daremetoidareyo
2021-09-09, 08:18 PM
The Sleepless Knight
"Resting Heal Face"
INTRODUCTION
Look, I'm no Piggy Knowles, but I love his showcases, and like him, I have years of spare build parts and ideas strewn across my digital storage. My particular focus of interest in optimization isn't really where the rules work to make solid builds, but more of the opposite: where the rules as written are a little insufficient and experimentally exploitable to create whole new optimization frontiers of ridiculous and unanticipated results. This edition of D&D has over 127 books, numerous web add-ons, and scores of authors between them, and with that comes strange redundancies and synergies that are just delightful to toy with.
So here is a dedicated effort to flesh out some of these build exploits into full write-ups, workshopped with other character optimization enthusiasts to show off a fancy new TO type trick and spur discussion, all in an homage to Piggy's Showcases.
In general, the intent is to create something that can be played theoretically, if you get permission from whomever is running your game, as the results of this munchkinry aren't fair to foist onto an unsuspecting DM. If the undergirding suppositions of how these rules work as written are accepted, a “reasonable” level 1 to level 20 build is provided.
Again, the goal is discussion, so feel free to discuss the build, talk about other options, make suggestions or tear it all to shreds. Also, feel free to use anything showcased here in any of your campaigns—and let us know how they work out if you do!
Right now the group consists of myself, the Viscount, Akal Saris, Venger, WhamBamSam, Darrin, Zaq and the inestimable Piggy Knowles. Typically one of us writes up the build concept and possibly a stub, the others share feedback on Discord or in some of the shared documents we have, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product.
For this showcase, it’s time to take a good long look at the sleep rules. Remember The Sleepless Beauty? Presented here is the Sleepless Knight.
https://media2.giphy.com/media/CxUmmgdMkOkYU/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e477xi3m046jy7d7ico84p9qbl2oon6 86ie1hnbmpls&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g
"BETTER THAN THE REST"
BACKGROUND
So this build works a little differently. What happens when you can naturally heal at massive rates even when you're not resting? This is a math-heavy bit of theory-craft, so let's see what happens when we combine a bunch of natural healing buffs with some feats and class features.
Since we aren't recharging spell slots or anything, we are going to focus on healing as fast as possible and figure out what to do with that. There are two ways to accomplish this goal: reduce your sleep needs to the smallest possible time increments and to use spells, feats, gear, and class features to exponentially increase your healing rate. So, let’s take a look at the ingredients!
A healing hymn bard (Complete Champion ACF) can play music for a minute and give you 24 hours of complete rest during your normal sleep period. Our goal is to change that sleep period and see what we can get out of it. The bard also has access to two early level spells that double your natural healing rate; healthful rest and summon elysian thrush.
We are running for the Child of Night prestige class from the Shadowcaster section of the Tome of Magic. They get a four level long rapid advancement of a shadowcaster class feature called sustaining shadow, which reads as follows:
Sustaining Shadow(Ex): When you reach 5th level, your bond to the Plane of Shadow allows you to absorb dark energies, mitigating certain biological needs. You need eat only a single meal per week to maintain health. At 10th level, you only need 1 hour of sleep per night (but you must still rest for 8 hours to regain your mysteries for the next day)
Unlike the shadowcaster, you get this 1 hour of sleep per night buff in just four child of night class levels.
We aren’t nearly finished, but it seems like it is worth it to point out that with just 10 class levels and two spell slots, we heal at EIGHT times the standard rate everytime we take an hour-long nap.
The Draw From the Land feat halves your need for sleep and doubles your heal rate for complete bed rest.
The Wakefulness feat halves your sleep needs by half again. If you're keeping score so far, that's 24 hours of rest in 15 minutes.
Lastly, the ring of sustenance "refreshes the body and mind, so that its wearer needs only sleep 2 hours per day to gain the benefit of 8 hours of sleep." Assuming that the sustaining shadow class feature has primacy, 15 minutes of sleep with a ring of sustenance worn grants you the effects of 8 hours of sleep, because you only need ⅛ of the usual sleep to function. This need is then halved twice from the Wakefulness and the Draw From the Land feats, bringing our total sleep needs down to three and three quarter minutes, while our healing speed has been multiplied by 8 or more.
But there's a throwaway line in another feat that breaks this whole approach wide open.
Rapid metabolism allows you to heal naturally without sleeping. Look at it. It's actually going to wind up getting pretty crazy.
Rapid metabolism (Expanded Psionics Handbook p. 50) [General]
Your wounds heal rapidly.
Prerequisite: CON 13
Benefit: You naturally heal a number of hit points per day equal to the standard healing rate + double your Constitution bonus. You heal even if you do not rest. This healing replaces your normal natural healing. If you are tended successfully by someone with the Heal skill, you instead regain double the normal amount of hit points + double your Constitution bonus.
May your wakeful slumbers be a wellspring of HP.
THE BASICS
Stayin up late again, eh? In order to leverage the hit point stream we discovered we are capable of setting up, we need a little psionic-theurge. What’s the point of having rocketing healing capabilities if you cant make it do anything? Here's the basic stub.
Good aligned human
Str 10,
dex 10,
con 16,
int 12,
wis 14,
cha 15
4th: +1 Charisma
8th: +1 Wisdom
12th: +1 Charisma
16th: +1 Wisdom
20th: +1 Wisdom
Healing hymn bard 2/
Ardent 1/
Healing hymn bard 2/
Child of night 4/
Cerebremancer 1/
Sublime chord 1/
Cerebremancer 9
With the following feats:
1: draw from the land, rapid metabolism
3: practiced manifester
6: ancestral relic (ring of sustenance)
9: wakefulness
12:Body fuel
15: Overchannel
18: Extra music? Linked power? bloodthirsty?
