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

[Zaq]

Hey Zaq, did you get that secret ingredient you were hoping for? ;D)))))

Maaaaaybe! I’m quite pleased with what we’ve got here.

I will admit to being surprised not to see any Silver Keys; I once played in an E6 game with someone who squeezed in both Silver Key and Trapsmith, which worked remarkably well in an E6 environment. I was also kind of hoping to see a kobold with Slight Build take Stoneblessed into Goliath Barbarian for Mountain Rage (kind of a diet version of Tiny Von Big McLargeHuge), and I was also expecting a Thief of Life, since you can enter ToL at level 2 if you try hard enough. Admittedly, the actual interesting parts of ToL are out of reach for E6 no matter what, so that’s mostly understandable.

I was also expecting a fallen Pally to cash in their levels and end up with 5 or 6 levels of Blackguard.

[lylsyly]

And, of course, *now* I spot a typo in my entry.

Don't feel bad, I did the same thing, LOL. Except mine wasn't a typo, I changed something and changed one thing from that and not the other. OOPS.

I'm tempted to suggest we break out the four Survivors as a mini-side-dish battle.

Me too, It's such a crappy class. I think difficult to judge in comparison to the others.

[Zaq]

So what you’re saying is that we should take all the dishes with Commoner as their first level, stick them on a remote island somewhere with a bunch of TV cameras, and make it an overhyped elimination event?

[lylsyly]

A crappy TV show for a crappy PrC, Perfect ;)

[tterreb]

Hey, survivor is a great class. All good saves, improved uncanny dodge and evasion, dr 5/-... As long as you don't care about actually doing anything...

[MinimanMidget]

Out of curiosity, which one did you expect?

Blade of Orien. It's a really cool class, with actually useful abilities. The only reason I didn't submit one is that I couldn't come up with anything good to do with the first 3 levels.

[DeTess]

Blade of Orien. It's a really cool class, with actually useful abilities. The only reason I didn't submit one is that I couldn't come up with anything good to do with the first 3 levels.

I agree it's a cool class, but how would you have gotten the lesser dragonmark early then? I can't really figure out how to get dragonmark heir any earlier than level 5.

[MinimanMidget]

I agree it's a cool class, but how would you have gotten the lesser dragonmark early then? I can't really figure out how to get dragonmark heir any earlier than level 5.

Because I completely forgot about the skill prereqs for Lesser Dragonmark and didn't get far enough into it to actually check the feat, obviously :)

[Zaq]

Happy Thanksgiving to those in the US! Happy, um, Thursday to those who don't celebrate the same holiday.

I really am grateful to have this community here and to have all of you put up with my insane ideas enough to churn out build after build and judgment after judgment, round after round. You're all awesome.

Enough sappiness for now. Any progress on judging, dare (and/or new volunteers to judge)?

[daremetoidareyo]

I haven't touched this yet. I will probably begin this week end

[lylsyly]

How did Ultron put it? "I'm not trying to be pushy ..." ; )))

Also bumped.

[daremetoidareyo]

I began work on it. The plan is to finish 1 per day until they are done. Just have 7 more to go.

[daremetoidareyo]

Update: Four more to go.

The 4 survivors really throw a wrinkle until remaining objective and consistent. I started by judging two of them, and then decided to go out of the survivors and judge some of the other entries so I got a feel for the whole competition.

As a judge, I have learned that I hate the Tome of battle. Anything from that book requires so much more legwork. Don't worry , that is just a gripe, I'm not blaming people. It just slows me down a bit.

[DeTess]

As a judge, I have learned that I hate the Tome of battle. Anything from that book requires so much more legwork. Don't worry , that is just a gripe, I'm not blaming people. It just slows me down a bit.

Just out of curiosity, why is that? ToB seems fairly self-contained, so if anything you'd think it'd reduce the amount of looking up you'd have to do.

[daremetoidareyo]

Just out of curiosity, why is that? ToB seems fairly self-contained, so if anything you'd think it'd reduce the amount of looking up you'd have to do.

That would be true if I had any physical copies of books. One of the builds this round had 16 tabs open in my internet browser and 6 books as PDFs open. Just to check for qualifications.

[thorr-kan]

Hey, survivor is a great class. All good saves, improved uncanny dodge and evasion, dr 5/-... As long as you don't care about actually doing anything...

