[PF] Infinite Time-Breaker Monk's Triad (infinite actions & spells for all)

[Power]

So here's a crazy combo, which requires a 3 character lineup. It gives infinite standard actions and spells in 1 turn (also infinite ki, rage, arcane pool, channel energy, bardic performance, extracts, grit, and smite evil, if you want), to be distributed at your leisure to an infinite amount of targets. Obtaining infinite resources requires build setup for the person in question, but infinite actions can be handed out to anyone without any requirements on their part.

First, we start with our Sensei Monk of the Four Winds. A Monk of the Four Winds at 12th level gets the following ability.:

Slow Time (Su): At 12th level, a monk of the four winds can use his ki to slow time or quicken his movements, depending on the observer. As a swift action, the monk can expend 6 ki points to gain three standard actions during his turn instead of just one. The monk can use these actions to do the following: take a melee attack action, use a skill, use an extraordinary ability, or take a move action. The monk cannot use these actions to cast spells or use spell-like abilities, and cannot combine them to take full-attack actions. Any move actions the monk makes this turn do not provoke attacks of opportunity. This ability replaces abundant step.

That lets him convert a swift (and his standard) action into obtaining 3 limited standard actions. It does cost 6 ki points though, although we could reduce it with one or more Rings of Ki Mastery. A Monk can equip 5 of them with 2 ring slots, 1 Hand of Glory necklace, and 2 Ten-Ring Swords and still be able to flurry with unarmed strikes (or the ten-ring swords, which are in fact monk weapons), which would reduce the ki cost to 1, but we shouldn't need that much reduction anyway.

At any rate, we can tweak this ability by combining this archetype with the compatible Sensei archetype, which gets the following ability:

Mystic Wisdom (Su): At 6th level, a sensei may use his advice ability when spending points from his ki pool to activate a class ability (using the normal actions required for each) in order to have that ability affect one ally within 30 feet rather than the sensei himself. At 10th level, a sensei may affect all allies within 30 feet rather than himself (spending points from his ki pool only once, not once for each target).

At 10th level, a sensei may instead spend 1 point from his ki pool (as a swift action) while using advice to provide a single ally within 30 feet with evasion, fast movement, high jump, purity of body, or slow fall. At 14th level, a sensei may spend 2 points to grant one of the abilities listed above to all allies within 30 feet, or diamond body, diamond soul, or improved evasion to a single ally within 30 feet. These abilities function at the sensei’s level and last 1 round. This ability replaces the bonus feats at 6th, 10th, and 14th level.

Seeing as the Monk needs 12th level for Slow Time, he will always give Slow Time to all allies in 30 feet, which is good stuff.

This brings us to our friendly friend, the Constable Cavalier, who gets this ability:

Instant Order (Ex): At 11th level, a constable can bark an order to an ally within 30 feet as a standard action. That ally can instantly take a single move or standard action to comply with the order. Taking the action dazes the ally for 1 round afterward. At 20th level, the constable can use this ability as a move action, but no more than once per round. This ability replaces mighty charge and supreme charge.

Our Cavalier is not yet 20th level, so he can use this ability as many times as he has standard actions. And as this is an extraordinary ability, he can use this with the 3 bonus standard actions he gets from Slow Time. So long as he orders the Monk once, the Monk gets an extra standard action, which he can convert into a swift action (by using a "Ready An Action" - which is a standard action - to ready a swift action (which is explicitly a valid option for readying actions) to go off immediately), letting him use Slow Time again. The constable still has 2 more standard actions to inspire someone else with.

