How do you pump your stats up?

[TheCrowing1432]

Like I see people with crazy amounts of Armor Class, Stats and so on and I have no idea how they do it.

Can someone tell me various ways besides

"Braces of Armor"
"Cloak of Strength" etc.

[Zanos]

Checking out X stat to Y bonus (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125732) should be a good start. You can make a character get a lot out of one or two ability scores.

[hymer]

@ OP: Unsurprisingly, this depends on the stat. The usual method is to hunt around for all the bonus types you can get your hands on, and picking them, whether from class abilities, feats, racial abilities, spells, or items.

[eggynack]

It really depends on what the stat is, and on what the character is made up of. A druid pumping AC is going to look pretty different from a melee guy boosting strength, and both are going to look different from a wizard boosting initiative.

Edit: Also, a druid pumping AC is going to look pretty different from a druid pumping strength, and a wizard pumping AC. Different classes have access to different tricks.

[Greenish]

Defending (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicWeapons.htm#defending) armour spikes, spiked gauntlets, braid blades, whathaveyou, with Chained Magic Vestments to boost enhancement bonus, then transfer it all to AC, is a well-known trick for boosting AC.

[ddude987]

Spells such as polymorph, draconic polymorph, etc can make your stats very large. Then cast alter self to become yourself again, with improved stats.

[Fax Celestis]

I'm a big fan of the belt of magnificence, too. +2 to all stats for 25,000, +4 for 100,000, +6 for 200,000.

Comparable prices for a + to each stat item, in individual slots: +2 for 24,000; +4 for 96,000; +6 for 216,000.

Comparable prices for a + to each stat item, all in the waist slot: +2 for 32,000; +4 for 128,000; +6 for 256,000.

TL;DR It's a little bit cheaper to go with individual items, but the belt puts all of them on the same slot for effectively the same price. If you're crafting, it cuts down on craft time a little bit too (from condensing any remainder fractional days into one day).

[Emperor Tippy]

I'm a big fan of the belt of magnificence, too. +2 to all stats for 25,000, +4 for 100,000, +6 for 200,000.

Comparable prices for a + to each stat item, in individual slots: +2 for 24,000; +4 for 96,000; +6 for 216,000.

Comparable prices for a + to each stat item, all in the waist slot: +2 for 32,000; +4 for 128,000; +6 for 256,000.

TL;DR It's a little bit cheaper to go with individual items, but the belt puts all of them on the same slot for effectively the same price. If you're crafting, it cuts down on craft time a little bit too (from condensing any remainder fractional days into one day).

I too am a fan of the belt of bling. And if you get it restricted to your alignment (easy if you are the one crafting it) then you get to lop 60,000 GP off of that market price (and taking the crafting cost from 100,000 GP down to 70,000 GP).

[eggynack]

I'm a big fan of the belt of magnificence, too. +2 to all stats for 25,000, +4 for 100,000, +6 for 200,000.

Comparable prices for a + to each stat item, in individual slots: +2 for 24,000; +4 for 96,000; +6 for 216,000.

Comparable prices for a + to each stat item, all in the waist slot: +2 for 32,000; +4 for 128,000; +6 for 256,000.

TL;DR It's a little bit cheaper to go with individual items, but the belt puts all of them on the same slot for effectively the same price. If you're crafting, it cuts down on craft time a little bit too (from condensing any remainder fractional days into one day).
Putting all of the stat bonuses onto existing items is just as cheap as buying them all as separate items, owing to the adding/improving common magical effects table in the MIC. +Stat items may as well be slotless as a result, making that impact of the belt irrelevant. Thus, the belt doesn't grant any kind of advantage until +6, and even then it's minimal. You'd be better off just allocating your stat enhancements in an efficient way, instead of boosting everything at once. Also, the belt means that if you're, say, a wizard who wants to boost intelligence, you can't do that unless you also want to boost all of your other stats to the same degree. That's not a big deal for con and dex, but wizards dump charisma, strength, and sometimes wisdom for a reason.

[Talya]

Like I see people with crazy amounts of Armor Class, Stats and so on and I have no idea how they do it.

Can someone tell me various ways besides

"Braces of Armor"
"Cloak of Strength" etc.

This isn't what you want to hear, but it's rarely a good idea to pump armor class. The cost of doing it is too high (in terms of character build resources) for too little benefit.

With that said, you mentioned "stats," and a "cloak of strength." That would actually be "abilities" and a "belt of strength" in all likelihood, but I get your point.

Most characters, by level 20, will have no less than 34 in their primary ability score. This is assuming they are human. That breaks down to 18 starting, +5 from levelling, +5 from inherent, and +6 from gear. To get them higher than that generally requires access to bonuses from some other source.

