Little Powergaming Rules That Slip By

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

While I like the idea of the thread, it seems to me as if "little Powergaming rules" shouldn't really consist of heavy multiclassing and exotic feat and equipment combination. But maybe I misunderstood the intention (or overestimate the "exoticness" of some of the builds presented)

 

[shilsen]

While I like the idea of the thread, it seems to me as if "little Powergaming rules" shouldn't really consist of heavy multiclassing and exotic feat and equipment combination. But maybe I misunderstood the intention (or overestimate the "exoticness" of some of the builds presented)

That's what I posted earlier. When a PC is picking up the Frenzied Berserker PrC and the Leap Attack and Combat Brute feats, I'm not sure that there's a chance of the DM missing the "little" powergaming combo coming up.

 

[Stalker0]

Of course if you apply the spot modifiers even when folks aren't hiding then you get the following situation.

Mook Guard: Spot+0

Chance of spotting a normal human standing in the road 120 feet away. 50%

Chance of NOT spotting a normal human standing in the road 20 feet away. 5%

Chance of spotting the 40 foot tall Colossal Red Dragon heading down the road towards the city 370 feet away: 0%

That's why I still use the old spot check table in 3.0, it took care of all this nonsense.

 

[airwalkrr]

While I like the idea of the thread, it seems to me as if "little Powergaming rules" shouldn't really consist of heavy multiclassing and exotic feat and equipment combination. But maybe I misunderstood the intention (or overestimate the "exoticness" of some of the builds presented)

Doh! You caught me. Yea, that was a bit tongue-in-cheek there. But hey, it's fun.

 

[airwalkrr]

Is there any official ruling on whether a spellcaster knows the results of variable effects of his spell, such as the duration of time stop? It seems as though this is something the caster might know innately, though I could see it going either way.

I believe, at least in the case of time stop, it is intentional that you do not know how long it lasts. The spell is powerful enough as it is and I think DBF is one of the reasons why it is random and not fixed. Hence the maximize workaround.

 

[JonnyFive]

Depends on DM ruling.

If destroying the surface the Explosive Runes are on successfully destroys the Explosive Rune without setting it off, then potentially only one of those 2,000 Explosive Runes you set up actually hurt anyone (no loopholes to this strategy of keeping that particular abuse out, unless you give the party something that can ignore force damage pretty much completely).

Do note that the same spell overlaps, it doesn't stack, and the Explosive Runes spell targets an object, and causes particular properties on that object - the explosion; if you put two on one book, you still only get one set of damage dice (loophole: player enchants individual parchments, tied together with string, rather than spellbooks; area dispel, all unattended objects in the area are potentially effected - so you can still get 1,000 of them going off).

Make the player roll and total up those 12,000 d6's, just to see how long the other players will stand it (Loophole: after finding out about this the hard way, a player will just set up as many as he can stand - which will still probably reduce any BBEG to a smoking crater - rather than as many as he can pack in).

update for this, any spell that you have cast, in this case explosive runes, that you attept to dispell automaticaly sucseeds per the dispell spell

 

[Zamtap]

so how many partys don't have a divine caster to cast the dispel magic on the pile of parchment the mage has just thrown across the room? all it takes is timeing and holding/readying an action?

 

[Jack Simth]

update for this, any spell that you have cast, in this case explosive runes, that you attept to dispell automaticaly sucseeds per the dispell spell

Well, that's half true:

You may choose to automatically succeed on dispel checks against any spell that you have cast.

(Emphasis added)
If you can choose to do something, you can usually choose not to as well, otherwise it's not really a choice, now is it? As written, Dispell Magic does not require you to auto-succeed against your own spells; tacking that onto the list would require house rules as opposed to DM rulings (which is what the others are).... and when you get into house rules, there's an effectively infinite number of different counters.

 

[Kormydigar]

This little trick just requires a bit of equipment from core and any character can use it.
Arm up a quick moving PC with a necklace of adaptation, and a packet of Dust of Sneezing and Choking (less than 12000 gp cost total). Send the pc a little ahead of the party toward a threat ( must be living, breathing creature(s)) and have the pc use the dust in the midst of the bad guys. Wait one round for the dust to settle, and rush in the reinforcements. This will result in an almost guaranteed victory unless the party is incompetent. The cost to repeat this maneuver is only 2400 gp since the necklace is permenant.

The great thing is you can count on the enemy making all Fort saves and still lose nothing in effectiveness.

I write this for humor because Dust of S&C is soooooo broken it ain't funny.

 

[Infiniti2000]

This little trick just requires a bit of equipment from core and any character can use it.

Not any character. Only characters in a campaign where the DM lets them make and/or buy cursed items.