Optimization Challenge: Dispater and the Iron Siege

[zook1shoe]

That was the only thing that came to mind

And nice tags

[TravelLog]

Sorry for my recent absence. RL took a brief, yet intense turn for the worse. Things have been resolved now and I'm back.

[Tshern]

Ahoy, prospective corpses. It seems that TravelLog's absence has become rather extensive and I thought about a possible solution.

In its short eloquence, I could take over the Iron Siege again and answer questions, examine builds and provide information to anyone willing to give this one a go. Should TravelLog return with the intention of running this little brainteaser, I would allow him to assume the helm.

Anyone up for that?

[Wrex]

Ahoy, prospective corpses. It seems that TravelLog's absence has become rather extensive and I thought about a possible solution.

In its short eloquence, I could take over the Iron Siege again and answer questions, examine builds and provide information to anyone willing to give this one a go. Should TravelLog return with the intention of running this little brainteaser, I would allow him to assume the helm.

Anyone up for that?

I'm sure he wouldn't mind. It is your beast of an unholy abomination, after all.

[Tshern]

Actually, it isn't mine. The challenge had already started and even ended on the Dicefreaks' boards when I first found that place. Even after that Witch kept running it on WotC for a good while before I took over. I did run it for a good while though.

[Amechra]

A question:

Does making Dispater no longer Dispater count as winning the challenge?

By this I mean, if we were to rewrite his memories, smack him with a permanent transformation, whatever, would that count as "killing" him?

[Tshern]

No. Only killing him in the conventional meaning of the word does.

[Garryl]

Build Stub:
(No, it doesn't qualify for everything yet, I'm just working out what it would need and what I want to fit in. As a plus, I think I can do this without divine ranks or epic spells/powers. Failing that, I'd like to do it with as little epic/divine stuff as possible.)

(As before, This is just theoretical stuff, not practical. I have little to no intention of filling this out to a full build and actually running it through the challenge. My personal goal is to have a non-epic, non-divine character capable of getting to Dispater in his tower and honking the archdevil's nose for a few points of damage before laughing and running away. For kicks, I'll also sunder the unenchanted side of The Iron Staff of Dis)

- Ardent 10 -> Time mantle w/ Substitute Powers so it has at least Synchronicity, Temporal Acceleration, and that 9th-level one that reverts time by 1 round. Apply Dominant Ideal (ACF) to Time mantle.
- Bestow Power power, Linked Power feat, Metapower (Linked Synchronicity) feat. Exponentially growing PP and actions based on time since the trick comes online.
- Some way to use powers as SU. Either Supernatural Transformation (psionics), or Dweomerkeeper 4 w/ Magic Mantle. This is a semi-optional thing, mostly for kicks. Since my entire attempt will take place inside a single round, if something goes wrong I want to be able to retry it freely by reverting to the beginning of the round, and the power that does that has a 1000xp cost. Other methods that ignore xp costs should work.
- Entry to the tower. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't a carefully worded Wish do the trick? If so, Reality Revision should do it.
- A way to find and reach Dispater. Sadly, the tower is a true infinity, so brute forcing it doesn't work. Find the Path? Reality Revision? Metafaculty? That Consecrated Harrier ability? If I can get the distance OR direction, I can triangulate.
- A way to ensure I can actually injure Dispater. Iron Curtain isn't an issue, since it has a very limited number of uses and I have an arbitrary amount of readied actions. Maneuvers (Mountain Hammer and friends) probably aren't viable, since I'm not sure I can freely refresh them. Should be some PR-less, save-less, DR-less powers that'll work. Crystal Spray or something like that? Or Amethyst Burst? Otherwise, great physical damage can be done through the standard methods (PA + stuff; even ubercharging is feasible if I can stagger myself). He only has DR 40/no, anyways, but spells/powers means I should be prepared if possible.
- Defenses. Not particularly necessary, since readied actions should be able to get me away from anything, but persistent area obstructions can still block off areas for me. Void Disciple should work for a lot. I'd like to look at non-epic options, too, though. Remember, all of this is happening on my turn, at an arbitrarily early point inside a single round to boot.
- Wasn't there a feat that boosted your CL or gave free metamagic or something based on the number of times you cast a spell in a previous round?
- Oh, cool. I can add an arbitrary amount of swift actions to this build, too. RKV 7 + any power that gives a turning attempt (that Druid spell -> Wyrm Wizard/Recaster -> StP Erudite). Gives me maneuver refresh, too, if that matters.

