another mailman, but more literal

[limejuicepowder]

The group of people I play with call themselves optimizers, but they really aren't; not by playground standards. The other day I was telling them how a 5th level wizard could destroy the tarrasque with enough prep time, using the rather insane explosive rune combo (aside from the wish, obviously).

Anyway, that made me want to make a character that uses explosive runes as his main (and only) form of attack. Sorcerer would probably work better in this case, for spells/day. Throwing a book would be a grenade attack, but would he be able to throw a book and cast dispel magic in a single round? LETTERBOMB! (nyuck nyuck)

[erikun]

Focused Specialist Wizard should have more spells/day than the Sorcerer.

You could have your familiar fly the "letter" over to the target and spend your own action dispelling it. The roll will be very easy to accomplish (AC 10 to hit a specific square). Beyond that, a Rod of Quicken can also accomplish casting a spell and taking a standard action all in one round, at least a few times a day. I don't recall what the price on that is, though.

Note that not all DMs are going to be okay with a 600d6 attack just because of an unusual rule interpretation. "Optimizing" doesn't necessarily mean "sneaking obscure/unusual rule interpretations past a lenient DM."


And a Candle of Invocation should get you your necessary Wish spell without too much trouble.

[ericgrau]

(1) You can either settle for low damage or for semi-infinite damage, either way it isn't very playable
(2) If you want to RAW it up then you can't fail your own dispel against your own spell; you automatically pass.

The trick with explosive runes is action economy, to set up a trap, get a foe to read it and then ambush him as it blows up. This is usually much easier for DMs than PCs. But since it has no material component you can put it on anything and everything, so that could be handy for leaving behind messages and signs. Be sure to learn every language there is or prepare tongues so you can match whatever you're facing. For example you could feign parle before a fight, then when the foe picks up the message and it goes boom, you start fighting. Silent spell in case you need to language-match on the fly without being heard could be useful.

Sepia snake sigil is a similar spell that provides a save-or-lose instead. However it costs 500 gp a pop.

Other reading spells: illusory script (suggestion, 30 minutes, 50 gp), symbol of X, nystul's magic aura (helps conceal traps), phantom trap (similarly, make it look like traps are everywhere to confuse rogues), secret page (which it explicitly says can also be trapped with explosive runes or sepia snake sigil)

Misc thematic spells: arcane mark, secret page, erase, comprehend languages, magic mouth. Tongues is 1500 xp to permanency, btw. Note that comprehend languages requires touch and does not let you write, so it's not a cheap substitute.

The illusion, abjuration, conjuration, divination, enchantment and necromancy schools are essential. Which means you'd have to ban evocation and transmutation and focused specialist hurts. I'd consider sorcerer or a wizard generalist or figure out which spells you can do without when specializing. Spell compendium might have more options too.

[limejuicepowder]

Note that not all DMs are going to be okay with a 600d6 attack just because of an unusual rule interpretation. "Optimizing" doesn't necessarily mean "sneaking obscure/unusual rule interpretations past a lenient DM."



Is there really that must "unusual rule interpreting" going on? The spell is quite straight forwarded - the only thing I can think causing a problem is the voluntary failure of dispel checks.

Just to note, I'm not posting this idea as an optimized character; the reference to optimization was just "back story."

More then anything, I love the flavor - throw exploding books! But then I thought of something even better: wrap exploding rune tags around the shaft of harpoons. Throw harpoon, stick in opponent. Next round blow them to smithereens. They of course can voluntarily yank it free, but that does damage too. Explosive Runes are even abjuration (as is dispel magic!), which fits perfectly with abjurant champ. How much fun would that be?

[W3bDragon]

Is there really that must "unusual rule interpreting" going on? The spell is quite straight forwarded - the only thing I can think causing a problem is the voluntary failure of dispel checks.

Your DM might say that you cannot have more than one explosive runes cast one a single book, rather than one casting per page, in which case, the exploding books wouldn't that impressive, though probably still fun at low levels.

The spell states: "You trace these mystic runes upon a book, map, scroll, or similar object bearing written information."

A book is one object and benefits from one casting of this spell, not multiple castings. You could get around this by casting the spell on individual pieces of paper, then string them together into a book, but he could easily call shenanigans on that. Something like: "The multiple objects just became one object, and so can only benefit from the spell once."

Bottom line is, you should obviously clear this with your DM. If he agrees about how the spell works, then no fancy shenanigans are needed to make it work. If he doesn't, it ain't gonna happen.

[Randomguy]

The downside is that you have to make your ammunition every day. You also have to decide between one highly explosive letter and many less explosive letters. Also, make sure to keep them all in a bag of holding, or else you might be hit by a dispel magic and die horribly.

If you play an elf, preferably one of the +int elf races, or another race that grants proficiency with a martial weapon, you can get into abjurant champion without multiclassing at all by level 10. Make sure to finish the class: martial arcanist is useless and arcane boost is only slightly useful, but the more levels you take the more powerful your abjurant armour and swift abjuration are. The d10 hit dice and full base attack bonus don't hurt, either.

