[3.P] Gimmick Builds

[Aegis013]

Howdy all. I'm looking to gather some interesting and fun ideas for gimmick builds! They don't have to be powerful or optimized, they just have to be gimmicky. A gimmick you can base your entire adventuring career on is ideal, but not necessarily required. Quirky mechanics are a plus! Weird, unexpected synergy is a double plus!

An example of the kind of thing I'm looking for is a build based around using Elemental Scion of Zilargo's (MoE) Elemental Merge ability in conjunction with Water Devotion (CChamp) and temporary buffs like Rage to turn into an effectively invulnerable raging water monster, as when you die, you just pop out of the dead elemental, and make a new one and start all over. (Credit where credit is due, I didn't come up with this idea (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=10brp119de5m5mun6luevp03i4&topic=10132.msg192957#msg192957)).

Another example is a Crusader (ToB)/Binder (ToM) who binds Dahlver-Nar and uses shield self against foes, and then attacks himself using his defenses, probably Stone Power (ToB) and whatever else, to kill the enemy by attacking himself. (Works even better with self-attacks based on Death Urge psionic power or a houseruling for DR to affect delayed damage pool)

Builds can be non-gestalt, or gestalt, cheesy or not, whatever. If they rely on a houserule or a favorable but debated interpretation I just ask you note it.
Also if you can, please source mechanics with a book acronym. Thanks!

[Jeff the Green]

CE Tibbit Soulborn 2/Stoneblessed 3/Goliath Barbarian 1. When you become a tiny cat, you keep your normal strength. When you rage, you become an 8-foot tall cat.

[T.G. Oskar]

The only gimmick build in my mind is a set of 4 "Elemental Warriors", whose whole schtick involves adding as much of their favored element as possible, including starting classes that fit the bill.

All "Elemental Warriors" belong to the Elemental Racial Variants (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/elementalRacialVariants.htm), with the Half-Elemental Template AND the Elemental Bloodline of their choice. They get as many levels as they need (usually 6 levels) to meet the prerequisites to Elemental Scion of Zilargo, and then straight to Elemental Warrior (the class from Planar Handbook) for even MORE Elemental goodness. Of course, the shame is that none of them are actually Elementals, but Outsiders (that is the nature of the Half-Elemental Template), but they're as a rule far, far more powerful than an Elder Elemental of their same level.

The Earth Elemental Warrior is a Half-Earth Elemental Earth Dwarf Crusader 5/Elemental Scion of Zilargo 8/Elemental Warrior 5 with 2 levels in Bloodline (Earth Elemental), focusing mostly on Devoted Spirit and Stone Dragon, and having the Earth Heritage and Sand Dancer feats (alongside Stone Power). The build is pretty tanky, what with having a DR of 3/-, a decent AC because of the natural armor bonus of the Half-Elemental template with the Stony Plating graft adding an extra point (plus proficiency in heavy armor), and Steely Resolve 10 + Stone Power adding to the resilience of the build. The Earth Elemental Warrior is also superb at Lockdown, having Improved Trip and a whopping Str of 22 before buffs, and Sand Dancer making the opponent take some time to rise; add Knockdown to the mix, and just about any attack will keep it on the ground. Because of Stoneskin and Iron Body, the darn thing is just hard to kill, and with a Con of 20+, even more. Then there's the fact that it's the only Elemental Warrior that, if LA buy-off is allowed, can grow a Greater Elemental, which works nicely with Elemental Merge.

The Air Elemental Warrior is a Half-Air Elemental Air Gnome Ninja 4/Fighter 2/Elemental Scion of Zilargo 7/Elemental Warrior 5 with 2 levels in the Air Elemental bloodline. Dabbling in Shadow Hand makes it a pretty nice killer, able to go invisible several times to land Sudden Strikes with relative impunity, and with enough Dexterity to get TWF, attack, AND damage. Eventually, it gets flight, and the grafts give it a free Deflect Arrows feat and the ability to blind opponents reliably (because it has a pretty decent Con).

