Useful Sanctified/Corrupt spells and Exalted/Vile feats

[danielxcutter]

Yes, I've heard about (Greater) Luminous Armor + Abjurant Champion, and yes I know about Apocalypse from the Sky, the bigger (and less cheesy) brother of the Locate City Bomb, but for some reason, I've never heard people talking about any of the others. Are there any others that are decently good?

What about feats? Vow of Poverty is mentioned now and then, and I've heard that Nemesis + Arcane Hunter ACF is pretty sweet, but those don't seem to be discussed that much either, barring Incarnates.

[Gildedragon]

Nymph's Kiss is probably the cream of the crop in exalted feats

Luminous armor is a much better Marge armor.

Aspect of the Celestial is a nice buff, especially if made last long. It has a lot of different uses

[flappeercraft]

I like a lot the spell Forbidden Speech from BoVD. It is especially useful when you don't want information spread but also don't want to kill people or as a failsafe

[WhamBamSam]

Intuitive Attack is noteworthy for certain builds. Wis SADness can be pretty cool.

Lahm's Finger Darts can be devastating if you can deal with the Str damage/temporary finger loss somehow.

Stalker of Kharrash's Favored Enemy (Evil) is pretty spiffy alongside Nemesis as well.

Murderous Intent is pretty good for certain crit-oriented builds with Favored Enemies. Sadly, it's incompatible with the Exalted Favored Enemy stuff.

Some of the Deformity feats are good, especially if you're getting Vile feats free by being dedicated to an Elder Evil.

Ranged Smite Evil can be handy. I like using Hunter's Mercy (via Consecrated Harrier casting) to stick the flat damage boost onto a crit.

Sanctified spells are often brought up as a means of expanding limited spell lists (like the Healer's). I think there's a good deal about them in eggynack's Druid handbook, with Animate With The Spirit getting high honors.

Speaking of Druids, Exalted Wild Shape is decent, albeit worse than Aberration or Dragon, mostly for Blink Dog Form, and the difference between 2 and 3 Int makes Exalted Companion quite good.

[ATHATH]

Lahm's Finger Darts is really good, especially if you can Twin or Quicken it and/or have some way of easily healing STR damage (such as a Binder dip for Naberius). 5d4 (10d4 if you can cast the spell twice in a round) DEX damage with no save as a second level spell? Yes please.

Forbidden Speech is really fun to use, especially if you can cast it again on your target to forbid them from telling others that they've had Forbidden Speech cast upon them.

You could also torment someone by forbidding them from telling anyone about something common but minor, like their need to go to the bathroom. Do this a couple times on them, and that person's friends will constantly have to guess what your victim wants (sort of like a crying baby, really).

Love's Pain (and, to a much lesser extent (and from a metagame perspective), Love's Greatest Treasure Lost) is notable for being the only (official D&D 3.5/3.0) spell (apart from, as mentioned above, Love's Greatest Treasure Lost) to have elicited a genuine reaction of "That's evil!" from me upon my first reading of it. It's also fun for killing foes from across the world/no matter where they hide- Mindrape a mouse or something to view your target as its most loved creature in the world, then cast Love's Pain on it (the mouse) a couple of times.

[danielxcutter]

Intuitive Attack is noteworthy for certain builds. Wis SADness can be pretty cool.

Pretty sure that I've seen this mentioned for Monk/Soulknife/Soulbow/Shiba Protecter builds...


Lahm's Finger Darts can be devastating if you can deal with the Str damage/temporary finger loss somehow.

No save Dex damage? Whoa.


Stalker of Kharrash's Favored Enemy (Evil) is pretty spiffy alongside Nemesis as well.

So, detect all Evil creatures as a supernatural ability, up to... 60 feet, is that right? Sweet.


Murderous Intent is pretty good for certain crit-oriented builds with Favored Enemies. Sadly, it's incompatible with the Exalted Favored Enemy stuff.

Yeah, but a TWFing Ranger with Keen kukris will love it. Bonus if you have Arcane Hunter!


Some of the Deformity feats are good, especially if you're getting Vile feats free by being dedicated to an Elder Evil.

Whoa, you can do that? That's awesome!


Ranged Smite Evil can be handy. I like using Hunter's Mercy (via Consecrated Harrier casting) to stick the flat damage boost onto a crit.

Ooooh, nasty. That'll hurt.


Sanctified spells are often brought up as a means of expanding limited spell lists (like the Healer's). I think there's a good deal about them in eggynack's Druid handbook, with Animate With The Spirit getting high honors.

Sure, why not give the Druid more nice things?

I see why people say that the Healer benefits from the BoED now.


