Iron Chef Optimization Challenge: E6 Appetizer Edition (Round VII)

[DeTess]

I'll judge. Expect writeups before wednesday.

[RaiKirah]

These are WAY better than anything I was expecting/able to come up with! My hat is off to the contestants!

[Thurbane]

Great entries everyone!

[lylsyly]

They all TPK anything my befuddled brain could figure out. Short of making a real joke of it anyway.

[DeTess]

It's taking me slightly longer than expected, but I should have my judging up tomorrow. I've finsihed my first pass of all classes, but want to do a second pass to ensure I've judged power fairly.

[Zombulian]

It's taking me slightly longer than expected, but I should have my judging up tomorrow. I've finsihed my first pass of all classes, but want to do a second pass to ensure I've judged power fairly.

Thanks for putting in the effort!

[Darrin]

Judgementarianism Ensueth:

Boros 16.0

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Originality: 4
So an angelic demon? Or demonic angel? Even better, it gives your build some great flavor! There's another contradiction here as well: Boros is considered demonstrably "ugly", but has an 18 Charisma. You don't see too many Abyssal Heritor feats in standard play, as feat slots are scarce, but piling them on in an E6 campaign is an intriguing idea.

Power: 4
Monks are often derided for being badly designed and underpowered, but this build has some "teeth" to it (well, claws, actually). I like how the profane damage bonus ratchets up your unarmed damage. Demoralize optimization is fairly well known, and it can be particularly effective in E6, but ratcheting up the Intimidate bonus with Abyssal Heritor feats is clever. In standard 1-20 campaigns, Intimidating Strike is often a waste of a standard action, as you have to give up your full attack to use it. As you are no doubt aware, it's much more effective in E6, where standard-action attacks are the norm. The Otherworldly Countenance debuff is also a great find. You don't see a lot of "sicken condition" optimization, so maybe that should be more of a "thing". Your biggest weakness in this build is dealing with ranged/flying opponents, which you acknowledge as a major problem, but I'm puzzled why you didn't mention Celestial Bloodline/Outsider Wings (Races of Faerun) as a possible solution. Well, other than it cuts into your selection of Abyssal Heritor feats. I have one other quibble: you rack up a +30 bonus on Jump checks and then don't do anything interesting with it! Well, ok, one interesting thing: Claw at the Moon.

Elegance: 4
There's only one questionable rules issue that I can find, but it's more of a quibble: you took Ordered Chaos at 6th instead of at 3rd. When you take Vestigal Wings at 3rd, this is your second Abyssal Heritor feat and your alignment switches to Chaotic as per FC1 p. 82. This means you're chaotic at 6th level, and thus ineligible to take Ordered Chaos, which requires a non-chaotic alignment. However, I can't imagine any DM getting all that nitpickish over this. Mechanically, there's no impact on the character, since non-lawful monks don't lose any of their class abilities and you have no intention of taking any monk levels after the 1st. It's easy to fix, either by switching when you take Ordered Chaos/Vestigial Wings, or getting a handwave from the DM. Other than that, the rest of the build looks fairly clean and straight-forward.

Use of Secret Ingredient: 4
As with the Monk, the Hexblade is considered underpowered, but with this build I believe you've proven that there is something Hexblade levels are good for: they are better than taking more Monk levels!

Erica D'zhar 20.0

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Originality: 5
Huh. Well, that's an interesting way to solve the "Dead Level" problem of Hexblade 6. I can see lots of little details that suggests a staggering amount of book-diving went into this build. My only issue with originality was using "Human" as the race... you should have used Vashar. However, rather than ruin your chance at a perfect score, I'm going to bump this up to 5 for finding Supernatural Instincts. I was not previously aware of this feat, but the implications of how it could work in various Lockdown builds keeps filling my head with interesting ideas.

