Favorite Tricks

[Irk]

Just curious as to people's favorite tricks, as DMs or players. Hopefully, I'll learn something new, and it's just an intrigue thing. Right now, though I haven't used it, I'm particularly fond of the Obscuring Snow + Snowsight trick, it seems to be bouncing around.

[eggynack]

The one I've been tossing around a lot lately, as a solution to the druidic entangle problem (having plants in plant-less areas), is plant-dog. In essence, instead of carrying the plants yourself, and potentially needing to be in the area of your entangle for it to work, you attach the plants to your friendly riding dog, and just put him somewhere in the area. Catching him in the entangle isn't much of an issue, cause that's where you want him anyway, eating bad guys.

I've also really been liking a combination of holt warden and contemplative on druids. Holt warden gets you the knowledge (religion) you need to enter contemplative, and it grants a pile of domain slots with mediocre spells you already have in them. Contemplative fills those slots with spells from the spell domain, which is the best thing. Overall, you get a druid that's competitive with wizards in a lot of ways they weren't before, and it only costs some skill points and two levels of animal companion and wild shape advancement. The former just doesn't matter at all later on, and the latter is important, but not urgent, and you can feasibly move it from important to not important at all with a wild shape amulet.

[roguemetal]

I'm a big fan of Coccoon + Baleful Polymorph.

Nothing is quite as satisfying as seeing an Epic level NPC turned into a Wolverine.

[Captnq]

I like synergestic weapon combinations. Also cutting off my arms and replacing them with warforged parts so I can add warforged componates to them. Also mutating myself with Warp Touch, cutting off the extra limbs and replacing them with functional tentacles, then grafting illithid weapons to the tentacles. Then I become a monk for one level, get a necklace of natural weaponry, then get the WSA Flying once for each natural weapon and all 9 Monk combat attack sites. Then my body is an animated object that can make 9+ attacks a round on it's own, EVEN IF I'M DEAD, all for a mere 1,000 gp an attack.

Then I like to point out much of this is silly as heck and you really shouldn't try to sneak things past your DM.

Then I direct people to just go to my sig file and get the EVD. It's got hundreds of tricks.

Go to town.

[Gemini476]

I kind of like how the Paragnostic Assembly has a bit of a monopoly on Truenamers. It's one of those weird fluff consequences that mechanics have sometimes.

Oh, and using a Legacy Weapon to boost Truespeak - you can add +5 competence for 2,300gp to an item if you use Table 4-5 (the one for non-combat skill monkeys.) If you never advance it beyond 5th level you never get any drawbacks! The item needs to either have no more than a +1 enchantment or not cost more than 4,000gp depending on whether or not it's a magic weapon/armor or not, so I recommend either just making it some cheap masterwork item (your Masterwork Truespeak Tool, perhaps?) or going full +1 Shuriken with +9 worth of special properties.

That's cheaper than a custom +5 competence item (2,500gp), so it's totally worth it.

Quick breakdown of Truespeak bonuses:
+5 Competence(Weapon of Legacy) - 2,400gp
+10 Untyped (Paragnostic Assembly) - 10% of WBL?
+10 Enchantment (Greater Amulet of the Silver Tongue) - 10,000gp
+3 Untyped (Skill Focus) - Feat
+2 Circumstance (Masterwork Tool) - 50gp

Total:
+30 Truespeak - 12,350gp+Paragnostic Assembly

Who needs Item Familiars? That's without adding Int bonuses or skill ranks or Illumian Sigils or anything! Although those organization dues add up fast - at level 20 it's at a total of 88,350gp, which is less than a +7 weapon by a little bit.

It doesn't scale perfectly - the DCs are 15+2*CR, and you have 33+Level, so you fall behind a bit without Int and such.
You're still just a more situational Warlock, but still. I kind of like Truenamers.


Oh, and the various more functional versions of the Locate City Bomb (Fell Drain Frostfell etc.) are all pretty neat-o. I also really like Fell Drain LCB+Warforged Soul Eater 9, although that's a really niche build.

[Phelix-Mu]

Green slime (DMG, p76). As DM, toss it at necromancers. As a player, toss it at everything. It might be harder to acquire as a player (especially if your DM can read), but if you can arrange it, it's pretty badass for A SELF-REPLICATING OBJECT.

Step 1: Locate something that isn't stone.

Step 2: Feed it to green slime.

Step 3: Get the DM to nail down a conversion/replication rate, if s/he dares.

Step 4:????

