Optimize This Feat 1: Wanderer's Diplomacy:

[daremetoidareyo]

I Love Feats. They are little alterations to the rules and they interface with class features in some really fun and strange ways. Sometimes their utility is circumspect (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?471548-optimize-this-feat-Battle-Mage-Tactics-(MMV)) and sometimes it gets into some weird waters (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?456152-RAW-what-makes-a-person-a-captain-of-a-ship-Scourge-of-the-Cheese). There is just something really satisfying about the interplay of feats and rules to produce illogical and unintended effects.

What is this?
So I'm thinking about posting a weekly "Optimize this feat." Arbitrary credit seems to be important to sway people's incentives, so I have devised the following system to award credit to people who help plumb the possibilities of how to use a feat. I'm developing this on the fly, so rules are subject to change :smallannoyed:


All participants in the optimization endeavor post directly into the thread. After a week, the thread will be evaluated and participants will be assigned a score. That score represents how helpful or novel the poster was in their analysis of a feat's uses, abuses, interactions, and limitations. The rubric by which points are assigned to posters is developed below. The poster's who are most helpful will be announced after a week, and have their name highlighted in bold and in a font color other than black! l


Point Allocation Rubric
The following list is not exhaustive of how points will be allocated, as I imagine that there will be weird end cases.

Suggestion of a non-overtly obvious class feature, spell, feat, skill trick, psi-power, magic/psionic item, or monster that interplays with the feat to produce an exaggerated result.

Overt Obviousness will be judged by me, but I will generally allocate points generously, What I am trying to avoid is people suggesting feat interplays that are non-exceptional and thus cluttering the thread with lame and uninteresting things. 1 point.

If the suggestion is particularly powerful, an additional point may be allocated to reward the optimizerly thinking. This decision is mine, although I will be swayed by what seems like genuine "co-signing," where other posters in the thread really glom onto the idea and develop it further.

A small build stub, between 5-12 levels, that includes a small write up of how the feat interplays with a few class features, racial features, spells, powers and feats to produce an effect that is far beyond the scope of what the feat of the week is capable of providing on its own. 5 points. +/- 1 point.

A rather undeveloped stub may only receive 4 points if it is a slightly modified rehash of a previous stub. A rather ingenious stub can earn an extra point. In some cases, you may actually do both! All of these are judgement calls as adjudicated by myself.

A fully functional optimization of the feat that ramps it up to its maximum power level where there is no way to possibly make it more amazing, including a 20 level build that follows the same format as iron chef dishes, but with minimal write up, is worthy of 10-12 points.

A display of relevant rules expertise that shapes the discussion is worthy of 0 or 1 point. This is the "squishiest" criteria, and will only be allocated when it corrects part of the conversation that is going too far off the rails. Particularly nasty interchanges about RAW may lead to abdication of this point. Being incorrect isn't an immoral offense, so I want an atmosphere where suggestions are flying but staying generally within the real bounds of dnd play. RAW discussions tend to get a little too personal, and hopefully this arbitrary point system can circumvent that.


BIAS
I am not a perfect judge. I prefer mundane to magical. I prefer Tier 3 and below to Tier 2 and up. But I do love me some dysfunction. So optimization that requires a lot of high level spells or powers (anything level 4 or up) will be less impressive to me. Go ahead and make your suggestion, I will try to police these biases in myself, but understand that these are factors that are in play.

Other information
All of that said, I have an exhibited tendency to be more forgiving/rules lax, whereas some of you are far more RAW heavy. I really do appreciate ya'll, so don't be afraid to reign in some of the theory and ground it in what is explicitly allowed. Different tables play the game differently. And this forum tends to highlight super polarized ends of this permissiveness spectrum that spans from "RAW to a fault" - "So ridiculously theoretically unbalanced beyond any DM's willingness to allow". Most play tends to be in the middle, if not a little skewed towards RAW: but not all play. With that in mind, if requested, if you are asked to assume that the theoretical DM handwaves your criticism as a special exception, please update your approach and proceed from there if you would like to continue to parse the possibilities that a feat offers. In this way, we can develop the full spectrum of what a feat can do.

