'The DBZ Effect' Character

[supersonic29]

You know how in Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and all those series, a character will charge one HUGE attack of some kind for hours, if not days, if not weeks, to ensure total decimation of whatever they oppose? I have always wanted to recreate something like this in d&d, but never found a proper way, so I thought maybe someone knew of something I didn't :smallsmile:

All I've gathered is this:

Obvious metamagics like maximize/empower
Channel Sound/Sonic Blast (spell that allows a scaling with how long you take to cast it)
Twin Spell (Kinda feels like cheating though)


Anyone have anything else they can think of, probably something that applies to magic, that scales over time for that charge effect? Even if it doesn't synergize with anything I've found at all, I'd love to here it :smallbiggrin:

[Summerstorm]

Hm, i don't remember something like that...

Possibly a Spellfire Channeler?

You know, when he is "empty" he could begin to draw magic in by sucking in charges from stuff he is carrying (Maybe a trick to charge himself by somehow casting and concentrating to absorb?)

Then he begins to glow and heat up all the spectacle of going super-saiyan. And than a Con*D6 Ray of doom (Maybe a second).

So it fits a bit (Just have to have LOADS of Con)

[evangaline]

I had iron heart surge refluffed as entering super sayian mode, this included the screaming, the aura of power and levitating sand around the character, wich was pretty fun.
I am quite sure that this is totally irrelevant though. wich I am not sorry for

[Psyren]

I'll begin with the obligatory comment that the fights in DBZ didn't really take that long. The added a lot of filler to keep the show from overtaking the manga (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OvertookTheManga) is all.

Anyway, the easy way to mimic this is with a spontaneous caster piling on metamagic with no time reducers. Each one you add will add an extra full-round action to the spell. So start with Heighten, Empower, Maximize, then add things like Enlarge, Widen, Intensify etc.

Obviously you will want to do this in epic so that you have high enough spell slots (via Improved Spell Capacity) to do it - but then, the DBZ characters are pretty clearly epic (or at least mythic) anyway.

[Red Fel]

Circle Magic? I mean, it's an hour of chanting and sniffing incense and singing kumbaya in embarrassing robes while holding hands, but it basically lets you boost the CL and metamagic the fool out of a spell.

[StoneCipher]

I'd imagine some kind of area of effect spell with circle magic with at the very least widen and explosive spell would get you to the desired imagery. Imagine spirit bomb.

Damage wise, getting it to do lots insane immense amounts of damage would probably require you to use an epic level spell that has a high die cap or no die cap.

You'd also have to consider getting it to last for several gaming sessions, as it wouldn't be DBZ style if you didn't power up over the course of 5 gaming sessions.

[Nettlekid]

An Epic character using Spelldancer, immunity to fatigue and Con damage, Earth Spell, Improved Heighten Spell, and a Perform: Dance check of 10+X means that you can Spelldance for X turns, raising the spell's level to level+X+1 and raising your CL by X. If you take any spell with dependence on CL (for range or damage, say) then you could spend minutes, maybe even hours (with a Perform: Dance of like 600, manageable if you keep casting Improvisation heightened to level Y, gaining a +Y/2 bonus to your Spellcraft with each use, use that bonus to do it again and get a larger Improvisation boost until you get one that lasts all day and can provide like +7000 on your Perform: Dance) dancing, charging it up, and then releasing it in a super-nuke.

[lytokk]

There's always Channeled Pyroburst. Can spend anywhere from a swift action to a 2 round action to charge the spell, moving it from a d4 damage to a d10. Caps out at 10th level though, at 10 die damage. But the radius of the blast goes up as you charge too. Its the only charging spell I've ever seen really. I'm sure an epic version of the spell would enable you to charge it further.

[Taveena]

Spelldancer allows you to replace each level of metamagic adjustment with a round of dancing. It's... not charging, but it's mechanically similar.

[Baroknik]

The above plus I would say:
Make Spirit Ball into a world-wide possible Circle magic that takes too much time to ever be useful (and make it auto-miss on any non may 20 because... suspense?)
I've always thought that Wilder has made sense to represent a Z Warrior, or at the least psionics with Overchannel.

[Vhaidara]

I actually solved DBZ in 3.5. It's Epic magic. Normally, you mitigate Epic Magic by requiring other people to help (chain gated solars, specifically), but you can instead mitigate via cast time. Since every DBZ character is a blast/self-buff focused Sorcerer who dumped Int and therefore never heard of Gate, they make Epic Spells with cast times expressed in hours.