THE BUILD
Level
Class
Base Attack Bonus
Fort Save
Ref Save
Will Save
Skills
Feats
Class Features
1st
Healing hymn Bard
+0
+0
+2
+2
32 skillpoints: k. arcana 4, k. planes 4, k. psionics 4, Listen 4, perform 4, spellcraft 4, psicraft 2, profession astrologer 4,
Draw From the Land, Rapid Metabolism
Bardic Music, Bardic Knowledge, Countersong, Healing Hymn, Inspire Courage +1
2nd
Bard
+1
+0
+3
+3
8: K. arcana 5, Listen 5, K. planes 5, K. psionics 5, perform 5, spellcraft 5, profession 5,
3rd
Ardent
+0
+0
+3
+5
4: psicraft 4, K. arcana 6, K. planes 6
Practiced Manifester
Assume 2 Mantles
4th
Bard
+2
+1
+3
+5
8:k. arcana 7, K. psionics 6, Listen 7, perform 7, spellcraft 6, profession 6
Inspire competence
5th
Bard
+3
+1
+4
+6
8: k. arcana 8, K. planes 8, listen 8, perform 8, concentration 3
6th
Child of Night
+3
+1
+4
+8
4: k. arcana 9, listen 9, perform 8.5
Ancestral Relic (Ring of sustenance)
Cloak of Shadows, Cold Resistance 5
7th
Child of the Night
+4
+1
+4
+9
4: k. arcana 10, listen 10, perform 9
Sustaining Shadow (Eat 1 meal/Week)
8th
Child of Night
+4
+2
+5
+9
4: k. arcana 11, Listen 11, perform 9.5
Dancing Shadows 1/day
9th
Child of Night
+5
+2
+5
+10
4: k. arcana 12, Listen 12, perform 10
Wakefulness
Cloak of shadows (blur 1/day), sustaining shadow (sleep 1 hour/day)
10th
Cerebremancer 1
+5
+2
+5
+12
4: k. arcana 13, listen 13, concentration 4
Advances bard and ardent spells/powers
11th
Sublime Chord
+5
+2
+5
+14
6: perform 14, concentration 6
Bardic lore, bardic music
12th
Cerebremancer 2
+6
+2
+5
+15
4: concentration 10
Body Fuel
advance ardent/sublime chord
13th
Cerebremancer 3
+6
+3
+6
+15
4: Concentration 14
ardent 8/SC 3
14th
Cerebremancer 3
+7
+3
+6
+16
4: concentration 17, K. arcana 14
ardent 9/SC 4
15th
Cerebremancer 5
+7
+3
+6
+16
4:concentration 18, K. arcana 18, perform 15
Overchannel
Ardent 10(11?)/SC 5
16th
Cerebremancer 6
+8
+4
+7
+17
Skills
Ardent 11/ SC6
17th
Cerebremancer 7
+8
+4
+7
+17
Skills
Ardent 12/ SC 7
18th
Cerebremancer 8
+9
+4
+7
+18
Skills
Bloodthirsty spell
Ardent 13 / SC 8
19th
Cerebremancer 9
+9
+5
+8
+18
Skills
Ardent 14/ SC 9
20th
Cerebremancer 10
+10
+5
+8
+19
Skills
Ardent 15/ SC 10
Bard Spells
0:detect magic, message, light, read magic, prestidigitation, lullaby,
1: Healthful Rest (spell comp. p.11), Instant of Power (forge of war p.114), Undersong (Spell Comp. p.227), Inspirational Boost (Spell Comp. 124)
2: Summon Elysian Thrush (Spell Comp p.214), Dark Way (Spell Comp. p.58), Glitterdust, Whirling Blade (Spell comp. p.238)
3: Shadow dagger (Shackled city p.336), g’elsewhere chant (Spell Comp. p.100)
Ardent Powers
1: Deaden Blow (Comp Psi p.82), Thicken skin (XPH p.137)
3: Share Pain (XPH p.132) Hostile Empathic Transfer (Comp Psi p.85), Dispel Psionics (XPH 94)
4: Emapthic Feedback (XPH p.98)
5: Psychotic break (Comp Psi p.97)
6: Fuse Flesh (XPH 109)
8: Psionic Iron Body (XPH 113)
9: Affinity Field Pain (Comp Psi 78)
Sublime Chord Spells
4: polymorph, Celerity (PHB2), Enervation, Dweomer of Transference (XPH)
5: Greater Dispel magic, Boreal wind (Frostburn), greater blink, baleful polymorph
6: tactical teleportation, mental pinnacle, mass charm monster,
7: Energy transformation field, project image, phase door
8: Deadly lahar, polymorph any object
9: Dominate monster
So at first level, thanks to Draw from the Land and Rapid Metabolism, every 4 hours of light activity you get 2xclass level + quadruple constitution in healing. Except that 4 hours of rest counts as 24 hours of complete bed rest. So, maybe you heal 4x class level + octuple your con mod. I'm not sure. You have 9 HP, and you heal somewhere between 14 and 28 HP every four hours. You're a bog standard bard, so inspire courage and have fun getting beat up.
At second level, you can cast Healthful Rest (Spell Comp p.11) for a 24 hour long buff that doubles your heal rate again, bringing us to 4×class level + 8 times your con bonus every four hours of light activity, and possibly double that if it counts as complete bed rest. With 13-18 max HP, and the capacity to heal 32 points of it during every four hours of light activity, you should be able to eat arrows as you get your inspire courage going. Your other spell, Instant of power lets you leverage a +4 bonus to hit, saves, or damage as an immediate action, so skimping on healthful rest eating up a spell slot makes sense.