Power: 5
From a damage standpoint, this is not a particularly impressive build, even by Hexblade standards. From a debuffing standpoint, this build is an ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING NIGHTMARE. On top of Hexblade's curse (2/day!) and the Dark Companion ACF, you've got Carrion Stench (Fort save vs. -2 penalty), Focalor's Aura of Sadness (another -2 penalty, no save), Intimidate/Imperious Command (shaken/cower) + Never Outnumbered, and then Frightful Presence from the Nighthunter Bat. (This last one only works on creatures with 1 HD, which means I probably shouldn't count it, but... still, it's a nice find, so I'll give it to you.) There's also a cascade effect: if they fail the save on Hexblade's Curse, then your target is more likely to fail on the save against Carrion Stench, which means they now have a -4 penalty to their save against Frightful Presence, and so on. If you manage to get every debuff working on your target, you can rack up a -10 penalty to attacks, saves, skill checks, etc. In an E6 campaign, that has the distinct possibility of being absolutely devastating.

Elegance: 5
I mentioned the book-diving earlier, but that suggests a jumble of kitchen-sink abilities thrown together with no consistent theme. You've done the exact opposite here, where everything added to the build enhances a Hexblade ability and also ties into the "thrall to a demon" theme. But there's a level of craftiness layered into this build that goes even deeper than that. For example, take "Supernatural Instincts". Never seen this feat before, had to look it up. Briefly: when opponents you threaten use an (Su), it provokes an AoO. I had just been looking at the spell death's call, which does some piddling damage and forces a Fort save vs. fatigue, which is yet another debuff to stack on top of all Erica's other debuffs. But it occurred to me, if you force your opponent to make a save, how often do they have an (Su) ability that gives them a bonus on saves? Quite often! Hexblade has Arcane Resistance, Paladins and Crusaders have Divine Grace, and a lot of other classes/creatures have abilities that grant them save bonuses. Almost all of 'em are (Su), which triggers an AoO via Supernatural Instincts. So Erica can get a weapon attack by casting a spell. Or force a save with Carrion Stench. Or with Frightful Presence from her bat. Armor spikes threaten adjacent, and can be used with the bloodletting spell for bleed damage. And if the target is immune to fear/enchantment/stench... is that due to an (Su) ability? Pretty darned likely! And if the target tries to move away from her? AoO + Stand Still with a -10 penalty to AC locks him down close enough she can stay adjacent with a 5' step. My only quibble is I'm not sure why you took Spell Focus: Enchantment instead of Necromancy, but I suppose failing a save vs. hideous laughter is much worse than death's call.

Use of Secret Ingredient: 5
You have everything a Hexblade 6 would have, and can do everything a Hexblade 6 can do, but you do it better along with flavor and style.

Gishy McGisherton 11.0

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Originality: 3
Nothing really jumps out at me as unusual or unexpected. Actually, I take that back... taking Great Fortitude and Lightning Reflexes when they aren't required as feat taxes? That was kind of unusual.

Power: 3
Your build concept appears to be, "Well, if all I get is 1st level spells, then I'm going to bury my enemies with 1st level spells!" While this is an interesting concept to build a Hexblade around, your spell choices are functional but not particularly exciting. You also don't have a lot of swift-action or immediate-action spells, so you're forced to choose between spellcasting and melee attacks. This may be an issue of personal taste, but my idea of a "gish" is a build that uses a mixture of buffs and swift-action spells to mix melee attacks and spellcasting into the same turn. You've got some of that here with enlarge person and karmic aura, but the rest of your spell selections and SLAs have more of the whiff of "scatterbrained hedge-wizard" than "battle-scarred spell-scrapper". Compared to a Hexblade 6 or a Duskblade 6, your build is charging into battle and casting... comprehend languages and detect secret doors? Combat-wise, you've got Power Attack but aren't doing much with it later in the build. Taking Enlarge Spell at 6th is puzzling... are there any cantrips that particularly benefit from the increased range? Hard to tell, particularly when most of your spellcasting classes have only 1 or 2 caster levels. Taking Battle Caster four times feels excessive, although it's not clear how E6 treats the availability of things like mithral full-plate (medium armor). Outside of combat, your various spells/SLAs may be unfocused, but they do add some additional utility to the build.

