Eldariel
2013-11-14, 05:57 AM
So in some thread I promised I'd post a Cleric Charger here when I get around doing it as a proof of concept of DMM: Persist Clerics as main warriors and specifically a charger (since most haven't seen one). Specifically, how they can indeed match Fighters/Barbarians in mid levels in their specialty while still being Clerics. Originally I intended for a level 10 character with +100 to hit and enough damage to take down a Hecatoncheires (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/abomination.htm#hecatoncheires) in one round, but that character used Persistent Consumptive Field.
All was well until I realized the Strength-bonus is uncapped so simply persisting Consumptive Field and summoning e.g. Bat Swarm and blowing it up would give you upwards to +10000 Strength, so it fell under my "don't abuse stupid big bonuses"-clause (this also meant I'd stay away from taint, loops & al.).
As such, I instead set out to one-shot a Hecatoncheires on a level 11 Cleric without using Consumptive Field & its ilk, and tossed together the following:
Human 11 (Cloistered Cleric 3/Church Inquisitor 4/Ruathar 3/Contemplative 1)
Cloistered Cleric 1: Extend Spell (Planning), Persistent Spell, DMM: Persistent Spell, Ocular Spell [Flaw], Battle Jump [Flaw]; Domains: Spell (Spontaneous Domain Casting), Planning, Knowledge
Cloistered Cleric 2:
Cloistered Cleric 3: Southern Magician [Races of Faerun]
Church Inquisitor 1: Trade Inquisition-domain for Knowledge Devotion
Church Inquisitor 2:
Church Inquisitor 3: Power Attack
Church Inquisitor 4:
Ruathar 1: MWP: Longbow
Ruathar 2: Craft Rod
Ruathar 3:
Contemplative 1: Wrath-domain
Stats (25pb):
Str 13
Dex 8
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 16
Cha 10
Level-ups to Wis, 18 Wisdom. +2 Wis item for 20 Wisdom total.
Items: 2xRod of Extend Spell, Lesser Rod of Extend Spell, 10xNightstick (all crafted), +1 Valorous Greatclub, +2 Wis item, Pearl of Speech, +1 Composite Longbow of Big Damages (elven gift). Leaves a little over for stuff I'm not accounting for here, spellbook & al.
Bit of an explanation here, the errata on Divine Metamagic restricts it to divine spells. Anyspell gives you arcane spells but Southern Magician allows casting them as divine spells at -1 CL (largely irrelevant for the purposes of this exercise; more practically we'd be investing in caster level boosting items and Ring of Enduring Arcana to make our buffs near-impossible to dispel, or just use Initiate of Mystra with AMF from Magic-domain, but that's beyond the scope of this exercise).
Ocular Spell is there mostly to enable persisting of certain Touch-range buffs. The only really important one is Girallon's Blessing (though invulnerability is a nice failsafe): it gives you a couple of arms in the Jarilith form, which among others helps you hold a weapon and cast spells. Jarilith is a quadroped demon hound from Monster Manual II. We couldn't normally Polymorph into one but Lesser Holy Transformation gives us the Outsider type.
40+3 = 43 turn attempts. Enough to persist 6 spells in a day.
Extended Persistent Buffs:
Wraithstrike [Anyspell, Southern Magician]
Lesser Holy Transformation
Ocular Girallon's Blessing
Draconic Polymorph: Jarilith (Pearl of Speech) [Greater Anyspell, Southern Magician]
Surge of Fortune
Divine Power
Spikes
Ocular Delay Death
Ocular Beastland Ferocity
Vigorous Circle
Righteous Wrath of the Faithful
Footsteps of the Divine
Normal Extended buffs:
Heroes' Feast
Greater Luminous Armor
Magic Vestment on GLA
Divine Insight
Knowledge Devotion should be at least +4 with us being able to max out Knowledge-skills early on and use Divine Insight on the check in combat. Divine Insight is +16 and it wouldn't take a lot of effort to get the 6 identification Knowledges to +10 or so. Add Mw. Tools and the usual and it should be easy. Skills are a lot of work for little gain so I'm not doing them here since I don't intend to play this character though but I can ballpark what we can do.
