Tippy's Terrifically Terrible Trial

[Chronos]

Didn't someone already post that the Elder Evils all have a blanket immunity to ability score damage?

[Kazyan]

Darrin: get a ghost touch thingamajig to hit the incorporeal Pandorym Mind Shard.

[Piggy Knowles]

Didn't someone already post that the Elder Evils all have a blanket immunity to ability score damage?

Yeah, my first entry involved paralyzing with Maiming Strike and then sacrificing the elder evil to my own elder evil (one of the LoM ones), but it was brought up that even if you can bypass SA immunity, they still all have a flat immune to ability damage.

[Darrin]

Didn't someone already post that the Elder Evils all have a blanket immunity to ability score damage?

Probably. They are also immume to energy drain, which makes the Soul Eater gimmick completely useless.

(It might have helped if I had actually opened up Elder Evils and given it another read-through.)

Hmm... Blister Oil Bombs might still work... lasso + sovereign glue FTW. Can any of the Elder Evils suffocate? 20+ vials of Aboleth Mucus might work on a few of them.

[Seer_of_Heart]

In one of his posts, Tippy specifically mentioned DCFS'g away all VoP feats at level 20 is acceptable :D






Thanks guys.

I was hoping to save a feat on using Human Heritage (and hopes Tippy allows the reading on sidebar on RoD pg 150).

The one in the DMG was what I was looking for. I remember the half elf being treated as half human part, and assumed that the same applied to Half-Orcs.

But alas, it doesn't.

He did say it gives negative points because playing a VoP monk is pretty much impossible. My method gives you the upsides without the downsides .

[Seer_of_Heart]

You have to have the Vow while you're leveling to get the feats, so Reforming into it doesn't get you anything useful, and Tippy's already said he pretty much expects anybody with feat troubles to be making use of PsyRef and/or the Chaos Shuffle. You don't really have to worry about giving up a secret advantage there

As for alignment, there's two ways you can deal with that. You can just change your alignment back after you discard all your Abyssal Heritor feats in the shuffle (get an Atonement or just do it the normal way).. or you can just stay Chaotic. Monks don't actually lose anything for becoming non-lawful except the ability to take more Monk levels, and you don't care about that in this challenge.

Do you actually? Based on the wording of it it appears you still gain the feats with Psi ref.

[Flickerdart]

Yeah, my first entry involved paralyzing with Maiming Strike and then sacrificing the elder evil to my own elder evil.

That is amazing and you should make it work somehow. Nothing like battles between cultists over whose patron evil is the best.

[Rubik]

Races of destiny has a feat that makes any race that is half human qualify for things as if they were human.

"Human Heritage"

Actually, it's even better than that. Any creature with human in its hereditary background qualifies, and humans can apparently breed with pretty much anything, so if your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent was human, you qualify for the feat.

Basically, if you can fluff it, you can take it.

[tyckspoon]

Do you actually? Based on the wording of it it appears you still gain the feats with Psi ref.

Pretty sure. The rules on the Vow are very clear that the feats aren't retroactive- you have to have the Vow when you get your levels in order to get the bonuses. And Psychic Reformation gives you the feat *now*, but it doesn't make it so that you already and always had it at that level- it lets you repick your feats, it doesn't change the past.

[Seer_of_Heart]

Well I suppose tippy might have to arbitrate this but the wording of psychic reformation suggests to me you can because it changes your decision and if you had decided to take VoP you would get the feats.

The subject can undo decisions of these sorts that were made at lower levels

[Zombulian]

You have to have the Vow while you're leveling to get the feats, so Reforming into it doesn't get you anything useful, and Tippy's already said he pretty much expects anybody with feat troubles to be making use of PsyRef and/or the Chaos Shuffle. You don't really have to worry about giving up a secret advantage there

Okay, good. I'm glad I'm not the only one who found it silly that it was phrased as a "I am divulging my secrets to you." Kind of post. When basically everyone was using it anyway.

