How to build (a) Superman/Hyperion/Alexandria with 3.P

[GrayDeath]

As the Title says.

Say I want the flying Brick with Extras (be they Heat Vision, Super Senses, perfect memory and Pattern Recognition etc) as a Character...how do I do it?

And no, being a Full Caster that, among other things, can buff himself well enough does not count.

Can it be done? If so, how?

Limits. must be possible Pre-Epic, cannot require any Infinity loops or more retraining than twice, everything else RAW legal is fair game.

Let the Best Optimizers get to work!

[exelsisxax]

As the Title says.

Say I want the flying Brick with Extras (be they Heat Vision, Super Senses, perfect memory and Pattern Recognition etc) as a Character...how do I do it?

And no, being a Full Caster that, among other things, can buff himself well enough does not count.

Can it be done? If so, how?

Limits. must be possible Pre-Epic, cannot require any Infinity loops or more retraining than twice, everything else RAW legal is fair game.

Let the Best Optimizers get to work!

You play a game that can do that, like M&M or Champions.

Alternatively, get a dragon template and pretend that the breath weapon are nonsense eye lasers. Mental abilities like memory are not represented in 3.PF, so just say you have those.

[tyckspoon]

It's pretty easily doable, even if through nothing more than well-chosen item purchases. You'll probably need to give more explicit details about the specific abilities you want/how you want to achieve it, however - do you want flight as a racial property? Magic item? Is having wings an adequate form of flight, or do you want something more like the classical Superman kind of flight such as provided by the Fly spell with no visible source of propulsion? You'll get much more applicable answers if you can help zoom in on what you want the result to look like.

[GrayDeath]

OK, lets add some more info.

1.: I didnt think this was necessary, as I asked in the 3.x Forum, but no, another game is NOT the answer. I know games that are built for it, its not hard to do it there (pick right powerset, done). I want to know if and how well it can be done in 3.P


2.: As stated above, as close to Superman/Hyperion/Alexandria as possible. So no, a puny Flight Spell that gives a few dozen Feet/round fly does not do enough, neither does Stone Skin or some minor DR:

I want enough strength to instantly kill most things/laugh about DR, enough DR/HP/AC to feel invulnerable, and enough speed to break the sound barrier (especially but not exclusively while flying).

Hence the title. And the question, as only giving a being flight and some toughners is easy (and not the point).

[exelsisxax]

OK, lets add some more info.

1.: I didnt think this was necessary, as I asked in the 3.x Forum, but no, another game is NOT the answer. I know games that are built for it, its not hard to do it there (pick right powerset, done). I want to know if and how well it can be done in 3.P

2.: As stated above, as close to Superman/Hyperion/Alexandria as possible. So no, a puny Flight Spell that gives a few dozen Feet/round fly does not do enough, neither does Stone Skin or some minor DR:

I want enough strength to instantly kill most things/laugh about DR, enough DR/HP/AC to feel invulnerable, and enough speed to break the sound barrier (especially but not exclusively while flying).

Hence the title. And the question, as only giving a being flight and some toughners is easy (and not the point).

This cannot be done without cheating(i.e. those finite loops you eliminated, flagrant equivocation with rules). DR is garbage and doesn't stack, AC scales poorly and can't keep up with attack bonus inflation, HP is constrained by level. You CAN easily laugh off DR, because that's what everyone making melee attacks does with a competent build. You can 1-shot most level-appropriate monsters with those same builds boosted with a bit more op-fu. Flight is slow, and if you aren't using wings it's also magic. Things get to be fast by cheesing spells. And of course you need to be a silly high level to even fake these things.

3.PF doesn't do superheroes.

[Buddy76]

Limits. must be possible Pre-Epic, cannot require any Infinity loops or more retraining than twice, everything else RAW legal is fair game.

What about templates and races with LA/RHD?

Best I've got so far: Human or Half-Giant (powerful build helps simulate super strength) with the Gheden Template (Dragon 313). Ardent 1/ Ranger 5/ Windwalker 10(Faiths and pantheons)/ Horizon Walker 1. That character is ECL 17 if you're a human and 18 if you're a half-giant.

