Curiousity-caused question

[GrayDeath]

One of my players, a quite new one, asked me the following question, and I was unable to answer it, so since the Playground is a basin of collected 3.x Knowledge, I thought I`s pass it along.

If your only aim was to max final attack bonus at the expense of almost everything else, what would you need to use to build the "Hits everything" guy?

Addendum by me: say Level 6-8ish (because most games are there), monster races and such are allowed, limited or no casting.
All 3.x you can get, no PF.

I`m really curious now. ^^

[Eldan]

Well, it's incredibly cheesy, but...

Cancer Mage. Despite the name, doesn't actually require any magic. The qualifications are quite low, a handful of skills, three feats and BAB 5+. Something like a human ranger should get that easily.

AT level 2, they get this:
Disease Host (Ex): At 1st level, a cancer mage suffers no ill effects of diseases, except for purely cosmetic ones such as boils, pockmarks, watery eyes, blackened skin, hair loss, foul smell, and so on. The cancer mage becomes a carrier of every disease he encounters, though he remains immune to most of their effects. However, the cancer mage takes 1d6 points of damage per caster level if someone casts a cure disease spell or effect on him (he can make a Fortitude save to try to resist the effect). Furthermore, if the cancer mage has a cancerous companion (see below), he loses all abilities gained from the companion for 1d10 days after being the subject of a cure disease spell.

And then there is the Festering Anger disease. Which increases strength. To arbitrary levels, as long as you can take drawbacks that are proportional to the increase. The problem being, of course, that hte Cancer Mage has no drawbacks.

So, the answer is: infinite. Write down any number, a cancer mage eventually gets that high.

[BowStreetRunner]

There are probably a couple of other cheesy ways to accomplish this besides even the Cancer Mage example already provided.

However, if you're not going the cheese route, then the first question that needs to be answered is "Hits everything with what?" Melee weapon? Ranged Weapon? Touch attack?

There are a lot of different ways to get at that final attack bonus. Just going from melee to ranged you are switching from Strength bonus to Dexterity bonus, unless you are using one of the numerous X stat to Y bonus (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?125732-3-x-X-stat-to-Y-bonus) abilities that allow you to use a different bonus instead. Having high ability score bonuses will be important to getting your attack bonus high, but you need to get the right ability score bonuses. That Cancer Mage trick might get high Strength, but that's not going to help make ranged touch attacks with ray spells.

You also need to consider whether you are making a normal attack or a touch attack (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatStatistics.htm#touchAttacks). The target number to hit is going to be different depending on whether the target can use their armor value or not.

There are a lot of abilities and effects out there that can increase your attack scores. Depending on your class, you may have access to feats, spells, or class abilities that grant bonuses. The builds that have the highest total score are probably going to be dipping into lots of different sources to add to their bonus. The Cancer Mage example can do it with only a single source of bonus, but most builds won't have just that one trick that cranks the score to arbitrary high levels.

[tiercel]

One easy, no-cheese. out-of-the-box, way to grab an arguably "high" attack bonus -- at least once per day -- is Duskblade 5.

Quick cast true strike, swing. As a side benefit, ignores concealment miss chances.

It's no "infinite strength" combo, but it'll likely hit most anything you're likely to need to hit. Takes basically zero effort to achieve (just be a Duskblade), albeit limited use.

I'm sure there's higher, but this is a useful baseline to start with. (It's a bit trickier if you're worried about maximizing every-round attack bonus, obviously.)

[GrayDeath]

Well, the Cancer Mage is too much cheese, if cool.

On general: lets say you pick if its close or ranged, I (we) dont ahve a clear preference.

But unlike Duskblades Truestrike Trick it needs to be consistent. (s)he needs to hit everything all the tmime (or as much of it as is possible for at least a few hours + per day).

I know of many a way to make yoiu hit everyhing for a short time, or against touch ac, thats not what I am looking for.

Thanks abain!

