The_Hanged_Man at [unixtime wrote:1110405074[/unixtime]]I like the fact that our contests are more about figuring out what combinations are so obviously overpowered that they shouldn't be allowed than actually putting together a build.
Yay us.
Well, the Illithid Savant is a special case. Now that Mind Flayers don't has Astral projection (and so, presumably, the Githyanki no longer need Silver swords), the ECL 15 Mind flayer is super-fragile.
Adding a 1d4 HP/good Will save PrC with absolutely no class abilities to that doesn't really help.
Which means that they are either horrendously overpowered, or dead, or both. Which is basically the definition of Broken.
---I think a "Before LoD" and an "After LoD" contest might be fun.
---Lets stick to an ECL of 8. CR works in funny ways with templates and I'd like to avoid that (like the mentioned Half-Illithid Incarnate Dread muthafvker).
Neeek wrote:Umm...I would imagine you'd be eating something that allows you to change your shape. Then when you change your shape, you would lose your ability to change your shape. I'm really not sure which form you are stuck in at that point. Seems like a poorly considered rule to me.
And bang, I just ran up against this. Now I don't have much chance of making a totally uber build to enter into the contest, I'd be lucky to make a passably competant one. So having a cool flavour thing would kick ass.
So when I came accross the Intellect Devourers Body Thief ability I thought cool, my mind flayer could shrink inside the skulls of its victims, simultaneously eat their brain and then take over their body for a week sitting inside the skull pulling the levers as it were.
But sadly no, as this works "as polymorph" so the second he is inside the victims skull he loses the ability to be inside the victims skull, at which point presumably someones head explodes, though its not clear who's or why.
I think I'm just going to end up with a psion with a rather lame trick of taking the wilders key class feature with none of its disadvantages via the illithid savant third level. Oh well, at least it might rank vaguely well on "playability".
Phonelobster's Self Proclaimed Greatest Hits Collection : (no really, they are awesome)
PhoneLobster at [unixtime wrote:1110420263[/unixtime]] So when I came accross the Intellect Devourers Body Thief ability I thought cool, my mind flayer could shrink inside the skulls of its victims, simultaneously eat their brain and then take over their body for a week sitting inside the skull pulling the levers as it were.
But sadly no, as this works "as polymorph" so the second he is inside the victims skull he loses the ability to be inside the victims skull, at which point presumably someones head explodes, though its not clear who's or why.
I think this was a finishing move in one of the Mortal Kombat games. If it wasn't, it should've been.
The_Hanged_Man at [unixtime wrote:1110405074[/unixtime]]I like the fact that our contests are more about figuring out what combinations are so obviously overpowered that they shouldn't be allowed than actually putting together a build.
Yay us.
On that note, I'd like to move that we consider the:
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
I'm game to enter, especially since there seems to be a large chance of winning by glorious default.
But I'm shy, so rather than post a huge rambling build full of piles of niggling stats calculated and explained...
Here is my build in its simplest form, essentially a summary of its core premise. If thats not enough to compete or there is a preferred format (or if anyone disagrees with the minor loopholes assumed by my reading of the rules), someone let me know.
The Psionic Illithid who eats other psionic Illithids build
This build is intended as a primary psionic caster. He isn't altogether that crash hot, but there is only so much you can do with the limited rules set for psionics.
This build is based on a psionic illithid (from the expanded psionics handbook). Such an illithid has 8 hit die but casts "as a 9th level psion(telepath)" as a special attack.
He immediately qualifies for illithid savant and advances 5 levels in that class.
The only consumed skill of note is "Psi Craft" that nets him an unlimited supply of powers known via the dumb research rules. There are no other consumed skills of note or consumed feats of note.
His first consumed class feature is not significant as its a bit low level to net anything amazing, he could use it to eat a clerics armour and weapon prof (along with a free set of cleric spells), another psions powers known, or PP pool. Whatever.
The important bit is the level five consumed special attack. He consumes the "psionic powers" special attack of another psionic illithid. He now has the "powers as a level 9 psionic(telepath)" twice. This may or may not have any actual immediate effect, its unclear, but he definitely has that tag twice.
