The Easy Exploit Compendium

[Divide by Zero]

Easy exploits, let's see... the Commoner Railgun is a common (no pun intended) one, and runs along the same lines as the horse one earlier, except each commoner readies an action to take an item from the person previous and pass it to the next.

By RAW, the commoner railgun only does damage according to the last commoner's thrown weapon stats. If you try to bring real-world physics into it, then the whole thing doesn't work to begin with.

[WinWin]

The level differential engine works better with the Assume Supernatural Ability feat and polymorph (death giant, barghest, redcap).

Can also work with racial hit dice and aquired templates, such as the extra hit dice gained by lycanthropes.

[Hiro Protagonest]

By RAW, the commoner railgun only does damage according to the last commoner's thrown weapon stats. If you try to bring real-world physics into it, then the whole thing doesn't work to begin with.

Die, catgirls, die!

[faceroll]

Or simply wish for Candle of Invocation (Lawful Evil), so you can later call an Efreet to get 3 more Wishes.

Make your wishes from a source that doesn't have to pay xp, like an efreet's SLA. Wish for a +1,000,000 sword and suit of armor. The only cost the wisher has to pay for when wishing for magic items are xp costs, and you just circumvented that. Cool, huh?

A bit more subtle exploit:
Live My Nightmare feat let's you attack anyone, who scries on you. The wording is, that you make a choice, whether to punish them or not - this means, you have to be aware of every successful scry attempt made on you. It's totally worth the exposore to Phantasmal Killer.

Better than that; any one who uses a divination effect on you. Detect Magic? Detect Evil? Everyone's gonna have bad dreams.

Hmm... Is there a way to share your Iron Heart Surge with someone else?

"My friends cannot iron heart surge; this is a problem; I will end it by using IHS to grant them IHS."

[Jack_Simth]

I always thought it meant, like, in the same day.

The exact wording is "in immediate succession" - near as I can tell, most DM's read that as "one right after the other, without delay"

[Siosilvar]

By RAW, the commoner railgun only does damage according to the last commoner's thrown weapon stats. If you try to bring real-world physics into it, then the whole thing doesn't work to begin with.

Which is why I made no mention of damage, only the fast-travel part.

[Flame of Anor]

Could someone explain just what Iron Heart Surge does? I get the feeling it's one of those things from Tome of Battle (which I don't have).

[Siosilvar]

Could someone explain just what Iron Heart Surge does? I get the feeling it's one of those things from Tome of Battle (which I don't have).

You'd be correct.

"When you use this maneuver, select one spell, effect, or other condition currently affecting you and with a duration of 1 or more rounds. That effect ends immediately." You also get a +2 morale bonus to hit for the next round.

The problem lies in that everything has a duration of 1 or more rounds, and "spell, effect, or other condition" is also (supposedly) ill-defined.

[Andorax]

Ok, I'm going to try my hand at this. One simple, one complex and likely flawed.

Clockwork Dragon:

The Mechanatrix (Fiend Folio, see Planetouched) is usually LN, mostly human looking, just has some sort of minor mechanical-looking trait.

They're healed 1/3 of any electrical "damage" they receive.

Dragonfire Adept (Dragon Magic) has, at 2nd level, the ability to use a Lightning Breath attack once a round.

A 2nd level character with the ability to heal up to full in just a few rounds time, all day long. It's not the only way to do it, but it's not a bad approach.




How I Learned to Quit Worrying About Hit Points:

Cleric 17th.

Endurance, Diehard, Extend Spell, Persist Spell (CA), Touch of Healing (CC)

Cast Delay Death (MiniHB) persisted as a 9th level spell. No bottom limit to the amount of damage you can take without dying, not forced into unconsciousness either.

Cast Shield Other on all other party members (17 hour duration). Suck it up and don't care.

Spend all the live-long-day after a fight healing everyone back up to half (Touch of Healing) their hit points, including yourself. Everyone else is still effectively at full hps (at half, but take half), and you don't care, period. For a big fight, actually heal people up above the halfway mark (until they have effectively double hps).

It only takes a handful of 2nd level slots, one 9th, and at least one spell that *could* be spontaniously cast as healing of 2nd level or higher held in reserve. Everything else can focus on mitigation, boosts, or butt-kicking.

Add Fiery Burst or Storm Bolt (CM) as reserve feats, and you have a nice supply of pain-bringing ongoing damage throughout the day.

The Fire Domain, coupled with Fiery Burst and memorizing Elemental Swarm as your 9th level Domain spell would provide that firepower (all-day 9d6 minifireballs).

Stormrage (CD) as a memorized 8th also works with Storm Bolt.