At third level, you dip ardent and take the practiced manifester feat for access to the guardian and pain and suffering mantles and their first level power choices. Both mantle powers allow you to blow your psionic focus to move damage to yourself. When you gain a new level of ardent, or a prestige class that advances ardent, you'll catch up on powers.
The guardian mantle has less than 10 powers, and so, is a candidate for the substitute power ACF. (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a)
You can add a 7th or 9th level guardian themed power free of charge. Psychofeedback might be an allowable substitution for a fifth level power.
The mantles chosen offer 2 different immediate action abilities that require blowing your psionic focus. Pain and suffering cause your attacker to take half of the damage that they deal to you, and the Guardian mantle allows you to take the damage of an adjacent ally in their stead. You have 17-26 max HP at this level, and you heal 18 HP every four hours (36 HP if you cast healthful rest in the last 24 hours), so feel free to gamble with your Hit Points by standing next to some allies likely to get hit.
Deaden Blow and thicken Skin are the powers chosen, so use them liberally.
We return to the bard. With a new spell known, we pick up Undersong, a spell that allows us to substitute perform checks for concentration. This makes getting our psionic focus back a bit easier after expending it to get whacked on purpose.
You have some real choices to make about your two 1st level spell slots. Healthful rest gives you the capacity to heal 10 HP an hour instead of 5HP, while you have 21-36 HP. Undersong helps with concentration and therefore regaining your psifocus, as you have a +10 to perform checks (+12 with a masterwork instrument) while having a +3 to concentration checks, because you have zero ranks in it at this level. Instant of power is still relevant at this level, so you have all good choices, but you can't choose them all.
Inspire Competence comes online, maybe you'll use it.
At level 5, we gain our second level bard spells. We need a shadow spell as a child of night pre-req, so we're getting Dark Way, as it's always nice to be able to make an illusionary bridge that can carry 200 lbs per caster level.
Now, you can summon an elysian thrush for 8 hours to flit about within 30' of you singing at you to double your natural heal rate again.
Elysian Thrush and Healthful Rest: With both spells up, you gain 8xclass level +16x con bonus HP that you get back every 4 hours. 40 + 48 = 88HP
That's 22 HP an hour.
At sixth level you begin Child of Night. We're riding this to get the sustaining shadow class feature: where you only have need of 1 hour of sleep. Until then, we are taking Ancestral Relic (ring of sustenance). We now only need 2 hours of sleep to get 24 hours of rest, we halve that because of the draw from the land feat, and we don't need to sleep thanks to rapid metabolism.
Further, We can buy a miners helmet (A&EG p.30) and restful candles (A&EG p.33) and just burn them on our heads while we adventure. The alchemical candle costs 100gp and doubles the natural heal rate again if you're within 20' of it and it lasts 8 hours. The miners helmet is 1gp, and allows you to festoon yourself with a candle while adventuring.
Without a candle, with healthful rest and Elysian Thrush up, every hour we heal 8xlevel + 16x constitution mod. ~96 hp/hour.
With a candle, we get 16x level +32xcon mod: 96+96 = 192 hp per hour or 3 HP per minute.
Child of night grants cold resistance 5, which is nice.
Level 7: We are proceeding in child of night, which is now advancing our bardic casting. We only need to eat one meal a week, which is useless. We add Inspirational boost to advance our paltry inspire courage and glitterdust to help with the oodles of invisible enemies that 7th level characters have to deal with.
We have between 33 and 59 HP (average 46HP) and we heal 8xclass level +16 X con bonus (104 HP) per hour (or 208 per hour with the candle).
Level 8: We have the dancing shadows mystery as a Su ability 1/day, granting concealment for 3 rounds. Eh. Maybe if you need a few rounds of miss chance to heal up. We add +1 to wisdom. By now, we can pump more money into our ancestral relic ring of sustenance to advance our ability scores.
At level 9, sustaining shadow kicks in and we take the wakefulness feat.
Ring of sustenance brings our 8 hours of sleep needs down to 2 hours. Sustaining shadow gives us 8 hours of rest in 1 hour. So, assuming they work together, 15 minutes sustaining shadow sustenance is the equivalent of 8 hours of sleep. Draw from the land halves that. Wakefulness halves it again. Healing hymn makes 3.75 minutes of rest the equivalent of 24 hours of complete bed rest.
Draw from the land, elusian thrush, healthful rest, and a restful candle multiply your healing rate by 16.
Your natural heal rate includes 2x your con mod thanks to rapid metabolism.
And you don't need to sleep to heal, again thanks to rapid metabolism.
9(class level)x16(heal rate) +3 (con mod) x32 (heal rate)= 144+ 96 =240 hp every 3.75 minutes. That's 64 hp a minute. Each minute is 10 six second rounds. You have fast healing 6.
But here's the thing, I've been calculating all of these as if you're doing a day of light activity. It can be argued that you get only the standard healing rate thereby not allowing for the doubled hp from draw from the land because adventuring isn’t light activity. But healing hymn makes your rest count as 24 hours, and thanks to rapid metabolism, you heal when you don’t rest, so it can be argued that you just get tripled natural healing over this period: standard healing rate 1 hp/level + 2xcon mod per 8 hours rest, 8 hours rest under a healing hymn counts as 24 hours rest. So 3hp/level + 6x con mod is the base. It is doubled 3 times (thrush, healthful rest, candle) to reach a multiplier of 24 times class level and 48 times con mod. A nice even 360 hp per 3.75 minutes. 96 hp a minute. 9.6 hp a round. If that’s confusing, that is because it is confusing.
We also get new spells: Whirling blade, shadow dagger, and g’elsewhere chant are the three chosen. Shadow dagger is a sweet little spell tucked away in an obscure source. Here it is for you.
