[3.5] Favorite Obscure Prc, Feat, Spell etc.

[Thurbane]

And yes it's the fang of Lolth.

Did Dread Fang of Lolth (DotU) supersede Fang of Lolth (S&S)? They look like totally different classes. They also have conflicting alignment requirements, so would be hard to take levels in both...

In regards to some classes already mentioned, I often get Witchborn Binder, Fiendbinder, Nar Demonbinder and Demonbinder all mixed up in my head as to which is which.

[Troacctid]

PrC: Battle Howler of Gruumsh (Dragon #311). I adore this PrC, just haven't had a chance to use it in actual play.

All the bard prestige classes in this issue are great. Memory smith, worldspeaker, green whisperer, and mourner are the other ones.

In regards to some classes already mentioned, I often get Witchborn Binder, Fiendbinder, Nar Demonbinder and Demonbinder all mixed up in my head as to which is which.

Don't forget fiend binder (two words)!

[Venger]

All the bard prestige classes in this issue are great. Memory smith, worldspeaker, green whisperer, and mourner are the other ones.


Don't forget fiend binder (two words)!

Where's fiend binder from? dragon magazine?

[Mr Adventurer]

Only really semi-obscure, but I was recently reminded of how cool Dragoncraft items are (Draconomicon). Armour gets lighter by category and gives energy resist, weapons deal a little non-magical elemental damage, dragonblood potions can give non-magical spell-like abilities.

[Thurbane]

Where's fiend binder from? dragon magazine?

Yeah, quick search looks like Dragon 292...

[Nebuul]

Raging Flame: it's a level 1 spell, but it can do SO MUCH DAMAGE. Non-magical fire does double damage, and magical fire does +1 damage per die. This thing stacks up so fast. I love it. As a transmuter, it's quicken-bait when my party has flaming weapons, or really any other fire damage.

[Bphill561]

Prestige Class: Eldritch Master from Dragon Magazine 280. It does not progress spell casting, but gives you a spell slot one level higher than you can currently cast at level 3, 6, and 9. It also adds another spell list to yours at level 4 and 8. Bonus spells known and extra metamagic feats.

Feat: Arcane Manipulation from Lost Empires of Faerun. It lets you break up a spell slot into a number of lower level spell slots when you prepare spells. It does not stat this slots count as bonus spells from high ability scores, so if you convert 3 level 9 spells to 27 level one spells, you can end up with 60 level 1 spell slots with a ring of wizardry. Very useful for a shadowcraft mage. Also neat to mix with Sublime chord, arcane preparation, and the above Prestige class to get 1-3 level spell slots and spells known on the sublime chord.

Base class: The Pugilist alternative fighter from Dragon #310 not only picks up unarmed strike and endurance as bonus feats, but has an ability called Iron Jaw he can take in place of a fighter feat. It reduces nonlethal damage by your Con score, very funny on a regenerater like a War troll.

Magic Item. The Ring of Meditation in dragon #317 cuts your spell preparation time in half for 3,750 gp.

[Mr Adventurer]

Prestige Class: Eldritch Master from Dragon Magazine 280. It does not progress spell casting, but gives you a spell slot one level higher than you can currently cast at level 3, 6, and 9. It also adds another spell list to yours at level 4 and 8. Bonus spells known and extra metamagic feats.

This thing is bizarre! Do I interpret this correctly that it gives you bonus spells known of levels 0-4, twice?

[WhamBamSam]

Prestige Class: Eldritch Master from Dragon Magazine 280. It does not progress spell casting, but gives you a spell slot one level higher than you can currently cast at level 3, 6, and 9. It also adds another spell list to yours at level 4 and 8. Bonus spells known and extra metamagic feats.

The 3.0 Eunuch Warlock works very similarly, though the Dragon 318 update made it into a more conventional casting PrC.