[Pickford]

General versus specific isn't usually just two things. It's a pretty large spectrum, where you evaluate everything based upon how deeply specific it is. Like, you have improvised weapon rules, which are more deeply specific than regular weapon rules, and you have drunken master improvised weapon rules, which are deeper than that. As I mentioned, general versus specific doesn't need to be in a book to be true. It is an absolutely fundamental part of most games in existence. It's a corner stone of game design, not some slapdash piece of RAW. If it didn't exist, the game would just not make any sense. Every time you play the game, you use general versus specific without even thinking about it.

Your logic does not hold. There's nothing to suggest that improvised weapon rules are 'more specific' than regular weapon rules. All rules are specific with that criteria, the example was to point out that we regularly accept that the weapon damage can be changed by virtue of size changes and, given that, there's no foundation for denying the damage increase to improvised weapons.

The Improvised Weapons (Ex) is no different than an equation in place of the original 1d3 for a mug, simple algebra: X = 1d4 + M where M is monk unarmed damage. All those factors can change however based on outside factors, namely I + M (I = f(Improvised Weapon damage)) where I is the function of improvised weapon damage a number of steps higher based on the ability.

Heliomance:

Errata Rule: Primary Sources
When you find a disagreement between two D&D rules
sources, unless an official errata file says otherwise, the
primary source is correct. One example of a
primary/secondary source is text taking precedence over a
table entry. An individual spell description takes precedence
when the short description in the beginning of the spells
chapter disagrees.
Another example of primary vs. secondary sources involves
book and topic precedence. The Player’s Handbook, for
example, gives all the rules for playing the game, for PC
races, and the base class descriptions. If you find something
on one of those topics from the Dungeon Master’s Guide or
the Monster Manual that disagrees with the Player’s
Handbook, you should assume the Player’s Handbook is the
primary source. The Dungeon Master’s Guide is the primary
source for topics such as magic item descriptions, special
material construction rules, and so on. The Monster Manual
is the primary source for monster descriptions, templates, and
supernatural, extraordinary, and spell-like abilities

[Flickerdart]

Your logic does not hold. There's nothing to suggest that improvised weapon rules are 'more specific' than regular weapon rules.

"Improvised weapons" are a subset of "weapons". It's kind of obvious.

[eggynack]

@ Pickford: I don't see what RAW justification you have for making a claim to different improvised weapon damage. The drunken master's improvised weapons deal as much damage as an unarmed strike, plus 1d4. You say that these factors can change, but I don't see any RAW justification for that claim. Your build just doesn't work. If it said, "Your improvised weapons deal your unarmed strike damage, or regular improvised weapon damage, whichever is higher," then yeah, your build would work. It does not say that. It says the thing that acts against your plan.

[Hecuba]

You know what, while I'd like to keep this trick to myself I'm not getting anywhere in my limited challenge. For anyone who is feat starved(and good) buy psionic reformation to make 2 of your level 1 feats Vow of Poverty then get someone(s) you paid in advance to DCS all your exalted feats and VoP away.

While DCS on VoP is useful, this particular iteration may not be: the bonus feats for VoP are explicitly the only element of Voluntary Poverty which are not retroactive. If you take VoP at level 16, you only get the bonus feats that come at 16 or after.
The exact wording, if I recall, is "he only gains those bonus feats that apply for levels he gains after swearing the vow."

I will leave it to others to parse the exact interaction with of that with Psionic Reformation in regards to which rule is more specific.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

While DCS on VoP is useful, this particular iteration may not be: the bonus feats for VoP are explicitly the only element of Voluntary Poverty which are not retroactive. If you take VoP at level 16, you only get the bonus feats that come at 16 or after.
The exact wording, if I recall, is "he only gains those bonus feats that apply for levels he gains after swearing the vow."

I will leave it to others to parse the exact interaction with of that with Psionic Reformation in regards to which rule is more specific.

Take VoP as early as possible so you get as many feats to re-assign as you can get.

Anyone know a good +0 LA template with natural flight of some kind? Or perhaps some other kind of non-item-based flight? I'm trying to avoid the whole 'use magic item, then Chaos Shuffle and keep the effects' thing.

[Kazyan]

Anyone know a good +0 LA template with natural flight of some kind? Or perhaps some other kind of non-item-based flight? I'm trying to avoid the whole 'use magic item, then Chaos Shuffle and keep the effects' thing.

