Optimization Showcase in the Playground: Gladys Knight and the Pips

[Piggy Knowles]

It’s the time of the… week? Month? Whatever, the point is, we’ve got another showcase ready!

INTRODUCTION
With more than a decade and a half of toying around with 3.5, I’ve accumulated a lot of spare builds and ideas. While I don’t have an active game going right now, I still like to pop open my builds folder and try to refine things. Recently I decided to make a dedicated effort to flesh out some of these builds into full write-ups, and reached out to some friends in the CO community who might be interested in doing the same. In the spirit of Tempest Stormwind’s Weekly Optimization Showcase (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?), I thought I’d showcase the end results here.

The goal is (usually) not to show off any fancy new TO trick, but to showcase effective, playable builds and spur discussion. While each of us has a different build philosophy, in general the intent is to create something that can be played in most groups from level 1 to level 20. Again, the goal is discussion, so feel free to discuss the build, talk about other options, make suggestions or tear it all to shreds. Also, feel free to use anything showcased here in any of your campaigns—and let us know how they work out if you do!

Right now the group consists of myself, the Viscount, Akal Saris, Venger and WhamBamSam, with a couple of other folks hopefully on their way. Typically one of us writes up the build concept and possibly a stub, the others share feedback on Discord or in some of the shared documents we have, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product. I’ll list the build’s main author whenever I showcase a particular build.

Spoiler: Previous showcases

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Buffsader (PK, ToB/Gish/Party Support)
The Utility Belt (PK, Psionics/Stealth/Utility)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless War Mind (PK, ToB/Psionics/Melee Damage)
The Melding Pot (Veng, Incarnum/Utility)
That’s So Raven (PK, Gish/Ranged/Debuff)
Dancing in the Dark (PK, ToB/Stealth/Lock-down)

We’ve got a musical guest for you today: Gladys Knight and the Pips!

Gladys Knight and the Pips
What’s a singer without her backing vocals?

BACKGROUND
Six showcases in and we’ve covered a lot of basic party roles: buffers and debuffers, tanks and sneaks, melee and ranged. But what about when you need to do more than just hack monsters to bits? Who do you call when it’s time to Win Friends and Influence People? Sure, the Melding Pot or That’s So Raven or the Buffsader might be able to make a passable diplomacy check, but what about when you need a real fixer?

The party face is kind of an awkward role. Social manipulation can be downright gamebreaking (and not in a good way) when it’s taken to real extremes, since it can completely bypass encounters and challenges in a way that’s not actually very fun for the DM or the rest of the party. And the open-ended and vague nature of many skill scenarios means that social skills can just as easily be nerfed to uselessness or even ignored entirely. (I’m sure we’ve all played in campaigns where the DM pretty much plods through their planned adventure regardless of how you handle the social situations.) Plus, it’s often difficult to translate many of these skills and abilities to combat scenarios. A good party face requires a careful balancing act: powerful social abilities with clearly defined outcomes, a good variety of ways to influence people, and a way to remain useful in combat.

As for this build’s own unique twist… I was looking through some spell lists when I saw an interesting bard spell, summon elysian thrush. This is a 2nd-level bard spell that summons a magical songbird for hours per level. Ostensibly this was to assist in natural healing (the song of the elysian thrush doubles the natural healing rate), but what if there were other ways to use it? I started thinking of a bird-focused bardic caster, a kenku followed around by a group of beautiful otherworldly songbirds, all aiding its perform check.

Unfortunately after quite a lot of tinkering, I couldn’t quite get the original build to coalesce. There just wasn’t a consistent way to get those thrushes to reliably make the DC 10 aid check without serious level or gear investments, as they weren’t quite intelligent enough to benefit from most auras and other ways of boosting checks. Luckily, there was another spell that worked even better (although sadly it precluded the use of kenku): summon marked homonculus. Though they aren’t quite songbirds, expeditious messengers in many ways work even better than elysian thrushes: they’re diminutive instead of tiny (meaning more of them can share a space without penalties), they’re smart enough to benefit from marshal auras, and unlike other homonculi, they can speak (and sing!). The spell isn’t on the bard spell list, but a few levels in lyric thaumaturge was all it took to get around that particular issue, and the rest of the build came together from there.

THE BASICS

• Race: Human. While you could make this work without the bonus feat, the Mark of Making is a requirement for a key part of the build here.
• Build Stub: Bard 5/Marshal 1/Lyric Thaumaturge 3/Sublime Chord 2/Virtuoso 9
• ACFs: Inspire awe, loresong, Eberron bard
• Alignment: Any non-lawful.

