Best permanently 13th level build?

[Particle_Man]

From another thread it was said that some people abused the multi-class penalty in 3.5 (-20% for every class that was more than 2 levels from another class (not including favoured classes and not including prestige classes)) to get a 13th level character (maximum allowed in some official games) that has a -100% penalty to xp (so they would never get too high a level for official games, but could keep collecting loot, blowing away WBL).

I am curious as to what builds people could make that are "permanently 13th level" like that that would be viable and fun to play. Presumably it has to have at least 6 classes, whether that is 1/2/2/2/2/4 or 1/1/1/1/1/8 or somewhere in between.

Thoughts?

[Bucky]

...or you could Wizard 13 and spend all your XP on crafting?

[frogglesmash]

...or you could Wizard 13 and spend all your XP on crafting?

That kind of defeats the point of the exercise.

[Inevitability]

If you consider full attacks 'fun', then a martial shouldn't be too hard to make.

[Flickerdart]

There are a couple of cheesetacular ways to obtain 9th level casting by level 13 (or earlier). That should be a pretty fun build.

[Particle_Man]

Can those cheesetacular builds also get the -100% multi-class penalty at level 13?

[Flickerdart]

Can those cheesetacular builds also get the -100% multi-class penalty at level 13?

To get 100% multiclass penalty, you need 5 one-level dips in base classes. Depending on what cheese you use, you might be able to manage it:

Fast-casting classes like beholder mage or sublime chord need 9 levels to reach nines normally, so they don't work.
Jacob's Ladder style wizards work just fine, since they only need one level.
Illithid savant works fine - it can acquire 9th level spells with only 3 levels in the class.

[Particle_Man]

I think the following could work:

Cleric 1 (time, darkness domains)/fighter 1/psychic warrior 1 (for expansion)/Swordsage 1 (unarmed variant)/Warblade 1/Crusader 2/Master of Nine 5 to level 12, then Crusader 3 at level 13.

The cleric domains get improved initiative and blind-fight, the fighter and psychic warrior classes get bonus feats (and expansion), the unarmed variant swordsage gets improved unarmed strike. So one needs to get adaptive style and dodge (or maybe desert wind dodge) and make sure ones 4 skill prereqs are topped up, but one is still relatively free, feat-wise, to customize a bit (since you at least get 2 bonus feats from the fighter and psychic warrior levels) and perhaps do something snazzy with one's turn undead ability. One will have maneuvers in all 9 disciplines.

And, fluff-wise, after one has completed one's Master of Nine class, one has achieved perfection in the sublime way, right? :smallsmile:

Anyhow, that was just off the top of my head. I may have missed something as I am not skilled at optimizing.

[Dagroth]

I think the following could work:

Cleric 1 (time, darkness domains)/fighter 1/psychic warrior 1 (for expansion)/Swordsage 1 (unarmed variant)/Warblade 1/Crusader 2/Master of Nine 5 to level 12, then Crusader 3 at level 13.

The cleric domains get improved initiative and blind-fight, the fighter and psychic warrior classes get bonus feats (and expansion), the unarmed variant swordsage gets improved unarmed strike. So one needs to get adaptive style and dodge (or maybe desert wind dodge) and make sure ones 4 skill prereqs are topped up, but one is still relatively free, feat-wise, to customize a bit (since you at least get 2 bonus feats from the fighter and psychic warrior levels) and perhaps do something snazzy with one's turn undead ability. One will have maneuvers in all 9 disciplines.

And, fluff-wise, after one has completed one's Master of Nine class, one has achieved perfection in the sublime way, right? :smallsmile:

Anyhow, that was just off the top of my head. I may have missed something as I am not skilled at optimizing.

Sadly, I don't think that actually works. You don't have 5 classes that are more than one level apart, you have one class that is more than one level apart.

1/3/5/7/9 is the only way (according to real math) that you could have a 100% XP penalty.

[Quertus]

Sadly, I don't think that actually works. You don't have 5 classes that are more than one level apart, you have one class that is more than one level apart.

1/3/5/7/9 is the only way (according to real math) that you could have a 100% XP penalty.

Point(ish). 1/1/1/1/1/3/3/3/3/3 would do it. Pick any one of those classes, and 5 class are 2+ levels different from it, for a -100% XP penalty.

Assuming no prestige classes, that is.

But, even then, I'm not completely sure that's how it works.