This week's Feat is Wanderer's Diplomacy from PHB2.

This primary endeavor concludes at 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time on December 23rd.

[daremetoidareyo]

Relevant rules to the discussion:
DMG p. 137



Settlement
population
GP limit


thorp
20-80
40


hamlet
81-400
100


village
401-900
200


small town
901-2000
800


large town
2001-5000
3,000


small city
5001-12000
15,000


large city
12001-25000
40,000


Metropolis
25001 or more
100,000






&&&



Influencing attitudes general rules (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/diplomacy.htm)

[Vaz]

Be an Outsider, Alter Self/Skin of Proteus+Metamorphic Transfer into a Visilight, drain Charisma, add it to your own, gain NI Charisma. Locate person who will sell you that item. Wands of Wall of Salt or buy Ladders to make money to do whatever you need to. Jaunter 4 to get Plane Shift as an ability (or can't UMD to save your life and don't want to trust a caster). You can now afford locate anyone who can sell you that item.

You need an item of say 1 million GP's worth. DC910 check lets you find a 1million gp worth item for sale. Run around with +10 equivalent armour. It can even be custom items.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Social Agility + Glibness should let your bard end encounters as a standard action. (You only need a 35 to go from Hostile to Friendly). Or at least give you a minute's worth of grace time to prepare buffs.

Canny Merchant's main benefit isn't the most useful thing, but I notice a stealthy one: if you succeed on the check, you find someone who can sell the item to you- with no provision for reality. Scrolls of rare spells? Wands from weird lists? Items from obscure books? Doesn't matter- by RAW they're just a check away. How useful that is varies by game, but it's nice to know that ye Olde Magic Mart is only a feat away.

[Darrin]

I thought Canny Merchant might do something interesting with Menacing Brute's Resourceful Search (Races of Destiny), but they don't appear to be compatible. Unless your DM allows the "without paying for it" to trump "You must still purchase it as normal."

Clarion Commander's "Follow Up" option lets you make a Diplomacy check to give an AoO to an ally. So you could make a Bluff check instead, but I don't see how putting ranks in Bluff is significantly different than putting them in Diplomacy.

Master Manipulator (PHBII) has two new uses for Diplomacy, but they're both kinda yawners.

[Amechra]

Social Agility doesn't get a boost from Glibness, sadly enough.

However...

Social Agility is really poorly written. You can actually run anything that gives you an alternate usage for Diplomacy off of it. Too bad all of the feats that give you something cool based off of a Diplomacy check are either Racial feats or already let you use Bluff for it.

But, I mean, if you can find a DM that'll let you, grab Silver Tongue (an [Ancestor] feat that requires that you're in the Unicorn Clan) and Wanderer's Diplomacy. Silver Tongue (or, at least, the version in the 3.5 update of Oriental Adventures) gives you:

• You can use Diplomacy to improve someone's attitude towards someone else.
• If you increase someone's attitude towards you with Diplomacy to Helpful, you can make them fall in love with you.
• You can create an EX Crushing Despair or Good Hope effect.
• You can Confuse someone with a Diplomacy check.

Social Agility would let you do all of them faster.

...

OK, I lied a bit. There's one feat that gives you a new use of Diplomacy: Master Manipulator (from the PHB II).

Unfortunately, the new things it lets you do kinda suck.

You can impose a -4 on someone's Listen, Spot, and Sense Motive checks! It lasts as long as you keep talking, and you can effect up to 1 + Charisma mod targets as long as they are within 20 feet!

You can make a Diplomacy check after someone fails a Bluff check against you to make them tell you the truth!

Only the second one really benefits - however, it does let you shorten the time it takes to use it from one minute to a Standard action...



Canny Merchant is boring because all it involves is optimizing skill checks. However, it kinda implies that the merchant is in the same settlement as you, so Plane Shift isn't really necessary.

