The Terrible Trio

[Edena_of_Neith]

It's actually a Dungeons and Dragons version of the game Knightmare Chess.
Have you ever played Knightmare Chess?

In Knightmare Chess, you use a normal chessboard and the normal chess rules. But each player holds 7 cards, and they play 1 on their moves, and these cards change the rules.
There are tons and tons of cards (I never took the time to even begin trying to memorize them all ...) that change the rules in tons and tons of ways.
There is nothing like a game of chess where the board is flipped sideways, then your opponent flips it upside down. Think *every* pawn in the 7th rank. Think 5 queens on each side running around.
The game is a blast, uproariously fun for me. (I'm no chess player, though. If I were, I'd faint at the idea of Knightmare Chess!)

Ok, how is Knightmare Chess relevant to 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons?
I'll show you:

First comes 3.0, with all new core books. Everyone is accustomed to 2nd edition, and has to relearn things.
Then comes a lot of 3.0 official supplements. These are like habitrail add-ons, much like the old 2nd edition add-ons, to 3.0.
Then comes new world settings.
And then comes a plethora of d20 products, campaign worlds, and other things. We have lots of stuff from Mongoose Publishing, Necromancer Games, and more other d20 companies than I can shake a stick at.
And then we have all the errata for 3.0.
And then we have a massive number of online products as well.

Then comes 3.5, with all new core books. And then a ton of official expansion books (enough to fill a large bookshelf.) And the d20 publishers with more products. And more errata. And more online material.

I argued that it would be difficult to create effective tactics and strategy in Knightmare Chess because you could never know exactly WHAT was going to happen. There were just too many possibilities, too many cards, too many combinations. So, you just had to play your best and hope for the best ... sorta like any Newbie was when he or she played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time.

What I am saying now is that 3.0, 3.5, d20, online stuff, errata, and all the rest have made Newbies again out of us all.
There is no way we can know all the stuff, memorize all the rules, understand all the possibilities ... short of spending thousands of dollars, reading an entire library of books, and making thousands of judgement calls on contradicting rules. And besides being impossible, it most certainly wouldn't be much fun.

So ... taking into account the philosophy I espoused above ... I just say: bring your stuff to the game, use your rules, and let's play. And hope it works. Much like Knightmare Chess.

Is it Munchkin? Certainly. But powermongering is a normal part of the game (at least, a normal part of most of the games I was ever in.) Heh ... even paladins get into the powermongering act, which always gets the paladins in trouble.

I think it is only normal, IF all the rules are allowed, that the Terrible Trio would be adopted. So yeah, 7th level cleric/wizards would be running around with Autokill spells.
Then again, a lot of campaigns seem to go only to 10th level, so most of the campaign is over by the time the characters get so strong anyways.

TPKing the party is not my idea of good DMing, even if the party is behaving totally unreasonably.
What is reasonable - if scary - is gleefully informing the players of all those TERRIBLE things out of sundry d20 products and god-knows-what products you plan to throw at them.
Players on their toes are a Good Thing. You may not be bent on TPKing the party, but they don't have to know that.

I showed, using the Terrible Trio (and then with help, the Septet Spectacular) how a mundane cleric 1 / wizard 6 could be turned into a killing machine.
I was hoping that someone could point out feats that would help the other classes to compete. The combination of keen edge and improved critical does help the fighter, for example. One does want every player to have a fair stab at the action.

So once again, I was asking if you'all could find neat feat combinations for the fighter, rogue, and bard. We know the cleric and the wizard can be made superpowerful; now, what can we do with the other classes?

I am not all knowing on feats, guys! I would like to hear from you about some really great feats for the fighter and rogue, to offset the munchkin wizard/cleric I have constructed out of monstrosity!

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

I consider my job, as a DM, to include weeding such IMO broken combinations out by disallowing them. That goes both for PC's and NPC's.

I see absolutely no reason to allow something that 99 out of 100 players would choose everytime due to its relative power.

The end result can only be a shallower game of identical character builds.

This is a serious concern indeed. You are quite right: everyone takes the powerful feats, and 95% of the rest of the book gets ignored. (I saw this happen a lot in 2nd edition.)
I really don't have a good answer to the problem, because players *do* powermonger, and they *like* having kick-butt characters who stomp on the monsters and eat them for dinner.

