Earliest entry into Chameleon?

[Black_Zawisza]

How quickly can a Changeling Rogue (though you can use other races and base classes, if necessary) get into the Chameleon prestige class? Any and all cheese is welcome.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

Race: Human or Doppelganger.
Skills: Bluff 8 ranks, Disguise 8 ranks, Sense Motive 4 ranks, Spellcraft 4 ranks.
Feat: Able Learner* feat.
Hit Die: d8

[Aegis013]

Any and all cheese is welcome.


Pun-Pun at level 1? Probably not the answer you're looking for.

It looks like 6th level would be the first of Chameleon. Maybe some Item Familiar cheese can get you in earlier? Though those aren't actual ranks, so probably not.

[darkbuu_1]

I'm sure there are other ways but the most common tend to be rogue or factotum 5.

Edit: Or if you're being cheesy have a bard inspire greatness on you while someone psychic reformations you at level 3.

[Jeff the Green]

As far as I know, there is exactly one way to get around skill rank prerequisites. The feat Primary Contact (Cityscape) gives you an extra rank in a skill associated with the organization you belong to, even if it would put you over the cap. You can only take the feat once, though, and it doesn't seem like it actually removes the 3+Level cap, just overrides it.

So yes, the earliest would be Rogue 5/Chameleon 1.

I was wrong; see below.

[ILM]

It is extremely difficult to exceed the normal HD+3 limit on skills, so your most likely bet is going to be Changeling Rogue 5. The Early Entry handbook seems to suggest that becoming an Illithid Savant or taking a major Bloodline might do the trick (but I don't know if it's possible to be an Illithid Savant before level 5). Finally, a Bard using Inspire Greatness can give you 2 extra HD, and by RAW it should also give you some skills (and increase your max ranks accordingly), but you'd need a level 9 Bard singing continuously. Since you said any and all cheese is welcome, you might as well write in your backstory that you apprenticed with a famous undead traveling minstrel, which would let you get in Chameleon after 3 levels of Rogue (you'd have to travel with him until you actually hit level 5 though, or lose the prereqs).

[Jeff the Green]

Oh, yes. Bloodlines. One of those bits of D&D I prefer to imagine do not exist.

To explain, bloodlines (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/bloodlines.htm) work sort of like becoming a necropolitan. You pay XP for a "level" (= the amount to reach your next real level) but your ECL doesn't increase, nor does your HD. Your CL and maximum skill ranks, on the other hand, do. So if the rest of your party were starting at level 3 (3000 XP), you could start at level 1 (0 XP) with three levels of bloodline (since you need 1000 XP to go from level 1 to level 2). Your max skill ranks would be 7 (1 higher than your party), if you were a caster your CL would be 7, you'd have a bunch of nifty abilities, and since you're a lower level you'd gain more experience than your party so eventually you'd catch up.

So the earliest would be Rogue 1/Chameleon 1, but there are some caveats to that. You'd need at least two bloodlines of which you take four bloodline levels, and for each of those you'd need 1000 XP. (You could instead get 5 or 6 HD from a level 9 bard with Song of the Heart and Words of Creation singing Inspire Greatness, but that kind of requires DM fiat.)

You also need a casting of Psychic Reformation (which is 530 GP) to swap around those skill points.

[hex0]

Unfortunatly you can only take the primary contact feat once. Also the feat sucks.

[Venger]

Unfortunatly you can only take the primary contact feat once. Also the feat sucks.

plus you can't legally retrain it, since it would make your entry into chameleon retroactively illegal.

5 is an awkward, ugly number of rogue levels anyway. if you want changeling rogue, that's well and good, social intuition can't be beat, but might I suggest rogue 2/factotum 3 instead? unless you really care about uncanny dodge for some reason, rog5 offers nothing over rog2 (it's not like you care about SA, or you wouldn't be going chameleon) plus this way, you get your int (obviously your primary stat with a rogue chameleon) to all str/dex based skills and checks (like grapple and initiative, which are normally very hard to boost)

more importantly, you get all skills as class skills forever thanks to the able learner that you're forced to take via chameleon. the changeling rogue's class list is nice and all, but a few ranks in lucid dreaming (or iaijutsu focus, control body, etc) never hurt anyone.

[Answerer]

plus you can't legally retrain it, since it would make your entry into chameleon retroactively illegal.
Plenty of other ways of getting rid of it, though. DCFS, Psychic Reformation, etc.

[Talionis]

Bloodlines are a lot like Gestalt characters, they throw off everything if all characters aren't playing by the same rule. Which is sad.