I guess you could take Resourceful Buyer as well? Resourceful Buyer (from Races of Destiny) lets you buy stuff in a settlement as if it were one step down on the chart. It doesn't stack with anything else that gives similar boosts, but Canny Merchant wouldn't overlap.

Then you can take Mercantile Background and sell everything for 75% the price, and buy stuff for 75% of the cost once per week. So you can more easily afford whatever it is you're buying. If you also take Apprentice (Craftsman), you buy raw materials for 90% of the cost, so you can essentially make things for 22.5% of their cost. Or, when it comes to magic items, you can craft them for 33.75% the market price... before any actual cost reducers you have.

Of course, Canny Merchant doesn't help you with that... except it lets you get those materials anywhere.

[Nettlekid]

Canny Merchant would be great for sting operations. As pointed out, it lets you find the item in question with no Gather Information or even need for it to have (previously) existed, it just makes it so that the item is there. Imagine a Paladin (probably a Gray Guard) using this to find a seller of exotic poison or drugs in a low-wealth area, and then arresting them once found.

[daremetoidareyo]

Be an Outsider, Alter Self/Skin of Proteus+Metamorphic Transfer into a Visilight, drain Charisma, add it to your own, gain NI Charisma. Locate person who will sell you that item. Wands of Wall of Salt or buy Ladders to make money to do whatever you need to. Jaunter 4 to get Plane Shift as an ability (or can't UMD to save your life and don't want to trust a caster). You can now afford locate anyone who can sell you that item.

You need an item of say 1 million GP's worth. DC910 check lets you find a 1million gp worth item for sale. Run around with +10 equivalent armour. It can even be custom items.

I looked it all up. This is a really fun idea. The problem is the visilight's stipulation: of it having to have a charisma higher than it's own. However, that could be construed as fluff. The problem is metamorphic transfer limiting you to 3 uses per day. Assuming that you find Charisma 30+ creatures (not hard in the outer planes) and that you can grapple them (very difficult to do) and that you can loan them charisma buffing gear +10 before you start, your real limit is going to be a charisma around 90-120. This grants a bonus of +40 to +55 to your charisma. Assuming that you've maximized your diplomacy (or bluff it seems) and have +20 with gear that helps diplomacy and bluff, and you dip a level of marshal, the real cap on your ability stands at around 55+55(marshal)+20 (diplomacy gear) + 10 (roll)+ 10-24 skill ranks. You wind up with a modifier capable of beating a DC of 110 after draining 3 huge charisma monsters in an hour. You can find a 200,000 gp item in any metropolis or a 100,000 gp item in any settlement smaller than that.

I love the audacity. I count 5 feats necessary to pull this off. Altogether, visilight+transfer+gp shenanigans. 3 points +1 for aiming for the bleachers: 4 points.


Canny Merchant's main benefit isn't the most useful thing, but I notice a stealthy one: if you succeed on the check, you find someone who can sell the item to you- with no provision for reality. Scrolls of rare spells? Wands from weird lists? Items from obscure books? Doesn't matter- by RAW they're just a check away. How useful that is varies by game, but it's nice to know that ye Olde Magic Mart is only a feat away.

Heck yeah, I saw that too. 1 point


Social Agility + Glibness should let your bard end encounters as a standard action. (You only need a 35 to go from Hostile to Friendly). Or at least give you a minute's worth of grace time to prepare buffs.

This is really fun. I just pasted this build that uses intimidate checks to kill people with wisdom damage. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20199016&postcount=61) The problem is continually targetting the same opponent. If combat keeps stopping and starting, I can hit them with more duels of will and scathing wits! Finally a way to make a fighter with 8 strength have the ability to kill you through wisdom damage! 2 points.


Canny Merchant would be great for sting operations. As pointed out, it lets you find the item in question with no Gather Information or even need for it to have (previously) existed, it just makes it so that the item is there. Imagine a Paladin (probably a Gray Guard) using this to find a seller of exotic poison or drugs in a low-wealth area, and then arresting them once found.

