Optimize this Feat 5: Hammer and Piton From Dungeonscape

[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 and sometimes they just stink. I'm looking at you Battle Dance. However, there is just something really satisfying about the interplay of feats and rules to produce illogical and unintended effects. Also, as a team, we can collectively push the limits of our apparent intelligence. (https://www.singularityweblog.com/human-swarming-and-the-future-of-collective-intelligence/)

What is this?
So this is the "Optimize this feat" discussion, wherein we work together to plumb the clever and amazing uses for feats in ways the designers could have only dreamt of. 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 explore the possibilities of how to use a feat. I'm developing this pseudo-contest on the fly, so rules are subject to change :smallannoyed:


All participants in the optimization endeavor post directly into the thread. They may post as many times as they want, just like any thread where you volunteer your ideas. After a week or so, 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! I will try to remain interactive in the process, because the contest element to me is secondary to extracting the maximum amount of versatility and power out of the feat resource.


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 or clever, 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.

As the Chair, I will remain interactive throughout the thread, even suggesting a few builds. Commenting on these is fine and all of the rubric points apply to those as well. This means that the thread is not a totally objective competition.

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. Plus, seeing as how extensive the rules system is, it is easy for me to get excited about how to make an idea work and get lost about the details.

Bounties. Starting with Optimize this feat #5, I am instating an additional means of accumulating bonus points: Bounties. You will find the bounties and their point values in a spoiler on the bottom of the second post, underneath the relevant rules excerpts and clarifications. A Bounty is a "winner-take-all" style miniquest for users to provide information relevant to optimizing the feat. The hope is to allow these "Optimize this Feat" contests can serve as a longform mini-handbook to the use of their namesake feats.


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.

Thanks to a suggestion by Darrin, this week's Feat is Dungeonscape's Hammer and Piton (p.45)

This endeavor concludes at 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time on February 17th.


Optimize this Feat 1:Wanderer's Diplomacy (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?472308-Optimize-This-Feat-1-Wanderer-s-Diplomacy): VAZ
Optimize this Feat 2: Conductivity (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?473047-Optimize-this-Feat-2-Conductivity-from-Unearthed-Arcana&highlight=Conductivity): ben-zayb
Optimize this Feat 3: Swim-by Attack (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?474225-Optimize-this-feat-3-Swim-by-attack-from-Stormwrack): WhamBamSam
Optimize this Feat 4: Contagious Paralysis (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?476019-Optimize-this-Feat-4-Contagious-Paralysis-from-Libris-Mortis) WhamBamSam


Upcoming Schedule:

Don't post your ideas for these on the wrong competition. Save em. Unleash your brilliance on us.

Optimize this feat #6: Unearthed Arcana's Residual Rebound p. 94(Thanks ATHATH)
Optimize this feat #7: Fiendish Codex 2's Mark of Phlegethos p.85
Optimize this feat #8: Fey Feature's (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fey/20030815a) Seelie Court Noble Kelir (web)
Optimize this feat #9:To Be Determined ...(could be your suggestion! make a post and I'll consider it.)

[daremetoidareyo]

Hammer and Piton: paraphrased. To get the real text of this feat, look up Dungeonscape page 45 or so.


A fighter bonus feat. You need three ranks of climb and a minimum strength of fifteen.
You can use a climbing piton or spike in your non-primary hand to make a touch attack for 1d4 + str damage on a target that is Large size or greater as a standard action when wielding a one handed bludgeoning weapon in your primary hand. Assuming your target is one size category (or more) larger than you, you can make a Climb check (DC = Target AC) as a move action, with a successful roll allowing you to enter the target's space and remain in the same space without provoking an attack of opportunity from your target as they move about, during which time, you lose your dex bonus to AC. This move action must occur in the same turn that you made the piton touch attack. If you are dealt 10 or more damage from any attack, you must make a climb check with a DC equal to the amount of damage taken to remain in the target's place. If you fail this check, you must leave your foe's space and enter the nearest available space.

The climb skill is SRD here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/climb.htm)

So, we have a few routes to optimize this. If you got good ideas, suggest them.

* Get more move actions
* Get more standard actions
* Optimize number of hands
* Do things from your opponent's space that would be more beneficial to yourself?
* Abusing the size clauses?
* Coordinating with an ally willing to take 1d4+str damage?
* Climb optimization?
* "Piton optimization"?


Bounties
HAMMERS
Bounty: One Handed Bludgeoning Weapons

Player's Handbook, page 115: Club
Player's Handbook, page 119: Mace (Both light and heavy work)
Player's Handbook, page 119: Morningstar (assuming that a weapon that does both bludgeoning and another type of damage works)
Player's Handbook, page 118: Hammer, Light
Player's Handbook, page 120: Sap
Player's Handbook, page 120: Shield (Both light and Heavy work)
Player's Handbook, page 117: Flail
Player's Handbook, page 121: Warhammer
Player's Handbook, page 120: Nunchaku
Player's Handbook, page 120: Sai (I didn't expect this to do bludgeoning damage. Huh.)
Player's Handbook, page 117: quarterstaff in one hand, Dire flail in one hand, gnome hooked hammer in one hand.
Player's Handbook, page 126 & 127: hammer, crowbar, torch

Arms and Equipment Guide (Rather annoyingly, the tables and most of the entries don't specify whether the weapon is one handed or not. I'll just post the ones that I think are one handed, but feel free to let me know if one of the weapons is two handed instead)
Arms and Equipment Guide, page 10: Ward Cestus (More or less the same thing as a gauntlet)
Arms and Equipment Guide, page 10: Tonfa

Savage Species (Same issue as the arms and equipment guide.)
Savage Species, page 43: Chain, Barbed
Savage Species, page 46: Tail Club

Planar Handbook:
Planar Handbook, page 68: Muspelrule

Complete Warrior:
Complete Warrior, page 157: Maul
Complete Warrior, page 157: double hammer (one hand)
Complete Warrior, page 158: Warmace
Complete Warrior, page 153: Wield Oversized Weapon. It lets you treat weapons as if they were one category smaller and "lighter" for the purposes of wielding. Aka, you could wield any 2 handed bludgeoning weapon and treat it as one handed. The downside is that it's an epic feat.

Frostburn, page 78: Tigerskull club (both bludgeoning and piercing)

Races of Stone, page 154: Hammer, throwing

Book of Exalted Deeds, page 34: Truncheon

Races of Faerun, page 155: aspergilium
Races of Faerun, page 155: Lasso

Special Mention: Tome of Battle, page 148: Aptitude enchantment. Effectively, you can use whatever weapon you want with the Hammer and Piton feat

Pitons

Bloodspikes from Magic of Eberron (page 139-140)

Stunning spikes, sleeping spikes, and exploding spikes. Miniatures Handbook P. 43 and 44.

Rod of lordly might: DMG p. 235. Button #4 has a "spike that can anchor in granite" This spike can give you 5 to 50' of reach!

FC 1 p. 51: "Snap-tong: This short polearm ends in a sharp spike that has one or more crescent-shaped pincers designed close around it."

FB p. 75: Bone Bow: "The bow has a long, thick spike protruding from both ends; this spike is used to brace against a solid object (either the ground or an overhanging protrusion or ceiling) to aid in pulling the bow’s string. A character may use a bone bow as a martial weapon, but doing so imparts a –4 penalty on attack rolls, and firing an arrow from the bow requires a full-round action."

FB p. 76: Goad: "A goad is a long, thin wooden pole mounted with a heavy stone or metal weight and a large spike at one end. Primarily intended as a tool to direct the movement of large animals, a goad makes an excellent weapon in a pinch. When you attack with a goad, you must decide if you are attack- ing with the spike to deal piercing damage"

DMG2 p. 41: Sticker boobie trap: "CR 1/2; mechanical device; touch trigger; no reset; sharp spike (Atk +6 melee, 1d6); Search DC 15; Disable Device DC 15." As a booby trap, you can collect this material by making a survival check!...

MM2 p.191: Stone Spike: 3HD medium sized Earth elemental. FLING ALLY?

RoF p. 158: Spike Shooter: "This is a modification of a class of weapons, rather than a specific weapon itself, and thus does not require any additional weapon proficiency. This spring-driven device can modify any weapon that has a spike at the end of a long pole (such as battleaxes, morningstars, and most polearms). The spike shooter allows the spike to be launched at a target as a normal ranged attack. The spike shooter is an inaccurate weapon, and those who use it suffer a –2 penalty on the attack roll. Resetting the spike is a full-round action." SEE MARX for Villainous Competition #9. Free Teleport!?

Dungeonscape p. 30: iron spikes.

Pitons:
piton
adamantine piton (thanks AvatarVecna) + weapon enchantments!!!
burrowing piton AEG (p. 135)

[Jormengand]

The creature isn't carrying you or any of your equipment, so you can use this to take anything you can carry with you on your dragon ride.

Any number of creatures can pile into the same space, which is fun.

You can use this feat to teleport, because the "Nearest free space" could be miles away.

The touch attack isn't specified to be melee. With the distant shot feat, you can climb onto any creature you can hit with a ranged touch attack. Worse, the target doesn't need to be a creature, so you can fire off a piton at, I dunno, the moon, and climb onto it.

You can escape a grapple with this feat; because touch attacks are light weapons you can fire a touch attack onto the creature you're fighting (against FFTAC, so you can hardly miss), and then climb onto them.

You can avoid creatures with reach weapons by climbing on them, so they can't possibly move into a position where they can hit you with their reach weapon.

The creature only has to be large and bigger than you when you hit it, and there are ways of jumping a creature up by four sizes.

[ben-zayb]

The first thing that comes to mind is a permanently-active Confound the Big Folk. One path you could take this is with a sneak attack build: initial flat-footed touch Piton sneak attack, then, since you no longer need to spend actions to trigger Confound the Big Folk, make a full-attack sneak attack on the following rounds with your "hammer" and "piton". If you are a gnome, you could even use a gnome hooked hammer (hammer on one side, and piton on the other), and use it for Unsteady Footing's trip attacks. A base build stub of Whisper Gnome Monk 2 / Rogue X should work, with slight PrC/feat alterations depending on how you want to specialize.


Another idea is to abuse Ride checks to spur your enemies to death (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?401045-Exploiting-Ride-checks-on-enemies). Normally, once you fall off or get forcefully dismounted, the enemy will be free to move away from you, but Hammer and Piton still keeps you wedged on the target (remaining in its square) unless you fail a Climb check from taking too much damage. This enables you to constantly do fast-mounting and using a move action to Spur. You can add any sort of rider effect to this, such as putting on Iron Guard's Glare for extra support, or getting some viable HiPS (use your target's shadow!) to be virtually untouchable everytime your target moves even a single square.

[daremetoidareyo]

The first thing that comes to mind is a permanently-active Confound the Big Folk. One path you could take this is with a sneak attack build: initial flat-footed touch Piton sneak attack, then, since you no longer need to spend actions to trigger Confound the Big Folk, make a full-attack sneak attack on the following rounds with your "hammer" and "piton". If you are a gnome, you could even use a gnome hooked hammer (hammer on one side, and piton on the other), and use it for Unsteady Footing's trip attacks. A base build stub of Whisper Gnome Monk 2 / Rogue X should work, with slight PrC/feat alterations depending on how you want to specialize.


