The Ultimate Chameleon! Now with 100% More Brains and 1,000% More Power!

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The chameleon PrC is famous (or perhaps infamous) for its ability to swap out its class features to perform a different role in the party every single day.

But what if I told you that I found a way to spontaneously swap out your entire build faster than a fighter swaps out his weapons with Quick Draw?

Be a random class X/illithid savant 4. Eat the brain of a greater doppelganger and steal their Consume Identity ability. (Alternatively, with 3 levels of illithid savant, eat another savant to eat their ability to eat a racial ability.) Buy a scroll of ice assassin to UMD a clone of yourself, commanded to not try to kill you, and to stay nearby until you say otherwise. Now do a character rebuild, either through the rules in the PHBII or by adding a Crafted Contingent Greater Restoration and hitting yourself with a bunch of negative levels (and rebuilding your way back up) or doing something similar with a thought bottle. Make sure you keep illithid savant 3 or 4. Now eat the ice assassin to add your old identity as your consumed identity. Now repeat that process until you've got a number of completely separate builds equal to your maximum number of identities (ie, your HD, if you can make the Will saves).

Since Consume Identity is a [Su] ability, it defaults to a standard action to swap, so if you need to do it in the middle of your turn, use Cunning Surge to change personas as a free action. This allows you to have one utility and initiative build for outside of a fight (likely your factotum build), a full-defense build that can turtle between turns while making use of lots of AoOs during a fight, and one that's all offense that doesn't bother with anything but obliterating (or at least neutering) opponents during your turn. Then start the fight with the utility/initiative build, use a free action to Cunning Surge your offensive build in at the beginning of the surprise round to smash face, then Cunning Surge (or belt of battle, or celerity, or synchronicity) at the end of your turn to swap to your turtle defense/AoO build. And the higher level you get, the more builds you can have to swap. Need a super-speedy mobility build? You've got it. Battlefield control for large-scale battles against tons of foes for hours and hours? You've got it. An infiltration specialist build? You've got it. Diplomancy? You've got it. The D&D equivalent of One Punch Man for singular massively powerful foes? ...I'm sure you get the gist, here.

[Flickerdart]

tl;dr - after using pretty much all the cheese in the game, you're left with something barely better than a 4th level power (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/psychicReformation.htm).

[MaxiDuRaritry]

tl;dr - after using pretty much all the cheese in the game, you're left with something barely better than a 4th level power (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/psychicReformation.htm).Hmm. Swap out your powers, feats, and skills after 15 minutes of concentration and an XP cost, or swap out everything, including class levels, as a free action multiple times per round, basically for free?

Decisions, decisions.

[Flickerdart]

Hmm. Swap out your powers, feats, and skills after 15 minutes of concentration and an XP cost, or swap out everything, including class levels, as a free action multiple times per round, basically for free?

Decisions, decisions.
I did say it was better. But you're using Illithid Savant, ice assassin, and thought bottles, and you're still in the same ballpark as that power. It's not better enough. It's like spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade your computer from a Core i5 to a Core i7. Is it better? Yes. Is it worth it? No.

Also, I'm not even sure where you're getting 15 minutes from - the regular manifestation time of the power is 10 minutes, and anyone who's anyone just manifests it as linked to get around that.

[Jowgen]

Can this be adpated to work without Ice-Assassin?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I did say it was better. But you're using Illithid Savant, ice assassin, and thought bottles, and you're still in the same ballpark as that power. It's not better enough. It's like spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade your computer from a Core i5 to a Core i7. Is it better? Yes. Is it worth it? No.You're basically only a step down from Pun Pun at that point. And it doesn't actually take all that much work.


Also, I'm not even sure where you're getting 15 minutes from - the regular manifestation time of the power is 10 minutes, and anyone who's anyone just manifests it as linked to get around that.I could've sworn it was 15. My bad. But you still have an XP cost, and it's still only 1/round (as multiple Linked psychic reformations still go off simultaneously, so having multiples going off at once is redundant). That's 1/round, has an XP cost, only functions on powers, feats, and skills (which is nice, yes), and it requires you to take a lot of feats to do more than once per fight, unless the fight is seriously long.


Can this be adpated to work without Ice-Assassin?There's always shapechange to turn into an ooze with the Split ability, I suppose. There aren't too many ways to get fully functional clones of yourself, really. Body outside body? Fission? Maybe, but neither of which are nearly as good.

[Flickerdart]

You're basically only a step down from Pun Pun at that point.
You're a bunch of 12th level characters. That's about as far from Pun-Pun as a fart is far from a supernova. Hell, you're even forced to switch between your abilities, while a boring old astral seed + mind switch combo can rack up anything you've got and have it all simultaneously.