GLADYS KNIGHT AND THE PIPS

Level	Class	Feats	Class Features	Spells	Notes (Click to Expand)
1st	Bard 1	Martial Study (crusader’s strike), Skill Focus (diplomacy)	Bardic music, loresong, countersong, fascinate, inspire awe	Detect magic, fleeting fame, songbird, prestidigitation	Spoiler: Build Notes Show Crusader’s strike once per encounter isn’t going to be gamechanging, but Martial Study for a devoted spirit maneuver is the easiest way to get Intimidate onto the bard’s skill list, which will be huge down the road. Skill Focus in one of your core skills certainly won’t go amiss, and will be more useful at this level than Melodic Casting or Least Dragonmark, two required feats; by taking Skill Focus here, you can instead take one of the other feats at a more useful time when you pick up a level in marshal. Inspire awe is a replacement for inspire courage that can instill the shaken condition in foes. At this level, that’s actually not bad at all: shaken provides a -2 to quite a lot of checks across the board, and unless you are in a melee heavy party, that’s going to be more significant than anything that inspire courage would get you. Since the DC is based off of your perform check, it should remain quite competitive, and in a few levels become almost impossible to beat. The ability doesn’t scale like inspire courage, but don’t worry, you’ll find some ways to continue to get use out of it. 0-level spells aren’t particularly exciting, but you do have two of note here: fleeting fame and songbird, both of which provide small boosts to Charisma-based skills. Not too bad for any party face.
2nd	Bard 2			Message, sleep, charm person	Spoiler: Build Notes Show With the addition of 1st-level spells, go ahead and pick up what is probably the single best low-level save or lose in sleep. It doesn’t scale well, but with your high Charisma it’s a great way to take out small groups of foes and can completely end encounters. Charm person should be a staple on any face, allowing you to turn a foe into a friend.
3rd	Marshal 1	Melodic Casting, Least Dragonmark (mark of making - make whole)	Bonus feat, minor aura (motivate Charisma)		Spoiler: Build Notes Show Since you’re not focused on inspire courage and you’ll be rebuilding your spellcasting later via sublime chord, go ahead and dip into marshal for motivate Charisma. This doubles your Charisma bonus on all your relevant skills; given your hefty Charisma bonus, that’s pretty significant. You have a couple of feats here, both of which fill pre-reqs but have some uses of their own. Least Dragonmark gives you access to make whole as an SLA; occasionally handy, I guess? Melodic Casting is a requirement for lyric thaumaturge, but is also really useful in and of itself, letting you substitute perform for concentration and cast while singing. Since marshal allows you to choose any other feat if you already have Skill Focus (diplomacy), you can pick both up this level.
4th	Bard 3	Soothe the Beast		Mage hand, grease	Spoiler: Build Notes Show Inspire competence is incredibly mediocre, so go ahead and swap it for the Soothe the Beast feat via the Eberron bard ACF. This allows you to play druid and influence the attitude of animals with a bardic music attempt. Using your force of personality to influence and control the world around you is kind of your bread and butter, so having this option in your back pocket is certainly handy. Also, go ahead and pick up grease as a handy low level debuff/battlefield control spell; unlike sleep, this one DOES remain useful even in the higher levels.
5th	Bard 4			Tongues, glitterdust, sleep → improvisation	Spoiler: Build Notes Show Tongues should be absolutely required for any face build; if you can’t talk to them, you can’t influence them. Meanwhile, we all know what glitterdust does: it’s a fantastic save-or-lose spell that also provides some decent utility. Hard to pass up. And since you can swap out a spell at this level, go ahead and ditch sleep, which should be getting less and less useful at this point, for improvisation, which can give you floating luck bonuses to various checks.
6th	Bard 5	Imperious Command		Silent image, detect thoughts	Spoiler: Build Notes Show Thanks to Martial Study adding intimidate to your skill list, you should qualify for Imperious Command at this point. Alongside the never outnumbered skill trick, this is an extremely powerful lock-down effect. Make an intimidate check (which you should be VERY good at, between your Charisma focus, motivate Charisma and synergy bonuses) as a standard action to force multiple enemies to first cower and then become shaken for a round. As for your spells, silent image is a fantastically flexible spell that is decent at any level, while detect thoughts is yet another spell that helps you fulfill the role of party face, allowing you to gather information and properly tailor your bluffing and diplomacy efforts.
7th	Lyric Thaumaturge 1		Bardic music, bonus spell		Spoiler: Build Notes Show Into lyric thaumaturge. Right off the bat that’s extra spell slots per day while still advancing both your casting and your music.
8th	Lyric Thaumaturge 2	Captivating Melody	Captivating Melody	Alter self, glibness, adoration of the frightful	Spoiler: Build Notes Show Captivating Melody is free, but probably not super useful, unfortunately. You can trade a bardic music attempt for +2 to the DC on an illusion or enchantment spell. Considering that you can instead spend a bardic music use to inspire awe, giving (among other things) a -2 penalty to all saves, this is not a great trade. Still, it’s free, and I suppose it could come in handy against enemies that are immune to fear. You do get some very nice spells at this level: alter self can be used for impersonation as well as being a powerful general buff and glibness provides thoroughly ridiculous bluff checks, but let’s look at adoration of the frightful. First of all, simply knowing this spell at all gives you a passive +1 bonus to diplomacy, which certainly won’t go amiss. Second, anyone currently under a fear effect within 60 feet of you becomes charmed for the duration of the fear effect. Suddenly your inspire awe ability becomes a lot more interesting, letting it functionally turn into a mass charm instead.
9th	Lyric Thaumaturge 3	Lesser Dragonmark (mark of making - minor creation)	Spell Secret	Summon marked homunculus, command undead, nightmare terrain	Spoiler: Build Notes Show A lot of very nice stuff happens at level 9. First, your dragonmark improves, giving you access to minor creation as an SLA. Second, you grab the very underrated nightmare terrain. Bards are pretty notably kow on BFC, but nightmare terrain does a good job at shoring that up. It’s shapeable, provides concealment as a fog spell regardless of the opponent’s save, entangles enemies and has a suitably creepy vibe. The lyric thaumaturge’s spell secret also gives you a pair of spells from the sorcerer and wizard list. Command undead goes a long way toward shoring up the biggest weakness for any enchanter, letting you charm the undead and command them with opposed Charisma checks. This is especially potent against mindless undead, who don’t even get a save. The other, though… let’s look a bit closer at that one. Summon marked homunculus is a hugely potent summoning spell, giving you a special dragonmarked version of various homunculi for hours per level. That’s insanely good utility for a first level spell. After spell secret and bonus spells for a high Charisma you should have six 1st-level spells at this point, and with a ring of wizardry I (well within your WBL by ECL 10), that means you can easily have a dozen homunculi following you around all day long. Thanks to you greater dragonmark you can create a wide variety of homunculi, all of which have their uses, but I want to especially focus on the expeditious messenger. This is a diminutive hawklike construct. Unlike other homunculi, the expeditious messenger is capable of speech, and its diminutive size means that a dozen of them can all share a single square without penalty. And since the messengers all have an Intelligence of greater than 3 and can understand your speech, that means they also benefit from your marshal aura as well. So what are they good for? Aiding and abetting, of course. Assuming standard WBL you should be looking at a 24 Charisma at this point, so even taking their Charisma penalty into account, your messengers all have a +5 bonus to any Charisma-based skill. That means they can succeed on aid checks for all Charisma-based skills with a 5 or better. Now, realistically a DM may cap what skills can effectively be aided. However, there are a couple of skills that your build in particular focuses on that make thematic sense as well. The first is perform (sing). With a dozen backing vocals to harmonize with (and they ARE based on birds, after all), they should be able to provide a sizable perform bonus, which you can in turn use to fascinate, frighten or influence others via your bardic abilities. The second is intimidate, and if you’re not sure how a bunch of expeditious messengers can boost an intimidate check, I suggest you take some lessons from the master. Assuming an average of 75% of your flying monkeys roll a 5 or better, that’s a +18 to perform or intimidate, and you’ll only get better as you get access to more messengers and a higher Charisma. Of course, depending on DM and player ingenuity, there’s no reason why these can’t boost ANY Charisma based skill. Some even make sense, such as gather information, but technically they can even aid complex skills like diplomacy or trained-only ones like UMD (you explicitly don’t need to be trained to use the aid action). The fact that your marshal aura specifically lends them a fair bit of your own force of personality means it’s actually not as much of a stretch as it sounds. This build functions just fine even if you only focus on getting your little flying monkeys to assist you with perform and intimidate, but if you can do more, go for it. Your flying monkeys aren’t solely here to act as backing vocals, though. They can aid allies, scout or spy for you, deliver messages, serve as useful scrying targets, or even nuke themselves for small damage. And you aren’t just restricted to expeditious messengers, either. Dedicated wrights can assist you in crafting (and aid you in the craft checks associated with minor creation). Furtive filchers have impressive stealth. Arbalesters or iron defenders an aid with combat rolls, possessing decent melee and ranged attacking rolls (though their size means they won’t be able to all share spaces the way the tiny and diminutive homunculi can).
