Inspired by jontherev and his critiques of my first post along these lines, here is a shot for my lowest level smack down: this is a 9th level smack down using all rules of D&D systems including standard PHB and DMG as well as source books (all splat books and all D&D campaign settings). Lower level smack downs (doing 200 dmg before opponent can react) are fairly easily attainable – but this is just cool.
Slayer and his crew are on the hunt. Big bad guy is going around sacrificing children to summon the ultimate evil. Slayer has a mission – take out the opposition in the most gruesome way imaginable – rend the body to shreds.
Slayer: 9th level Human (of crane family)
Str-18 (+2 from levels) (+5 Tensor’s Transformation) = 25, Dex-10 (+5 Tensor’s Transformation) = 15, Con-10, Int-10, Wis-10, chr-18 (+4 eagle's splendor) (+4 charm domain) = 22
Rogue 1: power attack – iaijutsu (crane feat), combat reflexes
Samurai 1
Fighter 2: power attack, quickdraw, expert tactician
Paladin 3: Leadership
Ranger 1: two weapon fighting, ambidexterity, track, divine might
Samurai 1: exotic weapon: crescent knife, improved initiative
HP = 50 (+70 temporary from Tensor’s Transformation) (-20 from two uses of divine sacrifice, 10 hp each) = 100
Skills - iaijutsu focus 22 (12 ranks+6chr+4 focus on katanna), Gather Information 3, Hide 8, Intimidate 3, Move Silently 3
Equipment - katanna +1 w/focus enchantment (+4 to iaijutsu focus)-2975gp, ready-drink helm-150gp, Potion of Tensor’s Transformation 20th level (from brewmaster)-6000gp
From Slayer’s leadership feat
Morpheus (8th level sun elf – cohort) and Veritas (2nd level human paladin w/tanglefoot bag, a potion of divine sacrifice 10th (from 20th level paladin) level-500gp, and a potion of divine favor 18th level-900gp)
Morpheus
Str-10, Dex-10, Con-10, Int-18 (+2 racial bonus) (+2 from levels) = 22, Wis-10, Chr-14
Wizard 5, Incantrix 3
Feats – iron will, skill focus - spellcraft
Skills – Concentration 4, Knowledge (arcane) 14 (8 ranks +6 intelligence bonus), Spellcraft 18 (11 ranks +6 intelligence bonus +2 bonus)
1st level spells: 6 potions of true strike-300gp, 4 scrolls of magic missile (enlarged) 10th level-1000gp
2nd level spells:
3rd level spells: 3 scrolls of greater magic weapon 15th level-3375gp, 4 potions of haste
4th level spells: Eagle’s Splendor (empowered), Bull’s Strength (empowered), Bull’s Strength (empowered)
Equipment: 3 masterwork ironwood woodshaped crescent knives-3120gp, 3 scrolls of greater magic weapon 15th level-3375gp, 4 scrolls of magic missile 9th level-900gp
From Morpheus’s leadership feat
The Shining Sun: 7th level human
Str-14
Dex-10
Con-10
Int-10
Wis-18 (+1 from levels) (+3 owl’s wisdom) = 22
Chr-10
Cleric 5, Paladin 2
Feats – Silent spell
1st level spells:
2nd level spells: Cause Moderate Wounds, Bless (silenced), Silence
3rd level spells: scroll of brambles 10th level-750gp, Cause Serious Wounds, Cause Serious Wounds
Equipment: 3 scroll of brambles 10th level-2250gp, 1 scroll of etherealness 15th level (arcane)-3000gp
Tactic: Find out where the lair of the big bad enemy is located and find out when he is there. A few days ahead of time get a druid to cast iron wood on each of your woodshaped crescent knives (this is already included in cost). The day of the attack prepare at your stronghold the following (or a few hours distance from the site of the attack):
Round 1:
Morpheus – casts empowered bull strength on Veritas
Round 2:
Morpheus – casts empowered bull’s strength on The Shining Sun
Round 3:
Morpheus – casts empowered Eagle’s splendor on Slayer
Round 4:
Morpheus – casts greater magic weapon from scroll (15th level) on one of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
The Shining Sun – casts spikes from scroll (10th level) on one of the 1 of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
Round 5:
Morpheus – casts greater magic weapon from scroll (15th level) on second one of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
The Shining Sun – casts spikes from scroll (10th level) on one of the 1 of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
Round 6:
Morpheus – casts greater magic weapon from scroll (15th level) on third one of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
The Shining Sun – casts spikes from scroll (10th level) on one of the 1 of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
Once you get to within around 5 minutes distance from your enemy’s lair (normal land based speed) do the following:
Round 1:
Morpheus casts Scroll of etherealness while he holds hands with Slayer, Veritas, and The Shining Sun. (Let’s assume this spell goes off.)