You know, someday I want to do a 20 level build with Survivor and War Hulk. Just for the BAB migraines it would cause.

ETA: Wrong class.

[thorr-kan]

That would be true if I had any physical copies of books. One of the builds this round had 16 tabs open in my internet browser and 6 books as PDFs open. Just to check for qualifications.

WE have a goal for the next contests submission! Can you make the judges reference more sources than this?

What? I'll show myself out...

[daremetoidareyo]

WE have a goal for the next contests submission! Can you make the judges reference more sources than this?

What? I'll show myself out...

It is definitely Karma. I am probably the absolute worst offender of this sort.

[lylsyly]

New competition Idea - 10 different base classes and 10 different Prcs!

[daremetoidareyo]

New competition Idea - 10 different base classes and 10 different Prcs!

Here is a crazy example of something that I put a judge through: Gar Hogchoker Well over 20 sources, mostly for items...


edit: 3 to go.

[Zaq]

Your hard work is appreciated, dare!

I'm willing to take input/discussion for the next round at this point. December/"teh holidayz" is a time when lots of people have time to cook and very few people have time to judge, so we need to carefully consider what we're setting up here.

Honestly, at this point I'm willing to just throw out some ideas and listen to feedback. It's spoilers, but it's not that much spoilers. And these aren't ranked in any particular order.

Ideas #0: I have a few SRD/OGL ingredients that I'm going to bring in eventually, but to be brutally honest, December seems like the worst possible time to do that. (See above: we'll have lots of cooks and very few judges. OGL ingredients exacerbate that like whoa.)

Idea #1: Mountebank, from Dragon Compendium. It's a hard class, not gonna lie. Like, really hard. It's got a ton of skill points and some utility of questionable value. I think I'd need at least three people chiming in proactively saying that they'd 100% be in to cook with it before I slapped this one on the table.

Idea #2: Sohei, from Oriental Adventures. Again, it's a damn hard class that I'd need a lot of advance commitment to in order to avoid another "no entries" round. Is that something that directly stimulates your creative juices?

Idea #3: Scout, from Complete Adventurer. This is going to be a strong ingredient because it's flavorful, it hasn't scaled out of relevance in E6, and it's honestly just a fun class that I genuinely enjoy. This is definitely going to be an ingredient, but it's a matter of when the stars will be right for it.

Idea #4: Lurk, from Complete Psionic. I was hoping to get some distance from Soulknife before bringing in another psionic thing, but it's a good ingredient nonetheless, I think. Strong flavor, unfortunate limitations in the mechanics that make things difficult. Those are arguably our best rounds (see Ninja, Soulknife, Swashbuckler). Is it too soon for Lurk, or would that be fun right now?

Idea #5: Binder, from Tome of Magic. The challenge with Binder is making it clear what you're doing that your compatriots aren't doing, since you've got such swappability. And, of course, the fact that it's kind of hard to actually make the Binder have a primary strategy. That's actually kinda rough, to be honest. Binders make great support for other levels but are hard to play straight through. Might be a good challenge, though!

Idea #6: Soulborn, from Magic of Incarnum. This feels mean. 6 is not a kind level for the Soulborn. They have a single freaking soulmeld and two bloody essentia (one from class, one from the mandatory [Incarnum] feat—every single feat with the [Incarnum] tag gives one point of essentia) and, like, that's about it. I mean, the Factotum at least has skills, and we had to beg and plead to get three of them in. Are you guys up for the challenge, or is Soulborn too deep into hardcore blandness?

Idea #7: Samurai, from Complete Warrior. I mean, let's be honest, you all know this is coming. It's a strong contender for lamest non-NPC base class in the game. Its design sins are no secret and no surprise. But, you know, I was hoping to sit on it a little while longer.

Those ideas will take us pretty far, I dare say. Other half-formed ideas include "Shadowcaster with a houserule that your mysteries/day are doubled at 6th level" (feels kinda janky/ham-fisted and still is going to run into the problem we had with Shugenja, plus it's one of the few really strong and explicit houserules we've brought in) and "any four base classes" (feels similar to what we're doing already with this round, though).

Feedback is strongly, strongly appreciated. I don't want to waste everyone's time with another dud ingredient like Hexblade, Shugenja, or Factotum. I want to keep things lively, like with Ninja and Swashbuckler. I just also don't want to overwhelm whatever brave hero signs up to judge by lunging straight for the OGL stuff.