Another idea is to abuse Ride checks to spur your enemies to death (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?401045-Exploiting-Ride-checks-on-enemies). Normally, once you fall off or get forcefully dismounted, the enemy will be free to move away from you, but Hammer and Piton still keeps you wedged on the target (remaining in its square) unless you fail a Climb check from taking too much damage. This enables you to constantly do fast-mounting and using a move action to Spur. You can add any sort of rider effect to this, such as putting on Iron Guard's Glare for extra support, or getting some viable HiPS (use your target's shadow!) to be virtually untouchable everytime your target moves even a single square.

These are great. Confound the big folk + goad to introduces an aggro mechanic to make them attack you and therefor your opponent 50% of the time. I love that ride check abuse link. Wanderer's diplomacy optimization actually solves the diplomacy check problem, just swap bluff in the place of diplomancy, and any unsuitable mount will be butter in your hands after a single standard action. Paired with marshal (I know, right?!), and then a bunch of mounted combat feats, you can actually use your "unwilling" mounts, bareback, at only a -10 to your ride checks. I'll see if I can make a workable enemy as mounts build. It would actually be fun to throw one of these as a monster at the PCs. "The shadow templated, lance wielding gnome is riding your half minotaur barbarian. He whispers something in the barbarian's ear. The barbarian is charging you! He's trying to throw the gnome off, but it isn't working, and the gnome has set his lance, steadying it against the frantic flailing of your party barbarian to remain icily level. What's your AC?"

[WhamBamSam]

Since moving into the opponent's space takes your move action, we'd probably benefit from some reach-op to be able to climb on from further away. Extended Reach and Inhuman Reach both work for a small creature. The full feat tree being something like Aberration Blood->Inhuman Reach->Deepspawn->Extended Reach, removing Deepspawn if you say Aberration Blood (Flexible Limbs) meets the prereq for Extended Reach (I personally don't agree with this interpretation, but I've seen it show up).

Losing Dex to AC is painful, and really hurts this line of optimization, but it might be possible to have a setup where attacks against you hit the enemy. The Best option I can think of is Ghostly Defense+some sort of miss chance. Note also that some AC bonuses (like the Monk's and Swordsage's) work even when denied Dex to AC.

If you want to optimize Climb checks and snag extra standard actions, Factotum seems like the way to go.

[Zetapup]

Ooh, I can do definitely do some bounties. I've also got an idea for a build, but it's going to take a bit of time to work out the kinks in it.

(I'm going to assume gauntlets/unarmed strikes won't count for 'one handed bludgeoning', but if they do, they're in the player's handbook, page 117/118 and page 121, respectively.)

Source, page: entry
Player's Handbook, page 115: Club
Player's Handbook, page 119: Mace (Both light and heavy work)
Player's Handbook, page 119: Morningstar (assuming that a weapon that does both bludgeoning and another type of damage works)
Player's Handbook, page 118: Hammer, Light
Player's Handbook, page 120: Sap
Player's Handbook, page 120: Shield (Both light and Heavy work)
Player's Handbook, page 117: Flail
Player's Handbook, page 121: Warhammer
Player's Handbook, page 120: Nunchaku
Player's Handbook, page 120: Sai (I didn't expect this to do bludgeoning damage. Huh.)

Arms and Equipment Guide (Rather annoyingly, the tables and most of the entries don't specify whether the weapon is one handed or not. I'll just post the ones that I think are one handed, but feel free to let me know if one of the weapons is two handed instead)
Arms and Equipment Guide, page 10: Ward Cestus (More or less the same thing as a gauntlet)
Arms and Equipment Guide, page 10: Tonfa

Savage Species (Same issue as the arms and equipment guide.)
Savage Species, page 43: Chain, Barbed
Savage Species, page 46: Tail Club

Planar Handbook:
Planar Handbook, page 68: Muspelrule

Complete Warrior:
Complete Warrior, page 157: Maul
Complete Warrior, page 158: Warmace

Frostburn, page 78: Tigerskull club (both bludgeoning and piercing)

Races of Stone, page 154: Hammer, throwing

Book of Exalted Deeds, page 34: Truncheon

Special Mention: Tome of Battle, page 148: Aptitude enchantment. Effectively, you can use whatever weapon you want with the Hammer and Piton feat.


I'll edit in some additional sources after I go through some more books. I think I'm done bookdiving, as I think I've gotten most of the obvious weapons.

[AvatarVecna]

As far as bounties go, a certain weight range of improvised weapons tend to deal bludgeoning damage (although some particularly sharp ones deal piercing, AFAICT). More particularly, any object weighing between 2 and 10 pounds for a Medium creature (or double/half that amount for every size up/down, respectively) counts as a one-handed bludgeoning weapon unless it's sharp enough to be a piercing weapon instead.

I'd probably only count this is as one bounty, though; technically, if one were being particularly obnoxious, one could say all objects anywhere in 3.5 weighing between .125 pounds (the lower limit for Fine creatures) and 160 pounds (the upper limit for Colossal) count as a separate weapon, but that's a stupid way to look at it, and counting all of those objects would be a tedious, boring exercise.

EDIT: It's almost as stupid as the idea that a Colossal creature of any kind can only wield up to 800 lbs of object as a 10 ft range increment improvised weapon (and two-handed at that, despite 800 lbs of granite being about a 2 ft diameter sphere), while a Hill Giant (a Large creature, and the weakest of the giants) can throw the equivalent of 50 lb objects with a 120 ft range increment. Urgh...

[ben-zayb]

You could argue that Pyrokineticist's Fire Lash, being described as a whip of fire, still counts as the weapon of the same statistics (1H bludgeoning melee weapon) except for that it deals 1d8 fire damage. Not to mention, you get the iconic visual of a rider whipping his mount and enemies. This also pretty much solves the reach/range issue raised above.

[Zetapup]

You could argue that Pyrokineticist's Fire Lash, being described as a whip of fire, still counts as the weapon of the same statistics (1H bludgeoning melee weapon) except for that it deals 1d8 fire damage. Not to mention, you get the iconic visual of a rider whipping his mount and enemies. This also pretty much solves the reach/range issue raised above.

My copy of the Player's Handbook says that whips do slashing damage, so I'm not quite sure where you're getting bludgeoning damage from.


As far as bounties go, a certain weight range of improvised weapons tend to deal bludgeoning damage (although some particularly sharp ones deal piercing, AFAICT). More particularly, any object weighing between 2 and 10 pounds for a Medium creature (or double/half that amount for every size up/down, respectively) counts as a one-handed bludgeoning weapon unless it's sharp enough to be a piercing weapon instead.

You should prolly note the source. I believe the relevant books are Player's Handbook page 113 and Complete Warrior page 159.

[AvatarVecna]

You should prolly note the source. I believe the relevant books are Player's Handbook page 113 and Complete Warrior page 159.

*shrug* Prolly

[Thurbane]

Not sure if it's alreasy been mentioned as a bounty, but right from the PHB p.126/SRD (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/goodsAndServices.html):


Hammer: If a hammer is used in combat, treat it as a one-handed improvised weapon that deals bludgeoning damage equal to that of a spiked gauntlet of its size.

Also, I'm wondering if you could use some Brutal Strike and Three Mountain if you're weapon is a Heavy Mace or Morningstar? Be a very feat intensive build, though...

[Jormengand]

Bounty: The Club, Heavy Mace, Morningstar, Quarterstaff (in one hand), Flail, Heavy Shield, Warhammer, Dire Flail (In one hand), Gnome Hooked Hammer (In one hand), Crowbar, and Torch are all PHB one-handed bludgeons. There are going to be loads more in sourcebooks, so I'm just going to add Maul (CW), Doublehammer (CW, in one hand), Tigerskull Club (Frostburn), and that's all the ones I can find with a quick search rather than deliberately jumping through books.


EDIT:
Okay, this is is silly idea, but because you can specifically target squares, you can target the large 10-foot square 200 feet above your opponent, and fall onto them, using the Catfall power to take no damage.

However, also funny are Unapproachable East's battle jump feat and Cityscape's Roof Jumper feat, which allow me to do the same and also charge at the end of the fall, and do double damage, meaning that I can combine this with the distant shot trick to charge a creature from a really long distance away, oh, and if you use Psionic Lion's Charge I get a full attack at the end of the charge.

You can also, while clinging to your opponent, use Mantis Leap (S&F) to jump onto your opponent twice, counting as two more charges, without having to let go.

This one's a little involved: climb onto a creature, then climb onto (part of) the sky, and then the creature, you, and (part of) the sky are all bundled into the same space. Then, climb off the creature but not the sky, and let them fall. If you know Reversed Greater Seek the Sky, you can do this even to flying creatures.

Actually, why not use it to drag a creature into a square in space? You can use Hammer and Piton+Distant Shot again to return to the ground, but they're stuck taking 2d6 cold and 1d4 untyped damage each round, and suffocating at that (taking information on space from Nailed to the Sky).

EDIT EDIT:

If you have a triple-throw returning piton, you can make a single attack which will allow you to grab a creature, put it on the sky, and return to earth, all in one round.

EDIT EDIT EDIT:

A Truenamer/Ruby Knight Vindicator/Factotum with Hammer and Piton, Distant Shot, and a Returning Triple-Throw piton can use Cunning Surge and two instances of Quickened Temporal Spiral in the same round, meaning that you can:

Attack creature A, Creature B, and Creature C. Climb onto Creature C attached to Creature A and B.
Swift action to get an extra move action to use either immediately on your turn. Choose to use it on your turn. Repeat this process.
No action to make an extra standard action.
Use this extra standard to attack creature D, the moon, and the ground. Then, climb onto the moon attached to creatures A, B, C and D. Then, using your third move action, climb onto the ground.

Well done, you have successfully put four creatures on the moon with one round of actions.

Of course, you can use a similar trick to put the moon onto the ground, because you share the moon's space, but also share the ground's space. If you're feeling mean, attach the sun and, I dunno, Alpha Centauri to the Earth. Or just pick up the earth and put it somewhere else.

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT:

The build for this trick is truenamer 7/cleric 1/factotum 9/RKV 7, however you can also get an extra full round of actions from Anticipatory Strike, so you can cut out the factotum and truenamer levels in favour of psion 9, using Psion 9/Cleric 1/RKV 7 and spending your last three levels to get maneuvers or whatever, or instead realise it's on the time mantle and you can easily enough get more ML, so you go Ardent 5/Cleric 1/RKV 7. You need the Distant Shot feat, and you should be a DWK to get it early. Spam Extra Turning to fuel your RKV schenanigans, and take Practiced Manifester. So by 15th level, you can use the equivalent to irresistible twinned nailed to the sky and irresitible quickened nailed to the sky, which are a 17th and 18th level spell, until you run out of power points or turn undeads. You can also practically irresistible teleport other, greater teleport or teleport other at will. Not bad, eh?

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT:

I am having far too much fun with this feat.

[daremetoidareyo]

Rules clarification Questions!

1.) If I use a setting sun throw to toss the creature that I've pitonned and climbed...Do I go with the guy I just tossed?

Further,

2.) Does confound the big folk's Unsteady footing maneuver stack with Mighty throw? Thereby nullifying all size bonuses to the grapple check while providing me a +4 to the endeavor.


Mighty Throw (TOB p.73)
"As part of this maneuver, you must succeed on a melee touch attack against your foe. Resolve the throw as a trip attempt (PH 158), but you do not provoke attacks of opportunity, and your opponent cannot try to trip you if you lose the opposed check. You can use your Dexterity or Strength modifier, whichever is higher. You gain a +4 bonus on the ability check."

