Boosting strength to obscene levels

[martixy]

Strength is supposedly the easiest stat to crank up to high heaven.
So give me some ways to optimize strength to truly obscene levels. Like lift-a-mountain strong.

As usual, we'll skip the Festering anger cheese, since infinity is not a number and we're still looking to put a number in an attribute that still only accepts numbers.

Options I'm aware of:
Templates(Lolth Touched and Half-Minotaur being the prime examples)
Races(Goliaths, your various mainstay dumb-but-stronk variations)
Classes(Barbarian/Frenzied Berserker/War Hulk)
Gaining permanent/true size categories (I have no idea what Enlarge person is)
Inherent bonuses.
Level-up bonuses
Enhancement bonuses from items
Adrenaline Boost power for an insight bonus
Pain Mastery feat (which turns damage to strength bonuses and makes this into a con and hp-boosting exercise as well, but that's a whole 'nother can-o-worms)
Planar Embrace power (Grants the Half-Celestial/Fiend template for +4 Str/+4 Con)
Warp Touch disease(rolling 87-88 for +2)
Consumptive field

Class: Bear Warrior(Juicy +20) [Troacctid]
Template: Goristro Half-fiend variant (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060630a) [Necroticplague]
Class: The good old "change the type of bonus so they can stack" artificer bit. [Doctor Despair]
Template: Tauric exploit: Add whatever templates to the lower creature, then put Tauric on, disregarding any other LA/RHDs. [Chronos]
Spell: Absorb Strength from BoVD - get 1/4 of dead critter's STR as enhancement. Just find yourself a dragon or a storm giant or smth. [Quertus]
While we're on the subject of BoVD: Lifedrinker PrC capstone for the rare profane bonus (+4).
Feat: Of course, the epic feats Great Whatever... small increases, but stack with everything in the world ever. [Telonius]
Grafts: I forgot about grafts. Vanilla ones still have a few small increases. That fiendish arm for +4 with tasks that involve it and the untyped from Silthilar grafts. [Vanyamore]
Spell: Bite of the Werebear +16. Neat. [Chronos]

...?

[Beheld]

Step 1: Prepare Polymorph Any Object
Step 2: Prepare a second Polymorph Any Object
Step 3: Nothing in the rules says you can't apply the same template more than once.
Step 4: Find any creature that can have the Half Troll template applied to it.
Step 5: Polymorph Any Object yourself into a Half Troll, Half Dragon, Half Troll, Half Dragon (repeated as many times as you want to get whatever str score you want) applied to that base creature.
Step 6: While Polymorphed, Cast Polymorph Any Object on yourself again.
Result: You have a Str score of whatever you want with a Permanent Duration.

[The Viscount]

I'm assuming you're using consumptive field and not greater consumptive field to avoid the NI strength from chicken infested?

A Barbarian with the Berserker Frenzy ACF gains a bonus to strength whenever below a certain threshold of hp, which can be exploited with some investment.

If you want to use your strength for lifting heavy loads, being quadrupedal dramatically increases all load capacities.

[Troacctid]

Easy, just use Festering Ang—

As usual, we'll skip the Festering anger cheese, since infinity is not a number and we're still looking to put a number in an attribute that still only accepts numbers.
...Oh, alright, fine then.

Bear Warrior and Primeval can offer large Strength bonuses. It's also fairly easy to morph into a high-Strength form with polymorph effects.


Gaining permanent/true size categories (I have no idea what Enlarge person is)
Enlarge Person is a 1st level spell that grows a humanoid by one size category, providing, among other things, a +2 size bonus to Strength. :smallwink:

[Necroticplague]

As usual, we'll skip the Festering anger cheese, since infinity is not a number and we're still looking to put a number in an attribute that still only accepts numbers.


Technically, Festering Anger produces an almost-arbitrarily high number, not an infinite one. With Festering Anger, your STR=starting STR+2*days you've had festering anger. This is a number, assuming you know how many days you've been infested.

Anyway, Half-Goristro might be of use. As a variant of half-fiend, it has a whopping LA+4, but it improves your size to Huge, regardless of original size, and gives you the size change bonuses for doing so. Half-ogre is free if you're already Large or bigger, and gives another +4 bump to strength.

If you have Fast healing or Regeneration, you can get an arbitrarily large amount of STR from Pain Mastery (assuming you can stretch out the encounter to give yourself time to heal). Silithar Healing Blood can give you this without eating up any more LA.

Also, Water Orc can be used instead of Goliath to save a level (same +4 STR).

Khyber's Rage and Reckless Rage both give a +2 STR bump while raging but -2 to AC.

