The Enabler

[Halinn]

@Halinn: Yeah, I know that Pun-Pun's not level infinity, hence my remarks of "she does not need to be level infinity, oh wait, yeah she does, dang".  Also: why would that not work?  Is there a rule that sufficiently high CRs do not grant xp?  I shall check the DMG now.

*checks*

It appears to be extremely open ended.  In fact, I'd say that since this is the YBIYBI forum?  infinite xp is a go.  The DMG leaves it up to the DM as to applying an appropriate xp reward for the encounter, going so far as to say all xp is explicitly DM fiat and that the chart is a general guideline.  Of course, this is up to debate since, again, all xp is up to the DM, not a hard rule.

Page 38: "The table doesn't support awards for encounters eight or more Challenge Ratings higher than the character's level. If the party is taking on challenges that far above their level, something strange is going on, and the DM needs to think carefully about the awards rather than just taking them off a table. See Assigning Ad Hoc XP Awards, page 39."
Under the Assigning Ad Hoc XP Awards section: "An encounter so easy that it uses up none or almost none of the PCs' resources shouldn't result in any XP award at all" Using one spell slot out of infinite, using one standard action out of nigh infinite per turn seems to fit within "almost none".

Perhaps making a Belt of Strength +infinity item and giving that away would do the trick.

[Elevevated Beat]

Yes it does. The first time Pun-Pun emerges, he immediately makes an infinite Knowledge check, granting him effective omniscience. He then knows exactly where and when each other Pun-Pun will emerge, and can get there beforehand and kill it with infinite actions.

Once one Pun-Pun has ascended, it is impossible for another to ascend. The first will not let it happen.

I meant that the whole Pun-Pun concept may not be the only way to infinite everything. Not that there were several Pun-Pun's running around.

This is all assuming the infinite exp problem is solved.

[Bozwevial]

@Halinn: Yeah, I know that Pun-Pun's not level infinity, hence my remarks of "she does not need to be level infinity, oh wait, yeah she does, dang".  Also: why would that not work?  Is there a rule that sufficiently high CRs do not grant xp?  I shall check the DMG now.

*checks*

It appears to be extremely open ended.  In fact, I'd say that since this is the YBIYBI forum?  infinite xp is a go.  The DMG leaves it up to the DM as to applying an appropriate xp reward for the encounter, going so far as to say all xp is explicitly DM fiat and that the chart is a general guideline.  Of course, this is up to debate since, again, all xp is up to the DM, not a hard rule.

Page 38: "The table doesn't support awards for encounters eight or more Challenge Ratings higher than the character's level. If the party is taking on challenges that far above their level, something strange is going on, and the DM needs to think carefully about the awards rather than just taking them off a table. See Assigning Ad Hoc XP Awards, page 39."
Under the Assigning Ad Hoc XP Awards section: "An encounter so easy that it uses up none or almost none of the PCs' resources shouldn't result in any XP award at all" Using one spell slot out of infinite, using one standard action out of nigh infinite per turn seems to fit within "almost none".

Perhaps making a Belt of Strength +infinity item and giving that away would do the trick.

That won't work either. You can only gain enough experience at once to go up 1 level and stop 1 XP short of the next level.

[Halinn]

That won't work either. You can only gain enough experience at once to go up 1 level and stop 1 XP short of the next level.

Could you get me a rules quote on that? I looked at the reward section in the DMG but couldn't find anything there (though I might have overlooked something).

[Bozwevial]

That won't work either. You can only gain enough experience at once to go up 1 level and stop 1 XP short of the next level.

Could you get me a rules quote on that? I looked at the reward section in the DMG but couldn't find anything there (though I might have overlooked something).

Sure.

A character can advance only one level at a time. If, for some extraordinary reason, a character's XP reward from a single adventure would be enough to advance two or more levels at once, he or she instead advances one level and gains just enough XP to be 1 XP short of the next level. Any excess experience points are not retained.

So if the belt trick works, you can do the Unlimited Charity Works trick repeatedly with multiple clones, but you only get one level per use of the trick. Your level (and the number of villages across the multiverse experiencing dramatic paradigm shifts) will be arbitrarily high, but still not infinite.