Unsteady footing
On the next round, you can use a standard action to attempt to trip your foe without provoking attacks of opportunity. If your touch attack to initiate the trip attack succeeds, you can attempt a Strength or Dexterity check (your choice) opposed by your foe's Strength or Dexterity check (as normal) to trip your foe. Your foe may not add any bonus on his Strength or Dexterity check to avoid the trip that he would gain from his size. If your trip check fails, your opponent may not attempt to trip you.

3.) Can you enchant a piton (or spike) as if it were a weapon, RAW speaking?


Attack creature A, Creature B, and Creature C. Climb onto Creature C attached to Creature A and B.The text of the feat says that you travel when your opponent moves. How are you forcing your opponent to move with you? If you piton ogre #1, cunning surge to piton ogre #2, there is no reason to believe that you drag ogre #1 with you. You would be moving out of your space to make the climb check.

From here on out, Let's assume that you cannot target a square that hasn't enough substance to hold the piton in place This excludes creatures. I don't care if you piton a ghost. Although RAW, it's way too TO to be pitoning the air 200 feet away and expecting gameplay to continue as if you're sane.

[WhamBamSam]

1) I believe so. In context, it doesn't really seem to make sense for "moves" not to apply to forced movement like Setting Sun throws or Bull Rushing.

2) No. Unsteady Footing says that you use a standard action to do the special trip, so it competes for the action with the throw.

3) Probably. At the least, you should be able to cast Magic Weapon or the like on it once you're wielding it as a weapon.

[AvatarVecna]

In regards to the "can you enchant it" question, here's what I can tell you, if it counts as only an improvised weapon: improvised weapons cannot be crafted as masterwork weapons, and therefore cannot be enchanted, since they're not of high enough quality. However, any object can be made out of special materials like Adamantine, and any weapons made out of adamantine counts as masterwork, and can thusly be enchanted. Since improvised weapons are still weapons, an adamantine object can be enchanted as a weapon.

This stretches the RAW a good bit, but I'm pretty sure it's RAW legal.

[Jormengand]

The text of the feat says that you travel when your opponent moves. How are you forcing your opponent to move with you? If you piton ogre #1, cunning surge to piton ogre #2, there is no reason to believe that you drag ogre #1 with you. You would be moving out of your space to make the climb check.

"You... remain in the target's space", meaning that even if you go somewhere else, said somewhere else is their space by definition.

[ben-zayb]

Rules clarification Questions!

1.) If I use a setting sun throw to toss the creature that I've pitonned and climbed...Do I go with the guy I just tossed?Did you just...did you just open a can of worms? Use Hammer and Piton on the first round. On the second round, initiate Tornado Throw. These are the nice parts:
After every 10 feet you move, you can attempt another throw against the same opponent or a different foe.
If you succeed in tripping your foe, you throw him up to 10 feet away from you.Yup, this means you keep on tornado throwing that Hammer and Piton target ad infinitum until it dies. And then, you still have the additional movement up to twice your normal move speed as part of this maneuver, which is great aftereffect once you've tornado thrown the beefiest enemy to death. Beefiest enemy = more HP = more throwing recursion = more additional movement = more throwing distance/damage for further throws.

The only barrier here is the initial "You must move at least 10 feet before making your throw", which should be solved with a simple Belt of Battle + Mighty Throw before initiating Tornado Throw! This feat is pretty bonkers on Setting Sun.

[daremetoidareyo]

Rules clarification 4
Are the Bloodspikes from Magic of Eberron (page 139-140) technically "spikes"?

[Jormengand]

Rules clarification 4
Are the Bloodspikes from Magic of Eberron (page 139-140) technically "spikes"?

A4) Yes, but you need a piton or climbing spike for the feat to work.

[daremetoidareyo]

A4) Yes, but you need a piton or climbing spike for the feat to work.

I'm not entirely sure that is the case. The direct quote is "and a climbing piton or spike in the other."

Does the adjective climbing get transitively applied to both listed nouns?
Making the options
1.) climbing piton
2.) climbing spike

Or are the options:
1.) climbing piton
2.) spike, (any old spike which can be improvised to be used for climbing related tasks)

The only reason that I feel that this interpretation is possible is that I cannot find a source of "climbing spikes" anywhere in the SRD, Races, Dragcomp, Completes, Eberron, or Faerun. The only hole in my 1st party sources is dragonmag. Granted, not all of my sources have a control F function, but I still looked for any "spikes" to see if they were listed anywhere. The Climber kit and spelunkers kits don't even list them. Why include the extra words in the feat for an option that doesn't exist in the game, if not to open up interpretations of the word "spike" to include any piton-like tool labelled a "spike"?

Edit: Miniatures Handbook has spikes. They aren't climbing spikes, however. They are stunning spikes, sleeping spikes, and exploding spikes. P. 43 and 44.

Edit 2: DMG has rod of lordly might: button #4 has a "spike that can anchor in granite" p. 235. This spike can give you 5 to 50' of reach!

Magic item compendium has the death spike, which is actually a spear, so probably not a fair option. It also has a manticore sword, which spews spikes...but they only last 1 round and you can only activate them as a standard action. Vanguard treads, which are boots, can be wielded for their sole spikes...

[Jormengand]

I'm not entirely sure that is the case. The direct quote is "and a climbing piton or spike in the other."

Does the adjective climbing get transitively applied to both listed nouns?
Making the options
1.) climbing piton
2.) climbing spike

Or are the options:
1.) climbing piton
2.) spike, (any old spike which can be improvised to be used for climbing related tasks)

The only reason that I feel that this interpretation is possible is that I cannot find a source of "climbing spikes" anywhere in the SRD, Races, Dragcomp, Completes, Eberron, or Faerun. The only hole in my 1st party sources is dragonmag. Granted, not all of my sources have a control F function, but I still looked for any "spikes" to see if they were listed anywhere. The Climber kit and spelunkers kits don't even list them. Why include the extra words in the feat for an option that doesn't exist in the game, if not to open up interpretations of the word "spike" to include any piton-like tool labelled a "spike"?

Probably because WotC forgot how their own game worked.

[daremetoidareyo]

More non-spike Spikes: I am not counting spiked items, rather items that are comprised of a single spike that can be driven induvidually into the ground or a wall.

FC 1 p. 51: "Snap-tong: This short polearm ends in a sharp spike that has one or more crescent-shaped pincers designed close around it."

FB p. 75: Bone Bow: "The bow has a long, thick spike protruding from both ends; this spike is used to brace against a solid object (either the ground or an overhanging protrusion or ceiling) to aid in pulling the bow’s string. A character may use a bone bow as a martial weapon, but doing so imparts a –4 penalty on attack rolls, and firing an arrow from the bow requires a full-round action."

FB p. 76: Goad: "A goad is a long, thin wooden pole mounted with a heavy stone or metal weight and a large spike at one end. Primarily intended as a tool to direct the movement of large animals, a goad makes an excellent weapon in a pinch. When you attack with a goad, you must decide if you are attack- ing with the spike to deal piercing damage"

DMG2 p. 41: Sticker boobie trap: "CR 1/2; mechanical device; touch trigger; no reset; sharp spike (Atk +6 melee, 1d6); Search DC 15; Disable Device DC 15." TRAPSMITH???

MM2 p.191: Stone Spike: 3HD medium sized Earth elemental. FLING ALLY?

RoF p. 158: Spike Shooter: "This is a modification of a class of weapons, rather than a specific weapon itself, and thus does not require any additional weapon proficiency. This spring-driven device can modify any weapon that has a spike at the end of a long pole (such as battleaxes, morningstars, and most polearms). The spike shooter allows the spike to be launched at a target as a normal ranged attack. The spike shooter is an inaccurate weapon, and those who use it suffer a –2 penalty on the attack roll. Resetting the spike is a full-round action." SEE MARX for Villainous Competition #9 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20332970&postcount=42). Free Teleport!?

DMG p.235: Rod of lordly might: button #4 has a "spike that can anchor in granite." This spike can give you 5 to 50' of reach!

Pitons:
piton
adamantine piton (thanks AvatarVecna) + weapon enchantments
burrowing piton AEG (p. 135)

Other mundane climbing gear
FB p.78: crampons: may count as a "spike" +2 circumstance bonus to climb
Und p. 67: Spelunkers kit: +2 circumstance bonus to climb and some other skills
PHB: Climber's kit: comes with pitons & +2 circumstance bonus to climb
DotU p. 92: +2 circumstance bonus on Climb checks; stacks with the bonuses provided by climber’s kits and spelunker’s kits


Note: I think I figured out why they included spikes in the feat. Dungeonscape has iron spikes for sale at 1 sp apiece. They definitely aren't for climbing. They are for nailing doors shut. This definitely grants us some leeway to use bloodspikes, the rod of lordly might, and the bone bow.

Iron spikes have a variety of uses, though they are most commonly hammered into door frames to keep the doors shut. If you have a hammer or mallet, you can pound one spike in place as a full-round action. A door with one spike in it is considered stuck, and a door with two or more spikes in it is considered locked for the purpose of breaking it down. (For the break
DCs for stuck and locked doors, see Table 3–10: Doors, DMG 61).

[ComaVision]

http://s12.postimg.org/5yizocj2l/Untitled.png

I tried making a build for it, combining it with Confound the Big Folk. The character would basically hop on to a Large or larger creature and sneak attack it into submission.

Problems with the build:
- It requires Dex 15 and Str 15 at level one, which may be difficult depending on ability generation method.
- It can't do its schtick very well until level 8 when it attains Confound the Big Folk.

Pros:
- Sneak Attack is barely ever behind straight Rogue.
- Almost full BaB
- Can probably flask-rogue OK vs medium targets.

I didn't do the higher level feats because I wasn't sure what else would be good. I also assumed that Gloves of the Balanced Hand would be available.

[daremetoidareyo]

http://s12.postimg.org/5yizocj2l/Untitled.png

I tried making a build for it, combining it with Confound the Big Folk. The character would basically hop on to a Large or larger creature and sneak attack it into submission.

Problems with the build:
- It requires Dex 15 and Str 15 at level one, which may be difficult depending on ability generation method.
- It can't do its schtick very well until level 8 when it attains Confound the Big Folk.

Pros:
- Sneak Attack is barely ever behind straight Rogue.
- Almost full BaB
- Can probably flask-rogue OK vs medium targets.

I didn't do the higher level feats because I wasn't sure what else would be good. I also assumed that Gloves of the Balanced Hand would be available.

Nice to see another database user! Well done. I agree with the strength 15 being a real sticking point, because it seems all other methods of optimizing on this require at least one other attribute.

[Thurbane]

Would an arrow used for melee purposes count as a spike? Could get nasty interesting with Arrows of Slaying or similar as a touch attack.

[daremetoidareyo]

The touch attack isn't specified to be melee. With the distant shot feat, you can climb onto any creature you can hit with a ranged touch attack.

Actually, we need a rules clarification here.

Are touch attacks not specified to be melee touch attacks typically allowed the assumption that they may also be ranged? If so, if this latitude exists, please cite at least one example of it.

Before I ruffle any feathers, I feel the need to assert this: Jormengand, I really appreciate the way you parse this sort of stuff. I also think that many of your rules interpretations/exploits are/would be routinely modified denied to fit with a certain verisimilitude level at most tables, and thus it may seem like I pick on you when I steer us back towards practical optimization. You've been nothing but a good sport, and before it seems like I single out your posts more than anyone else, I want it pre-emptively expressed that this is about getting the most out of the feat.