[Particle_Man]

"Your multiclass character takes a -20% penalty to XP for each class that is not within one level of his or her highest-level class." Page 60, player's handbook.

Prestige classes don't count for this, neither to favoured classes. So assuming the character I picked is not human or half-elven or a dwarf or some other class that has one of my listed classes (or simply highest level class) as a favoured class (let's make it a half-orc, their favoured class is barbarian), then crusader 3 is the highest level class that is not a prestige class or a favoured class, and there are 5 classes not within one level of crusader 3 that are not prestige classes or favoured classes. Therefore, the character will have -100% xp at character level 13.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Rogue 1/ Ninja 1/ Spellthief 1/ Psychic Rogue 1/ Sneak Attack Thug Fighter 1/ Assassin 1/ Psychic Assassin 1/ etc./ Swordsage 3+, preferably with fractional BAB.

There are plenty of base classes and prestige classes that get +1d6 sneak attack at 1st level, so stack those up and you'll have ~12d6 sneak attack per hit at level 13 with Assassin's Stance.

You'll need to use Skillful weapons if you can't get fractional BAB.

[Thurbane]

Bard 1/Warblade 1/Hexblade 1/Duskblade 1/Ranger 1/Ur-priest 8?

I mean, you only get 8ths, but still pretty cool.

*that won't work, you'd still get XP normally.

[ben-zayb]

One way to make it work is to abuse UA's Bloodline variant by stacking effects based on class levels, such as Initiator Levels:
Changeling Duskblade 1 / Titan Bloodline 3 / Swashbuckler 1 / Ranger 1 / Barbarian 1 / Fighter 1 / Crusader 1 / Warblade 1 / Unarmed Swordsage 1 / Crusader +2

Feats: Able Learner (1), Power Attack (B), Battle Jump (3), Two-Weapon Fighting (B), Adaptive Style (6), Improved Sunder (B), Improved Unarmed Strike (B), Snap Kick (9)

Crusader Maneuvers, IL20: DS (Vanguard Strike, Entangling Blade, Aura of Perfect Order, Strike of Righteous Vitality), SD (Crushing Vise), WR (Leading the Charge, White Raven Tactics, Covering Strike)

Warblade Maneuvers, IL18: DM (Moment of Perfect Mind, Action Before Thought), IH (Punishing Stance, Iron Heart Surge)

Swordsage Maneuvers, IL18: SH (Shadow Jaunt, Shadow Stride, Shadow Blink, One With Shadow), SD (Mountain Tombstone Strike), TC (Rabid Wolf Strike, Hunter's Sense)We have something that has plenty of versatility in and out of combat, but also packs sheer punching weight with Battle Jump + Shadow Hand teleports + Leading the Charge + Oversized 2HF + TWF.






A similar idea could be used for a spellcaster, such as utilizing it for Master Spellthief CL and Familiar effective class level:
Azurin Wu Jen 1 / Fey Bloodline 2 / Spellthief 1 / Bard 1 / Conjurer 1 / Chameleon 2 / Beguiler 1 / Duskblade 2 / Sublime Chord 1 / Duskblade +1

Class Level 27th for purposes of arcane CL and familiar purposes (+14 Natural Armor, 19 INT, Familiar Spell: Greater Shadow Conjuration)

Feats: Precocious Apprentice [Fire Shuriken] (1), Able Learner (Flaw), Invisible Spell (B), Sanctum Spell (B), Master Spellthief (3), Obtain Familiar (6), Improved Familiar (9)

Sublime Chord spells known: Telekinesis, Celerity, Polymorph, Minor Creation

We are using a noncheesy interpretation of Sublime Chord + Master Spellthief here, so we'll go with CL27 = Spellthief + other class levels, but adding 2 "bloodline levels" per class. Greater Shadow Conjuration is scribed on your spellbooks; you won't be able to directly cast it, but fortunately the epic feat Familiar Spell only requires that you know the spell.