Elegance: 2.5
You have a rules issue with your Wizard bonus feat at 3rd level. This is supposed to be Scribe Scroll, unless you're trading it away for something else, but it's not clear to me how you're swapping it for Alacritous Cogitation or Sudden Still Spell. As far as I'm aware, you can't trade Scribe Scroll away for any other wizard bonus feat at your first Wizard level. I expected to see Practiced Spellcaster in here somewhere, but it's not clear which of your three spellcaster classes needs +4 CLs, or which spells actually benefit from +4 CLs. It looks like you shorted yourself some points on your point build: 32 PB is the standard for Iron Chef, but you've only spent 25 PB. This isn't a penalty, but it's curious to have two of your spellcasting classes as Charisma-based, but only have a 13 in Charisma. You mention that Alacritous Cogitation might be banned, but I don't really see how this is contentious. Spontaneous casting has been a thing in the game since... well, "Sorcerer" existed as an option, and a wizard doing this 1/day (with a 1st-level spell) doesn't really sound like a game-breaker.

Use of Secret Ingredient: 2.5
Your build wasn't the only one to use the theme "OMG Hexblade was a horrible mistake, how can I salvage this?", and in that regard I think this build comes up with an interesting solution by capitalizing on one of the weakest abilities of Hexblade in E6: they get only one or two 1st-level spells from a limited list of spells. Dark Companion is nifty and useful, but the rest of those Hexblade levels... they're just sorta "there", and outside of providing HPs and BAB, it's not clear how they are being "gishy".

Sventir 11.5

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Originality: 4
Azurin and Golarian cleric are certainly unexpected, the latter in particular because Pathfinder material is generally considered as not allowable in Iron Chef competitions. Still, unexpected! Worshiping Sertrous is also interesting, because really, can you ever have enough snakes spontaneously bursting from the ground? Your primary schtick is smacking things around with two heavy shields, which I highly approve of.

Power: 3.5
The focus of the build appears to be "anti-spellcaster", specializing in particular on shield-based defenses. Your "key combo" looks like stacking both Parrying Shield and Shield Ward onto your touch AC, which is an interesting combo that I haven't seen before. There's an argument against this, which is basically how can you apply your shield bonus twice to your touch AC, but you've got two solid counter-arguments here: 1) different sources so the bonuses stack and 2) you have *two* different shields so you can use Parrying Shield with one and Shield Ward with the other. This does give you an impressive touch AC vs. rays and orbs, so very clever thinking on your part, and a good defense against blaster-based spellcasters. I'm a little puzzled you don't mention using a riverine shield or Inlindl School/feycraft heavy shield (Drow of the Underdark) to take better advantage of dual-wielding two shields. Against non-blasters, you have several other defenses: Mettle, Arcane Resistance, and Insane Defiance all work well together to bolster your saves. You also have Mage-Slayer, but I'm disappointed you didn't pick up Blind-Fight or Pierce Magical Concealment (one of which is available via Darkness/Shadow domain), for skewering those tricksy spellcasters who like to use illusions and concealment effects. Sertrous allows you to pick any two domains in print, but as I understand it, Golarian clerics don't get domains. I am also puzzled that your only incarnum-related feats appear so late in the build. Cobalt Expertise + Mauling Guantlets looks like a decent combo for tripping, but there isn't much of a penalty for spellcasting while prone. Animal Devotion, your only counter to a flying/levitating spellcaster appears extremely late. Overall, you have some impressive defenses, a few debuffs (trip, Dark Companion), but your offensive capabilities are underwhelming compared to most other "Pouncebarian"-style builds.