And it doesn't actually take all that much work.
It doesn't take work. It takes cheese. Well known, boring cheese. To do something unexceptional.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

You're a bunch of 12th level characters. That's about as far from Pun-Pun as a fart is far from a supernova. Hell, you're even forced to switch between your abilities, while a boring old astral seed + mind switch combo can rack up anything you've got and have it all simultaneously.It continues to go up in level as you do. The ability to do anything in the literal blink of an eye is pretty much what Pun Pun does. If there's an ability in the game, you almost certainly have it by 20th level. That's a lot of different builds you can squeeze in.


It doesn't take work. It takes cheese. Well known, boring cheese. To do something unexceptional.Whatever you say.

[ben-zayb]

This is nice, although takes far too longer to work than, say, a (Protean) Symbiote Commoner 1.

[Psyren]

I'm with Flickerdart - of all the things you could be using Illithid Savant, Ice Assassin and Thought Bottles to do, the end result here is pretty tame.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I'm with Flickerdart - of all the things you could be using Illithid Savant, Ice Assassin and Thought Bottles to do, the end result here is pretty tame.I'm not quite sure how having 20 different builds' worth of abilities at level 20 that you can cycle through at will, potentially multiple times a round, could be considered "meh" by any stretch. Numbers aside, you're basically gestalting 20 different ways at level 20, only better, because you don't have the normal restrictions on prestige classes and whatnot.

[Cerefel]

I'm not quite sure how having 20 different builds' worth of abilities at level 20 that you can cycle through at will, potentially multiple times a round, could be considered "meh" by any stretch. Numbers aside, you're basically gestalting 20 different ways at level 20, only better, because you don't have the normal restrictions on prestige classes and whatnot.

Well of course it's only considered weak in the frame of reference of what those methods can accomplish. With all of the things that can be done with those spells (especially in combination) 20 character builds that you have to take a standard to switch between is pretty limited in scope.

[The Glyphstone]

Well of course it's only considered weak in the frame of reference of what those methods can accomplish. With all of the things that can be done with those spells (especially in combination) 20 character builds that you have to take a standard to switch between is pretty limited in scope.

Yeah. This is the TO equivalent of buying a Formula One racecar, then using it to drive to the convenience store down the street once a month (or for rural areas, driving down to your mailbox). Yes, it does what it is meant to, and very well. But the specific tools being used to do so are being so vastly, woefully under-utilized that it still looks pale and unimpressive in comparison.

[Necroticplague]

I'm not quite sure how having 20 different builds' worth of abilities at level 20 that you can cycle through at will, potentially multiple times a round, could be considered "meh" by any stretch. Numbers aside, you're basically gestalting 20 different ways at level 20, only better, because you don't have the normal restrictions on prestige classes and whatnot.

Because the means you use to get there could get significantly more powerful. For actually LESS cheese (extended fusion->astral seed), you could essentially be a 20-way gestalt in all ways at once, without needing to switch. Nothing about this trick is significantly original, the results are acheivable using less intensive means. It's meh in that it neither does anything impressive (routes to infinite power with less effort exist), nor does it use a novel aspect of optimization.

[Jack_Simth]

Yeah. This is the TO equivalent of buying a Formula One racecar, then using it to drive to the convenience store down the street once a month (or for rural areas, driving down to your mailbox). Yes, it does what it is meant to, and very well. But the specific tools being used to do so are being so vastly, woefully under-utilized that it still looks pale and unimpressive in comparison.
Yeah. Ice Assasin + Thought Bottle + Fusion + Astral Seed, for instance, and you can have all 20 of those builds simultaneously. With a bit of work, you can be straight-up immune to everything, too (there's a clause about being willing that allows you to kill yourself despite your immunity to everything that permits the trick to work).

[Zaq]

Yeah. The problem isn't that this isn't powerful. The problem is that the power level is way, way less than expected for the amount of cheese that went into it. This basically makes it unusable in any reasonable situation—a game where the end results you get are appropriate (or maybe on the high end of appropriate) is unlikely to accept the massive cheese that you needed to get set up, and a game where the cheese you used is acceptable is going to expect much stronger results after all is said and done.

[LanSlyde]

Person posts a Thing that uses Gouda. Giants look at it and go 'meh, could be better'

This is why I come to this board. Because any local group I know would read that first post and think this man insane. The rest of you see it and go 'thats nice, but it could be better.'

[Zaq]

This is why I come to this board. Because any local group I know would read that first post and think this man insane. The rest of you see it and go 'thats nice, but it could be better.'

Make no mistake, the gouda in question is exactly why we're having this reaction. If this were something that could be pulled off without using well-known high-octane cheese (Ice Assassin, Illithid Savant, Thought Bottles, etc.), I think we'd all be legitimately impressed. I know I certainly would be. But including cheesy methods (especially well-established cheesy methods) makes us expect cheesy results.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Leaving aside the fact that "you can be 20 different builds, but only one at once and always with 4 levels pretty much wasted on Illithid Savant so they all suck for their level" isn't exactly what i'd call optimized... Or the fact that Ice Assassins don't have brains to consume.
You forgot to mention how you get around the "Mind Flayer" requirement on IS. Unless you consider 8 (bad) racial HD and +7 LA a minor speedbump to dethroning pun-pun?

