Level 20 Doors Open. Break the game.

[Eddieddi]

So a friend of mine is running a level 20 game, and is letting people use anything, 3rd party and the lot. He wants to see just how far towards 'I am now a god' we can go. The only rule is no cheesing (No spending the first 5 minutes of the session cycling spells for infinite stat points).
So I'm looking for a build that either just makes a character a god from the word go, or one who is so stupidly powerful that most gods would run the other way.
Any race, any class, any build, Templates are allowed. 3rd party is allowed. Can we make a god?

[Celestia]

Pazuzu, Pazuzu, Pazuzu.

[Florian]

So a friend of mine is running a level 20 game, and is letting people use anything, 3rd party and the lot. He wants to see just how far towards 'I am now a god' we can go. The only rule is no cheesing (No spending the first 5 minutes of the session cycling spells for infinite stat points).
So I'm looking for a build that either just makes a character a god from the word go, or one who is so stupidly powerful that most gods would run the other way.
Any race, any class, any build, Templates are allowed. 3rd party is allowed. Can we make a god?

No Mythic, no god, simple as that.

[Hellpyre]

You really need a more specific guideline for cheese in that scenario. I'm guessing literal overdeity Pun-Pun would be out, but what about casting Ice Assassin once?

[Quertus]

Agree with needing more details. However, at a first blush, I'd go tristalt, combining 3 good builds, like sorcadin or Arcane Caster Tainted Sorcerer or STP Erudite or Encantrix or something. I'd spend my WBL to boost my caster level, and on the Simulacrum spell. Start the game with copies of Paragon Illithids / Illithid Savant with whatever race & class features absorbed you want.

Actually, depending on how you define 3rd party, there's some homebrew I'd enjoy playing. Some of it not so good, but it would be fine in a tristalt.

[icefractal]

The only rule is no cheesing (No spending the first 5 minutes of the session cycling spells for infinite stat points).Does this mean no NI loops, or no pre-game actions taken? The former you should stick to anyway for playability, the latter does put a few limits to take into account (probably no minions other than leadership, and no personal demi-plane, for instance), meaning you need more up-front durability.

[AvatarVecna]

It's interesting how many people are ignoring the Pathfinder tag. I mean, it wouldn't be that hard to use 3.5 stuff in PF, and if the DM has opened the floodgates to shenanigans they could easily go with the full "3.5 is allowed" to really break everything, but somehow I don't think that's what the OP is intending.

[Eddieddi]

Ok, so I've chatted with the DM, The rules are as follows:
No Pre-game actions that arn't reasonable within the given situation (No NI loops, No 'backstory followers' or such. However things that could be done within the game world, Such as personal demi planes are fine, What this boils down to is 'No bucket trick, but if you want to own a house, go for it).
Gestalt is a-okay. Tristalt not so much. No 3.5 stuff, Basically, you have to be able to find it on the PFSRD20 website.
Templates are fine, but you may only have 1.

Clearly the key thing is go gestalt. And find a stupidly good template, but beyond that I have no real idea, their are lots of options.

[Geddy2112]

If you can have a template of any level, strongly consider being undead. A whole host of immunities and outright dump con. Being a ghost makes you effectively immortal unless you are laid to rest, and let's you dump strength too. Also ghost being incorporeal adds even more immunity.

A lich is a classic trick for a wizard or any arcane caster, but you can also go siabriae and do cleric/druid zilla. Iwould gestalt two tier one classes, like druid and cleric or wizard and witch. If you go ghost maybe sorcerer and summoner for cha based fun. Be a con dumping race that increases your key casting stat, elf or tengu for int and Wis based respectively

Craft all of your own magical items to basically double your wbl. Planar Ally and binding spam should be ready, as should similacrum if you go arcane. Witches have a grand hex that planar allies a ghost of your choosing as a standard action, getting far more minions as it summons more etc etc. Get a ton of scrolls of time stop and summon monster 9 and simply create armies.

That's just some material to get started.

[Quertus]

Path finder? Well, then...

Gestalt one side as a CR 50+ creature, taking massive penalties to all rolls on that side. But who cares, because massive HD, and powers that let you hit above your level.

On the other side... Whatever class combination is good in PF. You'll have to ask someone else about that.

[noob]

Just become a Psychic and create robotic trompe l'oeuils of overpowered creatures with synergetic powers and then use Artificial Ascension for stacking the powers of all the robots since nothing prevents to make the robot of which you are the ai use the first option of Artificial Ascension(and thus have the robot and you become an ai on the new robot) instead of using the quick transfer.
Then once you get the powers of a level 20 wizard and of a montrous lycanthrope of chtulu and of a gibbering orb and so on your character sheet just explode the mind of the reader and is so long the gm will never take the time to read it.
All that with only one cap stone and the craft artificial creature feat.
Oh and then abuse as much as possible the option to increase the stats of a construct and spend all your money increasing your casting stat at a rate of 5000 gp per 2 bonus intelligence.
Since all that is finite due to wbl it is totally valid.

