.

The mesmerist prestige class has the ability to lower will saves against their hypnotisms. This effect apparently lasts forever and stacks.

The energy drain feat allows you to spend a turn attempt to drain a number of levels or hit dice equal to you charisma modifier. This can be used after you succeed on any melee touch attack.

The ethereal touch feat lets you touch and harm incorporeal creatures. It also has an odd clause about allowing the character to possess the corrupting touch ability of a ghost, but it doesn't grant it. So I guess it's nice if you were prohibited from having that ability for some reason.

There is another version of the extra domain feat.

The feral rearing feat gives you the animal type instead of whatever type you had before. I'm sure this opens up tons of cheese. At the very least, it allows you to be a target for awaken animal. It also gives some other benefits and makes you illiterate.

The hollow feat makes you soulless, which, among other things, makes you immune to energy drain, magic jar, trap the soul, malevolence, and all other forms of possession.

The life force sacrificing feat allows you to damage yourself in order to swap out your prepared spells for any other spell that you could prepare. The damage is small, but it can't be healed by magical means.

From heroes of light:

The kiss of dawn feat refreshes all of your spells every day at dawn. Apparently regardless of if you rested or not.

The wealth feat gives you gold each month. The amount is entirely insignificant, but it's sort of unique that it's a feat that gives you a steady income for doing nothing.

From player's guide to ravenloft:

The ghostsight feat grants permanent see ethereal, but without the invisibility piercing part.

The curse rules are nasty. They can be used by any character, but require a charisma check to take effect. The save doc can get really high, and it doesn't require line of sight or line of effect. It seems like it has infinite range. Also, as an amusing side note, it doesn't seem to say what sort of save the target gets. Out of the book curses include -8 to an ability score, instant death, permanent transformation into a monster (could be a blessing), and lycanthropy.

Whew. This was a much longer post than I intended. I just kept running into more things. I'm sure I missed a bunch, but I will post them as I find them.

No, no, no. Festering anger + cancer Mage. Any be a gnome just cause. Then you just sit. You just sit and be the most patient, angry lil guy in the whole world. You become so angrily patient that your power becomes cosmically phenomenal. Beyond, of course, what it was already.

The body modifications are pretty neat. They aren't what I was envisioning though, as that still leaves them as items which can still be suppressed/dispelled. And the effects don't actually become yours. But they are a step closer than I was before.

Warforged + fussion sounds closer to what I'm trying to accomplish, but it's still somewhat limiting. Is there a good way to fuse with something permanently and in such a way as that it can't be dispelled?

There is a good chance that I'm just going crazy, but I could have sworn that at some point I read that there was a way to permanently absorb magic items into a character, and thus give the character that items abilities as their own. Maybe it was home brew? It's just killing me that I can't find anything like that anywhere. Perhaps I just dreamed it up and wish it was real. Anyone ever heard of anything like this?

Quote from: Cyrocloud on October 01, 2013, 07:30:34 PM

Sorry I'm a bit hung up on that Stone Giant thing, you should ask to see how the LA is being waived whether DM why the hell not, or you get less point buy to make up for it, or even if a flaw can be taken to lower the LA by one, because you might be able to snag a pretty tasty template like Phrenic, Half-Fey or like a Primordial Half-Giant (Necropolitan too if that doesn't disqualify Primoridial).

If you can exploit the same stuff as the Stone Giant along these lines, I'll really have to recommend becoming an Unbodied. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/unbodied.htm

The LA isn't being waived, I'm just draining away the hit dice. 4 LA doesn't harm a hulking hurler build nearly as much as it does a full manifester. And I'm playing a stone giant because of my character's background, not because it's optimal. But, on the note of LA, we are using buy off, so taking a few levels in the ghost savage progression might be a good idea daolothe. You can find it here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20040117a

Edit: Wait! I completely forgot that unbodied manifest as 4th level telepaths. By all means, do it.

Or you could not have everyone in your party blow a feat that they may or may not even be able to take. Not that it isn't fun to have a freakishly undead-like party, but it's really a hard sell in many cases. My suggestions are going to differ depending on just how min/max you are going here.

If you want to go as far as possible a well constructed artificer is your best bet. You would be able to laugh off wounds and effects that would kill a regular old cleric, but it takes a lot of book keeping and a lot of people hate artificers.

Cleric is really a very solid base for healing though. You can do really over the top DMM tricks if you want to be superman, or just stick to traditional healing and still be somewhat effective.

If you want to be a traditional healer there is actually a class from miniatures handbook called healer. They have an edge over cleric at traditional healing, but they are far, far worse at everything else. Maybe play a pacifist healer? Take vow of peace or some such thing.

If you want my personal favorite healing tricks I will list them below.

Sacred Healing (Feat, Complete Divine) grants area fast healing for turn attempts. A good solitary healing ability.

Dragonic Aura (Vigor) (Feat, Dragon Magic) gives you an area of fast healing up to half hp, but it's constantly on. Bonus if you can swing dragonblooded subtype.

Martial Stance (Martial Spirit) (Feat, Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords) this one heals you or an ally within 30ft for 2hp everytime you make a melee attack. It lets you multitask.

Augment Healing (Feat, Complete Divine) adds potency to healing spells. It isn't that much, but it's nice to get for a dedicated healer.

Master of Day and Night (Feat, Player's Guide to Eberon) maximizes all cure spells.