I am leaning towards the fact that you cannot activate hammer and piton if the piton or spike is not actually being manipulated in your hand. Because the hole simulationist idea here, that is never once specified, is that you hammer the piton into the creature. So the rod of lordly might could work, You're holding a spike from 50 feet away and you hammer your end of it. The rebuttal to this is, 1.) that's not what the feat actually says. and 2.) nothing says that you're not tossing the spike into the air and then swinging your bludgeoning weapon like a baseball bat to drive it into the target...


Would an arrow used for melee purposes count as a spike? Could get nasty interesting with Arrows of Slaying or similar as a touch attack.

Depends on your level of RAW abuse:

But I don't think so.

Unless, of course, the name of the arrow was "Spike." Mileage may vary, but is probably zero mpg.

But an adamantium spike strapped to an adamantium haft and then shot through a spike shooter would count as both ammunition and a spike, and could be enchanted as such.

[Zetapup]

Alright, I finally worked out the general gist of the build.


I apologize in advance for the formatting, but I'm not quite sure how to make tables.

I'm using a petal (MM3) as the base race for this build, since they're tiny size and have only +2LA. Also, I find the image of a group of monsters getting slaughtered by a 6 inch tall fairy very amusing.

Dark Petal Rogue 1/Hit and Run Tactics Stealthy Fighter 1/Totemist 3/Umbral Disciple 5/Crusader 1/Swordsage 1/Umbral Disciple 5/Totemist 3
Feats:
1st: Weapon Finesse (Petal bonus feat), Human Heritage, Aberration Blood (flaw), Inhuman Reach (Flaw), Vile Feat (retrained to Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Kusari Gama)(The petal worships an elder evil, therefore gaining bonus vile feats. I'm retraining these to other feats since the build is pretty feat starved)
3rd: Combat Reflexes
5th: Vile Feat (Retrained to Darkstalker)
6th: Hammer and Piton
9th: Underfoot Combat
10th: Vile Feat (Retrained to Confound the Big Folk)
12th: Shadow Blade
15th: Craven, Vile Feat (Retrained to Combat Expertise)
18th: Robilar’s Gambit
20th: Vile Feat (Retrained to Bonus Essentia)
Human Heritage is necessary in order to take the aberration blood/inhuman reach feats, since they require you to be humanoid. It requires you to be descended from humans, but that isn't terribly uncommon for fey (half fey, changelings, etc). Inhuman Reach is the only reach extending feat that Petals qualify for (except long reach, but that's only 5-15 feet of reach), so might as well take it.

The kusari gama is a one handed reach weapon. We're going to throw aptitude on it so it can be used with the hammer and piton feat and so the build has a whole 10 feet of reach.

Combat reflexes is nifty because petals have a ridiculously high dex score (+10 dex at char creation, then add in items and level up increases). It's also part of the cornerstone of this character's strategy.

Darkstalker is necessary since the character needs to be able to hide so it can do its thing.

Hammer and Piton had to be delayed till 6th level since petals get -8 str and can't really qualify for it without templates/items.

Underfoot Combat and Confound the Big Folk let the character gain soft cover while in a larger enemy's square and also give a 50/50 chance of attacks aimed at you hitting the enemy instead. Very handy.

Shadow Blade adds dex to damage while in a shadow hand stance. Since the character is going to be using Assassin's Stance constantly and should have a dex score in the mid 30s or so by now, this is great.

Craven is pretty self explanatory. Extra damage.

Combat Expertise lets the character take only a -1 to attack in order to use Confound the Big Folk's 50/50 miss chance ability instead of the -4 for fighting defensively.

Robilar's Gambit is great, since your main defense isn't AC, it's the miss chance from Confound the Big Folk and hiding. An attack of opportunity every time you're attacked is great for this build.

Finally, Bonus Essentia is there because I couldn't think of anything better. Still, that's an extra soulmeld or two.

The tactics of this build are going to change somewhat over time. At low levels, you have an insane modifier to hide (+8 from being tiny, +8 from the dark template, +8 or so from dex, plus ranks. At first level, that's a +28). The main issue is damage, but that's easily solved by the hit and run tactics acf of fighter. That adds dex mod to damage against flat footed targets. Since this character should be sneaking everywhere they go, that shouldn't be an issue (even with the -20 penalty for attacking while hiding, they have a +8 to hide. At first level).

Therefore, low level tactics should be to strike from hiding and utilize your reach and flight. Ranged weapons might be a good idea here, since you don't gain a whole lot from closing to melee until you get deeper into Totemist. Once you start taking levels in Totemist, grab as many natural attack granting soulmelds as you can. With 2d6 sneak attack and dex mod to damage, each of those attacks is going to hurt.

At mid levels (level 12, specifically), these tactics change. Now, you want to hammer and piton whichever enemy you prefer, while still hiding, and use them as a meatshield while attacking other enemies with reach/ranged weapons. Shadow blade gives dex to damage again (for the kusari gama, at least), which is nice. You're also getting some sneak attack and more miss chance from umbral disciple. Finally, defensive rebuke is a nifty way to get enemies to waste their attacks: they don't know exactly where you are, so they have to guess which square you're in. If they guess right, they have a 50% miss chance. If they succeed on that, they have another 50% chance to miss you and hit their ally because of Confound the Big Folk. If they choose not to attack you, you get an attack of opportunity against them. Nice. (Sidenote: the Kusari Gama is being used with the Hammer and Piton feat through the aptitude enhancement)

At high levels, you can extend your reach another 40-50 feet (assuming Umbral Disciple's reach is doubled by reach weapons) during your turn. You should have a decent amount of natural attacks from totemist, with some very solid bonus damage (7d6 sneak attack + 34 from dex for weapons that work with shadow blade). Not much changes from mid levels except for bigger numbers and the addition of Robilar's Gambit. This character would probably want to invest in a wand of blade storm, if they haven't already. At some point, you may want a permanencied Reduce Person cast on you, for extra dex, to hit, and hide (normally, fey wouldn't qualify for reduce person, but you're conveniently a humanoid because of human heritage)

An alternative to the umbral disciple would be to take enough levels in drunken master to get the ability that gives you the same reach as the improvised weapon you're wielding, and then use a spool of endless rope. That gives you 500 feet of reach, which should be more than enough for all your AoO/Blade Storm needs. I discarded this idea because it's somewhat cheesy and it'd be annoying to give the rope the aptitude enchantment (Adamantine rope???). Also, I dislike the "improvised weapons automatically break on a natural 1" clause (although I suppose you could get around that by making your weapon out of riverine).

I'm not really doing much with the spike besides using it for the hammer and piton feat, but I suppose you could grab some gloves of the balanced hand for two weapon fighting if you really want an extra attack.

Please let me know if I've made any errors! I'm not 100% on the hiding/attacking stuff working as described, but the player's handbook was annoyingly vague about combining hide and melee attacks.

[Grod_The_Giant]

"You... remain in the target's space", meaning that even if you go somewhere else, said somewhere else is their space by definition.
By that logic, you cannot leave, ever, except by being hit and failing the Climb check. It's also incorrect, I think-- the line is "if your foe moves, you remain in his space as he moves," meaning that other things-- say, a Bull Rush targeted at you-- could knock you off just fine.

(I'm also not sure where you're getting the "you can target squares" bit, and I'm pretty sure that a square two hundred feet above your target is not part of his space and that the default range for a touch attack is melee, but I'm less sure on the RAW for those-- though it certainly seems more like a "rules doesn't say I CAN'T" thing, which is generally not a well-regarded bit of rules space)

[Jormengand]

Are touch attacks not specified to be melee touch attacks typically allowed the assumption that they may also be ranged? If so, if this latitude exists, please cite at least one example of it.

Yes. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatStatistics.htm#touchAttacks)

"Some attacks disregard armor, including shields and natural armor. In these cases, the attacker makes a touch attack roll (either ranged or melee)."


Before I ruffle any feathers, I feel the need to assert this: Jormengand, I really appreciate the way you parse this sort of stuff. I also think that many of your rules interpretations/exploits are/would be routinely modified denied to fit with a certain verisimilitude level at most tables, and thus it may seem like I pick on you when I steer us back towards practical optimization. You've been nothing but a good sport, and before it seems like I single out your posts more than anyone else, I want it pre-emptively expressed that this is about getting the most out of the feat.

Fair enough. I try to accommodate for TO as well as PO, though, which is why many of my techniques involve nailing creatures to the sun (also there's not a fat lot else you can do with the feat, though I have made some attempt to use it for more mundane purposes).


It's also incorrect, I think-- the line is "if your foe moves, you remain in his space as he moves,

That's a different line from the one I'm talking about. I'm talking about "If the check succeeds, you enter and remain in the target's space". Indubitably, you also remain in his space as he moves, but you also remain in his space all the rest of the time - thus, any space to which you can move is therefore his space, meaning that he now occupies it.


(I'm also not sure where you're getting the "you can target squares" bit, and I'm pretty sure that a square two hundred feet above your target is not part of his space and that the default range for a touch attack is melee, but I'm less sure on the RAW for those-- though it certainly seems more like a "rules doesn't say I CAN'T" thing, which is generally not a well-regarded bit of rules space)

Because the target of H&P only has to be large or larger, and not necessarily a creature, you can target the square/space/air/whatever, so the square 200 feet above the person you want to kill is your target, and the person you want to kill has nothing to do with the H&P attack.

[daremetoidareyo]

Other Links related to this:

1.) http://www.giantitp.com/forums/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=19123753

2.) http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?224882-Advice-on-how-to-optimize-hammer-and-piton

3.) http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?474698-Looking-for-suggestions-for-a-tiny-warrior

Rather than make you read everything, here is the juiciest stuff.
#1

Well, Underfoot Combat/Confound the Big Folk may open up some options (such as "Knee Striker" and "Unsteady Footing"). A weapon with the Smoking property (+1 enhancement, Lords of Darkness) would be nifty: Fort save DC 13 vs. nausea.

The best strategy might be something along the lines of Person_Man's Fine But Deadly (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=5998772&postcount=2) build. Use Knight's Challenge/Iron Guard's Glare to draw aggro, and 50% of all attacks directed at you hit your opponent instead.

There's also Saint Bertold (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=5998772&postcount=2), combine it with Fine But Deadly but add Vow of Nonviolence/Vow of Peace (piton would need the Merciful property). Basically you force everyone to attack you, 50% of those attacks hit your opponent, the other 50% hit you and the weapon has to make a Fort save or shatter.

Darrin's suggestions are quite good but may not really need hammer and piton to help. Although a merciful smoking adamantine piton does add a fort save to the mix, and concealment, which is helpful considering that you aren't getting dex to ac.


: Rather than strike his original target, your enemy turns his attention toward you. While you are in this stance, any opponent that you threaten takes a –4 penalty on attack rolls against your allies. This penalty does not apply to attacks made against you. Enemies you threaten become aware of the consequences of the stance.

Fine but deadly has already been rehashed in the thread already, but combining it with apostle of peace takes you to a new level of frustrating. The thing is...hammer and piton may not be all that helpful in these endeavors, if your already fine sized, you can enter the square of something 3 sizes larger without AOO. And sparrows have tiny strength scores, invalidating the hammer and piton feat, and you're a caster, so why bother with feat optimization for hammer and piton when you already have confound the big folk.