Once you all spot your foes move into position: The Shining Sun moves 20 ‘ away from target on opposite side of it that Slayer is on (who is within 5’ of target), Veritas is 5’ behind Slayer putting Slayer in between the enemy and Veritas, and Morpheus is around 375’ away from the target.
Round 1:
Slayer – delays until after everyone has gone, drinks potion of haste, drinks potion of divine sacrifice (10th level)
Morpheus – drinks potion of haste
Veritas – drinks potion of haste
Round 2:
Slayer – drinks potion of divine favor, initiates divine might
The Shining Sun – drinks potion of haste, casts bless – silenced (just in case this was necessary – everyone’s been moving while 1 foot off the ground so there has been no noise made so far)
Morpheus – readies action to cancel etherealness when Slayer drinks potion
Round 3:
Slayer – drink’s potion of tensor’s transformation as etherealness spell is cancelled
The Shining Sun – readies action to throw tanglefoot bag when Slayer drinks potion
Morpheus – readies action to cancel etherealness when Slayer drinks potion
When etherealness is cancelled:
Surprise Round – everyone rolls initiative for actual combat
The Shining Sun – throws tanglefootbag at enemy from 20’ away then moves to flanking position.
Slayer – already 5’ away from the enemy – attacks with partial action from surprise round with crescent knife after drawing with quickdraw, then attacks again with haste, and again with expert tactician – all attacks of which are now flanks.
Morpheus casts MM from scroll 2x
Slayer’s stats
BAB - +8/+0
BAB bonus - +10+0 from Tensor’s Transformation 20th level
Bless - +1/+0 morale bonus
Divine Favor (from 18th level potion) - +6/+6 luck bonus
Strength - +7/+7 (+5 normal, +2 enhancement)
Greater Magic Weapon (from 15th level scroll) - +5/+5 enhancement bonus to weapon
Divine Might - +0/+6
Spikes - +2/+10 enhancement bonus to weapon (does not stack with greater magic weapon)
Sneak Attack - ---/+3.5 (1d6) dmg
Iaijutsu Focus - ---/+21 (6d6) (5d6 with average roll+1d6 from Power Attack – Iaijutsu)
Crescent Knife - ---/+2 (1d3)
Smite - +6/+3
Divine Sacrifice - +0/+17.5 (5d6) for 10 hp sacrificed
Flanking - +2/+0
Crescent knives have the nice property where every single attack actually is two attacks. That means that in fact you are rolling and resolving 6 attacks for your 3.
I will be conservative and say any ability that only effects {one attack, the first attack, or one attack roll} does not effect both attacks from the crescent knife but only one of the two (designated before the attack roll) although is up to some interpretation.
So first attack
1. First attack roll: smite giving a total of +45 to hit. You have the option of power attacking for up to +18. Against any normal opponent, it is highly doubtful that their AC will be better than 28 (don’t forget tanglefoot bag has already reduced opponents AC by 2) when caught flatfooted and unaware of your attack. Therefore let’s assume that you power attack for the full 18. That means that damage (including divine sacrifice for 10 hp) for this first attack with the first attack roll from the crescent knife, assuming an auto hit, is 99.2 including criticals (both attack and damage have accounted for the fact that GMW and spikes add the same type of bonus).
