ECL 8: LG SaintBoED Unicorn, Cleric of Ilmater 1
Our BAB is equivalent to a wizard of our level, but we've got a +10 ability modifier being added to our attack rolls thanks to the Intutitive Attack
BoED feat. Against an evil opponent, our attack sequence is
+3 horn +14 (1d8+7+1d6) and 2 hooves +6 (1d4+2+1d6).
Armor Class is 31 (10 +6 natural +5 Dex +10 Wis), touch 25, flat-footed 26, and between unicorn and saint we have a bunch of immunities to go with it.
We only have 1st level spells, but 5 spell slots and saint-boosted save DCs of 23, so options like
command or
doom aren't out of the question. Between unicorn SLAs and Healing Devotion
CC, we also make a decent medic despite our low caster level. Besides Healing we pick up the Suffering
SpC domain, giving us
bane as a domain spell plus a 1/day touch attack that inflicts a -2 penalty to Str and Dex for 1 minute (no save, but blocked by immunity to crits).
We have
two racial abilities which cause us to radiate a (Su)
magic circle against evil - a 10ft continuous one, and a 20ft one which can be turned on and off (and comes with a
lesser globe of invulnerability). By RAW it shouldn't work, but a permissive DM might allow you to turn the outer circle inwards to create a "donut against evil" which traps summoned creatures between the two circles.
Oh, and our Survival modifier is +17, which lets us reliably predict the weather and appear in front of villagers to give omens of storms and the like.
ECL 12: LG SaintBoED Unicorn, Cleric of Ilmater 1/Monk 4
With monk levels we're now adding Wis to AC a second time, which combined with our last Wis boost from levelling up gives us an AC of 43.
We also take a few alternate options for monk:
- Monk 2 - Martial Arts featsOA: We can select Falling Star StrikeOA in place of the usual bonus feat, provided that we meet the prerequisites. This lets us expend a use of Stunning Fist to make an unarmed attack that blinds a humanoid opponent for 1 round/level unless they succeed on a Fort save.
- Monk 3 - Broken One substitution levelCoV: Replaces Still Mind with Lay on Hands, which scales off our high Cha and adds to the healing we can do on the side. Optionally we can get more use out of this with a cheap set of Caduceus bracersMIC (3,000gp), letting us remove dazed, fatigued, sickened or points of ability damage, at the cost of 5hp of healing each.
- Monk 4 - Holy MonkCC: We don't need Ki Strike (magic) since both our horn and our saint damage reduction cover it for us, so this gets us an extra +1d6 damage against evil creatures.
ECL 16: LG SaintBoED Unicorn, Cleric of Lathander 1/Monk 5/Purifier of the Hallowed DoctrineHoH 3
We have begun working with the Sun Soul order (
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting p25) - an organisation of monks dedicated to various deities including Amaunator, Lathander, Selune and Sune - and it has led us to an epiphany. We convert from worship of Ilmater to his allied deity Lathander, keeping the Healing domain but trading Suffering for Sun.
As a member of the Sun Soul order we can enter a single class without breaking our monk multiclassing restriction, as long as our highest class level is in monk: we choose Purifier of the Hallowed Doctrine, a class from
Heroes of Horror dedicated to fighting tainted creatures.
We now add
detect taintHoH to our
detect evil, and gain the Smite Taint ability: this works like Smite Evil as a paladin of our PotHD level, and we can also convert smites from other sources to affect tainted creatures. A tainted creature is any Undead, (evil) or (Shadowlands) creature, or any mortal who has become contaminated by travelling through tainted areas or facing taint-based attacks. In
Oriental Adventures taint is extremely dangerous, applying as a penalty to Con and Wis which can reduce them to 0.
Heroes of Horror lowers its impact by splitting it into corruption (Con) and depravity (Wis), with a more complex penalty system which lets you have much higher taint scores safely and gives you a 24 hour window to cure excess taint before it starts penalising you. But the important thing to take away here is that even ordinary adventurers can count as "tainted creatures", at least temporarily (unless you have the Pure Soul
HoH feat that we took to enter the PrC, which makes us immune to gaining taint).
At 15th level we get the tactical feat Sun School
CWar. Two of its abilities aren't very one-punchy, but the last one (
Flash of Sunset: make a free attack after teleporting next to a creature) makes for a fun combo with our unicorn
greater teleport SLA.
Also we now cast as a 3rd level cleric, which opens up 2nd level spells.
Finally we gain Lay on Hands a second time, stacking with our levels in monk, and our damage reduction from saint has now reached its cap of 10/evil.
If we haven't already, we invest in a set of
ki straps (5,000gp) - an item which grants +2 to the DC of Stunning Fist "or any other effect gained by expending daily uses of that feat". How is a unicorn wearing an item that normally straps around the hands? Well it's DM-dependent, but even if we need to get a slotless version we can afford it.
ECL 20: NG SaintBoED Unicorn, Cleric of Lathander 1/Monk 5/Purifier of the Hallowed DoctrineHoH 3/Monk +1/Radiant Servant of LathanderCDiv 1/Purifier of the Hallowed DoctrineHoH +2
This is where it gets interesting.