[Piggy Knowles]

Prestige Class: Vigilant Sentinel of Aeranel, from Magic of Eberron. It seems like a fairly straightforward spymaster-style social rogue prestige class and... wait a minute, does thought theft let you read people's thoughts with no save with a successful Sense Motive check? Why yes, yes it does...

Feat: Mark of Stars, from Dragonmarked. I've harped on how good this is before, but holy crap, it's really really good. You're never flat-footed and completely immune to surprise, and get a +2 bonus to AC and Reflex saves. That's literally 9th-level spell good; it's always-on nonmagical foresight in feat form. It requires a Siberys dragonmark, which in turn requires two or three levels of Heir of Siberys, but Siberys marks are also really good (true creation, mind blank, greater teleport, greater prying eyes, mass heal, discern location... there are very few builds where adding one of these as an SLA a couple of times a day won't be good) and the prestige class itself isn't bad (easy to qualify for, requires one feat to get in but gives you another right back, plus provides either 2/3 spellcasting progression or two additional unrestricted bonus feats).

Spell: Investiture of the Orthon from Fiendish Codex II. All of the investiture spells are fascinating, but this is the one that always sticks with me. A retributive sonic shield is pretty cool; an immediate action teleportation disruptor is even cooler. Not a spell I've ever cast in an actual game, but cool nonetheless.

Item: Bleh I don't know, item shopping is literally my least favorite part of D&D and I don't really pay as much attention to the items sections of the various sourcebooks.

Race: I'm going to cheat and instead go with a template. Vecna-blooded, from the god-blooded section of MMV, is a +1 acquired template with really clear instructions on how to acquire it (which is sadly a rarity) that erases you from history. It also has some other cool aspects, most notably making you flat-out immune to most divination magic, but... it erases you from history. That is easily one of the coolest abilities in all of D&D.

[Zombulian]

Off the top of my head...

PrC: Charlatan from Dragon Mag 335. It’s a class that makes you really good at pretending to cast spells. It’s really hilarious. You also get (ex) ways to emulate spells like Burning Hands, Glitterdust, Obscuring Mist, and Pyrotechnics. You get some weird abilities to convince people of how rad you are, etc. etc. But the best part of the class is when you get access to Lesser and Greater Mind Trick. Spells like Command, Scare, Bestow Curse, Suggestion you can “cast” on enemies with a Bluff check, and the only save they get is a Sense Motive check.

Feat: Seconding Hardened Criminal. That feat is a necessity for Charlatan and Truenamer builds alike.

Race: Both of my picks are from Stormwrack. Hadozee are flying squirrel ape-men with Dodge as a bonus feat (no, really, check page 151) with a penchant for piracy. What absolute lads.
Also Darfellan. They’re not particularly shiny but I feel like I should see more of them. They’re orca-folk with a nice swim speed of 40ft and blindsense that only works in water. Also I may be wrong but I think they’re the only player race with a bite attack that isn’t something cherry picked out of a monster manual.

Also from the same book the True Necromancer just because you get 14th Levels of a Prestive class, the path is clear.

True Necromancer isn’t obscure. In fact, it’s quite infamous for being terrible.

[noce]

I really like Crimson Scourge PrC from Cityscape.
It has a lot of flavour, good chassis and good class features, the perfect PrC for your average street thug.

As for spells, Tyche's Touch from Lost Empires of Faerun, a buff to saves with (up to) 24 hours duration as a 2nd level spell, what's not to love.

[Kalkra]

PrC:
Incantifier from Dragon #339. At level one you get no aging penalties, no maximum age, no need to eat, drink or sleep, SR 20 + Incantifier level, and it advances casting. The downside is that you can only be healed by absorbing spells or SLAs with your SR, which heals 1d4 hp per spell level. At level three you've lost a caster level, but now you also have a bonus metamagic feat, and instead of healing yourself, you can choose to get back a spell slot of a level up to the spell or SLA which failed to overcome your SR, and you can heal yourself by draining single-use or charged magic items. In other words, if you have a warlock in your party, you have free out-of-combat healing, and you can get back all of your spells. Requires 14 ranks in some skills, and 6th-level arcane spells, so you can enter at level 12, or 11 with a bit of work.