To extend the idea further, distribute these:

Retributive Amulet (56k - BOED)

For any given attack, the attacker takes half damage (Retributive Amulet), the PC takes 1/4, and I take 1/4.

I keep the other PCs up with just enough healing, and sustain them at 1/2 full hps freely after each fight (which functions as 2x their normal hps, since they only take 1/4 damage).

I ignore the damage to me, also restoring it to 1/2 my normal total after each fight (and taking damage off everyone, yes, but only 1/4 of the hits they're suffering).

[Divide by Zero]

Which is why I made no mention of damage, only the fast-travel part.

But then it wouldn't be a railgun

[gorfnab]

Cheaper Resurrections
For just 1000gp a 9th level Cleric or Archivist can basically True Res someone (if you have the body and the death has occurred within Rounds/CL of the caster) with two spells from the Spell Compendium. Just cast Revenance, wait for the duration to end, and then cast Revivify. This leaves the target alive at -1hp and stable (easily fixed through cure spells) but with no loss of levels, xp, con, or spell slots (for the target anyways). It's definitely worth it for party members to buy scrolls of these two spells so that the divine casters of the party (or those with decent UMD chekcs) can "Res" them should the need arise. A scroll of Revenance should be 700gp and a scroll of Revivify should be 2125gp, fairly cheap for basically True Res.

[Siosilvar]

But then it wouldn't be a railgun

It's still on a rail in the sense that there's a linear path, and I suppose it could be considered a gun because it has a "projectile" that travels along it.

Nitpicking semantics aside... it was originally called the Commoner Railgun, so that's the name I use for it.

Immunity to Weapons (arguable)
Starmantle Cloak is from the BoED and ridiculously expensive. It grants a DC15 Reflex save to halve damage when you're hit by a weapon.
Evasion lets you take no damage from a Reflex save for half.

This one gets shut down when you realize Evasion says "an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save".

[Vladislav]

Combat Crafting

According to the craft rules, the time to craft an item is directly proportional to its cost. Slings, clubs and quarterstaffs cost nothing, and can therefore be crafted in zero time right on the battlefield.

[Douglas]

Combat Crafting

According to the craft rules, the time to craft an item is directly proportional to its cost. Slings, clubs and quarterstaffs cost nothing, and can therefore be crafted in zero time right on the battlefield.

In that vein, Combat Magic Crafting:
In one of the Eberron books, there's a set of feats that reduce gold, xp, or time costs of magic item crafting. Each feat reduces one of the three costs by 25%. As originally printed, each feat had a footnote in the table that said they could be taken multiple times and stacked. A level 20 Artificer has enough bonus feats, combined with character level feats, to take each of these feats 4 times. End result: 0 gold cost, 0 xp cost, 0 time cost for all magic item crafting. Need Freedom of Movement? Here, just a second ago I made a ring that does that. Teleport? Have some boots. Need to completely bury an entire enemy fortress in an avalanche? Just get me above it, I'll craft a billion luckstones in the blink of an eye and the weight of all those stones combined will pummel everything into oblivion.

Sadly, errata removed the footnote.

[Hoboshank]

Ring Gate Motorboat
Seal off one side of the first ring and drop and tie the second to a rope. then drop the second off the side of the boat. The water pressure shoots the water out propelling the boat forward.

[Lateral]

Shadow Landscape + Explosive Spell in a plains or forest setting will actually push all enemies that fail the reflex save several hundred feet.

Do I detect the locate city bomb's little brother?

Hardly; it requires an 11th level spell slot. Plus, the Locate City bomb version that uses Explosive Spell doesn't work; you need the wight-pocalypse version, but that's not really a 'bomb', exactly.

[faceroll]

In that vein, Combat Magic Crafting:
In one of the Eberron books, there's a set of feats that reduce gold, xp, or time costs of magic item crafting. Each feat reduces one of the three costs by 25%. As originally printed, each feat had a footnote in the table that said they could be taken multiple times and stacked. A level 20 Artificer has enough bonus feats, combined with character level feats, to take each of these feats 4 times. End result: 0 gold cost, 0 xp cost, 0 time cost for all magic item crafting. Need Freedom of Movement? Here, just a second ago I made a ring that does that. Teleport? Have some boots. Need to completely bury an entire enemy fortress in an avalanche? Just get me above it, I'll craft a billion luckstones in the blink of an eye and the weight of all those stones combined will pummel everything into oblivion.

Sadly, errata removed the footnote.

That's also not how percents stack, either. Percents are an exception to stacking rules, in that they are explicitly multiplicative. It's why post-errata leap attack is so fabulous.

[Shalist]

Craft: Minting, where coins are used as the raw materials to make more coins.

Material Component

The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created.

...pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials.