Off to post #2



What I can think of is that we need some small opponents, such as goblins or kobolds. What I can also think of is Hustle (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/hustle.htm), a psionic power that grants you an extra move action. With several 4th level Goblin Psychic Warriors (Blues (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/blue.htm) fit well) they could Hustle, move up to the target, and all piton themselves onto him. One will get hit with an AoO, but you should be able to fit 8 small creatures onto one large-sized creature.

Another option would be for the small creatures to start within 10', take a 5' step, and them attack/move into their space. (At least I think this works.) This would allow its use at a lot lower level, but require a lot more planning to pull off.

As for what to do while on there? Aid Another (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialAttacks.htm) with a grapple. With seven others, that's a +14 to the check, well more than the +8 benefit for the PC being two sizes larger. You'll probably lose two or three due to AoO and attacks against their low AC, but it's the best I can think up right now.

Note that this is a swarm tactic, and as such, you'll need a lot of them. Eight 4th level characters is CR 10, and you'll want to include more than that to keep the rest of the party busy as well. Plus, 4th level opponents against a 12th+ level party are going to die pretty easily...

Adding on to the above poster, the goblins (or whatever they are) need something to do once they grapple. How about explode?

You would have to homebrew a little, but little minions that pile on to people and blow up would be awesome. The explosion would be strong, but have no radius - thus the monsters must pile on to characters to hit them (make them explode when they die too, so a successful AoO saves the character from that particular minion). The more monsters that are attached, the bigger it gets. Since they are attached on to the character, no save. I think 2d6 or even 2d8 per minion would be good lethal damage. The BBEG could even be a summoner, summoning extirely expendable and exploding w/e's.

SUPER GHOST KAMIKAZE ATTACK!

If you combine energy resistance/immunity and a bunch of flasks of alchemists fire, you don't need to swarm. What are the rules for breaking vials from fire or acid damage. You could basically piton and climb, target yourself and your unattended bandolier of fragile flasks, and smash all of the alchemist fire in a single attack. Add shaped splash for funsies.

Rules Clarification, What are the rules for bursting flasks due to fire or acid damage? If you destroy 20 flasks of alchemists fire in the same square, simultaneously, does energy resistance apply once per flask? or does all the fire damage stack?


2 level dip in CE Soulborn will grant you same Str as average Medium-sized humanoid

Incorrect.

CE Soulborn makes you immune to Str penalties. It does not directly increase or alter your Str.

Most Small and smaller races don't have a Str penalty; rather, the Str is simply less than that of a Medium race. (It's not a penalty because it's not called a penalty. It's just a modification. Don't ask.)

This particular class is frequently cited with respect to the Tibbit, which explicitly takes a Str penalty when it assumes ittybittykitty form. CE Soulborn neutralizes the explicit penalty. But this isn't true of most other modifications to the Str stat; if based on size, it's generally just a modification, not a penalty, and thus Soulborn doesn't impact it.

O RLY?
Let's see...


ABILITY MODIFIERS
Each ability, after changes made because of race, has a modifier ranging from -5 to +5. Table 1-1: Ability Modifiers and Bonus Spells (on the next page) shows the modifier for each score. It also shows bonus spells, which you’ll need to know about if your character is a spellcaster.
The modifier is the number you apply to the die roll when your character tries to do something related to that ability. For instance, you apply your character's Strength modifier to your roll when he or she tries to hit someone with a sword. You also use the modifier with some numbers that aren't die rolls - for example, you apply your character's Dexterity modifier to his or her Armor Class (AC). A positive modifier is called a bonus, and a negative modifier is called a penalty.

Who is correct in this interchange? Red Fel seems to have isolated Tibbit CE soulborn as retaining strength score by RAW. Does any small size shenanigan paired with CE soulborn 2 also count? Or is ShurikVch cherry picking by applying the definition of penalty to size based modifiers of strength, which may not have the same mechanic as a straight up penalty?

Back to another idea stub.


Another idea is to abuse Ride checks to spur your enemies to death (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?401045-Exploiting-Ride-checks-on-enemies). Normally, once you fall off or get forcefully dismounted, the enemy will be free to move away from you, but Hammer and Piton still keeps you wedged on the target (remaining in its square) unless you fail a Climb check from taking too much damage. This enables you to constantly do fast-mounting and using a move action to Spur. You can add any sort of rider effect to this, such as putting on Iron Guard's Glare for extra support, or getting some viable HiPS (use your target's shadow!) to be virtually untouchable everytime your target moves even a single square.

Spurring your "mount" is a move action. Know what you can do with your standard action? Use a flippin tower shield. Can you carry around a tower shield on your back? and then ready it mid combat? If so, look at this:

Round.) actions
1.) Hammer + piton
2.) ready shield + get total cover
3+.) Fast mount, spur + get total cover

Are there any magical spurs or tower shields that we can use to rock this even harder?

[Jormengand]

Who is correct in this interchange? Red Fel seems to have isolated Tibbit CE soulborn as retaining strength score by RAW. Does any small size shenanigan paired with CE soulborn 2 also count? Or is ShurikVch cherry picking by applying the definition of penalty to size based modifiers of strength, which may not have the same mechanic as a straight up penalty?

Red Fel is correct. ShurikVch is confusing a strength modifier with a modifier to one's strength. The entire quoted rules section is irrelevant.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Because the target of H&P only has to be large or larger, and not necessarily a creature, you can target the square/space/air/whatever, so the square 200 feet above the person you want to kill is your target, and the person you want to kill has nothing to do with the H&P attack.
The air... doesn't... have a size? And so cannot be at least one size category larger than you?

[Red Fel]

Red Fel is correct. ShurikVch is confusing a strength modifier with a modifier to one's strength. The entire quoted rules section is irrelevant.

Thank you. Yes, I like to think I'm right on this.

To elaborate, the section quoted by ShurikVch talks about Strength modifiers which are negative, and are therefore called penalties. In other words, if you have a Str score of 8, your modifier is -1, and is called a penalty. You are not receiving a penalty to your Strength score; rather, you are receiving a negative Str modifier (a penalty) on any roll that calls for Str.

A Chaotic Evil Soulborn, at level 2, gains the following Incarnum Defense ability: "Your eyes become solid orbs of shadowy blackness, with no visible pupil or iris. You gain immunity to any penalty, damage, or drain to your Strength." The key language: You gain immunity to any penalty . . . to your Strength. Not immunity to a Strength penalty, which is a negative Strength modifier from having a low stat, but immunity to a penalty to Strength, which is any debuff that reduces your Strength ability.

A Tibbit's Feline Transformation ability contains the following language: "In cat form, the tibbit becomes size Tiny. Her size bonus to Armor Class and on attack rolls increases to +2, and her size bonus on Hide checks becomes +8. She gains a +10 bonus to her land speed. A tibbit suffers a -8 penalty to Strength (minimum 3) but gains a +2 bonus to Dexterity." The key language: In cat form, the tibbit . . . suffers a -8 penalty to Strength. That's a penalty to the Strength ability, not a negative modifier from a low Strength ability; that is explicitly the sort of thing prevented by a CE Soulborn.

Having a Small size means that you are likely to have a negative Str modifier - as in, a "penalty" instead of a "bonus" from a low Str ability - which is generally not avoided by a CE Soulborn's Incarnum Defense. It is only the Tibbit, and anything like it that explicitly calls out a penalty to Strength, as opposed to a penalty from Strength, that can enjoy CE Soulborn's arguably sole redeeming quality.

[Jormengand]

The air... doesn't... have a size? And so cannot be at least one size category larger than you?

A 10 foot cube of air does.

[daremetoidareyo]

A 10 foot cube of air does.

RAW, I agree that this is a valid interpretation. I doubt many DMs are going to let you set your piton into air, even if they let you set it into an ooze, invisible stalker, or even an air elemental. Just another way mundanes get shafted...


Any number of creatures can pile into the same space, which is fun.

Say we have a strikeforce of 50 CE tibbit soulborn 2/totemist 2 with hammer and piton. What can we actually do? Once we are all in the same space...

Which naturally begs the question of swarms...How do we get a swarm with two hands that can wield a spike and a hammer? Girallion arms soulmeld, maybe? Now they can't get away from our sweet sweet swarm damage.


*appears*

So it is true. All you need is your name mentioned and you pop into a thread...Freaky

[Jormengand]

Say we have a strikeforce of 50 CE tibbit soulborn 2/totemist 2 with hammer and piton. What can we actually do? Once we are all in the same space...

Aid. Another.


Multiple characters can aid the same friend, and similar bonuses stack.

[Zetapup]

Hm, if you're fine with cheese, you could use the feat to burrow (relatively) quickly. Target a 10 foot cube of earth and make an easy climb check to enter the earth. Continue "climbing" for as long as you want. You'd prolly want either a necklace of adaptation or immunity to suffocation to make it work.

Another idea is to use the feat as a transportation system for those who need to move quickly but teleportation won't work/is banned (although you need either extra move actions or free/swift action movement). The customer moves x feet and pitons Carrier A. Carrier A moves as far as they can and then pitons Carrier B, and so on and so forth (You'd need very carefully timed enlarge person spells or something similar so that A can piton B, etc). Assuming each carrier moves around 300 feet per turn (fairly reasonable if you're trying to optimize speed), and the maximum number of iterations is 10 or so (the limit is probably going to be the carrying capacity of the last carrier), you'd be able to move a normal person half a mile in 6 seconds. That's around 300mph. Not too shabby.

Edit: Also, another bounty. Complete Warrior, page 153: Wield Oversized Weapon. It lets you treat weapons as if they were one category smaller and "lighter" for the purposes of wielding. Aka, you could wield any 2 handed bludgeoning weapon and treat it as one handed. The downside is that it's an epic feat. That's... kinda crappy for epic.

[daremetoidareyo]

Bounty: from Races of Faerun
aspergilium: holy water sprinklin
lasso: attach to your climbed upon mount and have them drag other opponents around as they move.

[Jormengand]

Hm, if you're fine with cheese, you could use the feat to burrow (relatively) quickly. Target a 10 foot cube of earth and make an easy climb check to enter the earth.

Unlikely to work because the earth has total cover and total concealment from you.

[daremetoidareyo]

For ride check abuse: Complete champion has lancer's spurs, which can over come DR/ magic.

Fruit blossom spike (AEG) is another spike.

Are there rules about putting a saddle on a mount during combat?

[Jormengand]

Ride check abuse isn't very helpful when the creature you're riding is allowed to knock you off with no save as a free action. Also, just because you're in the target's space doesn't mean you're riding them. They could be riding you for all you know (although they'd need slight build and you'd need mighty steed, but shaddup). I don't think anything ride-based is helpful.

[daremetoidareyo]

Ride check abuse isn't very helpful when the creature you're riding is allowed to knock you off with no save as a free action. Also, just because you're in the target's space doesn't mean you're riding them. They could be riding you for all you know (although they'd need slight build and you'd need mighty steed, but shaddup). I don't think anything ride-based is helpful.

It's definitely in mileage may vary territory.

But you can bareback ride creatures that are typically unsuited for riding. You're stuck in their space as they move due to hammer and piton: Fast mount, spur, get shook off your mount, but still be pitoned in place.


"If you are riding bareback, you take a -5 penalty on Ride checks."