... hey, did anyone else notice that Dispater's cosmic rank is granted by an Ex ability? Remove the ability, remove the rank?

Dispater:
- Acadia's Influence: Don't be good-aligned.
- Aura of Hell: TODO: What's it even do?
- Call Devils: Ignore.
- Chains of Toil: Ignore.
- Ferric Affinity: Mostly ignore. He can see me and hit me with auras and whatnot through walls, though.
- Hell's Fire: Ignore.
- Iron Curtain: Ignore. Just attack with readied actions for when he raises it, or take the curtain down with 600 damage if he does raise it. He can only use it 9/day.
- The Might of Hell: Ignore, but be wary of Unhallowed areas on principle.
- Perseverating Glance: It takes an action to use and has limited uses. Ignore.
- Spells/Powers: TODO: His spellcasting is missing from the wrtiteup.
- Epic Spells/Powers: TODO
- Feats: He has (Epic) Craft Contingent Spell. Nothing else worrisome.

Items:
- Iron Staff of Dis: Spell Stowaway, Contingencies, Fortification (75% only), and super Spell Turning. Don't cast anything that'll one-shot myself. Note that it's a +6 defending weapon, but quarterstaves are double weapons. The other end must not be enchanted. Vulnerability, anyone?
- Rod of Dis: Rod of Rulership (ignorable) and Lawful Power. TODO: What's Lawful Power do, again?

Defeating the Iron Tower:
- Dimensional Anchor: I don't suppose there's a token that allows access to wherever big D may be at the time the attempt is made? If so, I'll just swipe it.
- Telekinetic interference: Get a Strength modifier of at least +1, then be satisfied that 1/400 attempts will still succeed, naturally. Or immunity to Force effects, possibly.
- Catapsi: TODO: check the power and see what it actually does.
- Defensive manifesting: -36 penalty means I should have at least a +50 modifier to manifest 9th level powers 1/20. I really need at least +61, though, so as to have a 100% success rate for level 1 powers, otherwise the plan might be at risk.
- Corrupt Intensified Lighting Bolt: It's 1/round. As long as I have at least 241 hp (or 121 and electricity immunity), it can be ignored.
- Hold Monster: If I'm there for more than 2 minutes, I've already lost. If it happens to trigger just as I arrive, I have a readied action for that. In a general sense, Mind Blank or Freedom of Movement should be enough.
- Disjunction: If any part of my plan relies on magic items or non-instantaneous buffs, I'll care about it then. Also, it's only every 4 rounds, readied action, yadda yadda.

To do list:
- Check Catapsi.
- Check Dispater's Aura of Hell.
- Check the effects of cosmic ranks.
- Get a dispel check of +59 or better.

[Tshern]

A nice lengthy post there. Here are a few thoughts you may or may not find worthwhile.

As a plus, I think I can do this without divine ranks or epic spells/powers. Failing that, I'd like to do it with as little epic/divine stuff as possible.)

Ambitious, that is excellent. The party I was planning (the project is on a pause until indefinite future) actually used most of the levels available.

My personal goal is to have a non-epic, non-divine character capable of getting to Dispater in his tower and honking the archdevil's nose for a few points of damage before laughing and running away. For kicks, I'll also sunder the unenchanted side of The Iron Staff of Dis)

It is unfortunate that the success of these ambitions cannot be verified theoretically. A curious approach nevertheless.

- Ardent 10 -> Time mantle w/ Substitute Powers so it has at least Synchronicity, Temporal Acceleration, and that 9th-level one that reverts time by 1 round. Apply Dominant Ideal (ACF) to Time mantle.

I think you mean Time regression. Remember that you need a manifester level of 17 to get that and you can take Practiced manifester only once, so you need three more levels that advance Ardent manifesting.

- Bestow Power power, Linked Power feat, Metapower (Linked Synchronicity) feat. Exponentially growing PP and actions based on time since the trick comes online.

