Infinite Health/Ability scores through infinite bonus feats?

[Westhart]

So I was wondering, can one use the DCFS to switch out the alertness from a familiar for a permanent feat, have the familiar go then come back trade again, as many times as needed, and through this gain an unlimited number of HP due to toughness etc? At epic you could (if this actually works) gain inf. ability scores due to the feats that increase ability scores... Basically, does this actually work, or is there something that would stop the trading of alertness multiple times?

Also, isn't there a spell you could do this with... Heroics?

[Boggartbae]

I'm pretty sure you lose the Feat from your previous familiar when you dismiss it

Also Heroics only gives fighter feats

[Westhart]

I'm pretty sure you lose the Feat from your previous familiar when you dismiss it

"Alertness (Ex)
While a familiar is within arm’s reach, the master gains the Alertness feat." If you change it out for another feat would that be permanent? Thus you could change it out, have your familiar move... say 10' away, come back and trade it out again? Cheesy as hell nachos, but could you do it?


Also Heroics only gives fighter feats

Which you use Dark chaos shuffle to turn into any feat.

[ATHATH]

Yeah, this is an old trick, IIRC.

Props to you for discovering it on your own, though.

[Westhart]

Yeah, this is an old trick, IIRC.

It is :smallredface: Alright then ><
Is there a compendium of inf loops? I don't see how people find them, I spent a while looking and found nothing except a Pun-Pun build :smallsigh:

[Boggartbae]

Oh sorry I didn't know about Dark Chaos Shuffle :smallredface:

I'm still confused though. Do you trade out the whole ability of "Alertness (Ex): While a familiar is within arm’s reach, the master gains the Alertness feat." for "Feat"?

Sorry I turned out to be not much help, but in terms of infinite combos the only other ones I know of are both in Pathfinder:
-using the rogue talent that gives you a feat to get a feat that gives you a rogue talent, then I think theres a feat that gives hp for every feat you have or something
-turning yourself into an animal and then casting Awaken on yourself a bunch of times to get infinite hit dice

[Doug Lampert]

Oh sorry I didn't know about Dark Chaos Shuffle :smallredface:

I'm still confused though. Do you trade out the whole ability of "Alertness (Ex): While a familiar is within arm’s reach, the master gains the Alertness feat." for "Feat"?

Sorry I turned out to be not much help, but in terms of infinite combos the only other ones I know of are both in Pathfinder:
-using the rogue talent that gives you a feat to get a feat that gives you a rogue talent, then I think theres a feat that gives hp for every feat you have or something
-turning yourself into an animal and then casting Awaken on yourself a bunch of times to get infinite hit dice

Embrace the Dark Chaos changes the alertness feat into another feat. It doesn't change the familiar ability at all. Shun the Dark Chaos then changes that feat into any feat you are eligible for.

So now you have a feat. Your familiar goes away, you lose your Alertness feat, which is already gone. Oh well. I'm pretty sure there's actually a rule in the books that if you lose a characteristic you don't have or have already lost this has no further effect.

Your familiar comes back, remember how you didn't actually change the familiar ability. That means you now have Alertness again.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

Now, the GM can stop this at several points. He can claim you don't actually get the feat from the ability, shame that the text of the ability specifically says "the master gains the Alertness feat".
The GM can declare that losing Alertness when you've shuffled it away costs you whatever you shuffled it for.
The GM can apply some reasonable costs to repeatedly Embracing the Dark Chaos.
The GM can simply declare that having traded away Alertness, it is gone till you take it as a feat, ignoring the fact that Embrace doesn't say anything about the source of the feat.
The GM can houserule that the character after Shunning the Dark Chaos the character must be a character who could be legally built without Embrace/Shun.

But RAW, this is probably a legitimate exploit.
Which is one reason I used a limited selection of splat books back when I played 3.x.

[Zanos]

Which is one reason I used a limited selection of splat books back when I played 3.x.
Probably not a tenable solution to rules exploits in general, since most of the best ones are in core.

Easier to just ban specific things, or, even better, play with people who have the same idea of what's fun.

[Bakkan]

Note that this process doesn't produce truly infinite feats at any point, simply whatever (finite) number you want. The distinction is often academic, but there are at least two reasons why you may care.

If two people are performing the same trick, then you may encounter a situation where they are at different points in the process at the same time, especially if the trick requires actions, spell recovery, or similar. In this case it may be important to know just how much bigger one's stack of feats is than the other.

Having arbitrarily high hit points is nice, but is still beaten by a truly infinite amount of damage, say by a 1d2 Crusader. I believe there are ways to achieve truly infinite hit points, but I don't recall them at the moment. If a 1d2 Crusader hit someone with infinite hit points, it's unclear what would happen. In particular, it might start to matter whether you measure hit points and damage using cardinal or ordinal numbers.

[Zancloufer]

Having arbitrarily high hit points is nice, but is still beaten by a truly infinite amount of damage, say by a 1d2 Crusader. I believe there are ways to achieve truly infinite hit points, but I don't recall them at the moment. If a 1d2 Crusader hit someone with infinite hit points, it's unclear what would happen. In particular, it might start to matter whether you measure hit points and damage using cardinal or ordinal numbers.

