What is the glassiest cannon build out there?

[daremetoidareyo]

I mean really fragile but packs a giant wallop every round/few rounds.

Please don't respond with generic: "Use a T1 caster. Now you're done."

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Please don't respond with generic: "Use a T1 caster. Now you're done."

I know you don't want that answer, but it's largely true. Take a Wizard, pick your method of destruction (Save-or-Suck/Die spells, Scry-n-Die, Mailman's damage burst, etc.), and pick your PrC to suit.

There's really no "glassiest cannon" in D&D: there are a number of high-power caster builds who all sit around playing rocket tag, and a few martial/mundane builds that do nothing but hope their nigh-infinite damage combo lands. 1d2 Crusader, for example: infinite damage...but only if he hits.

So you'll need to be specific. It's pretty easy to deal absurd damage and/or have just a tremendous output of destructive spells. Can you narrow it down a bit?

[bjoern]

I mean really fragile but packs a giant wallop every round/few rounds.

Please don't respond with generic: "Use a T1 caster. Now you're done."

First thing that comes to my mind is a poorly built incantatrix. Using mountains of metamagic to boost a blast spell to the moon for thousands of damage. Only to have the enemy make the saving throw/SR/resistance.

[ben-zayb]

I'm not sure what you meant by glassiest, but here was a "glass cannon" TO-trick of mine:


Be a devil and nab both the Mark of Cania(FC2) feat and a recoverable Moment of Perfect Mind maneuver. Get some at will Will-negates ability (maybe binder 1? warlock 6? template? Imp's Invisibility SLA? whatever) and use it with MoPM (no autofail) on one round, and then recovers the maneuver on another. Basically +1 to damage, attack, saves, and checks, as well as -1 to AC, per 2 or 5 rounds.

So...what information do I get with +200000 to Gather Info / Knowledge (all) / etc. checks in preparation, and free-action/non-action Spot / Listen / Sense Motive / Knowledge (all) / etc. during the fight proper? Also, are epic skill checks on?

Imp Truenamer 1 / Warblade 1
Utterance: Word of Nurturing, Lesser
Maneuver: Moment of Perfect Mind, Action Before Thought, Sudden Leap, Hunter's Sense

Plan: utter Lesser Word of Nurturing for 1d6+200000 damage, Truespeak check +200000 (+rank, +Int bonus, etc.)
Defenses: no save, no attack, no SR (no turning), but I'm not sure if it autobypasses ethereal/incorporeal if that matters
Substitute "+200000" with any positive number that you want (let's call it X)

With this, you +X bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, checks (e.g. grapple, caster level, level, skill, trip, bull rush, initiative, etc.), and saving throws, while suffering the same amount to your AC. (if by fragile, you meant AC of negative infinity - 1 )

You also just have 5 hit die, which will probably be less than most suggestions I'm expecting here (since Pun Pun is in no way fragile).

[deuxhero]

Use a T2 caster. Now you're done.

[Rebel7284]

Perhaps a charger build utilizing Shock Trooper? You end up with hundreds of damage on a pouncing full attack, but AC in the negatives.

[bjoern]

Another would be to make a martial guy. Lots of possibilities there. Ubercharger, power attacker, etc. Dump everything you got into smacking stuff for hundreds of damage.

....and.....fail your will save vs (insert pretty much any spell here)

Or be annihalated by an orb of force that had been thesised/empowered/maximized/twinned/repeating/arcane fusioned/greater arcane fusioned.......on your own turn when a mage interrupts your charge with a celerity.

[Vizzerdrix]

Hmm...

A build I proposed for the Commoner handbook.
(http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?232822-The-Commoner-Handbook)
Strongheart Halfling with Magical Training, Heighten Spell, Versatile Spell Caster and Spellfire Wielder. Charge yourself up and get one good blast every other week.

[Karl Aegis]

I'm going to nominate a fey race with integrated Tier 2 caster progression and huge level adjustment.

[Zaq]

Perhaps a charger build utilizing Shock Trooper? You end up with hundreds of damage on a pouncing full attack, but AC in the negatives.

Add in Headlong Rush. Now you do even more damage, but you're provoking extra attacks from enemies.

[Grod_The_Giant]

How 'bout ye olde Mind Over Body + Festering Anger + immortal race trick on a commoner? As a level one character, you can kill anything you can reach in a single hit (arbitrarily high Strength). And just about anything that hits you will kill you.