He takes one level of psion(telepath). At the beginning of the psionic monsters section of the expanded psionics handbook it specifically states that whenever a monster with psionic powers "as a specific character class" advances in that class "it can stack its innate powers with its class progression". He instantly stacks his 1 level of psion(telepath) with TWO lots of 9 levels from his monster special attacks. He now casts as a 19th level psion(telepath).
This might SEEM nice as for this contest he is now a 14th level character casting at 19th. But remember he is supposed to have +7 LA, so in the "real" rules he just gained 19th level casting at an ECL of 21st level. Whoopdeedoo. If he had advanced as a straight psion he would have been 14th by competition, 21st by raw and casting as only a 15th psion.
Anyway now he advances 4 more levels of Illithid Savant.
His next consumed class ability is high enough CR for him to consume font of power from a character dumb enough to max out the meta mind prestige class. This gives him infinte PP for a minute a day, not spectacular considering his already large PP pool, but nice enough to have.
His next consumed special attack is, again, the "psionic powers" of another psionic illithid (he'd eat something else with better psionic powers of the psion class if he could, but due to a shortage of higher level true psionic monsters illithid is the best there is readily available). Gaining a third tag of casting as a 9th level psion(telepath). Again it possibly doesn't do anything in its own right (though it might), but also it does not stack with his current level of psion yet, as that only happens when he gains levels of psion(telepath).
So he gains 1 more level of psion telepath, now determining his psionic powers by adding 3 nines and a 2, getting a nice enough 29th level set of psionic powers. He gains no additional PP beyond 20th, but does gain free powers known, and most importantly a big boost to manifester level.
So now at 19th level (by the contest) he casts as 29th level, nice but not spectacular, by the "real" +7 LA trash rules he is 26th level and casts as 29th, which almost sucks.
He now takes the last level of Illithid savant. He eats a nineteenth level wilder and gains their Wild Surge +6 class feature. Wild surge has NO disadvantages in its description, all its disadvantages are in fact a separate class feature he does NOT have. He applies this ability to EVERY power use he ever makes, gaining a free +6 manifester level and 6 points of free augmentation. He now essentially casts at 35th level with a small discount (though this time he gains no extra powers known).
So now as a 20th level character (by the contest) he casts as 35th, which is nice enough. Of course if you factor in LA he is actually 27th level casting as 35th, which is not exactly the most spectacular thing seen in the gaming world. If he had advanced as a straight psion he would have been 20th by competition, 27th by raw and casting as only a 21st psion.
Now for a few other minor notes.
Other than that his Int will be basically out the window, with a +6 item boost, five consectutive psionic wish equivalents available at level 15, 3 level advancements and a racial +8 his primary casting attribute is easily going to be 40 or so.
Don't forget that his Power resistance (which also functions as spell reistance) will be about 37, and that if he spends two feats he can gain a +8 penetration bonus against other characters power or spell resistances, which is nicer than the +4 a wizard buys for the same amount.
Psionics is not interfered with by armour, so he can crank his AC up without having to manifest stuff, which is nice, if unimportant. He doesn't actually need proficiency, just celestial mithril full plate, but if he DOES want or need proficiency eating a cleric with his spare early level consumed class feature would be nice, and give him 6 levels of cleric spells for free to boot.
In fact due to the wording of the class ability thing if you eat a class ability on a spell casting character you get free spells AS WELL as the class ability, so not only would he target weapons and armour prof on a cleric rather than a fighter, he may well also select characters which fill out the extra CR available on his other class ability consumes with spell casting classes, indeed after being classed as a spell caster they need only have the ability to cast spells of a certain level for the benefit to be applied to him, so one level of a spell casting class each on the meta mind and wilder along with some granted thing making spells of higher level available to them and bam, he gets more free spells. He doesn't need them, but he will take them.
He has infinite PP once a day already but if he REALLY needs even more PP he can just buy dull grey iouni stones at 25 gp per single use 1 PP of benefit. Hell he can use his free spells to qualify for craft wondrous item and make them at half price. It may seem like a dumb way to burn money, but it should be pretty easy to have more of these than he would ever need in any concievable emergency.
Most metapsionic feats have that whole annoying psionic focus thing happening, but that does still pretty much give one free use of one of them per combat, so maybe they are worth his time. He certainly takes the one that extends durations, because by means of using it outside of actual combat he can actually basically just ignore the psionic focus element of the cost.