[supersonic29]

Anyway, the easy way to mimic this is with a spontaneous caster piling on metamagic with no time reducers. Each one you add will add an extra full-round action to the spell. So start with Heighten, Empower, Maximize, then add things like Enlarge, Widen, Intensify etc.

This was my favorite at first, but it occurred to me that this is choosing anti-efficiency essentially, when a wizard who wrote down that he wanted to blow up the world could do it in a second.


I actually solved DBZ in 3.5. It's Epic magic. Normally, you mitigate Epic Magic by requiring other people to help (chain gated solars, specifically), but you can instead mitigate via cast time. Since every DBZ character is a blast/self-buff focused Sorcerer who dumped Int and therefore never heard of Gate, they make Epic Spells with cast times expressed in hours.

Learning this sounds preferable, trying to make some sort of character who rushes epic magic of suitable proportions ASAP and maybe has one of the tainted magic classes in order to get some metamagic on there and add in the exhaustion felt afterward from the con damage. Any fallacies in that?

The dancing bit wasn't bad mechanically, but I'd want to reflavor the hell out of it, it's literally dancing. :smallbiggrin:

[Taveena]

But just imagine Goku furiously twerking to defeat Buu!

[lytokk]

the ginyu force makes so much more sense now

[arkangel111]

The dancing bit wasn't bad mechanically, but I'd want to reflavor the hell out of it, it's literally dancing. :smallbiggrin:

Whiteboy dance... its what i do. Not everyone has skills.

[Brookshw]

But just imagine Goku furiously twerking to defeat Buu!

You are a terrible person
And so am I
http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a515/brookshw/Goku_zps7807e265.png

[Irk]

You could just go with a caster, but that's not as fun.

I'm working on a build that has a kind of charge-up effect with smites, employing the Psycarnadin trick from my signature, which effectively allows for recharging Smite Attacks as a move action. By combining Ranged Smite, Triadic Smite + regular smite, and Devastating Smite, I set it up as a sort of siege tank build, where it could stand still and deliver a single full round blast of death. I found a whole bunch of smite boosters, and I eventually got to the point where you could burn 4 smites for an exchange of +150 damage on a single attack. It's not spectacular, but it could have two rounds of charge up time if you invested 1 essentia into Sapphire Smite. I can post the build details if you are interested, but I suspect that the Metamagic-Spontaneous caster might be more powerful.

[Flickerdart]

But just imagine Goku furiously twerking to defeat Buu!
Well, there was that Fusion Dance.

[INoKnowNames]

I had iron heart surge refluffed as entering super sayian mode, this included the screaming, the aura of power and levitating sand around the character, wich was pretty fun.
I am quite sure that this is totally irrelevant though. wich I am not sorry for

Iron Heart Surge lets you shake off a single effect for one moment. It's not exactly a power up so much as it is a self heal.


(chain gated solars, specifically)

Dang it, Chain Gating Solars isn't the go to answer for everything!


But just imagine Goku furiously twerking to defeat Buu!

God why. Why did you have to say that. If you speak it, someone has already written a fanfic about it. WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!


the ginyu force makes so much more sense now

You'd actually be surprised how well synchronized posing helps raise the moral of a team, and thus affect performance. Besides, "never give a sword to a man who can't dance", right?

And now, to actually reply.


I'll begin with the obligatory comment that the fights in DBZ didn't really take that long. The added a lot of filler to keep the show from overtaking the manga (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OvertookTheManga) is all.

Anyway, the easy way to mimic this is with a spontaneous caster piling on metamagic with no time reducers. Each one you add will add an extra full-round action to the spell. So start with Heighten, Empower, Maximize, then add things like Enlarge, Widen, Intensify etc.

Obviously you will want to do this in epic so that you have high enough spell slots (via Improved Spell Capacity) to do it - but then, the DBZ characters are pretty clearly epic (or at least mythic) anyway.

Psyren's said quite a bit of what I've wanted to say. If nothing else, I need to quote this for emphasis.

However, I'd like to emphasize that most of the blasting and such for non Final Flash / Super Kamehameha / Spirit Bomb grade attacks is actually a lot faster than you would think. I'd like to go on the assumption that we watch and read it from the perspective of the fighters, and that from the human perspective, like with the spectators at the Cell Games, it looks like they aren't even there, or are trying to just use optical illusions and petty tricks, since they're moving so fast and shooting light.