[Doctor Despair]

I recently pumped charisma a bunch, so I'll share my strategies with that. Beyond racial bonuses, templates and whatnot, there are always spells to give certain types of bonuses -- but some types of bonuses just did not appear in the spells and templates I found. For that, I took Leadership and gained an Artificer cohort who would use a low-level transfusion to change the type of bonus granted by one of the several +6 items I was wearing. Iirc the artificer got 4 transfusions of the appropriate level, so I added 24 strength by doing that. There's a spell called Transfusion in a dragon mag that gives an untyped bonus, draining up to 6? strength from a target that you could stick on a staff. Iirc, the easiest racial dip for strength was Ogre which also gives you large size. Hope this helps. :)

[Chronos]

Quoth Beheld:

Step 3: Nothing in the rules says you can't apply the same template more than once.
True, but you can't polymorph into a creature with a template.

Another race option: The Tauric template. It's a combination of two creatures, a "lower" and an "upper". Physical ability mods depend on the lower creature. You can apply all sorts of templates to the lower creature, and it won't matter, since the Tauric template always has the same LA.

For less abusive options, the wizard/druid spell Bite of the Werebear gives a +16 enhancement bonus, and the Wu Gen spell Giant Size can give up to a +32 size bonus.

[martixy]

Greater Consumptive field... yes. Generally looking for something stuff that would at least be remotely plausible. Not that I wish to imply TO isn't fun or anything :)

I have no idea where to look for this barbarian ACF though.

...Dang, how could I forget about Bear Warrior. +20 is so juicy.


Technically, Festering Anger produces an almost-arbitrarily high number, not an infinite one. With Festering Anger, your STR=starting STR+2*days you've had festering anger. This is a number, assuming you know how many days you've been infested.

Anyway, Half-Goristro might be of use. As a variant of half-fiend, it has a whopping LA+4, but it improves your size to Huge, regardless of original size, and gives you the size change bonuses for doing so. Half-ogre is free if you're already Large or bigger, and gives another +4 bump to strength.

If you have Fast healing or Regeneration, you can get an arbitrarily large amount of STR from Pain Mastery (assuming you can stretch out the encounter to give yourself time to heal). Silithar Healing Blood can give you this without eating up any more LA.

Also, Water Orc can be used instead of Goliath to save a level (same +4 STR).

Khyber's Rage and Reckless Rage both give a +2 STR bump while raging but -2 to AC.

* STR=starting STR+2*(days - 1 year) you've had festering anger.

And yea... I already mentioned Pain Mastery.

Though... now that you mention it... would it work with regeneration? I mean reg converts everything that does not bypass it to non-lethal and it does say that non-lethal is not "real" damage, as the SRD says.
... Well technically it's not specified, but the "if you survive" the attack bit leaves the impression, you must have a chance not to.
Ah, whatever. We'll go with "it works, cuz I want it to".

Edit: The wu-jen spell is basically due to size increase. It follows the table (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm) to a tee.
But I love the Tauric trick.

[Beheld]

True, but you can't polymorph into a creature with a template.

You certainly can with Polymorph Any Object. You arguably can with Polymorph, but I don't really care, because Polymorph Any Object is the one that gets a permanent duration.

[Troacctid]

I have no idea where to look for this barbarian ACF though.

Here. (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060501a&page=3)

[LTwerewolf]

Greater Consumptive field... yes. Generally looking for something stuff that would at least be remotely plausible. Not that I wish to imply TO isn't fun or anything :)



This entire exercise is TO unless you're at a tippy table.






Though... now that you mention it... would it work with regeneration? I mean reg converts everything that does not bypass it to non-lethal and it does say that non-lethal is not "real" damage, as the SRD says.
... Well technically it's not specified, but the "if you survive" the attack bit leaves the impression, you must have a chance not to.


.

Easily bypassed using fast healing instead.

[Necroticplague]

And yea... I already mentioned Pain Mastery.

Though... now that you mention it... would it work with regeneration? I mean reg converts everything that does not bypass it to non-lethal and it does say that non-lethal is not "real" damage, as the SRD says.
... Well technically it's not specified, but the "if you survive" the attack bit leaves the impression, you must have a chance not to.
Ah, whatever. We'll go with "it works, cuz I want it to".

Nonlethal damage is still damage. The part about not being 'real' is A: irrelevant, as Pain Mastery doesn't say anything about real damage, just damage; and B: simply referring to the fact that lethal damage causes you to lose hit points, while lethal doesn't.

[Zetapup]

Instead of (or in addition to) fast healing/regeneration, you could use delay death with pain mastery. It isn't too cheesy as long as it isn't persisted or combined with a way to stay conscious below 0 hp (I believe beastlands ferocity is the go to spell for this). You could also add in the masochism spell for some extra bonuses from taking damage.