Item:
The dream keys from Dragon #330. Honestly, I like all of the Cerebrosis stuff, but the dream keys are all gloves which let you cast Cerebrotic spells a few per day, at the cost of some hp and penalties, depending on which you use. You get them by making a DC 21 Knowledge (the planes) check, then burning incense, and having disturbing dreams. The cost of the incense ranges from about 2k-5k, which is extremely cheap for the benefits.

Spells:
Skillful Moment from Dragon #350 is a 1st-level spell that lets you take 20 on a skill check in the next round as a standard action.

Research Aid from Dragon #342 is a 4th-level spell you get from the Initiate of Boccob feat. It takes an hour to cast, but it lasts days/level, and it halves the time to cast Identify or Legends Lore, the time to research a new spell, and the time to craft a magic item, and gives you a +5 circumstance bonus to Spellcraft for researching new spells. If you don't wanna take the feat, get it on an item.

Consume the Parasite from Dragon #343 is a 3rd-level spell that you can get from the Wormbound feat. Unlike all the other spells granted by the feat,
Consume the Parasite has the worm as a material component, rather than as the focus, (because it's consumed by the spell), meaning that if you can get it on an item, you don't need to ever have hosted a creepy worm parasite. The spell itself is a swift action to cast, and it gives +4 enhancement to Strength and Dexterity, +2 CL, and +2 DC to all your spellsfor rounds/level.

In case it wasn't clear, I recently went on a Dragon Mag binge.

[Zombulian]

Haven’t seen this mentioned but maybe I missed it.

Item: Spinning Sword from Secrets of Sarlona. Exotic weapon that works essentially like a Spiked Chain (may not be able to trip though) but is 1-handed. Also you can wear it as a belt, which is cool.

[Particle_Man]

Race/Class: Ambush Drake. Large size, fly speed, SR, dragon type, and NO LEVEL ADJUSTMENT. Essentially a 7-class 7-RHD "Dragon" class. Downside is favored class is Scout for some reason, and you only have 13 non-ambush-drake levels left to work with.

Wow! This is a good find! It seems that it’s SR actually increases with class levels in scout! Is that so? Is it an ambush drake thing or have I been misunderstanding 3.5 monster SR all this time? I thought that SR increases only applied to racial HD or age category for dragons.

[Mr Adventurer]

Race/Class: Ambush Drake. Large size, fly speed, SR, dragon type, and NO LEVEL ADJUSTMENT. Essentially a 7-class 7-RHD "Dragon" class. Downside is favored class is Scout for some reason, and you only have 13 non-ambush-drake levels left to work with.

This didn't sound right so I looked it up: Ambush Drakes are in the Monster Manual III:

• They aren't Large size, they're Medium
• While they do have a Fly speed, it's only 30' (poor) - actually less than their land speed - so a far cry from the speeds true dragons get
• SR starts at 16 which isn't impressive on a 7HD, CR5 creature, and the monster entry doesn't say anything about SR increasing with any kind of Hit Dice (or at all)
• They actually have LA —, which means they're not playable - not LA +0
• Their Advancement is by Hit Die, not by character class, and so they don't have a favoured class at all.

Basically I think you've made a number of mistakes and using only a web article on a specific, exceptional NPC rather than the actual monster entry hasn't helped you (though even then, some stuff like the size issue made me scratch my head).

[Thurbane]

My honest opinion is that the Ambush Drake "class" in the article was to allow DMs to use young/immature Ambush Drakes as encounters, and have their abilities and CR listed - but the article certainly doesn't make that clear.

[Mr Adventurer]

I'll hold my hands up and admit that I missed the "template class" at the end of the article (whatever that is), but yes, even the introductory text makes it clear it's about ways to create different monsters.