2. Second attack roll: no smite – so only +39 to hit. Again, assuming the normal opponent, even the AC of 18 (again, after the tanglefoot bag) is doubtful when caught flatfooted and unprepared. So, let’s assume again that you power attack for the full 18. That means that damage for this first attack with the second attack roll from the crescent knife, assuming an auto hit, is 78.4.
Second and third attack are exactly equivalent to the second attack roll of the first attack. Therefore total damage is 99.2+(78.4x5)= 491.2
With your +10 initiative there is a very good chance you will beat your opponent in initiative and again get to attack him while he is still flatfooted.
Now you can attack with a full attack (dropping the current CK and drawing the other two) gaining the extra attack from fighting with two weapons, the extra attack from haste, and the extra attack from expert tactician. This means a total of 12 attack rolls from the six total attacks (3 from BAB of 18 with TT, 1 from off hand, 1 from haste, 1 from ET). Let’s play it safe and say that you don’t PA so that you can hit with every attack, again, very high prob.
That means that your damage per hit will be 79.4 for the first attack with divine sacrifice and the other 11 will each do 41.5 damage each giving a total of 535.9 doing a total of…YES THAT’S RIGHT, OVER 1000 points of damage. Oh and don’t forget about Morpheus and The Shining Sun, they cast 2 MM and a cause serious wounds respectively doing another collective 53.5 damage. If they both won initiative, that’s an additional 67.5 damage (from two more MM, a cause serious wounds, and a cause moderate wounds). That means that the grand total of average damage assuming you all win initiative is 1148.1 damage.
But wait you might not be satisfied. I know most creatures in D&D would have just died but what if the opponent does have a really good AC, what if he has natural armor equivalent to hag's or a dragon's, an amulet of natural armor +5, or has bracers of defense +8 or something ridiculous like that (compared to your group’s equipment that is collectively worth less than 30000 gp total). Hey, what the hell, let's go nuts. Let's say its a great wyrm red dragon with an AC of 41 and 660 hit points. How would my 9th level fare against such a foe?
Mr. Big Bad guy is a great wyrm red dragon who not only is sacrificing young innocent children to summon the ultimate evil but also delights in burning villages. In this aberration’s thirst for blood, he has killed Slayers entire family and most of his followers. Its just the him, Morpheus, The Shining Sun, and Veritas. They seek revenge, and they are going to get it.
Well Slayer would probably die just for thinking that he could challenge him. But let's say that the circumstances were right and Morpheus was able to pull off the etherealness scroll. Blindsight is irrelevant given the etherealness scroll. The dragon’s fear effect is irrelevant because Morpheus is farther than 360’ away (he is 375’ away with his enlarged MM) and the other three all have aura of courage as paladins.
So, can we kill big bad red great wyrm? Slayer is exacting vengeance. Damn right we can. Up until this point, three things have been neglected: potions of true strike, ready-drink helm, and Veritas.
Before the surprise round Slayer would have drank one potion of true strike and then done the readying with his standard action for the TT potion. During the surprise round, after The Shining Sun autohits with the tanglefoot bag and the dragon’s AC is reduced by 2, Slayer attacks while drinking another potion of true strike as a free action. He makes sure to finish the second while he is attacking so that he will get a +20 to both of his attack rolls (again I am being conservative here applying the bonus to an attack to each attack roll despite two rolls constituting one attack). This means he can power attack for the full 18 and still autohit now that his total attack bonus is +59 (w/o smite) and the dragon’s AC is 39 (reduced by two from the tanglefoot bag). Rotating the ready drink helm is a move equivalent action and this is where Veritas comes in. Veritas, before Morpheus cancels etherealness readied an action to rotate the helm after Slayer’s first strike. So he does so with his partial action from the surprise round and then with his free partial action he. Slayer then does the same thing – drinking the two potions and doing another attack routine. The thing is Veritas still has the free partial action from haste – he used this to ready another action to rotate the helm again. Rinse and repeat.