Shadow dagger
Illusion [shadow]
Level: Bard 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V,S
Casting Time: 1 Standard Action
Range: 0 ft.
Effect: One shadowy Masterwork Dagger
Duration: 1 round/Level
Saving Throw: Will negates; See Text
Spell Resistance: Yes
A shadowy masterwork dagger appears in your hand. On subsequent rounds, you can wield the dagger as though it was a real masterwork dagger. Each time the dagger hits, it deals normal damage and forces the target to make a Will save. If the Will save fails, the shadow dagger deals and addition 1d6 points of damage per caster level (maximum 10d6)
Surely you can see why this is paired with whirling blade, 1d4+7d6 damage in a straight 60’ line is pretty good for bard damage, and it gets to use your charisma mod for the attack and damage rolls.
Remember when we took ardent seemingly for just two lame powers and a couple once-per-encounter immediate-action abilities? Now we take a level of cerebremancer. We gain access to the share pain power. Borrow that beatstick's pain. You have 45-80 hp (average 62) and Fast healing 10. Fast healing 5 if you’re conserving candles. You have just begun the crazy part of the build as we use sublime chord and cerebremancer to continue the chicanery.
Level 11!Sublime chord! You figure out the spells. Just kidding, I'll choose some spells, but keep in mind you can choose other spells if you somehow get this monstrosity approved by a DM.
Obviously, polymorph is a great option. Not only do you heal as if you rested for a night, but you get to be a monster. Going for utility, we'll back that up with celerity and enervation. We'll add bards' discount level 5 greater dispel.
Level 12: Cerebremancer 2: We're short on power points (only 11 + wisdom bonus), if only there were a way to get some more pp at low cost to ourselves. What if we take the Body fuel feat? We heal 24 ability score points per 3.75 minutes. That's About 1 every other round, so we can just regain 2 PP every other round by burning off a point of strength, dexterity, and constitution and healing it back. We add another ardent power: Empathic Feedback. Get out there and get hit! Cerebremancer advances sublime chord casting too, so if we pick up the Dweomer of Transference spell, we can burn spell slots for PP.
We have between 53 and 96 HP (average 74HP) and we heal a lot real fast depending on how it's calculated, anywhere between 3 to 12 HP a round
Level 13: Cerebremancer 3. We manifest as an 8th level ardent (with the pp of a 4th level one). We can add hostile empathic transfer, I guess.
Level 15: Cerebremancer 5: Overchannel: now hostile empathic transfer is wild. You Take 5d8 damage just to manifest it. You cast spells as an 9th level bard, or a 5th level sublime chord, and you manifest as an 11th level ardent. Fast healing 13.4
At level 18, the bloodthirsty feat allows us to put the bloodless template on a spell. And if we have, our sleep grants double healing again. Actually, we get 24 hours rest, so we triple it. 72 × class level + 144×con mod/3.75 minutes = 460hp a minute, 46 per round
At level 20, we heal 16.4 per round without the bloodleach, 49 with. We have 9th level sublime casting and 12th level ardent manifesting. Actually, with practiced manifester we have 16th level manifesting. 8th level powers. If overchannel allows you to choose powers on level up, you can get 9ths. And the 9th you want is affinity field pain. If not, you need to Orange ioun stone or to pay to put the ioun stones effect onto your ancestral relic.
Ability scores
The big problem of this build is ability scores.
STR 10, Dex 10, con 16,
wis 14 int 12, cha 15.
You need +5 wis, +4 cha, and ideally, +2 con to cast all of our spells/powers and to get more hp back per unit time.
We have 3 ability score boosts from class levels before level 15, so we can add two to charisma and 1 to wisdom. Bringing our needs down to +4 wisdom, +2 charisma, and +2 constitution. Level 16 adds another wisdom.
So, we're gonna price out that ancestral relic .
+1 enhancement bonus = 1000× 1.5 (nonstandard spot) x 1.5 (addition of ability) ×2 (base price to market price)= 4500
+2 enhancement bonus = 4000 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 2 - (cost of +1 bonus) = 18,000-4500 = 13,500
+3 enhancement bonus = 9000 ×1.5 ×1.5 ×2 = 40,500 (-18,000)=22,500
+4 enhancement bonus 16,000 ×1.5 ×1.5 ×2 = 72,000
Orange ioun stone= 30k × 1.5 additional power × 1.5 nonstandard spot = 90k
Continuous acorn of far travel: spell level×caster level×2000÷.5 ×1.5 (additional power) ×2 market price= 2×4×1000×1.5=24,000
Level 4: ring of sustenance= 2500 of 2700
Level 7: wis +1=7000 of 9500
Level 8: cha +1=11500 of 13500
Level 9: con +1 = 16000 of 18000
Level 11: wis +2 = 31,500 of 33,000
Level 13: cha +2 = 45,000 of 55,000
Level 14: con +2 = 58,500 of 75,000
Level 17: Orange ioun stone 90k? 160,500 of 170,000
Level 18: wis +3 = 183,000 of 220,000
Acorn of far travel 207,000 of 220,000
Level 20: con +4 = 265,500 of 380,000
What you'll need to figure out:
Do you heal in chunks or gradually? That 3.75 minute rest period while adventuring, do those hp get delivered continuously like a comic book healing factor? Or is it delivered in chunks all at once every 3.75 minutes?
Does your non sleeping rest period of 3.75 minutes eat up the entire effect of healing hymn or do the effects of it last 8 hours? You might need to invest in some gear based bardic music attempts.
Can overchannel qualify you for an ardents' access to higher level powers, as you have the capacity to hit the caster level requirements? Probably not, right?
What powers can you get on your mantles with the substitute mantle handwaive of an Alternative class feature? Anyway, I put some thought into it.