At first level you take troll blooded ( Dragon 319), which, combined with the gheden template, gives you immunity to all damage other than fire and acid (nigh invulnerability? Check). You also need able learner, so if you're half-giant take two flaws and get human heritage and able learner. With ardent 1 you add autohypnosis to your skill list, and with able learner it's a class skill forever. Keep autohypnosis high and you have super memory (Check). Ranger is there for full BAB and to qualify for Windwalker. Windwalker 10 gives you a flight speed of 100ft (good) (flight? Check). Choose desert for your favored terrain and you're immune to fatigue (you're almost tireless and your troll blooded disadvantage is gone).

Supersenses are trickier. Maybe take two more levels of Horizon Walker (plains and hills for +4 to both listen and spot). Half-giants have low light vision and if you select Light and Darkness as one of your ardent mantles and you may double your low light vision or gain darkvision. Other than that, make sure to keep you spot and listen skills maxed out, maybe take skill focus or something.

If you're using your fists take improved unarmed strike to hit harder. Selecting destruction as your second ardent mantle will help you damage inanimate objects. How high do you want your strength score to be? Gheden + half-giant will give you +6 strength (and powerful build), you can have some one Wish you a +5 bonus to strength giving you +11 (So 29 strength at 1st level if you start with 18).

Heat vision... that's harder. Best I've got is taking leadership, making your cohort a celestial creature with Dragon Fire Adept levels and channeling it (Book of Exalted Deeds, page 23). Now you can use it's fire breath weapon (refluff it as heat vision) and maybe have it take frost breath as well (now you have freezing breath).

You may also take Ranger 1/ Paladin 4 to be even tougher.

I can't presently think of anyway to break the sound barrier without spells. There are some pathfinder templates that triple and quadruple your speed, so stacking those might help but may take you into epic levels.

Don't know how playable any iteration of that build would be, but you might tweak then further.

[Manyasone]

Easy. Be a soulknife (deadly fist or as appropiate) and take the marvel prestige class. Pathfinder DSP, btw

[Andor13]

I'm not sure what high level d20 characters are supposed to be if NOT superheroes, but they don't usually get to the Superman level.

An Aegis (Pathfinder 3pp) is a psionic class which I generally think of as PsIronman. They can easily do the flight, senses, toughness, memory, and damage, but the aren't going to be at "Put the Tarrasque in a head lock while flying at supersonic speeds"levels. I think a human Aegis with the run feat caps out at around 300 mph at 20th level, but that's all he's doing if so.

But since you're looking for craziness, maybe you could gestalt? Aegis on one side for all the utility, and stack craziness like Warhulk in the other one to cheese out. Or if you get into Pathfinder Mythic there is always dual-wielding super-tankers....

[Manyasone]

I'm not sure what high level d20 characters are supposed to be if NOT superheroes, but they don't usually get to the Superman level.

An Aegis (Pathfinder 3pp) is a psionic class which I generally think of as PsIronman. They can easily do the flight, senses, toughness, memory, and damage, but the aren't going to be at "Put the Tarrasque in a head lock while flying at supersonic speeds"levels. I think a human Aegis with the run feat caps out at around 300 mph at 20th level, but that's all he's doing if so.

But since you're looking for craziness, maybe you could gestalt? Aegis on one side for all the utility, and stack craziness like Warhulk in the other one to cheese out. Or if you get into Pathfinder Mythic there is always dual-wielding super-tankers....

Especially the crystal warrior archetype has an Iron man flavour, right? And if you take the full arms tree in customization you can dual wield Greatswords, which is all sorts of awesome. Maybe not the most optimized, but at that point, who cares

[ExLibrisMortis]

Fusion + astral seed can do this without infinite loops... sort of. Basically, you fuse with a shadow shadow shadow shadow (...) shadow shadow shadow ogre mage. With forty-six iterations of the Shadow Creature template, you have a fly speed of almost 840 000 000 000 (85% of the speed of light), which is probably fast enough. If you use a beholder, instead, your fly speed becomes (Ex), but you have to apply the template twice more.

[AvatarVecna]

Required:

• Flight
• Being Tough

Forbidden:

• Epic
• Loops
• Buff-stacking

I hope you like the taste of disappointment.