10th	Virtuoso 1		Bardic music (fascinate), virtuoso performance (persuasive song)		Spoiler: Build Notes Show Virtuoso comes online here. Persuasive song allows you to influence a crowd with a perform check instead of a diplomacy check, which you… already could do via the epic usage of perform? Well, this is still pretty handy, especially if your DM balks at the idea of non-epic characters using epic skills. Perform is very easy to boost, between your army of flying monkeys and items like harmonizing weapons and the vest of legends.
11th	Sublime Chord 1		Bardic lore, bardic music	Ruin delver’s fortune, modify memory, freedom of movement, spell haven	Spoiler: Build Notes Show Sublime chord is the natural pick for any casting-focused bard. By the end of this you’ll have spell access that compares favorably with a 20th-level sorcerer… not too shabby. Ruin delver’s fortune is the ultimate get out of jail free card for a Charisma-focused character, giving you a sizable boost to saves or HP and some other nice defensive abilities as an immediate action. Modify memory helps you keep up the face roll well, providing a rather unique way to influence others that can’t be duplicated by super-charged skills and that doesn’t come with the [Evil] baggage of mindrape. Freedom of movement is another largely defensive option, letting you flat-out ignore things like paralysis and most forms of BFC. Special attention is needed for spell haven, however. This is a really interesting spell: you can charge up your dragonmark with any other spell, and then release it as an immediate action. It’s not quite as open-ended as contingency, but it’s still a really nice way to mess around with action economy without breaking the game in half. The spell level is capped by the strength of your dragonmark; with a lesser mark, you can have any 3rd-level or lower spell stored in your dragonmark.
12th	Sublime Chord 2	Greater Dragonmark (mark of making - major creation OR fabricate)	Song of Arcane Power	Dimension door, greater dispel magic	Spoiler: Build Notes Show Since we’ve gone with spell haven, it only makes sense to take on the greater dragonmark here. Now you can charge your dragonmark with 5th-level or lower spells. You can use this for action economy or to have immediate action access to powerful defensive spells. And as for which spells to choose, you nab two excellent choices here: dimension door, still the gold standard as far as tactical teleportation goes (long range, verbal components only, can bring allies), and greater dispel, a much-needed debuff/utility spell that you manage to nab as a 5th-level spell off the bard list. Both are incredibly useful, and are also great choices to have as an immediate action panic button via your spell haven. As for the ideal dragonmark SLA, both major creation and fabricate have their uses. I’d personally lean toward fabricate, but both are great options. Song of Arcane Power is a very nice ability. With your buffed out perform checks, it’s pretty easy to hit the DC 30 check to get a +4 to caster level even on a 1.
13th	Virtuoso 2			Freezing fog	Spoiler: Build Notes Show You’re about due for some more battlefield control. As far as 6th-level spells go, freezing fog is the best BFC you can find, locking down movement in multiple ways and dealing some damage as well.
14th	Virtuoso 3		Virtuoso performance (sustaining song)	Overland flight, irresistible dance	Spoiler: Build Notes Show Overland flight is one of those buff spells that just completely turns around some basic assumptions about the game. You can get flight via items, but there’s something to be said about self-sufficiency, especially when all it costs is a single spell slot. As for offensive options, irresistible dance requires you to get up close and personal, but is still incredibly powerful for the level: no save, just eliminate someone from combat for a while.
15th	Virtuoso 4	Doomspeak		Arcane spellsurge	Spoiler: Build Notes Show Hello, action economy. Arcane spellsurge significantly reduces the casting time of all of your spells. So what is there to do once you free up your standard action? How about Doomspeak? I’m not always huge on this feat, since it’s a single target debuff with an incredibly short duration, but alongside spellsurge it can be quite potent: knock someone’s saves down to single digits, then hit them with a swift action save-or-lose.
16th	Virtuoso 5		Virtuoso performance (jarring song)	Greater blink, greater scrying, glass strike	Spoiler: Build Notes Show And while we’re talking about save or loses, you have a lot of ways to target Will saves, but not many that target Fort. Glass strike is a nice little save-or-lose that hits targets traditionally immune to such attacks, including undead and constructs. And as for your other spells, greater blink is a fantastic defensive buff, while greater scrying is another of those game-changing spells that set the magical classes apart from the mundanes. And as for your virtuoso ability? Well, you finally get another good one in jarring song. With your insane perform checks (boosted by your army of robot flying monkeys), jarring song should be near-impossible for opposing spellcasters to beat. Definitely a solid option and something else to do with your standard action while you’ve got spellsurge active.
17th	Virtuoso 6			Mind blank	Spoiler: Build Notes Show A blanket immunity to more or less two entire schools of magic that lasts all day? Yeah, I think that’s a pretty good use of a spell slot.
18th	Virtuoso 7	Wanderer’s Diplomacy	Virtuoso performance (song of fury)	Superior resistance, greater arcane sight, moment of prescience	Spoiler: Build Notes Show Several handy buff spells here. Superior resistance is a flat boost to all saves that exceeds the highest level cloak of resistance. Greater arcane sight lets you see entire buffstacks at a glance, no concentration required. Finally, you have moment of prescience. This is like the grown-up version of ruin delver’s fortune: dodge any attack, win any opposed skill check, make any save. As for Wanderer’s Diplomacy, you’re mainly interested in the third option, social agility. You have a lot of ways to boost your bluff check, and now as a standard action you can change someone’s attitude for a minute. The standard action is the real selling point here, letting you use this ability in mid-combat and alongside a spellsurged spell.
19th	Virtuoso 8			Shapechange	Spoiler: Build Notes Show With access to 9th-level spells, there are a lot of options of varying degrees of brokenness. I’m fond of shapechange myself: unparalleled flexibility without requiring XP investment or crazy levels of cheese. While it’s definitely an abusable spell, it’s also something that can still be effective even without resorting to said abuses. There’s another option that’s on-theme with the face aspect, namely BoVD’s mind rape. Certainly that is an incredibly potent option, especially when combined with save debuffs like Doomspeak, but it’s less flexible than shapechange, comes from a 3.0 source and carries an [Evil] tag, so I decided to avoid it here. Feel free to use it if it’s your cup of tea.
20th	Virtuoso 9		Virtuoso performance (mindbending melody)	Greater teleport, maze, mage’s disjunction	Spoiler: Build Notes Show You close things out with a solid capstone and three fantastic spells. Mindbending melody lets you trade a bardic music attempt for a high-DC dominate person that doesn’t take a spell slot. And as far as spells go, mage’s disjunction is the key to winning any caster-versus-caster battle, completely shutting down fully buffed enemies. Maze eliminates someone for at least one full round, and possibly for an entire combat, with no save and without requiring you to get into harm’s way like irresistible dance. And greater teleport is one of those spells that every party needs, and makes sure you get where you need to go in style.

