Optimization-fu secrets?

[Seppo87]

Since the Test of Spite is in the past now, have those super-secret builds and RAW tricks been revealed yet? Could the be now?
I think it would be a great contribution to the community and grant even more fame and visibility to the authors.
It's for science's sake.

[Amphetryon]

Since the Test of Spite is in the past now, have those super-secret builds and RAW tricks been revealed yet? Could the be now?
I think it would be a great contribution to the community and grant even more fame and visibility to the authors.
It's for science's sake.

1. Which builds and/or RAW tricks are you particularly interested in? Many of them used optimization techniques discussed elsewhere, either on GitP or other 3.5-centered forums at the time.

2. Note that several of the regular contributors to Test of Spite either no longer frequent this forum, or are here sporadically at best, or have moved on to PF/4e/5e by this point, so their specific comments on how a particular build or trick functioned may be tricky to pin down unless they shared them and/or kept rather detailed notes.

[Seppo87]

I was curious about how sofawall managed to prevent his walls from being disjoined.
The "lightsaber" that casts disintegrate and disjunction when swung and costs less than 1'000 GP is pretty awesome as well

[Irk]

Unfortunately, I think Amphetryon is correct. You could try to PM some of those users, and that may work. I recall sofa wall explicitly saying that he would not explain how he defeated MDJ. You could also maybe try PMing Doc Roc for the Character Sheets, but that seems less scrupulous.

If you say who had the "lightsaber", I could do some searching.

EDIT: Shouldn't be speaking as if I was present when they happened; just a lurker for a VERY long time, found out about them that way.

[Extra Anchovies]

Two questions from a newbie:

1. What was Test of Spite? Some sort of competitive optimization thing?

2. Why would someone keep a character build secret after it's served its purpose? That seems a bit selfish IMO; no offense meant to those present who do this, however.

[DeAnno]

If I had to guess, you would defeat MDJ with a shell shaped region of Antimagic Field that recast itself when it got dispelled, and some sort of Cheater of Mystra type item inside of it. I don't know how you'd make it by RAW, and frankly at the point you're twisting it that hard I find RAW gets sort of academic and uninteresting.

[paperarmor]

Two questions from a newbie:

1. What was Test of Spite? Some sort of competitive optimization thing?

2. Why would someone keep a character build secret after it's served its purpose? That seems a bit selfish IMO; no offense meant to those present who do this, however.

1. It was awesome you should look it up some time.

2. The builds were kept secret due to the pvp aspect. therefore only the chairman got to see all the sheets

Oh! What would it take to bring it back?

[Karnith]

1. What was Test of Spite? Some sort of competitive optimization thing?
The Test of Spite was essentially a (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?113644-Test-of-Spite-D-amp-D-3-5) series (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?124216-The-Test-of-Spite-3-51) of (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?135097-Test-of-Spite-3-5-3) threads (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?150821-Test-of-Spite-3-5) for setting up and judging arena-style fights with an increasingly large ban-/fix-list.

Oh! What would it take to bring it back?
A lot of people with deep rules knowledge and system mastery who also have a good deal of time on their hands and a willingness to focus on arena fights - difficulty keeping the judges and participants, many of whom were involved in developing Legend, active was the main reason it fell apart, if I recall correctly.

[Amphetryon]

If I had to guess, you would defeat MDJ with a shell shaped region of Antimagic Field that recast itself when it got dispelled, and some sort of Cheater of Mystra type item inside of it. I don't know how you'd make it by RAW, and frankly at the point you're twisting it that hard I find RAW gets sort of academic and uninteresting.

I know sofawall described the Cube as 'pure wealthomancy,' going so far as to pilot it with a human commoner because he didn't want to bother statting up a character to sit inside it. If that description is both accurate and honest - and I've no reason to doubt either - then a custom item to accomplish the above effect seems unlikely (note I didn't say 'impossible') to me.

[Bluydee]

A google search yielded this (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=631503) up, as being the closest to the build without seeing it based on what was seen.

[Irk]

A google search yielded this (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=631503) up, as being the closest to the build without seeing it based on what was seen.
Wow, I'm quite impressed you managed to find that!

Looking at ti, lots of cost-reduction tricks, combined with something I should have known: The Spell-Clock se to Dispelling Screen every fraction of a second. I read that somewhere, and I should have remembered.

Well, thanks to Bluydee, we know that's how sofa managed to do it.

With regards to the "getting ToS back up" thing, i asked a while ago, and was met with a response similar to what Karnith said. It's just too much work. That said, OMG_Ponies did do something similar a while ago: The Crowd Calls for Blood (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?322536-The-Crowd-Calls-for-Blood!-D-amp-D-3-5-lvl-6-PvP-arena). Definitely worth checking out as well, if anyone wants inspiration.

[Vogonjeltz]

A google search yielded this (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=631503) up, as being the closest to the build without seeing it based on what was seen.

Interesting, except for otiluke's dispelling screen not stopping mordenkainen's disjunction, it's a great idea.

[Psyren]

Note that several of the regular contributors to Test of Spite either no longer frequent this forum, or are here sporadically at best, or have moved on to PF/4e/5e by this point, so their specific comments on how a particular build or trick functioned may be tricky to pin down unless they shared them and/or kept rather detailed notes.

Or Legend. (Whatever happened to Legend? Nobody here seems to talk about it anymore. Or is it in a different subforum I never visit?)

[Aharon]

Or Legend. (Whatever happened to Legend? Nobody here seems to talk about it anymore. Or is it in a different subforum I never visit?)

Doc Roc got a job at a company with a rather strict noncompete contract and couldn't continue working on Legend. The rest of the design team is still on it, but as they are all working for free, and they promised a lot of features in the kickstarter, the production process is rather slow compared to its goals. There's still some debate over at the rule of cool forums, and presumable on the IRC channel, but I don't know how close (or far) they are from finishing everything.

The monsters are probably a PITA, since they are exactly as complicated as PCs by design.

[Darrin]

I was curious about how sofawall managed to prevent his walls from being disjoined.


Most of the ToS contributors have publicly posted their builds or the tricks they used for them. However, sofawall very deliberately never made the details of the Cube public, because once you know all of the defenses, you can use the same Landlord trick to crack it open.

From what sofawall has mentioned about the Cube, it involved spellclocks casting prismatic wall 40x per round. So if you design a build that can cast MDJ 41x, you could get through that part of the Cube. No one ever got through that, so we have no idea what the next defense was.



The "lightsaber" that casts disintegrate and disjunction when swung and costs less than 1'000 GP is pretty awesome as well

Well, you'd still need to figure out how to swing it 41x a round. Which is probably doable under the ToS rules...