That means that surprise round damage is the same as before (a grand total of 491). Right now the ready-drink helm is empty so no more quickened potions of true strike. Now Slayer has to attack normally doing on average the same amount of damage with each successful hit as is done normally in the first full round of combat (calculated above). This means 41.5 damage per successful attack roll with excluding the first which is at 79.4. Doing all the calculations means that avg damage for all 12 attacks equals .95x((41.5x7)+79.4)+.7(41.5x2)+.45(41.5x2) = 409. Yup, that great wyrm ate it too. That’s a total of 937 damage not including the minimum of 2 MM from Morpheus (4 if he also won initiative) and the several touch spells from The Shining Sun.
In order for this smackdown to work as written, you have to allow for the application of the two strikes for the two attack rolls for each attack from the crescent knife. This assumes both attacks do not occur perfectly simultaneously (the drinking of the true strike potions is a free action so ordering the true strike, attack, true strike, attack is not a problem). If you rule that both attacks occur exactly simultaneously, then I would argue for consistency that the true strike spell should effect both (if you even allow this broken weapon in your game). If you just rule 0 on the true strike thing, then the damage is going to be reduced by about 230. So, in the end, it doesn’t even matter. This smackdown also hinges on the functioning of the etherealness scroll which only has a certain percent chance of working – I am actually not sure how that works or where the rules are. I am confident that there is a way to tweak it to get it to work though.
As an alternative to the broken crescent knives you could instead use a katanna with the Iaijutsu master level 8 ability –one strike, two cuts. This pushes the smackdown up to 14th level (Sam2,Fighter2,Rng1,MirumotoNM1,IaijutsuMaster8) – not really that low of a level, but slightly more legitimate. This would negate the offhand attack because from what I understand about partial/full round/standard/move equivalent actions you have to actually perform a standard action that is an attack and not just an attack to get the one strike, two cuts ability. Thus you would be limited to 6 total attacks – 3 from the surprise round, and 3 from the regular round, which equates to 12 actual attack rolls. Further, because these definitely can occur non-simultaneously, there is no problem with using the true strike potion/ready-drink helm combo.
Also, at that level, the cohorts from leadership will also be higher level and consequently there is a much lower chance that the scroll of etherealness will fail, not to mention some of the items will be completely unnecessary in that you won’t have to have potions but can have permanent effect items or charged items.
I think I will say it - GOOD NIGHT.
Slayer and his crew are on the hunt. Big bad guy is going around sacrificing children to summon the ultimate evil. Slayer has a mission – take out the opposition in the most gruesome way imaginable – rend the body to shreds.
Slayer: 9th level Human (of crane family)
Str-18 (+2 from levels) (+5 Tensor’s Transformation) = 25, Dex-10 (+5 Tensor’s Transformation) = 15, Con-10, Int-10, Wis-10, chr-18 (+4 eagle's splendor) (+4 charm domain) = 22
Rogue 1: power attack – iaijutsu (crane feat), combat reflexes
Samurai 1
Fighter 2: power attack, quickdraw, expert tactician
Paladin 3: Leadership
Ranger 1: two weapon fighting, ambidexterity, track, divine might
Samurai 1: exotic weapon: crescent knife, improved initiative
HP = 50 (+70 temporary from Tensor’s Transformation) (-20 from two uses of divine sacrifice, 10 hp each) = 100
Skills - iaijutsu focus 22 (12 ranks+6chr+4 focus on katanna), Gather Information 3, Hide 8, Intimidate 3, Move Silently 3
Equipment - katanna +1 w/focus enchantment (+4 to iaijutsu focus)-2975gp, ready-drink helm-150gp, Potion of Tensor’s Transformation 20th level (from brewmaster)-6000gp
From Slayer’s leadership feat
Morpheus (8th level sun elf – cohort) and Veritas (2nd level human paladin w/tanglefoot bag, a potion of divine sacrifice 10th (from 20th level paladin) level-500gp, and a potion of divine favor 18th level-900gp)
Morpheus
