Maxxing out miss chance?

[flamewolf393]

I want to build a character and/or creature that has as high a miss chance as possible, preferably always on. Lets see if we can get it to 99.9%. Templates, magic items, expanded permanency, martial classes, anything not homebrew goes. Bonus points if theres some way to counter the counters, like things that would let you see through things like blur/invisibility/whatevs.

I was thinking start with a shadow template for total concealment while in anything less than bright light, with an item of always on control light for permanent dimness with which to use the shadow blend.

Blink gives a flat 50% miss chance that is not concealment (attacks able to attack ethereal creatures downgrades this to concealment, but the base 50% miss chance is flat, because half the time im literally not there to get hit)

Mirror image effectively gives a 75% miss chance without using concealment. Would my images have the same miss chance I do at time of casting? The problem here is if I have the total concealment you cant see me or the images so it wont count here.

Shadow phase gives 50% miss chance (20% against magic) without using concealment.

Wind wall and enveloping winds both give flat miss chance, but only for ranged attacks.

Mindblank gives us immunity to so many of the things that would counter our miss chance, most importantly: true sight.

So far Ive got this if you try to swing a sword at me: 50% chance of not knowing where in the shadows I am in the first place. Then 50% of me literally not being there due to blink (25%), then if I *am* there, theres a 50% chance of me being unaffected because shadow phase (12.5%) So far thats an 87.5% miss chance, what more can I add on to this?

[Uncle Pine]

A literal interpretation of the Reserves of Strength feat (Dragonlance Campaign Setting 86) combined with mirror image (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mirrorImage.htm) will give you 1d4+ CL/3 duplicates, for a 99% "miss chance" with a CL of 291 (technically a CL between 279 and 291 will suffice).

[flamewolf393]

A literal interpretation of the Reserves of Strength feat (Dragonlance Campaign Setting 86) combined with mirror image (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mirrorImage.htm) will give you 1d4+ CL/3 duplicates, for a 99% "miss chance" with a CL of 291 (technically a CL between 279 and 291 will suffice).

Reserves of strength only lets you up your caster by a maximum of 3. How are you getting a caster level 291?

[Telonius]

As far as getting through the counters, the big one you would really need to address is the Pierce Magical Concealment feat. As far as I can tell, the feat gives a pretty direct "no" button for any magical concealment as well as mirror images. Any miss chance that you have against a character with it would have to come from something other than a spell or spell-like ability. (Su) or (Ex) abilities would have to do the job.

[Cosi]

Reserves of strength only lets you up your caster by a maximum of 3. How are you getting a caster level 291?

What he means by "literal reading" is that if you take:


Your increased caster level affects all level-based variables of the spell, ... You can exceed the normal level-fixed limits of a spell withthis feat

To mean that you apply your whole caster level (plus up to three) and ignore level limits. So you would have to have a native caster level of 288, which you could then boost to 291, which would then be applied to the 1d4+1/3*CL (which is normally capped at 8) to get upwards of 99 images.

The implication here is that we "should" interpret Reserves of Strength as only allowing you to overflow spell caps by three or less levels, regardless of what your base CL is.

[emeraldstreak]

As far as getting through the counters, the big one you would really need to address is the Pierce Magical Concealment feat. As far as I can tell, the feat gives a pretty direct "no" button for any magical concealment as well as mirror images. Any miss chance that you have against a character with it would have to come from something other than a spell or spell-like ability. (Su) or (Ex) abilities would have to do the job.

Do you think it counters No Light + Ring of Darkhidden?

[flamewolf393]

As far as getting through the counters, the big one you would really need to address is the Pierce Magical Concealment feat. As far as I can tell, the feat gives a pretty direct "no" button for any magical concealment as well as mirror images. Any miss chance that you have against a character with it would have to come from something other than a spell or spell-like ability. (Su) or (Ex) abilities would have to do the job.

