Touch of Hate

[cartejos]

How would you optimize this?
It doesnt have limits on anything except that before the transformation the animal has to have less HD than you have cleric levels.

What group setup would be most efficient for developing a hoard of beasts, train them, and feed them dozens of mini mooks.


Bard and marshal would be my first bet to give the beasts power buffs, cleric (obviously I would think) for actually obtaining the critters, but I am unsure what other things would bolster them

[Kayblis]

As it's limited to once per tenday, you'd want the strongest animals you can get for your level. Animals have a low will save by design, so you're probably not hurting your chances by picking a stronger subject. A good idea for finding animals to turn would be looking up Polymorph form lists, as they are already available and usually organized by HD. You could find Druid forms too, but they aren't as easy to find.

As buffs, you could pick a domain or feat that gives you wizard spells. Haste is beast(no pun intended) and Animal Growth is not a Cleric spell. Those two already guarantee your army will be mostly unstoppable.

[noob]

In fact all that matters is getting to finance the chicken business and being a cleric with that feat and that spell which allows to count as an animal for the duration(or play one of those races which counts as animals).
Then with a massively massive production of chickens you have near limitless animals to feed to the templated creatures you just need to abuse polymorph to turn the chicken in humans and there is probably some item which when worn makes you human shaped or equivalent stuff to use on the chickens(but without it spending spell slots to cast polymorph is not that bad).
Of course ideally for not losing control of the overfed beast it is preferable to be the overfed beast so it is when the spell of which I forgot the name which allows to count as an animal for the duration enters play: target yourself with the touch of hate while being under the effect of the spell(templates does not go away when you stop qualifying or else all templates making you undead which works on non undead people would be dysfunctional).
Then eat the chickens you polymorph in humanoids since what matters is to kill an humanoid then eat its corpse not eating an humanoid corpse.
With that you will get quickly high hit dice you can retrain in cleric levels and then progress through epic at a quick pace.
Then once you have a few thousand of levels in cleric whatever you planned is easy.
At no step should you use bard or marshal you will be purely less good than a straight cleric unless your intent is to end all the encounters with diplomancing(the art of using diplomacy for instantly turning everything ever in the best friends ever) in this case carry on and be a binder of naberius too for avoiding the penalty for rushed checks and the right to take a 10.

[Rebel7284]

Aspect of the Wolf is the spell that turns you into an animal. Druid/Ranger 1, so may require some UMD for a cleric.