Running Overpowered/cheese campaign, need help.

[hunterx260]

Hello all,
Welcome to my first post. I have been playing on and off for a few years, and finally delving in to the community a little more.


So As the story goes, my DM is running an overpowered campaign, with some of the same death mechanics as Dark Souls. You don't really die you start to fade. He issued us all a challenge, build the strongest, most well rounded character you can. The entire setting appears to be a tournament of sorts. He predicted 60%+ of game time would be combat. In addition to this, he has claimed he will be throwing his scariest creations at us. Non-Player Characters (NPC's) that he created in the past and deemed them too powerful for us to face. As I got to work, and chatted with my DM about the campaign (roommate, I have home field advantage, LOL) I have come to realize he is far more studied in D&D than I, so, I turn to you all.

Here are the stipulations:
All books from the D&D campaign setting are allowed.
Nothing from Ebbaron/Faerun/Forgotten realms.
Any "Gray area" rulings need to be addressed with him.
Starting Level: 10-12 (we get to choose, but apparently there is a bonus for starting at level 10)
Starting gold ~40k

Given those guidelines, can anyone help me out?

[Flickerdart]

The inherent problem with this sort of game is that different people have different ideas of what it means to be overpowered. Interestingly, the wealth he's giving you is too low for what you should have.

My thoughts - play a druid. No PrCs, no fancy tricks. Just druid with Natural Spell. When you see what the other PCs and challenges are like, tailor your animal companion, go-to wildshape forms, and prepared spells as appropriate.

[Demidos]

General Advice
Take a single level (mayyybe 2) in the ghost savage progressions, for etheralness, more flying, allowing you to dump con, undead immunities, and generally making you really hard to hit, possibly telekinesis at caster level 12 every 1d4 rounds,

Use beads of Karma to set all your buffs and spells at +4 caster level (for 10 minutes per day). Toss on ankh of ascension for another +4 (for several rounds a day). If you can't beat them with your caster level 8 higher than usual, you're not trying.

If you want to be a jerk about it, get Spellguard rings, and use your animal companion?familiar to get antimagic field on it, while yourself being unaffected (you can dispel your own). Now you're a full caster and nothing magical works inside the area where you're hiding (which, incidentally, makes it really hard for them to hit an incorporeal you).

A level dip in sacred exorcist and a few feats can get you DMM persisted spells on pretty much any character.

If you ARE going as druid...
Start as an anthromorphic bat for the fly and +6 wis. The best summoning feats were nerfed, so consider other nice druid spells like kelpstrand.

If you ARE going as wizard...

If you ARE going as cleric...
Good Domain plus the aforementioned boosts to CL plus scrolls of holy word are...nasty.

[Invader]

Flickerdart is right. It'd be really helpful to know the level of optimization because I can almost guarantee you're going to get suggestions for builds magnitudes over what your DM is expecting.

[Threadnaught]

Now onto the truly broken stuff.


If your character relies on multiple sources, rather than just a single base Class, then ask your DM about which parts are legal, do this individually for everything and find out if you're allowed certain abilities. If you allow your DM to have a copy of your character sheet as well, they'd be able to look up your abilities as you go so if you manage to surprise them to the point they're about to accuse you of cheating, you could just remind them to check their version of your character sheet.

[Brova]

Human Cloistered Cleric. Worship Boccob, with first level domains of Knowledge, Magic, and Spell. Your feats are Extend Spell, Persist Spell, Craft Wondrous Item, Divine Metamagic (Persist Spell), Leadership, and Divine Might*. Go Cloistered Cleric 5/Dweomerkeeper 7 if you expect to advance, or dip out for a level of Contemplative if you don't. Your big trick is Supernatural Spell. You also have a lot of spell diversity, Leadership, and DMM: Persist. All told a pretty good deal.

First, Supernatural Spell. This lets you cast any spell with a 1 standard action or less casting time as a supernatural ability. That means that you get some minor boosts to the spell itself (no SR, no AoO provoked), but more importantly it means that you don't have to provide any components. That's super nice, and there are a lot of tricks you can pull with it, particularly in conjunction with greater anyspell and limited wish. Your basic trick is that you use permanency really, really effectively. Here's (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=4544.0) a list of things you can make permanent. The other thing you can do is the awaken loop. That involves emulating polymorph with greater anyspell to turn you into an animal, then awaken with limited wish to give you +1d3 Cha (drain the HD with a wight). That rapidly bootstraps you to arbitrary values of Charisma, giving you enough turn attempts to Persist every spell you cast.

Second, spell diversity. This one is pretty basic. You have anyspell, greater anyspell, and limited wish to pull from every list. Good options include planar binding, wraithstrike, and polymorph. You can pull a lot of neat Wizard tricks out of this, particularly downtime ones.

Third, Leadership. Not much to say. You have loads and loads of followers, plus a cohort. You could go for an optimized Wizard, or a more meatshield build, or a mini-me clone. I don't really care.

Fourth, DMM: Persist. Or, more generally, you have a lot of turning. You can persist up a bunch of stuff, and also use extra turning attempts to add your Cha to damage with Divine Might.

*: This requires Power Attack. No biggie, just make any item of mirror move and spend some time using heroics on a follower.

[Razanir]

Necropolitan Dwarf Ranger 3/Monk 2/Fist of the Forest 1/Deepwarden 2/Paladin of Tyranny 2 would be fun, but you'd have to get DM approval to use PF undead rules, not 3.5. (Pathfinder lets them sub Cha for Con any time it's used, 3.5 is more restrictive) (Or Swordsage 5 at the start)

[Mongobear]

Dragonborn of Bahamut Water Orc

Orc Paragon 3/ Barbarian 2/Fighter 1/Frenzied Berserker 4-6(4 is minimum for Deathless Frenzy)

build for an Uber-charger, and pump up your damage as much as possible, and just Power Attack the world into pieces.

