Optimizing the Anarchic Initiate's Chaotic Breach

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I've been looking around, and I haven't seen much about the A.I.'s chaotic breach ability, from CPsi.

Chaotic Breach, Minor (Su): At 6th level, you can breach reality itself, allowing the chaotic influence of Limbo to seep into reality. You can trigger a breach a number of times per day equal to your class level. Once a breach comes fully into being, it has a duration of 1 round per class level (you can dismiss it early as a free action).

As a standard action, you can trigger a chaotic breach that takes 1d4 rounds to fully come into being, accompanied by discharges of multicolored light, wild gusts, and deep rumbling sounds. The breach occurs in a 20-foot-radius spread, the center of which you can place up to 100 feet away. Once it is placed, the spread is fixed.

Once the breach is fully realized, all powers, psi-like abilities, spells, and spell-like abilities manifested, cast, or used in the affected radius are impeded by the chaotic energies of Limbo and have a chance to go awry. Your ability to manifest powers or use psi-like abilities is unimpeded. All other manifesters, spellcasters, or creatures must make a manifester level check or caster level check against a DC of 10 + 1/2 your class level + the level of the attempted power or spell.

If the check fails, roll on the table in the Wild Magic section (DMG 149) to determine the outcome of the effect. The table only references spells, but powers are affected in the same way. Exceptions include references to a spell not being expended (power points are not expended, instead) or to material components not being expended (since powers do not have components).

Chaotic Breach, Complete (Su): At 10th level, you can completely pierce reality and punch a hole into the outer plane of Limbo once per day. As with a minor chaotic breach, you can trigger the breach as a standard action; it takes 1d4 rounds to fully come into being. Once a breach comes fully into being, it has a duration of 1 round per class level (you can dismiss it early as a free action).

When a complete breach occurs, it rips a hole in reality. The hole takes the shape of a 10-foot-radius sphere in the center of a 50-foot-radius spread (the same radius as a minor breach) on both affected planes. This larger area exists on both affected planes and contains the traits of both affected planes. The hole at the center is an open portal between the planes, where creatures from either plane can move through the breach at will.

If you choose to form the breach directly on a creature, the creature must make a Will save (DC 10 +1/2 your class level + your Cha modifier). On a successful save, the breach forms normally 1d4 rounds later (and with enough warning for the creature to move away from the rift). On a failed save, the breach doesn't form at all; instead, the subject is pushed bodily through into Limbo. Unless the creature has a method of returning, it is marooned in the chaotic realm of Limbo.

I know Ability Focus works, as do the Extend, Widen, and Enlarge Supernatural Ability feats, but I can't think of anything else, feats, items, whatever, that pushes it from "pretty good" to "wow" levels.

Anyone else have any ideas?

[Sleven]

Chaotic Breach is practically unusable in an actual game because of all the stipulations it has. It takes 1d4 rounds to come into play, it has a CL/ML check that can be regularly beaten by opponents of an appropriate CR, the random effects can be beneficial to your enemies and harmful to you, the area isn't wide enough to matter and your enemies can simply walk out, and it only affects casters.

If you're willing to wait 1-4 rounds + do a bunch of prep beforehand, pick the right battlefield and/or blow a bunch of power points on quickened, etc. battlefield control spells just to see the effects of the ability in action... then go for it?

Or use some of my old group's house rules, like allowing them to create different effects with the breach as they progress in the class, including an emanation and ray version (similar to the antimagic versions of the spell but with wild magic) and making it only take a single round for the base breach to come into being.

Or play a Wild Mage and spam Reckless Dweomer.

[remetagross]

I think the only interesting things to do with the Major breach ability are:

1. Using it as a way to escape the plane you're in, even if dry of power points for the day

2. Abusing the fact that the part of the rift that is shared by the two planes also shares the traits of the planes, in particular the fact that Limbo is highly morphic, and with subjetive directional gravity, to alter the plane on which you're on.

[daremetoidareyo]

Hey, I totally made an Iron Chef entry using the planar Bard substitution levels and a carefully curated list of spells that would comport with this ability quite well.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23197409&postcount=109

You only need 6 levels of bard. Consider Googling psionic bard, as I think that one of the game designers made a psionic Bard that they put online. Maybe you can combine the planar Bard alternative class features from the plane or handbook with The psionic Bard that you find online and then Prestige into the anarchic blah blah blah blah.

[Zaq]

It's just shifting the problem (if you can already make them fail a Will save, why not just force a Will save against something more decisive, yada yada), but you could maybe use Time Hop to force people to wait until the breach is opened before doing their thing? Or if the battle in question is taking place in an area that isn't going to move (e.g., your opponents are guarding something), you could Time Hop yourself and just not exist in reality until the breach opens up.

As dare mentioned, that build of his does all kinds of incredibly stupid (and hilarious) things with portals and breaches. I consider Planar Bard to be relatively high-octane shenanigans (it's honestly not going that far beyond the allegedly intended use of the ability, but holy cow it seems nightmarish to GM for), but if you like that sort of thing, I definitely recommend reading the build. (I recommend reading the build anyway. It's highly amusing.)

Hmm. If you use the breach in a safe location (not in combat) and then have everyone who can cast spells/manifest powers spam their lowest-level, least dangerous effects, you've got a 4% chance per casting of getting a heal spell on the whole party for a much lower cost than it would take to get heal cast normally, especially if you've got multiple beneficiaries. Most of the effects are annoying if used in combat, but very few are dangerous if you're not in combat and you're not casting a dangerous spell. You might take a precaution against falling damage (either down from the "pit" function or up from the reverse gravity effect), but otherwise, you're not likely to come to any actual harm. Works great if you or anyone else in the party has access to at-will SLAs (your powers and PLAs are unaffected, but your SLAs are subject to the wild magic effect).

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Just as an aside, some time ago I played a shaper psion 5/anarchic initiate 10/psionic wild mage 5 in an elder elvis evils campaign, and the party reached the final encounter with Pandorym. Lucather Majii, Pandorym's servant/thrall, managed to completely debilitate the whole party, but given that I had specialized in overcoming my psychic enervation (and a few similar effects as a side effect), I managed to shrug it off. I actually had to take on Lucather Majii and a mindshard of Pandorym by myself, while Obligatum VII began hacking away at the prison with a weapon that the stupid thrall had just given him in the next room. Luckily, I'd optimized really well, and I took down everything but the kolyarut in a few rounds and one-shotted the dumb-as-a-doorknob inevitable, but not before it actually released Pandorym's mind. Normally, this would lead to the entire multiverse being completely effed, but the DM allowed me to attempt to delay the elder evil while it tried to withdraw so it could reach its body, in the hopes that the effect that had stunned the rest of the party would wear off. The DM had actually statted out a higher level version of a mind shard, which was a real bitch to fight. I tried to hit it with a complete chaotic breach, but it succeeded on its Will save. I managed to hold it off for a full 4 rounds as the breach came into existence (right at the Spawning Stone, rolled randomly, no less), and I hit it with a telekinetic maneuver* and forced it through the portal. My last view of the abomination was an extremely ticked off Ssendam and Ygorl destroying it.

So it's not entirely useless. It actually managed to save the entire multiverse at least once.



*Luckily, TK maneuver doesn't allow a save, I'd found a way to negate power resistance entirely, and Pandorym's mind, being a Strength-less incorporeal being, absolutely sucked at grappling. Apparently, that was its only real weakness, as the DM hadn't thought anyone could grapple an incorporeal creature; I proved him wrong.