Str-10, Dex-10, Con-10, Int-18 (+2 racial bonus) (+2 from levels) = 22, Wis-10, Chr-14
Wizard 5, Incantrix 3
Feats – iron will, skill focus - spellcraft
Skills – Concentration 4, Knowledge (arcane) 14 (8 ranks +6 intelligence bonus), Spellcraft 18 (11 ranks +6 intelligence bonus +2 bonus)
1st level spells: 6 potions of true strike-300gp, 4 scrolls of magic missile (enlarged) 10th level-1000gp
2nd level spells:
3rd level spells: 3 scrolls of greater magic weapon 15th level-3375gp, 4 potions of haste
4th level spells: Eagle’s Splendor (empowered), Bull’s Strength (empowered), Bull’s Strength (empowered)
Equipment: 3 masterwork ironwood woodshaped crescent knives-3120gp, 3 scrolls of greater magic weapon 15th level-3375gp, 4 scrolls of magic missile 9th level-900gp
From Morpheus’s leadership feat
The Shining Sun: 7th level human
Str-14
Dex-10
Con-10
Int-10
Wis-18 (+1 from levels) (+3 owl’s wisdom) = 22
Chr-10
Cleric 5, Paladin 2
Feats – Silent spell
1st level spells:
2nd level spells: Cause Moderate Wounds, Bless (silenced), Silence
3rd level spells: scroll of brambles 10th level-750gp, Cause Serious Wounds, Cause Serious Wounds
Equipment: 3 scroll of brambles 10th level-2250gp, 1 scroll of etherealness 15th level (arcane)-3000gp
Tactic: Find out where the lair of the big bad enemy is located and find out when he is there. A few days ahead of time get a druid to cast iron wood on each of your woodshaped crescent knives (this is already included in cost). The day of the attack prepare at your stronghold the following (or a few hours distance from the site of the attack):
Round 1:
Morpheus – casts empowered bull strength on Veritas
Round 2:
Morpheus – casts empowered bull’s strength on The Shining Sun
Round 3:
Morpheus – casts empowered Eagle’s splendor on Slayer
Round 4:
Morpheus – casts greater magic weapon from scroll (15th level) on one of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
The Shining Sun – casts spikes from scroll (10th level) on one of the 1 of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
Round 5:
Morpheus – casts greater magic weapon from scroll (15th level) on second one of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
The Shining Sun – casts spikes from scroll (10th level) on one of the 1 of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
Round 6:
Morpheus – casts greater magic weapon from scroll (15th level) on third one of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
The Shining Sun – casts spikes from scroll (10th level) on one of the 1 of the mw, woodshaped, ironwood crescent knives
Once you get to within around 5 minutes distance from your enemy’s lair (normal land based speed) do the following:
Round 1:
Morpheus casts Scroll of etherealness while he holds hands with Slayer, Veritas, and The Shining Sun. (Let’s assume this spell goes off.)
Once you all spot your foes move into position: The Shining Sun moves 20 ‘ away from target on opposite side of it that Slayer is on (who is within 5’ of target), Veritas is 5’ behind Slayer putting Slayer in between the enemy and Veritas, and Morpheus is around 375’ away from the target.
Round 1:
Slayer – delays until after everyone has gone, drinks potion of haste, drinks potion of divine sacrifice (10th level)
Morpheus – drinks potion of haste
Veritas – drinks potion of haste
Round 2:
Slayer – drinks potion of divine favor, initiates divine might
The Shining Sun – drinks potion of haste, casts bless – silenced (just in case this was necessary – everyone’s been moving while 1 foot off the ground so there has been no noise made so far)
Morpheus – readies action to cancel etherealness when Slayer drinks potion
Round 3:
Slayer – drink’s potion of tensor’s transformation as etherealness spell is cancelled
The Shining Sun – readies action to throw tanglefoot bag when Slayer drinks potion
Morpheus – readies action to cancel etherealness when Slayer drinks potion
When etherealness is cancelled:
Surprise Round – everyone rolls initiative for actual combat
The Shining Sun – throws tanglefootbag at enemy from 20’ away then moves to flanking position.
Slayer – already 5’ away from the enemy – attacks with partial action from surprise round with crescent knife after drawing with quickdraw, then attacks again with haste, and again with expert tactician – all attacks of which are now flanks.