Speaking of Druids, Exalted Wild Shape is decent, albeit worse than Aberration or Dragon, mostly for Blink Dog Form, and the difference between 2 and 3 Int makes Exalted Companion quite good.

Not bad. Not bad at all.


Lahm's Finger Darts is really good, especially if you can Twin or Quicken it and/or have some way of easily healing STR damage (such as a Binder dip for Naberius). 5d4 (10d4 if you can cast the spell twice in a round) DEX damage with no save as a second level spell? Yes please.

And I thought Shivering Touch was broken.


Forbidden Speech is really fun to use, especially if you can cast it again on your target to forbid them from telling others that they've had Forbidden Speech cast upon them.

You could also torment someone by forbidding them from telling anyone about something common but minor, like their need to go to the bathroom. Do this a couple times on them, and that person's friends will constantly have to guess what your victim wants (sort of like a crying baby, really).

Oh my, that's nasty. Very nasty.


Love's Pain (and, to a much lesser extent (and from a metagame perspective), Love's Greatest Treasure Lost) is notable for being the only (official D&D 3.5/3.0) spell (apart from, as mentioned above, Love's Greatest Treasure Lost) to have elicited a genuine reaction of "That's evil!" from me upon my first reading of it. It's also fun for killing foes from across the world/no matter where they hide- Mindrape a mouse or something to view your target as its most loved creature in the world, then cast Love's Pain on it (the mouse) a couple of times.

Love's Pain... Okay, that is just foul. As for Love's Greatest Treasure Lost, do you mean Soul's Treasure Lost? That's pretty sadistic as well, but not as much as Love's Pain.

[WhamBamSam]

Pretty sure that I've seen this mentioned for Monk/Soulknife/Soulbow/Shiba Protecter builds... Well, a Soulbow will be using Zen Archery, but yeah, that's basically the idea. There's a fair bit of nice Wis stuff in the old X stat to Y bonus thread. A few things are specific to various races (Yondalla's Sense for Wis to initiative, Shiba Protector for attack and damage, Battlesmith for damage with a warhammer), so I kinda like Racial Emulation Changeling to try to jam them all into the same build.


So, detect all Evil creatures as a supernatural ability, up to... 60 feet, is that right? Sweet.Yep. It beats Darkstalker too.


Yeah, but a TWFing Ranger with Keen kukris will love it. Bonus if you have Arcane Hunter!It's also handy in conjunction with things like Surge of Fortune. I really like Great Flyby Attack+Surge of Fortune+Murderous Intent.

The Chameleon 2 floating feat for Extra Favored Enemy is also handy on builds using Nemesis or Murderous Intent.


Whoa, you can do that? That's awesome!You get a bonus Vile feat at level 1 and every level divisible by 5 if you worship an Elder Evil. Elder Evils, pg.10. Being a dirty, dirty optimizer, I can rarely resist using the rule whenever a build calls for use of one or more vile feats.


Ooooh, nasty. That'll hurt.The simplest version of the full build is generally something like Silverbrow Human Paladin 5/Consecrated Harrier 1/Triadic Knight 7/etc with a Kaorti Resin Longbow. Pumping the damage enough to fit the classic "one shot, one kill" archetype and getting enough Smite attempts to last through the adventuring day are a little problematic, but that skeleton at least gets things moving in the right direction.

[danielxcutter]

Well, a Soulbow will be using Zen Archery, but yeah, that's basically the idea. There's a fair bit of nice Wis stuff in the old X stat to Y bonus thread. A few things are specific to various races (Yondalla's Sense for Wis to initiative, Shiba Protector for attack and damage, Battlesmith for damage with a warhammer), so I kinda like Racial Emulation Changeling to try to jam them all into the same build.

Yeah... Changelings are broken when you use them like that, I guess. On the other hand no DM is going to allow that under about 99.9999% of the time so...


Yep. It beats Darkstalker too.

Fun fact: I submitted an Arcane Hunter Ranger character(intended to multiclass into Psion(Egoist) and go into Illithid Slayer) to a PbP recently, and I considered grabbing Nemesis later if I made it. I didn't make it, but I am so gonna grab it next time I do anything with Ranger levels(and is Good, of course).


It's also handy in conjunction with things like Surge of Fortune. I really like Great Flyby Attack+Surge of Fortune+Murderous Intent.

Hmmm... What did SoF do again?


The Chameleon 2 floating feat for Extra Favored Enemy is also handy on builds using Nemesis or Murderous Intent.

Where is EFE?


You get a bonus Vile feat at level 1 and every level divisible by 5 if you worship an Elder Evil. Elder Evils, pg.10. Being a dirty, dirty optimizer, I can rarely resist using the rule whenever a build calls for use of one or more vile feats.

