D&D Shenanigans

[tacticslion]

Whelp. I just started a new campaign, as a player. Having used my nefarious hijinks, I managed a player character with ten (10) in each of my physical ability scores, but thirty-eight (38) in each of my mental ability scores, a slew of innate abilities that don't cost me anything to use, and no, as in zero (0) level adjustment. I'm a mage, but I start with 11 hit points, also due to rules-wrangling. I love magic so very, very much. And it. Loves. Me.

Oh, and in a related news, I constantly read anyone's mind within a 100 foot radius (unless they succeed a will DC of 28 per round), I have a constant +4 to my AC so long as I'm conscious, I only sleep 2 hours per day, I am conscious for those two hours, and have telekinetic abilities at will (which I can set on fire, also at will). I can also do an illithid-like stun-blast freely once per round. I can heal and restore myself and my companions (spell-likes) and start with a bunch of ranks in a large number of skills (though most of these are crafts, professions, and performs, there are some knowledge skills social skills, and a few other 'adventurous' ones).

The entire point of this campaign is to help one of the players will become king/queen of their own country.

So. Who wants to bet I'm assassinated on our first day out?
(if not by a frustrated GM, than by my own party?)

[TDK]

Originally Posted by tacticslion

Ridiculousness

Um.

What?

[tacticslion]

Originally Posted by TDK

Um.

What?

Cheese. Lots and lots of cheese. Rules-allowable cheese, but cheese nonetheless. Effectively, it uses a number of loopholes in the wordings of a number of templates combined with loopholes in several magical effects (and one psionic effect) that creates a first level character without level adjustment and +20 to all mental ability scores (and starts them at 18, thus the 38), plus some great spell-likes. I've actually voluntarily lost some of my at-will spell-likes just because it was so stupidly powerful (like charm and suggestion). All of which is available at first level, it's just highly unlikely that any Game Master would ever allow it. Ever. I strongly suspect I'm being set up for a slaughter, but, hey, it's cool.

Heck, I could've just gone all the way and gotten 45's, but I figure 38's more than good enough for a 54 year old young adult mortal, despite the neat symmetry of 45/54. That and I don't hate my GM, I swear.

The trade-offs are that a) my character can't really go into any kind of personal combat without getting killed, and b) can't really hurt the bad-guys much, without basically putting himself in the front lines. He can annoy the crap out of 'em, sure, but can't hurt 'em. With my physical ability scores, and the fact that I'm a first level character (despite my mental scores, spell-likes, and DC's), I can't really access anything game breaking before anyone else could, i.e. twelfth level. That's when magic just becomes silly-broken, because you've got access to sixth level spells. With this I've got good hit points per level, and acceptable saves, but real benefits are my DC's and spells per day. Basically when I do a spell, it's done (so long as it doesn't require an attack roll on my part).

Also, I've voluntarily made most of my stuff utility things. I'm a better bard than the bardiest of all bardly bards ever to bard a barding.

EDIT: to clarify, I'm not a bard. I'm a wizard. I'm just better at being a bard than a bard.

[Nikose Tyris]

Following evidence from the townsfolk, they explored the hill that seemed to be eminating a magic deficiency.
The Paladin, Wizard, Shadowcaster and Cleric go and find a door, which they get into via kicking in- or rather fail to get in with kicking in because the door is made of solid stone and locked.
Cleric knocks and ACCIDENTALLY pulls off the secret knock to get in.

Talk past the Dark Behir (advanced hitdice), kill some spellwarped gargoyles, accidentally go into secret tunnels that puts them BEHIND the illusionary walls (wrong side) so they pull off that secret automatically, stumble down stairs and find a secret temple to Shar, (Evil goddess of night) and catch three drow Traders going in for business.

They jump the drow, and the Imaskari wizard (Being our wizard) intimidates the FUCK out of them, surprisingly pulls power from the earth node that we happened to be on and murders two of them, grants mercy to their leader and made him lead them into the Temple to Shar- giving us surprise rounds on the gatehouse.
We get into the inner rooms and begin to stumble against Yugoloths (Neutral Evil Fiends). Team survives and slaughters anything that isn't an outsider.

None of us are really specced for fighting them except the paladin, so for the most part the group hangs back and casts support for him.
We fought through two special noteriety point murders in that place too. That was actually totally awesome.
They going to jump Esvele, the leader of the Sharran Clergy for the area, then move on to kill every other important warleader in the occupying army's group.

However, the group is still not figuring out how to take out the NE fiends. I'm trying to find the easiest way to tell them, "Guys, guys, dismissal, seriously."

[tacticslion]

Originally Posted by TDK

Okay, then.

PM me for some of the details, if you want 'em, but it's complicated and annoying as all get out. Also any GM that lets you do this either loves you very, very much, or hates you and plans to make you very, very miserable. I'm banking on the former, but suspecting the misery may come into play. Also, you may have to sell your soul.

