The man grenade.

[Clopin Silk]

Any ideas how, using only the core rulebooks, one could make a 'man grenade'?
To explain, sometimes you'll encounter enemies that have an understanding of tactics. Enemies that fight in formation. And sometimes you need to break this formation. Enter the man grenade. I want a character built to break formations and scatter enemies, in varying states of health. Any ideas?

[Name1]

The Death Throes spell makes you into a grenade. Setting Sun has multiple throw maneuvers, allowing you to break a formation by taking the enemies BSF and throwing him off the next best cliff.

[Efrate]

Bibgy's hand spells in core. A good improved bull rush by a high strength character. Grease is always good and works. Wall of X spells. Power word spell to drop a member (assuming mooks), mounted characters charging with trample. Improved trip on a good reach weapon. Cast iron body on someone, then telekinesis them as your own awesome metal bowling ball. Any illusion spell that distracts them from all being a cohesive unit. Tasha's hideous laughter, confusion. Fear spells. Disintegrate, and high damage single target evocation spell. Summon something big to run into them, possibly with a bull rush (earth elementals of large and larger size are very good at this). Tanglefoot bags at low levels work ok as well.

[Endarire]

The DMG has the Elemental Gems (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Elemental_Gem) which summon a Large elemental when broken as a standard action. It's not you as the man, but it's core and it is a grenade!

[Extra Anchovies]

Destruction Retribution (Libris Mortis, requires Corpsecrafter) causes undead you create to explode upon death, dealing 1d6 + (1d6 per 2 HD) negative energy damage in a 10-foot spread, Reflex DC 15 half. Zombie bats have 1/4 HD, so a caster can control up to 16 bats per caster level. They also have a 40-foot (clumsy) fly speed, and as Diminutive creatures it would be difficult to tell them apart from normal bats if they're up in the sky. Get a couple dozen of them, keep them 150 feet in the air, and command them to maneuver above your enemies and stop flying. A rain of 1d6 bat-bombs may not win you the battle single-handedly, but if the first volley doesn't convince the enemy to break ranks, the second one will. A 5th-level cleric commanding them to fall in waves of 10 at a time can order 8 bat-drops before having to restock. If bats aren't available, ravens, parrots, and puffins all also have fly speeds and 1/4 HD; smaller birds could work as well, but there aren't printed stats for sparrows/robins/etc that I'm aware of.

[Segev]

Core-only, the most straight-forward that keeps to the image conjured in my head (that of the "man grenade" charging in to do his thing point-blank in an "explosion") would be Whirlwind Attack + Improved Trip. Enlarge person the guy, and his reach is at least 10 feet. Give him a Spiked Chain, and his reach is 10 feet on his own, and 20 feet when enlarged.

He moves in, and makes a whirlwind attack at everybody in reach with a trip attack, and then gets to pound anybody who he successfully trips.


Grease and other spells will also do nicely. Heck, fireball is the poster child for this kind of thing.

[Darrin]

There aren't a lot of effects in Core that "scatter enemies". I thought defenestrating sphere (Spell Compendium) might do this best, but it only affects one creature at a time.

My second thought was summon monster I or unseen servant plus Quaal's Feather Token: Tree or Boat. Instruct your celestial owl/fiendish raven/unseen servant to fly up above your enemies to a particular square and activate the token. There's no command word, so presumably these tokens can be activated without speaking (although technically by RAW any creature conjured via summon monster can speak Common).

My third thought was summon an air elemental and direct it to use its Whirlwind (Su) attack. If any creature smaller than the elemental fails two Reflex saves, it gets picked up by the whirlwind and scattered into another square when it finally makes a Ref save to get out. Djinni also have a Whirlwind (Su) attack, so you could get one of those with planar binding/planar ally if you prefer.

A control weather spell with at least hurricane-level winds can blow away medium-or-smaller-sized creatures. A tornado can pick up and scatter creatures that are large-sized or smaller.

If you need the tornado triggered specifically by the creature's death, then I suppose a wizard casting contingency with control weather could do that, but why he wouldn't just cast control weather without the contingency would be somewhat puzzling to explain.