[Fizban]

An interesting thing about this challenge is that a 5th level restriction not only puts a ton of magic item abuse off the table, but also that it's a low enough level that a lot of things you might dip because they have combo feats or magic items to boost them, don't provide much of a bonus when compared to the loss of BAB at this level. Bardsader in particular: you can still get Song of the Heart, Badge of Valor, and Inspirational Boost, but even if allowed to double them all with Words of Creation, WoC is only providing +4: the ability points required to take WoC will stop you from being an orc with a base 18 unless the DM gives you god stats, so that final cheese might not even be a gain (for your personal attack bonus anyway).


A quick survey of MM1 shows that CR 5 creatures usually max at about AC 20, with the Nightmare being the only standout at AC 24. Going up to CR 7 we find. . AC 22. Assuming monsters from other books have similar ACs (YMMV), +18-19 should be sufficient to hit everything except a wildly over-leveled monster at 5th.

Trip is worth -4 AC= +4 hit, wolf totem barbarian lets you ignore int problems so you can just max strength with your favorite cheesy LA +1 (though a normal orc with sundark goggles is already +4). BAB +5, 24 strength, -4 AC trip, that's +11 vanilla, +13 charging, +15 on the follow up from Improved Trip, against almost anything without even trying, and you begin to see why I hate both tripping and the assumptions that orcs are a PC race and starting 18s are "standard." The final +X can come from all sorts of places: +1 masterwork/magic, +2 flanking, +2 aid another, +1 high ground from a mount (which can also be trained to aid another), and martial maneuvers are all quite doable, and of course you have your base rage 1/day for +2 for several rounds if you need it. If you want to live dangerously, taking PHB2's Berserker Strength gives the same +4 str and is *always* active. . . when you're at 24hp or less.

That's only Barb 2. You have two actual feats, one of which is probably going to be Weapon Focus because nothing beats that reliability, which leaves one for Martial Study to supplement your 3 levels of Crusader or Warblade. For maximum attack bonus, Warblade with Steely Strike and Rabid Wolf Strike has +4 on up to 2/3 of his rounds and could Martial Study for Distracting Ember to make his own flanking buddy.

Barb 2/Warblade 3: BAB 5+ str 6+ 1 enhance+ 1 focus= +13 base/+15 with ember. Charge +15-17, trip follow up +17-19, trip follow up (charging) +19-21, SS/RWS +16-18. But with only two barb levels you've got to be at 9hp or less if you go Berserker Strength for unlimited "rage."

Berserker Strength Wolf Totem Barb 5 at 24hp: BAB 5+ str 8+ 1 enhance+1 focus = +15 base, +17 charge, +19 trip follow-up, +21 charging trip follow-up.

As for higher levels, and assuming no Barsader abuse (and without abuse, morale bonuses are plentiful on items/spells), Melee Weapon Mastery shows up to kick Berserker Strength in the teeth as focus+spec+mastery is +3 attack/+4 damage all the time, and can apply to ranged weapons. The barbarian's most broken features are available in the first two levels, and fighter 4 is enough to qualify for weapon mastery, which means you're done before even hitting a BAB +7 PrC- such as Citadel Elite, which gives you up to an effective +5 on all attacks (by negating up to 5 points of dex bonus on foes), in addition to a massive AC bonus.

If you don't even care about damage, getting small gives the biggest attack bonuses. Using the cohort LA, a Petal with base 18 dex can get BAB 3+ size 2+ dex 9+ 1 enhance+ 1 focus= +16 base. A Muckdweller has 0 LA, but also 4 less dex, for the same total. Interestingly the Compression power does not actually refer to table for changes based on size: it states outright the modifications to the point it technically doesn't work right even on small creatures.