Elegance: 1.5
Ok, so, the Elephant In the Room, as it were: I am not all that familiar with a "Golarian cleric", but apparently this is an ACF or archetype from the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting that gets full BAB and d10 HPs in exchange for losing both cleric domains. Well, it's published by Paizo as OGL content, but it's not an official WotC-published book, so it's illegal in Iron Chef competitions. Scoring-wise, dropping Elegance to 1 feels a little too harsh, as removing or replacing the cleric level with something else doesn't hurt the build too much: mostly you lose an iterative attack. The non-cleric parts of the build appear to work well enough together, so I'll call it "1.5". The deity you worship is Sertrous, and I'm not sure this is an allowable deity in Golarian or a Pathfinder campaign world. However, Elder Evils are kinda known for crashing into campaign worlds, so that's fine (no penalty), but I would have liked to see a little more explanation on what Sertrous is trying to accomplish in Golarian, because that could be *really* interesting. Flavor-wise, there are a couple other elements that feel a bit off: Azurin doesn't seem to do much for you until really late in the build, no mention of Hexblade spells, no mention of Cleric spells, and you don't appear to be proficient with nets.

Use of Secret Ingredient: 2.5
One of the "signature" abilities of the Hexblade is the ability to mix melee and spellcasting into the same class, and... you don't really mention any spellcasting at all. From the terse write-up, it was hard to tell if Sventir's despise for spellcasting applies to even his own spellcasting, or just other spellcasters. The rest of Hexblade you use very well: full BAB, good Will save, and the Dark Companion ACF are all the best aspects of Hexblade. Hexblade's Curse isn't mentioned, and I presume you're using it to stack with other debuffs (Tripping, Dark Companion), but it's hard to get excited about a 1/day ability that is utterly meaningless on a successful Will save. Most of the focus of your build involves a variety of shield-based feats, but the Hexblade's lack of bonus feats works against you here, as most of your best shield-related feats are taken after 6th level and don't really appear to be related to any of your Hexblade abilities.

Tio Hexblahday 16.5

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Originality: 5


Power: 5
This appears to be something rather rare in Iron Chef nowadays... a New Exploit. What to call it, though? "Gen Blender"? "Pet Shop Chop Shop"? "This Abottoir Looks Familiar"? "I Scream of Djinni"? At first glance, I thought "That's an awful lot of work to get 54 extra HPs", but it's more than that. If you kept Devil's Stamina (or haven't lost/replaced it yet), getting Fast Healing 28 for 5 rounds would be impressive in a normal game, much more so in E6. You've got also those 28 Devil's Favor +2 bonuses floating around. They don't stack with each other (at least I don't think they do), but that's a pretty sizeable resource for your attacks, skill checks, or a "check of any sort" (for a couple oddball corner cases). Devil's Flesh for +14 natural armor... okay, but if you lose/replace this feat, don't you lose the natural armor bonus? Even if a DM allowed all those extra HPs from Devil's Stamina, I can imagine a lot of them saying you lose the natural armor bonus if you lose/replace it with Devil's Sight. And then, when I'm still trying to wrap my head around the Devil-Touched feats... you're turning your horse into a Wightpocalypse with Death Devotion/Supernatural Transformation/Create Spectral Spawn... WTF? I like to reward chefs who are swinging for the fences, but now it looks like you're playing relativistic baseball. In light of that... full points for shear audacity.

Elegance: 4.5
There is a discrepancy in your build. Your build stub has "Sha'ir 27" crossed out, but you actually take Sha'ir 28 times. 4.1 through 4.27 is 27 times, plus the original 4.0 = 28. I am sure you are devastated by this embarrassing oversight. Outside the audacity of taking 35 class levels in an E6 competition, this is a fiendishly clever trick (pun intended). Other than the Sha'ir/familiar recycling stuff, does the rest of the build work? Well... yeah, about that. Your method to get "Energy Drain" as a supernatural ability is very iffy. First, the Death Devotion SLA is never identified as an "Energy Drain" ability. Second, Supernatural Transformation requires an "innate" SLA, and a lot of DMs would not consider a Devotion feat to be an innate ability.

Despite all that... the long-ish explanation of the path you took to put together this build is a lot more fascinating than it has any right to be, and reads a lot like a primer on "How to put together a medal-winning Iron Chef build". All of the dead ends, half-remembered tidbits, and the process you go through chasing down wrinkles in the rules mirrors a lot of my own experiences, and I hope this is helpful to a lot of current/prospective chefs still desperately trying to figure out, "How do I win this stupidly complicated contest?" So most of the points you lost in Elegance I'm going to give back for explaining how you put this thing together. I'm not sure if Elegance is the right place to do that, but I'm doing it anyway.

