Iron Chef Optimization Challenge VIII

[WinWin]

The vigilante spell list is pretty good. They get all bards spells save those from conjuration, enchantment and evocation...well, the list is better than the one in Cadv, thanks to spell compendium and such.

Animal lord is versatile, can go in a lot of different directions flavour-wise.

I'm happy to avoid full or near full casting PrC's for this challenge, they rarely need a lot of optimization anyway. I just thought that working through each of the Completes series would be cool.

[Draz74]

Originally Posted by Amphetryon

Examplar gets bandied about in some TO work, so a gentleman's agreement will be needed there as well.

Well, besides being "known cheese" in some instances, most TO Exemplars I've seen just dip the class for one or two abilities, and don't really "feel" like the PrC is important to their character concept at all. So I think this could actually be a really interesting one, with "Use of Secret Ingredient" being a very important category.

Hmmm. Crazy idea: we could have certain judging categories weigh differently for certain competitions. For example, what if we did a full-casting PrC, but Power scores are multiplied by 50% and Originality scores are multiplied by 150% when determining the contest's winner?

[Amphetryon]

W00t! New contest thread is up. Good call, WinWin.

[Nerdanel]

I'm late to the party again. I didn't participate as I was unable to come up with anything particularly interesting. It's only now that I've come up with an idea:

Something like this:
Unbodied 4/Psion (Telepath) 1/Pyrokinetist 10/Psion (Telepath) +1 (LA +4)

If I'm right, an Unbodied should be able to wield a Fire Lash (which is also on fire) and add Hand Afire to its natural attack.

Taking Mindsight as a feat would probably be a good idea. The question is, does Mindsight allow the Unbodied cast Heat Death on a target while it is safely hiding inside or beyond a stone wall? Even with an easy DC (though being an Unbodied helps here a little) and even if there is a 50% miss chance, this could be devastating in an environment without much free space so that the Unbodied can keep casting Heat Death over and over again until the targets rolls low enough. Imagne an Unbodied with Mindsight and Heat Death chasing the hero in the Underdark...

Firewalk is completely useless to this build, though, and fire resistance less useful than normally.

[The Vorpal Tribble]

I had an idea actually to do an Unbodied Pyro, a guy who in the process of 'setting 'afire' burned himself alive, leaving only his insane spirit.

Wasn't happy with the build though.