[Halinn]

I knew it was too good to be true
So the angle of attack should be trying to gain a CL-dependent amount of HD instead, I guess.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

I knew it was too good to be true

Psst ... hey, I've got some Gear to sell ya I gots from a Sparkly Temple.

[Tohron]

I don't suppose there's a way for an infinite number of body doubles to complete an infinite number of encounters in immediate (contingency-based) succession, and gain infinite xp that way?

[Bauglir]

Couldn't you count each belt delivery as a separate adventure? If you do that, and you have infinite belts, each of which grants you infinite experience (necessary in order to ensure you never stop gaining XP, even though the XP from each belt is truncated), and you have infinite people to deliver them to (simply deliver one to one trillionth of the inhabitants of Sigil, thereby ensuring that the odds of any party actually ENCOUNTERING somebody who received one, or of them affecting the setting meaningfully, are close to zero while still producing an infinite number of them), you can still gain infinite levels, right?

[dman11235]

Regardless of what you do to give the belts away, you can always kill the recipients later (and destroy the belts) and still have the xp.  So the belts are gone immediately after you hit infinite xp.

[Gazzien]

I knew it was too good to be true
So the angle of attack should be trying to gain a CL-dependent amount of HD instead, I guess.

I remember seeing something on a thread around here about what to do with an arbitrarily high CL... It was something to do with Suffer the Flesh, I believe, and quoted being able to shapeshift into a <CL obtained by trick> HD dragon, because of some way to remove the CL limit on Shapechange. Let me go look it up...

Here we go...

(click to show/hide)

So, I have (possibly) the world record for non-infinite CL (reposted from here):

It only lasts for 48 hours, but it's nice nonetheless (and if you happen to be using a particular homebrew variation on epic magic you can make it permanent).

Needed:
~Reserves of Strength feat
~Elven Spell Lore feat
~Sanctum Spell feat
~Persistent Spell feat
~Lesser Extend rod
~Shadowcraft Mage (wizard)/Incantatrix 3 with the ability to cast Shadow Miracles out of a 6th-level slot (via Easy Metamagic Heighten, Sanctum, Arcane Thesis, Invisible Spell, etc.)
~Signature Spell: Silent Image
~Knowledge of the following spells: Shapechange, Manyjaws, Suffer the Flesh, Arcane Fusion, Arcane Spellsurge, any 6th-level spell
~Command-word item of Mage's Lucubration

Begin by persisting Shapechange and Arcane Spellsurge using Metamagic Effect.  Cast a 6th-level spell, Sanctum-down to 5th-level.  Then shapechange into a shambling mound.

• Each round, cast Arcane Fusion as a swift action using a 6th-level Shadow Miracle.
• The two spells you will be duplicating are a Sanctum-down, Reserves of Strength Suffer the Flesh for max Con damage, and a Reserves of Strength Manyjaws with the damage changed to electricity via Elven Spell Lore.
• With your standard action, trigger your command word item to regenerate the 6th-level spell slot.

Doing this for N rounds will increase your CL by a factor of 1.5^N, and you can have it last for 48 hours by Persisting the final Suffer the Flesh and using the Extend rod to double the duration.  So, if you do this for 24 hours minus say a minute of prep time (the length of your persisted shapechange and arcane spellsurge), starting with a CL of 20, your final CL will be 20 * 1.5^14390, or approximately 1.8e2535.

The advantage this has over stacked GCFs is that you don't need to kill anyone to do it.

Now, this is a very feat-intensive solution, so I suggest starting as an Elf and using DCFS on your racial proficiencies.

By the way, if you also extend the Shapechange and Spellsurge with a rod, you get 48 hours - 1 minute of boosting... so you'd have a CL of 20 * 1.5^28790, or roughly 9.3e5070.  That's probably the record.

What are the silliest and most insane things you can do with a caster level that high?  Since we're already using Reserves of Strength, we can ignore CL caps.

My suggestions:
~Shapechange into a 1e5071 HD advanced epic dragon
~Make 2e5070 copies of yourself with Body Outside Body
~Cast Reach+Chain RoS Greater Mighty Wallop on all the particles in several universes and then TK all of them at once

"What are the silliest and most insane things you can do with a caster level that high?  Since we're already using Reserves of Strength, we can ignore CL caps."