Most builds probably don't have room for that many Vile feats, but this means that you don't have to?! This VC(current theme: Elder Evils) is going to be awesome.


The simplest version of the full build is generally something like Silverbrow Human Paladin 5/Consecrated Harrier 1/Triadic Knight 7/etc with a Kaorti Resin Longbow. Pumping the damage enough to fit the classic "one shot, one kill" archetype and getting enough Smite attempts to last through the adventuring day are a little problematic, but that skeleton at least gets things moving in the right direction.

OUCH.

[Uncle Pine]

Seething Eyebane is great potion material to include in randomly generated treasures.

[eggynack]

There's lotsa cool ones. Out of ones that haven't been mentioned, first you have inquisition. Inquisition is basically zone of truth if zone of truth did what it says it does. Higher level, but the base spell is untargeted and allows the creature not to answer, so you get basically no information out of it. Inquisition lets you know if they passed their save, and it forces unambiguous answers, so you get truth out of it. Vision of punishment is a pretty classic save against some lost actions, but it happens as a swift action, and it's first level, so it's sweet. Benign projection is like crappy project image, and celestial fortress is like secure shelter, except, again, kinda worse. Both are nice if you lack those effects generally. Hammer of righteousness is a decent and kinda hard to have immunity to blasting spell. Valiant steed and cry of ysgard provide mediocre minions for like a year, so it's free upside if you mitigate the drain. And, finally, constricting chains is a strong no save debuff effect.

That's just the sanctified spells. There's a few good unmentioned corrupt spells too. Absorb mind offers a ton of scattered information. Not necessarily whatever specific thing you want to know, but it's solid utility. Touch of the juiblex is a low level SoD that's hard to be immune to, albeit one that takes awhile for the actual kill. Consume likeness is a really weird disguise self variant that has high cost but lasts forever. Curse of pain eternal (Dragon Magazine #300, 55) is essentially a really weird and permanent buff spell, granting the masochism fetish which offers a +4 on saves against pain effects and a +1 to attack, damage, saves, and skills for one round after taking your level in damage. Super marginal, but it's a not nothing. It's seemingly intended as a debuff, because there's a ten minutes/level of, um, just no healing before you get the fetish, but it's better used like this. Death by thorns is an even stronger no save effect than constricting chains. And pestilence is halfway decent as a commoner mass murder method.

Oh, and best spell of all, putrefaction (DrM #300, 56). It's a 9th, but it's actually a really good 9th. Basically, you take a one round action, touch the target, and they become stunned for several rounds before dying. No save, incredibly few defenses (mostly just lacking standard aging, like a dragon), and incredibly few ways to stop it (mostly just wish or miracle, and they need someone else to cast that in an unrealistically low amount of time). That'd be great on its own, but then, after the target more or less inevitably dies, their body rises as a zombie and their spirit rises as a ghost, both under your control. And because ghost is a template that maintains the original's abilities, you essentially get a better version of whatever you just killed. So, incredibly high quality minionmancy crossed with incredibly high quality murderizing, with the only downside being the range and casting time. Those factors have workarounds though. Extending your touch range (reach spell or just having longer reach helps) and reducing the casting time (rapid spell type effects) help.

[Uncle Pine]

I forgot to mention Searing Seed (Dragon #300), but that's also kinda spectacular: hurl sperm of an evil outsider at your enemies and have half-fiend twisted twins of them claw their way out of their abdomen.

[WhamBamSam]

Yeah... Changelings are broken when you use them like that, I guess. On the other hand no DM is going to allow that under about 99.9999% of the time so...Eh, not really. The end result is something like the following, assuming multiclass penalties aren't in effect. If they are, then you can resolve the problem by bumping up some Swordsage levels and replacing the levels in Paladin with Soldier of Light.

Changeling Feat Rogue 2/Paladin 2/Swordsage 2/Shiba Protector 1/Battlesmith 1/Swordsage +6/Eternal Blade* 6
1. Changeling Feat Rogue 1 - Combat Expertise, Racial Emulation
2. Feat Rogue 2 - Intuitive Attack
3. Paladin 1 - Alertness**, Iron Will (Otyugh Hole)
4. Paladin 2
5. Swordsage 1
6. Swordsage 2 - Weapon Focus (Warhammer)
7. Shiba Protector 1
8. Battlesmith 1 - Craft Magic Arms and Armor
9. Swordsage 3 - Serenity
10. Swordsage 4
11. Swordsage 5
12. Swordsage 6 - Yondalla's Sense
13. Swordsage 7
14. Swordsage 8
15. Eternal Blade 1 - Open Feat***
16. Eternal Blade 2
17. Eternal Blade 3
18. Eternal Blade 4 - Martial Study (Diamond Nightmare Blade)
19. Eternal Blade 5
20. Eternal Blade 6