Forget 'wall of iron' or 'genesis,' with this, a level 10 wizard could be churning out millions of gold (or platinum) with every casting, and all he'd need is a single coin to get the ball rolling.

Spoiler

Show

Gold is ~1200 pounds / cubic foot, platinum is ~1340...10 cubic feet / CL, so 600,000 gold / CL for gold, or ~670,000 platinum / CL for platinum, minus the 1/3 you started with as raw materials.

Also, you could probably use a variation of this to utterly devalue various precious stones (ie diamonds, rubies), so that someone would need several portable holes just to carry the "50 gold worth of diamond dust" needed for a simple spell :P

[Ksheep]

Ring Gate Motorboat
Seal off one side of the first ring and drop and tie the second to a rope. then drop the second off the side of the boat. The water pressure shoots the water out propelling the boat forward.

Except for the fact that Ring Gate specifically says "Up to 100 pounds of material can be transferred each day". So… you can shoot 12 gallons of water out. Hardly enough to jet your boat across the sea. However… it could work if you are on a plane with an extremely short day…

[Jack_Simth]

Ok, I'm going to try my hand at this. One simple, one complex and likely flawed.

Clockwork Dragon:

The Mechanatrix (Fiend Folio, see Planetouched) is usually LN, mostly human looking, just has some sort of minor mechanical-looking trait.

They're healed 1/3 of any electrical "damage" they receive.

Dragonfire Adept (Dragon Magic) has, at 2nd level, the ability to use a Lightning Breath attack once a round.

A 2nd level character with the ability to heal up to full in just a few rounds time, all day long. It's not the only way to do it, but it's not a bad approach.

Amusing. Definately not the only way to do it - especially as there's templates that'll outright give you fast healing for a similar LA.

How I Learned to Quit Worrying About Hit Points:

Cleric 17th.

Endurance, Diehard, Extend Spell, Persist Spell (CA), Touch of Healing (CC)

Cast Delay Death (MiniHB) persisted as a 9th level spell. No bottom limit to the amount of damage you can take without dying, not forced into unconsciousness either.

A couple of things... Delay Death was reprinted in Spell Compendium; in the Spell Compendium version, it's not available for Persisting, due to the variable range (Close). In the Miniatures Handbook version, some DM's will let it be persist-able, others not (not everyone considers Touch a fixed range). Also: Do note that this doesn't prevent the dying state, so you still fall unconscious (but there's ways to fix that, such as Beastland Ferocity or Favor of the Martyr).

Cast Shield Other on all other party members (17 hour duration). Suck it up and don't care.

Spend all the live-long-day after a fight healing everyone back up to half (Touch of Healing) their hit points, including yourself. Everyone else is still effectively at full hps (at half, but take half), and you don't care, period. For a big fight, actually heal people up above the halfway mark (until they have effectively double hps).

As you're getting Persistent Spell anyway, it's simpler to use Mass Lesser Vigor (Spell Compendium) for this. Saves you a feat, and remove the "max 1/2" clause, effectively doubling HP for the party.

It only takes a handful of 2nd level slots, one 9th, and at least one spell that *could* be spontaniously cast as healing of 2nd level or higher held in reserve. Everything else can focus on mitigation, boosts, or butt-kicking.

Reserve Feats require you actually have the spell prepared if you're a prepared caster - yes, you could cast it spontaneously; doesn't matter, as a Cleric is a prepared caster.

Add Fiery Burst or Storm Bolt (CM) as reserve feats, and you have a nice supply of pain-bringing ongoing damage throughout the day.

The Fire Domain, coupled with Fiery Burst and memorizing Elemental Swarm as your 9th level Domain spell would provide that firepower (all-day 9d6 minifireballs).

Stormrage (CD) as a memorized 8th also works with Storm Bolt.

To extend the idea further, distribute these:

Retributive Amulet (56k - BOED)

For any given attack, the attacker takes half damage (Retributive Amulet), the PC takes 1/4, and I take 1/4.

I keep the other PCs up with just enough healing, and sustain them at 1/2 full hps freely after each fight (which functions as 2x their normal hps, since they only take 1/4 damage).

I ignore the damage to me, also restoring it to 1/2 my normal total after each fight (and taking damage off everyone, yes, but only 1/4 of the hits they're suffering).

Further refinement: Divine Metamagic (Persistent Spell). Makes this doable much, much earlier.

Oh yes, and Greater Dispel Magic becomes very, very fatal for you.