[Flickerdart]

Dragonborn of Bahamut Water Orc

Orc Paragon 3/ Barbarian 2/Fighter 1/Frenzied Berserker 4-6(4 is minimum for Deathless Frenzy)

build for an Uber-charger, and pump up your damage as much as possible, and just Power Attack the world into pieces.

No character that is defeated by a handful of marbles could be seriously called overpowered.

[Mongobear]

No character that is defeated by a handful of marbles could be seriously called overpowered.

Freedom of Movement, Levitate, Flight speed, a Reach Weapon, or even ranks in cross-classed Balance laughs at the marbles. Which probably isnt much higher than DC 10-15 if there isnt a magical method to avoid them.

People also have completely differing opinions of what "Overpowered" can mean, and to me, charging with a Pouncing Frenzied Berzerker fully stacked for Uber-charging and Power Attack/Shock Trooper will delete almost any single monster in the game of an appropriate CR or even several CRs higher. Yes, he will probably get outshined by someone building a Mailman, Batman, or CoDzilla, but in a vacuum, for a lowly T3/T4 build appropriately equipped, this will do just fine at messing up anything a DM throws at him.

[Threadnaught]

The inherent problem with this sort of game is that different people have different ideas of what it means to be overpowered.


No character that is defeated by a handful of marbles could be seriously called overpowered.


People also have completely differing opinions of what "Overpowered" can mean,

Damn it Flickerdart, you said it first.
Mongobear's offering looks horribly OP from a "numbahs=powah" standpoint. All that damage, all them HPs.

[Eldest]

My favorite high power class is a factotum, mostly because of their ability to dumpster dive most badly written rules in the game. Throw BoVD's sacrifice rules, psionic tattoos, Iaijutsu strike, poison shenanigans, and more all on the same person, and that ends up being some WBL, 2 skills maxxed, and 2 feats.

[bean illus]

Human Cloistered Cleric. Worship Boccob, with first level domains of Knowledge, Magic, and Spell. Your feats are Extend Spell, Persist Spell, Craft Wondrous Item, Divine Metamagic (Persist Spell), Leadership, and Divine Might*. Go Cloistered Cleric 5/Dweomerkeeper 7 if you expect to advance, or dip out for a level of Contemplative if you don't. Your big trick is Supernatural Spell. You also have a lot of spell diversity, Leadership, and DMM: Persist. All told a pretty good deal.

First, Supernatural Spell. This lets you cast any spell with a 1 standard action or less casting time as a supernatural ability. That means that you get some minor boosts to the spell itself (no SR, no AoO provoked), but more importantly it means that you don't have to provide any components. That's super nice, and there are a lot of tricks you can pull with it, particularly in conjunction with greater anyspell and limited wish. Your basic trick is that you use permanency really, really effectively. Here's (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=4544.0) a list of things you can make permanent. The other thing you can do is the awaken loop. That involves emulating polymorph with greater anyspell to turn you into an animal, then awaken with limited wish to give you +1d3 Cha (drain the HD with a wight). That rapidly bootstraps you to arbitrary values of Charisma, giving you enough turn attempts to Persist every spell you cast.

Second, spell diversity. This one is pretty basic. You have anyspell, greater anyspell, and limited wish to pull from every list. Good options include planar binding, wraithstrike, and polymorph. You can pull a lot of neat Wizard tricks out of this, particularly downtime ones.

Third, Leadership. Not much to say. You have loads and loads of followers, plus a cohort. You could go for an optimized Wizard, or a more meatshield build, or a mini-me clone. I don't really care.

Fourth, DMM: Persist. Or, more generally, you have a lot of turning. You can persist up a bunch of stuff, and also use extra turning attempts to add your Cha to damage with Divine Might.

*: This requires Power Attack. No biggie, just make any item of mirror move and spend some time using heroics on a follower.

I would do a few things a little different, but Cloistered Cleric/Dweomerkeeper has the potential to be as cheesy and broke as anything in the game that i know. There is very little that can keep up with your SR penetration, and permanancy.

Let me say it again: Un-dispell-able permanancy in an Anti Magic Field is so broke that your DM will wish he was playing your character. You get to boost your everything as high as you wish.....with undispellable permanancy. Get Quicken, Ocular, Chain...

If a better utilitarian blaster exist, i don't know of it.

[Brova]

I would do a few things a little different, but Cloistered Cleric/Dweomerkeeper has the potential to be as cheesy and broke as anything in the game that i know. There is very little that can keep up with your SR penetration, and permanancy.

So would I. The build really wants Initiate of Mystra, and some Hathran levels for Circle Magic and Spontaneous Casting. Unfortunately, the DM has banned Faerun material. Getting an antimagic field without that requires Extraordinary Spell Aim, which doesn't do quite what you want it to. As you aren't effected by the AMF, people can still cast on you.

[Taffimai]

I am a terrible optimiser (because I like simplicity and gritty low-level play), so others will improve on this, but if a DM told me "all books allowed" and "make it as strong as you can", I'd go gestalt, Druid 10//Unarmed Swordsage 8/Winged (+2 template from Savage Species). It mightn't be the most powerful character there, but you're a majestic flying Fleshraker (MMIII) that would send Indominus Rex running for his mammie.