Feats: Dragontouched (if not dragonblooded) -> Dragon Wings -> Improved Dragon Wings. Or, Shape Soulmeld (Manticore Belt) -> Open Chakra (Shoulders).

As for templates, Dragonborn with the wings aspect. If you're a tosser, Unseelie Fey.

[eggynack]

Take VoP as early as possible so you get as many feats to re-assign as you can get.

Anyone know a good +0 LA template with natural flight of some kind? Or perhaps some other kind of non-item-based flight? I'm trying to avoid the whole 'use magic item, then Chaos Shuffle and keep the effects' thing.

Does anthropomorphic bat work? The strength hit is problematic, but the wisdom is pretty seriously nice.

[Zombulian]

Take VoP as early as possible so you get as many feats to re-assign as you can get.

Anyone know a good +0 LA template with natural flight of some kind? Or perhaps some other kind of non-item-based flight? I'm trying to avoid the whole 'use magic item, then Chaos Shuffle and keep the effects' thing.

Raptoran monk can have some cool flavor.
Also Dragon Wings feat after being a Dragonwrought Kobold... but... yea no.

[Emperor Tippy]

Anyone know a good +0 LA template with natural flight of some kind? Or perhaps some other kind of non-item-based flight? I'm trying to avoid the whole 'use magic item, then Chaos Shuffle and keep the effects' thing.

Unseelie Fey.

[shaikujin]

Build idea:
Use power attack + damage multipliers on top of Scorpion Kama (base weapon damage changed to 12d8) to guarantee a quick 1 hit or 1 round kill. Leave no chance for opponents to counter attack, cast spells or do any damage.

I will submit 2 builds, 1 for 20 levels of an actual SRD Monk. The second will be far cheesier for using 3 levels of non-monk (using Soulknife for at least 1 of the levels. Yes, a combo of the 2 weakest classes), and the remaining 17 will be mainly Psionic Fist.

First, the level 20 Monk build (still a draft, also missing numbers and formatting etc)

Features:

Spoiler

Show

1. Actual all monk levels in full spirit of the challenge.
2. No casting/enabler classes.
3. Free action movement up to 1000 feet per round.
4. Actually being able to use Slow Fall because I'm only 5 feet away from the ground. When I use subjective gravity to "fall" horizontally, the ground turns into a wall within 5 feet that I can use. I cannot use feather fall, due to it slowing me down to 60 feet per round
5. Persisting of spells and buffs without using DMM Persist or Spelldancer
6. Persisting of spells and buffs that are not normally doable using DMM or Spelldancer
7. Permanent duration buffs
8. Cost effective build. I only need to use each consumable scroll once, and it lasts forever.
9. Weapon enchantments are split into multiple items, so instead of paying 200k for a +10 weapon, I can split the properties among 7 weapons of +2/+3/+4/+5/+6 each. Depending on the properties chosen, at minimum this works out to be 5 weapons of +2 costing 20k
10. Psuedo AMF effects that doesn't affect Rorc Lee
11. Immunity to AMF, Dispel
12. Overwhelming damage higher than what a fully optimized Barbarian can do
13. More attacks than any dual wielding build, more damage than 2 handed weapon build
14. Weapon itself is a non 3rd party published weapon (it's from Dragon magazine) that has +15 reach and threatens all opponents within reach
15. All within reach dies in first round due to Great Cleave
16. Unarmed attack has +64 enhancement bonus
17. 1200 damage per hit, I can hit 6 times in a flurry

While any class can use parts of the build, there are a couple of abilities unique to a monk - Unarmed Damage progression, Flurry progression (which is an enhanced TWF that works on 2 handed weapons), Unarmored Speed progression, AC progression.

These are the abilities I try to synergize and capitalize on.

I present:
Rorc Lee, the Half-Orc Lv 20 Monk

Spoiler

Show

Main assumption is that Genesis shenanigans can be used.