Wow thats pretty good. Though it specifically only negates magical concealment and mirror image so blink and shadow phase would still work against it letting me still have 75% miss chance. Then again if you are playing a mage slayer build then you probably have other answers for ethereal and incorporeal.

[Uncle Pine]

Reserves of strength only lets you up your caster by a maximum of 3. How are you getting a caster level 291?

A chain of consumptive fields: consumptive field, then greater consumptive field, then consumptive field again, etc. with each consumptive field superseding the previous iteration of consumptive field using the CL improved by greater consumptive field as your base CL (and vice versa). This is because two casting of the same spells don't stack, but "greater consumptive field" and "consumptive field" aren't the same spell, so they do. Pair this with RAW Reserves of Strength, as Cosi correctly explained, and you can actually get much more than 99% miss chance. Preferably using a bag of rats or other small critters (i.e. bees) to avoid having to slaughter a small town every day before your buffing routine.

Now this is technically the maximum miss chance you can get short of 100%, but since the trick also sets your CL to "arbitrarily high" I wouldn't expect it to fly at most tables. :smallwink:

EDIT: And yes, since it's completely negated by Pierce Magical Concealment your second goal should be to sistematically drop the Constitution score of any opponent to 12 or less so that they can't use that feat.

[Zaq]

It's debatable if Mind Blank counters True Seeing, but maybe we can leave that aside for now.

It's very much the opposite of always on, but the Chaotician (Planar Handbook pp. 61-2) gets a pretty nice ability called Anarchic Grace that gives a non-concealment-based miss chance of 50% against "all" attacks, and it explicitly is not beaten by True Seeing or "similar effects." It's a (Su) ability, so it ignores Pierce Magical Concealment, and it's even a free action to turn on. The problem is that, as I said, it's very much not even close to always on (it only lasts a few rounds and only works 1/day with an investment of 2 levels or 2/day with an investment of 4 levels), but it's still remarkably strong.

If you want a form of concealment that doesn't care about light and that isn't technically called out as being magical (thereby ignoring PMP, probably True Seeing, and so on), there's always Word Given Form (Tome of Magic pg. 218). It's total concealment (called out as being 50% miss chance) against a single foe and it's basically always on. The downside is that it's crazy resource-intensive (it requires five feats, many of which are garbage, and 12 ranks each in two skills, one of which is Truespeak) and it also requires that you be using the actual Dodge feat (rather than, say, Expeditious Dodge or Desert Wind Dodge), so it's obnoxious to make it apply against more than one opponent at a time.

[Jack_Simth]

There's the Obi of Protection (Dragon Compendium) that gives a 20% miss chance.

If you have a Starmantle Cloak (Book of Exalted Deeds), a Ring of Evasion, a +13 or better Reflex save, and the Pride domain power (a couple ways to get it), then you've got a 1 in 400 chance of being affected by a strike from a magic weapon (and a 0% chance of being affected by a strike from a mundane weapon). A 1 in 400 chance of getting hit is... what, 99.75% already?

[flamewolf393]

There's the Obi of Protection (Dragon Compendium) that gives a 20% miss chance.

If you have a Starmantle Cloak (Book of Exalted Deeds), a Ring of Evasion, a +13 or better Reflex save, and the Pride domain power (a couple ways to get it), then you've got a 1 in 400 chance of being affected by a strike from a magic weapon (and a 0% chance of being affected by a strike from a mundane weapon). A 1 in 400 chance of getting hit is... what, 99.75% already?

Thats absolutely evil. We have a winner even though its technically not miss chance. A +13 reflex save is *not* hard to do. Good job.

[Anthrowhale]

The rules compendium says a miss chance can be at most 50%, hence entries with not-explicit-miss-chance are required to satisfy the OP.

[Jack_Simth]

Thats absolutely evil. We have a winner even though its technically not miss chance. A +13 reflex save is *not* hard to do. Good job.