[Darrin]

Basically I think you've made a number of mistakes and using only a web article on a specific, exceptional NPC rather than the actual monster entry hasn't helped you (though even then, some stuff like the size issue made me scratch my head).

My apologies. I had a brain fart on the size. They are indeed medium-sized, both in MMIII and the web article. As penance, please consider the Hornhead Saurial from the Serpent Kingdoms Web Enhancement, which is the only large-sized humanoid that hasn't been errata'd into a different creature type. 2 RHD and LA +2, so not exactly PC-friendly, but valid for alter self shenanigans. The small-sized Flyer (50' average Fly speed) might also be useful for alter self.

As far as whether the Ambush Drake was intended for PCs... from what I can tell in the archives, D&D Fight Club was intended to give the PCs opponents (and sometimes allies) that the DM could drop in easily into an "Arena Fight" or any other plausible encounter. So probably NPC-only. However, the Template Class used with the Ambush Drake was introduced specifically for PC use with the "Savage Progression" articles.

The odd part is the designer changed the rules for the Ambush Drake Template Class. As per the Ver'Shan article: "An ambush drake must take all levels of this class before it can take levels in any other class." This contradicts the rules from the Savage Progression article: "Characters are not required to complete all the levels of a given template class in uninterrupted succession." This makes the Ambush Drake Template Class to be more similar to the Monster Class levels from Savage Species.

Anyway, this is not really evidence on one side or the other, but the Ambush Drake Template Class is usually considered legal for Iron Chef, and we've had at least one build that used it.

[Particle_Man]

Is ambush drake the only race that has SR scale with levels in other classes?

[Troacctid]

Spell: Flame sands, from here. You've heard of orb of fire? How about an orb of fire that you can re-cast for free every turn for the rest of the combat?

EDIT: For more detail, it's of course not quite orb of fire, since it has a Fortitude save for half damage and can't daze them. But you can do it once a turn for 1 round/level, and subsequent uses are only a move action (based on the general rule for directing and redirecting spells). It also has the added bonuses of being Medium range rather than Close, having no somatic components, breaking any exposed glass objects (such as potions) on the target's person, and gaining a small AoE if you target an area of water. Plus, it's a druid spell too! All in all, seriously potent.

[Zombulian]

Spell: Flame sands, from here. You've heard of orb of fire? How about an orb of fire that you can re-cast for free every turn for the rest of the combat?

Holy crap! Yet another goody to add to my Archivist’s wishlist.

[Venger]

wow, your archivist gets spells from dragon magazine?

[Thurbane]

Spell: Flame sands, from here. You've heard of orb of fire? How about an orb of fire that you can re-cast for free every turn for the rest of the combat?

EDIT: For more detail, it's of course not quite orb of fire, since it has a Fortitude save for half damage and can't daze them. But you can do it once a turn for 1 round/level, and subsequent uses are only a move action (based on the general rule for directing and redirecting spells). It also has the added bonuses of being Medium range rather than Close, having no somatic components, breaking any exposed glass objects (such as potions) on the target's person, and gaining a small AoE if you target an area of water. All in all, a seriously potent spell.

It's also one of the rare Evocation damaging spells that is SR: No. Evokers and Warmages everywhere thank you for bringing this to their attention!

[The Viscount]

Is ambush drake the only race that has SR scale with levels in other classes?

Karsites from Tome of Magic also have this feature.

[Bphill561]

This thing is bizarre! Do I interpret this correctly that it gives you bonus spells known of levels 0-4, twice?

I assumed you got a second round of low level bonus spells known because you pick up more spells lists to choose spells from as you go.

I played a Bard 4/Cleric 1/Eldritch Master 5/Sublime Chord 10.