Use of Secret Ingredient: 2
The fact that you have six Hexblade levels is completely inconsequential to the rest of the build. Those Hexblade levels could be replaced by any other class and this build would be almost functionally identical. So while you've definitely got a couple jaw-dropping optimization tricks in here, your Hexblade abilities are mentioned mostly to joke about how bad the class is. Still... the somewhat thin description of a PC desperately trying to figure out how to overcome the useless stankitude of Hexblade is amusing and an interesting framing device, so I'm going to be more generous in this category than I probably should be.

[daremetoidareyo]

Darrin, you are the judge I wish to be some day

[Long_shanks]

That is some awesome and thorough judging, Darrin. No disputes from me. Hats off to you. You are a gentleman and a scholar.

[daremetoidareyo]

That is some awesome and thorough judging, Darrin. No disputes from me. Hats off to you. You are a gentleman and a scholar.

No disputes here.

[DeTess]

Boros, the Demon of Elysium: 14.5/20

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Originality
The Imperious command+never outnumbered combo is fairly obvious for the debuffing aspect of the built. However, monk is a bit of a surprise, but I can see how it’d work well. Loading up on the abyssal feats likewise is an interesting direction, and I liked your backstory.
3.5/5

Power
You cannot take the ordered Chaos feat, as it requires you to be non-chaotic. You take two abyssal heritor feats before this feat, so your alignment becomes chaotic. This does not seem to impact your build in anyway though (you can’t take more levels in monk, but you keep all the levels you already had with all the benefits), so this is essentially a wasted feat.
Damage output is nothing special, but you’re very tanky with DR10 and decent saves against spells. A couple of wizards spamming arcane missile are going to ruin your day though.
Intimidating strike does not work with feats that work of the ‘demoralize’ use for intimidate, as intimidating strike doesn’t allow you to demoralize. It allows you to make an intimidate check to obtain an (admittedly similar) effect.
Overall your storm of de-buffs is pretty decent even without that interaction though.
4/5

Elegance
No real inelegant or elegant stuff happening (ordered chaos feat mishap was already deducted under power).
3/5

Use of SI
4 levels in the SI, and you make decent use of most of its abilities, though you don’t mention the 1 spell you get at all. Your build also works with the themes of Hexblade.
4/5

Erica D’zhar: 13.5/20

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Originality
Imperious command+never outnumbered again. Nothing else stands out in a good or bad way.
2.5/5

Power
Power attack gives you some offensive power, and your debuffs would allow you to hit even if you sacrifice most of your BaB to power attack. You’ve got a couple of reusable debuff options in addition to hexblade’s curse, and stand still allows you to immobilize one or two opponents.
4/5

Elegance
Hideous Laughter is not on the Hexblade spell list as far as I can tell. You can’t take the obtain familiar feat as it requires 4 ranks in knowledge(arcana). This also stops you from taking the improved familiar feat.
2.5/5

Use of SI
5 levels, decent use of abilities and the build fits the overall theme of the class.
4.5/5

Gishy McGishterton: 11.5/20

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Please try to show Skill-point totals for each level, that way the judge can easily see how many ranks you have in each skill for the purpose of checking prerequisites. You weren’t penalized for this, but fixing this in the future will make judging easier.