[awaken_D_M_golem]

F-ing Elves ... 

[nijineko]

I knew it was too good to be true
So the angle of attack should be trying to gain a CL-dependent amount of HD instead, I guess.

I remember seeing something on a thread around here about what to do with an arbitrarily high CL... It was something to do with Suffer the Flesh, I believe, and quoted being able to shapeshift into a <CL obtained by trick> HD dragon, because of some way to remove the CL limit on Shapechange. Let me go look it up...

Here we go...

(click to show/hide)

So, I have (possibly) the world record for non-infinite CL (reposted from here):

It only lasts for 48 hours, but it's nice nonetheless (and if you happen to be using a particular homebrew variation on epic magic you can make it permanent).

Needed:
~Reserves of Strength feat
~Elven Spell Lore feat
~Sanctum Spell feat
~Persistent Spell feat
~Lesser Extend rod
~Shadowcraft Mage (wizard)/Incantatrix 3 with the ability to cast Shadow Miracles out of a 6th-level slot (via Easy Metamagic Heighten, Sanctum, Arcane Thesis, Invisible Spell, etc.)
~Signature Spell: Silent Image
~Knowledge of the following spells: Shapechange, Manyjaws, Suffer the Flesh, Arcane Fusion, Arcane Spellsurge, any 6th-level spell
~Command-word item of Mage's Lucubration

Begin by persisting Shapechange and Arcane Spellsurge using Metamagic Effect.  Cast a 6th-level spell, Sanctum-down to 5th-level.  Then shapechange into a shambling mound.

• Each round, cast Arcane Fusion as a swift action using a 6th-level Shadow Miracle.
• The two spells you will be duplicating are a Sanctum-down, Reserves of Strength Suffer the Flesh for max Con damage, and a Reserves of Strength Manyjaws with the damage changed to electricity via Elven Spell Lore.
• With your standard action, trigger your command word item to regenerate the 6th-level spell slot.

Doing this for N rounds will increase your CL by a factor of 1.5^N, and you can have it last for 48 hours by Persisting the final Suffer the Flesh and using the Extend rod to double the duration.  So, if you do this for 24 hours minus say a minute of prep time (the length of your persisted shapechange and arcane spellsurge), starting with a CL of 20, your final CL will be 20 * 1.5^14390, or approximately 1.8e2535.

The advantage this has over stacked GCFs is that you don't need to kill anyone to do it.

Now, this is a very feat-intensive solution, so I suggest starting as an Elf and using DCFS on your racial proficiencies.

By the way, if you also extend the Shapechange and Spellsurge with a rod, you get 48 hours - 1 minute of boosting... so you'd have a CL of 20 * 1.5^28790, or roughly 9.3e5070.  That's probably the record.

What are the silliest and most insane things you can do with a caster level that high?  Since we're already using Reserves of Strength, we can ignore CL caps.

My suggestions:
~Shapechange into a 1e5071 HD advanced epic dragon
~Make 2e5070 copies of yourself with Body Outside Body
~Cast Reach+Chain RoS Greater Mighty Wallop on all the particles in several universes and then TK all of them at once

"What are the silliest and most insane things you can do with a caster level that high?  Since we're already using Reserves of Strength, we can ignore CL caps."

ummm. can shamblers speak? it usually indicates if a monster can speak, or not speak but understand. no language entry begs the question of if they can speak at all... which would invalidate that chain at the point of activating the command word item if they cannot.

[zook1shoe]

Haha very good point!

[sirpercival]

"Command-word" is a catchall for items that are activated as a standard action.  That activation can be verbal (traditional, and the reason for the term), manipulation, or mental.

[Bauglir]

That depends - by the release of the MIC, for instance, they specified which was necessary. However, there's no particularly good reason you couldn't change them, since they were largely decided by fluff (even though mental is strictly superior).

[sirpercival]

I mean that when designing a custom item, you can have it be any of those.  Not that you get to choose each time you activate it.

[Bauglir]

Oh, right, gotcha, herp derp. Ignore my claims, move on. Forgot you were creating the item in the first place.

[nijineko]

ah, an excellent counter point. thank you.

[Bauglir]

Pictured above: How arguments are supposed to go.

Also pictured above: An event of fucking mythological rarity on the Internet.