Haztaratain Early Entry?

[Tibbaerrohwen]

Though I've never gotten the chance to play it, I keep finding myself drawn to the Haztaratain. It may not be an optimal PrC, but I love the flavour and potential for fun. With this in mind, I have a questions:

When is the earliest I can get in?

OR

What would be the quickest way to gain entry?

Thanks.

[VGLordR2]

Take a look through The Prerequisite and Early Entry Handbook (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=7061.0). It covers just about all of the known early entry tricks. I don't know what it takes to get into Haztaratain, but the handbook can probably give a lot of good advice.

[Tibbaerrohwen]

Take a look through The Prerequisite and Early Entry Handbook (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=7061.0). It covers just about all of the known early entry tricks. I don't know what it takes to get into Haztaratain, but the handbook can probably give a lot of good advice.

Though it is cool, it doesn't help with specifics.

Just for clairification:

Haztaratain Pre-Reqs:

Feats: Altitude Adaptation, Stunning Fist
Special: Flurry of Blows
Manifest/Spellcasting: cast expeditious retreat, jump or longstrider and levitate or spider climb, or manifest skate or stone mind and earth walk or psionic levitate

[animewatcha]

If concentration ranks weren't there, your DM doesn't mind 'swift, exped' instead of the normal one, and the mumbo jumbo entry crap. You could actually enter with monk 1/duskblade 1.

don't forget the to do cross class in Knowledge nature and survival and you can't be an Inspired race.

-edit- Had to look at the cast/manifesting a few times due to poor wording. See if you can be Primordial half-ogre ( template or race ) for manifest levitate at will. See if you can combine that with the monk 1/duskblade 1 thing ( pick something for concentrate ). If the con ranks weren't required, you could enter at ECL 3.

[Mithril Leaf]

With a wizard 1/monk 1 taking precocious apprentice you can qualify sans skill ranks, which you failed to mention.

[animewatcha]

Forgive me for thinking duskblade at first.

[eggs]

The 8 Concentration ranks make it a pretty clear level 6 entry.

EDIT: As far as what entry you'd want, I'd go with Monk 2/Warblade 2/Cleric 1 - Cleric's a good dip, and if you intersperse Warblade levels with Haztaratain, you might keep a passable melee build.

EDIT2: For early entry, Bloodlines could shave a level, but they don't exactly work intuitively.

Or with a stupid trick involving a Bard playing an optimized Inspire Greatness the moment you hit level 2, you could qualify by ECL3. But I seriously wouldn't call that reasonable.

[Mithril Leaf]

The 8 Concentration ranks make it a pretty clear level 6 entry.

EDIT: As far as what entry you'd want, I'd go with Monk 2/Warblade 2/Cleric 1 - Cleric's a good dip, and if you intersperse Warblade levels with Haztaratain, you might keep a passable melee build.

EDIT2: For early entry, Bloodlines could shave a level, but they don't exactly work intuitively.

Or with a stupid trick involving a Bard playing an optimized Inspire Greatness the moment you hit level 2, you could qualify by ECL3. But I seriously wouldn't call that reasonable.

How do you propose you pick up Expeditious Retreat with a cleric? Other then that I'd agree. Wizard is probably a better method then cleric, seeing as you can pick up all the spells you need with but a single feat and one level.

[eggs]

How do you propose you pick up Expeditious Retreat with a cleric? Other then that I'd agree. Wizard is probably a better method then cleric, seeing as you can pick up all the spells you need with but a single feat and one level.
Travel domain's one of the better choices anyway. Celerity's not bad either.

...Bleh. Spider Climb and Levitate are harder. I think Spider domain can still get the Cleric in before the Wizard, but it's not one of the top-shelf picks.

[Tibbaerrohwen]

The 8 Concentration ranks make it a pretty clear level 6 entry.

EDIT: As far as what entry you'd want, I'd go with Monk 2/Warblade 2/Cleric 1 - Cleric's a good dip, and if you intersperse Warblade levels with Haztaratain, you might keep a passable melee build.

EDIT2: For early entry, Bloodlines could shave a level, but they don't exactly work intuitively.

