breaking the classes

[Somensjev]

ok, everyone on this seems obsesed with breaking the wizard, so, i was wondering; how are ways that people have broken each of the classes in the PHB?

[Neo Tin Robo]

It typically involves combing through every sourcebook you can find and combining materials whose respective authors never anticipated being used together or were not even aware they existed.

For specific examples, just search for "[insert class here] handbook."

[Fyermind]

Well, when I want to break a class in the PHB, I use a wizard.

Bards can optimize inspire courage up the wazoo to the point of giving +14 to attack and damage, +12d6 sonic, and +12d6 fire damage on all of all their allies attacks at 10th level. They can then go sublime chord and cast like a wizard from there on out.

Barbarians will probably never reach the level of broken casters do, but they deal some crazy amounts of damage. I guess that's cool.

Clerics: DMM persist.

Druids already broken. For extra power get a fleshraker companion. Cast venomfire. laugh. Lots.

Fighters. The horizon tripper was a fun build. Not broken, but functional and strong. I liked it. Breaking fighters is a lot like breaking commoners, except dragon magazine doesn't love you as much. Dungeoncrashing with knockback and a high strength score is fun if you can get above your opponent to bullrush them straight down on every attack.

Monks are kind of broken in the wrong direction. I would break a monk by taking as few levels in it as possible and then going into some casting class. Doesn't Ur-Priest has wisdom synergy or something?

Paladins are fun. There are like a hundred ACFs. Some of them let you be competent at something. Take some of them.

Rangers. I love rangers. Mystic ranger sword of the arcane order is strictly better than sorcerers for a long time. That's fun to do on a melee class. They also make some of the best archers in the game.

Rogues are a lot like barbarians except they get UMD as a class skill. Should probably have been named Abuse Magic Device.

Sorcerers are Wizards with a better paint job and no transmition. Basically any broken thing a wizard can do, a sorcerer can too, it's just that most wizards can do most of them, and any sorcerer can only do a very small number.

Wizards: apparently you know how to break these. My favored method is actually Iron Colossus. What's yours?

[Sgt. Cookie]

Human Barbarian with Blazing Beserker and Frozen Beserker (Sandstorm/Frostburn) Symbioted (Savage Species) with an ADread Blossom Swarm (MMIII), that has picked up Extra Rage, Extra Rage and Sudden Rage (Comp Adv, Not sure where Sudden Rage is from off-hand). Total ECL 2.

Vulnerability (I.e, actual HP Damage.) to two things, Trollbane and Searing Spell, while Raging and you can Rage 5 times per day. Sudden Rage allows you to rage as a Free Action, meaning you can never be surprised.

[Kristinn]

I am not knowledgeable about either the Bard or the Rogue, but breaking other classes is usually straight forward.

Grouping melee characters together, you can make a character with two levels of Barbarian for free Improved Trip and Pounce, and lots of levels in Fighter for lots of feats, spent on Spiked Chain proficiency, Combat Reflexes, Knock-Down, and the Power Attack, Leap Attack, Shock Trooper combo. Now you can charge and leap for X damage per round, where X is greater than the HP of any monster you will face. And when the remaining monsters close in you can hit them with Attacks of Opportunity, each granting you free trip attempts, each successful one granting you free melee attack.

So as long as something is on the ground and corporeal, you can kill it in under one round.

Breaking the Druid is as simple as taking the Natural Spell and Greenbound Summoning feats, Summon some Nature Allies, and whale on the poor soul who thought you were a (comparatively) harmless Fleshraking Dinosaur.

Breaking the Cleric usually is enabled through easily accessible turn attemps fueling Persistent spell with Divine Metamagic. All day full BAB, flight, Large size, and large boosts to physical ability scores is easily attainable.

Also, as the cleric gets all his class features at lvl.1, later levels consists of dipping full casting PrCs giving him insane amounts of extra class features, such as extra domains, Evasion in heavy armor and an extra pool of turn undead attemps (by trading Turn or Rebuke Undead from your cleric chassis to Destroy Undead). And our cleric can even nab quintessential arcane spells, such as Teleport, Haste and Time Stop by picking domains such as Force, Time and Travel.

Want to break the wizard at level 1? Fill your level 1 slots with Fell Drain Sonic Snaps, for no save single target negative level, and enjoy killing any one HD opponents llike you are freaking Lord Voldemort.

[Shaynythyryas]

Minor breaks :

Breaking the Hellfire Warlock by taking one level of Binder, and bind whats-is-name who can cure CON loss per round.

Breaking the Wilder by taking a 2 lvl Paladin dip, Quick Recovery, and then having insane saves against your own enervation to the point it never bothers you again.

[eggynack]

Breaking the Druid is as simple as taking the Natural Spell and Greenbound Summoning feats, Summon some Nature Allies, and whale on the poor soul who thought you were a (comparatively) harmless Fleshraking Dinosaur. being a druid.

Natural spell and all of that other stuff help bunches, but even without it you're still a full caster with a free fighter and the ability to become a bear. The bear thing isn't nearly as abusable without natural spell, but sometimes you just need to be a bear. Greenbound summoning and fleshraker dinosuars are definitely not necessary components of druid breaking, though they are also helpful. At higher levels, I tend to prefer rashemi elemental summoning over greenbound summoning. It's the feat that can make blasting actually good.