This brings us to our third friend, the Irori-worshiping Cleric with either 1 level of Pathfinder Field Agent for the Ki Pool Rogue Talent or the Perfect Style feat, who also happens to have the Ki Channel feat, which lets a Cleric heal people for Ki points equal to their positive energy dice instead of healing their health (8d6 at class level 17, +2d6 with a Phylactery of Positive Channeling), which covers multiple uses of Slow Time easily enough. We use a single level of Veiled Illusionist to add Greater Shadow Conjuration to the Cleric spell list. If the Cleric has 17th level casting (ie a 17th level char with Perfect Style, or 18 with the Field Agent dip, but we can subtract 2 levels if we use a Candle of Invocation to be treated as 2 levels higher). We use Greater Shadow Conjuration to get Major Creation as a standard action, which we will use to create a giant volume of Tea of Transference (which is conveniently nonmagical and comprised of vegetable matter (spirit of wine), crystal (realgar), and precious metal (gold)), making the DC 20 Craft (Alchemy) (or a suitable Profession check, if the GM allows) check, which at this point with just raw ranks cannot be failed on a 1 anyway. Naturally, we will voluntarily fail our saving throw against our Greater Shadow Conjuration. After that we pick up a cup of tea with a move action, drink it with a standard action, and get another channel energy or restore any depleted spell slot of 7th level or lower (which gives us infinite spellcasting too).

The exact action loop would probably be something like: Monk burns through 2x Slow Time using his own swift and standard action (maybe use a Corset of Delicate Moves for the 2nd Slow Time using up his move action), giving us 6x Instant Order actions and 6x Slow Time actions on the Monk and Cleric, which leaves us with our Constable reserving 1x Instant Order for another Slow Time, and 5x to be used as we will. Cleric uses 1 Instant Order to create a lot of cups' worth of tea (down to 4 Instant Orders), then uses a move action to take a cup of tea (as this is a move action, this does not use a constable action, but uses one of the 6 Slow Time actions that the Cleric gets, which are now down to 5), then uses another Instant Order action (to sidestep any debate on whether or not drinking the tea and transferring the ki point to restore a channel or spell counts as an extraordinary action) to restore the Greater Shadow Conjuration (down to 3 Instant Orders), uses a Ki Channel (down to 2 Instant Orders) to restore enough ki for 2 Slow Time actions (assuming only 1 Ring of Ki Mastery is used) as well as restore his own ki pool to full, takes another cup of tea (Cleric is down to 4 Slow Time actions), drinks it to restore Channel Energy (down to 1 Instant Order). That leaves us with 4 Slow Time actions on the Cleric, 6 Slow Time actions on the Monk, 6 Slow Time actions on anyone else the monk chose to pump, and 1 Instant Order remaining, which can be used for another Slow Time, resetting the loop, only we don't need to cast Greater Shadow Conjuration and restore the slot every loop, which saves us 2 instant orders (and 1 slow time action), which we can spend at our leisure to give anyone extra standard actions.

And now we have a whole party with infinite actions and a Cleric with infinite spellcasting.

Incidentally, if the dazed condition inflicted by the Constable proves to be a problem, you can always replace the Constable with a Dawnflower Dervish Bard (or any class, really) prestiged into 9 levels of Pathfinder Chronicler UMDing a scroll of Shadowbard, which he will direct with move actions from Slow Time to Inspire Action on anyone (alternatively the Bard can use his own move actions to Inspire Action, but then we'll need to use Perfect Style, 2 levels of Ninja, or the Negotiator or Archeologist Bard archetype for the ki pool rogue talent, and make our Chronicler drink tea for rounds of Bardic Performance too), since using the Slow Time standard action to take a move action is a separate option from using an extraordinary ability, and these are indeed move actions. Incidentally, if our Chronicler is a tea-drinker too, then if he worships Tsukiyo and uses Deific Obedience with Diverse Obedience, he can get a Smite Evil (from the 2nd Sentinel boon) which he can replenish for infinite smite evil uses. That's honestly irrelevant when you have infinite attacks and actions before the rest of the world ever gets a turn but hey.

[Garryl]

I'm not sure this works. Slow Time doesn't grant +2 standard actions. It replaces the normal standard action you get in your turn with 3 limited-usage standard actions.
- Once you've used Slow Time once, you don't have the normal standard action for your turn to replace again, so subsequent uses shouldn't do anything.
- I'm not even sure Slow Time does anything when used outside your turn, which would make it difficult to apply to allies, since you would need to ready an action to use it during an ally's turn, and it would only affect the one ally whose turn it is. A reasonably more generous interpretation would have it apply during your next turn if you are affected by it outside of your turn, but RAW I don't think it even does that.

