Iron Chef Optimization Challenge XII

[WinWin]

b-but casters are scarier. I would suggest Nightmare Spinner or Dread Witch, only 5 levels each though.

It does not matter if the submission ends a few days before halloween. It's IC 13...That merits a spooky comeptition all by itself. Even I'm inspired to wite a coherent backtory this time.

[true_shinken]

Full casters tend to be pretty boring, I think. "Oh, look, I'm doing LogicNinja's Baman with a different class. Oh, I scare people as well. Boo!"

I like Souldrinker (is that the name?) from Book of Vile Darkness. Optimizing it to the fullest is a serious challenge.

[Ozymandias9]

Yeah, I'll have to agree with OMG here. IC XIII on Halloween does sound cool, but IC XIII with a Halloween theme on Thanksgiving... not so much, no.

Actually, I'll be closing this one up and posting XIII tomorrow. If we run at about the same rate, we should be towards the end of judging around Halloween.

[ranagrande]

To celebrate Halloween, I would suggest the Scaled Horror from Savage Species.

If instead we want to celebrate Thanksgiving, I would suggest the Apostle of Peace from The Book of Exalted Deeds.

[BobVosh]

Eye of Gruumish? Can't we go with horrifying rather than scary? :D

[Zaq]

Maybe we could do True Necromancer? It's certainly horrifying on several counts, and takes a lot of skill to turn into a tasty dish... but I'm not sure how many different things can be done with it, so that's a concern.

[The Vorpal Tribble]

Also, VT, the Ardent thing is perfectly legal.
"This feat does not affect your powers known."

This is the line that I look at. If you can take this feat while taking a class like Fighter or something, come back to Ardent and take high-leveled powers as if you had never left, I think it is affecting your powers known.

It also does not say a word about anything special happening with Ardent, which it would if that feat was meant to do what everyone takes it as doing.

You could also take Precious Apprentice and Practiced Manifester and take Cerebremancer at 4th level with this interpretation.

All in all, I do not believe that was the intention of the feat, and goes against the spirit of it.

[Ozymandias9]

And, since we have 4 complete scores in from the Judges and there are not outstanding disputes, we have our winners:

In first place, with a score of 64.25: The Gilded Duke's "Ultimo Tarrasco Jr."
In second place, with a score of 60: Nerdanel's "Esha Two Bears"

A special round of congratulations to this round's winners.

As noted, this round's trophies will be delayed due to the chairman failing a save against his own ray of stupidity.

The final standings for the other contestants are as follows:

{table=head]Contestant|Build|Score
Rancor1|Dolgan Whurard|56.5
Player3|Khalanatari, Ascetic Nightmare|55.5
Amphetryon|Daken|55.5
WinWin|Xepher Lod, Harbinger of Consumption|54.75
Rancor1|Bosleigh Eddon|54.5
T.G. Oskar|Violet Rose|50.5
kestrel404|Krelb the Canny|47.5
Cadian 9th|Tanis Bloodblade|47.25
Duke of URL|Sublime Mind of War|42[/table]

Congratulations to all the contestants for a battle well fought.

In addition I would like to thank the Judges this round, especially since more than one filled in on short notice.

The next round will be up later tonight.

[Keld Denar]

"This feat does not affect your powers known."

Tell me then, what else governs when and how an Ardent learns their powers? It has to be based on ML. Practiced Spellcaster affects your ML. Think of it like IL and marital adepts. If you take 1 level of Warblade, then 18 levels of Fighter, then 1 level of Warblade, you'll have an IL of 11 and can learn a 6th level power. Ardents function similarly. If you take some Ardent levels, then some non-Ardent/non-+Manifester levels with PM, then some more Ardent or +Manifester levels, you get the higher level powers based on your ML. The phrase you quoted is for all other Manifesters (and casters in the case of Practiced Spellcaster) to clarify that it only increases your caster level, not your spellcaster level like a level of a +spellcaster class would do.

With spellcasters, you have two things. You have your caster level and your effective spellcaster level. Spellcaster level determines things like spell/day and spells known. Caster level is only used to determine things like duration, range, # of targets, # of dice, etc. You generally get +1 CL for each spellcaster level you have, plus more for certain feats, effects, and abilities. CL has no bearing on what level spells you know, only how hard your spells hit. For most psionic classes, its the exact same thing. Your effective Psion level determines how many powers known you have, and what your base PP pool amount is. ML affects how much you can augement powers by, and things like duration and how many bonus PP you get for a high caster stat. Ardents are different though. Ardents are ONLY dependant on their Manifester Level. Ardents are the exception. Thats one of the reasons why a lot of people like them...they are very dip-friendly and make great gishes. They do pay for that price in their severely limited number of powers known and low pool of available powers to learn.

[T.G. Oskar]

Ugh. Still not a complete vindication from that utter failure from last time.

Why it is that hindsight has to be annoyingly 20/20? It's so annoying that, two seconds after I posted the thread, the idea of "Carmendine Monk" came to mind. But I oddly went with Swashbuckler for no particular reason...the entry requirements for BAB were only +3, and I entered a bit late in that regard (probably was thinking of a +6 for some reason.

Psychic Warrior wasn't meant to be entry to War Mind; I used Half-Giant specifically because of Powerful Build + natural PP pool. It was mostly to take advantage of the extra feat; I could have used Fighter for that, but the net result would have been a bit terrible for multiclass penalties and half-giants already have PsyWar as a favored class, so it was a bit advantageous.