Spoiler: Spells known

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0: Detect magic, fleeting fame, songbird, prestidigitation, message, mage hand
1: Sleep, charm person, grease, improvisation, silent image, summon marked homunculus
2: Tongues, glitterdust, detect thoughts, alter self, command undead
3: Glibness, adoration of the frightful, nightmare terrain
4: Ruin delver’s fortune, modify memory, freedom of movement, dimension door
5: Spell haven, greater dispel magic, overland flight, greater blink
6: Freezing fog, irresistible dance, greater scrying, superior resistance
7: Arcane spellsurge, glass strike, greater arcane sight, greater teleport
8: Mind blank, moment of prescience, maze
9: Shapechange, mage’s disjunction

Spoiler: Stat Suggestions

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Charisma, Charisma, Charisma. Start with an 18 and boost it at every available opportunity.

SAMPLE STAT ARRAYS:
28-point buy: Str 8/Dex 14/Con 12/Int 10/Wis 8/Cha 18
32-point buy: Str 8/Dex 14/Con 14/Int 10/Wis 10/Cha 18

Spoiler: Skills Notes

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Basically run your finger down the skill list and pause every time you see [Cha] next to a skill; you probably want at least some investment in that. You’ll definitely want to max out the big 3 (bluff/diplomacy/intimidate), as well as perform (sing). The more niche options like gather information or disguise are nice if you have the spare skill points but don’t necessarily need to be maxed, especially since your spellcasting and flying monkeys can assist you with those. As a full caster UMD is less essential for you than most bards as well, though it’s certainly never bad.

You do have some hefty skill requirements for your prestige classes. While you should auto-qualify for virtuoso, you’ll need 13 ranks in knowledge (arcana) and listen, and 6 ranks in spellcraft and profession (astrologer), in order to qualify for sublime chord and lyric thaumaturge.

You can also make decent use out of skill tricks as well. Never outnumbered is a must-have, and should be taken as early as possible. I also highly recommend social recovery.

Spoiler: Equipment Recommendations

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You’ve got a lot of freedom when it comes to equipment. As a bard you can cast in light armor, so certainly take advantage of this. You’ll want anything that boosts your perform check; the vest of legends and a harmonizing weapon will go a long way toward this end (you have no reason to ever swing a weapon in combat, but it’s still a handy thing to have). And since you’ll want as many castings of summon marked homunculus as possible, definitely go for a ring of wizardry I as soon as it’s available, and consider picking up a wand or staff to get even more uses of the spell.