Originality
picking up lots of SLA's and first level spell slots for versatility is interesting. nothing else really stood out.
3.5/5

Power
You’ve got some out-of combat utility thanks to your ton of 1st level spell slots and 1/day SLA’s.
In combat though you don’t do much of interest. You’re either slightly tanky in full plate, in which case you’re doing almost no damage, as you’re not proficient with heavy armor and therefore take a very high bonus to hit, while your Charisma and Intelligence are fairly low so spells that give a save will mostly be passed by your enemies.
If you’re wearing light armor instead your AC will be very low, though you will be able to hit things.
2/5

Elegance
Wizard 1 does not get a bonus feat. You take practiced spellcaster but don’t specify which class you apply it to.
2/5

Use of SI
4 levels in the SI. Your build focuses somewhat on the armored spellcaster aspect, rather than the debuffer aspect, which is within the direction of the class
4/5

Sventir Shieldsling 11/20

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Originality
Dual shield bashing. I suppose that works.
4/5

Power
You’ll have decent AC with heavy armor and a shield (shields give a typed bonus, so you only get the bonus of one for the purposes of AC), and your touch AC will be high enough to make life difficult for beam-spamming mages. Your Reflex save is very low though, so those same mages could just start spamming burning hands/fireball instead.
Between your various shield enhancements you can make a decent number of attacks (up to 2 against three different targets if your dice agree), but your damage per attack is nothing special (1d6+strength).
3/5

Elegance
Swearing allegiance to an elder evil is a quick way to turn a PC into an NPC in my opinion. It’s RAW legal I suppose, so I won’t reduce your score for his.
You didn’t list the shield type for shield specialization(minor mistake, not penalized).
‘Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting’ is not a first party source. This means that you can’t take Golarion Cleric. As far as I can tell, that level isn’t integral to the functioning of your build though, so i won't penalize you for this as heavily as I could have.
2/5

Use of SI
4 levels in the SI, but you don’t make special use of your class abilities. In fact, I’m fairly certain you could have taken any other full BaB class here instead of hexblade and have been better off (with the exception of the samurai classes, maybe).
2/5

Tio Hexblahday: 15.5

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Originality
So, that thing you did with level 4 combined with the detailed breakdown of your design process? Have all the points.
5/5

Power
Your armor is ridiculous, you’ll probably have as much hp as the next two party-members combined…and that’s it. And if you manage to kill someone with energy drain, you get a permanent pet ghost, which is neat. You can inflict some negative levels a couple of times a day, and gain some benefits from that, but you’re not particularly impressive in combat apart from that. You’re not bad either, as you’ve got that +6 BaB, it’s just nothing special.
4.5/5

Elegance
You list a source for a feat at level 6, but no actual feat.
Then there's the fact that you took and lost 27 levels to be able to say you selected a certain class of feat to get enhanced benefits. It’s beautiful, in a 1/5 in elegance kind of way. It seems legal if you really stick to the letter of RAW, but it’s... *throws hands up in despair, and then chucks a DMG at you*
4/5 (<- not a mistake. As much as I’d like to penalize you for that Sha’ir shenanigan, I just can’t bring myself to do so)

Use of SI
As you said yourself, this build is good despite being a hexblade. Also you take less than 20% of your levels in Hexblade, which is a shame.
2/5

[Darrin]

Erica D’zhar: 13/20

Elegance
Hideous Laughter is not on the Hexblade spell list as far as I can tell. You can’t take the obtain familiar feat as it requires 4 ranks in knowledge(arcana). This also stops you from taking the improved familiar feat.

Tasha's hideous laughter is a 1st level Hexblade spell as per Complete Warrior pg. 116. The SRD version removes the name "Tasha" (proprietary IP).

Skill ranks for Knowledge (arc-- Oh, look! Cute kitten gif!

(I'm going to ignore the two missing skill ranks for... reasons. Looks like an honest mistake.)

Tio Hexblahday: 14

Elegance
You list a source for a feat at level 6, but no actual feat.

That threw me for a bit, but the source for "Create Spectral Spawn" is cited correctly:

http://archive.wizards.com/default.a...d/we/20070425a

An excerpt of the feat can also be seen here.

[DeTess]

Tasha's hideous laughter is a 1st level Hexblade spell as per Complete Warrior pg. 116. The SRD version removes the name "Tasha" (proprietary IP).

Huh. I had checked that, but somehow I must have missed it. I'll correct the scoring.

That threw me for a bit, but the source for "Create Spectral Spawn" is cited correctly:

http://archive.wizards.com/default.a...d/we/20070425a

An excerpt of the feat can also be seen here.

