Unoptimized Fighter

[LordOfCain]

Wood Elf with Fey Bloodline
Feats are Acrobatic and Power Attack.
Skills are intimidate and bluff
Weapon is scythe.
Stats are:
18
9
11
13
11
13
May or may not multicast into bard and maybe dragon disciple.

[Pluto!]

Sure looks unoptimized.

What's the question?

[Mystral]

Wood Elf with Fey Bloodline
Feats are Acrobatic and Power Attack.
Skills are intimidate and bluff
Weapon is scythe.
Stats are:
18
9
11
13
11
13
May or may not multicast into bard and maybe dragon disciple.

Congratulations?

[Draco_Lord]

Yes. He is unoptimized. But could he be more unoptimized? Can we make something so unoptimized that it loops around to being optimized again?

[daremetoidareyo]

hmmmm.... not enough truenamer

[ComaVision]

Power Attack is far too good a feat, munchkin.

[noob]

Power attack is not too much good it you always optimize the value for having the lowest possible average damage.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Yes. He is unoptimized. But could he be more unoptimized? Can we make something so unoptimized that it loops around to being optimized again?

A fighter that deals negative value damage! And then he becomes a source of infinite healing...

[Morcleon]

Still not unoptimized enough. Put the 18 into Wis, the 9 into Str, and the 11 into Dex. Switch intimidate to Knowledge (history) and bluff to Knowledge (nobility and royalty). Drop the scythe and do whip TWF. You get a -6 and -10 to attack, and can only deal 1d3-1 nonlethal damage to opponents with no armor bonus to AC and +2 or less natural armor bonus to AC.

[YossarianLives]

Make sure to put all your skill points cross-classed into use rope and decipher script.

[daremetoidareyo]

So we have a wood elf true namer with a wisdom of 18 and skills in use rope and decipher script and two weapon fighting using a whip in each hand.

Is there a better bloodline to really synch it all together?

[noob]

We can make it blind and deaf and take the slow and frail flaws.
Also we must make it wear a very very heavy mundane helm(helms gives no bonuses)
and also he must absolutely have some cursed items like an armor of arrows attraction, -2 whips a slotless robe of debility and so on.

[nedz]

Wood Elf with Fey Bloodline
Feats are Acrobatic and Power Attack.
Skills are intimidate and bluff


That looks pretty unoptimal, could at least go for Persuasive ?

[danzibr]

Wait 18 Str?

[Curmudgeon]

Watch out for that Intimidate skill! Zhentarim Soldier Fighter substitution levels could net you Swift Demoralization, which is far from unoptimized.

[Extra Anchovies]

Unoptimized would be randomly selected and arranged feats, ability scores, and skill points, because every character that is intentionally built has at least some optimization to it - you have a job in mind that you want it to do, and you allocate some build resources towards making it able to do that. Putting an 18 into Strength when play a fighter is optimization.

[ahenobarbi]

Swift Demoralization
Am I the only one who just noticed that the name sounds like it should belong to a completly different ability?

[Morcleon]

Unoptimized would be randomly selected and arranged feats, ability scores, and skill points, because every character that is intentionally built has at least some optimization to it - you have a job in mind that you want it to do, and you allocate some build resources towards making it able to do that. Putting an 18 into Strength when play a fighter is optimization.

Unoptimized would also be deliberately picking feats and skills and such that do nothing or are actively detrimental to your character. :smallbiggrin:

[Brookshw]

Am I the only one who just noticed that the name sounds like it should belong to a completly different ability?

I don't know, playing this fighter would be pretty swiftly demoralizing in many games :smalltongue:

[Extra Anchovies]

Unoptimized would also be deliberately picking feats and skills and such that do nothing or are actively detrimental to your character. :smallbiggrin:

Not really. If you're trying to make a bad fighter, and you select options that will make them a bad fighter (negative physical stats, Skill Focus (Speak Language), etc), you are still optimizing - you have a job that you want your character to do (try to fight, but suck at it), and you are allocating build resources to make it do that job :smalltongue:

[Telonius]

I think we can do better than that.

Feats: Sacred Vow, Vow of Poverty.
Current alignment: Neutral.

[Curmudgeon]

I think we can do better than that.

Feats: Sacred Vow, Vow of Poverty.
Current alignment: Neutral.
Rules-illegal choices can't be chosen. That's not unoptimized; that's just incompetent.

[The Insanity]

Rules-illegal choices can't be chosen. That's not unoptimized; that's just incompetent.
I think the "current" in his sentence indicates that he became Neutral after getting VoP, thus losing all its benefits.

[Curmudgeon]

I think the "current" in his sentence indicates that he became Neutral after getting VoP, thus losing all its benefits.
Then the character had some benefit before that. It's not as useless as taking Skill Focus (Speak Language) repeatedly.

[Telonius]

He could just load up on Metamagic feats. All of the ones in the PHB don't have any prerequisites, and since he doesn't actually have spellcasting, they'd give him no benefits.

If it's possible this guy would go into Bard, Charisma should probably get the 9. Strength of 11 is higher than I'd like it, but giving him any kind of spellcasting would be bad news.

[Morcleon]

It's not as useless as taking Skill Focus (Speak Language) repeatedly.

You can't do that, actually.


Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new skill.