Also, lysyly, you joke about 10 base classes and 10 PrCs, but I've submitted two separate "1 × 10 + 10 × 1" (ten levels in the SI, one level each in ten other classes) builds to the main competition, so that's really not so unfamiliar.

[DeTess]

Okay, let's see. I've got a basic idea for mountebank, not so much for Sohei. Scout, Lurk and binder should be easy enough to come up with something for. Soulborn, not so much (I've got one vague idea, but it only uses two soulborn levels and could do the same thing with a dip in Naberius). I'm not really getting any warm and fuzzy feelings from Samurai either.

[Darrin]

Ideas #0: I have a few SRD/OGL ingredients that I'm going to bring in eventually, but to be brutally honest, December seems like the worst possible time to do that. (See above: we'll have lots of cooks and very few judges. OGL ingredients exacerbate that like whoa.)

Can of worms, yes. But there are undoubtedly some very interesting worms in there.

Idea #1: Mountebank, from Dragon Compendium. It's a hard class, not gonna lie. Like, really hard. It's got a ton of skill points and some utility of questionable value. I think I'd need at least three people chiming in proactively saying that they'd 100% be in to cook with it before I slapped this one on the table.

Hmmm... I'm looking over this now, and the first six levels do have some interesting possibilities. I'm pretty sure I could do something with this... maybe not quite 100%, but 95%?

Idea #2: Sohei, from Oriental Adventures. Again, it's a damn hard class that I'd need a lot of advance commitment to in order to avoid another "no entries" round. Is that something that directly stimulates your creative juices?

This one intrigues me because it's so gawdawfully terribad. I have *no* ideas at all, but I'd have to try this simply because the challenge is just off the charts.

Idea #3: Scout, from Complete Adventurer. This is going to be a strong ingredient because it's flavorful, it hasn't scaled out of relevance in E6, and it's honestly just a fun class that I genuinely enjoy. This is definitely going to be an ingredient, but it's a matter of when the stars will be right for it.

Lots of ideas here, but I'm not quite sure I could come up with something we haven't seen before.

Idea #4: Lurk, from Complete Psionic. I was hoping to get some distance from Soulknife before bringing in another psionic thing, but it's a good ingredient nonetheless, I think. Strong flavor, unfortunate limitations in the mechanics that make things difficult. Those are arguably our best rounds (see Ninja, Soulknife, Swashbuckler). Is it too soon for Lurk, or would that be fun right now?

The Lurk frustrates me... every time I think it might be useful, it disappoints me. But there's got to be something interesting in there.

I think you could probably throw Divine Mind on the pile somewhere. I keep looking at that, thinking that there's got to be something useful in there, but no, it keeps underwhelming me. I think I'd put it in the same bucket as Sohei.

Idea #5: Binder, from Tome of Magic. The challenge with Binder is making it clear what you're doing that your compatriots aren't doing, since you've got such swappability. And, of course, the fact that it's kind of hard to actually make the Binder have a primary strategy. That's actually kinda rough, to be honest. Binders make great support for other levels but are hard to play straight through. Might be a good challenge, though!

Binding isn't my particular cup of tea, but this feels like it could be a strong ingredient.

Idea #6: Soulborn, from Magic of Incarnum. This feels mean. 6 is not a kind level for the Soulborn. They have a single freaking soulmeld and two bloody essentia (one from class, one from the mandatory [Incarnum] feat—every single feat with the [Incarnum] tag gives one point of essentia) and, like, that's about it. I mean, the Factotum at least has skills, and we had to beg and plead to get three of them in. Are you guys up for the challenge, or is Soulborn too deep into hardcore blandness?

I have secretly been campaigning for Soulborn 20 in the main IC competition, but the Chair hasn't shared my enthusiasm. Yes, this would be hardcore... I'm not sure I'd want to see it in E6, as I desperately want to see the 20-level version. E6 would be much harder, as they just don't get all that much in 6 levels.

Idea #7: Samurai, from Complete Warrior. I mean, let's be honest, you all know this is coming. It's a strong contender for lamest non-NPC base class in the game. Its design sins are no secret and no surprise. But, you know, I was hoping to sit on it a little while longer.

I'm not quite sure what to do with this one that we haven't seen already. So maybe lukewarm/moderately interested.

[lylsyly]

I might be up for SRD/OGL.

I could take a look at mountebank.