*Consumables

• *Awaken specifics - Hire NPC spellcaster to "Polymorph any Object" Rorc Lee into a Tree, then cast a Maximized Empowered Awaken to get 18 + (0.5 x 3d6). Repeat until I get max on the rolls. If Epic feats allowed (Gate scrolls with high enough CL to gate in Epic level Solars/Dragonwrought Kobold), I will use Intensified.
• *Would have also tried polymorphing into a animal subsequently for another Maximum Empowered Awaken to get an arbitarily high Cha. But I'm not sure if the 2 HD messes with this challenge, and also whether this pushes it into the no infinite loops restriction.

Monk 20 with Invisible Fist and Dark Moon Disciple ACFs


Feats (will need to buy a few magical locations to DCFS):
Planar Touchstone to get EWP (Rope Dart) and Weapon Focus
Power Attack (add damage equal to 2 x BAB)
Leap Attack (errata'd to +100% of Power attack damage)
Battle Jump (x 2 damage)
Power Lunge (x2 Str damage, Ghostwalk)
True Believer
Headlong Rush
Improved Bull Rush
Shock Trooper
Robilar's Gambit
Cleave
Great Cleave
Darkstalker
Item Familiar

To consider:
Improved Critical (or maybe just use a keen scabbard)
Beastial Strike (Dragon #355)



All equipment below are Psionic versions.

Weapons

Armor

Equipment

Grafts


Consumables

*Note, except for Genesis, all spells are actually Psionic versions converted by an Spell to Power Erudite.
The Erudite learned the spells from a Generic Arcane Spell caster (SRD), who can learn any Arcane and Divine spells as Arcane.
If I am unable to find one, I will rebuild my levels to become the Erudite and/or Generic Arcane spellcaster myself.
For converting 9th level spells, I will use Dragonwrought Kobold or Barghest shinnegans to qualify for Epic feats/manifesting and convert the spells.


Demiplane "The Rorc":

Buffs

• To be added.
  All spells cast on Rorc Lee are permanent. Will start off referring to the normal DMM builds.

Tactic:
Carry acorn with me. (For now, in a hollow hilt of my knee blade)
Morph Scorpion Karma into a Rope Dart (Dragon 319, pg 73). 2 handed Exotic Weapon. Reach 15 feet. Can be used in a flurry. Can be used to trip.
1d4, Crit 20/x4


The Elder Evils have blindsense of 500. I stealth and hide just outside that range and wait for a time until I have a clear line of attack.
Manifest Psionic Lion's Charge.
Jump a little to trigger Leap attack, then change my subjective gravity to fall 500 feet towards the elder Evil.
Falling is a free action.
Free falling speed is 500 feet a round (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20040706a)
So I will be able to reach the elder evil in a round, executing a diving charge attack, delivering enough damage with my 6 flurry attacks to kill it in the surprise round.
Spells and effects that touch me basically winks out of effect since my plane is considered a dead magic zone to Arcane and Divine spells.


Numbers:

Items that increase virtual size

Items that increases Monk levels:


Normal walking speed is 100 feet per round.
Flight is 200 feet per round at good manueverability.
Actual movement speed is 500 as a free action on round 1, 1000 on round 2. If a move action is used, add twice flight speed to this.

AC at rough count is my Dex bonus (10) + Wis bonus (14) + Bracers (+5 from enchantment) + Greater Mage Armor (6) + Eighteen defending weapons (18 x 5) = 125

Damage:

[shaikujin]

Also, I name my demiplane "The Rorc"

[Kazyan]

*whistles* I think you win, shaikujin.

However, you should come up with an alternate method of beating, no surprises here, Pandorym's Mind Shard. It cuts off access to the planes.

[Threadnaught]

Anyone know a good +0 LA template with natural flight of some kind? Or perhaps some other kind of non-item-based flight? I'm trying to avoid the whole 'use magic item, then Chaos Shuffle and keep the effects' thing.

You're trying to do this with VoP (no shuffling) aren't you?


Good luck, I want you to win, seriously just for that.

[Chronos]

What part of that required you to be human?

[Zombulian]

Build idea:
Use power attack + damage multipliers on top of Scorpion Kama (base weapon damage changed to 12d8) to guarantee a quick 1 hit or 1 round kill. Leave no chance for opponents to counter attack, cast spells or do any damage.