I think I'm going to stick with my scoring on that. He does mention at one point that he's now doing something with spectral spawn, but he really should have mentioned the feat properly, even if the source is correct. I'm giving that build too much points for elegance as it is anyway. :P

Though that trick would require an upscoring in power, which I'll add.

[Darrin]

Entablementation:

Entry	Alignment/Race	Stub	Judge: Darrin	Judge: Randuir	Total
Erica D'zhar (link)	CE Human	Hexblade 5/Thrall to Orcus 1	20	13.5	33.5
Tio Hexblahday (link)	?E Hellbred	Hexblade 3/Sha'ir 28/Hexblade +3	16.5	15.5	32.0
Boros (link)	LN?CN Lesser Aasimar	Monk 1/Hexblade 4/Swordsage 1	16.0	14.5	30.5
Gishy McGisherton (link)	?? Human	Hexblade 1/Battle Sorcerer 1/Wizard 1/Hexblade +3	11	11.5	22.5
Sventir Shieldsling (link)	CE Azurin	Barbarian 1/Cleric 1/Hexblade 4	11.5	11	22.5

[Falontani]

After reading the other judgings I feel as though I don't have anything really to add that hasn't been said. I also have not been able to start my own judging so I will drop out of the judging pool this round

[Zombulian]

Is that it for the judging then?
I wanted to respond to some judges to clarify certain things about the build, but I don't really consider them to be disputes or expect them to change my score.

[daremetoidareyo]

Is that it for the judging then?
I wanted to respond to some judges to clarify certain things about the build, but I don't really consider them to be disputes or expect them to change my score.

Then just clear the air after the comp. I plan on doing the same.

[Zaq]

A response!

To Randuir:
It won't change anything scorewise (and neither should it), but I did choose my spell known in the level 5 breakdown:
Level 5 – Alright, here is our Hexblade capstone: the Dark companion ACF. It’s a free debuff for any enemy adjacent to it, always on and moves at your speed. That’s why Expeditious retreat is one of our spells known, to enhance the mobility of Boros and of the companion. The other spell is Magic weapon, to bypass any pesky DR/magic that could crop up.

And since Hexblade is a spontaneous caster, then we use whichever is more useful in a day ;)

To Darrin and Randuir:
And yep. I completely missed the line that said two abyssal heritor feats = chaotic alignment. As Darrin said, we could just switch them up and it still works, but that is just a plain mistake on my part.

[lylsyly]

So, what's next?

[DeTess]

To Randuir:
It won't change anything scorewise (and neither should it), but I did choose my spell known in the level 5 breakdown:
Level 5 – Alright, here is our Hexblade capstone: the Dark companion ACF. It’s a free debuff for any enemy adjacent to it, always on and moves at your speed. That’s why Expeditious retreat is one of our spells known, to enhance the mobility of Boros and of the companion. The other spell is Magic weapon, to bypass any pesky DR/magic that could crop up.

And since Hexblade is a spontaneous caster, then we use whichever is more useful in a day ;)

To Darrin and Randuir:
And yep. I completely missed the line that said two abyssal heritor feats = chaotic alignment. As Darrin said, we could just switch them up and it still works, but that is just a plain mistake on my part.!

In case no one noticed yet, I'm a 'table' person, not a 'text' person. If your build takes something, and it isn't mentioned in a table or neat list, I might miss it. That's not really an excuse, but if you're submitting a build, and want to prevent having to make disputes about things like this, make sure things like spells, maneuvers, etc. are neatly tabulated :P.

If I was using a some kind of finer grade scale(0.1 point intervals instead of 0.5), this correction might have made a difference on your scoring. As it is the difference taking these into account is not significant enough to change your score on either power use of SI. 4/6 levels and good use of both SI powers and SI theme will generally get you a 4/5 on SI use with me, while that feat wasn't so much penalized as considered a loss of potential power. As I can only grade the power you have, it didn't particularly influence your score there.

[Zaq]

So, what's next?