Something like Bard 1/Cleric 1/Wizard 1/Human Paragon 2/ Eldritch Master 2/ Dweomerkeeper 1/ Eldritch Master 2/ Sublime Chord 1/ Dweomerkeeper 9 would be pretty funny. With the previously mentioned Arcane Manipulation plus Arcane Preparation, you could break a level 6 sublime chord slot into a 1, 2, and 3 allowing you to apply eldritch master bonus spells known to sublime chord at those levels.

Only really semi-obscure, but I was recently reminded of how cool Dragoncraft items are (Draconomicon). Armour gets lighter by category and gives energy resist, weapons deal a little non-magical elemental damage, dragonblood potions can give non-magical spell-like abilities.

Didn't they also have non-magical potions that worked in antimagic fields made from dragon blood? One of them gave you polymorph.

My apologies. I had a brain fart on the size. They are indeed medium-sized, both in MMIII and the web article. As penance, please consider the Hornhead Saurial from the Serpent Kingdoms Web Enhancement, which is the only large-sized humanoid that hasn't been errata'd into a different creature type. 2 RHD and LA +2, so not exactly PC-friendly, but valid for alter self shenanigans. The small-sized Flyer (50' average Fly speed) might also be useful for alter self.
[/URL] that used it.

Although they are in dragon Magazine, there are the Quinametin that are large humanoids in issue #317.

Race: The Brainstealer dragon from Dragon Magazine #337 is a dragon Mind Flayer. It has 7 Racial Dragon HD with a +5 LA compared to the standard Mind Flayer with 8 Racial Aberation HD with a +7 LA. Same size, same abilities with a lower ECL. You can even keep it at +5 LA pushing to the very young category with 10HD for large size for better eating. Not bad if you can still get clearance for Illithaid savant entry.

Spell: Miracle. Okay this is SRD and well known. But the last ability listed under the non-xp options does not get listed much.

Have any effect whose power level is in line with the above effects.

Taking a look at the Tome of Magic, Truenamer abilites have an associated level attached to them and under the true name magic rule section, it says the effective spell level of an utterance is equal to its utterance level for purposes of interaction with other spells. Hmm works like a spell for interactions, has a level, equivalent to spells, and every power is 7th level and under. Looks like you could copy an effect with a miracle. Shadowmagic mysteries in the same book are similar. But there are some unique powers like "Rebuild Item" that restores a magic item destroyed in the previous round. Now if you can just figure out how to ocular, chain spell the miracle with a shadowcraft mage to restore Disjunction problems.

Flood of Shadows in the same book adds empower to all shadow descriptor spells cast in the area. Nice add to the shadow plane free maximize spell for your shadowcraft mage.

[Venger]

Karsites from Tome of Magic also have this feature.

drow does as well

[Thurbane]

Karsites from Tome of Magic also have this feature.

drow does as well

Speaking of obscure stuff, another race that I only (re)discovered recently - Bariaur (PH) also have scaling SR (11 + class levels): they are surprisingly decent for a LA +1 race. Not to be confused with Exalted Bariaurs from BoED.

[animewatcha]

Spell: Miracle. Okay this is SRD and well known. But the last ability listed under the non-xp options does not get listed much. Taking a look at the Tome of Magic, Truenamer abilites have an associated level attached to them and under the true name magic rule section, it says the effective spell level of an utterance is equal to its utterance level for purposes of interaction with other spells. Hmm works like a spell for interactions, has a level, equivalent to spells, and every power is 7th level and under. Looks like you could copy an effect with a miracle. Shadowmagic mysteries in the same book are similar. But there are some unique powers like "Rebuild Item" that restores a magic item destroyed in the previous round. Now if you can just figure out how to ocular, chain spell the miracle with a shadowcraft mage to restore Disjunction problems.

Flood of Shadows in the same book adds empower to all shadow descriptor spells cast in the area. Nice add to the shadow plane free maximize spell for your shadowcraft mage.

To take this a step further.... Isn't truenaming 'safe' to do in antimagic fields? So miracle can duplicate any truenaming effect for within antimagic fields?

[Venger]

utterances are slas and thus do not work in an amf