Haven't worked yet the Fire Elemental and Water Elemental Warriors, but they're most likely going to be: a) a Half-Fire Elemental Fire Elf Swordsage 6/Elemental Scion of Zilargo 7/Elemental Warrior 5 with 2 levels in Fire Elemental Bloodline (specializing in Desert Wind, of course!), and b: a Half-Water Elemental Water Orc Monk/Rogue/Elemental Scion of Zilargo 7/Elemental Warrior 5 with 2 levels in the Water Elemental Bloodline. Exactly how they'll end up is beyond me, but it should be pretty interesting nonetheless.

[Red Fel]

LE Tibbit Soulborn 2/Stoneblessed 3/Goliath Barbarian 1. When you become a tiny cat, you keep your normal strength. When you rage, you become an 8-foot tall cat.

That's CE Soulborn. First off, LE Soulborn doesn't work with Barbarian (any non-Lawful); second, LE's power makes you immune to exhaustion; CE's makes you immune to Str penalties.

Also, ittybittykitty with solid black eyes is scary.

For my suggestion, I'll throw out the Mark of Storm Commoner. Take a Half-Elf Commoner, take Least Dragonmark (Mark of Storm) and Favored in House. As soon as you can, PrC into Dragonmarked Heir. When you get your Greater Dragonmark, take the Control Winds power. Grab an item that increases your Dragonmark CL. And you're done; you can now generate a tornado that lasts for three hours that basically demolishes everything, and can do so twice a day. This is your only gimmick, but it can pretty much destroy anything that isn't Huge.

When you give a man a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When you give a man the power to conjure murder!tornadoes, every problem looks completely destroyed.

[AvatarVecna]

Be a bear druid: have your animal companion be a bear, use your spell slots to summon a small army of bears, and turn into a bear yourself. At higher levels, you can use Leadership with Animal Shapes to turn all your followers into bears, and you can use Animal Growth to make all the bears even bigger bears. Hell, you might not even need Animal Shapes: just have most of your followers be Awakened bears, or anthropomorphic bears, or werebears!

There is no problem that can't be solved with enough bears.

[Darrin]

I'll just leave this here, then...

Ridiculous Character Concepts 2: Slam Dunk! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?402795-Ridiculous-Character-Concepts-2-Slam-Dunk!)

[Deadline]

There is no problem that can't be solved with enough bears.

It's a technique we like to call 'over bearing'.

[AvatarVecna]

It's a technique we like to call 'over bearing'.

Ugh, puns are so unbearable. :smallwink:

[Deadline]

Ugh, puns are so unbearable. :smallwink:

To me, they are oso (https://www.google.com/#q=oso+spanish) slightly bearable. :smallbiggrin:

[Deox]

Did this in play:
Each PC was a kobold bard wearing different color armor representing their heritage. If the situation got dicey, they'd all 'combine' into one square and use the swarm fighting feats to boost their stats and include dragonfire inspiration.

Essentially, Voltron.

In game, we used our abilities to spread word that our group was the living embodiment of the Fivefold Breath of Tiamat. All spells, invocations, etc. were trying to emulate us.

[Tuvarkz]

PF Half Giant Gifted Blade Soulknife 7(Psionics)/Brutal Slayer Stalker 3(PoW+PoW:E)/Barbarian 1
Traits: Psionic Knack (+2 ML)
Start with a Large Greatsword from Half-Giant's Powerful Build for 3d6, increase four sizes from Augmented Expansion+Primal Warrior stance to 12d6 weapon damage dice, to 24d6 with Vital Strike. Keen Weapon+Critical Edge and Combat Precognition give you a 16-20/x2 where you roll the die twice and take highest. Furious Finish automatically maximizes the damage die for an automatic 144 damage if you don't confirm crit, 216 if you do, plus all the other modifiers. With the Gorum exclusive feat from WMH you can charge with all this too.

[Sayt]

Dwarf fighter, two handed fighter archetype. Pick up a dorn dergar, pick up cleave, great cleave, cleave through, goblin cleaver, orc hewer, giant killer and lunge.