[Jormengand]

Of course, if you really want your character to suck, you could summon that epic fire thing that burns off hit points permanently, and then have it burn you down to -9.

Of course, you also need to take a ton of feats that don't help your character, and find some way to... ooh, I know, you can have 40 levels, 39 of with are casting levels (Or any values of N and N-1) and then take 39 negative levels, thus taking more penalties for the negative levels than you got bonuses for having the levels in the first place.

Also, you can't take truenamer levels, otherwise all those ranks in Truespeak that you're going to take would actually be useful. Instead, you gotta take 1 level of commoner and the rest in wizard (see the second paragraph). Chicken infested is right out: instead, take Pathetic and Unreactive, and then waste those feats, too.

Of course, if you insist on taking a fighter level, then fine. Just waste the feat from that, too, and never wield any weapons or wear any armour. Always carry a heavy load.

Of course, we can do worse. But let's start with that.

[Curmudgeon]

You can't do that, actually.
Not with the same feat, but you can accomplish the goal by taking Aereni Focus (Speak Language), Skill Focus (Speak Language), Focused Skill User (Speak Language + 2 others), and Epic Skill Focus (Speak Language).

[daremetoidareyo]

Of course, if you really want your character to suck, you could summon that epic fire thing that burns off hit points permanently, and then have it burn you down to -9.

Of course, you also need to take a ton of feats that don't help your character, and find some way to... ooh, I know, you can have 40 levels, 39 of with are casting levels (Or any values of N and N-1) and then take 39 negative levels, thus taking more penalties for the negative levels than you got bonuses for having the levels in the first place.

Also, you can't take truenamer levels, otherwise all those ranks in Truespeak that you're going to take would actually be useful. Instead, you gotta take 1 level of commoner and the rest in wizard (see the second paragraph). Chicken infested is right out: instead, take Pathetic and Unreactive, and then waste those feats, too.

Of course, if you insist on taking a fighter level, then fine. Just waste the feat from that, too, and never wield any weapons or wear any armour. Always carry a heavy load.

Of course, we can do worse. But let's start with that.

Who said anything about ranks in truespeek?

[The Insanity]

Then the character had some benefit before that.
We're talking about VoP here. :smalltongue:


It's not as useless as taking Skill Focus (Speak Language) repeatedly.
Yeah, but now it's a feat slot (or two, don't know if Sacred Vow also loses its powers) wasted (barring cheese like Psychic Reformation or Chaos Shuffle).

[Jormengand]

Who said anything about ranks in truespeek?

Me, just now. What, were you planning on spending them on anything useful? Surely not.

[nedz]

We're talking about VoP here.

So we take Vow of Non Violence and lots of Fighter feats starting with Power Attack.

[YossarianLives]

I think we should also change the race to 'hairy spider'.

[Kantolin]

You can't do that, actually.

In what I presume is the most random of questions...

Does that mean, by RAW, a character could take Skill focus(Perform) or Skill Focus (Craft)?

Or does it mean that a character must take Skill Focus(Wind Instruments) rather than the more general perform, but then could not take Skill Focus(Percussion) afterwards?

[Morcleon]

In what I presume is the most random of questions...

Does that mean, by RAW, a character could take Skill focus(Perform) or Skill Focus (Craft)?

Or does it mean that a character must take Skill Focus(Wind Instruments) rather than the more general perform, but then could not take Skill Focus(Percussion) afterwards?

Nope. Craft and Perform are not actually individual skills.


Like Knowledge, Perform, and Profession, Craft is actually a number of separate skills. You could have several Craft skills, each with its own ranks, each purchased as a separate skill.

[Telonius]

Well, if we're talking totally useless...

Skill focus (Spellcraft), (Disable Device), (Decipher Script), (Open Lock), (Tumble), and (Use Magic Device) ... then never put any skill ranks in them. That would take care of the level-up feats from 1-15, so all we need is one more useless one for 18. Why not go nuts and take Nimble Fingers? +2 to two of the skills you can't use! :smallbiggrin:

[Curmudgeon]

The problem with Nimble Fingers and such feats is that, with the very next level, there's nothing preventing the character from training both Disable Device and Open Lock. So that feat can only be currently useless rather than forever useless like Skill Focus (Speak Language).

[AvatarVecna]

Not to ruin the non-optimizing fun, but I'd just like to point out that this is an alternate thread for a previous topic. They were asking for people's thoughts on their "semi-optimal" build, which is the same one as in the OP of this thread. I will repeat what I said there: I congratulate the OP on putting together a build where I have absolutely no idea why any of these build choices were made.

[Jormengand]

The problem with Nimble Fingers and such feats is that, with the very next level, there's nothing preventing the character from training both Disable Device and Open Lock. So that feat can only be currently useless rather than forever useless like Skill Focus (Speak Language).

Mm... I suppose that ruins my fun with the truespeak ranks as well, then.

[Kantolin]

Mm... I suppose that ruins my fun with the truespeak ranks as well, then.

I dunno; then we'd have the drawback that the character is a Truenamer :smalltongue:

[Jormengand]

I dunno; then we'd have the drawback that the character is a Truenamer :smalltongue:

That's like talking about the drawback that a character is, I dunno, a ninja. Yeah, it's fun to make jokes about them being bad, but they're not actually that bad.