Keep in mind:
That's specifically weapons. A natural weapon might get past it just fine, as will something like a Scorching Ray spell. But it's good vs. the average Joe Barbarian.

[Remuko]

Requires Epic Levels but theres also this

Self-Concealment [Epic]

Prerequisites
Dex 30, Hide 30 ranks, Tumble 30 ranks, improved evasion.

Benefit
Attacks against you have a 10% miss chance, similar to the effect of concealment. You lose this benefit whenever you would lose your Dexterity bonus to AC.

Special
You can gain this feat multiple times. Each time it is taken, the miss chance increases by 10% to a maximum of 50% after it has been taken five times.

[Telonius]

Do you think it counters No Light + Ring of Darkhidden?

I would say that by the wording of the feat ["allows you to disregard the miss chance granted by spells or spell-like abilities such as darkness, blur, invisibility, obscuring mist, ghostform (see page 109), and spells when used to create concealment effects (such as a wizard using permanent image to fill a corridor with illusory fire and smoke)"] would probably mean that it foils No Light, since it punches through the similar but more powerful Darkness spell. The Pierce Magical Concealment character would be able to see into the area normally. Ring of the Darkhidden wouldn't apply. If it were just a mundane area of darkness, I think the Ring would function normally. Since it's not a spell or a spell-like ability, Pierce Magical Concealment wouldn't do anything against it, and you'd still have your concealment from the nonmagical lack of light.


Wow thats pretty good. Though it specifically only negates magical concealment and mirror image so blink and shadow phase would still work against it letting me still have 75% miss chance. Then again if you are playing a mage slayer build then you probably have other answers for ethereal and incorporeal.

The "such as" in the feat description isn't a limiting thing; it's just giving examples of the sort of spell that it would block, rather than listing every single spell that could be blocked by it. I think Blink and Shadow Phase would still be ignored.

[flamewolf393]

The "such as" in the feat description isn't a limiting thing; it's just giving examples of the sort of spell that it would block, rather than listing every single spell that could be blocked by it. I think Blink and Shadow Phase would still be ignored.

Yes it gives some examples which normally would not be limiting, but it also straight up says "spells when used to create concealment effects" and also specifically mentions concealment effects in its limiter statement of "Your ability to ignore the miss chance granted by magical concealment..." The wording seems that this spell only interacts with concealment. Blink and Shadow phase give miss chance without concealment of any kind.

[Jack_Simth]

Thats absolutely evil. We have a winner even though its technically not miss chance. A +13 reflex save is *not* hard to do. Good job.
Oh: The other thing to keep in mind, of course: Because it's *not* miss chance, it stacks with the other things mentioned here. Greater Mirror Image (Player's Handbook 2, page 120) qualifies for Persistent Spell, and recharges itself (up to 8 images), for instance, giving an attacker a 1 in 9 chance of hitting the right target. Displacement or Blink also helps with that. So a 50% chance of hitting a target, a 1 in 9 chance of it being the right target, and then a 1 in 400 chance of doing something if you do hit the right target... 0.5 * (1/9) * 1/400 = 0.000138888... = 0.0138888...% works out to an effective 99.9861111... % miss chance.

[Zaq]

Oh: The other thing to keep in mind, of course: Because it's *not* miss chance, it stacks with the other things mentioned here. Greater Mirror Image (Player's Handbook 2, page 120) qualifies for Persistent Spell, and recharges itself (up to 8 images), for instance, giving an attacker a 1 in 9 chance of hitting the right target. Displacement or Blink also helps with that. So a 50% chance of hitting a target, a 1 in 9 chance of it being the right target, and then a 1 in 400 chance of doing something if you do hit the right target... 0.5 * (1/9) * 1/400 = 0.000138888... = 0.0138888...% works out to an effective 99.9861111... % miss chance.

So basically a sure thing (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0584.html), then?

[Jack_Simth]

So basically a sure thing (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0584.html), then?

Heh. DM intervention is always an exception, of course.