Activate lunge, cleave all enemies within 10ft. Swift action gain reach, continue cleave on enemies that are 15 or 20 ft away. 5ft step to continue cleabing if you'd like. You are now a dwarven spinning top with attached ball and chain. If you do it as a goblin with 3 levels of stoneblessed, you're now a night goblin maniac from warhammer fantasy.


Unchained monk, dimemaional dervish feat line, sun school feat. Teleport between each attack, teleporting adjacent to an enemy grants a free attack. Spend a ki point to telepounce, getting an extra attack at full bab for every attack you'd make. With haste and flurry, you're eligible for 12 attacks, 10 of which are at full bab.

The Chain Bug
Non-psionic Thri-keen, spirit lion totem barb 1, ranger 2, cavestalker 4, psywar+. Mutiweapon fighting feats. 4x valorous spiked chsins, 1x valorous mouthpick spiked chain. Real Bugs Penta-wield.

[ATHATH]

I made an outline for an Undead-Annihilating Sorcerer here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?485430-Spells-(and-strategies)-for-an-almost-exclusively-undead-opponent-campaign

[BearonVonMu]

I like to occasionally have a lucky guy.
Someone who has all of Complete Adventurer's luck feats, Fortune's Friend as a prestige class, and uses spells like Unluck and Alter Fortune.
If possible, acquiring a custom magic item (like a rod) that grants Alter Fortune two or three times a day is a key goal for the character.
There's something special about turning natural ones into twenties and deciding to not die right now.

[5ColouredWalker]

Warlock Thri-kreen. Exact details vary, multiclassing with fighter brings it online earlier but weaker. However, at level 14 with Savage Species you can get Multitasking, giving you an extra standard/move action with only your arms for every set past the first you have.
Ghostly Arm Graft, 6000/Extra Arm.

Congratulations, you now have NI eldritch blasts per turn.

[Malimar]

My favorite gimmick:

Mechanatrix wizard or sorcerer with Improved Familiar and Extra Familiar. Your two shocker lizard familiars use their AOE electricity damage to zap your foes while healing you. Works best if there's two to four of you with the same setup.

[WhamBamSam]

A few favorites of mine off the top of my head.

Primordial Half-Giant Factotum 3/Dungeoncrasher Fighter 2/Chameleon. Requires either a flaw (so you can take Human Heritage and Able Learner at 1), or the variant rule from Races of Destiny giving half-human races the Human subtype to obviate the need for Human Heritage. Wall of Stone is only level 3 on the Trapsmith list and can therefore be Quickened with just a Least Rod of Quicken. So toss up a wall as a swift action then use Whirling Blade+Knockback to Dungeon Crash a whole line of enemies into it.

Half-Fiend (Pleasure Devil variant (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/eo/20070209a)) Template Class (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20031010a) 1 Ice Gnome with Magic In the Blood going into Mortal Hunter. In the early going the Produce Flame from your first Half-Pleasure Devil SLA and the Ice Gnome's racial Ray of Frost serve as vectors for Mortalbane at a time when 2d6 is actually fairly consequential. At very high levels, you can take Quicken SLA allowing you to use Unhallow (3/day thanks to Magic in the Blood) as a swift action (Quicken SLA lacks any verbiage about the spell's casting time, unlike Quicken Spell). In addition to being able to get Freedom of Movement on all your like-minded friends, Dimensional Anchor all your enemies, or the like, being able to Unhallow (or Desecrate) at a moment's notice allows the build to block attempts to heal the damage it does with its Vile Lance spell or Violate Spell-Like Abilities (being dedicated to an Elder Evil for a few more Vile feats helps out). Use a hit and run strategy with Flyby Attack, and grind your foes down by attrition. Other cool tricks might include an Incarnate dip to pick up Soulspark Familiar (for Mortal Hunter's Alertness prereq) along with essentia to fuel Sapphire Smite for extra uses and oomph on Smite Mortals.