If TO is available, a Mirror Mephit would be actually a no-brainer as the choice due to its 1/day CL8 Simulacrum, which is useful for copying creatures like Quinton (casts as Cleric 20), Black Ethergaunt (casts as Wizard 17), Elemental Weird (casts as Sorcerer 18), Abeil Queen (casts as Druid 16), Hebi-no-Onna (casts as Sorcerer 14 from Wu Jen spell list), and Ulitharid Mind Flayer (manifests as Telepath 13). Since TO isn't fun for many tables, we'll go with something else.For starters, you can cast any CL27 1st-5th level arcane spell and any CL8 1st-2nd divine spells via a Chameleon's floating Extra Spell feat. How does a CL27 Telekinesis manhandling foes or throwing your poisoned (via Minor Creation) weapons (via Fire Shuriken, or mundane ones) sound? That floating feat also opens up stuff like crafting feats, metamagic feats, etc, depending on what you need. Maybe a Fell Drain Fire Shuriken is in order? Clearly, you have a lot of versatility at this point, but more than half of that versatility is limited day to day.

Now here's where it gets good. With downtime, you can utilize Familiar Spell's Greater Shadow Conjuration daily to emulate Shalantha's Delicate Disk, where you can store any of those spells. This basically makes it a fast, easy, and free potion/scroll, with activation that is both easy and versatile: you can have party mates carry "buff" disks and let them activate it manually, or you can throw "offensive" disks at an enemy's square a la grenades, or... you can use Telekinesis to hurl 15 disks at once. You can even chain it, such that at least one of the thrown disk contains another Telekinesis to enable another batch of 15 violently thrust weapons. Anothing thing to point out is that the Disk enables Target: Personal spells to target the creature breaking it, so things like Draconic Polymorph should be available to your party. Granted, you won't be doing this kind of nova on a regular basis due to the 1/day limit, but still.

[Quertus]

Right. So, to get the XP penalty from 1/1/1/1/1/3, the most levels in Illithid Savant we can take is 5.

What classes to pick? Bo9S classes are better the higher level you are when you take the dip, and so should be taken last. Crusader is just great for infinite free healing, given for free to the townsfolk, and for a modest fee to adventurers. Because, unless we're a murder hobo, were gonna live somewhere, and may as well make sure the locals like us, y'know. And nothing says party-friendly fun like White Raven Tactics. Sadly, I don't think we can get WRT with Warblade, too, without making one of them our 3-level class. Might be worth it.

For level 1, I'm thinking Rogue, for the skill points. +1d6 SA is kinda nice, too. Heck, Rogue might even be our 3 level class, for evasion and lots of skill points. Of course, we could always just buy evasion... so probably not worth it.

Abrupt Jaunt Transmuter and Cloistered Cleric should get us the skills we need to qualify for Illithid Savant. As well as letting us use all kinds of wands. Maybe even a level of Psion? Probably not.

I assume we're qualifying for Illithid Savant via PaO shenanigans? If so, the only stats we're keeping are Wis & Chr. So Monk 1 for Wis to AC and Paladin 1 for Chr to saves aren't horrible. Not necessarily fun, but handy 1-level dips.

Maximizing our wands usage, taking a level in Arcane Spellcaster, and a level in Divine Spellcaster would open lots of doors.

Personally, I'm a fan of a level of Druid for the animal companion. Are the feats to compensate for only taking a single level dip D&D, or Pathfinder? I'd still take the dip either way.

If we're gonna be living life as an Illithid, and wearing trendy Illithid daywear anyway, taking troll blooded seems like a no-brainer.

I don't know how the whole polymorph line is supposed to work, but, as long as we're going cheesy, I'd ask if we go human, if we get to keep the bonus feat & skill points, but lose the favored class, when we polymorph. Probably doesn't work that way, so just something with a bonus to mental stats would be nice.

As to what to eat for our 9s? I'd recommend a high level Archivist, for all the spells. How many rounds in a day? 14,400? Then probably a level 30,000 Archivist would do, so that our round / level spells last a little over 2 days.

So maybe Rogue 1 / Druid 1 / Cloistered Cleric 1 / Warblade 1 / Abrupt Jaunt Transmuter 1 / Illithid Savant 5 / Warblade +2 / Crusader 1.

At low level, we're a wand-using skill monkey, which can really hurt our WBL, but we have lots of low-level spells to back it up. By level 8, we're crazy. By 13, we've got double instances of White Raven Tactics and infinite free healing to go with our insane spell power.

Sounds fairly fun to me.

[Particle_Man]

Personally, I'm a fan of a level of Druid for the animal companion. Are the feats to compensate for only taking a single level dip D&D, or Pathfinder? I'd still take the dip either way.

To answer this question, as this weird situation would only have happened in an official 3.5 D&D game, I would use 3.5 feats not Pathfinder ones.

May I just say I am very impressed with what you guys are coming up with! I am not sure I follow all the details, but wow!