Take at least one level in the incantrix prestige class. Not for the usual reasons, but so that you effectively specialise in abjuration again, giving you 7 spells each spell level per day. (Three from any school and 4 from abjuration) The downside is you need to ban four schools, but you can still use first through third level spells from your last banned schools.

The master specialist class also fits thematically with the build.

Normally, a wizard should never ban conjuration. In your case, you might want to consider it, since you probably won't be summoning anything, and you won't be using any of the conjuration damage dealing spells. Also, if you keep illusion then you can mimic most conjuration spells with shadow conjuration, and can mimic teleport with shadow walk. As a bonus, dispelling explosive runes doesn't end invisibility.

Your banned schools would be evocation, necromancy, enchantment and either conjuration or illusion, leaving you with abjuration, divination, transmutation, and either conjuration and illusion, whichever you didn't ban.
I suggest either conjuration or illusion, whichever you choose to ban, as your banned school for incantrix, so you still have access to the lower level spells. If you banned conjuration you still get glitterdust, mage armour and web, if you banned illusion you still get invisibility, mirror image, the lower image spell, invisibility sphere, displacement, blur, the like.

I suggest you either get a wand or an eternal wand of dispel magic at minimum caster level, so that you can cast it more often without preparing it. You could also take the alternate class feature that lets you cast dispel magic spontaneously. Remember you can choose to cast spells at a lower caster level, which is how you'll detonate your runes.

Launch object is a good cantrip to prepare since you can cast it to launch a or piece of paper with explosive runes on it out to medium range. Coincidentally, that means it has the same range as dispel magic. Hooray for artillery.

Let your party members be the rune delivery system: Cast explosive runes several times on an arrow, give it to the party archer in times of need, and ready an action to dispel it when it reaches the target. Notice I didn't say when it hits the target: This way his attack doesn't even have to hit.

Remember not to use overkill: at level 5, 6d6 no save is better damage than a fireball, and two castings does 12d6 no save, which is basically a death sentence, so there's no need to cast it 20 times on the same object.

At higher levels, a spellglyph staff with explosive runes on it is a big help, since you can spend all your unused spell slots at the end of the day to make more letterbombs. And you don't need to worry about night time encounters either, since the only spell you cast in combat is dispel magic. At higher levels, a ring of wizardry 3 is also a huge bonus, for more explosives.

Don't forget that you can still use explosive runes for it's intended purpose, rather than in combat. It's also a great way to assassinate people if someone else in your party can cast animal messenger.

[Dragonsoul]

Could you tie paper to an arrow, then use Arcane archer's AOE arrow to dispel at the target?, If your could refluff it to throwing cards, you'd esentially have X-Men's Gambit....

[Randomguy]

There's no need to go arcane archer: Dispel magic is a medium ranged spell. But with launch object, you don't even need to refluff: just put the runes on the cards.

[Alefiend]

I'm not about to weigh in on the viability of this idea—other than to say the concept is cool and would be beautiful in a relatively low-op game—but it's even easier than you think to hit a square. Assuming no range penalties, you're aiming for AC 5, because the square is considered to be Medium size and has a Dex of 0, for -5 AC penalty.

[Godskook]

(2) If you want to RAW it up then you can't fail your own dispel against your own spell; you automatically pass.

AFAIK, that's only for targeted dispels. An area dispel doesn't have that language. The language for an area dispel gives you the choice to do so, but does not require it.

[ericgrau]

At the very least there's no given way to voluntarily fail. I suppose you could drop your caster level down to 5 by RAW. Meh (2) is only the TO reason. (1) is the PO reason.

[JKTrickster]

Didn't someone make the perfect homebrew class for this? I want to say Realms of Chaos did it....but then again he just does so many awesome stuff in general...

EDIT: Oh here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=210029) it is!

[Eldariel]

Yeah, you need to boost your CL to like 15 ASAP. That allows you to autofail the Dispel-check by dropping your CL to 5. I'd make a Focused Specialist -> Master Specialist Abjurer. Except this would give you Minor Esoterica as a non-CL bonus to Dispelling *facepalm* I guess that means you're better off with like Red Wizard or Spontaneous Divination -> Ultimate Magus or something similar *sigh*

[Randomguy]

There's a feat in complete arcane called arcane mastery that lets you take 10 on caster level checks. If your DM rules that dispel checks count as caster level checks, that means that you auto-fail to dispel your own spells unless you have some sort of untyped bonus, and even then you can lower your caster level voluntarily.

Sadly, I don't think it lets you take 10 on caster level checks during combat, so that's a moot point. Unless I'm wrong.

What about the erase spell? It says you need to touch a magic writing to succeed in erasing it, but it also has a range, so does that mean if you choose to cast it on a magic writing at a range it automatically fails, so the runes go off?