First off, D&D doesn't handle tanking/being tough very well at all. There's basically two version of the game: if you're still playing the numbers game (making attack rolls, caring about movement and initiative and AC), then your best bet for winning a fight is to kill the enemy before they kill you, because resources are quite frankly more easily spent on offense than defense; any AC value that's actually high enough to matter will cost way more than it's worth, you'll never have enough HP to survive more than 30 seconds against anything even remotely close to your level, miss chance only helps so much, and SR/DR/ER are too expensive for the benefit they provide, and even if you fully invest in one of them it won't do more than remove a single drop from the bucket of offense you'll be facing. Focusing defense over offense is why so many monsters ****ing suck.

But let's move past your delusions of defense and move on to flight. You want non-magic flight that looks like Superman? Doesn't happen in this system. All flight that looks like superman is accomplished through spells or magic items or (incredibly rarely) inherent telekinetic gifts specific to a particular monster. That last one is the closest thing you'll get to what you're wanting, but it's 1) fluffed as magic-adjacent, and 2) requires the ability to copy/steal monster abilities, which is always magic or magic-adjacent. Vow of Poverty doesn't do it. Monk doesn't do it. Favored Soul doesn't do it. Nobody does it. The closest thing there is to this in the system, if you squint your eyes and extend the fluff, is that the epic Balance use "balance on a cloud" can be used to "stand/walk/run" on air, allowing you to "fly" at your ground speed.

...which will never be able to compete with modern vehicles, much less superheroes. Highway speeds, which should be pretty low by superhero standards, are the equivalent of 88 feet per second, or 528 feet per round. That's a 110 movement speed with the Run feat, and 110 ft movement speed is a 20 ft move than a Monk 20 will have. And even then, unless this highly-optimized non-epic non-caster has invested in Endurance or similar, they're gonna get tired of going that speed in just a couple minutes at best. And that's still super-slow by super-standards.

[Florian]

Within the boundaries and limits of the system, my best guess for PF is maybe Fighter (Weapon Master) 12/Occultist (Panoply Savant) 8 for a regular Iron Caster build.

Sorry, you won't ever come close to that speed, but that's what we have DimDoor for, super senses comes with the Divination implement and the rest is either Item Mastery or Item Trick, which you grab via Martial Flexibility.

[ShurikVch]

Well, the all the powers of Alexandria are stemming from the fact she's "frozen in time" (however it works)
Thus, Planar Bubble to emulate Astral plane, and Timeless Body.

Superman?
Which Superman?
For example, original Superman didn't have any ranged abilities, superhuman senses, or - for that matter - fly speed: "... able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" - what's the point of leaping, if you able to just fly, without the inconveniences of physical wings, propellers, or jet streams?
Silver Age Superman was just a reality warper - his whole concept was "invent a new superpower to save the day", thus - he's much closer to the Eidolon than Alexandria. If you want to re-create it - then: Pun-Pun. Done!

[Telonius]

Warlock 6 will take care of flying, with Fell Flight on 24/7. Warlock can also hit a few of the extras like Super Senses (All-Seeing Eyes, See the Unseen, Devil's Sight, Serpent's Tongue), or being animal-friendly (Call of the Wild). If you want to have a couple of Aquaman's iconic powers, Swimming the Styx/Call of the Wild is how to do it without using a Trident of Fish Command. Eldritch Blast is pretty clearly a native way of getting laser beams. If you're going for Superman's heat rays, stick in it until 8 so you can get Brimstone Blast along with Fell Flight. If you need telepathy, Charm is a Lesser Invocation that qualifies you for Mindbender. Supers with invisibility powers will want Walk Unseen; Flee the Scene will let you go Nightcrawler with teleports.

Unfortunately there are two major weaknesses for your purposes: Lack of HP, and lack of BAB. Warlock is very much not a bruiser. Switch over to something else (possibly Warblade or Crusader) once you have the super-powers you need.

[Serafina]

If you're willing to turn yourself into a weapon, you can use Spheres of Power and be a Spirit Blade.
You get Hardness - and since you're a magical weapon (ideally with Impervious, later Adamantine, and the Dwarven FCB) it actually scales up to Hardness 60!
You can fly - simply use Telekinesis on yourself.
You can get other powers, since you still have access to everything Spheres of Power has to offer. You're a bit limited in caster level and available talents, but both of those can be surpassed, especially if you're just going for a specific theme.
You can also ignore all the "when wielded by another person" stuff, if you like - you already get full attacks just from the right combination of Telekinesis talents, after moving and a standard-action freely available at that!