The wishlist for substitute powers for the mantles are:
Forced share pain (pain mantle 3 in place of mental turmoil)?
Empathic transfer (guardian 2 or 3)
Psionic contingency (guardian 6 or 7)
Psychofeedback (guardian 6 or 7)
Psionic revivify (guardian or pain 5,6, or 7)
"Resting Heal Face"
INTRODUCTION
Look, I'm no Piggy Knowles, but I love his showcases, and like him, I have years of spare build parts and ideas strewn across my digital storage. My particular focus of interest in optimization isn't really where the rules work to make solid builds, but more of the opposite: where the rules as written are a little insufficient and experimentally exploitable to create whole new optimization frontiers of ridiculous and unanticipated results. This edition of D&D has over 127 books, numerous web add-ons, and scores of authors between them, and with that comes strange redundancies and synergies that are just delightful to toy with.
So here is a dedicated effort to flesh out some of these build exploits into full write-ups, workshopped with other character optimization enthusiasts to show off a fancy new TO type trick and spur discussion, all in an homage to Piggy's Showcases.
In general, the intent is to create something that can be played theoretically, if you get permission from whomever is running your game, as the results of this munchkinry aren't fair to foist onto an unsuspecting DM. If the undergirding suppositions of how these rules work as written are accepted, a “reasonable” level 1 to level 20 build is provided.
Again, the goal is discussion, so feel free to discuss the build, talk about other options, make suggestions or tear it all to shreds. Also, feel free to use anything showcased here in any of your campaigns—and let us know how they work out if you do!
Right now the group consists of myself, the Viscount, Akal Saris, Venger, WhamBamSam, Darrin, Zaq and the inestimable Piggy Knowles. Typically one of us writes up the build concept and possibly a stub, the others share feedback on Discord or in some of the shared documents we have, and together we refine things until we’re happy with the final product.
For this showcase, it’s time to take a good long look at the sleep rules. Remember The Sleepless Beauty? Presented here is the Sleepless Knight.
https://media2.giphy.com/media/CxUmmgdMkOkYU/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e477xi3m046jy7d7ico84p9qbl2oon6 86ie1hnbmpls&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g
"BETTER THAN THE REST"
BACKGROUND
So this build works a little differently. What happens when you can naturally heal at massive rates even when you're not resting? This is a math-heavy bit of theory-craft, so let's see what happens when we combine a bunch of natural healing buffs with some feats and class features.
Since we aren't recharging spell slots or anything, we are going to focus on healing as fast as possible and figure out what to do with that. There are two ways to accomplish this goal: reduce your sleep needs to the smallest possible time increments and to use spells, feats, gear, and class features to exponentially increase your healing rate. So, let’s take a look at the ingredients!
A healing hymn bard (Complete Champion ACF) can play music for a minute and give you 24 hours of complete rest during your normal sleep period. Our goal is to change that sleep period and see what we can get out of it. The bard also has access to two early level spells that double your natural healing rate; healthful rest and summon elysian thrush.
We are running for the Child of Night prestige class from the Shadowcaster section of the Tome of Magic. They get a four level long rapid advancement of a shadowcaster class feature called sustaining shadow, which reads as follows:
Sustaining Shadow(Ex): When you reach 5th level, your bond to the Plane of Shadow allows you to absorb dark energies, mitigating certain biological needs. You need eat only a single meal per week to maintain health. At 10th level, you only need 1 hour of sleep per night (but you must still rest for 8 hours to regain your mysteries for the next day)
Unlike the shadowcaster, you get this 1 hour of sleep per night buff in just four child of night class levels.
We aren’t nearly finished, but it seems like it is worth it to point out that with just 10 class levels and two spell slots, we heal at EIGHT times the standard rate everytime we take an hour-long nap.
The Draw From the Land feat halves your need for sleep and doubles your heal rate for complete bed rest.
The Wakefulness feat halves your sleep needs by half again. If you're keeping score so far, that's 24 hours of rest in 15 minutes.
Lastly, the ring of sustenance "refreshes the body and mind, so that its wearer needs only sleep 2 hours per day to gain the benefit of 8 hours of sleep." Assuming that the sustaining shadow class feature has primacy, 15 minutes of sleep with a ring of sustenance worn grants you the effects of 8 hours of sleep, because you only need ⅛ of the usual sleep to function. This need is then halved twice from the Wakefulness and the Draw From the Land feats, bringing our total sleep needs down to three and three quarter minutes, while our healing speed has been multiplied by 8 or more.
But there's a throwaway line in another feat that breaks this whole approach wide open.
Rapid metabolism allows you to heal naturally without sleeping. Look at it. It's actually going to wind up getting pretty crazy.
Rapid metabolism (Expanded Psionics Handbook p. 50) [General]
Your wounds heal rapidly.
Prerequisite: CON 13
Benefit: You naturally heal a number of hit points per day equal to the standard healing rate + double your Constitution bonus. You heal even if you do not rest. This healing replaces your normal natural healing. If you are tended successfully by someone with the Heal skill, you instead regain double the normal amount of hit points + double your Constitution bonus.
May your wakeful slumbers be a wellspring of HP.
THE BASICS
Stayin up late again, eh? In order to leverage the hit point stream we discovered we are capable of setting up, we need a little psionic-theurge. What’s the point of having rocketing healing capabilities if you cant make it do anything? Here's the basic stub.
Good aligned human
Str 10,
dex 10,
con 16,
int 12,
wis 14,
cha 15
4th: +1 Charisma
8th: +1 Wisdom
12th: +1 Charisma
16th: +1 Wisdom
20th: +1 Wisdom
Healing hymn bard 2/
Ardent 1/
Healing hymn bard 2/
Child of night 4/
Cerebremancer 1/
Sublime chord 1/
Cerebremancer 9
With the following feats:
1: draw from the land, rapid metabolism
3: practiced manifester
6: ancestral relic (ring of sustenance)
9: wakefulness
12:Body fuel
15: Overchannel
18: Extra music? Linked power? bloodthirsty?