Or with a stupid trick involving a Bard playing an optimized Inspire Greatness the moment you hit level 2, you could qualify by ECL3. But I seriously wouldn't call that reasonable.

Though I'd probably never do it, now I'm exceedingly curious about how you'd do this by ECL 3 with a bard. Could you walk me through it?

[Draz74]

Though I'd probably never do it, now I'm exceedingly curious about how you'd do this by ECL 3 with a bard. Could you walk me through it?

It's one of the standard extra-cheesy ways to enter PrCs early, along with the Dusk Giant. Note that the character in question isn't a Bard; he's getting helped by a (higher-level) Bard.

Inspire Greatness gives its recipient a temporary boost in Hit Dice. Since it's from Core, the authors didn't think to specify what ways these actually get treated like Hit Dice and what ways they don't. So they act like real Hit Dice in every way.

That means that if you happen to level up while someone is Inspiring Greatness in you, your maximum ranks in a skill are temporarily boosted to your new Hit Dice +3. So if you assign your new skill points before the music wears off, you're left with higher skill ranks than a character of your level is normally allowed to have. By RAW.

[Tibbaerrohwen]

It's one of the standard extra-cheesy ways to enter PrCs early, along with the Dusk Giant. Note that the character in question isn't a Bard; he's getting helped by a (higher-level) Bard.

Inspire Greatness gives its recipient a temporary boost in Hit Dice. Since it's from Core, the authors didn't think to specify what ways these actually get treated like Hit Dice and what ways they don't. So they act like real Hit Dice in every way.

That means that if you happen to level up while someone is Inspiring Greatness in you, your maximum ranks in a skill are temporarily boosted to your new Hit Dice +3. So if you assign your new skill points before the music wears off, you're left with higher skill ranks than a character of your level is normally allowed to have. By RAW.

Oh wow, that's bad. I'd never heard of it before. Then again, I've never heard of the Dusk Giant trick.

[Zaq]

It's one of the standard extra-cheesy ways to enter PrCs early, along with the Dusk Giant. Note that the character in question isn't a Bard; he's getting helped by a (higher-level) Bard.

Inspire Greatness gives its recipient a temporary boost in Hit Dice. Since it's from Core, the authors didn't think to specify what ways these actually get treated like Hit Dice and what ways they don't. So they act like real Hit Dice in every way.

That means that if you happen to level up while someone is Inspiring Greatness in you, your maximum ranks in a skill are temporarily boosted to your new Hit Dice +3. So if you assign your new skill points before the music wears off, you're left with higher skill ranks than a character of your level is normally allowed to have. By RAW.

As I understand it, "leveling up" isn't really a tightly defined process in terms of when it happens, which makes ensuring that your Greatness is being Inspired at the proper time rather difficult. However, this is easily solved with a simple Psychic Reformation while being Greatly Inspired.

[Tibbaerrohwen]

As I understand it, "leveling up" isn't really a tightly defined process in terms of when it happens, which makes ensuring that your Greatness is being Inspired at the proper time rather difficult. However, this is easily solved with a simple Psychic Reformation while being Greatly Inspired.

I love learning new ways to bring character concepts to life, and sometimes that requires a little cheese on the side to make sure they can keep up with other players' optimized builds, but where do you guys come up with this stuff? Is there a summer camp I haven't heard about?

[Draz74]

I love learning new ways to bring character concepts to life, and sometimes that requires a little cheese on the side to make sure they can keep up with other players' optimized builds, but where do you guys come up with this stuff? Is there a summer camp I haven't heard about?

Most of the crazy Theoretical Optimization tricks have been around for a while, and originated on the old WotC "Character Optimization" forum (back before 4e existed). I think if any new ones show up nowadays, they're most likely to appear on the brilliantgameologists forums.

[NeedsAnswersNao]

This boards used to have some optimizers (mainly from minmaxboards.com) but they've mostly been banned.

Anyways: that PrC is rough. The psionic route seems easier. The handbook covers all prereq's except those in setting-specific PrCs... which SoS is.

If enough people want, perhaps someone could PM PBMC over at minmax to get the setting-specific prereqs (and magazines?) too!