Originally Posted by TDK

I played a bard. He turned out to be a warmage/wizard/ultimate magus with terrific stats. This'll be a fun campaign!

It sounds awesome. I'm really glad to see someone using the elf paragon the way it was meant to be (ab)used. One thing, if you're interested in higher caster levels, is the Practiced Spellcaster feat, from Complete Arcane. It grants you a +4 to your caster level, with a maximum caster level equal to your HD. You'd have to take it twice (to affect both classes), but it might well be worth it. It doesn't affect spells per day or spells known - only caster level (durations, range, spell resistance, etc).

Another thing, if you liked the bard-flavor, but hate the bard, there's always the beguiler from the PH2. An intelligence-based caster similar to war mage in areas, with spontaneous casting and a mostly prescribed spell-list of illusion and enchantment spells (and the advanced learning special for those two schools). It doesn't seem like much, save that they get six skills (instead of 2), that they can wear armor while they cast and phantasmal killer is, in fact, an illusion spell. While this doesn't go with your I AM DOOM INCARNATE theme, the silent and still spell feats they get for free combined with phantasmal killer makes an incredible assassin, especially with your DC's. Though this particular guy probably doesn't want to do it, as he's a nuker, the beguiler goes tremendously with a shadow adept.

Finally, there is cheese in this post. Awful, awful, dreadful cheese, of which I'm almost ashamed to post here. Click at your own risk.if you like extra power, you could go with a master specialist, or if you like cheese and don't have transmutation as a prohibited school, once you finish your ultimate magus, you might enjoy the master transmogrifist, from the complete arcane (when chosen wisely, your special forms will allow you to literally replace the planet with yoursel[f/ves], especially if you permanently mentally link each of you, creating an entire planet-sized body made up of billions of you's all of which are constantly sharing insights, skill checks, etc; if you want to rule the world, there's no better way than by being the world, right?). Another option, though it slows down his casting progression (while making him immortal, which is fun/the point) is the green star adept, though you've got to work with your GM to make sure you can complete the class before starting it. Once you finish it, simply dominate a druid, use him to make an infinitely regenerating contingency reincarnation, and enjoy growing old, dying just before you do, and gaining age bonuses without the penalties*. Arch mage is great, but you're giving up some of your very nice excess spells per day for it's stuff, unless you solely take it for the bonus feats. Lore Master might be nice for a level or three if you want Epic Spellcasting feat early (when you gain any bonus feat, it doesn't have to be one you can currently qualify for).

Unless you go for something with specific class goals like the GS Adept or the Master Transmogrifist**, I'd recommend only going to level twenty before hitting the ultimate magus really hard again, allowing both caster levels to hit epic heights.

Two other things. One: get a thought bottle. Buy it or (even better) build it yourself (so it can't be cursed); it's something that all mages, especially epic ones, need like nobody's business. Found in the Complete Arcane, it is the reason for a GM to never let any magic items ever be in any campaign ever. It requires the spells Demand and Modify Memory, a caster level of 13, and the Craft Wondrous Item feat, and costs 20,000 g, and is worth every penny plus far, far more. Build them by the dozens and hide them in planes only you can access. You can store your current XP total by paying the low, low cost of 500 XP. XP Costs will never frighten you again. Two: if you can, keep conjuration and abjuration. The spell you're looking for at sixth level (especially with your charisma) is planar binding, while abjuration is for magic circle against evil. I want to say one word to you, just one word: simulcra**.

Originally Posted by Nikose Tyris

However, the group is still not figuring out how to take out the NE fiends. I'm trying to find the easiest way to tell them, "Guys, guys, dismissal, seriously."

Nice game, and hilariously good luck! I wouldn't rely on that kind of luck to persist, however. Also, I'd say the easiest way to tell them that is to go, "Guys, guys, dismissal, seriously."

*Technically, you shouldn't have any age penalties when you reincarnate anyway, as you're placed into a young adult body, but the GS Adept is there to make sure the GM doesn't pull something nasty. With the GS Adept, your new body/race is actually grown from the Green Starmetal, which means you start and stay immortal in that form. Reincarnation is actually nothing but a boon to you, since it doesn't affect your mental ability scores, only physical ones, and only a kobold gets similar physical problems to you. And, as pun-pun proved, kobolds may be the most powerful creatures in the game.
**PM me if you'd like the details. I assure you they are all awful and dreadfully cheese, so much so that I took them down after writing it all out. Simply knowing that I know them/thought them out could cause people to hate me. Well, hate me more, anyway. Also you could PM me to request details on, what I like to call, the god-crown. All cheese-casters should gain this eventually.

EDIT: Okay, NOW you can PM me. I just noticed my box was full and I fixed it.

[TDK]

Okay then.