I would definitely be in for Scout.

[jdizzlean]

i never really know until i look at things, and i'd prefer not to do it ahead of time, sorry if that's no help

[WhamBamSam]

Idea #1: Mountebank, from Dragon Compendium. It's a hard class, not gonna lie. Like, really hard. It's got a ton of skill points and some utility of questionable value. I think I'd need at least three people chiming in proactively saying that they'd 100% be in to cook with it before I slapped this one on the table.

I'd definitely cook at least one Mountebank, maybe two with holiday cooking time.

Idea #2: Sohei, from Oriental Adventures. Again, it's a damn hard class that I'd need a lot of advance commitment to in order to avoid another "no entries" round. Is that something that directly stimulates your creative juices?

Oof. That'd be a tough one. They really mean it when they say "a small number of divine spells," but then, you can't cast while in a Ki Frenzy anyway.

Idea #4: Lurk, from Complete Psionic. I was hoping to get some distance from Soulknife before bringing in another psionic thing, but it's a good ingredient nonetheless, I think. Strong flavor, unfortunate limitations in the mechanics that make things difficult. Those are arguably our best rounds (see Ninja, Soulknife, Swashbuckler). Is it too soon for Lurk, or would that be fun right now?

Seems like a fun round. I think E6 is a good environment for Lurk.

Idea #5: Binder, from Tome of Magic. The challenge with Binder is making it clear what you're doing that your compatriots aren't doing, since you've got such swappability. And, of course, the fact that it's kind of hard to actually make the Binder have a primary strategy. That's actually kinda rough, to be honest. Binders make great support for other levels but are hard to play straight through. Might be a good challenge, though!

I don't know whether the feat-rich E6 environment would make for more variety or would just allow everyone to really lean into the jack-of-all-trades schtick, but Binder is rad and I'm sure it'll be a fun round either way.

Idea #6: Soulborn, from Magic of Incarnum. This feels mean. 6 is not a kind level for the Soulborn. They have a single freaking soulmeld and two bloody essentia (one from class, one from the mandatory [Incarnum] feat—every single feat with the [Incarnum] tag gives one point of essentia) and, like, that's about it. I mean, the Factotum at least has skills, and we had to beg and plead to get three of them in. Are you guys up for the challenge, or is Soulborn too deep into hardcore blandness?

I have vague thoughts on Soulborn and would probably enter, but I can't say I'm excited about it.

Idea #7: Samurai, from Complete Warrior. I mean, let's be honest, you all know this is coming. It's a strong contender for lamest non-NPC base class in the game. Its design sins are no secret and no surprise. But, you know, I was hoping to sit on it a little while longer.

E6 isn't the worst of environs for Samurai, but it's hard to imagine much variety.

Those ideas will take us pretty far, I dare say. Other half-formed ideas include "Shadowcaster with a houserule that your mysteries/day are doubled at 6th level" (feels kinda janky/ham-fisted and still is going to run into the problem we had with Shugenja, plus it's one of the few really strong and explicit houserules we've brought in) and "any four base classes" (feels similar to what we're doing already with this round, though).

E6 does make low level Shadowcaster a bit better without further houseruling by virtue of giving a lot of feats to throw at Favored Mystery. I wasn't able to get an entry in back in the Knight round, but I had really wanted to go Knight 3/Full BAB 2/Shadowsmith 1 with Favored Mystery (Carpet of Shadow) a bunch of times.

Feedback is strongly, strongly appreciated. I don't want to waste everyone's time with another dud ingredient like Hexblade, Shugenja, or Factotum. I want to keep things lively, like with Ninja and Swashbuckler. I just also don't want to overwhelm whatever brave hero signs up to judge by lunging straight for the OGL stuff.

My personal preference is for Mountebank, for whatever that's worth.

[thorr-kan]

I'm game for any of these.

[DEMON]

Most likely, Scout could draw a fair amount of attention, I'm just not sure he's this season's material.

Both Lurk and Binder will surely find its fans, while Soulborn and Samurai might draw people seeking challenge, or hoping for an easy round, with low amount of entries.

Personally, I'd probably build something for a Scout round if my schedule permits (for me, the last two weeks of the year are the opposite of days off).

[daremetoidareyo]

I should be finishing up tonight or tomorrow night!

[Maat Mons]

Since this time of year is all about getting cool stuff, maybe the next secret ingredient should have something to do with items?