Because of this notion, you could actually go with Metamagic Reducers and Time Reducers for your standard reflex blasting and do just fine on them. From my research into this department (I've spent a long time loving DBZ and wanting to play a DBZ like character), a Sorcerer Incantatrix with metamagic reducers probably is among your best bets. As DBZ characters are vulnerable to any attack they don't prepare a defense or dodge for, the small hitdice is offset through good Constitution Scores and using your Energy (buff spells) to defend yourself. The rest of your spells, aside from having a few that you specifically use for the blasting and the powering up, you can use for your enhanced senses and mobility, such as teleportations of various ranges, and analyzing energy signatures.

I've been looking for a long time on the subject of the Final Flash / Super Kamehameha / Spirit Bomb, and I agree that you're probably looking at Epic Level Magic, or something as broken, to get the proper scale for the attack. Dragon Magazine actually presents such a thing: War Spells, from 309. They require you to have knowledge of an area based on having been there for at least a full minute before casting (easily met requirement when you start battling a foe, though you could scry ahead if you needed to), and require a full minute of casting time to actually launch the spell (much like our biggest attacks above). Horrendously broken, even with the material component and casting time (neither of which are as eeasily offset as has been once described on Gitp), particularly if you were to use it to slaughter the economy by creating materials, or to summon entire armies. It's easily as bad as Epic Magic, if not worse since it's available at a lower level.

But an Explosive, Twinned, Energy Admixture Fire, Energy Admixture Electric, Empowered, Maximized, Born of Three Thunders, War Lightning Bolt? Or likewise with a Fireball? I believe that should be about what you're looking for, op. A nice, big blast that makes those who see it reconsider attacking you. This also comes to mind. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-yclEFBGnY) An army over ten thousand strong, and the entire universe they rode in on, reduced to ash by a single attack.

Obviously, all of this straddles the border between Practical planning and Theoretically planning, or at least it does in my book. I wouldn't try to pull all of these suggestions onto an unsuspecting Dm. War Spells: definitely on a ban first basis in my book. But I hope they were useful all the same.

Edit: No conversation concerning horribly broken mechanics, particularly Metamagic abuse that makes Richard Gale say "Dayam. I thought I got my ass beat!", is completely without the mention to consider the Metaphysical Spellshaper as a way to apply some or more of those metamagics. On top of that, go Dragon Blooded (seems appropriate given the subject matter), and take both Easy and Practical Metamagic for the ones you intend to use, to keep costs even lower. Though you probably don't have nearly enough feats...

[Telonius]

You know how in Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and all those series, a character will charge one HUGE attack of some kind for hours, if not days, if not weeks, to ensure total decimation of whatever they oppose? I have always wanted to recreate something like this in d&d, but never found a proper way, so I thought maybe someone knew of something I didn't :smallsmile:

All I've gathered is this:

Obvious metamagics like maximize/empower
Channel Sound/Sonic Blast (spell that allows a scaling with how long you take to cast it)
Twin Spell (Kinda feels like cheating though)


Anyone have anything else they can think of, probably something that applies to magic, that scales over time for that charge effect? Even if it doesn't synergize with anything I've found at all, I'd love to here it :smallbiggrin:

I've seen this sort of thing happen quite frequently in my experience. It's just that those meddling PCs tend to show up two minutes before the charge-up is about to be completed, and they blow up the gate, or kill the high priest, or cross the streams, completely ruining it.

[Taveena]

I FOUND A THING

By which I mean I was reading through Magic of Eberron. Dragon Prophesier + Prophecy's Shaper allows you to spend a round charging up to then gain a free Empower once per round. Prophesier's Explorer boosts your speed and AC. Prophesier's Slayer gives you a 1d6 sneak attack. HNAAAAGH!

[supersonic29]

I can post the build details if you are interested, but I suspect that the Metamagic-Spontaneous caster might be more powerful.

Love to see what you have! Just as standard d&d had fighters and casters having "charge-monster" casters and fighters sounds like you could make a whole party out of it. What you're talking about also sounds perfect for something I wanted to build for a Test of Spite (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?150821-Test-of-Spite-3-5) build to one shot my opponents.


Dragon Prophesier + Prophecy's Shaper allows you to spend a round charging up to then gain a free Empower once per round. Prophesier's Explorer boosts your speed and AC. Prophesier's Slayer gives you a 1d6 sneak attack. HNAAAAGH!

Free empowers sound good, dunno how often you would charge and successfully sneak attack though :smallbiggrin: