TO fast ramp up builds.

[ivanbin]

Out of curiosity, what builds are there that are both very very strong (broken) but also do so at early levels.
I mean things like Pun Pun, Omniscificer and Tainted Scholar. Both of whom can get infinite and nigh I finite stats at very early levels.
What else is there like that? (Excluding anything 3rd party, or dragon mag)

[Rubik]

Out of curiosity, what builds are there that are both very very strong (broken) but also do so at early levels.
I mean things like Pun Pun, Omniscificer and Tainted Scholar. Both of whom can get infinite and nigh I finite stats at very early levels.
What else is there like that? (Excluding anything 3rd party, or dragon mag)Well, a level 1 wizard with Precocious Apprentice (Ray of Stupidity), Sanctum Spell, and Forceful Magic can gain enough XP via one-shotting elephants with level 0 scrolls of Ray of Stupidity to hit epic levels within, like, 2 days.

[Chronos]

You can't get to epic levels by one-shotting elephants. You'll quickly reach a point where elephants, or anything else that trick will work on, won't give you any XP at all.

And it's not in the same class as Pun-Pun, but a wizard with both the Elf Generalist racial substitution level and the Domain Wizard variant, plus a few feats, can cast 9th-level spells at level 1.

[Rubik]

You can't get to epic levels by one-shotting elephants. You'll quickly reach a point where elephants, or anything else that trick will work on, won't give you any XP at all.

And it's not in the same class as Pun-Pun, but a wizard with both the Elf Generalist racial substitution level and the Domain Wizard variant, plus a few feats, can cast 9th-level spells at level 1.But you can get high enough to use Planar Binding to get a Wish, which you can then use for a thought bottle, attuned to you, which is already filled with an arbitrarily high number of XP, which is, again, already attuned to you.

[AvatarVecna]

A common infinite Str trick (usually used for Hulking Hurler cheese) is to dip into Cancer Mage, get infected with Festering Anger, hole up somewhere for years, and then hurl the planet into the sun. There's a few things wrong with this...

1) The point of Cancer Mage is being able to ignore the Con damage of Festering Anger; once you've got that, you can wait for infinite days and gain infinite Str. The goal, then, is to acquire both immunity to death by aging and a method of ignoring Con damage; Undead and Constructs (Necropolitans and Warforged) can accomplish both without taking any levels in Cancer Mage.

2) There's a race from Races of Destiny called Illumians: they have a racial option to use Str in place of their casting stat for the purposes of gaining bonus spells. Illumians, incidentally, can become Necropolitans.

Build: Illumian Wizard 3 becomes Necropolitan (becoming lvl 2 with no extra XP), then retreats into isolation for 1000 years. After emerging, the mage emerges, having gained 730000 Str; they now have enough Str that, no matter what non-epic level they are, they gain enough bonus spells of their highest level to cast 2 spells of their highest level every single round, all day long. The mage proceeds to use the usual magical TO tricks to curbstomp their way straight to whatever level they want to be.

[Extra Anchovies]

Nitpick: the Tainted Scholar trick only works under a certain interpretation of the rules. Either the effective taint score of evil-subtype creatures (one-half their Charisma score, +1 for undead, +2 for outsiders) overrides their actual taint score, or it only sets a minimum effective taint score (with their actual taint score being used if it's higher than the effective taint score). If the former is true, the trick doesn't work; if the latter is true, the trick does work. I'm of the opinion that the RAI leans strongly towards the former, and thus don't think the Tainted Scholar exploit holds any water.

[Vhaidara]

A common infinite Str trick (usually used for Hulking Hurler cheese) is to dip into Cancer Mage, get infected with Festering Anger, hole up somewhere for years, and then hurl the planet into the sun. There's a few things wrong with this...

1) The point of Cancer Mage is being able to ignore the Con damage of Festering Anger; once you've got that, you can wait for infinite days and gain infinite Str. The goal, then, is to acquire both immunity to death by aging and a method of ignoring Con damage; Undead and Constructs (Necropolitans and Warforged) can accomplish both without taking any levels in Cancer Mage.

2) There's a race from Races of Destiny called Illumians: they have a racial option to use Str in place of their casting stat for the purposes of gaining bonus spells. Illumians, incidentally, can become Necropolitans.

Build: Illumian Wizard 3 becomes Necropolitan (becoming lvl 2 with no extra XP), then retreats into isolation for 1000 years. After emerging, the mage emerges, having gained 730000 Str; they now have enough Str that, no matter what non-epic level they are, they gain enough bonus spells of their highest level to cast 2 spells of their highest level every single round, all day long. The mage proceeds to use the usual magical TO tricks to curbstomp their way straight to whatever level they want to be.

Um... If you're a construct/Necropoiltan, you can't contract Festering Anger because you're immune to disease...

[PsyBomb]

Um... If you're a construct/Necropoiltan, you can't contract Festering Anger because you're immune to disease...

Agreed. Cancer Mage is used because they specifically ignore PENALTIES from diseases. This lets them gain the diseases to spread later, which is the point of the class.

Constructs and Undead can't contract the disease in the first place.