I will submit 2 builds, 1 for 20 levels of an actual SRD Monk. The second will be far cheesier for using 3 levels of non-monk (using Soulknife for at least 1 of the levels. Yes, a combo of the 2 weakest classes), and the remaining 17 will be mainly Psionic Fist.

First, the level 20 Monk build (still a draft, also missing numbers and formatting etc)

Features:

Spoiler

Show

1. Actual all monk levels in full spirit of the challenge.
2. No casting/enabler classes.
3. Free action movement up to 1000 feet per round.
4. Actually being able to use Slow Fall because I'm only 5 feet away from the ground. When I use subjective gravity to "fall" horizontally, the ground turns into a wall within 5 feet that I can use. I cannot use feather fall, due to it slowing me down to 60 feet per round
5. Persisting of spells and buffs without using DMM Persist or Spelldancer
6. Persisting of spells and buffs that are not normally doable using DMM or Spelldancer
7. Permanent duration buffs
8. Cost effective build. I only need to use each consumable scroll once, and it lasts forever.
9. Weapon enchantments are split into multiple items, so instead of paying 200k for a +10 weapon, I can split the properties among 7 weapons of +2/+3/+4/+5/+6 each. Depending on the properties chosen, at minimum this works out to be 5 weapons of +2 costing 20k
10. Psuedo AMF effects that doesn't affect Rorc Lee
11. Immunity to AMF, Dispel
12. Overwhelming damage higher than what a fully optimized Barbarian can do
13. More attacks than any dual wielding build, more damage than 2 handed weapon build
14. Weapon itself is a non 3rd party published weapon (it's from Dragon magazine) that has +15 reach and threatens all opponents within reach
15. All within reach dies in first round due to Great Cleave
16. Unarmed attack has +64 enhancement bonus
17. 1200 damage per hit, I can hit 6 times in a flurry

While any class can use parts of the build, there are a couple of abilities unique to a monk - Unarmed Damage progression, Flurry progression (which is an enhanced TWF that works on 2 handed weapons), Unarmored Speed progression, AC progression.

These are the abilities I try to synergize and capitalize on.

I present:
Rorc Lee, the Half-Orc Lv 20 Monk

Spoiler

Show

Main assumption is that Genesis shenanigans can be used.





*Consumables

• *Awaken specifics - Hire NPC spellcaster to "Polymorph any Object" Rorc Lee into a Tree, then cast a Maximized Empowered Awaken to get 18 + (0.5 x 3d6). Repeat until I get max on the rolls. If Epic feats allowed (Gate scrolls with high enough CL to gate in Epic level Solars/Dragonwrought Kobold), I will use Intensified.
• *Would have also tried polymorphing into a animal subsequently for another Maximum Empowered Awaken to get an arbitarily high Cha. But I'm not sure if the 2 HD messes with this challenge, and also whether this pushes it into the no infinite loops restriction.

Monk 20 with Invisible Fist and Dark Moon Disciple ACFs


Feats (will need to buy a few magical locations to DCFS):
Planar Touchstone to get EWP (Rope Dart) and Weapon Focus
Power Attack (add damage equal to 2 x BAB)
Leap Attack (errata'd to +100% of Power attack damage)
Battle Jump (x 2 damage)
Power Lunge (x2 Str damage, Ghostwalk)
True Believer
Headlong Rush
Improved Bull Rush
Shock Trooper
Robilar's Gambit
Cleave
Great Cleave
Darkstalker
Item Familiar

To consider:
Improved Critical (or maybe just use a keen scabbard)
Beastial Strike (Dragon #355)



All equipment below are Psionic versions.

Weapons

Armor

Equipment

Grafts


Consumables

*Note, except for Genesis, all spells are actually Psionic versions converted by an Spell to Power Erudite.
The Erudite learned the spells from a Generic Arcane Spell caster (SRD), who can learn any Arcane and Divine spells as Arcane.
If I am unable to find one, I will rebuild my levels to become the Erudite and/or Generic Arcane spellcaster myself.
For converting 9th level spells, I will use Dragonwrought Kobold or Barghest shinnegans to qualify for Epic feats/manifesting and convert the spells.