Personally I see Love's Pain abuse to be an easier application of TO for the purposes of Iron Siege.

- Some way to use powers as SU. Either Supernatural Transformation (psionics), or Dweomerkeeper 4 w/ Magic Mantle. This is a semi-optional thing, mostly for kicks. Since my entire attempt will take place inside a single round, if something goes wrong I want to be able to retry it freely by reverting to the beginning of the round, and the power that does that has a 1000xp cost. Other methods that ignore xp costs should work.

Even if you used, say, 30 levels for your build and you were undead, you would have 75 levels worth of experience to burn to offset the XP costs. That amounts to a decent number of manifestations.

- Entry to the tower. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't a carefully worded Wish do the trick? If so, Reality Revision should do it.

Both work in theory. In practice the matter is slightly more complicated than that. I would tell more, but I like my secrecy.

- A way to find and reach Dispater. Sadly, the tower is a true infinity, so brute forcing it doesn't work. Find the Path? Reality Revision? Metafaculty? That Consecrated Harrier ability? If I can get the distance OR direction, I can triangulate.

There have been a number of decent proposals for this. Even if you avoid epic levels, you could still acquire epic items like scrolls to emulate some custom epic spell you want to use.

- A way to ensure I can actually injure Dispater. Iron Curtain isn't an issue, since it has a very limited number of uses and I have an arbitrary amount of readied actions. Maneuvers (Mountain Hammer and friends) probably aren't viable, since I'm not sure I can freely refresh them.

As you point out later, the damage reduction is hardly an issue, because if you have trouble bypassing a DR of 40, you probably should not try to deal damage in the first place.

- Defenses. Not particularly necessary, since readied actions should be able to get me away from anything, but persistent area obstructions can still block off areas for me. Void Disciple should work for a lot.

Void Disciple? Care to elaborate a bit?

- Oh, cool. I can add an arbitrary amount of swift actions to this build, too. RKV 7 + any power that gives a turning attempt (that Druid spell -> Wyrm Wizard/Recaster -> StP Erudite). Gives me maneuver refresh, too, if that matters.

There is a Druid spell that gives Turn undead attempts?

... hey, did anyone else notice that Dispater's cosmic rank is granted by an Ex ability? Remove the ability, remove the rank?

Any thoughts about how to remove that? Removing it basically involves going over the head of the Overlord of Hell, which is an interesting exercise indeed. Do note that Infernal Nobility explicitly says that only Asmodeus can remove the ability and involving him opens a new can of worms.

- Aura of Hell: TODO: What's it even do?

Described in the Chapter 9 of the Gates of Hell along with the Lord of the Nine template. Around page 10, methinks.

- Spells/Powers: TODO: His spellcasting is missing from the wrtiteup.

Page 20 in Chapter 9 or 340 if you follow the numbers at the bottom of each page. Obviously no DM has prepared the spells the writers suggested. Not even one of the original writers, who was the first DM.

Defeating the Iron Tower:
- Dimensional Anchor: I don't suppose there's a token that allows access to wherever big D may be at the time the attempt is made? If so, I'll just swipe it.

The only creatures who might have one are Merorem, Glasya, Titivilus and Caim. They may or may not have those.

- Telekinetic interference: Get a Strength modifier of at least +1, then be satisfied that 1/400 attempts will still succeed, naturally. Or immunity to Force effects, possibly.

That's the spirit.

- Defensive manifesting: -36 penalty means I should have at least a +50 modifier to manifest 9th level powers 1/20. I really need at least +61, though, so as to have a 100% success rate for level 1 powers, otherwise the plan might be at risk.

Skills are easy to boost, so no worries.


Hopefully this clarified the situation a bit.

[Garryl]

Sorry, I meant Void Incarnate, Bone Talisman, and both Temporal Acceleration and Time Regression.

I'm going with the Synchronicity trick because
1) It's basically my trick (I didn't make it, but I did advance it and it's been attributed to me /shrug).
2) I like that trick, but I don't like Love's Pain.
3) I want to see if it and its copious amount of readied actions is as close as I think to a perfect defense (it isn't, but it's damn close).
With the whole action economy breakage, doing 1 point of damage to Dispater is roughly equivalent to doing ANY amount, so it'll prove my point well enough. And as I said, sundering the nonmagical half of the Iron Staff of Dis is just for kicks, because I probably can and the writers forgot the rules.