[Power]

Hm, I may need to look at this again since I may have misread Slow Time slightly. Still, Slow Time replaces just 1 standard action (if GM rules this must mean you are down to exactly 1 standard action, it is possible to waste excess standards to bring your number of standards down to 1 in time for another Slow Time) with 3 limited option standard actions. It never applies any criteria to the kind of standard action it is replacing, it only asks for a standard action, so it would be possible to multi-slow paying with standard actions you got from Slow Time. How this works for allies (who have no standard actions during your turn) can require adjudication. If the GM does require the party members to have standard actions to benefit from Slow Time, it's still possible to ready Instant Order or Inspire Action to give yourself a standard action during the Monk's Slow Time, which Slow Time will replace with 3 of its standard actions. At that stage, you (the Constable or PF Chronicler) need to keep 1 standard remaining for future Slow Times, and can use 1 standard to give another person +1 standard action and use 1 standard to order the Monk to Slow Time again (burning one of his Slow Time standards to Slow Time again), giving you, the Monk, and the other person 3 Slow Time type standard actions. At this stage Slow Time will continue to consume Slow Time actions to go on. The only real question is how many actions per Slow Time vs Ki Channel cycle do we need in order to ensure there is a self-sustaining cycle. I'm a bit too lazy to do the math atm but given that Slow Time and Channel Energy work in an AoE, we can keep adding Constables/Chroniclers, Monks, and/or perhaps even Clerics to the combo until a positive feedback loop is achieved, so the ability to go infinite is not in doubt, just the amount of setup required. The Monk equipping 5 Rings of Ki Mastery would also reduce the Slow Time ki cost to a point where a single Ki Channel can cover 10 Slow Time uses.

[ketaro]

Don't really know about whether this would legally work or not as I'm not familiar with the class abilities mentioned, or PF as much as 3.x, but your response post there does have you mentioning possibly reapplying Slow Time using Slow Time granted actions  but, at the least, that wouldn't work because the Slow Time granted actions can't trigger Supernatural abilities, of which Slow Time is Su.

So, if this is a technically valid tactic, the only method of triggering Slow Time after the original use is via Instant Orders, right?

As well, if we go by RAW, is Tea of Transference allowed to be used by anyone that does not have a level in Monk? Cause, yanno, the first line in the item description says its for monks. Um, not considering any sort of diving deeper into the whole potential "RAW" definition and making a grammatical case against "M"onk versus "m"onk.

And lastly, refilling spell slots equals infinite spellcasting how? Not contesting the ability to refill your spell slots, but only the ability to actually cast the spells after refilling when spellcasting is generally not an extraordinary ability and thus could not be used with the bonus actions from Slow Time? The only reasonable sidestepping of that is dedicating more Instant Orders to force Spellcasting which possibly takes away the ability to make the loop infinite but could still give enough actions to a group in a single turn to end any fight regardless.

Lastly, it doesn't look like the Dazed in the following round condition of Instant Orders is any detriment to this loop, if the loop is legally valid, because all these actions happen during a single turn in its best case scenario of functioning as you intended.

[Power]

Don't really know about whether this would legally work or not as I'm not familiar with the class abilities mentioned, or PF as much as 3.x, but your response post there does have you mentioning possibly reapplying Slow Time using Slow Time granted actions  but, at the least, that wouldn't work because the Slow Time granted actions can't trigger Supernatural abilities, of which Slow Time is Su.

So, if this is a technically valid tactic, the only method of triggering Slow Time after the original use is via Instant Orders, right?

Correct. You use an Instant Order action to get the swift to activate Slow Time. What I'm referring to is that because Slow Time gives you 3 standard actions instead of 1, you can keep paying the "1" by having Slow Time consume a standard action that a previous Slow Time gave you in order to keep the loop going (as opposed to consuming an Instant Order-granted standard action).

As well, if we go by RAW, is Tea of Transference allowed to be used by anyone that does not have a level in Monk? Cause, yanno, the first line in the item description says its for monks. Um, not considering any sort of diving deeper into the whole potential "RAW" definition and making a grammatical case against "M"onk versus "m"onk.

Pretty sure that's more of a flavortext/helpful explanation (like many text blocks at the top of a feat and other things) than an actual prerequisite to be a Monk, considering how many non-Monks there are with ki pools. Tea of Transference details the actual prerequisites for its usage here: "You must have the ki pool class feature and the class feature you want to regain uses of in order to benefit from tea of transference." If you also needed to be a Monk, it would've said so right there. Even if a GM for some reason rules otherwise, all that means is that everyone using tea must apparently have a 1 level Monk dip (or perhaps have a ki pool that says it functions as a Monk's ki pool), and the combo goes on.

Looking over it, the main concern here is if people take the "class feature" requirement literally (even though PF frequently uses "class feature" phrasing to cover more than just literal class features), seeing as Perfect Style is not actually a class feature (although if you dip 1 level of Student of Perfection you do have a ki pool class feature using Perfect Style's ki points...), in which case you will need to dip 1 level of Pathfinder Field Agent for the ki pool Rogue Talent or 1 level of Student of Perfection (you have Improved Unarmed Strike from Irori's favored weapon anyway) to get a ki pool class feature using your Perfect Style pool.

And lastly, refilling spell slots equals infinite spellcasting how? Not contesting the ability to refill your spell slots, but only the ability to actually cast the spells after refilling when spellcasting is generally not an extraordinary ability and thus could not be used with the bonus actions from Slow Time? The only reasonable sidestepping of that is dedicating more Instant Orders to force Spellcasting which possibly takes away the ability to make the loop infinite but could still give enough actions to a group in a single turn to end any fight regardless.

Spellcasting is fueled with Instant Orders, yes. The key is to maintain a surplus of Instant Orders per resource loop (of ki channel vs slow time). So long as you can get at least 1 free Instant Order in a cycle, you can just do infinite cycles to give everyone infinite Instant Orders. And you can always add more Constables or Chroniclers to the loop to make life easier by obtaining more general-purpose standard actions per Slow Time.

Lastly, it doesn't look like the Dazed in the following round condition of Instant Orders is any detriment to this loop, if the loop is legally valid, because all these actions happen during a single turn in its best case scenario of functioning as you intended.

Shouldn't be, no, but I threw the alternative in anyway.

[phaedrusxy]

The visual of these four guys sitting around sipping a bunch of tea at infinite speed to pull this off is hilarious. Whether it works or not thanks for that.

[ketaro]

What I'm referring to is that because Slow Time gives you 3 standard actions instead of 1, you can keep paying the "1" by having Slow Time consume a standard action that a previous Slow Time gave you in order to keep the loop going (as opposed to consuming an Instant Order-granted standard action).

But thats the point I was making. The actions from Slow Time can't trigger another Slow Time because they only allow extraordinary abilities to be used with them, not supernatural, and Slow Time is supernatural. So Slow Time cannot trigger more Slow Times. It has to be Instant Orders that triggers all the Slow Time uses.

[Power]

The visual of these four guys sitting around sipping a bunch of tea at infinite speed to pull this off is hilarious. Whether it works or not thanks for that.

I might need to hash out the specifics of the loop but so far the ability to make it work does not appear in doubt. I'm still unclear on Ring of Ki Mastery stacking working or not. It's not a bonus though so it seems like it should work but if it doesn't the loop becomes a bit more convoluted, and might end up needing a 2nd Constable/Chronicler, depending on whether or not party members are ruled to need to have standard actions of their own for Slow Time to work on them.

What I'm referring to is that because Slow Time gives you 3 standard actions instead of 1, you can keep paying the "1" by having Slow Time consume a standard action that a previous Slow Time gave you in order to keep the loop going (as opposed to consuming an Instant Order-granted standard action).

But thats the point I was making. The actions from Slow Time can't trigger another Slow Time because they only allow extraordinary abilities to be used with them, not supernatural, and Slow Time is supernatural. So Slow Time cannot trigger more Slow Times. It has to be Instant Orders that triggers all the Slow Time uses.

Instant Orders do trigger the activation of Slow Time, but it looks like in addition to being activated as a swift action (the Instant Order), its effect reads "gain three standard actions during his turn instead of just one." So if you need to continually consume a standard action upon activating Slow Time, that is what you use previous Slow Time actions for.

[ketaro]

I feel like you keep missing the part ketaro is trying to bring up where the actions granted by Slow Time are explicitly restricted to not being able to activate Supernatural abilities (i.e. Slow Time)

The monk can use these actions to do the following: take a melee attack action, use a skill, use an extraordinary ability, or take a move action.