Anyway, I've been teaching my friend how to play DnD, and we've been playing one-on-ones to show him the ropes and whatnot. The first character he created was Todd, the bard, who he later abandoned when he realized bards suck.

So he rolled up a rogue and I accompanied him in his adventure as the bard, rearranging Todd's feats to make him a decent melee fighter. =P Later on when randomly joking around, we came to the conclusion that Todd was actually a powerful evil wizard named Toddisticus who had been smote by the gods (because he was getting too powerful) and turned into a weakling bard, his mind having been wiped.

But when, in the course of our adventure, we were brought before Pelor himself, the shock of his holy countenance weakened the block on Todd's mind, and now Todd is pissed and on a quest to regain his lost power and take revenge on the gods. Todd disguised this as a 'spiritual awakening' and tells his companion that he is going to devote his life to the church, but actually he's questing to regain his equipment, his absurdly powerful familiar (Toddisticus was about level 40), and his spellbook, and journey into the depths of hell to make a deal with Asmodeus personally so he can take the artifact his power was drained into and exact his revenge.


And just recently we've decided to play an evil campaign (partly to show my friend that they are often rather pointless and lack variety because there are less motivations for evil characters, etc and you can pretty much solve all your problems through violence without any problems.)

So I am playing Toddisticus before all of that. Starting at level 1.

Its gonna be fun.

I somehow managed to roll 3 18s for his stats (going into dex, int, and cha) and he's a gray elf (+2 dex, -2 con, -2 str, +2 int) so I've got int 20 and dex 20 and cha 18. My level progression is going to go as follows:

Warmage 1, Wizard 1, Elf Paragon 1-3, then Ultimate Magus 1-10 (Not sure where I'm going after that. Maybe archmage or something.). I'll end up with ridiculous amounts of spells per day, most of which are combat oriented as I'm going focused specialist evoker for my wizard levels, and Ultimate Magus gives +1 to a prepared AND spontaneous casting class almost every level, among other awesome benefits. I think I worked out that at level 15 I'll have the spellcasting power of a level 12 warmage AND a level 12 wizard.

Elf paragon gives +1 to wizard level at levels 2 and 3, and at level 3 gives +2 int, so my int will be 22 at 5th level, giving me even more bonus spells and insane DCs for wizard spells. And my int modifier gets added to any damage I deal with warmage spells.


This is going to be a fun campaign.

[TDK]

I've had the concept of "Smite neutral" stuck in my head for a while. So I finally decided to write out a class based on it.

http://sansrandom.com/blog/main/2010...of-choice.html


Also, fyi, pulled a random magical item off a corpse as my warmage/wizard/elf paragon/ultimate magus and it happens to be a tome of clear thought +3...XD By level 5 I'm gonna have 26 int.

[walkertexasdruid]

Some examples of Thokk logic:

Hmm, ok so we are going somewhere that we do not know where it is and we do not know how long it will take. I know, one month's rations for each of us!

We just found a magical book, and my deity just told me to use my head. I know, I will hit my head with the book!

This is what Thokk's party members have to deal with during every session.

[EVILNess]

I started a new character in the same campaign setting as my old one. My DM as I explained before is very popular and he has been running the same setting for almost 10 years now. He basically runs all of his groups and when everyone gets to the end of what he calls a "story telling cycle" he does a time skip and everyone rolls new characters. This is the sixth cycle and the 4th one I have participated in.

It sounds weird but he does it so smoothly and fairly no one has complained. He also has this system where he gives you boons for having characters participate in the previous cycle.

My reward for my previous character was a 25% "You had a character ascend to omnipotence" xp penalty. Although I am decently sure it was just for one play session as a joke as I am the only player he has had to ever get that powerful. (He is a hard-ass DM who tries to reign in PC power, in a fair way. Munchkins need not apply)

New character is a BARD wish me luck.

[TDK]

So lately I've been playing a character in a solo campaign, with a friend DMing whom I taught to play DnD fairly recently. This is just practice because he's been asked to DM a game and he hasn't DMed before.

I've had this idea for a character based around summoning swarms for a while, so I made Joe, a gnome warlock with the Summon Swarm invocation. He has ranks in Profession (Beekeeper) and only ever summons swarms of bees. Later he branched into Druid, getting a giant bee animal companion.

Part of the point in this campaign was to show him just how far off track games often get from what the DM has planned.

I won't go into what he had planned, but so far this is what happened:

My character's motivation was to get an investment as a starter fund so he could start a honey business (he made some awesome honey. I later realized, given that I could summon bees at will, I could have them collect pollen and make honey, basically making honey through sheer force of will). The king was offering 5 gp each for goblin scalps (goblins had been killing livestock), so I headed out to collect some. I killed an injured one I found (stung it to death with bees) when Chyme, god of petty creatures, appears. (This is a creation of the DM's, he's actually a pretty interesting NPC. He's a demigod.)