Also; should have definitely placed a bit more emphasis on Drow Scorpion Chain. A few days later, I noticed I could have used the Sandstorm feats related to Scorpions on that regard, but then again, that would have only worked with someone with a bit more feats.

But really...should have gone with Monk. The options would have been quite effective, and I would have developed even more synergy with the feats I could have had at my disposal (maybe even dabble in grapple, which meant two good things that could use a large size) and Decisive Strike + Perfect Riposte (and maybe Chain of Overwhelming Force) for a brutal third.

Again, hindsight is annoyingly 20/20. Oh well...as usual; anyone else might want to polish their judging skills while next competition comes by making an extra-official judging of an idea? It helps me improve more than just keep competing and realizing that I can't cook for anything...

[Keld Denar]

Man, I'm surprised Bosleigh didn't rank higher. I thought that was a pretty amazing build. It is kinda 2 concepts, but they weave together in fantastic fashion that creates a whole with more power than the sum of the parts. Mauling Gauntlets + stacking size on UAS is brutal...

[Cadian 9th]

A Huge CONGRATULATION! to the Winners and Competitors!

A Winner is YOU!


Ugh. Still not a complete vindication from that utter failure from last time.

Why it is that hindsight has to be annoyingly 20/20? It's so annoying that, two seconds after I posted the thread, the idea of "Carmendine Monk" came to mind. But I oddly went with Swashbuckler for no particular reason...the entry requirements for BAB were only +3, and I entered a bit late in that regard (probably was thinking of a +6 for some reason.

Psychic Warrior wasn't meant to be entry to War Mind; I used Half-Giant specifically because of Powerful Build + natural PP pool. It was mostly to take advantage of the extra feat; I could have used Fighter for that, but the net result would have been a bit terrible for multiclass penalties and half-giants already have PsyWar as a favored class, so it was a bit advantageous.

Also; should have definitely placed a bit more emphasis on Drow Scorpion Chain. A few days later, I noticed I could have used the Sandstorm feats related to Scorpions on that regard, but then again, that would have only worked with someone with a bit more feats.

But really...should have gone with Monk. The options would have been quite effective, and I would have developed even more synergy with the feats I could have had at my disposal (maybe even dabble in grapple, which meant two good things that could use a large size) and Decisive Strike + Perfect Riposte (and maybe Chain of Overwhelming Force) for a brutal third.

Again, hindsight is annoyingly 20/20. Oh well...as usual; anyone else might want to polish their judging skills while next competition comes by making an extra-official judging of an idea? It helps me improve more than just keep competing and realizing that I can't cook for anything...

Ditto, hindsight.


http://c0348292.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/droids-hindsight-starwars-motivational1.jpg


I kinda assumed that Sweeping Strike would work with Bloodstorm Blade's thunderous throw, but RAW it doesn't. Fair enough. All in all, I'll take away a lot from this competition (and be ready for the next one :smallbiggrin: )... First time I've designed a 1-20 build, and I love it. Some kinks with pre-reqs and things I've got to iron out, but mainly I forgot some of the things I pretty much always would get anyway, e.g. Practised Manifester. Next time I'll see if I can accomplish the dish with one class, the PrC and make it even more elegant. I was most pleased with my non-choppy progression, but It had some flaws.

Once more into the breach! :smallsmile:

[BobVosh]

Congrats, and I really found the winners build to be hilarious, thought that is more to do with the backstory.

[BG]

Viva la lucha!

[Nerdanel]

Wow, I got the second place with my build that was finished in a hurry and submitted two minutes before the deadline!:smallsmile:

The whole thing was done with the aid of the SRD + the Crystalkeep PDFs + Google. I had a great difficulty coming up with a prestige class to finish off the build. Horizon Walker looked unlikely on the first glimpse, but I was already grasping at straws and so found out it wasn't that bad a choice after all. (Frenzied Berserker? - Antisynergy. Bear Warrior? - Antisynergy. Elocater? - Awful prerequisites for questionable benefits and a total disjunct of flavor. And so on. In addition, the Crystalkeep PDFs gave me only the first two levels of the first two...)

I thought of Practised Manifester, but didn't have access to its text.

The nice thing about Powerful Charge is how it synergises with Expansion.

I chose Destructive Rage mostly for flavor (Esha solves problems by hitting them with his sword!) and because I was running out of time.

[The Gilded Duke]

Awesome.
Yeah, a grappling build seemed natural to go with with large size + Expansion, but it only really came together with the idea of grappling multiple creatures with the wording of sweeping strikes. Once I finally looked up what improved grab could do, the build really came together.

And then I had a bland but powerful grappler, so Lucha Libre was the obvious way to go.


Looking at the various judgings, what would have made it better was to cut out some fighter, start totemist earlier to get the soul chakra going from low levels. Completely cut out the weapon focus grapple, and get improved grapple from normal feats. With improved grab he never really needed it, but a +4 still didn't hurt. There might have been some way to make it better with other feats, but most of the usual grapple feats (Lords of Madness stuff) was humanoid only.

If I did all that though, could have made it a 19 level build, and not caused so many problems with LA.

The very early build idea was a half-giant barbarian War Mind, and I think some traces of that build remain. Actually swapped things over to totemist after going through gear options.

Also looking forward to a Halloween themed competition. Perhaps something notoriously bad... what was it, True Necromancer?