Good employment of the feat. It doesn't say that you must buy the item. So you can search for a specific weird item anywhere, find it's location, and steal it later. The must clause of canny merchant might be the sticking point, however, as the DM may say that the shroedingers item only exists if you plan on purchasing it and otherwise doesn't exist. 1 point


I thought Canny Merchant might do something interesting with Menacing Brute's Resourceful Search (Races of Destiny), but they don't appear to be compatible. Unless your DM allows the "without paying for it" to trump "You must still purchase it as normal."


I looked into it. The "must" clause of canny merchant is pretty nasty in this regard. But resourceful buyer definitely helps with menacing brute's ability. 0 points


Clarion Commander's "Follow Up" option lets you make a Diplomacy check to give an AoO to an ally. So you could make a Bluff check instead, but I don't see how putting ranks in Bluff is significantly different than putting them in Diplomacy. Master Manipulator (PHBII) has two new uses for Diplomacy, but they're both kinda yawners.

Interesting. The people you use a non-standard diplomacy check on HAVE to be hostile towards you for this to work. It may help with skill point strapped builds. Master manipulator's captivating speech is rendered capable of being used in combat against hostile creatures as a standard action through the use of Social agility however, so maybe if you have a team that needs a lot of spot checks by the enemy to fail for some reason, there is situational utility there (maybe you have rangers who dumped their hide checks or you're a distraction while a teammate snipes the people around you). 2 points.


But, I mean, if you can find a DM that'll let you, grab Silver Tongue (an [Ancestor] feat that requires that you're in the Unicorn Clan) and Wanderer's Diplomacy. Silver Tongue (or, at least, the version in the 3.5 update of Oriental Adventures) gives you...
Master Manipulator:
You can make a Diplomacy check after someone fails a Bluff check against you to make them tell you the truth! Only the second one really benefits - however, it does let you shorten the time it takes to use it from one minute to a Standard action...

Silver tongue is from dragon number 318. I like this. you can make your opponent fall in love with your friend but hate you a minute later. This is a great find. 2 points

Master manipulator: I'm not sure that RAW will allow you to change the 1 minute time to a standard action because of the way it is worded. You have to talk for a minute and then you roll, rather than having a minute of talking being represented by a single roll. But, if you are correct, let's continue forward with it: if someone unsuccessfully feints against you during combat, you can force them to tell you the truth...of why they feinted...hmmm....maybe it's not that good. 0 points.


Then you can take Mercantile Background and sell everything for 75% the price, and buy stuff for 75% of the cost once per week. So you can more easily afford whatever it is you're buying. If you also take Apprentice (Craftsman), you buy raw materials for 90% of the cost, so you can essentially make things for 22.5% of their cost. Or, when it comes to magic items, you can craft them for 33.75% the market price... before any actual cost reducers you have. Of course, Canny Merchant doesn't help you with that... except it lets you get those materials anywhere.

Situationally relevant. 1 point

Current standing:
Vaz 4
Grod the giant: 3
Nettlekid: 1
Darrin: 2
Amechra: 3

Ya'll have unlocked an important avenue of further analysis: What diplomacy actions are there that typically take longer than a standard action, beyond motivating people to like you, that the social agility can help with?

[Xervous]

In a similar vein of discount seeking you could look for items that have limitations (Class, Alignment) that are specifically tailored to your character. Provided you are capable of reaching the seller this is an easy 30%+ discount on just about everything you buy. If it is permissible to stack Skill + Class + Alignment requirements all together you'd end up buying items at 44.1% of effective value. Compared to crafting this only requires you to make the check and visit the seller.

