Enworlders, help me Min/Max a character for a Contest!

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

Start the battle by casting time stop. Then, cast fly and shapechange. Fly directly over you opponent, 10 feet above him. When the time stop ends, fall on him. The fall will deal 1d6 damage to you, and 25,174,951d6 damage to your opponent.

 

[Tidus4444]

What're the fall damage calculations again? I forgot what they were, but I don't think you should be able to do that much damage to a target with just a fall... And I'm personally fond of archers, though their strength is pretty reliant on magic items, so Mord's Disjunction will ruin it. If you're going as a Fighter, consider taking a level of Wiz or Sorc and buy as many scrolls of Tenser's Transformation as you need. Taking some scrolls of Mord's Disjunction would be good too.

 

[Kraedin]

Damage from falling objects is dealt with on page 89 of the Dungeon Master's Guide. To summarize, a falling object deals 1d6 points of damage for every 200 pounds it weighs, +1d6 for every ten feet fallen, to maximum of 200 feet.

Re: playing a fighter type

It will never work. Unless you can kill on the first round in an epic level arena fight, you are dead, dead, dead. That's why initiative is so important.

 

[Arthur Tealeaf]

A 17th level paragon grey elf wizard will work well. Your total level adjustment is +11, but you get a +17 bonus to Dexterity. Take the Improved Initiative feat, and buy gloves of dexterity +6. With the starting Dexterity of 18, you'll end up with a Dexterity of 45, which gives a +17 bonus to Initiative. You now have a total Initiative bonus of +21.

Also, you should have a starting Constitution and Intelligence of 18. (Leave the rest of your ability scores at 8, the +15 from paragon will help quite a bit.)

Start the battle by casting time stop. Then, cast fly and shapechange. Fly directly over you opponent, 10 feet above him. When the time stop ends, fall on him. The fall will deal 1d6 damage to you, and 25,174,951d6 damage to your opponent.

What the heck am I supposed to shapechange into that does that much damage???

 

[Kraedin]

Whoops. I've posted this so many times, I forgot that. A 200' diameter gold sphere.

 

[LokiDR]

One of the reasons Exodus reduced the fficacy of Mordenkainen's Disjunction; in a PvP environment, it's just too powerful. Even then, you'd be ... let's see, ECL, equipment ... you'd be lucky to be much over a 23 caster level, if any over that..

1% per caster level to overcome the AMF means under a 1-in-4 chance with each spell. Even assuming you're a Sorceror, with 10th level spell slots, and you burn most of all 9th and 10th level spells ... with FOUR items giving AMF (two of them quickened) ... odds are, you'll run out of MDJ's before the above watered-down Lohtek runs out of AMFs.

With a caster level of 25 (being generous IMO), your cumulative chances of dropping a single Antimagic Field by core rules for the MDJ are roughly:

1 casting: 25%
2 castings: 44%
3 castings: 58%
4 castings: 68%
5 castings: 76%
6 castings: 82%

Now factor in, the watered down setup I suggested still has FOUR antimagic field items available -- for exactly the reason of a Disjunction.

It takes 8 castings to have a 90% cnance to drop the AMF; times four AMFs, well ... unless you get lucky, on average it'll take some 25-30 Disjunctions to be certain of facing this sort of character without the Antimagic Field going.

28th ECL isn't a problem for the caster, he has buffs and wishes so he can get the inherent bonuses directly. Bonus points if you say you are a 28th level caster and are using wishes to change your type and give yourself the template.

Your math is faulty. If one casting had a 25% chance, two casting have a 50% chance, by the basic rules of probability.

Disjuction is for winning the initive. If you lose, you fire off a MM first, see if it disapears, then fly up invisibly (persistant improved invisibility). I can wait a long time up there, and your AMF will drop eventually. A few wands of MM should keep me set for quite a while.

Notice, still hyperreliant on the (for this application) brokenly-overpowered Disjunction. There's a reason it's been barred or heavily nerfed in every Arena where it's possible to cast it. That would be the same reason I said, either an antimagic fighter, or, a spellcaster yourself -- not just 100% "crew you" dispelling of spells -- which, I must observe, is better than the EPIC dispel in the ELH -- but also, save for each bloody magic item or it's FOREVER nonmagical. And anyway ... you have the same problem dropping the AMF, as above, anyway.

On top of which, unless you're using Silent Spell ... you can't BE silent when casting a spell with a (v)erbal component. One readied action to charge later ... and you have a sorceror stuck in an antimagic field, being hacked into giblets.

Yes, disjuntion is stupidly overpowered. That's the point of this combat, isn't it?

The genasi would have to win initive, TS, and make sure his opponent died. That shouldn't be too hard, give the spells you can cast those levels.

Well, of course.

If the organisers have been smart, they've set up the arena area to make IMPOSSIBLE the first-round "run up and no hope" victory, like the cleric trick you mention above.