Step 5: Profit!

[Irk]

Green slime (DMG, p76). As DM, toss it at necromancers. As a player, toss it at everything. It might be harder to acquire as a player (especially if your DM can read), but if you can arrange it, it's pretty badass for A SELF-REPLICATING OBJECT.

Step 1: Locate something that isn't stone.

Step 2: Feed it to green slime.

Step 3: Get the DM to nail down a conversion/replication rate, if s/he dares.

Step 4:????

Step 5: Profit!
Since it counts as plant matter for the purposes of spells and other "special effects" a level 1 psion could make some with minor creation. Other wise, major creation

[Phelix-Mu]

Since it counts as plant matter for the purposes of spells and other "special effects" a level 1 psion could make some with minor creation. Other wise, major creation

OMG. THANKS. REALLY. Now I have to officially rewrite that power.

Otherwise, yeah, if you can produce it at will, it can produce more on demand. The new patches might not even disappear. That would be broken.

Anyway, a high level druid combined massive amounts with control winds, whirlwind to distribute it.

It's nice because it's a real easy kill button to remove from the playing board. Some daylight (or dispelling some darkness) or some fire or cold, and it all just goes poof.

Until that, it eats whatever it falls on.

[HaikenEdge]

I have this belief that, with enough creativity, a player can solve any problem with judicious application of my big five: shatter, time hop, disintegrate, prestidigitation, and the tree token. In particularly, I like to shatter or time hop the belts on enemies, dropping their pants or leg armor around their ankles; depending on your DM, you might get some roleplay XP, an entangled effect, or something similar.

Basically, my favorite tricks involve observing the environment, then trying to figure out what I can do with the environment using my big five. DMs either love it, because it's very creative, or hate it, because it bogs down the game when I ask a lot of questions about details, but I find it a super satisfying way to play.

[Phelix-Mu]

I have this belief that, with enough creativity, a player can solve any problem with judicious application of my big five: shatter, time hop, disintegrate, prestidigitation, and the tree token. In particularly, I like to shatter or time hop the belts on enemies, dropping their pants or leg armor around their ankles; depending on your DM, you might get some roleplay XP, an entangled effect, or something similar.

Basically, my favorite tricks involve observing the environment, then trying to figure out what I can do with the environment using my big five. DMs either love it, because it's very creative, or hate it, because it bogs down the game when I ask a lot of questions about details, but I find it a super satisfying way to play.

I've already mentioned how much I like your list, and how close tree token is to my heart.

Back in 2e, I used to get by with a mundane list of stuff with similar intent, which pretty much every character I had carried. Ten-foot pole, marbles, chalk, rope/string/wire, lantern oil, source of fire. Really stupid how many good uses there are for such things, and back in 2e a lot more was left up to DM interpretation.

[HaikenEdge]

I've already mentioned how much I like your list, and how close tree token is to my heart.

Back in 2e, I used to get by with a mundane list of stuff with similar intent, which pretty much every character I had carried. Ten-foot pole, marbles, chalk, rope/string/wire, lantern oil, source of fire. Really stupid how many good uses there are for such things, and back in 2e a lot more was left up to DM interpretation.

They've got rules for most of that stuff in 3.5 as well, in Dungeonscape, I think, and a lot of times, GMs will let you get away with using them for things that make sense. Personally, I'm not a fan of mundane items that cost me money, but if you have a DM who accepts using Call Weaponry to call items your character considers to be weapons, as opposed to just weapons off weapons tables, the amount of fun you can have with that is immense, particularly if your character happens to be a person who spends a lot of time imagining create ways to kill people with everyday objects; generally, if your GM allows that interpretation of the word "weapon" within the power, it makes it one of the most useful powers in the game, although it does occasionally cause party members to think you might be a psychopath. But hey, if one power point and six seconds can get you anything your heart desires for a minute per level, why not abuse the heck out of it?

[Darrin]

Since it counts as plant matter for the purposes of spells and other "special effects" a level 1 psion could make some with minor creation. Other wise, major creation

Chaos Flask (100 GP, Planar Handbook) should work for non-psionics. The original green slime only lasts about a minute, but that should be long enough to make more.

[Manly Man]

Psicrystal Affinity + Psicrystal Containment + Deep Impact + Greater Psionic Weapon + levels as an initiator with access to the Diamond Mind discipline. A Ruby or Diamond Nightmare blade paired with that is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

[Ydaer Ca Noit]

warp wood the archers away