[Chronos]

You could also use Festering Anger with anything that lets you ignore or quickly heal Con damage. Naberius and Strongheart Vest both come to mind.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You could also use Festering Anger with anything that lets you ignore or quickly heal Con damage. Naberius and Strongheart Vest both come to mind.
The easiest is to have a Con of 17 or more and the Mind over Body feat. Every day you take 1d3 Con damage and heal up to 1+Con points of ability damage. The worst Festering Anger can do is drop you to 14-- still high enough to heal the full 3 Con damage. Slap that on an Elan and you've got functional immortality to go along with it (though you need to boost your Con by a few points if you start accumulating aging penalties-- Ice Dweller (Dragon 306) will give you a +2 racial bonus for +0 LA, enough to get you to a starting score of 20, itself enough to leave you at that magic 17 at venerable age)

[MilesTiden]

Actually, the aging penalties stack, so it would be 14, and then down to 11.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Actually, the aging penalties stack, so it would be 14, and then down to 11.
That's why you have to boost your Con up to 20 if you want to go to venerable age. 18 base + 2 Ice Dweller gives you that. Aging takes you down to 17, Festering takes you down to 14, and Mind Over Body heals you back to full again. Not that it's really necessary, mind-- you're gaining 760 Strength a year. ONE year is enough to break a character. In a little over 13 years you have a Strength score of over ten thousand. The tricky part would be getting access to a fast time plane at a low level to accelerate the process.

I mean, it's not a great trick, since you're still pretty squishy, and one Cure Disease spell can wipe out centuries of work. But if we're talking level 1 power builds...

[Chronos]

20 - 6 = 14, not 17.

[Grod_The_Giant]

20 - 6 = 14, not 17.
A starting Con of 14 gets reduced to 17 by aging penalties. Then every day you take 1d3 damage and heal a minimum of 3 points.

[Vhaidara]

A starting Con of 14 gets reduced to 17 by aging penalties. Then every day you take 1d3 damage and heal a minimum of 3 points.

Grod, what they're saying is
You have a 20 Con
You reach Middle Age. Your Con drops by 1 from 20 to 19.
You reach Old. Con drops by 2 from 19 to 17
You reach Venerable. Con drops by 3 from 17 to 14.
You take 1d3 Con damage from Festering Anger. You are now too low to recover enough with Mind Over Body

[Grod_The_Giant]

Wuh? I was under the impression that the aging penalties are simply increasing, not stacking...

[Extra Anchovies]

Wuh? I was under the impression that the aging penalties are simply increasing, not stacking...

Nah, they stack. You end up with -6/-6/-6/+3/+3/+3. PHB p. 109 bottom of the left column gives an example, in case you want rules citations.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Nah, they stack. You end up with -6/-6/-6/+3/+3/+3. PHB p. 109 bottom of the left column gives an example, in case you want rules citations.
Huh. Learn something new every day. (I am not good at CharOp) That method only gives us 980-some years of Anger-- "only" 744,800 Strength. In any case, it's very, very broken at a very, very low level.

So, compensating... hmm. If we start with a 14 Con... make our first level Incarnate, we can stick one Essentia in a Strongheart Vest. That gives us DR 2 against ability damage. Festering Anger hits you for three at worst, meaning that we only to heal 1-- the minimum Mind Over Body gives you. Of course, you have to keep that shaped until you can kill someone with a +4 Con item, but hey. (If you use flaws, you could take Expanded Soulmeld Capacity and and of the Azure or Cobolt feats for the +1 Essentia. With both points invested, the Vest will protect you from Festering Anger entirely).

[AvatarVecna]

Okay, fair point about the disease immunity of constructs/undead. Still, as has been demonstrated, there's other methods of gaining risk-free Festering Anger.


I mean, it's not a great trick, since you're still pretty squishy, and one Cure Disease spell can wipe out centuries of work. But if we're talking level 1 power builds...

You're absolutely right, one Cure Disease spell could undo centuries of work. Of course, if this caster has any ability to counterspell Cure Disease, he has infinite spells with which to do so. Other similar healing magics would only start coming into play right around the time he became capable of counterspelling them; playing it otherwise would be a result of the DM metagaming in some way.

In other words, it could happen...but it wouldn't, at least not realistically.

[Darrin]

Famous Optimized Character Builds (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?258580).

Looking through the list, most of them aren't all that achievable at lower levels, other than Pun-Pun/Omniscificer. Bubs the Commoner starts to click around ECL 4, but that depends on the DM being daft enough to let you find several battletitans just wandering around with nothing to do. You can also abuse the sacrifice rules from BoVD to summon an efreet at level 1 (see my Apocalypse Martini (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=15634823&postcount=19) for an example).

[Psyren]

Druid 10/PS 10 and Tippy Psion 20 are TO builds that start strong and end strong.

[Inevitability]

I don't know if Madness qualifies, but I think having a 9th-level spell (which grants access to each spell of 7th-level and lower, plus some 8th-level spells) as a 1st-level commoner does count.

[Jormengand]

Truenamer McApocalypse (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17858913&postcount=113) kicks off at level 1.