[Deadline]

There's an exotic weapon in Masters of the Wild (3.0 content) called the Caber that is used for breaking up military formations. It's basically a ranged bull rush on an area that does damage if the enemy can't move out of the way.

[Flickerdart]

Why in the world would you want to break a formation of enemies? A formation is the best place to launch your fireballs. After one or two, the enemies will scatter themselves, and much effort usually needs to be extended to make them stay put (using solid fog and the like).

[Darrin]

There's an exotic weapon in Masters of the Wild (3.0 content) called the Caber that is used for breaking up military formations. It's basically a ranged bull rush on an area that does damage if the enemy can't move out of the way.

Now I'm tempted to put together a hengeyokai sparrow Exotic Weapon Master/Bloodstorm Blade build that hurls fine-sized cabers at everybody... (the caber's damage is set by its descriptive text rather than the weapons table).

[yellowrocket]

Sounds like an entry in the nearly useless magical item thread.

When the holy man gernade is activated, in place of a rage attack, a barbarian may simply explode when he blows his fuse. The damage is equal to the barbarians level spread over the 8 adjacent squares.

Does 5' of knockback, no save, DC 15 reflex to avoid being knocked prone.

Barbarian's corpse is left with 8 large holes and is unreserectible by any means.

[Telonius]

Assuming they're armed or armored, Repel Metal or Stone can do this.

[Rebel7284]

Born of the Three Thunders sounds perfect for this.

[BaronDoctor]

Fireball. They'll scatter on their own. Or die. Stinking Cloud, Cloudkill, etc. also do the job.

[Deadline]

Fireball. They'll scatter on their own. Or die. Stinking Cloud, Cloudkill, etc. also do the job.

Bah! Don't rely on enemy action, force them to move! Use the Explosive Spell metamagic!

[Flickerdart]

Bah! Don't rely on enemy action, force them to move! Use the Explosive Spell metamagic!
Yeah, there's a ton of this kind of stuff outside of Core.

[Deadline]

Yeah, there's a ton of this kind of stuff outside of Core.

Doh! I missed the "core only" bit. Although to be fair, so did quite a few others.

Yeah, Core only makes this a bit harder. I think the only things I can think of that haven't been mentioned yet are Bull Rush and ... maybe a couple of psionic powers? The War Mind PrC Sweeping Strikes ability might let you perform a Bull Rush against multiple targets at once.

[Flickerdart]

The War Mind PrC Sweeping Strikes ability might let you perform a Bull Rush against multiple targets at once.

Core isn't allowed to have cool stuff, sadly - War Mind is XPH, and Core is only DMG+PHB+MMI. This is a frequently made mistake because the XPH appears in the SRD, but the SRD contains a whole slew of things that doesn't belong to Core (Unearthed Arcana, some of Deities and Demigods, Epic Level Handbook, etc).

[Deadline]

Core isn't allowed to have cool stuff, sadly - War Mind is XPH, and Core is only DMG+PHB+MMI. This is a frequently made mistake because the XPH appears in the SRD, but the SRD contains a whole slew of things that doesn't belong to Core (Unearthed Arcana, some of Deities and Demigods, Epic Level Handbook, etc).

I suppose that depends on your definition of "Core". (So I covered my bases)

<Common point of contention>But, the SRD is Core! *cue the usual back and forth that results in no satisfying outcome for anyone*</Common point of contention>

I totally agree with the sentiment of Core not getting cool stuff. :smallsmile:

[Clopin Silk]

Sounds like an entry in the nearly useless magical item thread.

When the holy man gernade is activated, in place of a rage attack, a barbarian may simply explode when he blows his fuse. The damage is equal to the barbarians level spread over the 8 adjacent squares.

Does 5' of knockback, no save, DC 15 reflex to avoid being knocked prone.

Barbarian's corpse is left with 8 large holes and is unreserectible by any means.
Permission to sig part of this glory?

[yellowrocket]

Permission to sig part of this glory?

Please do. I'm flattered.

[mabriss lethe]

In core, you'd probably want fighter/barbarian. Use fighter bonus feats to pick up your tactical options/prerequisites for things like bull rush and trip and that tasty rage bonus to make those moves work even better. The whirlwind attack idea mentioned above is a decent one.