The most common sources:
Racial bonuses. If your ability score is going to matter a lot, you pick a race that boosts it higher.
Templates. Be careful with these, as they often have level adjustments. But there are lots of low level ones, and a few that have no adjustments at all.

So, as an example: Say I am building a sorcerer that needs a pile of charisma. I might start with a Lesser Aasimar (+2 wis, +2 cha, no level adjustment.) Then, she's got magic in her blood, so i go with the spark: magic blooded template (no level adjustment. -2 wis, +2 cha.) I put 18 starting points into charisma. With no effort at all, she's got 38 charisma by level 20.


That's not even doing any heavy optimizing.

Maybe, instead, you've got a druid. Perhaps you do something not all that optimal and put Vow of Poverty on your druid. Then with your first ability score bonuses, you raise STR.

Then you wildshape into something with 40 strength, and add +8 more...

[eggynack]

Maybe, instead, you've got a druid. Perhaps you do something not all that optimal and put Vow of Poverty on your druid. Then with your first ability score bonuses, you raise STR.

Then you wildshape into something with 40 strength, and add +8 more...
Does VoP stack with wild shape like that? I thought the whole thing was just replaced, kit and caboodle. +X items are different, cause they're not a part of you, so they get to reapply their modifier to the new form, but ability score enhancement seems rather attached to your base form.

[Talya]

Does VoP stack with wild shape like that? I thought the whole thing was just replaced, kit and caboodle. +X items are different, cause they're not a part of you, so they get to reapply their modifier to the new form, but ability score enhancement seems rather attached to your base form.

VOP takes the place of gear, it's an enhancement bonus that it provides to your ability scores.

However, not being gear, it doesn't "meld with you and become nonfunctional" when you wildshape. Therefore you keep all its bonuses, just as if you had the gear that granted them with wilding clasps.

There's a reason I've repeatedly said VOP is not nearly as damaging to druids as it seems, even taking into account that they're still tier 1. A druid keeps all those nice numerical bonuses when they wildshape, making VOP the equivalent of having both the gear it's replacing, + wilding clasps for all of it.

[eggynack]

VOP takes the place of gear, it's an enhancement bonus that it provides to your ability scores.

However, not being gear, it doesn't "meld with you and become nonfunctional" when you wildshape. Therefore you keep all its bonuses, just as if you had the gear that granted them with wilding clasps.
Yeah, that might make sense. As long as the bonuses aren't just an inherent part of the character, it'd probably work. As a bonus, this means that fancy sanctified druids get even cooler, or don't become less cool. It's just a nifty druid archetype in general.

Edit:
There's a reason I've repeatedly said VOP is not nearly as damaging to druids as it seems, even taking into account that they're still tier 1. A druid keeps all those nice numerical bonuses when they wildshape, making VOP the equivalent of having both the gear it's replacing, + wilding clasps for all of it.
That's certainly a factor, but if that were all it wouldn't be nearly enough. The main critical aspect of this is obviously spells, and the various spell-ish stuff that wild shape gets you, like mobility options, and occasionally vision modes (the latter needs enhance wild shape, or better for these purposes, exalted wild shape). Being able to thrive with VoP means that you're accomplishing most of the stuff you'd normally get with items, except without items, and druids cover their bases well. Furthermore, druids have basically the best list of good exalted feats in the game. Both exalted companion and exalted wild shape are absolutely amazing, and a good number of the sanctified feats with more normal power levels, like touch of golden ice, and intuitive attack work great on a druid.

All that stuff still just means that druids get to be somewhat weaker instead of much weaker, but that's about as good as it gets. Things would be a bit better on that front if luminous armor stacked with VoP, but it tragically does not. Ultra-good style druids are pretty neat though. Ya gotta love stuff like luminous armor, or those exalted feats I mentioned, even if you're not going all out with VoP stuff.

[Talya]

Oh, it's certainly not optimal. But what it is, on the druid, is viable. And in fact, it's easy. Taking a tier 1 that suffers so little from VOP to start with, and removing them from the irritation that is "gearing up" is actually a blast.

I've only hit level 8 with the VOP druid I'm playing, but she's so much fun.

[eggynack]

Oh, it's certainly not optimal. But what it is, on the druid, is viable. And in fact, it's easy. Taking a tier 1 that suffers so little from VOP to start with, and removing them from the irritation that is "gearing up" is actually a blast.

I've only hit level 8 with the VOP druid I'm playing, but she's so much fun.
Quite so. I don't really disagree on either count. Exalted wild shape in particular is so much more insane than it looks.

[Greenish]

removing them from the irritation that is "gearing up" is actually a blast.You can say that again.

[atomicwaffle]

step 1: get 18 wisdom
step 2: pump that wisdom
step 3: hunt for Tomes of Understanding and Periapts of Wisdom
step 4: Get a Monk's Belt.
step 5: ?????
step 6: PROFIT!