[Hugh Mann]

Just become a Psychic and create robotic trompe l'oeuils of overpowered creatures with synergetic powers and then use Artificial Ascension for stacking the powers of all the robots since nothing prevents to make the robot of which you are the ai use the first option of Artificial Ascension(and thus have the robot and you become an ai on the new robot) instead of using the quick transfer.
Then once you get the powers of a level 20 wizard and of a montrous lycanthrope of chtulu and of a gibbering orb and so on your character sheet just explode the mind of the reader and is so long the gm will never take the time to read it.
All that with only one cap stone and the craft artificial creature feat.
Oh and then abuse as much as possible the option to increase the stats of a construct and spend all your money increasing your casting stat at a rate of 5000 gp per 2 bonus intelligence.
Since all that is finite due to wbl it is totally valid.

Since we are also adding gestalt stuff we might as well add on to this. You can go for The Artisan so that you can add even more constructs to your horde by reducing the prices of just about anything you can craft. And at level 19 it gives you a minor artifact, so you can just take Id portrait and use that to copy cohorts or other party members.

And if you need ideas for what you want to turn into constructs then you can start with time elementals, gravity elementals, and Id Portrait clones. The time elementals will let you make up to 4 perfect copies of yourself from alternate timelines, and can make you immune to all time related magic, basically it can act during other people's time stop. And the gravity Elemental can make you immune to projectiles, which is a neat.

But the real charm of the Tromp Loeil is that you can make copies of things with class levels. And with the artificial ascension trick you can gain the class features of dozens of people. With Id portrait you can make copies of yourself with different classes, then you make Tromp Loeils of them. So when you fuse together you have a super being with the the abilities of every class combined, including the 3rd party ones.

[martixy]

Instead of scouring for templates, potentially create your own via the Race creation system? You said anything on PFSRD, and that's there so...

[Jack_Simth]

Ok, so I've chatted with the DM, The rules are as follows:
No Pre-game actions that arn't reasonable within the given situation (No NI loops, No 'backstory followers' or such. However things that could be done within the game world, Such as personal demi planes are fine, What this boils down to is 'No bucket trick, but if you want to own a house, go for it).
Gestalt is a-okay. Tristalt not so much. No 3.5 stuff, Basically, you have to be able to find it on the PFSRD20 website.
Templates are fine, but you may only have 1.

Clearly the key thing is go gestalt. And find a stupidly good template, but beyond that I have no real idea, their are lots of options.

Gestalt, Pathfinder, 20th?
...

Yay!

Oracle(Occult). Capstone makes you a ghost (you'll need to kill yourself, but meh). Take Undead Lord for your template. Now anything you kill rises as a ghost under your control.
The other side, other than Undead Lord, do what you want. A CR 17 Dragon, maybe. Or go Synthesist Summoner. Whatever.

[vasilidor]

I have always liked the diviner capstone of getting a nat 20 on initiative, always. with no other modifiers you get a initiative score of 30, get to act in surprise rounds, and know that you are about to enter a dangerous situation. the weakest spells in pathfinder are damage dealers, unless you take effort to invest.

[Eddieddi]

So, I did some scouring. We don't start with mythic, so Instrument of the gods, Instant mythic.
The DM has said 1 template per class. Race wise I took Monsterin because it lets me pick any monster and steal a bunch of its abilities. Lucifer, because why not.
Sorcerer is going to be one of the classes, Mostly because With mythic I can grab mythic spells, and mythic meta-magics. Why sorc not wizard? Because I am not having to prepare spells for a 20th level mythic wizard.

The DM has also told us to 'keep the game compact' (IE so we don't have to use massed combat rules or have 500 different summons) We cannot use 'minion builds' So no trompe l'oeuils.

Options for my second class have been so far: Dragon Rider or Artificer (craft everything).
I have also found a 3rd party mythic feat that compacts all your mounts/animal companions/familiars in to 1 creature, letting you take the highest stats of each one, and it gains all the creatures feats, abilities ect. It also gives them the mythic animal/creature template. I mathed out a max level dragon rider dragon, dr 10/epic, 1.5k health, 55ac, SR 25(doulbed vs non mythic spells).
If I then take herald of the apocalypse template with that class, I cease needing to have a artifact weapon from my mythic class, and can make myself some artifact armor, Yay for full casting in full plate. + My dragon becomes unkillable, because I just re-summon it. It also makes me theoretically unkillable because the combined instrument of the gods template + the whole 're possessing' trick.

Opinions? While it isn't a punpun or trompe l'oeuils army, it does feel suitably stupid, It also means (having overheard the DM's planning) His intended 'well....the badguy has mythic rank 3' Check on the party will be.....very much steamrolled by a NE spell slinging grim reaper looking ******* on a god-teir dragon.