In battle, we start by casting Rhino's Rush (Wrath-domain; we can prepare it once in 1st and 2nd level domain slots and then we can Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer for 2 more after those are used up) as a swift action. Then we jump on the enemy. Between having flight (not Fly, which would impede with Battle Jump, but Footsteps of the Divine), enough Strength and movement to give us untrained +32 on Jump and overall everything, we have no trouble jumping on basically anything to trigger the charge.
We hit with natural weapons + greatclub. We also have some rakes and Improved Grab if interested but Battle Jump bonus will always be applied to the Greatclub. For this exercise, we won't use natural weapons since they would need to separately be blessed to deal normal damage to Hecatoncheires. Either way, Battle Jump doubles our damage and Valorous doubles it again, with Rhino's Rush doubling it once more. We have pounce from Jarilith for a full attack.
Outcome:
Str: 35 + 8 (Draconic Polymorph) + 2 Sacred (Lesser Holy Transformation) + 6 Enhancement (Divine Power) = 51
Dex: 29
Con: 27 + 2 (Draconic Polymorph) + 2 Sacred (Lesser Holy Transformation) = 31
Int: 10
Wis: 20
Cha: 10
Greatclub
Attack: 11 BAB + 20 Strength + 3 Morale (Righteous Wrath of the Faithful) + 2 Luck (Surge of Fortune) + 4 Knowledge Devotion + 2 Weapon = +42/+42/+37/+32 (Touch)
Damage: 2d8 + 30 Strength + 3 Morale (Righteous Wrath) + 2 Luck (Surge of Fortune) + 11 (Spikes) + 4 Knowledge Devotion + 2 Weapon = 2d8+50
Multipliers:
Battle Jump
Valorous
Rhino's Rush
Damage quadrupled. Full power attack on charge, +31/+31/+26/+21 at 19-20/x2 for 2d8+72 = 1296 damage if all hit but none crit. Accounting for miss chance & DR vs. Touch AC 30 (Hecatoncheires), we're expected to be able to one-shot it. We hit it for 1120 damage on average, which drops it dead so it won't get to regenerate or fast heal.
Though if we fail, we can always do it again next turn, and we could also burn Surge of Fortune for an autocrit if we feel so inclined. To beat Regeneration, we need to cast Bless Weapon or similar first though so we might have to take a few thousand damage. That's ultimately fairly inconsequential between Delay Death and Beastland Ferocity rendering us immune to its attacks and Vigorous Circle healing us up eventually.
Of course, even if we fail to kill it, the natural weapons should easily render it unconscious even through the regeneration.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and you should trivially get sufficient Tumble to avoid any kind of AOO nonsense.
Note, while the items are kinda barebones, it would be possible to get much more out of that. I didn't bother since it's unnecessary but if we use some stuff from the cost reduction handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1000.0), we could squeeze in caster level buffs and stuff particularly if we Heroics for Power Attack instead of having it the oldfashioned way (we have Spontaneous Domain Casting: Spell so we can recast Anyspell spontaneously to reuse our domain slot for arcane stuff) and take Craft Wondrous Items instead. This would significantly increase our damage and to hit too (Greater Magic Weapon & Spikes could be used to greater effect)
Oh, and polymorph handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=519.0) offers the less hoop-intensive option of using Cave Troll [MM3] instead of Jarilith. Stats are worse (-6 strength, but a ton of Dex and some Natural Armor lost), but it's biped and can speak without Pearl of Speech so it's an easier form all-around and since it already has hands, it could quadwield with Girallon Arms for extra Strength bonus to damage [Savage Species], or use Fuse Arms to get 4 out of the 6 missing strength back. So if someone has problems with any part of the Jarilith-tricks (casting spells as one through Pearl of Speech and Girallon's Blessing, turning into one through acquiring type with Lesser Holy Transformation, or whatever), you can just use Cave Troll instead to much the same effect.