The monk triggers the 1st Slow Time with his original Standard Action.
The 2nd time the monk wishes to use Slow Time, it must be from the Standard granted by Instant Orders as that has no restriction on the usage of the action.
The 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc etc activations of Slow Time also HAVE to use the Standard gained from future uses of Instant Orders, only.
Slow Time's restricted Standard Actions cannot be used to activate Slow Time.

[Power]

No, you're simply misreading me. You are not activating Slow Time with standard actions from previous Slow Time. You are activating Slow Time with Instant Order actions which you use as swifts, but in addition to the swift action used to activate Slow Time, Slow Time also gives you 3 standard actions instead of just 1, and that 1 standard action which is consumed is covered with a previous Slow Time. These Slow Time standard actions are not used as an activation (Slow Time is activated as a swift). They are simply paid as a resource for Slow Time to grant 3 standards.

[ketaro]

Ah, you're right. That huge block of text and that single word (swift) was entirely missed cause it was hanging on the edge of a line break.

[zook1shoe]

permanent lesser create demiplane + greater create demiplane (timeless) + time stop = infinite time, actions, and spells (for one)

[Power]

permanent lesser create demiplane + greater create demiplane (timeless) + time stop = infinite time, actions, and spells (for one)

There are a number of limitations on that one though.

• You're confined to your demiplane, unless you cast fresh time stops before exiting, I suppose. Maybe if you use stunts to get super-long time stops (Magaambyan Arcanist Wizard with a Magical Lineage magic trait so he can cast Blissful Time Stop, possibly stacking an Extend Spell from a Limited Wish for Arcane Concordance, which he can pay for with infinite money shenanigans considering you already have infinite time or a Blood Money spell or whatever) you can Scry your target from your demiplane (repeat infinite number of times until nat 1 is reached if necessary), Plane Shift out and Greater Teleport to your victim (Mind, you already have infinite wealth when you have infinite spells and time, so you can just Wish yourself there, in which case probably all you need are extended Time Stops. Or you could just Plane Shift there with the Planar Traveler feat giving you perfect aim plane shifting.), do what you want, Plane Shift back home before Time Stop runs out, refresh all your resources, and dive in and out of any location you want an infinite number of times for infinite time outside your personal demiplane too.
• You can't attack people in Time Stop.
• Infinite spells probably does not apply to divine casters, who all receive their spells at a specific hour of day, unless they have a set of 1st through 9th Pearls of Power anyway, but that still leaves prepared casters stuck with existing spells (not a major problem if you have Miracle though, aside from GM ruling that requesting ludicrous amounts of miracles in an infinitesimal slice of time is liable to piss off your deity, but this is already pretty TO as is, and if you're a Druid with Samsaran Mystic Past Life or Channeler of the Unknown Cleric you don't exactly have a patron deity). Spontaneous divine casters only require a 9th level Runestone of Power, but they can only cast 1 spell per 24 hour cycle per runestone, so better get a lot of them. At least with a Craft Wondrous Item feat, which they can Paragon Surge their way into (probably take that Emergency Attunement feat so you can switch your feat of choice) courtesy of the timeless plane, and infinite time they can probably craft themselves infinite runestones of power.
• Instead of moving at infinite speed, you are giving yourself an infinite length of frozen time, so you can still acquire enough years to age to death the moment you exit (but then again, perhaps you will not age at all, considering you do not age in the timeless plane and no real world time is passing outside the plane either), but presumably you can Wish or Miracle your way past that, even if you have to Reincarnate yourself (perhaps a Cyclic Reincarnation) to reset your lifespan. On the upside of things you can use this to age yourself to venerable and get Greater Age Resistance for a free +3 to all mental stats. You can also just turn yourself into an intelligent undead and sidestep aging that way. Possibly Time Stop will buy you a reprieve from aging to death when you exit your plane until the time stop runs out.

Hey, it's got great potential for RPing as Alberto Malich from Discworld.

[Power]

Bumping to note that grasping the Padma Blossom suppresses the dazed condition indefinitely, in case that were to be a crippling factor of the Constable Cavalier's Instant Order.