Other than that, get every Charisma-boosting item you can get your hands on, keep a few wands or scrolls of utility spells nearby and focus mostly on items that boost your relevant skills. The crystal mask of dread, for example, is very good value, providing a +10 bonus to intimidate for only 10,000gp. And although it’s a bit more expensive, the admiral’s bicorne from Stormwrack provides not only a decent untyped bonus to all your Charisma-based checks, it also greatly extends the range of any abilities dependent on your voice. Definitely worth grabbing in the later levels.

BUILD SUMMARY
Well, let’s start with the obvious: you nab 9th-level spells and access spells at only a level behind what a single-classed sorcerer would. Like any good spontaneous caster, your spells should cover a wide variety of scenarios, with a heavy focus on utility and a nice mix of offenses.

With many of your low level slots dedicated to summoned marked homunculus, you should be surrounded by an army of flying monkeys, all of which benefit from your motivate Charisma aura to auto-succeed on any Charisma-based aid other checks. Let them play backup vocals for you as you use your perform check to inspire fear, win over new friends or lock down opposing spellcasters, or have them bare their teeth during an intimidate check, or send them flying out to assist you with a gather information. This is a huge boost to any social skill, easily on par with Item Familiar, but with half a dozen other utility uses as well. Combined with your marshal aura, you should do very well on the social side.

You also have ways of using those social skills in combat. In addition to all your fun uses of perform, intimidate + Imperious Command + never outnumbered is a classic, and with adoration of the frightful you can turn every fear effect into a temporary charm (making the lowly inspire awe a surprisingly effective option). You can also attempt to temporarily influence attitudes as a standard action without that hefty -10 penalty thanks to Wanderer’s Diplomacy. And you have a wide variety spells and abilities to assist you in your role, whether that means mental manipulation (charm person, modify memory and mindbending melody), information gathering (a wide variety of divinations, including scrying and mindreading) or self-buffing (glibness in particular does wonderful things).

And unlike the typical party face, you’re not useless versus mindless or mentally protected foes, either. Command undead completely eliminates mindless undead as a threat and can help versus intelligent undead as well, and spells like grease, freezing fog or glass strike help ensure you can still contribute in encounters where enemies are immune to your charm. Plus, with access to greater dispel magic and mage’s disjunction, you definitely have tools to bypass common magical defenses against mental manipulation.

VARIANTS
If you really want to have an army of flying monkeys, Repeat Spell and Residual Magic can make that happen. In addition to giving you four homonculi for the cost of one 4th-level and one 1st-level spell slot, it also allows you to pick up a cheap wand of summon marked homonculus but still use your full caster level. If flaws are on the table, these are some good options, especially if you’re not sure you’ll be able to get your hands in a ring of wizardry. (Another good option is Obtain Familiar.)

Persuasive song can easily be replaced by the epic usage of perform. In that case, Bard 5/Marshal 1/Lyric Thaumaturge 4/Sublime Chord 10 or Bard 5/Marshal 1/Lyric Thaumaturge 1/Uncanny Trickster 3/Sublime Chord 10 are actually pretty decent alternatives. While you lose the excellent jarring song and the decent mindbending melody, you get a nice save-or-lose in song of timelessness and powerful area damage with the song of cosmic fire. While direct damage isn’t always the best option at ECL 20, the imagery of a bard and her robotic flying monkey backup singers calling cosmic fire down from the sky with the power of song is a pretty fun one. Add on either the extra spell slots from another level in lyric thaumaturge or the extra uses of never outnumbered from uncanny trickster, and you’ve got a pretty even trade. I still prefer the virtuoso overall (higher skill points are nice and jarring song is definitely underrated), but it’s a compelling option.

And if you’re dropping virtuoso anyhow, Bard 5/Marshal 1/Lyric Thaumaturge 1/Uncanny Trickster 3/Sublime Chord 10 is another solid option. While this will delay your Spell Secret for a level, it will give you multiple uses of never outnumbered in a single encounter at a point in your career when it’s still very relevant.

Also, I mentioned this a bit when discussing spell selection, but I tried to keep a very neutral approach to character choice and avoid anything with an explicitly aligned focus. A lot of that is personal preference and based on how I envisioned this character. You could very easily go in a good or evil direction, however. A Nymph’s Kiss exalted bard is always effective, while leaning evil opens up some interesting spell choices and the ability to nab a quasit familiar for XP-free commune.

Finally, if you wanted to go back to the original concept, a kenku bard can pull off a similar version of this trick with the summon elysian thrush spell. Unfortunately elysian thrushes don’t have a high enough Intelligence to benefit from motivate Charisma, but they have a positive Charisma score and if you can afford masterwork tools to boost perform to divy out, you can have them all succeeding on their aid check with a 4 or better. And kenku isn’t just being picked for the theme: the fact that they get +3 instead of +2 when aided means that, with enough songbird allies, they can put out some seriously good numbers. My original vision had been to go from there into stormsinger, and use those buffed out perform checks to fire off high damage thunderclaps.

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And that’s that! Please let us know what you think in the comments, and as always we’re open to suggestions for future showcases!

[Aegis013]

I really like these. This feels like a PO version of the nanobot artificer.

Thanks for sharing.

[WhamBamSam]

I really like these. This feels like a PO version of the nanobot artificer.

Thanks for sharing.

That was a big part the impetus for this build. We spent a fair bit of time fiddling with ways of acquiring lots of tiny long-term minions from familiars to rebuking to higher level spells like Call Faithful Servants before Piggy finally settled on Summon Marked Homonculus for the Aid Another vectors.

[Menzath]

I don't comment enough in posts like these, but they are always a pleasure to read.

How the build goes about fulfilling a party role, while not being the typical PO, and often in a unique (or unexpected) way.

Thank you once again for a showcase from your group.

[Piggy Knowles]

Thanks, glad you liked it!