All was well until I realized the Strength-bonus is uncapped so simply persisting Consumptive Field and summoning e.g. Bat Swarm and blowing it up would give you upwards to +10000 Strength, so it fell under my "don't abuse stupid big bonuses"-clause (this also meant I'd stay away from taint, loops & al.).
As such, I instead set out to one-shot a Hecatoncheires on a level 11 Cleric without using Consumptive Field & its ilk, and tossed together the following:
Human 11 (Cloistered Cleric 3/Church Inquisitor 4/Ruathar 3/Contemplative 1)
Cloistered Cleric 1: Extend Spell (Planning), Persistent Spell, DMM: Persistent Spell, Ocular Spell [Flaw], Battle Jump [Flaw]; Domains: Spell (Spontaneous Domain Casting), Planning, Knowledge
Cloistered Cleric 2:
Cloistered Cleric 3: Southern Magician [Races of Faerun]
Church Inquisitor 1: Trade Inquisition-domain for Knowledge Devotion
Church Inquisitor 2:
Church Inquisitor 3: Power Attack
Church Inquisitor 4:
Ruathar 1: MWP: Longbow
Ruathar 2: Craft Rod
Ruathar 3:
Contemplative 1: Wrath-domain
Stats (25pb):
Str 13
Dex 8
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 16
Cha 10
Level-ups to Wis, 18 Wisdom. +2 Wis item for 20 Wisdom total.
Items: 2xRod of Extend Spell, Lesser Rod of Extend Spell, 10xNightstick (all crafted), +1 Valorous Greatclub, +2 Wis item, Pearl of Speech, +1 Composite Longbow of Big Damages (elven gift). Leaves a little over for stuff I'm not accounting for here, spellbook & al.
Bit of an explanation here, the errata on Divine Metamagic restricts it to divine spells. Anyspell gives you arcane spells but Southern Magician allows casting them as divine spells at -1 CL (largely irrelevant for the purposes of this exercise; more practically we'd be investing in caster level boosting items and Ring of Enduring Arcana to make our buffs near-impossible to dispel, or just use Initiate of Mystra with AMF from Magic-domain, but that's beyond the scope of this exercise).
Ocular Spell is there mostly to enable persisting of certain Touch-range buffs. The only really important one is Girallon's Blessing (though invulnerability is a nice failsafe): it gives you a couple of arms in the Jarilith form, which among others helps you hold a weapon and cast spells. Jarilith is a quadroped demon hound from Monster Manual II. We couldn't normally Polymorph into one but Lesser Holy Transformation gives us the Outsider type.
40+3 = 43 turn attempts. Enough to persist 6 spells in a day.
Extended Persistent Buffs:
Wraithstrike [Anyspell, Southern Magician]
Lesser Holy Transformation
Ocular Girallon's Blessing
Draconic Polymorph: Jarilith (Pearl of Speech) [Greater Anyspell, Southern Magician]
Surge of Fortune
Divine Power
Spikes
Ocular Delay Death
Ocular Beastland Ferocity
Vigorous Circle
Righteous Wrath of the Faithful
Footsteps of the Divine
Normal Extended buffs:
Heroes' Feast
Greater Luminous Armor
Magic Vestment on GLA
Divine Insight
Knowledge Devotion should be at least +4 with us being able to max out Knowledge-skills early on and use Divine Insight on the check in combat. Divine Insight is +16 and it wouldn't take a lot of effort to get the 6 identification Knowledges to +10 or so. Add Mw. Tools and the usual and it should be easy. Skills are a lot of work for little gain so I'm not doing them here since I don't intend to play this character though but I can ballpark what we can do.