My best answer to it, reflects in my question above: what kind of fighter and rogue feats make for a killer fighter and/or rogue?
We don't want everyone taking Divine Metamagic and Irresistible Spell, for it leads - as you said - to shallowness (and boredom.)
We need other options that are equally good (or, equally munchkin/broken, as you would say) and which add variation to the game. Variation, even munchkin variation, is better than one concept beaten into the ground.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

The Killer Wizard Battery of Feats (KWBF)

- Divine Metamagic (original 3.0 version, or new version with Southern Magician Feat from the Forgotten Realms Setting) - purpose: to use turning attempts as a battery for autokill spells
- Irresistible Spell (original 3.0 version from the Kingdoms of Kalamar Player's Handbook) - purpose: to crush through opponent saving throw capabilities
- Spell Penetration/Greater Spell Penetration (original 3.0 versions) - purpose: to break through spell resistance
- Array Resistance (the spell) - purpose: to further break through spell resistance
- Improved Initiative - purpose: to act first
- Quicken Spell (original 3.0 and 3.5 versions, not a Swift Action) - purpose: to act first, to act instantaneously, to gain a 2nd spell castable in a round
- Reach Spell - purpose: to destroy opponents at a distance with touch spells that ignore armor and similar defenses
- Chain Spell - purpose: to destroy multiple opponents
- Spectral Hand (the spell) - purpose: to combine the abilities of Reach Spell and Chain Spell
- Quicker than the Eye (original 3.0 version, and if Partial Actions used) - purpose: to grant an extra standard action for the spellcaster, which means a 3rd spell could be cast in the round, if the opponent is caught flat-footed.

Now, how to improve on this? ...

 

[RigaMortus2]

Out of curiosity, can someone post how this feat works exactly?

Prereq: Mulan human, ability to cast 2nd level spells
Benefit: Once per day per two spellcaster levels, you can cast a divine spell as an arcane spell, or vice versa. This enables you to bypass arcane spell failure due to armor, or gain additional benefit from spells that function differently for a divine caster instead of an arcane caster, such as true seeing or magic weapon.
Spells changed with this feat are often confusing to those who haven't studied Mulan magic. Spellcasters don't have this feat suffer a -4 penalty on attempts to counterspell or dispel this spell, and they must succeed at a caster level check (DC 11 + spell level) to detect a spell with detect magic.
The actual source of the spell's power doesn't change, not does its means of preparation. You are merely weaving the strands of magic together in an unconventional way that makes the spell behave somewhat differently.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm still wondering where the revised version of the Irresistable Spell feat (+10 to save DC) that Crothian mentioned came from.

 

[RigaMortus2]

So once again, I was asking if you'all could find neat feat combinations for the fighter, rogue, and bard. We know the cleric and the wizard can be made superpowerful; now, what can we do with the other classes?

I am not all knowing on feats, guys! I would like to hear from you about some really great feats for the fighter and rogue, to offset the munchkin wizard/cleric I have constructed out of monstrosity!

Alright, since you asked.... This is currently my favorite (broken) combination because you can do some really powerful stuff at a very early character level. This is another Cleric combo, but for a straight Cleric, no multiclassing needed.

Premise: Spell level requirements for anything can be met with lower level spells heightened to the appropriate level.

Build:

Illumian (Naenhoon) Cleric 6
Feats: Heighten Spell (1), Sanctum Spell (3), Extra Slot (6)

Thats it.

So whats the trick?

That 6th level feat is Extra Spell for a 9th level spell slot

How?

Here goes:

The Illumian Runeword Naenhoon from Races of Destiny gives the character a limited version of divine metamagic, whereby they may spend turning attempts to apply metamagic. Specifically with heighten spell the illumian may spend one turning attempt per level to be heightened, but cannot increase past 9th level.

Sanctum Spell allows us to cast a spell without adjusting its slot level. If this spell is cast in a designated sanctum it functions at one level higher than normal, if cast beyond that, it functions one level lower.

So when we get to taking that level 6 feat, we select extra slot, which tells us that we may choose any spell level up to one less than the highest level spell we can cast.

What is the hightest level spell we can cast? Well if we cast in our sanctum, and use our runeword, we can actually cast a 10th level spell. Now, its actually a 3rd level spell, but it counts as a 10th level spell due to the wording on the metamagic feat Heighten Spell. (save DC is 20+casting mod and everything). By the wording of extra slot, we can select an extra 9th level spell slot, taking us to a grand total of 1 in that regard.

Now if we have 19 wisdom, we can prepare spells like miracle, gate, implosion, mass heal, energy drain. You know, the fun stuff.