As WhamBamSam mentioned, we talked a lot about whether it was possible to create a playable nanobots-style build that would pass muster in your average campaign. Conceptually it's really cool: being surrounded by miniscule darting minions that aid you and your allies? That sounds awesome! But there are a lot of problems with the classic TO nanobots builds. Some of my issues with them are fiddly (liberties being taken with the animate objects spell to allow for fine and diminutive objects to be animated, the clunkiness of the move action required to direct the objects, the fact that they kinda brush over the extreme cost/XP/time investment required to permanency such a huge number of animated objects, the various rules-gray areas involving mindless creatures making skill checks, the fact that Strength-, Wisdom- and Charisma-based checks still failed a significant number of times due to the low ability scores of animated objects, etc.), but ultimately I had two really core concerns:

1. Too much DM-adjudication required. Beyond just the fact that they stretch the rules a bit with regard to using animate objects to animate masses of fine-sized items, the aid rules themselves are really open to DM-adjudication. The aid rules explicitly include a vague line about how in many cases aiding won't be beneficial, that there is a limit to how many characters can aid at once. This leaves the door open for a DM to just completely shut down the core concept of the build. The authors did spend some time coming up with interesting ways to explain how these miniscule objects were aiding in various ways, but it's still a big problem.

2. None of the nanobots builds seemed at all interesting to actually play outside of limited level 20 builds. A big part of this was that the reliance on mindless constructs as nanobots meant most aura-based ways of boosting skills just didn't work, and so the builds needed to use Exemplar's lend talent ability. But Exemplar is a prestige class with fairly late entry, and assuming a neutral ability score you need 9 levels of Exemplar to guarantee that your nanobots succeed on their aid checks. Sure, an Artificer 11/Exemplar 9 can create nanobots and also play as a decent artificer to boot, but at an actual table playing an actual game, the actual nanobots will almost never come into play.

So I wanted to make sure that with this build, there were built-in limitations (restricting aid other checks to a few skills that all made thematic and practical sense, limiting the number of helpers, making sure that the helpers were useful in other ways beyond just feeding +2s via aid another actions, etc.), and that they came online at a reasonable point in the game. Instead of trying to create nanobots that could aid with every skill all the time, I tried to optimize a small handful of skills, and then look at ways to use those skills in a variety of situations.

(In the process of making this one we did come across some other build ideas that abandoned the Face role but leaned way harder into the nanobots-style mass aiding; I'd be happy to share some of those ideas if anyone is ever interested.)

Some of those same concerns are concerns I have with super optimized diplomancers in general, by the way. Really crazy fast-talking diplomacy checks kind of force DMs to house-rule, because if you play them perfectly straight and by the rules, they can just completely crap up campaigns in ways that aren't fun for anyone. And that's a shame, because playing a Face is fun. Standing firm in front of a rampaging demon and convincing him to lay down his flaming whip or bluffing so hard that you convince the prison guard that he's a yellow-footed rock wallaby? Those are the kinds of moments that players will talk about long after the campaign ends. But there's a balance to be struck.

[remetagross]

Thanks as always for your really though-out and insightful build, guys

I am not completely sold on why you chose to go the Virtuoso route instead of stacking up more Sublime Chord levels. That means you've lost a caster level in the process, and the Sublime Chord class features are somewhat interesting as well, as you mentioned in your alternative builds suggestion. Something you didn't mention is that they keep up Bardic Knowledge, too.

On the whole, I have to admit the build layout is somewhat more classical than what other contributions you have put forth have shown: mostly Bard + Sublime Chord for advanced casting, and in the spell selection you picked we seem to forget a little about the swarm of flying monkeys accompanying you. I mean, it's not like I'd be able to pull off half the degree of masterfulness you displayed here, but I'm mentally comparing that to your other contributions ! Wouldn't it have been possible to try and keep Inspire Courage, maybe switch to Dragonfire Inspiration, and then optimize that a little to give some oomph to your swarm of servants?

On an unrelated note, I'd be interested to see these other nanobots ideas

[Piggy Knowles]

Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, the build overall isn't going to look that different from any other standard Sublime Chord, but unfortunately Sublime Chord's requirements kind of tie your hands a bit. It's still the absolute best option for this kind of character, though. I tried to keep things fresh where I could, with stuff like the inspire awe + adoration of the frightful mass charm effect, the dragonmarked backup singers and Doomspeak + arcane spellsurge for late game offense, but in some cases you just don't gain much of note from deviating too far from the norm. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Finishing with Sublime Chord is definitely an option, but Virtuoso has its selling points too. The lost caster level isn't particularly significant, since it gets taken before you start your Sublime Chord progression, meaning the build finishes with 10 effective levels of Sublime Chord in the end. I also mostly tried to avoid spells that were too heavily reliant on caster level, since that's often a weak point of accelerated caster builds. But ultimately Virtuoso comes down to a few main points:

• Persuasive song gives you an explicit way to use perform (song) to influence allies without having to convince a DM that the perform rules in the Epic Level Handbook also apply to non-epic characters. (I know that by RAW they do, but I also know that this is something I've seen shut down in more than one actual game.)
• Jarring song is actually surprisingly good, because it only effects enemies and has no easy way to avoid or bypass it other than getting out of its range (100’ with an admiral's bicorn, certainly not impossible for a caster but still quite handy). Your supercharged perform checks should easily outstrip the concentration checks of most casters.
• An extra 2 skill points per level is pretty minimal overall on a build with 9th-level spells, but realistically it means the difference between just keeping your big four (perform/diplomacy/bluff/intimidate) maxed or being able to branch out and keep other interesting skills high.

The rest of the benefits... well, you can take them or leave them. The only other Virtuoso song the build particularly cares about is mindbending melody, which is more on theme for a face character but not actually that much more effective than the sublime chord's song of timelessness. (Domination is a lot better than just removing someone from combat for a bit, but the song of timelessness can have some defensive uses and works on more foes; all in all I consider the two abilities a wash.) So really it's a question of 2 skill points per level and jarring song versus some extra mid level spell slots and adding on some decent area damage via song of cosmic fire. Even though I ultimately settled on the Virtuoso to present, I think both are good options.