[Kaouse]

No need for Gestalt, no need for templates. If you want to be the closest to a God, then Oracle (Cyclopean Seer) 20 is probably the closest you can get without infinite loops and coven abuse. Just take the Shadow Mystery, the Dark Secrets revelation, and the Shadow Mastery revelation. If you spend a feat on Solid Shadows (or get a metamagic wand) then you can turn any Greater Shadow _ spell into a 100% real copy of itself. This includes Greater Shadow Conjuration (& Shades), Greater Shadow Evocation, and Greater Shadow Enchantment. Thus, 3 spells become tens of spells, chosen at the time of casting, all without their material component.

What makes Cyclopean Seer so great, is that they get access to the Doomsaying Revelation, which is the most powerful debuff in the game. Inflicting a penalty equal to your level until they fail a save/attack roll/skill check. If you follow it up with a Quickened Save or Die (with a Quick Metamagic rod you could even Quicken Shades to simulate Trap the Soul) then it's almost a guaranteed one-shot of almost any opponent, with even certain deity level opponents failing to survive.

More than that though, Cyclopean Seers also get access to the fabled "Flash of Insight" ability, as the cyclops ability of the same name. Moreover, at level 20 they get infinite use out of it, so long as the number they choose with it is lower than their CHA mod. With enough finagling, it's possible to get a +20 CHA mod, meaning you can use this ability to roll natural 20s on demand.

Funningly enough, this isn't even the true power of Flash of Insight, which works on ANY roll, even percentile d100 rolls. With this, you could choose the outcome for anything that would otherwise be random chance. This works best, with an erratic time demiplane. With this, you could enter your demiplane, spend a full day resting, then use Flash of Insight to return only one round after when you left. In other words, you have nigh-infinite spells per day.

Did I also mention that their ability to choose any divination spell as a bonus spell gives them access to the most powerful buff spell in all of existence as well? Yeah, there's almost nothing that this build can't do.

[chimaeraUndying]

If you're allowed just one template, look no farther than Eldritch (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/eldritch-cr-varies/), a.k.a. the best template. While there's a lot to take in about its DIY monstrosity-ness, I'd point out a few of the more powerful aspects of it:

Ability Score Decrease: lets you free up space for other perks of the template, especially if you've got some other means to become an incorporeal undead and in doing ignore two stats entirely (of particular convenience, stats reduced to ≤0 with multiple applications of this quality are explicitly changed to "no score" and not 0)
Dual Essence: "retains the defenses, spell-like abilities, special attacks, and special qualities of its former type, as well as its new type. It counts as both its original and current type" -- be an undead and an extraplanar outsider! At the same time!
Incorporeal: speaks for itself, I feel. Lets you not have to hunt around for something to make you an incorporeal undead, and instead just find something to let you ignore CON for those sweet extra Ability Score Decrease eldritch points.
Fast Healing & Healing Bypass: basically just another way to stack up extra eldritch points -- Fast Healing with a single type of damage which bypasses it is effectively free, and stacking on even more forms of damage which bypass it gain you yet more eldritch points!
Spellcasting: "cast spells as a cleric, druid, oracle, sorcerer, witch, or wizard of a level equal to its racial Hit Dice (20 max)". Wanna cast off of every spell list? Definitely the best thing available.


And since you're starting at 20, you've got 10 "eldritch points" to play around with!

[LuminousWarrior]

Any 3rd party thing from the PFSRD is open, right? Consider this (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/rite-publishing/jotun-paragon-class/). This is the Jotun Paragon Class. It's restricted to the 3rd party jotun race, but lets you play a giant. At level 20 you'll have every ability this class grants, which means you'll be Colossal sized with enough extra Strength and Constitution to dump them. Make that other class a spellcaster, and you're set. Honestly, just by rule of cool it would be fun to play.

[EldritchWeaver]

But the real charm of the Tromp Loeil is that you can make copies of things with class levels. And with the artificial ascension trick you can gain the class features of dozens of people. With Id portrait you can make copies of yourself with different classes, then you make Tromp Loeils of them. So when you fuse together you have a super being with the the abilities of every class combined, including the 3rd party ones.

Looking at the entry (http://archivesofnethys.com/PsiTechDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Artificial%20Ascensio n), I don't see where your trick is supposed to work.

[noob]

Looking at the entry (http://archivesofnethys.com/PsiTechDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Artificial%20Ascensio n), I don't see where your trick is supposed to work.
The concept is simple: an aggregate gets a lot of the powers of the ai.
Artificial ascension is among them.
So the robot can use artificial ascension and nothing says that you can not have the robot use the first option to turn itself into an ai inside of a second robot which would get all the first's robot powers that are transferred through aggregation which include the powers you transmitted to the first robot so you get a new robot with all the powers which you transmitted to the first robot and all the powers of the first robot that can be transferred through aggregation.

[Hellpyre]

If you do go the cyclopian seer route, don't forget to pick up a vorpal weapon to decapitate on any attack roll.