Ends up with Wis x2 to attack rolls (Intuitive Attack, Shiba Protector), Wis x2 to damage with a Warhammer, or x3 on Diamond Mind strikes (Shiba Protector, Battlesmith, Swordsage's Discipline Focus), Wis to Saves (Serenity), Wis to Initiative (Yondalla's Sense), and Wis to AC (Swordsage AC Bonus). That probably looks better than it actually is, but it really just amounts to a pretty ordinary Swordsage build that's more SAD.

*Strict RAW might cause problems for Eternal Training, since, as a Changeling, you sleep rather than trancing. There are probably item based solutions (Eternal Wands of Trance should work, and there may be other things), but if you can't resolve the issue, then finishing with more Swordsage isn't so bad (you'd finish short of the 16 BAB benchmark, but the build is mostly a striker, so it's mostly just when using Time Stands Still that you can be bothered to care).
**If your DM rules that SLA caster levels count as Arcane, then you can undergo the Draconic Rite of Passage by emulating a Kobold and take Obtain Familiar to gain Alertness that way instead (you should undergo the rite eventually anyway, as the SLA is useful and it gives you a CL for Secrets of the Forge). You could also take Shape Soulmeld (Soulspark Familiar), and actually might as well if you don't qualify for Obtain Familiar, since the build is sort of predicated on the notion that you can't disqualify yourself from PrCs outside of CWar and CArc anyhow, so it's strictly better than spending the feat on Alertness.
***Power Attack is conspicuously absent from the rest of the build and might not be a bad choice. You've got a high to-hit to sink into it and Wis x3 to damage may not be as good as it looks on its face. At any rate, your favorite maneuvers (the Nightmare Blades) will enjoy a bit more flat damage to multiply. That said, I do kinda like a warhammer and shield setup aesthetically for a wise warrior who has learned from the fighting styles of all different races, and Eternal Blade could allow access to the Devoted Spirit shield maneuvers, so there are other options as well.


Fun fact: I submitted an Arcane Hunter Ranger character(intended to multiclass into Psion(Egoist) and go into Illithid Slayer) to a PbP recently, and I considered grabbing Nemesis later if I made it. I didn't make it, but I am so gonna grab it next time I do anything with Ranger levels(and is Good, of course).Yeah, Nemesis is fun. You could also go Psionic Mindbender for Mindsight on the build in question, but Nemesis saves a feat you'd need to spend on Expanded Knowledge and a point of BAB that Mindbender would probably cost you.


Hmmm... What did SoF do again?It gives a small bonus to a number of things for a short duration, but you can discharge it early as an immediate action to make your next d20 roll count as a natural 20. Great Flyby Attack applies one attack roll to all enemies in a line, so you get a 20 against each of them. Murderous Intent auto-confirms the crits, and hilarity ensues.

The go-to build is probably something like Silverbrow Human Wild Shape Ranger 5/Chameleon 10/Warshaper 2/Wild Shape Ranger +3 Dedicated to an Elder Evil
1. Ranger 1 - Able Learner, Aberration Blood (Flexible Limbs), Track, Willing Deformity
2. Ranger 2
3. Ranger 3 - Inhuman Reach, Endurance
4. Ranger 4
5. Ranger 5 - Murderous Intent
6. Chameleon 1 - Flyby Attack
7. Chameleon 2
8. Chameleon 3
9. Chameleon 4 - Great Flyby Attack
10. Chameleon 5 - Deformity (Tall)
11. Chameleon 6
12. Chameleon 7 - Dragon Wild Shape
13. Chameleon 8
14. Chameleon 9
15. Chameleon 10 - Aberration Wild Shape, Deformity (Teeth)
16. Ranger 6
17. Ranger 7
18. Ranger 8 - Extend Reach
19. Warshaper 1
20. Warshaper 2 - Open Vile Feat

With Chameleon crafting you should be able to equip yourself with a Wild Shape Amulet and a +1 Mouthpick Vorpal Spiked Chain. Your go-to form at high levels will be a Young or Juvenile Mercury Dragon (which are medium and therefore retains the benefits of Deformity (Tall)) or Legendary Eagle (loses Deformity (Tall) and some movement speed, but has higher Dex if you need to be able to hit more opponents), but you've got a decent array of options (all of which can wield your Mouthpick weapon, thanks to Deformity Teeth) and can use the Chameleon floating feat for varying Assume Supernatural Ability choices along with the Extra Favored Enemy options. Surge of Fortune+Great Flyby Attack+Murderous Intent+Vorpal with the reach optimization means that everything within 50 ft in every direction from a 300ft line gets automatically decapitated, which is pretty hilarious.