Demiplane "The Rorc":

Buffs

• To be added.
  All spells cast on Rorc Lee are permanent. Will start off referring to the normal DMM builds.

Tactic:
Carry acorn with me. (For now, in a hollow hilt of my knee blade)
Morph Scorpion Karma into a Rope Dart (Dragon 319, pg 73). 2 handed Exotic Weapon. Reach 15 feet. Can be used in a flurry. Can be used to trip.
1d4, Crit 20/x4


The Elder Evils have blindsense of 500. I stealth and hide just outside that range and wait for a time until I have a clear line of attack.
Manifest Psionic Lion's Charge.
Jump a little to trigger Leap attack, then change my subjective gravity to fall 500 feet towards the elder Evil.
Falling is a free action.
Free falling speed is 500 feet a round (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20040706a)
So I will be able to reach the elder evil in a round, executing a diving charge attack, delivering enough damage with my 6 flurry attacks to kill it in the surprise round.
Spells and effects that touch me basically winks out of effect since my plane is considered a dead magic zone to Arcane and Divine spells.


Numbers:

Items that increase virtual size

Items that increases Monk levels:


Normal walking speed is 100 feet per round.
Flight is 200 feet per round at good manueverability.
Actual movement speed is 500 as a free action on round 1, 1000 on round 2. If a move action is used, add twice flight speed to this.

AC at rough count is my Dex bonus (10) + Wis bonus (14) + Bracers (+5 from enchantment) + Greater Mage Armor (6) + Eighteen defending weapons (18 x 5) = 125

Damage:

Wow. Oh wow.
Btw where's the errata for Leap Attack?

Also, has anyone looked at Braid Blades? Monk weapons with which you can have an ambiguous number of in your hair?

[tyckspoon]

What part of that required you to be human?

Battle Jump's regional requirement is Human from the Taer region, IIRC.

I don't think Pandorym's sign actually blocks off Roc's personal invulnerability plane (I also don't think it would make a huge difference, since Pandorym's shard isn't all that hard to just walk up to and kick in the gaseous face once you can survive its attacks. Mind Blank defangs like 80% of its threat.) It's pretty specific about what it actually does stop- divine casting, conjurations except the Creation subschool, and divinations that contact other-planar beings. Neither Acorn of Far Travel nor the Genesis spell itself go under those categories.. so I'm pretty sure Rorc can hammer his way through everything fairly easily. Only thing I can see that might be a problem is if Lucather Majii decides to be smart and lays a Disjunction on him.

[Piggy Knowles]

Battle Jump's regional requirement is Human from the Taer region, IIRC.

Actually, it just says "Region: Taer." Which is confusing, because Taer isn't a region - it's a race of hairy medium-sized giants. (You know, in case medium giant wasn't confusing enough...)

[nyjastul69]

Actually, it just says "Region: Taer." Which is confusing, because Taer isn't a region - it's a race of hairy medium-sized giants. (You know, in case medium giant wasn't confusing enough...)

Page 40 of UE explains them as character regions and a bit further on a racial regions. It is odd nonetheless.

[Piggy Knowles]

Page 40 of UE explains them as character regions and a bit further on a racial regions. It is odd nonetheless.

True... but this section doesn't actually help matters:

Taer Region

Taers live in the cold mountains of the Unapproachable East, principally the Giantspire Mountains of Narfell and the Icerim Mountains of the North Country. This region reflects a taer driven into exile by his clan.

In any case, this came up in response to tyckspoon saying that Battle Jump requires you to be a human from the Taer region. Nothing in the "Taer region" mentions humans at all, though, only taer. So I'm really not sure why Human Heritage/RoD sidebar is needed, since presumably the build is qualifying for Battle Jump via ranks in knowledge (local - taer) rather than by being a taer.

That said, I love the build, although one minor nitpick: you can't Battle Jump from 500 feet up:

You can't jump from more than 30 feet above your opponent, nor can you effectively battle jump while under the influence of a fly or levitate spell or effect, as you have to hurl yourself down at your foe.