[Mordaedil]

I dunno if this is optimal, but one of my gish characters was a battle sorcerer/abjurant champion using orbs, true strike and power attack to land pretty devastating hits with a fairly high accuracy.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Lesser thri-kreen warblade with multi-weapon fighting. By level 8-ish you're already hitting pretty reliably with your primary attack so get 3 more just like it.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Warblade 2/psychic warrior 4 with Sapphire Nightmare Blade and Deep Impact can make a regular melee attack as a flat-footed touch attack (most creatures have ff-touch AC 10).

[Mordaedil]

What still applies against that, actually?

Base 10 applies.
Armor AC nullified by being Touch.
Shield AC nullified by being Touch
Dexterity AC nullified by being Flat-footed. (Does penalty still apply?)
Dodge AC nullified by being Flat-footed.
Natural AC nullified by being Touch.
Deflection AC bonus still applies?
Untyped AC bonuses still applies? (What AC bonuses are untyped? Monk's and bladedancers are nullified in their description, are there others?)
Sacred AC bonuses still applies.
Alchemical AC bonuses still applies.

Am I missing anything?

[ExLibrisMortis]

What still applies against that, actually?

Base 10 applies.
Armor AC nullified by being Touch.
Shield AC nullified by being Touch
Dexterity AC nullified by being Flat-footed. (Does penalty still apply?)
Dodge AC nullified by being Flat-footed.
Natural AC nullified by being Touch.
Deflection AC bonus still applies?
Untyped AC bonuses still applies? (What AC bonuses are untyped? Monk's and bladedancers are nullified in their description, are there others?)

Am I missing anything?
Weird bonus types, like sacred and alchemical, still apply. But yeah, being able to hit flat-footed touch is really nice all the way through the game.

[Uncle Pine]

A 9th-level cleric (so 1 level above the cap presented by the OP) can autohit any AC by discharging Surge of Fortune (Complete Champion). An archivist of the same level could combine that with Hunter's Mercy (1st level ranger spell) to autocrit any AC with any bow.

EDIT: Hunter's Mercy is from Spell Compendium.

[GrayDeath]

Hmmm, Warblade Psywar....and given that there are ways tog et PP back and he can do the maneuver every second turn, this is a valid way to hit everything a lot of the time.

THanks.

Still looking for really high Attack bonuses and ways to do so ALL the time though. Keep em coming. :)


@ Lesser Thri-kreen: Nice catch, but they dont exist in almost all our games, sadly (I like the jumpy buggers a lot myself and should ahve thought of it^^).

[ben-zayb]

At ECL 6, a Kuo-Toa (2HD,LA+3) Monk with the Kuo-Toa Monasticism feat (MM5,p97) can apply the adhesive as a swift action, attack a square (AC5) for its first attack, then autohit with its flurry.

Naturally, you'd need to be an ex-Monk (assuming no Chaos Monk variant) to quickly get Pounce from Lion Totem Barbarian.

EDIT: Depending on your DM, a Changeling Egoist 5 / Monk 1 may also grab the feat and do the combo

[Necroticplague]

Well, the default for a full BaB character is one point of attack per level. Since monstrous characters are allowed, we can focus on stat-raising templates. Then, all we have to do to increase to-hit is find templates that provide more than their LA in attack bonuses.

Start with a Water Orc, since they have a nice +4 STR for no LA.
Then, add in Half-Minotaur. This gives +4 STR for 1 LA. Also, thanks to a monumentally stupid idea, it gets the +8 STR for going from medium to Large.
Half Ogre then provides an additional +4 to STR with no LA.
Feral provides +4 STR for 1 LA.
Lolth-touched adds +6 STR for 1 LA.
Add on one level in a full BaB class.

So, at ECL 4, the ensuing creature has STR 48 (assuming starting 18), and +1 BaB. This provides a to-hit of +19, taking size into account. This can then be improved by either enchanted weapons, STR-increasing magic items, or both.

Not the highest (that would involve buffs like True Strike), but i beleive it's the highest at that ECL you get without temporary measures.
Do be mindful of mental stat damage, though, these beatstick templates make you dumb as a sack of bricks.