"If you attempt to ride a creature that is ill suited as a mount, you take a -5 penalty on your Ride checks."

"Soft Fall: You can react instantly to try to take no damage when you fall off a mount—when it is killed or when it falls, for example. If you fail your Ride check, you take 1d6 points of falling damage. This usage does not take an action."

Add an animated tower shield for full cover while you spur the beast on. The question becomes, does each individual ride restart the exponential spur counter? Do the spurring rules count per mount or per ride.

I mean, if we're doubling down on cheezwhiz...
Unwilling mounts with an intelligence of 3 or more can be controlled through diplomacy checks. You can substitute those 1 minute long diplomacy checks with standard action bluff checks thanks to Wanderer's diplomacy!

And the arms and equipment guide allow you to ride on humanoid shaped mounts that are 2 size categories larger than yourself.

Do you have a citation for those free action shrug offs? If we can't find a way around it, the ride check abuse optimization will be abandoned for other fun hammer and piton abuse.

[Jormengand]

Except you explicitly don't stay attached to the creature:


You can react instantly to try to take no damage when you fall off a mount—when it is killed or when it falls, for example. If you fail your Ride check, you take 1d6 points of falling damage. This usage does not take an action.

You quite clearly fall off the mount, so you aren't attached to it any more. This could cause you to leave it's space if it's flying.

Also, you can't spur a mount with int greater than 4 anyway.


Characters must use diplomacy checks to negotiate what the mount will and will not do.

[ben-zayb]

The point of the Spur abuse is that you always remain in the enemy space, which means fast mount + spur is an option. Spur also has no mechanical means to command what the mount will or will not do. Mechanically, it's a speed buff at the cost of HP damage.

[Jormengand]

The thing with Spur is that if you're knocked off your mount, you specifically fall off, meaning that you're not attached to it by H&P any more, so you have to move to the adjacent space.

[ben-zayb]

The thing with Spur is that if you're knocked off your mount, you specifically fall off, meaning that you're not attached to it by H&P any more, so you have to move to the adjacent space.

Do you have actual RAW on your fall off = not attached premise, or are you following RL definition/logic in a way that disqualifies most of your shakier suggestions? Even if so, specific beats general. You have mount rules, then you have the more specific H&P. So eitjer way, this works.

[Jormengand]

Also, how the hell are you getting from "You're sharing this person's space" to "You're riding them"? You might as well say you're grappling them.

[ben-zayb]

If you succeed a grapple check against it, sure. The step by step is on SRD, I believe.

You mount it the way suggested by daremeto, or plain Diplomacy. It's somewhere on this thread, too.

[Jormengand]

Also, you need to make a DC 30 ride check to get onto the damned thing as a free action, and it only works for creatures exactly one size larger than you, which have no way to deal 10 damage or more to you. Quickly enough, any creature who understands how combat works is going to start readying actions to chuck you off, or just whacking you in the face. Or using whatever special attacks it has that ignore your tower shield. Or sundering the damn thing.

I mean, you're basically saying "We can maybe, possibly, use this feat to defeat an oddly specific type of creature which could probably have been defeated by sitting up a tree and shooting it." Which is fine, but not very helpful.

[ben-zayb]

Jumping through size category, as you said, is easy. Ready actions won't do jack on my base suggestion, so that one is not for me to mind. I'm not really seeing issues other than "but I could just do other things that are possibly less effective, such as attack optimization (on the very fragile ranged combat type, no less) vs skill optimization".

[daremetoidareyo]

This weekend, I will tabulate the winner.

But I will push along contest #6 before the sunday bored perusal bump.

If ya'll have any more suggestions, I'm available to hear you out. Otherwise, I'll just keep selecting from the ones that I think are most breakable. Or the most weird.

[daremetoidareyo]

Ok, time to score this biddy.


The creature isn't carrying you or any of your equipment, so you can use this to take anything you can carry with you on your dragon ride.

Any number of creatures can pile into the same space, which is fun.

You can use this feat to teleport, because the "Nearest free space" could be miles away.

The touch attack isn't specified to be melee. With the distant shot feat, you can climb onto any creature you can hit with a ranged touch attack. Worse, the target doesn't need to be a creature, so you can fire off a piton at, I dunno, the moon, and climb onto it.

You can escape a grapple with this feat; because touch attacks are light weapons you can fire a touch attack onto the creature you're fighting (against FFTAC, so you can hardly miss), and then climb onto them.

You can avoid creatures with reach weapons by climbing on them, so they can't possibly move into a position where they can hit you with their reach weapon.

The creature only has to be large and bigger than you when you hit it, and there are ways of jumping a creature up by four sizes.

8 observations = 8 pts.


The first thing that comes to mind is a permanently-active Confound the Big Folk. One path you could take this is with a sneak attack build: initial flat-footed touch Piton sneak attack, then, since you no longer need to spend actions to trigger Confound the Big Folk, make a full-attack sneak attack on the following rounds with your "hammer" and "piton". If you are a gnome, you could even use a gnome hooked hammer (hammer on one side, and piton on the other), and use it for Unsteady Footing's trip attacks. A base build stub of Whisper Gnome Monk 2 / Rogue X should work, with slight PrC/feat alterations depending on how you want to specialize.


Another idea is to abuse Ride checks to spur your enemies to death (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?401045-Exploiting-Ride-checks-on-enemies). Normally, once you fall off or get forcefully dismounted, the enemy will be free to move away from you, but Hammer and Piton still keeps you wedged on the target (remaining in its square) unless you fail a Climb check from taking too much damage. This enables you to constantly do fast-mounting and using a move action to Spur. You can add any sort of rider effect to this, such as putting on Iron Guard's Glare for extra support, or getting some viable HiPS (use your target's shadow!) to be virtually untouchable everytime your target moves even a single square.

confound (1), hook hammer (1), tiny stub suggest (2), Ride abuse (1 + 1 clever +1link), IGG (1), & HIPS (1) = 9 pts


Since moving into the opponent's space takes your move action, we'd probably benefit from some reach-op to be able to climb on from further away. Extended Reach and Inhuman Reach both work for a small creature. The full feat tree being something like Aberration Blood->Inhuman Reach->Deepspawn->Extended Reach, removing Deepspawn if you say Aberration Blood (Flexible Limbs) meets the prereq for Extended Reach (I personally don't agree with this interpretation, but I've seen it show up).

Losing Dex to AC is painful, and really hurts this line of optimization, but it might be possible to have a setup where attacks against you hit the enemy. The Best option I can think of is Ghostly Defense+some sort of miss chance. Note also that some AC bonuses (like the Monk's and Swordsage's) work even when denied Dex to AC.

If you want to optimize Climb checks and snag extra standard actions, Factotum seems like the way to go.

reach optimization methods (1), Ghostly defense to cover AC issues (1), Factotum cunningness (1) =3 points


Ooh, I can do definitely do some bounties. I've also got an idea for a build, but it's going to take a bit of time to work out the kinks in it.

(I'm going to assume gauntlets/unarmed strikes won't count for 'one handed bludgeoning', but if they do, they're in the player's handbook, page 117/118 and page 121, respectively.)

Source, page: entry
Player's Handbook, page 115: Club
Player's Handbook, page 119: Mace (Both light and heavy work)
Player's Handbook, page 119: Morningstar (assuming that a weapon that does both bludgeoning and another type of damage works)
Player's Handbook, page 118: Hammer, Light
Player's Handbook, page 120: Sap
Player's Handbook, page 120: Shield (Both light and Heavy work)
Player's Handbook, page 117: Flail
Player's Handbook, page 121: Warhammer
Player's Handbook, page 120: Nunchaku
Player's Handbook, page 120: Sai (I didn't expect this to do bludgeoning damage. Huh.)

Arms and Equipment Guide (Rather annoyingly, the tables and most of the entries don't specify whether the weapon is one handed or not. I'll just post the ones that I think are one handed, but feel free to let me know if one of the weapons is two handed instead)
Arms and Equipment Guide, page 10: Ward Cestus (More or less the same thing as a gauntlet)
Arms and Equipment Guide, page 10: Tonfa

Savage Species (Same issue as the arms and equipment guide.)
Savage Species, page 43: Chain, Barbed
Savage Species, page 46: Tail Club

Planar Handbook:
Planar Handbook, page 68: Muspelrule

Complete Warrior:
Complete Warrior, page 157: Maul
Complete Warrior, page 158: Warmace

Frostburn, page 78: Tigerskull club (both bludgeoning and piercing)

Races of Stone, page 154: Hammer, throwing

Book of Exalted Deeds, page 34: Truncheon

Special Mention: Tome of Battle, page 148: Aptitude enchantment. Effectively, you can use whatever weapon you want with the Hammer and Piton feat.


I'll edit in some additional sources after I go through some more books. I think I'm done bookdiving, as I think I've gotten most of the obvious weapons.

Bounty count: 21


As far as bounties go, a certain weight range of improvised weapons tend to deal bludgeoning damage (although some particularly sharp ones deal piercing, AFAICT). More particularly, any object weighing between 2 and 10 pounds for a Medium creature (or double/half that amount for every size up/down, respectively) counts as a one-handed bludgeoning weapon unless it's sharp enough to be a piercing weapon instead.

I'd probably only count this is as one bounty, though; technically, if one were being particularly obnoxious, one could say all objects anywhere in 3.5 weighing between .125 pounds (the lower limit for Fine creatures) and 160 pounds (the upper limit for Colossal) count as a separate weapon, but that's a stupid way to look at it, and counting all of those objects would be a tedious, boring exercise.

EDIT: It's almost as stupid as the idea that a Colossal creature of any kind can only wield up to 800 lbs of object as a 10 ft range increment improvised weapon (and two-handed at that, despite 800 lbs of granite being about a 2 ft diameter sphere), while a Hill Giant (a Large creature, and the weakest of the giants) can throw the equivalent of 50 lb objects with a 120 ft range increment. Urgh...

Bounty count 22, improvised weapons weighing between 2 and 10 pounds



You should prolly note the source. I believe the relevant books are Player's Handbook page 113 and Complete Warrior page 159.

Thanks.


Not sure if it's alreasy been mentioned as a bounty, but right from the PHB p.126/SRD (http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/goodsAndServices.html):


Also, I'm wondering if you could use some Brutal Strike and Three Mountain if you're weapon is a Heavy Mace or Morningstar? Be a very feat intensive build, though...

Bounty count: 23
TOB =1 point

That's it for now...I'll have a few hours tomorrow to plug through some more.

[Prime32]

So... I tried to build around this feat once (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=10132.0;msg=214269). There's a few abilities which let you retain your Dex bonus to AC while climbing, which should still apply.

[daremetoidareyo]

teamwork benefits.

I forgot about teamwork benefits.

Wall of steel allows others to grant you tower shield bonuses.
Indirect fire: get rid of half of your own cover bonus to whom your traversing
Expert mountaineers...HAHAHA invite up all of your friends onto the "same surface"
Cunning ambush and improved cunning ambush: climb up in the surprise round
Friendly fire evasion and improved Friendly fire evasion: Casters can whomp on you.

[Mr_Blue]

Did you just...did you just open a can of worms? Use Hammer and Piton on the first round. On the second round, initiate Tornado Throw. These are the nice parts:Yup, this means you keep on tornado throwing that Hammer and Piton target ad infinitum until it dies. And then, you still have the additional movement up to twice your normal move speed as part of this maneuver, which is great aftereffect once you've tornado thrown the beefiest enemy to death. Beefiest enemy = more HP = more throwing recursion = more additional movement = more throwing distance/damage for further throws.