Silverbrow Human Sorcerer/JPM archer using a heavily metamagic'd Ghostly Tail spell. Defensive Rebuke works with non-melee attacks, and Ghostly Tail explicitly doesn't care if you're actually wielding a weapon that can threaten the enemy or not, so either they have to leave your allies to come to you, or they have to take force damage and other unpleasantness as punishment for attacking your allies. I'm also very fond of Kobold Ghostly Tail builds using their Draconic Rite of Passage SLA. They can either be ranged attackers or use something like Paimon's Dance of Death to get a bunch of enemies Defensive Rebuked, then use Maximized Mortalbane Ghostly Tail to punish those that still choose to attack allies.

Silverbrow Human Skilled City-Dweller Paladin 5/Consecrated Harrier 1/Triadic Knight 7/Stuff. Obscenely feat heavy, but the idea is to load up Smite multipliers (Devastating Smite, Threefold Smite) onto a Hunter's Mercy auto-crit with a Kaorti Resin Longbow using Ranged Smite Evil for a one-shot one-kill sniper build.

[Aegis013]

For my suggestion, I'll throw out the Mark of Storm Commoner. Take a Half-Elf Commoner, take Least Dragonmark (Mark of Storm) and Favored in House. As soon as you can, PrC into Dragonmarked Heir. When you get your Greater Dragonmark, take the Control Winds power. Grab an item that increases your Dragonmark CL. And you're done; you can now generate a tornado that lasts for three hours that basically demolishes everything, and can do so twice a day. This is your only gimmick, but it can pretty much destroy anything that isn't Huge.

I think I saw something about this back in that Collateral Damage Man thread?


My favorite gimmick:

Mechanatrix wizard or sorcerer with Improved Familiar and Extra Familiar. Your two shocker lizard familiars use their AOE electricity damage to zap your foes while healing you. Works best if there's two to four of you with the same setup.

I definitely like these two gimmicks best, so far. Tornado-man and living Tesla Coil are pretty cool. Especially because they can potentially be your entire build's focus, or they can just be tagged on as an afterthought. I'd worry that Shocker Lizard mob's damage output would be lackluster at higher levels though.

[the_david]

2 levels of cavalier (Order of the Cockatrice) for the Braggart ability.
1 level of rogue with the thug archetype for the Frightening ability.
2 levels of barbarian with the Intimidating Glare rage power.

Braggart allows the Intimidatrix to demoralize larger groups at once, and she gets a +2 bonus on melee attacks against demoralized opponents.
Frightening lets the opponent be demoralized for an extra round, and if the opponent is demoralized for 4 or more rounds you can choose to let him be frightened for 1 round instead.
Intimidating Glare gives the option to use a move action to intimidate an adjacent oponent, and the opponent is intimidated for 1d4 extra rounds.

Now to finish this build you'll need a high Intimidate.
Half-Orc +2
Skill Focus (Intimidate) +3
Intimidating Prowess (Strength while raging) +5
Bully trait +1
Charisma +4
Intimidate Ranks +5
Class Skill +3

That's a +23 on intimidate for an average of 33 on intimidate checks. The DC would be 10+hit dice+wisdom. Who says martials can't have nice things?

[the_david]

Half-Giant Barbarian 1/Psychic Warrior 1. (Pathfinder/Dreamscarred Press, not the WotC version.)
Take the Interceptor warrior's path so you can use Expansion by expending your focus. A big weapon like a large greatsword would be a good choice.
Expansion followed by Rage, this one is really simple. You could debate about which feats would be most effective. As this character can use Expansion all day long, you might want to consider Extra Rage.

Avoid casters with the Murderous Command spell.

[Ortesk]

This wasn't very powerful, but it was funny.

I was allowed 5 flaws, and bonus feats could be any source (fighter feats could get me metamagic, for example)

I took fighter 4/Commoner 1. So I had 11 feats to work with, being a human.