[Gwendol]

The same can be said of the cleric. You don't need DMM Persist to "break" a class that has full caster progression, knows all spells, d8 HD, medium BAB, casts in heavy armor, and gets extra powers and spells through domains.

[FleshrakerAbuse]

The rogue class can be broken more when combined with multiple dips in various prestige classes that grant sneak attack at level 1 to gain huge amounts, and then using multiple natural attacks or using thrown weapons and various abilities (dips in swordsage, etc) to gain hundreds of damage.

[cerin616]

The rogue class can be broken more when combined with multiple dips in various prestige classes that grant sneak attack at level 1 to gain huge amounts, and then using multiple natural attacks or using thrown weapons and various abilities (dips in swordsage, etc) to gain hundreds of damage.

My and a buddy made a build that dealt 26d6+20, rerolling all ones and had a reflex save of "whats a d20?"
granted it had a BAB of 7 at level 20, so umd divine power all day.plus we still had room for some more feats.

[Flickerdart]

ok, everyone on this seems obsesed with breaking the wizard, so, i was wondering; how are ways that people have broken each of the classes in the PHB?
Breaking the non-caster classes usually involves egregious multiclassing, you don't just go fighter 20 and expect to accomplish something.


My and a buddy made a build that dealt 26d6+20, rerolling all ones and had a reflex save of "whats a d20?"
granted it had a BAB of 7 at level 20, so umd divine power all day.plus we still had room for some more feats.
Spellthief 1/Wizard 1/Ardent 1/Cerebremancer 10/Unseen Seer 2/Red Wizard 5 with Psiotheurgist and Practiced Manifester. Your Circle boosts your CL to 40, then an ioun stone, talisman of Boccob, Magic Sensitive feat, and Spellgifted raise that to 44. Your ML is 16. Total CL for a Persisted Hunter's Eye is 60, giving +20d6 SA on top of your +2d6 SA and another +2d6 SA from Assassin's Stance. Next, you Shapechange into a Gloom for +13d6 SA, for a total of 37d6 dice of SA (plus 20 because Craven, of course). Oh, and your BAB is 8.

Of course, you're an 18th level wizard and 15th level ardent (more with shenanigans), so this is the least of things you could be doing, especially given that 37d6+20 is a mere 149.5 damage.

[cerin616]

Breaking the non-caster classes usually involves egregious multiclassing, you don't just go fighter 20 and expect to accomplish something.


Spellthief 1/Wizard 1/Ardent 1/Cerebremancer 10/Unseen Seer 2/Red Wizard 5 with Psiotheurgist and Practiced Manifester. Your Circle boosts your CL to 40, then an ioun stone, talisman of Boccob, Magic Sensitive feat, and Spellgifted raise that to 44. Your ML is 16. Total CL for a Persisted Hunter's Eye is 60, giving +20d6 SA on top of your +2d6 SA and another +2d6 SA from Assassin's Stance. Next, you Shapechange into a Gloom for +13d6 SA, for a total of 37d6 dice of SA (plus 20 because Craven, of course). Oh, and your BAB is 8.

Of course, you're an 18th level wizard and 15th level ardent (more with shenanigans), so this is the least of things you could be doing, especially given that 37d6+20 is a mere 149.5 damage.


hah nice. If I can get the poly into a gloom in this build (i forget the actual level progression, but all our sneak attack came from class feature or assassin stance, dont think we got to feats items or spells) I could net that up to 40d6 +20. get the feat that rerolls 1s and that's 180 average damage on a sneak attack.

[Flickerdart]

hah nice. If I can get the poly into a gloom in this build (i forget the actual level progression, but all our sneak attack came from class feature or assassin stance, dont think we got to feats items or spells) I could net that up to 40d6 +20. get the feat that rerolls 1s and that's 180 average damage on a sneak attack.
Shapechange is Personal only and Polymorph is 10HD short, so no, you can't get Gloom form without being a full caster.

[cerin616]

well thats depressing. oh well.

[Marnath]

Shapechange is Personal only and Polymorph is 10HD short, so no, you can't get Gloom form without being a full caster.

Get your party runesmith to give you a sharable shapechange token. :smallamused:

[Flickerdart]

Get your party runesmith to give you a sharable shapechange token. :smallamused:
Nope - Share Runes increases the spell level to an 11th level spell without actually being metamagic, so you can't mitigate it down.

[Turion]

Nope - Share Runes increases the spell level to an 11th level spell without actually being metamagic, so you can't mitigate it down.

An ally with Spellguard of Silverymoon, maybe?

[Flickerdart]

An ally with Spellguard of Silverymoon, maybe?
That seems like it would do the trick, though you'd need the ally to Persist the spell (difficult) or cast it on you whenever it runs out (expensive slot-wise), whereas the Red Wizard has enough spare circle levels to Persist whatever he wants.

[cerin616]

so. 40d6. now if i can get a persisted hunters and divine power....

[Flickerdart]

At this point, though, how much is coming from your build, and how much from a random guy that took so much pity on you that he build himself to cast persistent shapechange on other people?

[cerin616]

Hey, maybe that guy doesn't have the confidence to see himself as wielding a weapon and feels much better at letting some other guy stab people. Or maybe he doesn't like getting his hands dirty murdering the **** out of people.

I don't judge.

[Darrin]

An ally with Spellguard of Silverymoon, maybe?

Skull Talisman or Greater Glyph Seal would be simpler.