Couldn't we start using some algebra of some sort at that point?

Let's assume that infinite is an actual variable that we will call ni. This matters for our theoretical math.

The Crusader doesn't do ni damage, he does x damage ni times. So the Crusader's damage is actually x*ni. if he does 12 damage per hit with his d2 weapon his damage is actually 12*ni.

Our character with ni HP might gain that from, let's say for simplicity's sake, ni constitution modifier. Therefore they have ydz+y*ni HP. If they are a level 12 fighter they have 12d10+12*ni. Let us go with average HP, so 65 from 12d10.

Put it in a formula to solve. 12*ni = 65 + 12*ni. 12*ni cancels out on each side so we are left with a fighter HP of 65. Therefore a d2 crusader that does 12 damage per swing attacks a character with ni con mod and 12 levels would fail to kill them and leave them with 65 HP. Somehow.

Math is probably a lot uglier with less comparable numbers but you get the idea.

[Bakkan]

Couldn't we start using some algebra of some sort at that point?

Let's assume that infinite is an actual variable that we will call ni. This matters for our theoretical math.

The Crusader doesn't do ni damage, he does x damage ni times. So the Crusader's damage is actually x*ni. if he does 12 damage per hit with his d2 weapon his damage is actually 12*ni.

Our character with ni HP might gain that from, let's say for simplicity's sake, ni constitution modifier. Therefore they have ydz+y*ni HP. If they are a level 12 fighter they have 12d10+12*ni. Let us go with average HP, so 65 from 12d10.

Put it in a formula to solve. 12*ni = 65 + 12*ni. 12*ni cancels out on each side so we are left with a fighter HP of 65. Therefore a d2 crusader that does 12 damage per swing attacks a character with ni con mod and 12 levels would fail to kill them and leave them with 65 HP. Somehow.

Math is probably a lot uglier with less comparable numbers but you get the idea.

Unfortunately a lot of things stop working when we do algebra with infinite cardinalities or ordinals. In particular, subtraction of infinities isn't defined, and cancellation like you suggest is no longer valid. Furthermore, the "rate" at which you approach infinity is irrelevant; if a d2 Crusader deals א copies of 2 damage, he deals 2א damage (here I use א for aleph-null). A hypothetical "d3" Crusader would deal 3א damage, but it is the case that 2א3 = א = א , and so they both dealt the same amount of damage.

If someone had א hit points via some mechanism, then any finite amount of lethal damage done will not affect his hit points. A d2 Crusader dealing א damage results in a situation where the result is literally undefined, mathematically. There is no way to define א-א in a way that is consistent with the rest of algebra. Interestingly, we may reach a solution if we consider nonlethal damage. Since nonlethal damage counts up rather than subtracting from current hit points, if a d2 Crusader dealt א nonlethal damage to someone with א hit points, then the target has an amount of nonlethal damage equal to his hit points, making him staggered.

The above assumes that we are measuring damage and hit points using cardinal numbers. If instead we use ordinal numbers, subtraction is still not well-defined, but we can say that one ordinal number is greater than another, even if they are both countably infinite. Hence it might be possible to make someone with infinite hit points unconscious if you deal an infinite ordinal amount of damage greater than his ordinal amount of hit points.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

If you DCFS the Alertness feat away, once the familiar moves away, the feat it grants (which is whatever you changed Alertness to) would also go away.

What you could do is to get yourself a high UMD score, take a power link shard (Magic of Eberron), and add a ton of feat-granting abilities on it, such as adding the blue rhomboid ioun stone ability to get Alertness, and the fanged ring's ability for Improved Unarmed Strike and Improved Natural Attack (IUS).

Then clone it with this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?246396-Another-Addition-To-The-Tippyverse) and implant all of them in you. UMD yourself as a kalashtar to do it. Boost your HD temporarily via (post operation-cured) lycanthropy and inspire greatness to insert extras.

Then DCFS.

Voila. Not infinite, but you can get a LOT doing this.

[ericgrau]

Doesn't the crusader need to actually roll his damage though? So while he could beat someone with ni hp, it's going to be a long game session.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Doesn't the crusader need to actually roll his damage though? So while he could beat someone with ni hp, it's going to be a long game session.The damage stops when you say it stops.

Best just to lie back and think of Regdar.

[ericgrau]

You can also get proficiency with everything, infinite turn attempts => every buff persisted, ni spells per day, prepare all spells without a spellbook, ni rages/smite evils/others, ni power points, ni natural armor AC (which you can persisted scintillating scales into touch AC), every monster Su/SLA, poison immunity

Epic: ni magic item slots, all domains, grant others +ni to various rolls & HD, ni age limit, know all spells, whenever any spell is cast near you you may recast it on yourself if you want, all your spells reappear 1d4 rounds after being dispelled, ni spell level spell slots

[Nifft]

So, the character trades out the Familiar's granted Alertness feat, and then the Familiar leaves...

When the Familiar leaves arm's reach, does the character have a negative Alertness feat?

Or is the character short selling Alertness, and needs to spend XP to cover the universal margin call at the end of every round?