DR 40/- is easy to bypass on principle. Power attack for 20 with a two-handed weapon. I mentioned it just as a reminder that I do, indeed have to remember that and can't just charge in with 1d3 fists. I also thought it was something like DR 100 before I checked, though.

Btw, I want free Time Regression if possible, not ridiculously large amounts of it. I expect plan to run that same round an arbitrary number of times if needed, a la Groundhog Day. In theory, anyways. In practice, I don't expect I'll ever even run it once.

Thanks for the insight and page references.

[Tshern]

Page references: No problem. I was surprised that I remembered the latter one without checking.

DR: You could also just get a weapon that ignores the DR. Susceptible to dispelling and such, but with all the actions that might not be a problem.

In any case, it seems that the problem is once again finding Dispater and getting to him.

[Amechra]

Funny, I actually was toying with summoning Asmodeus, and then convincing him that Dispater was a threat. Dismissed it as infeasible.

If we destroy Dis, does that count as killing him? Or do we lose if he wasn't on the plane at the time?

I do have a rather unique method I'm working on... I still need to find a spell that puts people to sleep in an emanation around yourself...

Because quite frankly, I might as well bore Dispater to death.

Then there is always the boring option of gating him to whatever point in Dis you are (I can't find an immunity to Calling spells, and SR doesn't apply to Gate), and then smacking him with whatever sillyness I can get away with.

Then there is Baleful Polymorph him into a frog.

Then there is always using the Transform Epic Seed to transform some poor shmuck you brought to the plane with you into Dispater, and then killing him when you are face to face. So maybe change the parameters to killing all instances of Dispater on Dis?

Of course, the above are joking suggestions; I actually have a way that'll work, but I have to keep my methods secret...

[Tshern]

If we destroy Dis, does that count as killing him? Or do we lose if he wasn't on the plane at the time?

Only if Dispater dies in the process.

Then there is always using the Transform Epic Seed to transform some poor shmuck you brought to the plane with you into Dispater, and then killing him when you are face to face. So maybe change the parameters to killing all instances of Dispater on Dis?

You cannot create cosmic ranks with epic spells.

Of course, the above are joking suggestions; I actually have a way that'll work, but I have to keep my methods secret...

Good luck.

[Amechra]

Then there is always using the Transform Epic Seed to transform some poor shmuck you brought to the plane with you into Dispater, and then killing him when you are face to face. So maybe change the parameters to killing all instances of Dispater on Dis?

You cannot create cosmic ranks with epic spells.

However, we can create unique entities, or permanently transmute ourselves into entities, correct?

[Tshern]

Then there is always using the Transform Epic Seed to transform some poor shmuck you brought to the plane with you into Dispater, and then killing him when you are face to face. So maybe change the parameters to killing all instances of Dispater on Dis?

You cannot create cosmic ranks with epic spells.

However, we can create unique entities, or permanently transmute ourselves into entities, correct?

Depends on the definition of unique. If you want to create a Kobold that has no hands, but eleven legs, certainly. If, on the other hand, you aim to create entities with cosmic and/or divine ranks, no. The example given as well as those that fall between those two extremes still need to be cleared with me.

[mthor]

Quick question. I can't seem to find a level limit. Am I just dense or is it really constrained by max HD (70 for a mortal/40 for a deity).

[Tshern]

It's muddled somewhere in the Dicefreaks' campaign setting rules. I'll try to find it, but here's what I remember from the top of my head: Mortals 40, outsiders (deities included) 70, elementals and undead 100.

[brujon]

Necroing this for a bit...

Tshern, it seems that the challenge no longer is active, and for a very long time. It's unlikely that it's going to be revived anytime soon... You mentioned several times that you had several ideas on how you would go about finishing the challenge yourself, after DM'ing it for so long.

Mind sharing those?

[zook1shoe]

I wanted to try some stuff, but never got answers. Then the thread just died

[zook1shoe]

If the adventure is resurrectable, are Planewalker.com possibly available?