quick actions and the ruby knight vindicator.

[Agamemmnoth]

So this is my first campaign and I'm playing with my wife. I'm a druid and she is a cleric. We have a fighter and rogue with us in the party. I'm debating going into planar shepherd and she is seriously considering some cheese too with her cleric.

She is debating

cleric4/crusader1/Ruby10/contemplative5

My question is I know divine impetus allows her to burn her undead turns as swift actions. (btw she's already taking divine persistent spell with planning and undeath as her domains)

I've heard this build is op but please help me wrap my head around this. what all can she do with all the quick actions she could get.

How does she maximize this build.

All books are open.

dm is fairly knowledgeable and says he could challenge us with those builds.

[Windstorm]

one thing to note is that the divine impetus has an interesting rules dysfunction.

by raw, a character only ever gets 1 swift action a turn, and you cannot 'downgrade' a move or standard to a swift (the design intent seeming to be forcing meaningful choices). however, divine impetus does not provide the action cost for activating the ability, and all abilities of a similar type are either standard actions, or are swift actions themselves.

before you decide what to do with the build, figure out what the DM interpretation on that ability is, as that will significantly affect the choices you make.

[Agamemmnoth]

one thing to note is that the divine impetus has an interesting rules dysfunction.

by raw, a character only ever gets 1 swift action a turn, and you cannot 'downgrade' a move or standard to a swift (the design intent seeming to be forcing meaningful choices). however, divine impetus does not provide the action cost for activating the ability, and all abilities of a similar type are either standard actions, or are swift actions themselves.

before you decide what to do with the build, figure out what the DM interpretation on that ability is, as that will significantly affect the choices you make.

According to him he's allowing her to blow her "wad" at once if she wants.

Btw what is raw?

[HammeredWharf]

If you use White Raven Tactics on yourself, you can get a huge number of full-round actions per round, but that relies on an interpretation of Divine Impetus that's not RAW and utterly broken. What Impetus actually does is letting you trade your standard action for a swift action. A sometimes-useful, but not great function. Why? Because it's a supernatural ability and they're standard actions by default, not free actions.

It's still a solid class, especially if you go down the DMM:Persist road and don't have to cast much in-combat.

Edit: That being said, if your DM is fine with cheese and you plan to make a Druid of Cheese, allowing Impetus to be a free action is probably ok. However, I'd make sure other players are ok with it, because many don't like being limited by extremely cheesy party members. Personally, I wouldn't even play in a game with an optimized Planar Shepherd. It basically takes all vanilla builds off the table and is a bit boring.

[Agamemmnoth]

If you use White Raven Tactics on yourself, you can get a huge number of full-round actions per round, but that relies on an interpretation of Divine Impetus that's not RAW and utterly broken. What Impetus actually does is letting you trade your standard action for a swift action. A sometimes-useful, but not great function. Why? Because it's a supernatural ability and they're standard actions by default, not free actions.

It's still a solid class, especially if you go down the DMM:Persist road and don't have to cast much in-combat.

Edit: That being said, if your DM is fine with cheese and you plan to make a Druid of Cheese, allowing Impetus to be a free action is probably ok. However, I'd make sure other players are ok with it, because many don't like being limited by extremely cheesy party members. Personally, I wouldn't even play in a game with an optimized Planar Shepherd. It basically takes all vanilla builds off the table and is a bit boring.

I figured the ruby knight/cleric route was stronger than the planar shepherd from what I was told it couldn't be beat. Planar shepherd sounded cool and I herd it was pretty awesome. then again I'm a total newb so I'm just going by what other people have said and ****.

[Agamemmnoth]

what I'm looking for is absolute cheese and power.

[John Longarrow]

OK, how much cheese are you looking for and is this for your build, your wifes, or both?

And by cheese, which flavor? Melee / Pure blast damage / Control / Wierd? I've seen 20th level clerics with the Animal Domain rock Shapechange as a divine metamagic persistent spell. That makes even druids wildshape look rather weak.

[Kazudo]

The RAW is that it takes a Standard Action to use that specific RKV ability. Essentially you're trading a Standard Action for a Swift Action. If you have ways of gaining additional Standard Actions per turn, you can do it as many times per turn as you have Standard Actions. It's really good for converting to Swift since many if not most important ToB actions utilize a swift action.

If you want broken and for the DM to throw things at you, the much more open-to-interpretation rule reading would be the infamous d2 Crusader, which would be somewhat difficult to pull off until later.

In short, RKV isn't as broken as a lot of Theoretical Optimizers would have you believe. In fact, many if not most of those "ZOMG THIS IS SO BROKEDEDED ZOMG" realizations require a VERY loose reading of the rules and, in fact, omissions of other general rules that fill the gaps in quite nicely.