Best optimization tricks for Savage Species?

[Conradine]

What are the most powerful builds you can come up with, using monsters as characters - and staying inside the ECL 20 ?
The best I found is to add the Feral Template to either Stone, Fire or Frost giant. It changes the type into monstrous humanoid which raises both the BAB and the Hit Dice, and it gives several special attacks and fast healing, for just a +1 ECL.

[Piggy Knowles]

There's a LOT of Savage Species cheese, and Emancipated Spawn abuse probably doesn't even count as being in the top 3, but sure, I'll bite:


STEP 1: Start with a level 20 druid.
STEP 2: Let a ghoul or ghast attack you, and voluntarily fail all your saves until you die and rise as one yourself. Pay a hireling or charm/dominate an animal or summon something to kill the ghoul after you yourself rise as one.
STEP 3: You're a ghast now. That means you've lost all of your abilities as a druid and you're an ECL 8 character, using the playable ghoul/ghast monster class in Libris Mortis (p35). (Note that the sidebar on p75 of Savage Species and the sample listed under the "Rediscovery" section actually both say that a freed ghoul spawn should have an ECL of 5, which makes all of this much better, but we'll go with Libris Mortis' version because it's more recent and therefore should supercede.)
STEP 4: Now that you're risen, your hireling/forest friend/summon should kill the ghoul that spawned you.
STEP 5: Take two levels in the Emancipated Spawn class (Savage Species, p75), which among other things unlocks all the feats and class features of your previous life.


The end result is that you are an ECL 10 ghast with 6 HD and improved turn resistance. Yawn. But you also have all the feats you had as a level 20 druid (getting better...) and all the class features of one former class, including spellcasting. You only get one spell per spell level, but that still means 9th-level spells, which in turn means shapechange, and from there you can access pretty much every other relevant ability. You also get all your other class features back, including the wild shape abilities of a 20th-level druid. As long as you never take that last level of Emancipated Spawn, you get all of these abilities without increasing your ECL. And you still have 10 levels to play with, so go do... whatever you want, really. If you want to crank the stupidness up to 11, dip into Ur-Priest, then finish with Planar Shepherd (advancing Ur-Priest), to close with 9th-level druid and cleric spells, full druidic abilities and planar bubbles madness.

You can do this with any class, of course, not just druid. You'll get the most mileage out of classes that provide 9th-level spellcasting, and I like druid because it provides actual class features (which can in turn be used to qualify for other classes, such as Planar Shepherd) beyond just spellcasting, and I'm of the opinion that once you hit 9th-level spells there just isn't much of a difference between the druid, wizard and cleric spell list anymore, since spells like shapechange or gate functionally provide access to all other spells with a little bit of splatbook digging.

[Willie the Duck]

ECL 20 limit might be a problem (at least unless you find an illithid from another source) but the Illithid Savant PrC is effectively 'permanently gain the abilities of whatever your friends can capture and let you eat the brains of.' I forget the specifics, but the end result is something like a Solar who is also a level 20 wizard who is also a Titan, or the like.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

After consideration, I'm forced to conclude that the Symbiotic Creature template is fundamentally broken. For proof of this, look no further than my Siege Tower build, which uses Human Heritage to qualify for the Symbiotic Creature template multiple times, and can hurl 24 (or maybe it was 22?) daggers per round at ECL 8.

Anthropomorphic animals are oodles of fun. My signature has Hank, an anthropomorphic giant octopus. Anthro wolverine/badger give you permanent rage and good enough stats that I'd be willing to eat the starting ECL of 4, especially in an LA buyoff game. I've never used anthro bat, but I hear that one is actually crazy good. And anthro huge viper is a large creature with high dex and no LA (3 HD, but full BAB) and the base race of The Siege Tower above.

Feral Creature has already mentioned, but I'll second it being good. There's some question as to whether class levels advance its special attacks (I don't think so, but there's an argument to be made).

Tauric Creature is Symbiotic Creature that you have to pay for, but it can be applied to a lot more things as a player. (With Symbiotic you're basically stuck to large creatures with Human Heritage, and a single Naga ).

[ShurikVch]

After consideration, I'm forced to conclude that the Symbiotic Creature template is fundamentally broken.Actually, Symbiotic Creature template is completely unusable to PC without house rules, since it's completely incomprehensible how you should calculate Level Adjustment for it

[Conradine]

Would it be possible to transform with a Ritual into a dragon puppy, then wait 2500 years and become a Grand Dragon?