[IZ42]

How 'bout ye olde Mind Over Body + Festering Anger + immortal race trick on a commoner? As a level one character, you can kill anything you can reach in a single hit. And just about anything that hits you will kill you.

*Looks down at Cancer Mage class. Looks back up again. Points to Cancer Mage Class*

[Grod_The_Giant]

*Looks down at Cancer Mage class. Looks back up again. Points to Cancer Mage Class*
Yeah, but Mind Over Body works from first level. You're much squishier that way.

[morkendi]

I played a shadowcraft mage with both the frail and feeble flaws. -1 hp pwr level and -2 to con. Character was so fun though.

[Darrin]

Put an actual glass cannon between two pieces of bread = psionic sandwich trick.

[Exegesis]

Great wyrm gold, devilish impulse, maximize breath, heighten breath, lingering breath, enlarge breath times a billion, frowning solars surround you, totally worth it.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I'm going to go with some kind of (mounted) charger with a bunch of LA for Str bonuses (Half-Goristro (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060630a) gets +16 with the size increase). Use Shock Trooper to Power Attack for an AC penalty, and forsake all possible defenses for moar damage. That he has to get in melee range just makes it worse for him.

[Psyren]

Put an actual glass cannon between two pieces of bread = psionic sandwich trick.

Beat me to it

[Telonius]

Maybe ... a Hellfire Warlock that doesn't bind Naberius or use a Strongheart Vest?

[Feint's End]

It's most likely ubercharger. While caster can deal similar or higher amounts of damage they can do it while being almost unkillable while ubercharger actually have low survivability.

They are therefore glasscanons while caster are not.

[goto124]

Could they be actual cannons?

Could they be made of literal glass?

Or both?

[Milodiah]

My friend managed to build a character who was always at -9HP. Naturally.

We're not entirely sure how he managed to get through wizard college, given he's always unconscious without outside interference.

[Telonius]

Sounds like a great Oneiromancer build. :smallcool:

[FocusWolf413]

Warmage/(Hellfire) Warlock/Eldritch Theurge

[LoyalPaladin]

Normally I am the last person to jump on the T1 bandwagon, but it does seem that the Mailman build is what you are looking for...

Otherwise I feel like the Swordsage is sort of a squishy glass cannon. That could just be ours though.

[atemu1234]

My friend managed to build a character who was always at -9HP. Naturally.

We're not entirely sure how he managed to get through wizard college, given he's always unconscious without outside interference.

Temporary hit points from repeated castings of Vigor by the local friendly Psion?

[Zorgoth]

How about a telekinesis wizard/sorcerer with a pile of large arrows chosen to penetrate any DR? Cast sonic substituted flame arrow and greater magic weapon on them, maybe buff up your damage rolls with a few cleric/bard buffs via umd or in the case of bard eternal wands. If you've prepared you can do absurd damage (cl 12 gmw and cl 15 telekinesis (pretty easy to attain by lvl 11) and good hope and cl 9 divine favor can do 30d6 + 120 damage with a fifth level spell, no spell resistance or save, assuming the ac is not too high (a real danger since your bab sucks), but without multi-round preparation your damage potential with telekinesis is quite meh. Add a belt of battle to double the damage, and later a rod of quicken spell to quadruple it (that or use 8th level spell slots presuming arcane thesis).

[Cruiser1]

I mean really fragile but packs a giant wallop every round/few rounds.
A mailman sorcerer using the Spelldancer PrC. Use Ocular Spell and a bunch of other metamagic feats that increase damage to store a super enhanced Orb spell in your eyes, that can then be released at your leisure. It takes several rounds of spelldancing to cast the spell with metamagic. Most of the builds suggested so far pack the same wallop every round. This build is notable because it requires a number of rounds to "charge up", after which you release a super mega wallop.

[Sam K]

Commoner rail gun.

Launch items at infinite speed is pretty cannony, but any piece of machinery is vulnerable to cuddly kitty death!

[Blackhawk748]

A Gray Elf Wizard, who didnt take Faerie Mysteries Initiate *DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN!!* Seriously that very Glass Cannon

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Commoner rail gun.

Launch items at infinite speed is pretty cannony, but any piece of machinery is vulnerable to cuddly kitty death!

Doesn't work that well by RAW, sadly. While the object does travel at infinite speed, the last Commoner to throw it at a target still deals damage as a thrown improvised object of the item's size, with a -4 penalty to hit for the improvised use.

So, while you do get hit by a bucket travelling at the speed of light (or faster), you still only take something like 1d3+1 damage. D&D is funny that way. :smallbiggrin:

[Shining Wrath]

Mailman sorcerer, Maximize Metamagics, dump Constitution.