He has skill points to burn all over the place and some reasonable class skill lists, even before the whole consume skill business. So he can do things like crank up Hide, put some points (or even totally blow a consume skill) for at least 2 points of perform(dance) then take the Cloak Dance feat from the psionic handbook. Essentially enabling an option (however much he doesn't need it) to combat hide even with the strict RC/3.5 errata nerfed hide skill functionality. And its cheaper than blowing a consumed class skill on hide in plain sight.
Its anybodies guess what having more than one "powers as an X level psion" at the same time does, especially if you then loose it later on, perhaps he has vast additional pools of XP, perhaps he has a pile of additional power known. But some things about it are definitely worth mentioning. The powers known listed for a psionic illithid are "typical" presumably meaning he can actually select other legal powers in preference, and he probably will in part, and if having the multiple 9th level psion thing has ANY effect he will use this to ensure he selects powers he does not already know.
But more importantly due to shortcuts in the way maximum powers known and number of powers known are recorded for psion advancement by jumping ahead to a 19th level caster he gains 15 new powers known in one sweep, and a maximum power level learnable of 9th, which means that all 15 could be 9th level if he wants. This doesn't matter much because as long as his max learnable is high he can use research to know any number of powers, but 15 9th level powers DOES save him 2 and a bit years of research time. AND he gets to do this again with even more known powers when he jumps to 29th level psion powers. Theres no reason he shouldn't know basically every legally available power from level 9 down to 7 or under, BEFORE the whole stupid research more known powers thing.
Anyway thats it, I could present a build with more numbers, more details and more endless explanation, but really, why bother? The rest is just window dressing thats been done before.
Feel free to dispute my interpretation of advancing psionic monsters and the wild surge disadvantages but I'm pretty confident I have it right on those.
Phonelobster's Self Proclaimed Greatest Hits Collection : (no really, they are awesome)
Here's a short little framework that's cute, but probably not worth developing any further
Huspelth: The Eater of Beauty,
Half-Fey Mindflayer Illithid Savant 10/Archmage 2
Books Used: Core + Savage Species + MM2 + Fiend Foglio, Magic of Faerun
Acquire Class Feature 1: Paladin Divine Grace Acquire Special Attack or Special Quality 1: Nymph Aura Acquire Class Feature 2: Blackguard Dark Blessing Acquire Special Attack or Special Quality 2: Sylph Spells Acquire Class Feature 3: Mystic Wanderer Glory of the Divine Acquire Feat 1: Skill Focus (spellcraft) Acquire Feat 2: Spell Focus (whatever) Acquire Feat 3: Spell Focus (something else) Acquire Feat 4: Acquire Skill1:____ Acquire Skill 2: Spellcraft 15+ Acquire Skill 3:____ Acquire Skill 4: Use Magic Device 32 or 33 (depending if Expert 15&16 are associated levels for a stone giant or not) Archmage High Arcana: Spell Power, Spell Power,
Other Feats of Note: Ability Focus: Mind Blast, Supernatural Transformation: Mind Blast, Improved Natural Armor
The questionable rules interpretation here is if the Sylph's casting spells as a Sorcerer of Slyph HD+4 carries over when possessed by a different creature type, and whether it scales with class level. It seems like it would to me, but you could argue otherwise, in which case Huspelth may need to use form changing magic and/or eat a Sylph advanced in one of those extremely rare cases beyond the normal maximum of 9 HD (at the standard advancement rate of +1 CR for +4 fey HD, he could fit a 51 HD Sylph in under the contest CR guidelines)
Why this even counts as cheese:
Huspelth gets to add his Cha x 3 to all his saves, and twice his Cha to AC, and he gets to cast spells as a 23rd level sorcerer (with a caster level of 25). It's fairly trivial to buff his Cha up to 39, and probably reasonable to assume that it goes as high as 46, so not only does he get to mind blast with a save DC of 30 to 34, he also has something like +42 to +54 to all saves, and an AC of 46 to 54 *before* counting spells or equipment (other than the mandatory Cloak of Charisma). Being Immune to Enchantments and having a pair of butterfly wings are just cutesy.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
