A few questions about optimizing UMD

[Melnir]

ATM I'm taking part to a tournament, ECL 6, only a few books allowed (PH I&II, MM I, III, IV, V, CM, CD, CW, CAdv, CAr, Dungeonscape, Miniature's handbook, BoED, BoVD, RotW, RoS, masters of the wild).
I faced a guy who used a scroll with UMD DC 32, IIRC. He said he doesn't even need to roll the dice to hit 32, so I was guessing how could he do that (I'm not surprised, I just can't think how he did it).
Let's say Cha 20 (18+2 enhancment, is there a +x Cha race with LA 0?), 9 ranks, motivate charisma and it's +19. I can think of nymph's kiss for another +2, +10 magic item (I would say +5 because he relies heavily on equip and we have only 13k). What would you do to hit that DC?

[Khedrac]

As an aside (as +31 seems surprisingly high to me too) even if he can auto-hit the DC he does have to roll - a natural one on UMD is an auto-failure with extra effects (here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/useMagicDevice.htm)).
There are a couple of class that get to "take 10" iirc though.

Edit: never mind and ignore the above - I re-read it and noticed missed the words "and you fail" - so it is not an auto fail.

[HunterOfJello]

A +32 is pretty damn high for that level. The guy could be cheating, or misunderstanding how some of the rules of the game work. How do you know that the character had +32 to UMD? Are you sure the character didn't just have the spell on his spell list?



There are some +0 LA races with a bonus to charisma. Star Elves and Spellscales both do. I'm not sure if there are any from the books you've listed.

5 Ranks in Spellcraft gives a +2 bonus to UMD on scrolls
5 Ranks in Decipher Script gives a +2 bonus to UMD on Scrolls

You get a +2 bonus if you've activated "the item in question" before. How that applies to scrolls, I'm not precisely sure.