All of those things you mention can also be accomplished by a single-classed wizard. With some cheese to get infinite spells (there are several ways) and some time to fill up your spellbook you'll be way better at all of those things, with a lot less cheese used.

Or you could just murder enemies (or just people) with the relevant abilities, bring them back with the appropriate undead template and have your own personal army (that actually has the actions to actually make use of all those abilities).

[daremetoidareyo]

Or you could just murder enemies (or just people) with the relevant abilities, bring them back with the appropriate undead template and have your own personal army (that actually has the actions to actually make use of all those abilities).

Well, here you're not optimizing the inherent rpg social contract, the typical assumption that the player wants his PC to survive. Undead cronies get whacked with regular ease. Dm is never afraid to kill off minions, especially powerful minions with ability combos. But, if all the abilities are stacked onto a PC, then a certain plot armor and sense of fair play materializes.

It is this exact thing that makes illithid savant + ice assassin seem like an underused combo in this case. If a dm allows this blatant power grab, then the bad guys are going to be far greater than what is offered by OPs trick. Because if this was all you wanted, why were you so cheesey? Be an illithid savant and hunt illithid savants. A good dm will float a real juicy fish out there for you, because an illithid savant campaign based on a combo of highlander and Dexter would be hella fun.

But instead, there is a disregard for these non cheese compact, and thus you would deplete so much social capital on getting your cheesey RAW readings to be allowed, that the dm will come at your neck instead of work with you. Your blatant power grabbing doesn't get you enough power to defend you against the ill will you conjured getting to this point. It's like robbing a bank to buy new lawn furniture instead of using the layaway plan.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Be an illithid savant and hunt illithid savants.There are only two things this can get you:

A.) You can eat another illithid savant to get an illithid savant's class abilities. This exchanges one use of your Acquire Class Feature for one of the other's Acquire Class Feature, Acquire Special Quality or Special Attack, Lore use, Acquire Skill, or Acquire feat. Using ACF (heh) to get another use of ACF just trades yours for theirs, and is pretty pointless.

B.) You can eat another illithid savant to acquire one of the abilities that the other savant has acquired. This works if they have a difficult-to-acquire ability that you want for yourself.

The only way to make it work on the way that most people want it to work (that is, acquire multiple uses of Acquire [Class/Racial Feature] is to devour a high level legacy champion or uncanny trickster and use the +[lots] Class Level ability to gain effective levels of illithid savant (or whatever other classes you want). So I guess you could do that, if you want some really high op for very little resource expenditure. Devour lots of "+1 Class Levels" and take a minimum of a 1 level dip to whatever class it is you want to boost (including illithid savant). Wash, rinse, repeat ad infinitum.


But instead, there is a disregard for these non cheese compact, and thus you would deplete so much social capital on getting your cheesey RAW readings to be allowed, that the dm will come at your neck instead of work with you. Your blatant power grabbing doesn't get you enough power to defend you against the ill will you conjured getting to this point. It's like robbing a bank to buy new lawn furniture instead of using the layaway plan.Not necessarily.

See: Emperor_Tippy's games. The gold standard for high power games, though that's the exception, and not necessarily the rule.

[Caudex Capite]

If you want to do something similar without using Thought Bottle, Illithid Savant, Ice Assassin, or Fusion/Astral Seed, you can always use Ability Rip (from Serpent Kingdoms, which I'm sure is a surprise to everyone) on a Greater Doppleganger to steal Consume Identity. It only has hours/level as a duration, but that can be gotten around in a few different ways (Temporal Reiteration, living on a timeless plane [though that cuts into adventuring options], probably some shenanigans involving Astral Projection, though exactly how escapes me), and the permanent loss of a Supernatural ability can be paid for pretty easily through spells (Shapechange is the obvious one, but I believe there are a number of spells that provide a temporary (Su) ability). Obviously, this is almost as cheesy (possibly moreso), but it does have the advantage of working at lower levels.

[Cerefel]

If you want to do something similar without using Thought Bottle, Illithid Savant, Ice Assassin, or Fusion/Astral Seed, you can always use Ability Rip (from Serpent Kingdoms, which I'm sure is a surprise to everyone) on a Greater Doppleganger to steal Consume Identity. It only has hours/level as a duration, but that can be gotten around in a few different ways (Temporal Reiteration, living on a timeless plane [though that cuts into adventuring options], probably some shenanigans involving Astral Projection, though exactly how escapes me), and the permanent loss of a Supernatural ability can be paid for pretty easily through spells (Shapechange is the obvious one, but I believe there are a number of spells that provide a temporary (Su) ability). Obviously, this is almost as cheesy (possibly moreso), but it does have the advantage of working at lower levels.

For making durations timeless there's Acorn of Far Travel, right?