Anything in the 3,001gp to 15,000 gp range requires at most a DC 22 check. (15k in a large town)
15,001 to 40,000 is at most a DC 35.
40,001 to 100,000 is at most a DC 70.
So by hitting a DC 70 diplomacy check we can find ourselves any item initially valued at or under 226,757gp

A scroll of wish is 28,285gp for a basic, 12,474 for cheesy reduced variant. So we only need a laughable DC 20 check to find it! Better move up to something more efficient.
A scroll with 2 wishes clocks in at 24,948gp. Another silly DC 20 check... This is theoretically enough to go infinite. One wish to get 25k of mundane currency, the other to skip off to your next seller.
3 Wish scroll is 37,422gp. DC 33. More wishes if you don't want to spend as much of your time in the checkout line.
4 Wish scroll is 49,895gp. DC 20. Again more wishes and a lower DC.

A level 11 cleric (Travel and Envy Domains) is capable of plane shifting, surviving on most inhospitable planes and eventually teleporting to the location by virtue of his class features alone (plus some minor material components). If we aren't assuming a stupidly hard to get to place, this is sufficient to begin the loop given his WBL of 66k gp.

[Vaz]

True, the fluff has a Visilight hunting for high Charisma creatures, but that seems to be something that is in the mind of the Visilight - you don't gain the thought process of a Visilight when change shape. The 3/day limit on the metamorphosed drain means that provided you get some basic humans (10-11) means that you can grapple them, and drain their charisma, and with a 1/hour drain, you get a +6 to +9 gain on charisma. A full year of that (especially if you can convince these drained people that you were just really good in bed, and it was that which left them comatose for nearly a week, and that they should be your follower, triple so if they're a Binder and can bind Naberius), and you're at 2750 Charisma (averaging 7.5ish a day)

Plus, given time (or the ability to change your appearance easily) to rearrange yourself, and you can look more like the person your impersonating than the person you're impersonating looks like themselves. AND IT'S MUNDANE (i.e can't be defeated with True Seeing). Combine with Marshal 1 Lesser Aura to motivate intellect to get an incredible Forgery Score. Basically, if you stood next to the person you're impersonating, and have a forged invitation you've never even seen, you'd get into the party.

Really good for just noping your DC's through the roof on a Sorcerer, although as that's basically a wizard, you already win. Of course, having a Charisma that high nullifies the other parts of the feat. Who cares if you can bluff to change a

I had good fun with this for the Slime Lord build for iron Chef a while back - have a look at Tsagoth the Destroyer for the visilight drain trick (although I didn't get to use Wanderer's Diplomacy).

Although I used an Ardent for the base there (because multiclassing), a Wilder could do that trick quite well, especially with the NI Charisma DC's and bonus PP).

[daremetoidareyo]

True, the fluff has a Visilight hunting for high Charisma creatures, but that seems to be something that is in the mind of the Visilight - you don't gain the thought process of a Visilight when change shape. The 3/day limit on the metamorphosed drain means that provided you get some basic humans (10-11) means that you can grapple them, and drain their charisma, and with a 1/hour drain, you get a +6 to +9 gain on charisma. A full year of that (especially if you can convince these drained people that you were just really good in bed, and it was that which left them comatose for nearly a week, and that they should be your follower, triple so if they're a Binder and can bind Naberius), and you're at 2750 Charisma (averaging 7.5ish a day)

Plus, given time (or the ability to change your appearance easily) to rearrange yourself, and you can look more like the person your impersonating than the person you're impersonating looks like themselves. AND IT'S MUNDANE (i.e can't be defeated with True Seeing). Combine with Marshal 1 Lesser Aura to motivate intellect to get an incredible Forgery Score. Basically, if you stood next to the person you're impersonating, and have a forged invitation you've never even seen, you'd get into the party.

Really good for just noping your DC's through the roof on a Sorcerer, although as that's basically a wizard, you already win. Of course, having a Charisma that high nullifies the other parts of the feat. Who cares if you can bluff to change a

I had good fun with this for the Slime Lord build for iron Chef a while back - have a look at Tsagoth the Destroyer for the visilight drain trick (although I didn't get to use Wanderer's Diplomacy).

Although I used an Ardent for the base there (because multiclassing), a Wilder could do that trick quite well, especially with the NI Charisma DC's and bonus PP).