Technically, we’ve got another week to judge. That said, if anyone else planning to judge? I could potentially see us accelerating a bit, given that we’ve had two solid judgments already. But if anyone is still actively planning to judge and/or has started judging, I don’t mind waiting, either. Thoughts and opinions on this matter are welcome.

I have the next ingredient all picked out. Its problems are, on the whole, very different from the Hexblade’s. The parts about it that are difficult will present a rather distinct challenge. It may be a bit deceptive, truth be told.

Any votes for HM?

[Long_shanks]

Does HM have to be an entry that is not in medal position? I mean, it's reeeeeaaaaally hard to look past Tio in this round.

[Zaq]

Does HM have to be an entry that is not in medal position? I mean, it's reeeeeaaaaally hard to look past Tio in this round.

Traditionally, yeah, HM is supposed to be a build that wouldn’t otherwise medal.

I admit that this gets weird in a very small field of entries, though.

[Zaq]

Seriously though, is anyone actively judging or seriously intending to judge? I'm all for following the rules and stuff, but the point of the rules is to facilitate fun, and there's not much point in just twiddling our thumbs for the better part of another week if we're all ready to move on. (I will say that it was nice to have a round that wasn't choked to hell with disputes. I don't mind encouraging dialogue between chefs and judges, and disputes are often necessary, but having a breather was also really nice.)

If I don't hear any serious objections to this plan soon, I'll try to post the new contest within the next couple of days. I'm excited for it. (I've actually got the next, like, three or four ingredients planned out, each with something special that they bring to the table—but one thing at a time.)

[lylsyly]

I am all for moving on. I may have bailed on this round but I am still interested In the Competition.

[johnbragg]

Seriously though, is anyone actively judging or seriously intending to judge? I'm all for following the rules and stuff, but the point of the rules is to facilitate fun, and there's not much point in just twiddling our thumbs for the better part of another week if we're all ready to move on. (I will say that it was nice to have a round that wasn't choked to hell with disputes. I don't mind encouraging dialogue between chefs and judges, and disputes are often necessary, but having a breather was also really nice.)

If I don't hear any serious objections to this plan soon, I'll try to post the new contest within the next couple of days. I'm excited for it. (I've actually got the next, like, three or four ingredients planned out, each with something special that they bring to the table—but one thing at a time.)

I accept the judgement.

[Long_shanks]

Bring on the next useless fantastic ingredient, I say.

[daremetoidareyo]

the plan to move along sounds good to me.

[Zaq]

Then let's get this show on the road! Thanks once more for making the table, Darrin.

Entry	Alignment/Race	Stub	Judge: Darrin	Judge: Randuir	Total	Chef
Erica D'zhar (link)	CE Human	Hexblade 5/Thrall to Orcus 1	20	13.5	33.5	WhamBamSam
Tio Hexblahday (link)	?E Hellbred	Hexblade 3/Sha'ir 28/Hexblade +3	16.5	15.5	32.0	daremetoidareyo
Boros (link)	LN?CN Lesser Aasimar	Monk 1/Hexblade 4/Swordsage 1	16.0	14.5	30.5	Long_shanks
Gishy McGisherton (link)	?? Human	Hexblade 1/Battle Sorcerer 1/Wizard 1/Hexblade +3	11	11.5	22.5	johnbragg
Sventir Shieldsling (link)	CE Azurin	Barbarian 1/Cleric 1/Hexblade 4	11.5	11	22.5	Zombulian

Congrats to everyone who got a dish in with this awful stinker of an ingredient, and particular congrats to WhamBamSam for taking gold, darematoidareyo for taking silver, and Long_shanks for taking bronze! I love how prompt and civil the judging was this time around, so many, many thanks to Darrin and Randuir for taking the time and the effort to judge.

I’ve updated the OP. New thread here!

[Long_shanks]

As soon as I read Erica, I knew gold was gone. Basically the same idead I had, just done way better. Well done, WhamBamSam!

And dare, what the actual hell? Mind explaining what happened in that demented mind of yours ?