It's not quite your typical Flying Brick (unless you use a brick as your weapon form ). But if you want to be more humanoid, you could use Illusion for disguise, and it's a nice unusual character concept.

[Quertus]

Allow me to throw Sculpt Self (Kryptonian) into the pot.

Throw out WBL (because you're spending your XP, so you've got mad wealth for your level), and give yourself as many instances of Roll With It as it takes to get the DR you feel Superman deserves.

Same thing for any magical / winged flight - simply use Sculpt Self to reskin it (and make it continue functioning in antimagic).

[Gnaeus]

The Dreamscarred Press dragon classes are the closest I can think of. Not officially 3.P, but a heavily supported 3rd party system who did the official ports of Tome of Battle and Psionics and are generally very good at balancing in the tier 2-4 range.

D12 hp + dr magic (supes vulnerable to magic) = bulletproof
You get stat boosts at most levels, making you inhumanly strong, tough, smart and charismatic
Superhuman senses
Non magical (although winged) flight. At pretty high speeds as you gain levels. Not supersonic, but I think you hit 200.
No Eye Beams, but cold breath is definitely an option
Take humanoid form feat at level 1 and you are basically just a human (or other humanoid of choice) with better stats, full BAB, and lots of skill points to pump that disguise skill.

[Telonius]

Another option for you: The Champion, by the Giant himself.

[AvatarVecna]

Another option for you: The Champion, by the Giant himself.

Well geez, if homebrew's on the table...

[Hand_of_Vecna]

It doesn't really work to ask for a clearly epic concept without epic levels. I still remember a "build anything" thread I started way back where I think Superman was my specific example of a request that wouldn't be reasonable under this rule. Asking that he not be a caster further compounds this problem especially when many instances of Superman work better as casters as he is far more vulnerable when taken by surprise and can pull out exotic powers or punch harder after he grits his teeth.

Metropolis kid, the Superboy introduced in Reign of the Supermen was actually using Telekinesis for most of his abilities; personal forcefield, tactile Telekinesis, telekinetic flight and would be best represented as a psion.

In most versions of his backstory, Superman began with reliable powers in every physical aspect with his more exotic powers being occasional bursts that he had to master over time. If you wanted this kind of Superman the best option might be something similar to Nazi Jill's Fighting Game boss character from the second evil campaign in Another Gaming Comic. Starting as a Shifter or Changeling and leveling in RoB classes until qualifying for Master Shapeshifter for esoteric immunities and powers.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

This build only actually needs one or two levels of monk (and the last three levels are basically feats and filler), so monk 1 or 2/psion 19 or 18 with Tashalatora would work just fine. GTWF flurry of throws emulates super speed nicely (and that's not even mentioning psi action economy breakage), and psion gives you super senses, eye lasers, flight, cold breath, etc. Find a way to get the amethyst gem dragon's ten ton telekinesis, and you're most of the way there.

Dipping some ToB for d2 crusader for the infinite mass punch and some WBLmancy for carrying capacity optimization, and you've got it.

[exelsisxax]

This build only actually needs one or two levels of monk (and the last three levels are basically feats and filler), so monk 1 or 2/psion 19 or 18 with Tashalatora would work just fine. GTWF flurry of throws emulates super speed nicely (and that's not even mentioning psi action economy breakage), and psion gives you super senses, eye lasers, flight, cold breath, etc. Find a way to get the amethyst gem dragon's ten ton telekinesis, and you're most of the way there.

Dipping some ToB for d2 crusader for the infinite mass punch and some WBLmancy for carrying capacity optimization, and you've got it.

The build you posted is like 5% within the OP's rules. Wishlooping, DCFS cheese, and high-grade spell(&power)casting abound.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The build you posted is like 5% within the OP's rules. Wishlooping, DCFS cheese, and high-grade spell(&power)casting abound.

It can be done without the DCFS and wishes, but Tippy has very high standards for competence, and houserules appropriately, so one must milk said houserules for all they're worth. I mean, it's a monk vs all the Endbringers elder evils, SOLO, for Tippy's sake!

You need a T1 or T2 class for most of Superman's more esoteric abilities, if you want something even vaguely recognizeable, so psion et al is a must.

At least the super hardness "invulnerability" translates pretty well, and that's mostly monk and warforged.