THE BUILD
Level
Class
Base Attack Bonus
Fort Save
Ref Save
Will Save
Skills
Feats
Class Features
1st
Healing hymn Bard
+0
+0
+2
+2
32 skillpoints: k. arcana 4, k. planes 4, k. psionics 4, Listen 4, perform 4, spellcraft 4, psicraft 2, profession astrologer 4,
Draw From the Land, Rapid Metabolism
Bardic Music, Bardic Knowledge, Countersong, Healing Hymn, Inspire Courage +1
2nd
Bard
+1
+0
+3
+3
8: K. arcana 5, Listen 5, K. planes 5, K. psionics 5, perform 5, spellcraft 5, profession 5,
3rd
Ardent
+0
+0
+3
+5
4: psicraft 4, K. arcana 6, K. planes 6
Practiced Manifester
Assume 2 Mantles
4th
Bard
+2
+1
+3
+5
8:k. arcana 7, K. psionics 6, Listen 7, perform 7, spellcraft 6, profession 6
Inspire competence
5th
Bard
+3
+1
+4
+6
8: k. arcana 8, K. planes 8, listen 8, perform 8, concentration 3
6th
Child of Night
+3
+1
+4
+8
4: k. arcana 9, listen 9, perform 8.5
Ancestral Relic (Ring of sustenance)
Cloak of Shadows, Cold Resistance 5
7th
Child of the Night
+4
+1
+4
+9
4: k. arcana 10, listen 10, perform 9
Sustaining Shadow (Eat 1 meal/Week)
8th
Child of Night
+4
+2
+5
+9
4: k. arcana 11, Listen 11, perform 9.5
Dancing Shadows 1/day
9th
Child of Night
+5
+2
+5
+10
4: k. arcana 12, Listen 12, perform 10
Wakefulness
Cloak of shadows (blur 1/day), sustaining shadow (sleep 1 hour/day)
10th
Cerebremancer 1
+5
+2
+5
+12
4: k. arcana 13, listen 13, concentration 4
Advances bard and ardent spells/powers
11th
Sublime Chord
+5
+2
+5
+14
6: perform 14, concentration 6
Bardic lore, bardic music
12th
Cerebremancer 2
+6
+2
+5
+15
4: concentration 10
Body Fuel
advance ardent/sublime chord
13th
Cerebremancer 3
+6
+3
+6
+15
4: Concentration 14
ardent 8/SC 3
14th
Cerebremancer 3
+7
+3
+6
+16
4: concentration 17, K. arcana 14
ardent 9/SC 4
15th
Cerebremancer 5
+7
+3
+6
+16
4:concentration 18, K. arcana 18, perform 15
Overchannel
Ardent 10(11?)/SC 5
16th
Cerebremancer 6
+8
+4
+7
+17
Skills
Ardent 11/ SC6
17th
Cerebremancer 7
+8
+4
+7
+17
Skills
Ardent 12/ SC 7
18th
Cerebremancer 8
+9
+4
+7
+18
Skills
Bloodthirsty spell
Ardent 13 / SC 8
19th
Cerebremancer 9
+9
+5
+8
+18
Skills
Ardent 14/ SC 9
20th
Cerebremancer 10
+10
+5
+8
+19
Skills
Ardent 15/ SC 10
Bard Spells
0:detect magic, message, light, read magic, prestidigitation, lullaby,
1: Healthful Rest (spell comp. p.11), Instant of Power (forge of war p.114), Undersong (Spell Comp. p.227), Inspirational Boost (Spell Comp. 124)
2: Summon Elysian Thrush (Spell Comp p.214), Dark Way (Spell Comp. p.58), Glitterdust, Whirling Blade (Spell comp. p.238)
3: Shadow dagger (Shackled city p.336), g’elsewhere chant (Spell Comp. p.100)
Ardent Powers
1: Deaden Blow (Comp Psi p.82), Thicken skin (XPH p.137)
3: Share Pain (XPH p.132) Hostile Empathic Transfer (Comp Psi p.85), Dispel Psionics (XPH 94)
4: Emapthic Feedback (XPH p.98)
5: Psychotic break (Comp Psi p.97)
6: Fuse Flesh (XPH 109)
8: Psionic Iron Body (XPH 113)
9: Affinity Field Pain (Comp Psi 78)
Sublime Chord Spells
4: polymorph, Celerity (PHB2), Enervation, Dweomer of Transference (XPH)
5: Greater Dispel magic, Boreal wind (Frostburn), greater blink, baleful polymorph
6: tactical teleportation, mental pinnacle, mass charm monster,
7: Energy transformation field, project image, phase door
8: Deadly lahar, polymorph any object
9: Dominate monster
So at first level, thanks to Draw from the Land and Rapid Metabolism, every 4 hours of light activity you get 2xclass level + quadruple constitution in healing. Except that 4 hours of rest counts as 24 hours of complete bed rest. So, maybe you heal 4x class level + octuple your con mod. I'm not sure. You have 9 HP, and you heal somewhere between 14 and 28 HP every four hours. You're a bog standard bard, so inspire courage and have fun getting beat up.
At second level, you can cast Healthful Rest (Spell Comp p.11) for a 24 hour long buff that doubles your heal rate again, bringing us to 4×class level + 8 times your con bonus every four hours of light activity, and possibly double that if it counts as complete bed rest. With 13-18 max HP, and the capacity to heal 32 points of it during every four hours of light activity, you should be able to eat arrows as you get your inspire courage going. Your other spell, Instant of power lets you leverage a +4 bonus to hit, saves, or damage as an immediate action, so skimping on healthful rest eating up a spell slot makes sense.