This can be scaled down to a more practical op-level, natch.


Where is EFE?It's printed in both Sword & Fist and Ghostwalk. Ghostwalk is more current, but the two versions are identical, so if your DM dislikes the book, as some do, it shouldn't be an issue.


Most builds probably don't have room for that many Vile feats, but this means that you don't have to?! This VC(current theme: Elder Evils) is going to be awesome.That's the idea. Since you can have a lot of Vile feats easily, that also makes Chosen of Evil a better than it might look at a glance, especially if you have a mechanism for dealing with the Con damage (as with Corrupt spells, Naberius is a popular choice).


OUCH.Devastating Smite+Threefold Smite gets to 4x Smite damage, which then bounces out of D&D multiplication before getting quadrupled by a Kaorti Resin crit, so that's around 16*level plus whatever base damage your bow gives you. Average HP at CR20 is around 400, though, so you need to boost damage a little further to reliably put things down in one shot and it takes 3 daily Smite attempts to do, which means you need ~12 to be able to do it in every combat of an adventuring day.

[ATHATH]

Do keep in mind that a Changeling with the Racial Emulation feat can only use race-specific feats while in the form of that race (or else it no longer qualifies for them until it enters that form again).

Oh man, how could I forget Death by Thorns? If you fail your save, you're incapacitated for 1d4 rounds and die at the end of that time unless you receive a Wish or Miracle spell (DbT has a duration of instantaneous, so Dispel Magic or the like won't work). If you succeed on your save, you're still incapacitated for 1d4 rounds (and take 1d6 points of damage per round for the duration of the effect, for good measure). The wording makes it ambiguous if you can be saved from the incapacitation by Wish or Miracle if you succeed on your save.

[WhamBamSam]

Do keep in mind that a Changeling with the Racial Emulation feat can only use race-specific feats while in the form of that race (or else it no longer qualifies for them until it enters that form again).Fortunately, the only race-specific feat is Yondalla's Sense. So long as PrC abilities are retained you can just stay in Halfling form unless you need to be disguised as something else more than you need the initiative bonus.

[Particle_Man]

Touch of Golden Ice is nice for a monk or multi-natural attack build (even if the save is easy to make, usually a 1 is a failure on a save, and it doesn't cost an action if you are already attacking anyhow). I suppose it could also be a "poor man's detect evil" via a handshake.

[atemu1234]

I forgot to mention Searing Seed (Dragon #300), but that's also kinda spectacular: hurl sperm of an evil outsider at your enemies and have half-fiend twisted twins of them claw their way out of their abdomen.

You know, my friends and I had a game we'd play where we'd try to figure out what particular fetish a writer would have from things like that.

[Windaar]

Oh, and best spell of all, putrefaction (DrM #300, 56).

Is this spell dead? Or does my Google-fu just suck?

[Gruftzwerg]

A lil teaser from my upcoming PACMAN build:

Chain Spell - Power Leech:


Duration: 1 round/level

The caster creates a conduit of evil energy between himself and another creature.
Through the conduit, the caster can leech off ability score points at the rate of 1 point per round.
The other creature takes 1 point of drain from an ability score of the caster's choosing, and the caster gains a +1 enhancement bonus to the same ability score per point drained during the casting of this spell.
In other words, all points drained during this spell stack with each other to determine the enhancement bonus, but they don't stack with other castings of power leech or with other enhancement bonuses.
The enhancement bonus lasts for 10 minutes per caster level.
Corruption Cost: 1 point of Wisdom drain.

Get some (ideally clvl+1; and 21 max @ lvl 20) sacrificial tokens (e.g. summon monster) and cast Chain Spell Power Leech on them.
Pick a stat you wanna leech and easily win any Ability Score contest. Even if the foes only have a base score of 10 you could easily leach up to +210 enhancement bonus to that stat.
Sole downside here is that the "buff duration" is fixed (with 10min/clvl) since it is not the "spell duration" and thus can't be altered by metamagic (but it can be increases a bit with additional clvls).

edit: I also have made a bunch of builds with VoP and Touch of Golden Ice if you should be interested (some of em are contest builds and I would need to look em up). The latter can be combined with Shivering Touch in an Unarmed Strike build for devastating results (up to 4d6 DEX dmg per unarmed strike).

[Peelee]

The Mod on the Silver Mountain: Don't know about the spell but this thread is certainly dead.