[BlueInc]

Not sure if anyone brought this thread up, but it deserves attention:

http://community.wizards.com/go/thre...t_and_Discount

Personal favorite quote:

When fighting the final BBEG of a campaign we were at our wits ends of how to defeat him. He had DR 30/lawful and none of us had lawful-aligned weapons. In addition our power house (drunken master monk) kept having his weapons disintegrate in his hands due to the skin effect of the monster. We also had a lawful neutral dwarf monk who was a grappler and useless against the collosal BBEG.
Our Drunker Master, seeing no other choice, picked up the only remaining improvised weapon which would work, the dwarf. Seeing that the dwarf was lawful we now had a lawful aligned weapon.

[Flame of Anor]

How I Learned to Quit Worrying About Hit Points:

Wow...I'm totally stealing this. Except wait, no, it would only work for two other people because you have to wear a matched pair of rings. I don't suppose there's a Mass Shield Other? Still cool, though. And you don't even need to be 17th level with DMM.

In that vein, Combat Magic Crafting:
In one of the Eberron books, there's a set of feats that reduce gold, xp, or time costs of magic item crafting. Each feat reduces one of the three costs by 25%. As originally printed, each feat had a footnote in the table that said they could be taken multiple times and stacked. A level 20 Artificer has enough bonus feats, combined with character level feats, to take each of these feats 4 times. End result: 0 gold cost, 0 xp cost, 0 time cost for all magic item crafting. Need Freedom of Movement? Here, just a second ago I made a ring that does that. Teleport? Have some boots. Need to completely bury an entire enemy fortress in an avalanche? Just get me above it, I'll craft a billion luckstones in the blink of an eye and the weight of all those stones combined will pummel everything into oblivion.

Sadly, errata removed the footnote.

Pff, I didn't see any errata if you didn't. What book are those in?

Craft: Minting, where coins are used as the raw materials to make more coins.

O.O

...you've broken my brain.

[Jack_Simth]

Wow...I'm totally stealing this. Except wait, no, it would only work for two other people because you have to wear a matched pair of rings. I don't suppose there's a Mass Shield Other? Still cool, though. And you don't even need to be 17th level with DMM.

Ah, you can only wear two *magic* rings at a time. Mundane rings don't have that limit, and they're merely a focus for the spell, they're not themselves enchanted. So yes, you can do the entire party this way, if the tactic passes the other tests.

Including the one where some DM's consider the Spell Compendium to be errata for the assorted spells it contains....

O.O

...you've broken my brain.

Fabricate for any trade good has similar results. Linen is a popular choice: Made entirely from flax (a plant) you've got a very large volume to work with, and linen is a trade good, so it's usable as cash when you need more flax for your next casting.

[Flame of Anor]

Including the one where some DM's consider the Spell Compendium to be errata for the assorted spells it contains....

Which entry in the Spell Compendium is applicable here, and why?

[faceroll]

Here's another money-hack:
Buy mithril chain shirts for huge creatures. They cost 4400gp each, and weigh 125 lbs. Melt the mithril down into ingots, which you can then sell at the price of 500gp/lb, or 62,500gp/shirt.

[NNescio]

...should I mention the ten-foot pole ladders hack at this point?

('though this one can be handwaved away easier.)

[Flame of Anor]

...should I mention the ten-foot pole ladders hack at this point?

('though this one can be handwaved away easier.)

Ah, that's the one where you buy a ladder, take it apart, and then sell it as two poles for greater than its buying price?

[Jack_Simth]

Which entry in the Spell Compendium is applicable here, and why?

The Miniatures Handbook's Delay Death spell vs. Spell Compendium's Delay Death spell are substantially different - Cleric 3 vs. Cleric-4, standard action vs. Immediate action, Touch vs. Short range. But with the sidebar on page 4 of Spell Compendium ("... some material has been revised to 3.5..."), and the back cover of the Spell Compendium ("... and have been updated to include official errata...") there's a significant number of DM's that will not let you use the original version of spells when the Spell Compendium is in play.

[Amnestic]

The Miniatures Handbook's Delay Death spell vs. Spell Compendium's Delay Death spell are substantially different - Cleric 3 vs. Cleric-4, standard action vs. Immediate action, Touch vs. Short range. But with the sidebar on page 4 of Spell Compendium ("... some material has been revised to 3.5..."), and the back cover of the Spell Compendium ("... and have been updated to include official errata...") there's a significant number of DM's that will not let you use the original version of spells when the Spell Compendium is in play.

*shrug* Just requires you to use Ocular Spell (Lords of Madness) metamagic as well, it's still doable.

[NNescio]

Ah, that's the one where you buy a ladder, take it apart, and then sell it as two poles for greater than its buying price?

Yep. The standard handwave is that 10-foot poles with holes or price of wood jutting out of them aren't study enough to be 10-foot poles any longer. I prefer the "Adventurers are chumps who will pay 2sp for a 10-foot piece of wood" approach.