At third level, you dip ardent and take the practiced manifester feat for access to the guardian and pain and suffering mantles and their first level power choices. Both mantle powers allow you to blow your psionic focus to move damage to yourself. When you gain a new level of ardent, or a prestige class that advances ardent, you'll catch up on powers.
The guardian mantle has less than 10 powers, and so, is a candidate for the substitute power ACF. (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a)
You can add a 7th or 9th level guardian themed power free of charge. Psychofeedback might be an allowable substitution for a fifth level power.
The mantles chosen offer 2 different immediate action abilities that require blowing your psionic focus. Pain and suffering cause your attacker to take half of the damage that they deal to you, and the Guardian mantle allows you to take the damage of an adjacent ally in their stead. You have 17-26 max HP at this level, and you heal 18 HP every four hours (36 HP if you cast healthful rest in the last 24 hours), so feel free to gamble with your Hit Points by standing next to some allies likely to get hit.
Deaden Blow and thicken Skin are the powers chosen, so use them liberally.
We return to the bard. With a new spell known, we pick up Undersong, a spell that allows us to substitute perform checks for concentration. This makes getting our psionic focus back a bit easier after expending it to get whacked on purpose.
You have some real choices to make about your two 1st level spell slots. Healthful rest gives you the capacity to heal 10 HP an hour instead of 5HP, while you have 21-36 HP. Undersong helps with concentration and therefore regaining your psifocus, as you have a +10 to perform checks (+12 with a masterwork instrument) while having a +3 to concentration checks, because you have zero ranks in it at this level. Instant of power is still relevant at this level, so you have all good choices, but you can't choose them all.
Inspire Competence comes online, maybe you'll use it.
At level 5, we gain our second level bard spells. We need a shadow spell as a child of night pre-req, so we're getting Dark Way, as it's always nice to be able to make an illusionary bridge that can carry 200 lbs per caster level.
Now, you can summon an elysian thrush for 8 hours to flit about within 30' of you singing at you to double your natural heal rate again.
Elysian Thrush and Healthful Rest: With both spells up, you gain 8xclass level +16x con bonus HP that you get back every 4 hours. 40 + 48 = 88HP
That's 22 HP an hour.
At sixth level you begin Child of Night. We're riding this to get the sustaining shadow class feature: where you only have need of 1 hour of sleep. Until then, we are taking Ancestral Relic (ring of sustenance). We now only need 2 hours of sleep to get 24 hours of rest, we halve that because of the draw from the land feat, and we don't need to sleep thanks to rapid metabolism.
Further, We can buy a miners helmet (A&EG p.30) and restful candles (A&EG p.33) and just burn them on our heads while we adventure. The alchemical candle costs 100gp and doubles the natural heal rate again if you're within 20' of it and it lasts 8 hours. The miners helmet is 1gp, and allows you to festoon yourself with a candle while adventuring.
Without a candle, with healthful rest and Elysian Thrush up, every hour we heal 8xlevel + 16x constitution mod. ~96 hp/hour.
With a candle, we get 16x level +32xcon mod: 96+96 = 192 hp per hour or 3 HP per minute.
Child of night grants cold resistance 5, which is nice.
Level 7: We are proceeding in child of night, which is now advancing our bardic casting. We only need to eat one meal a week, which is useless. We add Inspirational boost to advance our paltry inspire courage and glitterdust to help with the oodles of invisible enemies that 7th level characters have to deal with.
We have between 33 and 59 HP (average 46HP) and we heal 8xclass level +16 X con bonus (104 HP) per hour (or 208 per hour with the candle).
Level 8: We have the dancing shadows mystery as a Su ability 1/day, granting concealment for 3 rounds. Eh. Maybe if you need a few rounds of miss chance to heal up. We add +1 to wisdom. By now, we can pump more money into our ancestral relic ring of sustenance to advance our ability scores.
At level 9, sustaining shadow kicks in and we take the wakefulness feat.
Ring of sustenance brings our 8 hours of sleep needs down to 2 hours. Sustaining shadow gives us 8 hours of rest in 1 hour. So, assuming they work together, 15 minutes sustaining shadow sustenance is the equivalent of 8 hours of sleep. Draw from the land halves that. Wakefulness halves it again. Healing hymn makes 3.75 minutes of rest the equivalent of 24 hours of complete bed rest.
Draw from the land, elusian thrush, healthful rest, and a restful candle multiply your healing rate by 16.
Your natural heal rate includes 2x your con mod thanks to rapid metabolism.
And you don't need to sleep to heal, again thanks to rapid metabolism.
9(class level)x16(heal rate) +3 (con mod) x32 (heal rate)= 144+ 96 =240 hp every 3.75 minutes. That's 64 hp a minute. Each minute is 10 six second rounds. You have fast healing 6.
But here's the thing, I've been calculating all of these as if you're doing a day of light activity. It can be argued that you get only the standard healing rate thereby not allowing for the doubled hp from draw from the land because adventuring isn’t light activity. But healing hymn makes your rest count as 24 hours, and thanks to rapid metabolism, you heal when you don’t rest, so it can be argued that you just get tripled natural healing over this period: standard healing rate 1 hp/level + 2xcon mod per 8 hours rest, 8 hours rest under a healing hymn counts as 24 hours rest. So 3hp/level + 6x con mod is the base. It is doubled 3 times (thrush, healthful rest, candle) to reach a multiplier of 24 times class level and 48 times con mod. A nice even 360 hp per 3.75 minutes. 96 hp a minute. 9.6 hp a round. If that’s confusing, that is because it is confusing.