Lv17 is monk 6, and since we've hit BAB +10 we can choose Freezing the Lifeblood
CWar as our martial arts bonus feat - a Stunning Fist variant which paralyzes humanoids for 1d4+1 rounds on a failed save. And with that we have collected all the components of the
Meditation of WarOA martial art, unlocking its mastery ability - a +2 bonus to the save DC of Stunning Fist and other pressure-point attacks, as well as Weapon Focus from a short list of weapons; we have no use for any of them, so we pick heavy mace since it's Lathander's favored weapon.
At lv18 we fully embrace our new god's philosophy, shifting to their alignment of Neutral Good and becoming a Radiant Servant of Lathander (see Radiant Servant of Pelor
CDiv adaptation section). This both enhances our light spells, and lets us use the granted power of the Sun domain (when you turn an undead, it's destroyed instead) 13/day. What use is this, when our effective cleric level for turning is so low? Because at the same level, as a member of the Sun Soul order who has reached the mythical 6th level of monk, we can take the Sun Soul Monk
CoV feat. For a worshipper of Lathander, this lets us 1/day infuse an attack with ki that turns any undead, regardless of HD, unless they succeed on a Will save (with a bonus equal to their turn resistance). We can use this feat additional times per day by expending uses of Stunning Fist or Turn Undead, which qualifies it for the DC boost from
ki straps.
And finally at lv20 we gain our 5th level of Purifier of the Hallowed Doctrine, receiving not only 3rd level cleric spells but the class feature "Turn Tainted". This is exactly what it says on the tin - we can turn tainted creatures as if they were undead. They count as 4 HD higher, but this is
not turn resistance so it doesn't apply to turning inflicted by Sun Soul Monk. And the crazy part is... there are ways to be immune to death effects, to disintegration, to physical damage in general. But it's almost impossible for a non-undead creature to have turn resistance, let alone immunity to turning or destruction, making this an extremely hard effect to tank. If you're tainted and get hit, then make a DC 38 Will save or just explode. If we're wearing an item that boosts Wis, then make that DC 41. And while Smite Taint might not be doing much for us in terms of damage, it does give us a handy +10 bonus to our attack roll to make sure that attack hits. Even if you use
Moment of Perfect Mind to boost your Will save, we can hit you again before you recover it.
If our main trick doesn't work, we have a few backup tactics. Stunning Fist and Freezing the Lifeblood have similarly inflated save DCs but target Fort, making it less likely that an opponent who survives Sun Soul Monk can withstand them too. And if we're fighting an undead who can't be turned, we can pump a 110hp Lay on Hands into them (it's only expended if we hit, so we get multiple tries of this too).
But when worst comes to worst, we have...
Spoiler: The Black Horse
Show
If non-Undead, non-tainted opponents are overwhelming us, then as a last resort we can use our greater teleport SLA to flee back to our lair and lick our wounds. We then decide if our foes are deserving of judgement (using our detect evil and detect taint abilities to inform our decision). If we find them lacking, then we wait until nightfall and then begin to transform ourselves into the Black Horse.
To do so, we equip two items: a +1 ki focus necklace of natural weapons (8,600gp)... and a barding version of oni armor (42,350gp) - a suit of magic armor originally published in Oriental Adventures and updated in a sidebar on p66 of Heroes of Horror. This is a suit of heavy armor (+7 base AC, +2 max Dex, -4 ACP, +4 enhancement bonus), and thus while wearing it our AC drops from 45 to 41 (assuming we have no other AC-boosting items). Because we're not a tainted creature, we also incur one negative level while wearing it. So why on earth are we wearing it? Because it comes with a pair of +1 claws which deal damage as bastard swords... and inflict 1 point of corruption on each hit. That means any creature we hit with a claw attack instantly becomes a tainted creature, and can therefore be obliterated by Sun Soul Monk as part of the same attack.
Only a small number of creatures (nezumiOA, some nagasOA, and characters with the Pure SoulHoH feat) have outright immunity to this kind of “no save, just gain taint” effect, and most of them are friendly towards us. Otherwise the only way to block it is by carrying taint-absorbing items (Heroes of Horror p67), but they burn out quickly and it’s difficult to carry a lot of them at once.
If our enemies are foolish enough to set up camp in our forest, then we can employ scry-and-die tactics: cast locate object to find the nearest campfire, then greater teleport to its location and make a Flash of Sunset attack that catches them flat-footed (we're Large and can stand on top of campfires without harm due to our fire resistance, so ending up adjacent to the enemy isn't hard).
...
Okay, important question: is this trick even legal? Well entrants aren't allowed to have taint... and we don't. In fact we're explicitly immune to ever becoming tainted. The only thing we need is a world where tainted creatures exist. Most board contests frown on taint because the HoH rules give a combination of free bonus feats and ability score swaps that lets you inflate your stats easily, but that's not remotely what we're doing here. Even if an enemy somehow manages to get tainted by us and then escape without dying, they won't be able to abuse it either because it's only 1 point. And because we primarily fight creatures that spread taint, we would never agree to taint our allies nor would they need our help to become tainted in the first place.