Now, as for the real Lohtek ... he has well more than 4 AMFs (around 20 of them), and many many many doses of poison suitable for grenadelike thrown use ...

He also had a lot more money available, as the "starting money by character level" tables were used ... 2.3Mgp is no small amount. Buys a lot of Runes of Antimagic Field, and LOTS of throwable vials of poison.

Not perfect, by no means unbeatable, but darned scary for a spellcaster (or other excessively-magic-reliant character) to face.

All they need to do is keep the card of mobility on their side, hence natural flight. 20 AMF at 2 miniutes a pop is only 40 miniutes, more than enough time for the invisible spellcaster to stay aloft, pepper ever few rounds with MM, and move so he isn't hit by projectiles. Inside the AMF, there is no way for you to defeat invisibility. Outside, I should have wands of false life to renew hitpoints (got to love the wizard cure) and an uber empowered endurance and high con to stop those annoying poisons. You can't throw a vile 90 feet up, but I can hit you with spells from there.

It doesn't sound like the planners of this contest are being inteligent, unless they like springing surprizes on the contestants. None of what I have suggested is against any of the stated rules (though at least some of it probably should be).

God, I feel dirty for just discussing this.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Your math is faulty. If one casting had a 25% chance, two casting have a 50% chance, by the basic rules of probability.

Ouch! Think before typing! Think before typing!

Basic rules of probability say 43.75%. His 44% is a reasonable rounding; your 50% shows complete ignorance of how probability works.

By your logic:

If I flip a coin, there's a 50% chance it will come up heads. Therefore, if I flip it twice, there's 100% chance one of them will be a head. So if the first flip comes up tails, I know with absolute certainty that the next flip will be heads.

That's not how it works.

The probability that my first head will be on flip number 1 is 50%.
The probability that my first head will be on flip number 2 is 25%, because it means I flipped a tail first (50%) and then a head (50%), and 50% x 50% = 25%.
The probability that my first head will be on flip number 2 (EDIT: 3, rather) is 12.5%, because it means I flipped a tail first (50%) and then a tail (50%) and then a head (50%), and 50% x 50% x 50% = 12.5%.

The chance that one scroll of Disjunction succeeds is 25%.
The chance that two scrolls of Disjunction succeed is 43.75%, because either the first works (25%); or the first fails (75%) and the second succeeds (25%), and 25% + (25% x 75%) = 43.75%.

Think before typing!

-Hyp.

 

[LokiDR]

Ouch! Think before typing! Think before typing!

Basic rules of probability say 43.75%. His 44% is a reasonable rounding; your 50% shows complete ignorance of how probability works.

By your logic:

If I flip a coin, there's a 50% chance it will come up heads. Therefore, if I flip it twice, there's 100% chance one of them will be a head. So if the first flip comes up tails, I know with absolute certainty that the next flip will be heads.

That's not how it works.

The probability that my first head will be on flip number 1 is 50%.
The probability that my first head will be on flip number 2 is 25%, because it means I flipped a tail first (50%) and then a head (50%), and 50% x 50% = 25%.
The probability that my first head will be on flip number 2 is 12.5%, because it means I flipped a tail first (50%) and then a tail (50%) and then a head (50%), and 50% x 50% x 50% = 12.5%.

The chance that one scroll of Disjunction succeeds is 25%.
The chance that two scrolls of Disjunction succeed is 43.75%, because either the first works (25%); or the first fails (75%) and the second succeeds (25%), and 25% + (25% x 75%) = 43.75%.

Think before posting!

-Hyp.

Man Hyp, here I thought we were just working out a civil way to always disagree. Why you got to be dissing me like that. I knew there was a reason I hated probability. Are we going to start doing Bernoulli’s trials and calculating Binomial distributions too?

But you are wrong too: The chance that the first flip is tails and the second is heads is 50% x 50%, or 25%. What was that about thinking before you type?

 

[Hypersmurf]

But you are wrong too: The chance that the first flip is tails and the second is heads is 50% x 50%, or 25%. What was that about thinking before you type?

[blink] But that's what I said! You even quoted it :

"The probability that my first head will be on flip number 2 is 25%, because it means I flipped a tail first (50%) and then a head (50%), and 50% x 50% = 25%."

Admittedly, on the next line there's a typo from where I cut'n'pasted without changing the "2" to a "3", but the explanation of the 12.5% clearly shows three flips.

-Hyp.

 

[LokiDR]

Admittedly, on the next line there's a typo from where I cut'n'pasted without changing the "2" to a "3", but the explanation of the 12.5% clearly shows three flips.

-Hyp.

You said

The probability that my first head will be on flip number 2 is 12.5%, because it means I flipped a tail first (50%) and then a tail (50%) and then a head (50%), and 50% x 50% x 50% = 12.5%.

which shows you weren't thinking when you typed (or cut'n'pasted) it. If I am not allowed to make mistakes, neither are you.