Morpheus casts MM from scroll 2x
Slayer’s stats
BAB - +8/+0
BAB bonus - +10+0 from Tensor’s Transformation 20th level
Bless - +1/+0 morale bonus
Divine Favor (from 18th level potion) - +6/+6 luck bonus
Strength - +7/+7 (+5 normal, +2 enhancement)
Greater Magic Weapon (from 15th level scroll) - +5/+5 enhancement bonus to weapon
Divine Might - +0/+6
Spikes - +2/+10 enhancement bonus to weapon (does not stack with greater magic weapon)
Sneak Attack - ---/+3.5 (1d6) dmg
Iaijutsu Focus - ---/+21 (6d6) (5d6 with average roll+1d6 from Power Attack – Iaijutsu)
Crescent Knife - ---/+2 (1d3)
Smite - +6/+3
Divine Sacrifice - +0/+17.5 (5d6) for 10 hp sacrificed
Flanking - +2/+0
Crescent knives have the nice property where every single attack actually is two attacks. That means that in fact you are rolling and resolving 6 attacks for your 3.
I will be conservative and say any ability that only effects {one attack, the first attack, or one attack roll} does not effect both attacks from the crescent knife but only one of the two (designated before the attack roll) although is up to some interpretation.
So first attack
1. First attack roll: smite giving a total of +45 to hit. You have the option of power attacking for up to +18. Against any normal opponent, it is highly doubtful that their AC will be better than 28 (don’t forget tanglefoot bag has already reduced opponents AC by 2) when caught flatfooted and unaware of your attack. Therefore let’s assume that you power attack for the full 18. That means that damage (including divine sacrifice for 10 hp) for this first attack with the first attack roll from the crescent knife, assuming an auto hit, is 99.2 including criticals (both attack and damage have accounted for the fact that GMW and spikes add the same type of bonus).
2. Second attack roll: no smite – so only +39 to hit. Again, assuming the normal opponent, even the AC of 18 (again, after the tanglefoot bag) is doubtful when caught flatfooted and unprepared. So, let’s assume again that you power attack for the full 18. That means that damage for this first attack with the second attack roll from the crescent knife, assuming an auto hit, is 78.4.
Second and third attack are exactly equivalent to the second attack roll of the first attack. Therefore total damage is 99.2+(78.4x5)= 491.2
With your +10 initiative there is a very good chance you will beat your opponent in initiative and again get to attack him while he is still flatfooted.
Now you can attack with a full attack (dropping the current CK and drawing the other two) gaining the extra attack from fighting with two weapons, the extra attack from haste, and the extra attack from expert tactician. This means a total of 12 attack rolls from the six total attacks (3 from BAB of 18 with TT, 1 from off hand, 1 from haste, 1 from ET). Let’s play it safe and say that you don’t PA so that you can hit with every attack, again, very high prob.
That means that your damage per hit will be 79.4 for the first attack with divine sacrifice and the other 11 will each do 41.5 damage each giving a total of 535.9 doing a total of…YES THAT’S RIGHT, OVER 1000 points of damage. Oh and don’t forget about Morpheus and The Shining Sun, they cast 2 MM and a cause serious wounds respectively doing another collective 53.5 damage. If they both won initiative, that’s an additional 67.5 damage (from two more MM, a cause serious wounds, and a cause moderate wounds). That means that the grand total of average damage assuming you all win initiative is 1148.1 damage.
But wait you might not be satisfied. I know most creatures in D&D would have just died but what if the opponent does have a really good AC, what if he has natural armor equivalent to hag's or a dragon's, an amulet of natural armor +5, or has bracers of defense +8 or something ridiculous like that (compared to your group’s equipment that is collectively worth less than 30000 gp total). Hey, what the hell, let's go nuts. Let's say its a great wyrm red dragon with an AC of 41 and 660 hit points. How would my 9th level fare against such a foe?
Mr. Big Bad guy is a great wyrm red dragon who not only is sacrificing young innocent children to summon the ultimate evil but also delights in burning villages. In this aberration’s thirst for blood, he has killed Slayers entire family and most of his followers. Its just the him, Morpheus, The Shining Sun, and Veritas. They seek revenge, and they are going to get it.