[Troacctid]

Oh, let's not forget lycanthropy/entomanothropy. Those exist.


This entire exercise is TO unless you're at a tippy table.
I disagree--boosting Strength is very much a PO problem.

[LTwerewolf]

Boosting str sure. Boosting it into the stratosphere with questionable rules interpretations are another thing.

[Zanos]

Low-hanging fruit: Use reserves of strength to uncap your favorite form changing transmutation and turn into the strongest printed creature.

[martixy]

entomanothropy

:smallconfused:
I had no idea this was even a thing... that even has its own word.

You learn something new everyday.

Besides... there's nothing questionable about anything we've discussed here. I think you're trying to conjure up an argument to argue against out of thin air.

Well... the only funky bit is the Tauric shenanigans, but that's too beautiful to ignore. :)

[Zaq]

It's temporary, but if you have an Artificer buddy (or are yourself capable of casting/spamming 4th level infusions), you can buy a bunch of different items with a +6 enhancement bonus to STR, then use Item Alteration (ECS pg. 113) to change all but one of those bonuses to different (and therefore stacking) bonuses. You can't use sacred or profane, but surely you can dig up enough other obscure bonus types to matter. Alchemical, circumstance, competence, inherent, exalted (technically not sacred!), perfection, insight, racial . . .

If you want to get cheesy (and this miiiiight not work by RAW), you might be able to turn them into dodge bonuses, which, as we all know, stack. Item Alteration specifies that "you cannot make an item provide a dodge bonus to Armor Class," but it doesn't say you can't make it provide a dodge bonus to STR. The reason this might not work is pg. 307 of the PHB, which defines a dodge bonus as being "a bonus to Armor Class (and sometimes Reflex saves)," and which also specifies that "dodge bonuses are never granted by spells or magic items." Now, this is provably false even within the PHB (just take a quick look at Haste), so there's definitely some confusion as to whether or not the glossary entry is controlling, but there's certainly some RAW pitfalls.

Also, pg. 171 of the PHB states that racial bonuses stack. So you can probably just make all your bonuses racial.

Even without a dodge bonus to STR, though, you can still rack up quite a few bonuses. Not for cheap, of course (you've gotta get all those enhancement bonuses in the first place, and Item Alteration only lasts 10 min/lvl, so you either need enough serious CL shenanigans to make them last all day or you need a whole lot of 4th level infusion slots to keep re-upping them as the need arises), but the rest of the stuff mentioned in this thread so far makes it seem like we aren't really worried about resource costs, no?

[martixy]

Dodge Bonus
A dodge bonus improves Armor Class (and sometimes Reflex saves) resulting from physical skill at avoiding blows and other ill effects. Dodge bonuses are never granted by spells or magic items. Any situation or effect (except wearing armor) that negates a character's Dexterity bonus also negates any dodge bonuses the character may have. Dodge bonuses stack with all other bonuses to AC, even other dodge bonuses. Dodge bonuses apply against touch attacks.

It doesn't.

[Zaq]

It doesn't.

Very well then.



Even without a dodge bonus to STR, though, you can still rack up quite a few bonuses. Not for cheap, of course (you've gotta get all those enhancement bonuses in the first place, and Item Alteration only lasts 10 min/lvl, so you either need enough serious CL shenanigans to make them last all day or you need a whole lot of 4th level infusion slots to keep re-upping them as the need arises), but the rest of the stuff mentioned in this thread so far makes it seem like we aren't really worried about resource costs, no?

[Vanyamore]

Don't forget grafts!

Fiendish Clawed Arm: +4 Untyped STR
Undead Enervating/Paralyzing/Weakening Arm: +4 Inherent STR

[Telonius]

Small potatoes compared to some of the others mentioned here, but Great Strength (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#greatStrength) (an Epic feat) gives you +1 (untyped) each time you take it. I suppose it could become significant if you Chaos Shuffled a bunch of proficiencies.

[Quertus]

I haven't heard anyone mention consumer strength from the BoVD. Nothing stratospheric here, unless you're eating some half dragon half troll half dragon half troll etc etc meat. Note to self: need to make a character who works at this mythical dragon/troll breeding facility.

[martixy]

@Vanyamore: Right... and Silthilar for untyped +2. The arms get you a bonus only for tasks done with them, but given that it will be the majority of how you exercise your strength, that's okay.

@Telonius: Yea... I forgot about that one. It's a small potato, but it is the best quality potato you could ever get. Just a straight up unconditional increase.

@Quertus: I'm gonna assume you meant "Absorb Strength", which is indeed pretty nice. Also, Lifedrinker offers the ability to get +4 of the rare(hence, likely stackable) profane bonus.

[Troacctid]

You can also get a +16 enhancement bonus from Bite of the Werebear.