I didn't thoroughly read visilight enough, you only lose 1 cha point per hour (I thought that one lost all the charisma gains after an hour), and so long as you can drain 25 charisma per day, you still get a net bonus of +1 charisma per day. And its not that hard to find three commoners to kill and nearly kill every day. I was trying to find a way to just drain animals, and the highest charisma animal is the wolverine, coming in at 10. Weird. With a charisma that high, your handle animal skill can handle a wolverine ranch, never have to kill sentient life again and you get +6 charisma a day.

[Lagren]

Distribute nearly-worthless but unique items to all members of your organization. Now you can find any of them that are in the same city as you at will.

[Muggins]

Given that artifacts have no given monetary value, a possible reading of the Canny Merchant ability would allow you to locate any such items within any town at a negligible/negative DC of 10 + ([GP Cost of 0] - [Community GP Limit] / 1000). This would be particularly useful for, say, a level 10 Entropomancer who doesn't have a Sphere of Annihilation in their possession. It would also be useful for artifact-hunting campaigns, and by strict RAW (mentioned above) would let you avoid all that adventuring nonsense by having it be conveniently in the same town as you are.

Edit: Other classes which would like this include:

Green Star Adepts: For obtaining the (incredibly rare) pieces of Starmetal needed to get their class features.
Suel Arcanamachs: To locate a copy of the Grimoire Arcanamacha, one of the paths to access the class.
Acolytes of the Skin: To locate any texts detailing the Ritual of Bonding needed to take levels in the class.

And anyone who might want to locate a Lich's Phylactery.

[daremetoidareyo]

Distribute nearly-worthless but unique items to all members of your organization. Now you can find any of them that are in the same city as you at will.

I like it. 1 point. Might pair really well on a thrall herd or beguiler.


Given that artifacts have no given monetary value, a possible reading of the Canny Merchant ability would allow you to locate any such items within any town at a negligible/negative DC of 10 + ([GP Cost of 0] - [Community GP Limit] / 1000). This would be particularly useful for, say, a level 10 Entropomancer who doesn't have a Sphere of Annihilation in their possession. It would also be useful for artifact-hunting campaigns, and by strict RAW (mentioned above) would let you avoid all that adventuring nonsense by having it be conveniently in the same town as you are.

Edit: Other classes which would like this include:
Green Star Adepts: For obtaining the (incredibly rare) pieces of Starmetal needed to get their class features.
Suel Arcanamachs: To locate a copy of the Grimoire Arcanamacha, one of the paths to access the class.
Acolytes of the Skin: To locate any texts detailing the Ritual of Bonding needed to take levels in the class.

And anyone who might want to locate a Lich's Phylactery.

Same idea but much more utility demonstrated: 3 points

[SirNMN]

Social Agility: You can temporarily alter a creature's attitude toward you. You can use Bluff against an unfriendly or less hostile creature in the same way you use Diplomacy. Using Bluff in this manner is a standard action that takes no special penalties. The target's attitude remains changed for 1 minute. After this time, it becomes one grade more hostile than where it started for 10 minutes.

it takes one minute to make a diplomacy check make the check while they like you more it end right after they change attitude so it give you time to make the check as they like you more they will at least hear you our so diplomancer away

match it with the Persuasion from half elf paragon

[daremetoidareyo]

Ok, I'm calling it.

Someone can tally the scores and the people at the top were the most generally useful at optimizing the feat. Vaz won the day with the visilight shenanigans.

AS Promised, here is your name with some fancy fonts applied: VAZ

Things that were totally missed but should be said before moving on:

Undead empathy from ECS jives with this feat super well. You can make mindless undead simply ignore you, in a standard action, with a bluff check.

Further, Emissary of barachiel is predicated on diplomacy checks, often as full round actions. I love the idea of a dude who convinces bad guys to be good guys by lying to them.

Urban tracking is absolutely necessary to pull of shenanigans with this feat. You need to be able to find the people who you know will sell you the goods.

Up next:
Conductivity from Unearthed arcana