The only barrier here is the initial "You must move at least 10 feet before making your throw", which should be solved with a simple Belt of Battle + Mighty Throw before initiating Tornado Throw! This feat is pretty bonkers on Setting Sun.

Does this mean you can travel an infinite distance if the target is unkillable? Am I right in reading that you could throw a regenerating creature (as long as you don't do fire damage) forever?

[daremetoidareyo]

Bounty: The Club, Heavy Mace, Morningstar, Quarterstaff (in one hand), Flail, Heavy Shield, Warhammer, Dire Flail (In one hand), Gnome Hooked Hammer (In one hand), Crowbar, and Torch are all PHB one-handed bludgeons. There are going to be loads more in sourcebooks, so I'm just going to add Maul (CW), Doublehammer (CW, in one hand), Tigerskull Club (Frostburn), and that's all the ones I can find with a quick search rather than deliberately jumping through books.

Bounty 29.


Okay, this is is silly idea, but because you can specifically target squares, you can target the large 10-foot square 200 feet above your opponent, and fall onto them, using the Catfall power to take no damage.

However, also funny are Unapproachable East's battle jump feat and Cityscape's Roof Jumper feat, which allow me to do the same and also charge at the end of the fall, and do double damage, meaning that I can combine this with the distant shot trick to charge a creature from a really long distance away, oh, and if you use Psionic Lion's Charge I get a full attack at the end of the charge.

You can also, while clinging to your opponent, use Mantis Leap (S&F) to jump onto your opponent twice, counting as two more charges, without having to let go.

This one's a little involved: climb onto a creature, then climb onto (part of) the sky, and then the creature, you, and (part of) the sky are all bundled into the same space. Then, climb off the creature but not the sky, and let them fall. If you know Reversed Greater Seek the Sky, you can do this even to flying creatures.

Actually, why not use it to drag a creature into a square in space? You can use Hammer and Piton+Distant Shot again to return to the ground, but they're stuck taking 2d6 cold and 1d4 untyped damage each round, and suffocating at that (taking information on space from Nailed to the Sky).

If you have a triple-throw returning piton, you can make a single attack which will allow you to grab a creature, put it on the sky, and return to earth, all in one round.

A Truenamer/Ruby Knight Vindicator/Factotum with Hammer and Piton, Distant Shot, and a Returning Triple-Throw piton can use Cunning Surge and two instances of Quickened Temporal Spiral in the same round, meaning that you can:

Attack creature A, Creature B, and Creature C. Climb onto Creature C attached to Creature A and B.
Swift action to get an extra move action to use either immediately on your turn. Choose to use it on your turn. Repeat this process.
No action to make an extra standard action.
Use this extra standard to attack creature D, the moon, and the ground. Then, climb onto the moon attached to creatures A, B, C and D. Then, using your third move action, climb onto the ground.

Well done, you have successfully put four creatures on the moon with one round of actions.

Of course, you can use a similar trick to put the moon onto the ground, because you share the moon's space, but also share the ground's space. If you're feeling mean, attach the sun and, I dunno, Alpha Centauri to the Earth. Or just pick up the earth and put it somewhere else.

Target squares, Crazy stuff. 1 point.
Psionic lions charge + battle jump +roof jumper + mantis leap: 4 points Leaping climb skill trick (CS) might actually help tie the feats together…

Assuming that your targets move with you according to rules wonkery (1) + ministub (3) + returning piton (1)+ moving celestial bodies around (1): 6 points

We are going to assume, going further, that you can’t compel the creature you climb to remain in your space when you make decisions to move. Although the transitive property of language would allow one to assume that this could happen, few games would allow this sort of no save hand forcing.




The build for this trick is truenamer 7/cleric 1/factotum 9/RKV 7, however you can also get an extra full round of actions from Anticipatory Strike, so you can cut out the factotum and truenamer levels in favour of psion 9, using Psion 9/Cleric 1/RKV 7 and spending your last three levels to get maneuvers or whatever, or instead realise it's on the time mantle and you can easily enough get more ML, so you go Ardent 5/Cleric 1/RKV 7. You need the Distant Shot feat, and you should be a DWK to get it early. Spam Extra Turning to fuel your RKV schenanigans, and take Practiced Manifester. So by 15th level, you can use the equivalent to irresistible twinned nailed to the sky and irresitible quickened nailed to the sky, which are a 17th and 18th level spell, until you run out of power points or turn undeads. You can also practically irresistible teleport other, greater teleport or teleport other at will. Not bad, eh? [/spoiler]




Half points for stub capitalizing on in-elegant RAW PO: 2 points


1) I believe so. In context, it doesn't really seem to make sense for "moves" not to apply to forced movement like Setting Sun throws or Bull Rushing.

2) No. Unsteady Footing says that you use a standard action to do the special trip, so it competes for the action with the throw.

3) Probably. At the least, you should be able to cast Magic Weapon or the like on it once you're wielding it as a weapon.

rules clarifications: 3 points


In regards to the "can you enchant it" question, here's what I can tell you, if it counts as only an improvised weapon: improvised weapons cannot be crafted as masterwork weapons, and therefore cannot be enchanted, since they're not of high enough quality. However, any object can be made out of special materials like Adamantine, and any weapons made out of adamantine counts as masterwork, and can thusly be enchanted. Since improvised weapons are still weapons, an adamantine object can be enchanted as a weapon.

This stretches the RAW a good bit, but I'm pretty sure it's RAW legal.

Rule clarification part 2, beautiful: 1 point + 1 point for elegant RAW abuse


Did you just...did you just open a can of worms? Use Hammer and Piton on the first round. On the second round, initiate Tornado Throw. These are the nice parts:Yup, this means you keep on tornado throwing that Hammer and Piton target ad infinitum until it dies. And then, you still have the additional movement up to twice your normal move speed as part of this maneuver, which is great aftereffect once you've tornado thrown the beefiest enemy to death. Beefiest enemy = more HP = more throwing recursion = more additional movement = more throwing distance/damage for further throws.

The only barrier here is the initial "You must move at least 10 feet before making your throw", which should be solved with a simple Belt of Battle + Mighty Throw before initiating Tornado Throw! This feat is pretty bonkers on Setting Sun.

I love it. Tornado of throws (1) + items to deal with movement clause (1) +1 for riding into sunset on the beefiest bad guy. 3 points. Consider also travel devotion for an additional move action.


http://s12.postimg.org/5yizocj2l/Untitled.png

I tried making a build for it, combining it with Confound the Big Folk. The character would basically hop on to a Large or larger creature and sneak attack it into submission.

Problems with the build:
- It requires Dex 15 and Str 15 at level one, which may be difficult depending on ability generation method.
- It can't do its schtick very well until level 8 when it attains Confound the Big Folk.

Pros:
- Sneak Attack is barely ever behind straight Rogue.
- Almost full BaB
- Can probably flask-rogue OK vs medium targets.

I didn't do the higher level feats because I wasn't sure what else would be good. I also assumed that Gloves of the Balanced Hand would be available.

Full build with little write up, saving me from doing the exact same thing: 12 points.


Alright, I finally worked out the general gist of the build.


I apologize in advance for the formatting, but I'm not quite sure how to make tables.

I'm using a petal (MM3) as the base race for this build, since they're tiny size and have only +2LA. Also, I find the image of a group of monsters getting slaughtered by a 6 inch tall fairy very amusing.

Dark Petal Rogue 1/Hit and Run Tactics Stealthy Fighter 1/Totemist 3/Umbral Disciple 5/Crusader 1/Swordsage 1/Umbral Disciple 5/Totemist 3
Feats:
1st: Weapon Finesse (Petal bonus feat), Human Heritage, Aberration Blood (flaw), Inhuman Reach (Flaw), Vile Feat (retrained to Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Kusari Gama)(The petal worships an elder evil, therefore gaining bonus vile feats. I'm retraining these to other feats since the build is pretty feat starved)
3rd: Combat Reflexes
5th: Vile Feat (Retrained to Darkstalker)
6th: Hammer and Piton
9th: Underfoot Combat
10th: Vile Feat (Retrained to Confound the Big Folk)
12th: Shadow Blade
15th: Craven, Vile Feat (Retrained to Combat Expertise)
18th: Robilar’s Gambit
20th: Vile Feat (Retrained to Bonus Essentia)
Human Heritage is necessary in order to take the aberration blood/inhuman reach feats, since they require you to be humanoid. It requires you to be descended from humans, but that isn't terribly uncommon for fey (half fey, changelings, etc). Inhuman Reach is the only reach extending feat that Petals qualify for (except long reach, but that's only 5-15 feet of reach), so might as well take it.

The kusari gama is a one handed reach weapon. We're going to throw aptitude on it so it can be used with the hammer and piton feat and so the build has a whole 10 feet of reach.

Combat reflexes is nifty because petals have a ridiculously high dex score (+10 dex at char creation, then add in items and level up increases). It's also part of the cornerstone of this character's strategy.

Darkstalker is necessary since the character needs to be able to hide so it can do its thing.

Hammer and Piton had to be delayed till 6th level since petals get -8 str and can't really qualify for it without templates/items.

Underfoot Combat and Confound the Big Folk let the character gain soft cover while in a larger enemy's square and also give a 50/50 chance of attacks aimed at you hitting the enemy instead. Very handy.

Shadow Blade adds dex to damage while in a shadow hand stance. Since the character is going to be using Assassin's Stance constantly and should have a dex score in the mid 30s or so by now, this is great.

Craven is pretty self explanatory. Extra damage.

Combat Expertise lets the character take only a -1 to attack in order to use Confound the Big Folk's 50/50 miss chance ability instead of the -4 for fighting defensively.

Robilar's Gambit is great, since your main defense isn't AC, it's the miss chance from Confound the Big Folk and hiding. An attack of opportunity every time you're attacked is great for this build.

Finally, Bonus Essentia is there because I couldn't think of anything better. Still, that's an extra soulmeld or two.

The tactics of this build are going to change somewhat over time. At low levels, you have an insane modifier to hide (+8 from being tiny, +8 from the dark template, +8 or so from dex, plus ranks. At first level, that's a +28). The main issue is damage, but that's easily solved by the hit and run tactics acf of fighter. That adds dex mod to damage against flat footed targets. Since this character should be sneaking everywhere they go, that shouldn't be an issue (even with the -20 penalty for attacking while hiding, they have a +8 to hide. At first level).

Therefore, low level tactics should be to strike from hiding and utilize your reach and flight. Ranged weapons might be a good idea here, since you don't gain a whole lot from closing to melee until you get deeper into Totemist. Once you start taking levels in Totemist, grab as many natural attack granting soulmelds as you can. With 2d6 sneak attack and dex mod to damage, each of those attacks is going to hurt.