I considered going the inspire courage route, though not for the obvious reason. I think the flying monkeys/pips are mostly ill-suited to be actual combatants by the level you get them, and even stacking on inspire courage or DFI won't really change that. You could do something passable with arbalesters and some poisoned arrows maybe (you do have minor creation and fabricate after all), but in general that's only going to be so-so, and arbalesters can't speak and therefore can't aid you on perform (song). Instead, I had toyed with the idea of using inspire courage to improve their to-hit bonuses so that they could in turn become more likely to successfully aid in attacks. This way you could send the pips to aid allies in combat when you didn't need them boosting your perform or intimidate checks. But in general I decided to pass. For one thing, I was pretty excited to use the oft-maligned inspire awe ability, which turns into a mass charm effect (with debuffed saves!) when you add in adoration of the frightful. For another, while you're immune to the retributive strike of your pips, your allies aren't, which can actually be pretty annoying if they're aiding friends. And finally, it's a bit hard to really heavily optimize inspire courage without going hard down the exalted route, especially when you're multiclassing out of bard a fair bit, which was something I was hoping to avoid with this build.

I'll write up some of the other ideas we had for nanobots when I get a chance. We looked at everything from undead creation to various rebuking abilities to spells that created minions. One of my favorite options was a familiar-focused route: stack on as many familiars as possible, and then add on access to the soulspark familiar soulmeld and the Share Soulmeld feat, so that you and your familiars also had little floating balls of light that could also aid you. Really bad in practice (there are very few ways to make a bunch of dips into familiar-granting classes effective in actual play), but a fun visual, and the fact that familiars shared your skill ranks meant you didn't need something like marshal auras to guarantee success on aid checks.

[remetagross]

Alright, I see your points. I have to admit that Inspire Awe + Adoration of the Frightful is indeed a neat trick! Also, yeah I hadn't paid attention to the fact that the lost caster level from Virtuoso was a Bard caster level, so indeed that's not too bad then. Fair enough

[Troacctid]

Is inspire awe really "oft-maligned?" It's very powerful with almost no work required, since the saving throw is basically unbeatable and the fear is really easy to stack. I don't see it talked about much, but I've never seen any floccinaucinihilipilification either.

Epic Perform DCs are also much higher than the DCs for actual Diplomacy. There's basically no reason to use the one if you have the other.

[Piggy Knowles]

Maybe saying it's maligned is a bit hyperbolic, but I don't think I've really seen it outside of dedicated fear-stacking builds, and I've seen people complain that it doesn't scale nearly as well as inspire courage. But maybe it's more that people hate giving up inspire courage than that people don't like inspire awe.

[remetagross]

Nice new avatar, Troactidd :)

[Efrate]

I like that its fluff is on theme with face more than minions plus dfa equals combat is over earlier. Any ideas of what you are doing next? I like anything with binders fwiw.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I love this series

[Zaq]

Huh. I coulda sworn that a marshal's auras were mind-affecting, but they're technically not. Fascinating. Each target to be affected needs to be INT 3 or higher and must hear/understand the marshal, but it's not actually a mind-affecting ability. Circumstance bonuses, unlike morale bonuses, aren't defined as being mind-affecting, so I guess this actually does work. Cool! I was concerned when I saw you trying to add bonuses to constructs via CHA-based abilities, but I'm glad that I checked the sources before running my mouth.

I agree that inspire awe's greatest sin is the fact that it's not inspire courage. (The duration is also a bummer, but really, it's losing IC that hurts.) Fear-stacking is a viable tactic, and we all know who comes out ahead when rolling a saving throw vs. a skill check.

Is there a reason for taking SF: Diplomacy at 1st level? Usually when I see that in a build that contains a level of marshal, it's to let the marshal bonus feat let you get a feat "early" (after you met the prereqs but before you have a free feat from regular HD progression). Looks like you qualify for both the feats you took at 3rd level at 1st level, though. Was that just a little "because I can" flourish?

I love this series

Word.

[Troacctid]

Nice new avatar, Troactidd :)

Thanks! I've been wearing my hair in a ponytail lately and I got a new purple jacket so I figured I might as well update it.

Yours is still too big to display properly.

I agree that inspire awe's greatest sin is the fact that it's not inspire courage. (The duration is also a bummer, but really, it's losing IC that hurts.) Fear-stacking is a viable tactic, and we all know who comes out ahead when rolling a saving throw vs. a skill check.

I think inspire courage is overrated. It's good when you invest build resources into it to boost it. Otherwise, it's just okay. If I'm not really leaning into it, then I'll almost always prefer inspiring awe. On single-class bards that aren't leaning into it, I actually even prefer the animal companion.

[remetagross]

Yours is still too big to display properly.

True; problem fixed

Piggy, I would enjoy a Binder-themed build too, if you guys have one in store! Binder is often said to be the least bad-designed class of Tome of Magic, and though I have zero experience with the class I'm sure some neat stuff can be done out of it or maybe, given the link in your signature, something Shadowcaster-themed?

[Piggy Knowles]

Thanks for the positive feedback, everyone!

@everyone who suggested binder: no binders currently in the queue, but I'll ask around the group and see if we can come up with anything interesting. I know a while ago Akal Saris had been working on an anima mage debuffer that focused on Dark Speech, but he unfortunately hasn't been around as much lately. Binder is a class I only have limited experience with myself (I've DM'd just one campaign with a binder and never actually played one myself, so I have less of a feel for how the class works in practice than I do with others), but it's definitely a cool one. Shadowcaster could be fun, and I do have a folder full of shadowcaster builds that could be tweaked into something interesting. The big problem is that there is really very little you can do to get around their big glaring drawback of terribly low mystery uses per day at the lowest levels, so even a well-optimized shadowcaster generally ends up being just passable in the early game. The only build I have that really doesn't feel this particular pinch involves some moderately cheesy early entry shenanigans that might not fly in a lot of actual campaigns.