In battle, we start by casting Rhino's Rush (Wrath-domain; we can prepare it once in 1st and 2nd level domain slots and then we can Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer for 2 more after those are used up) as a swift action. Then we jump on the enemy. Between having flight (not Fly, which would impede with Battle Jump, but Footsteps of the Divine), enough Strength and movement to give us untrained +32 on Jump and overall everything, we have no trouble jumping on basically anything to trigger the charge.
We hit with natural weapons + greatclub. We also have some rakes and Improved Grab if interested but Battle Jump bonus will always be applied to the Greatclub. For this exercise, we won't use natural weapons since they would need to separately be blessed to deal normal damage to Hecatoncheires. Either way, Battle Jump doubles our damage and Valorous doubles it again, with Rhino's Rush doubling it once more. We have pounce from Jarilith for a full attack.
Outcome:
Str: 35 + 8 (Draconic Polymorph) + 2 Sacred (Lesser Holy Transformation) + 6 Enhancement (Divine Power) = 51
Dex: 29
Con: 27 + 2 (Draconic Polymorph) + 2 Sacred (Lesser Holy Transformation) = 31
Int: 10
Wis: 20
Cha: 10
Greatclub
Attack: 11 BAB + 20 Strength + 3 Morale (Righteous Wrath of the Faithful) + 2 Luck (Surge of Fortune) + 4 Knowledge Devotion + 2 Weapon = +42/+42/+37/+32 (Touch)
Damage: 2d8 + 30 Strength + 3 Morale (Righteous Wrath) + 2 Luck (Surge of Fortune) + 11 (Spikes) + 4 Knowledge Devotion + 2 Weapon = 2d8+50
Multipliers:
Battle Jump
Valorous
Rhino's Rush
Damage quadrupled. Full power attack on charge, +31/+31/+26/+21 at 19-20/x2 for 2d8+72 = 1296 damage if all hit but none crit. Accounting for miss chance & DR vs. Touch AC 30 (Hecatoncheires), we're expected to be able to one-shot it. We hit it for 1120 damage on average, which drops it dead so it won't get to regenerate or fast heal.
Though if we fail, we can always do it again next turn, and we could also burn Surge of Fortune for an autocrit if we feel so inclined. To beat Regeneration, we need to cast Bless Weapon or similar first though so we might have to take a few thousand damage. That's ultimately fairly inconsequential between Delay Death and Beastland Ferocity rendering us immune to its attacks and Vigorous Circle healing us up eventually.
Of course, even if we fail to kill it, the natural weapons should easily render it unconscious even through the regeneration.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and you should trivially get sufficient Tumble to avoid any kind of AOO nonsense.
Note, while the items are kinda barebones, it would be possible to get much more out of that. I didn't bother since it's unnecessary but if we use some stuff from the cost reduction handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1000.0), we could squeeze in caster level buffs and stuff particularly if we Heroics for Power Attack instead of having it the oldfashioned way (we have Spontaneous Domain Casting: Spell so we can recast Anyspell spontaneously to reuse our domain slot for arcane stuff) and take Craft Wondrous Items instead. This would significantly increase our damage and to hit too (Greater Magic Weapon & Spikes could be used to greater effect)
Oh, and polymorph handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=519.0) offers the less hoop-intensive option of using Cave Troll [MM3] instead of Jarilith. Stats are worse (-6 strength, but a ton of Dex and some Natural Armor lost), but it's biped and can speak without Pearl of Speech so it's an easier form all-around and since it already has hands, it could quadwield with Girallon Arms for extra Strength bonus to damage [Savage Species], or use Fuse Arms to get 4 out of the 6 missing strength back. So if someone has problems with any part of the Jarilith-tricks (casting spells as one through Pearl of Speech and Girallon's Blessing, turning into one through acquiring type with Lesser Holy Transformation, or whatever), you can just use Cave Troll instead to much the same effect.