Fact checking the BBEG. Need some help!

[Ken Murikumo]

So i need help fact checking my DM's BBEG's abilities. See below before you make any comments about whether this is kosher or not.

This guy has 20 levels in samurai, but he might have other classes mixed in (as we are playing quadstalt). This guy used his challenge class feature on all of us... at the same time... on the round he appeared. Also, the DM insist that this feature makes it so we are only dealing minimum damage to the guy. Now i've looked though the class and done some digging. I cannot find any orders, archetypes, feats, items, or spells that allow Challenge to do this. By raw it's pick ONE target and get some extra damage, give them a small penalty to AC, and take a penalty to AC against anyone other than the Challenge target. Even if he were to challenge us all, one by one as a swift action on every consecutive turn, wouldn't that (assuming it's legal) make the ac penalty levied against the BBEG stack. Can you guys shed light on anything that would allow him to do this? We use all 1st party 3.0/3.5/pathfinder content plus dreamscarred press but no dragon mag.

Just looking for some solid ground to argue from as i've checked about half of all the 1st party orders and my google fu is turning up nothing that could do this. Hell, It doesn't even have to be native to Samurai. Is there anything in the expanse of 3.PF that could do what ive described?

Now, i don't want people to be grabbing the torchforks just yet. He did warn us that this would be, legit, the hardest encounter we'd ever faced & there is a good chance that we will not succeed. Also, he said that we will not die during this encounter but failure will change the how the plot proceeds. And we all agreed, simply ignorant to the exact calibur of enemy we're fighting.

Before the battle began we were told that he is an incarnate golem - stone golem - half-golem (iron). Thats a messy CR 12 right there. We are level 6 quadstalt and moderately to poorly optimized, so i figure this would be a hard battle but totally do-able between 3 PCs and our animal companions & homunculus. He told us this before we planned a strategy for battle, but after we did the pre-battle shopping. When the battle started he used his challenge ability, which the dm named the feature out loud and described how it was the best thing ever. Everyone groaned and the DM cackled explaining that he also had 20 levels of samurai (pathfinder) in addition to being fully equipped as a lvl 20 character should, and throughout the session gave us more insight into how the abilities worked (clearly proud of his creation). I told him i would be fact checking, as a joke, and he laughed and said to do it.

So between 3 lvl 6 quadstalt PCs, a wolf (don't remember if it's dire), and a very well built artificer's (snapjaw) homunculus, we're going up against something well over CR 30. We do have a ton of buffs and DM special abilities (like favors from "immortal" beings, and some special summons) so we haven't been destroyed by this guy yet. If it weren't for his AC being somewhere in the high 30s low 40s we would have been able to take him down in the first session. My character is an unarmed warforged monk/artificer/and-beyond built with trace amounts of ubercharger (warforged pun). If i could pounce and hit him with all of my attacks, (even at minimum damage) i would have deleted well over 2/3 of this guys health, but the real challenge is hitting him more than once with a lucky 19 or 20.

This isn't meant to be a rant or to vent. And again, while we didn't quite understand that we would be going up against an enemy that is a CR equal to a literal exponent of our ACL, we did know that we would have a very slim chance of victory. Im just going to be miffed if he was doing all wrong this whole time and that screwed us over.

And thus i have come to you, the collective of knowledge. Please help me shed light on this endeavor.

[Manyasone]

If you are already this heavy into house rules territory I really fail to see how it even matters what exact ability he is using... Quadstalt... Really...

[Efrate]

Knight from 3.5 can challenge multiple people and force them to hit him, but it allows a save and doesn't give huge penalties or bonuses to ac. That would be a seperate action to samurai challenge, unless hes using all challenges as weird geshtalt rule to combine multiple challenges into one action because they are all called challenge.

Is Path of War on the table? Iron tortise and Eternal guardian diaciplines might have something similar.

That A.C. seems rather low, if he's 20 and has access to 20 wbl. I had a dwarven defender that could hit 50s in the low to mid teens with minimal op fu and no where near 20 wbl.

[Geddy2112]

So the minimum damage is the wording from last stand,which is the once a day capstone for samurai.
"At 20th level, a samurai can make a last stand once per day whenever he makes a challenge. While this challenge is in effect, all melee and ranged weapons deal the minimum amount of damage to the samurai, unless the attack scored is a critical hit."

However....

If you are already this heavy into house rules territory I really fail to see how it even matters what exact ability he is using... Quadstalt... Really...
This.

[Ken Murikumo]

So the minimum damage is the wording from last stand,which is the once a day capstone for samurai.
"At 20th level, a samurai can make a last stand once per day whenever he makes a challenge. While this challenge is in effect, all melee and ranged weapons deal the minimum amount of damage to the samurai, unless the attack scored is a critical hit."

Yup, totally missed that part, my bad...



If you are already this heavy into house rules territory I really fail to see how it even matters what exact ability he is using... Quadstalt... Really...



This.

Because he boasted how the character was made "by the books" and i see no "by the books" means to accomplish making multiple challenges/last stands at the same time and without incurring stacking penalties.

but, before we TRY and move past the gestalt issue, lets take another look. Is there any gestalt combo that could accomplish this without DM fiat?



That A.C. seems rather low, if he's 20 and has access to 20 wbl. I had a dwarven defender that could hit 50s in the low to mid teens with minimal op fu and no where near 20 wbl.

over 35 = 10 +11 natural from the golem shuffle +14 armor (from +5 fullplate)+?? for some extra goodies

the bench pressing chart for pathfinder puts him comfortably between average and pretty good

[Efrate]

Never ac stacked in path so don't know all the options. Fair enough, but deflection, insight, shield, and most importantly dodge goes a long way.

Is Path of War available? Warder can do some stuff to that effect as well.

[Elricaltovilla]

There's no way of knowing what this character is capable of without a full understanding of your house rules and a copy of his "character sheet." The information you've given is woefully incomplete to be able to even begin fact checking. Add to that you're combining multiple templates, 3.5 and Pathfinder material, and doing Quadstalt... there's simply no way of accurately checking.

[Ken Murikumo]

Is Path of War available? Warder can do some stuff to that effect as well.

PoW is technically allowed simply because we are a big fan of DSP's psionics books, and i brought up PoW being by the same publisher. The DM approved the book (this was over a year ago) but im 99% sure he hasn't even looked at anything in the book. He does not own it and does not use pfsrd.



There's no way of knowing what this character is capable of without a full understanding of your house rules and a copy of his "character sheet." The information you've given is woefully incomplete to be able to even begin fact checking. Add to that you're combining multiple templates, 3.5 and Pathfinder material, and doing Quadstalt... there's simply no way of accurately checking.

You're over complicating the question.

There were two core questions in the original post, one of which was the result of my own stupidity, and was promptly answered thanks to Geddy2112

The other was if there was any way to use the Challenge (and by extension, Last Stand) class features on multiple opponents at the same time.

House rules would be mostly irrelevant, but we do allow taking different classes and prestige classes at any time they become legally available, whether we play single classes, gestalt, or quadstalt; where as, gestalt in the book dictates you can only take prestige classes at the same level one both "sides" of the gestalt, if i remember correctly. We ignore that rule, which is pretty common. Much like taking max HP per level instead of rolling HD; our group does this.