Well Slayer would probably die just for thinking that he could challenge him. But let's say that the circumstances were right and Morpheus was able to pull off the etherealness scroll. Blindsight is irrelevant given the etherealness scroll. The dragon’s fear effect is irrelevant because Morpheus is farther than 360’ away (he is 375’ away with his enlarged MM) and the other three all have aura of courage as paladins.
So, can we kill big bad red great wyrm? Slayer is exacting vengeance. Damn right we can. Up until this point, three things have been neglected: potions of true strike, ready-drink helm, and Veritas.
Before the surprise round Slayer would have drank one potion of true strike and then done the readying with his standard action for the TT potion. During the surprise round, after The Shining Sun autohits with the tanglefoot bag and the dragon’s AC is reduced by 2, Slayer attacks while drinking another potion of true strike as a free action. He makes sure to finish the second while he is attacking so that he will get a +20 to both of his attack rolls (again I am being conservative here applying the bonus to an attack to each attack roll despite two rolls constituting one attack). This means he can power attack for the full 18 and still autohit now that his total attack bonus is +59 (w/o smite) and the dragon’s AC is 39 (reduced by two from the tanglefoot bag). Rotating the ready drink helm is a move equivalent action and this is where Veritas comes in. Veritas, before Morpheus cancels etherealness readied an action to rotate the helm after Slayer’s first strike. So he does so with his partial action from the surprise round and then with his free partial action he. Slayer then does the same thing – drinking the two potions and doing another attack routine. The thing is Veritas still has the free partial action from haste – he used this to ready another action to rotate the helm again. Rinse and repeat.
That means that surprise round damage is the same as before (a grand total of 491). Right now the ready-drink helm is empty so no more quickened potions of true strike. Now Slayer has to attack normally doing on average the same amount of damage with each successful hit as is done normally in the first full round of combat (calculated above). This means 41.5 damage per successful attack roll with excluding the first which is at 79.4. Doing all the calculations means that avg damage for all 12 attacks equals .95x((41.5x7)+79.4)+.7(41.5x2)+.45(41.5x2) = 409. Yup, that great wyrm ate it too. That’s a total of 937 damage not including the minimum of 2 MM from Morpheus (4 if he also won initiative) and the several touch spells from The Shining Sun.
In order for this smackdown to work as written, you have to allow for the application of the two strikes for the two attack rolls for each attack from the crescent knife. This assumes both attacks do not occur perfectly simultaneously (the drinking of the true strike potions is a free action so ordering the true strike, attack, true strike, attack is not a problem). If you rule that both attacks occur exactly simultaneously, then I would argue for consistency that the true strike spell should effect both (if you even allow this broken weapon in your game). If you just rule 0 on the true strike thing, then the damage is going to be reduced by about 230. So, in the end, it doesn’t even matter. This smackdown also hinges on the functioning of the etherealness scroll which only has a certain percent chance of working – I am actually not sure how that works or where the rules are. I am confident that there is a way to tweak it to get it to work though.
As an alternative to the broken crescent knives you could instead use a katanna with the Iaijutsu master level 8 ability –one strike, two cuts. This pushes the smackdown up to 14th level (Sam2,Fighter2,Rng1,MirumotoNM1,IaijutsuMaster8) – not really that low of a level, but slightly more legitimate. This would negate the offhand attack because from what I understand about partial/full round/standard/move equivalent actions you have to actually perform a standard action that is an attack and not just an attack to get the one strike, two cuts ability. Thus you would be limited to 6 total attacks – 3 from the surprise round, and 3 from the regular round, which equates to 12 actual attack rolls. Further, because these definitely can occur non-simultaneously, there is no problem with using the true strike potion/ready-drink helm combo.
Also, at that level, the cohorts from leadership will also be higher level and consequently there is a much lower chance that the scroll of etherealness will fail, not to mention some of the items will be completely unnecessary in that you won’t have to have potions but can have permanent effect items or charged items.
I think I will say it - GOOD NIGHT.