Then I took nothing but luck feats. I Put my physical scores at 10, then used a greatsword. My mental stats were all good, but I was a fighter so not really helpful. All the luck rerolls and luck feats made it where I always survived, if for nothing else sheer luck. Which was horribly funny, considering how silly my character was. I imagine I could have played the character as somewhat decent in combat by using better stats, but I found it to be amusing that way

[tsj]

What about some guardian builds such as...

Master of fear, darkness and nightmares (the darkness)

Master of sleep (sandman)

Master of frost and winter (jack frost)

Master of Xmas (Santa Claus)

Master of time (father time)

Master of nature (mother nature)

Master of easter (easter bunny)

Master of teeth (toothfairy)

Master of love (cupid)

Master of the sun (sunman)

Master of the moon (man in the moon)

And I'm sure there are others too :)

[Inevitability]

CE Tibbit Soulborn 2/Stoneblessed 3/Goliath Barbarian 1. When you become a tiny cat, you keep your normal strength. When you rage, you become an 8-foot tall cat.

Don't forget said 8-foot tall cat is only 40% heavier than a normal cat.


My favorite gimmick:

Mechanatrix wizard or sorcerer with Improved Familiar and Extra Familiar. Your two shocker lizard familiars use their AOE electricity damage to zap your foes while healing you. Works best if there's two to four of you with the same setup.

Don't you need the almost impossible to obtain Electricity subtype to get a Shocker Lizard? Unless you're a 10th-level Electrokineticist, I don't see how you qualify.

[AnonymousPepper]

Don't forget said 8-foot tall cat is only 40% heavier than a normal cat.



Don't you need the almost impossible to obtain Electricity subtype to get a Shocker Lizard? Unless you're a 10th-level Electrokineticist, I don't see how you qualify.

Mechanatrix is a monster from Fiend Folio that's pretty obviously playable as a race - is intended to be, so far as I can tell, as it advances by class level. It heals 1 for 3 from electricity damage.

Also, I'd like to put forward something I submitted to Red Fel's Collateral Damage Man thread - namely, the Archivist Hathran who's built to chuck around CL41 Control Winds as a fourth-level spell via Nentyar Hunter (CL41 Extended as a 5, CL41 Extended Heightened as a 6); she can do anything else she likes, being an Archivist into Hathran, of course, but being a Hathran she gets Circle Magic. I'll link to RF's post instead of mine, though.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17766252&postcount=13

Swap PMM: Extend and Heighten Spell to unscrew my rules derp, or Arcane Thesis if you wanna cheese it harder at the cost of possible versatility; you do qualify for it after you're into Hathran, because Rashemi Spirit Magic (also known as potentially the cheesiest ability in the game when paired with an Archivist given that they can get every spell in existence in their spells known, even though that's not the focus of the character) is spontaneous casting.

Basically, Control Winds-related gimmicks are the ultimate in unnecessary Hilarity Ensues. Other than the Body of the Fun entry (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17769136&postcount=35) later in that thread, maybe.

[swebo]

Vivisectionist homunculist alchemist 4/ carnivalist rogue 2/ eldritch guardian fighter 2
Take the tumor familiar and evolved familiar discoveries, extra familiar and improved familiar feats. Mauler archetype tidepool dragons for all 3, use evolution points to give them extra natural attacks and pounce. Take the gang up feat and equip with menacing amulets of mighty fist. Flanking is guaranteed, for +10, full attack for 5+ natural attacks each and sneak damage on all 15, plus whatever you're doing. And, if any of the claw attacks land they can next turn choose to pin and just go to town on them. And that's before you start sharing mutagens and extracts.

[avr]

A gnome crusader/bard with the gnome tunnel acrobatics feat can drop from on high, attack & do bonus damage equal to the falling damage, then heal up one way or another the next round. Actually all the uses of that feat are fun.

A tibbit seer with burrowing spell can cast spells at you while curled up quietly by the fire in another room.

There's any number of PF archetypes which are gimmicks just by their nature. Among the most recent, the cipher investigator, the dandy ranger and the magical girl child vigilante.