[ben-zayb]

To answer this question, as this weird situation would only have happened in an official 3.5 D&D game, I would use 3.5 feats not Pathfinder ones.

May I just say I am very impressed with what you guys are coming up with! I am not sure I follow all the details, but wow!

After taking another look at my build, I actually just realized that the spellcaster has -120% XP penalty: the additional -20% XP is from Major Bloodline starting level 6 until you take the bloodline level, which we won't be doing.

So this means that every challenge that rewards XP actually reduces the caster's XP, until it loses Duskblade 3, at which point it goes back just a -20% XP penalty! Once it gets to ECL13, the cycle repeats itself! This itself may actually have some big optimization usage...

[Dagroth]

One way to make it work is to abuse UA's Bloodline variant by stacking effects based on class levels, such as Initiator Levels:
Changeling Duskblade 1 / Titan Bloodline 3 / Swashbuckler 1 / Ranger 1 / Barbarian 1 / Fighter 1 / Crusader 1 / Warblade 1 / Unarmed Swordsage 1 / Crusader +2

Feats: Able Learner (1), Power Attack (B), Battle Jump (3), Two-Weapon Fighting (B), Adaptive Style (6), Improved Sunder (B), Improved Unarmed Strike (B), Snap Kick (9)

Crusader Maneuvers, IL20: DS (Vanguard Strike, Entangling Blade, Aura of Perfect Order, Strike of Righteous Vitality), SD (Crushing Vise), WR (Leading the Charge, White Raven Tactics, Covering Strike)

Warblade Maneuvers, IL18: DM (Moment of Perfect Mind, Action Before Thought), IH (Punishing Stance, Iron Heart Surge)

Swordsage Maneuvers, IL18: SH (Shadow Jaunt, Shadow Stride, Shadow Blink, One With Shadow), SD (Mountain Tombstone Strike), TC (Rabid Wolf Strike, Hunter's Sense)We have something that has plenty of versatility in and out of combat, but also packs sheer punching weight with Battle Jump + Shadow Hand teleports + Leading the Charge + Oversized 2HF + TWF.

Okay, how are you figuring the high Initiator Levels? You have 7 non-Crusader levels (10, if you count the Bloodline) which gives you +5... then +3 for Crusader Levels & +3 for Bloodline bonus. That's only IL11. Warblade & Swordsage calculate at IL10.

[ben-zayb]

Okay, how are you figuring the high Initiator Levels? You have 7 non-Crusader levels (10, if you count the Bloodline) which gives you +5... then +3 for Crusader Levels & +3 for Bloodline bonus. That's only IL11. Warblade & Swordsage calculate at IL10.
Using the rules for determining IL and this neat passage:

If a character has levels in two or more classes in addition to his bloodline levels, each class gains the benefit of adding the bloodline levels when calculating abilities.
So, to calculate the Crusader LA would be:
0.5*(Duskblade lvl + Bloodline lvl) + 0.5*(Swashbuckler lvl + Bloodline lvl) + 0.5*(Ranger lvl + Bloodline lvl) + 0.5*(Barbarian lvl + Bloodline lvl) + 0.5*(Fighter lvl + Bloodline lvl) + 0.5*(Warblade lvl + Bloodline lvl) + 0.5*(Swordsage lvl + Bloodline lvl) + 1*(Crusader lvl + Bloodline lvl)
= 0.5*(1+3) + 0.5*(1+3) + 0.5*(1+3) + 0.5*(1+3) + 0.5*(1+3) + 0.5*(1+3) + 0.5*(1+3) + 1*(3+3)
= 0.5*(4) + 0.5*(4) + 0.5*(4) + 0.5*(4) + 0.5*(4) + 0.5*(4) + 0.5*(4) + 1*(6)
= 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 6
= 20The calculations for the other two initiator levels are left as an exercise to the reader (*giggles*, as it literally is a math problem)

[Dagroth]

Initiator level is not a Class Ability, it's a calculation.

[ben-zayb]

Initiator level is not a Class Ability, it's a calculation.
Uh, then why did you say Crusader has IL11? By that logic, bloodlines will not affect IL, then.

Fortunately for our purposes, the main example being given was Caster Level, so by the logic, IL actually is a class ability, especially given that:
Initiator level is functionally equivalent to caster level or manifester level—it’s simply the relevant class level of the martial adept who initiates the power