He scolds me for brutally killing the 'innocent' goblin and casts a geas on me that will turn me into a rabbit if I don't go on a quest for him. The quest is to go stop some gnomes from tunneling under the forest and collapsing it.

I go up to the gnome tunnel and murder the guards*, immediately turning into a rabbit. Chyme shows up and yells at me and says I can live out my days as a rabbit.

*"Have you ever considered beekeeping?" "How do I do that?" "Here, hold this hive..."

With a newfound craving for carrots, I wonder into the farm of an old wizard who had grown weary of adventuring and took up agriculture. He was about to throw me out of his garden when he recognized a spark of intelligence in my bunny eyes and proceeded to break the spell on me. But in regaining my former size, I stumbled and accidentally broke his crystal ball.

He got real mad and sent me on a quest to get a new one, threatening that he would be scrying on me, etc.

Up to this point, this was according to the DM's plan. It was at this point everything tht happened afterward completely departed from his plans. As I told him, it was good improv experience.

At this point I went to the nearest town and found a jewelry shop (where I sold some honey to the owner), where I bought a crystal door knob. I had the bottom part cut off and sanded down, leaving me with a small ball of crystal. I took it back to the wizard, but that just made him mad. =P

So I went back to the town and asked the local mage (sold him some honey too) where I might acquire a crystal ball. He says some local goblins stole a crystal ball from him. So I head off to the goblin village. The guards raise their spears as I approach, but I show them I'm not armed and offer them honey. They fucking LOVE it and start fighting over the jar, so I walk in and talk to the chief, who speaks common. Basically I trade them all the honey I have (ten jars or so) for the crystal ball. All of the goblins are completely addicted to the honey at this point.

This was actually one of few parts where I was actually SUPPOSED to engage in combat in this campaign, and I solved it peacefully.

So I took the crystal ball back to the wizard and squared everything with him. From there I went back to the starting town, where I went to town hall looking for a loan. The accountant I talked to didn't like honey, but I demonstrated how much everyone loved it and got my loan. I set up a shop in the town, and went and gathered some bee hives and set up a deal with the goblins I talked to before. They would handle the beekeeping and I would pay them in honey.

Given how good the honey was, this quickly became a successful business. It was at this point that I heard about hives of giant bees in some valley to the north.

I had recently gained my first druid level, and my giant bee animal companion, so I took to the skies on Mike the Bee and flew to where the giant bee hive supposedly was. There was an illusion over the valley, but I saw through it and found the place. There were hives of ridiculous size and tons of flowers. I went into one of the hives, using wild empathy to make sure the bees didn't think I was a threat.

The bees all seemed very frightened, and as I got deeper, I found some dwarves. Long story short, the dwarves were subjugating the bees to use the honey to make mead. I freed the captive soldier bees and took back the hives with my new army of giant bees (and a few swarms of summoned bees, and maybe an eldritch blast or two).

It was at the beginning of this rebellion that I made the best reference ever.

Joe, you see, was raised by bees (silly backstory for a silly campaign). So when all the bees divebombed and killed all the dwarf guards but one, Joe floated slowly down on Mike. He looked the last dwarf straight in the eye and said. "LET. MY. PEOPLE. GO!"

(Yes, in this story, Joe is Moses but for Bees.)

I integrated this hive, with its preposterous amounts of honey, into my store. I now basically had an unlimited amount of honey. I acquired a bag of holding, using that to ferry huge amounts of honey back and forth.

When I got back to the small hives in the goblin village, though, I found it in ruins. The goblins were so entranced with the honey they neglected to defend their village. And the honey attracted bears, who killed the goblins. The hives themselves had collapsed into the earth because of the unchecked digging of the gnomes. But it appeared that once the hives fell into the tunnel, they had killed all of the gnomes, to my satisfaction. At this point Chyme appeared again, blaming me for all this.

I used my gnome spell like ability to speak with burrowing animals to ask a nearby mole where he had seen gnomes digging. I used this information to track down all the other gnome groups in the area. I was GOING to murder them but Chyme wouldn't leave me alone so I settled it peacefully.

After all of that, I moved my small hives (the small hives produced finer honey, so I sold that at an elevated price as the Top Shelf honey, whereas the less refined giant bee honey I sold as the normal, bottom shelf honey. The former was 10 gp a jar, the latter 3.)

I had a few more adventures starting honey shops in other cities, and a few more encounters with gnomes (Joe is really starting to hate gnomes), but that's basically where we stopped. For now.


During all of this, I did not once enter melee combat. Or even direct combat, really. I only actually killed anyone with bees, either summoned swarms or giant ones.

My new goal for this character is to ascend to godhood.

Joe, God of BEES.

This is partly because I want to kick Chyme's ass.