 

[RigaMortus2]

There is also this build here for high level Sorcerers http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=728842

First off, I want you all to pull out your PHB2, Dragon Magic, and Complete Mage, and take a look at the spells, Celerity,Arcane Spellsurge, and Greater Arcane Fusion

Okay now. If you see what I see now, something outrageous is possible.

Take a Sorceror with the following
Sample Build
Race: Silverbrow Human

Class:Sorceror6/Incantarix10/Human Paragon 3/Whatever 1

Feat Progression
1. Repeat Spell, Twin Spell
3: Iron Will
6: Practical Metamagic: Repeat Spell,
7: Empower Spell
9: Practical Metamagic: Twin Spell
10: *Free Metamagic Feat*
12: Residual Magic
15: Arcane Thesis: Arcane Fusion
16: *Free Metamagic Feat*
18: Arcane Thesis: Greater Arcane Fusion, Arcane Thesis: Celerity

So we'd do combat somewhat as follows

Round 1:
Cast Arcane Spellsurge as a Swift Action
Casts a Twinned Repeated Greater Arcane Fusion as a Full-Round Action Changed into a Standard Action

Uses one of the Greater Arcane Fusions to Cast Limited Wish to emulate Favor of the Martyr (Spell compendium) which gives immunity to daze. Uses the 4th level slot to cast a Repeated Celerity.

Uses the Celerity to cast a Twinned Repeated Greater Arcane Fusion Keep in mind that you have another Repeated Greater Arcane Fusion that you haven't used yet.


Heck! You don't even have to win Initiative! Just cast Celerity as an immediate action whenever you want! You'd do something similar to this.

cast Celerity as an immediate action. Use the standard action from Celerity to cast a Twinned Repeated Greater Arcane Fusion (using the Metamagic specialist alternative class feature). Use the 7th level spell to cast limited wish to emulate Favor of the Martyr, and use the 4th level spell to cast another Repeated Celerity.

The biggest abuse of this is the fact that Arcane Fusion can cast spells that are swift or immediate actions. As such, Celerity which can normally be cast only once a round, can now be cast as many times as you have spells!

Consider this fun combo as well. Cast Greater Arcane Fusion to emulate Arcane Fusion, and Celerity. Have Arcane Fusion Emulate any 1st level spell and Celerity too!

So it could go like this.
1.Cast Greater Arcane Fusion, get Arcane Fusion and Celerity, which gets you 1st level spell, and two celerities
2. Use 2 celerties to cast two Greater Arcane Fusions which will end up netting 2 first level spells, and 4 celerities
3. 4 first level spells, 8 celerities,
4. So on and so forth as long as you have spells.

I don't know everyone. The silliness of this combo is simply amazing. You don't even have to twin or repeat this to make it work, although if you do, it just gets that much crazier. Some of you might argue that you can't use the spells cast by Arcane Fusion for Metamagic spells, and we can talk about it. Even then, the combo still works great! Perhaps someone wants to crunch some numbers and see just how many spells we can get off. I'm also curious as to how comparable all of this is to Synchronicity. Albeit this takes really high level slots.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

Alright, since you asked.... This is currently my favorite (broken) combination because you can do some really powerful stuff at a very early character level. This is another Cleric combo, but for a straight Cleric, no multiclassing needed.

Premise: Spell level requirements for anything can be met with lower level spells heightened to the appropriate level.

Build:

Illumian (Naenhoon) Cleric 6
Feats: Heighten Spell (1), Sanctum Spell (3), Extra Slot (6)

Thats it.

(snip)

Now if we have 19 wisdom, we can prepare spells like miracle, gate, implosion, mass heal, energy drain. You know, the fun stuff.

Holy Mackeral! So you can create a 6th level cleric, who can cast multiple 9th level spells?! WOW.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

There is also this build here for high level Sorcerers http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=728842

First off, I want you all to pull out your PHB2, Dragon Magic, and Complete Mage, and take a look at the spells, Celerity,Arcane Spellsurge, and Greater Arcane Fusion

Okay now. If you see what I see now, something outrageous is possible.

Take a Sorceror with the following

(snip)

I'm not familar with enough of these feats and rules to understand what you've done, but it sounds ghastly good.
What is Arcane Fusion? What is Celerity? What is a Silverbrow Human? And what are some of these other terms? I mean, this sounds NASTY: it sounds like this guy/girl could take my autokill wizards and eat them for breakfast!

 

[The Forsaken One]

(Hey Edena, just sayin' hi . Hows life? hope you're fine!)