[Feint's End]

Mailman sorcerer, Maximize Metamagics, dump Constitution.

You can still be extremely durable with little effort.

Seriously I'm gonna repeat what I said at page 1. T1 and T2 are never technically glass cannons because they don't have to sacrifice defense for ridiculous offense. You can deal the most damage and still be more durable than the most tanky barbarian.
Therefor I argue that none of those classes technically qualify as glass cannons. Ubercharger on the other hand are not durable. While they do deal high amounts of damage, they are prone to retaliation due to their low AC. They are actually based around the idea that you kill things before they surely kill you. I say that they are true glass cannons but there may be others out there.

[Zaq]

You can still be extremely durable with little effort.

Seriously I'm gonna repeat what I said at page 1. T1 and T2 are never technically glass cannons because they don't have to sacrifice defense for ridiculous offense. You can deal the most damage and still be more durable than the most tanky barbarian.
Therefor I argue that none of those classes technically qualify as glass cannons. Ubercharger on the other hand are not durable. While they do deal high amounts of damage, they are prone to retaliation due to their low AC. They are actually based around the idea that you kill things before they surely kill you. I say that they are true glass cannons but there may be others out there.

T1 yes, T2 no. A T2, by definition, can't change their spell load on any given day (if they could, they'd be T1, right?). So if you build a T2 and don't take any defensive spells, any "NO!" buttons, or anything other than straight offensive spells, then yeah, they can be glass cannons. They aren't doomed to be glass cannons no matter what, but neither is it forbidden to them.

[Kraken]

I'm gonna go with a twist on a classic (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1765181). All you need to do is start the game as venerable, and not put any points into con, and suddenly you're rocking 1 HP per character level, plus hits to the relevant saves, and also being vulnerable to a single point of con damage resulting in instant death - and stuff that causes con damage will likely be prevented by a fort save, which is based off of the worst save by both class progression and ability mod. Then ditch all the defensive spells and so forth, and swap them out for more offensive firepower, or out of combat utility. Every step taken to make the character more fragile enhances it in some other way so far, but I can't think of a method to tank the will save in a way that creates this sort of tradeoff. Taking steadfast determination, for instance, would blow up their only good save, but without causing them to gain something in return.

[Vrock_Summoner]

T1 yes, T2 no. A T2, by definition, can't change their spell load on any given day (if they could, they'd be T1, right?). So if you build a T2 and don't take any defensive spells, any "NO!" buttons, or anything other than straight offensive spells, then yeah, they can be glass cannons. They aren't doomed to be glass cannons no matter what, but neither is it forbidden to them.

I mean, technically a T1 can also choose to never prepare any defensive spells. :smalltongue:

But more seriously, yeah, spell selection for spontaneous casters is much more part of the build itself than for prepared casters, so you can pretty well build a T2 glass cannon. It... Really wouldn't be much other than a less-effective-than-normal mailman sorc or somesuch, though.

[Sam K]

Doesn't work that well by RAW, sadly. While the object does travel at infinite speed, the last Commoner to throw it at a target still deals damage as a thrown improvised object of the item's size, with a -4 penalty to hit for the improvised use.

So, while you do get hit by a bucket travelling at the speed of light (or faster), you still only take something like 1d3+1 damage. D&D is funny that way. :smallbiggrin:

I know.

But launching things at infinite speed is still pretty cannony. It just doesn't do much DAMAGE!

[Feint's End]

T1 yes, T2 no. A T2, by definition, can't change their spell load on any given day (if they could, they'd be T1, right?). So if you build a T2 and don't take any defensive spells, any "NO!" buttons, or anything other than straight offensive spells, then yeah, they can be glass cannons. They aren't doomed to be glass cannons no matter what, but neither is it forbidden to them.

My point is that you can even built t2 blasters which are defensive monsters with little effort. And they won't be any less effective at blasting than a t2 without defensive spells because realistically you need like 5ish spells to be good at dealing damage.

So you can be defensive without actually sacrificing any offense (because same here ... you don't need a lot of defensive spells neither. Not taking those spells doesn't make you a class cannon. It only makes you someone who purposely gets rid of defense, but doesn't get higher damage in return. To put it blunt it's like playing a strength based paladin without armor. Now does this combination have high damage and low defense? Yeah it does. Does it have to have that low of a defense to deal the same damage? No it doesn't.