At mid levels (level 12, specifically), these tactics change. Now, you want to hammer and piton whichever enemy you prefer, while still hiding, and use them as a meatshield while attacking other enemies with reach/ranged weapons. Shadow blade gives dex to damage again (for the kusari gama, at least), which is nice. You're also getting some sneak attack and more miss chance from umbral disciple. Finally, defensive rebuke is a nifty way to get enemies to waste their attacks: they don't know exactly where you are, so they have to guess which square you're in. If they guess right, they have a 50% miss chance. If they succeed on that, they have another 50% chance to miss you and hit their ally because of Confound the Big Folk. If they choose not to attack you, you get an attack of opportunity against them. Nice. (Sidenote: the Kusari Gama is being used with the Hammer and Piton feat through the aptitude enhancement)

At high levels, you can extend your reach another 40-50 feet (assuming Umbral Disciple's reach is doubled by reach weapons) during your turn. You should have a decent amount of natural attacks from totemist, with some very solid bonus damage (7d6 sneak attack + 34 from dex for weapons that work with shadow blade). Not much changes from mid levels except for bigger numbers and the addition of Robilar's Gambit. This character would probably want to invest in a wand of blade storm, if they haven't already. At some point, you may want a permanencied Reduce Person cast on you, for extra dex, to hit, and hide (normally, fey wouldn't qualify for reduce person, but you're conveniently a humanoid because of human heritage)

An alternative to the umbral disciple would be to take enough levels in drunken master to get the ability that gives you the same reach as the improvised weapon you're wielding, and then use a spool of endless rope. That gives you 500 feet of reach, which should be more than enough for all your AoO/Blade Storm needs. I discarded this idea because it's somewhat cheesy and it'd be annoying to give the rope the aptitude enchantment (Adamantine rope???). Also, I dislike the "improvised weapons automatically break on a natural 1" clause (although I suppose you could get around that by making your weapon out of riverine).

I'm not really doing much with the spike besides using it for the hammer and piton feat, but I suppose you could grab some gloves of the balanced hand for two weapon fighting if you really want an extra attack.

Please let me know if I've made any errors! I'm not 100% on the hiding/attacking stuff working as described, but the player's handbook was annoyingly vague about combining hide and melee attacks.


Close enough. 12 points for a full build and explanation. I love builds so much more without the fluff attached.


By that logic, you cannot leave, ever, except by being hit and failing the Climb check. It's also incorrect, I think-- the line is "if your foe moves, you remain in his space as he moves," meaning that other things-- say, a Bull Rush targeted at you-- could knock you off just fine.

(I'm also not sure where you're getting the "you can target squares" bit, and I'm pretty sure that a square two hundred feet above your target is not part of his space and that the default range for a touch attack is melee, but I'm less sure on the RAW for those-- though it certainly seems more like a "rules doesn't say I CAN'T" thing, which is generally not a well-regarded bit of rules space)

Rules clarification & voicing my misgivings: 1 point.


Yes. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatStatistics.htm#touchAttacks)

"Some attacks disregard armor, including shields and natural armor. In these cases, the attacker makes a touch attack roll (either ranged or melee)."



Fair enough. I try to accommodate for TO as well as PO, though, which is why many of my techniques involve nailing creatures to the sun (also there's not a fat lot else you can do with the feat, though I have made some attempt to use it for more mundane purposes).



That's a different line from the one I'm talking about. I'm talking about "If the check succeeds, you enter and remain in the target's space". Indubitably, you also remain in his space as he moves, but you also remain in his space all the rest of the time - thus, any space to which you can move is therefore his space, meaning that he now occupies it.



Because the target of H&P only has to be large or larger, and not necessarily a creature, you can target the square/space/air/whatever, so the square 200 feet above the person you want to kill is your target, and the person you want to kill has nothing to do with the H&P attack.

1 point for citation, 1 point again for noticing that for some reason, the text of the feat omits reference to a creature in its mechanical fluff. Look at it:
While wielding a one-handed bludgeoning melee weapon in your primary hand and a climbing piton or spike in the other, you can make a touch attack with the piton as a standard action.This attack deals 1d4 points of damage + your Strength modifier. The target must be size Large or bigger. If the target is at least one size category larger than you, you can make a special Climb check.

The text omits any mention of a creature. This means that you can use a hammer and piton to damage things, anything really… Even things typically un-attackable????




Red Fel is correct. ShurikVch is confusing a strength modifier with a modifier to one's strength. The entire quoted rules section is irrelevant.

Rules Clarification: 1 pt.


The air... doesn't... have a size? And so cannot be at least one size category larger than you?\


A 10 foot cube of air does.

It can be a 5’ square??? Good point though 1pt to each yall.


Thank you. Yes, I like to think I'm right on this.

To elaborate, the section quoted by ShurikVch talks about Strength modifiers which are negative, and are therefore called penalties. In other words, if you have a Str score of 8, your modifier is -1, and is called a penalty. You are not receiving a penalty to your Strength score; rather, you are receiving a negative Str modifier (a penalty) on any roll that calls for Str.

A Chaotic Evil Soulborn, at level 2, gains the following Incarnum Defense ability: "Your eyes become solid orbs of shadowy blackness, with no visible pupil or iris. You gain immunity to any penalty, damage, or drain to your Strength." The key language: You gain immunity to any penalty . . . to your Strength. Not immunity to a Strength penalty, which is a negative Strength modifier from having a low stat, but immunity to a penalty to Strength, which is any debuff that reduces your Strength ability.

A Tibbit's Feline Transformation ability contains the following language: "In cat form, the tibbit becomes size Tiny. Her size bonus to Armor Class and on attack rolls increases to +2, and her size bonus on Hide checks becomes +8. She gains a +10 bonus to her land speed. A tibbit suffers a -8 penalty to Strength (minimum 3) but gains a +2 bonus to Dexterity." The key language: In cat form, the tibbit . . . suffers a -8 penalty to Strength. That's a penalty to the Strength ability, not a negative modifier from a low Strength ability; that is explicitly the sort of thing prevented by a CE Soulborn.

Having a Small size means that you are likely to have a negative Str modifier - as in, a "penalty" instead of a "bonus" from a low Str ability - which is generally not avoided by a CE Soulborn's Incarnum Defense. It is only the Tibbit, and anything like it that explicitly calls out a penalty to Strength, as opposed to a penalty from Strength, that can enjoy CE Soulborn's arguably sole redeeming quality.

Thanks for the in depth analysis. I will now abuse the evil tibbitss with those feline april fools article. The only other option is strength of the true form, which requires a bit of sorcery. 1 point.


Hm, if you're fine with cheese, you could use the feat to burrow (relatively) quickly. Target a 10 foot cube of earth and make an easy climb check to enter the earth. Continue "climbing" for as long as you want. You'd prolly want either a necklace of adaptation or immunity to suffocation to make it work.

You’re gonna need the ability to see through earth…ring of xray vision? 1 point.


Unlikely to work because the earth has total cover and total concealment from you.

Cover is an issue. good observation. 1 point.


Another idea is to use the feat as a transportation system for those who need to move quickly but teleportation won't work/is banned (although you need either extra move actions or free/swift action movement). The customer moves x feet and pitons Carrier A. Carrier A moves as far as they can and then pitons Carrier B, and so on and so forth (You'd need very carefully timed enlarge person spells or something similar so that A can piton B, etc). Assuming each carrier moves around 300 feet per turn (fairly reasonable if you're trying to optimize speed), and the maximum number of iterations is 10 or so (the limit is probably going to be the carrying capacity of the last carrier), you'd be able to move a normal person half a mile in 6 seconds. That's around 300mph. Not too shabby.

You’re going to need a bunch of guys who are successively larger than each other, all of whom have the ability to take 2 move actions. Threefold mask of the chimera soul meld helps here. Imagine your “HamMatryoshka and Piton” Voltron of space sharing. Not sure of what we could use that for, but they all move when the big guy moves. Maybe if they all max out ride, and take battle jump and the dismount attack skill trick, and all wear exotic masterwork saddles, you can have the big guy have a bunch of fractal attackers…Weird. 1 point


Edit: Also, another bounty. Complete Warrior, page 153: Wield Oversized Weapon. It lets you treat weapons as if they were one category smaller and "lighter" for the purposes of wielding. Aka, you could wield any 2 handed bludgeoning weapon and treat it as one handed. The downside is that it's an epic feat. That's... kinda crappy for epic.

Bounty 30


Bounty: from Races of Faerun
aspergilium: holy water sprinklin
lasso: attach to your climbed upon mount and have them drag other opponents around as they move.

Bounty 32


Except you explicitly don't stay attached to the creature:

You quite clearly fall off the mount, so you aren't attached to it any more. This could cause you to leave it's space if it's flying.

Also, you can't spur a mount with int greater than 4 anyway.


The point of the Spur abuse is that you always remain in the enemy space, which means fast mount + spur is an option. Spur also has no mechanical means to command what the mount will or will not do. Mechanically, it's a speed buff at the cost of HP damage.

This is absolutely in YMMV territory.


The thing with Spur is that if you're knocked off your mount, you specifically fall off, meaning that you're not attached to it by H&P any more, so you have to move to the adjacent space.


Do you have actual RAW on your fall off = not attached premise, or are you following RL definition/logic in a way that disqualifies most of your shakier suggestions? Even if so, specific beats general. You have mount rules, then you have the more specific H&P. So eitjer way, this works.

This too. It becomes a matter of which effect dominates. H&P’s you move with them, even if you fall off of them as a mount. Or ride’s you fall off of them…entirely.


Also, you need to make a DC 30 ride check to get onto the damned thing as a free action, and it only works for creatures exactly one size larger than you, which have no way to deal 10 damage or more to you. Quickly enough, any creature who understands how combat works is going to start readying actions to chuck you off, or just whacking you in the face. Or using whatever special attacks it has that ignore your tower shield. Or sundering the damn thing.

I mean, you're basically saying "We can maybe, possibly, use this feat to defeat an oddly specific type of creature which could probably have been defeated by sitting up a tree and shooting it." Which is fine, but not very helpful.

Optimizing ride is really easy, and thus, you can use this weirdly specific thing to kill stuff way out of your league. With like…only a little magic.

[daremetoidareyo]

Does this mean you can travel an infinite distance if the target is unkillable? Am I right in reading that you could throw a regenerating creature (as long as you don't do fire damage) forever?

Yes. infinite movement if you pull it off. So you can hammer and piton the awakened tarrasque and throw-ride him all the way to the north pole on the second round of combat. Meanwhile, your allies are like "BOOO" to the underlings.

[daremetoidareyo]

ZetaPup takes the bounty, 16 points. Well done.



Name
Score
Place


AvatarVecna
2



Jormengand
26
2nd


WhamBamSam
6



ben-zayb
12
3rd


ComaVision
12
3rd


Zetapup
30
1st


Grod_The_Giant
2



Red Fel
1



Thurbane
1




There we have it.



Zetapup, congratulations. Bounty + stub really kicked you over the edge.
Special thanks to ben-zayb and jormengand for really plumbing this thing.

So ZetaPup, please enjoy an underlined rocky brown Courier font. Zetapup

[Jormengand]

Next bounty I don't think should be as much, given that over half of zeta's points were from the bounty.

[Zetapup]

Next bounty I don't think should be as much, given that over half of zeta's points were from the bounty.

Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. Plus, the majority of my bounty points were just because I was the first person to go through the player's handbook and list the options. Maybe points for bounties vs points for everything else could be separated, so you don't end up with point inflation like that (so you'd end up a giving a prize to whoever got the most bounties and a separate prize for whoever scored the most points otherwise). Fun round though.

[ben-zayb]

Congrats to Zetapup!

Does this mean you can travel an infinite distance if the target is unkillable? Am I right in reading that you could throw a regenerating creature (as long as you don't do fire damage) forever?Why, yes, Troll Transit is definitely a go!