Some other things I could showcase include a few different totemists (one a stealth-focused grifter, the other an ubercharger that notably does not use Power Attack), a chameleon counterspeller or a rainbow-themed tank. I also have several builds that I've posted publicly before some time ago, but that could maybe benefit from some tweaks and the full showcase treatment: how about a psychic archer whose bonus damage comes not from sneak attack or skirmish but from getting really really big? Or an exalted monk that can smell evil and successfully stun a balor? Or a duskblade with full attack channeling, +19 BAB and 8th-level spells (or 9ths with a tiny bit of cheese)? Those are all things I could write up pretty easily as well.

Also if anyone ever wants to see some of the less successful builds, the stuff that went in interesting directions but didn't really feel good enough to showcase, I can post some of those as well. For example, has anyone here read V.E. Schwab's Shades of Magic series? When I was messing around with various bards, I ended up putting together a build that actually does a very good job of emulating Delilah Bard from that series (total accident on my part, I didn't even realize until I was looking at a draft of the build how close it hewed to the character, and then it only took a few small tweaks to bring it all the way there). Probably nothing I'll ever showcase, but it was a neat build nevertheless if anyone's interested.

Is there a reason for taking SF: Diplomacy at 1st level? Usually when I see that in a build that contains a level of marshal, it's to let the marshal bonus feat let you get a feat "early" (after you met the prereqs but before you have a free feat from regular HD progression). Looks like you qualify for both the feats you took at 3rd level at 1st level, though. Was that just a little "because I can" flourish?

No major reason beyond that I figured Skill Focus would be more useful at level 1 than Melodic Casting or the ability to use make whole once a day. Could easily take Melodic Casting first, though, with no real consequence to the build overall. Melodic Casting is pretty useless at first level when you only have 0-level spells and one use of bardic music, though it gets a bit better once you hit second level. But I figured the extra +2 to diplomacy checks in those first two levels would probably come in handy more for a dedicated face.

I think inspire courage is overrated. It's good when you invest build resources into it to boost it. Otherwise, it's just okay. If I'm not really leaning into it, then I'll almost always prefer inspiring awe. On single-class bards that aren't leaning into it, I actually even prefer the animal companion.

Yeah, I mostly feel the same. I used inspire awe on That's So Raven as well; if I'm not fully investing in inspire courage, I generally prefer inspire awe as a quick and dirty debuff. Glad to see there's more love for the ACF than I thought. I'd always been under the impression that most folks on CharOp boards didn't like it unless they were going the full fear-stacking route.

[WhamBamSam]

I'm actually a little surprised that Binder never came up in our nanobot discussions. Zceryll can produce a decent-sized and effectively permanent cadre of minions just by spamming summons, but maybe that's overkill.

Venger, Viscount, and I are all quite fond of the Binder class, but all the unique Binder ideas I can think of are perhaps a touch too inelegant for showcasing.

[rrwoods]

It’s really minor, but I think fleeting fame is a Dragon Magazine spell. What would you recommend for DMs that don’t have that option on the table? Again it’s super minor being a 0-level spell, but for level 1 campaigns those cantrips might really matter.

EDIT: is it in dragon Compendium?

[Piggy Knowles]

Oh, whoops. No, I don’t think it’s in Dragon Compendium. Lullaby or minor disguise would both be fine replacements.

[Efrate]

There is some great stuff to be done via binder with knight of the sacred seal, divine or arcane (or both?) Anima mage and such. Its a fairly flexible class and dripping with flavor. Even without zycrell. I tend to avoid zycrell because it feels like it more or less invalidates most other vestiges, because it's basically a summon focused caster which is at least t2 by itself vs. Binder being tier 3/4.

Plus the ashardalon reborn build from the old optimization showcase at wotc got me interested in optimizing and plumbing the depths of 3.5 character creation so I have a soft spot for binder since I had not heard of the class before then.

Edit: Speaking of the old optimization showcase, I might still have them all saved if anyone is interested, found some old thumb drives recently and finding all kinds of stuff as I go through them.

[Troacctid]

Oh, whoops. No, I don’t think it’s in Dragon Compendium. Lullaby or minor disguise would both be fine replacements.

I would go with daze. It's a good low-level combat option. Actually, I'd be inclined to put daze as the first choice and retrain it later.

[Piggy Knowles]

Yeah, daze is another great option.

I'm definitely open to showcasing a binder, though we don't have anything on deck right at the moment. I'll ask around and see if we get any neat ideas. In the meantime, though, we've got a few builds that I think could be ready for a full showcase in a couple of days, so I figured I'd put it up to a vote as to which we should do next:

NEW BUILDS:
-->The Rainbow Knight. The durability of an M4 Sherman tank, the family-friendly color palette of a CareBear.
-->Now You See Me. Get in, get the goods and get out.
-->The Uncanny Chameleon. Jack of all trades, master of "NOPE."
-->The Totem Charger. That ubercharging taste you've come to love is now 100% Power Attack-free!

REVISED BUILDS (all of these are revised versions of builds I've posted publicly in the past, though they're a few years old now):
-->Birdman Stunna. For those times when you just really, really want to punch evil in the face.
-->Darker than Dusk. Make 'em dance.
-->Zen in the Art of Archery. Sometimes a little problem needs a BIG solution.

Let us know what you’d like to see next!

[rrwoods]

Archers are oft-maligned, I’d love to see a full build!

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I'll second the request for Zen Archer; that sounds fun.

[Efrate]

I would enjoy a Zen archer while i wait for binder opt-fu.