[SinsI]

I'm gonna go with a twist on a classic (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1765181). All you need to do is start the game as venerable, and not put any points into con, and suddenly you're rocking 1 HP per character level, plus hits to the relevant saves, and also being vulnerable to a single point of con damage resulting in instant death - and stuff that causes con damage will likely be prevented by a fort save, which is based off of the worst save by both class progression and ability mod. Then ditch all the defensive spells and so forth, and swap them out for more offensive firepower, or out of combat utility. Every step taken to make the character more fragile enhances it in some other way so far, but I can't think of a method to tank the will save in a way that creates this sort of tradeoff. Taking steadfast determination, for instance, would blow up their only good save, but without causing them to gain something in return.

Glass cannon shouldn't be able to do anything to fix its vulnerability (at least without sacrificing the attack power). Your venerable "glass cannon candidate" can take Necropolitan template and Fairy Mysteries Initiate without losing any.

[gooddragon1]

I mean really fragile but packs a giant wallop every round/few rounds.

Please don't respond with generic: "Use a T1 caster. Now you're done."

I think a dragonfire adept (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1101061) using five-fold breath of tiamat might be what you're looking for. 9d6 acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic damage (I think) for a total of 45d6 damage to an opponent with a 2 round cooldown or so. The catch is that you take either 2 or 4 times your level in damage (depending on your alignment) for using it. If you max out your constitution score you can offset this, but you'll still be a bit fragile. Very blasty, and not so easy to fix the fragile bit. All this comes from one book by the way and doesn't require any cheese (though you can add some on for extra firepower if you want).

[Dysart]

Not read all the answers to this, got bored by the 5th "Tx Caster".

To answer your question, if we're talking low levels like level 1:

Sorcerer, melee option from Complete Arcane.
Blade of Blood spell:
level 1 spell
Necromancy
Swift action
Lasts for 1 round/level
Deals an extra 1D6 on the next successful hit. OR spend 5 hp and deal an additional 2D6 (total of 3D6).

So that's a low HP character casting in melee and reducing his own HP to deal more damage... sounds pretty fragile to me while throwing around atleast 4D6 damage (with a shortsword) per hit, at level 1.

[daremetoidareyo]

Not read all the answers to this, got bored by the 5th "Tx Caster".

To answer your question, if we're talking low levels like level 1:

Sorcerer, melee option from Complete Arcane.
Blade of Blood spell:
level 1 spell
Necromancy
Swift action
Lasts for 1 round/level
Deals an extra 1D6 on the next successful hit. OR spend 5 hp and deal an additional 2D6 (total of 3D6).

So that's a low HP character casting in melee and reducing his own HP to deal more damage... sounds pretty fragile to me while throwing around atleast 4D6 damage (with a shortsword) per hit, at level 1.

Throw that on a battle sorcerer acf with the stalwart sorcerer acf class feature (and you might be able to do it...twice!) Make him killoren/jermlaine/duskling and add the charm the arrow feat...or just truestrike on round 1.

[Kraken]

Glass cannon shouldn't be able to do anything to fix its vulnerability (at least without sacrificing the attack power). Your venerable "glass cannon candidate" can take Necropolitan template and Fairy Mysteries Initiate without losing any.

I don't really get your point. Has anybody posted anything with an unchangeable weakness? Does such a thing even exist?

[gooddragon1]

I don't really get your point. Has anybody posted anything with an unchangeable weakness? Does such a thing even exist?

The truenamer?

[ben-zayb]

The truenamer?Except for once he decides that his next attack roll should hit, all bonuses and penalties are reset to zero after the attack.

EDIT: Of course, he still only has 5HD after that, so that could count as still being weaksauce.

[Feint's End]

I don't really get your point. Has anybody posted anything with an unchangeable weakness? Does such a thing even exist?

There exists nothing like this in dungeons and dragons because you can get high survivability via items anyways. However I propose we don't count those.

I think what he (and I've said it multiple times) meant is that a class which doesn't have to be squishy to dish out the same amount of damage doesn't qualify as a class cannon. Look at my previous example. The point is that you can easily ramp up your defenses as a caster and still deal enormous amounts of damage .... therefor they can't qualify as glass cannons.

[Kraken]

I think I understand the distinction you're trying to make, but I'm having a hard time coming up with an example that differs in principle in any significant way. Every defensive ability you strip away from the mailman gives it some other ability - this doesn't even necessarily need to be offensive in nature if you believe you've already reached the 'I win all combats' threshold. Trading mage armor for comprehend languages as spells known, for instance.