We also get new spells: Whirling blade, shadow dagger, and g’elsewhere chant are the three chosen. Shadow dagger is a sweet little spell tucked away in an obscure source. Here it is for you.
Shadow dagger
Illusion [shadow]
Level: Bard 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V,S
Casting Time: 1 Standard Action
Range: 0 ft.
Effect: One shadowy Masterwork Dagger
Duration: 1 round/Level
Saving Throw: Will negates; See Text
Spell Resistance: Yes
A shadowy masterwork dagger appears in your hand. On subsequent rounds, you can wield the dagger as though it was a real masterwork dagger. Each time the dagger hits, it deals normal damage and forces the target to make a Will save. If the Will save fails, the shadow dagger deals and addition 1d6 points of damage per caster level (maximum 10d6)
Surely you can see why this is paired with whirling blade, 1d4+7d6 damage in a straight 60’ line is pretty good for bard damage, and it gets to use your charisma mod for the attack and damage rolls.
Remember when we took ardent seemingly for just two lame powers and a couple once-per-encounter immediate-action abilities? Now we take a level of cerebremancer. We gain access to the share pain power. Borrow that beatstick's pain. You have 45-80 hp (average 62) and Fast healing 10. Fast healing 5 if you’re conserving candles. You have just begun the crazy part of the build as we use sublime chord and cerebremancer to continue the chicanery.
Level 11!Sublime chord! You figure out the spells. Just kidding, I'll choose some spells, but keep in mind you can choose other spells if you somehow get this monstrosity approved by a DM.
Obviously, polymorph is a great option. Not only do you heal as if you rested for a night, but you get to be a monster. Going for utility, we'll back that up with celerity and enervation. We'll add bards' discount level 5 greater dispel.
Level 12: Cerebremancer 2: We're short on power points (only 11 + wisdom bonus), if only there were a way to get some more pp at low cost to ourselves. What if we take the Body fuel feat? We heal 24 ability score points per 3.75 minutes. That's About 1 every other round, so we can just regain 2 PP every other round by burning off a point of strength, dexterity, and constitution and healing it back. We add another ardent power: Empathic Feedback. Get out there and get hit! Cerebremancer advances sublime chord casting too, so if we pick up the Dweomer of Transference spell, we can burn spell slots for PP.
We have between 53 and 96 HP (average 74HP) and we heal a lot real fast depending on how it's calculated, anywhere between 3 to 12 HP a round
Level 13: Cerebremancer 3. We manifest as an 8th level ardent (with the pp of a 4th level one). We can add hostile empathic transfer, I guess.
Level 15: Cerebremancer 5: Overchannel: now hostile empathic transfer is wild. You Take 5d8 damage just to manifest it. You cast spells as an 9th level bard, or a 5th level sublime chord, and you manifest as an 11th level ardent. Fast healing 13.4
At level 18, the bloodthirsty feat allows us to put the bloodless template on a spell. And if we have, our sleep grants double healing again. Actually, we get 24 hours rest, so we triple it. 72 × class level + 144×con mod/3.75 minutes = 460hp a minute, 46 per round
At level 20, we heal 16.4 per round without the bloodleach, 49 with. We have 9th level sublime casting and 12th level ardent manifesting. Actually, with practiced manifester we have 16th level manifesting. 8th level powers. If overchannel allows you to choose powers on level up, you can get 9ths. And the 9th you want is affinity field pain. If not, you need to Orange ioun stone or to pay to put the ioun stones effect onto your ancestral relic.
Ability scores
The big problem of this build is ability scores.
STR 10, Dex 10, con 16,
wis 14 int 12, cha 15.
You need +5 wis, +4 cha, and ideally, +2 con to cast all of our spells/powers and to get more hp back per unit time.
We have 3 ability score boosts from class levels before level 15, so we can add two to charisma and 1 to wisdom. Bringing our needs down to +4 wisdom, +2 charisma, and +2 constitution. Level 16 adds another wisdom.
So, we're gonna price out that ancestral relic .
+1 enhancement bonus = 1000× 1.5 (nonstandard spot) x 1.5 (addition of ability) ×2 (base price to market price)= 4500
+2 enhancement bonus = 4000 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 2 - (cost of +1 bonus) = 18,000-4500 = 13,500
+3 enhancement bonus = 9000 ×1.5 ×1.5 ×2 = 40,500 (-18,000)=22,500
+4 enhancement bonus 16,000 ×1.5 ×1.5 ×2 = 72,000
Orange ioun stone= 30k × 1.5 additional power × 1.5 nonstandard spot = 90k
Continuous acorn of far travel: spell level×caster level×2000÷.5 ×1.5 (additional power) ×2 market price= 2×4×1000×1.5=24,000
Level 4: ring of sustenance= 2500 of 2700
Level 7: wis +1=7000 of 9500
Level 8: cha +1=11500 of 13500
Level 9: con +1 = 16000 of 18000
Level 11: wis +2 = 31,500 of 33,000
Level 13: cha +2 = 45,000 of 55,000
Level 14: con +2 = 58,500 of 75,000
Level 17: Orange ioun stone 90k? 160,500 of 170,000
Level 18: wis +3 = 183,000 of 220,000
Acorn of far travel 207,000 of 220,000
Level 20: con +4 = 265,500 of 380,000
What you'll need to figure out:
Do you heal in chunks or gradually? That 3.75 minute rest period while adventuring, do those hp get delivered continuously like a comic book healing factor? Or is it delivered in chunks all at once every 3.75 minutes?
Does your non sleeping rest period of 3.75 minutes eat up the entire effect of healing hymn or do the effects of it last 8 hours? You might need to invest in some gear based bardic music attempts.
Can overchannel qualify you for an ardents' access to higher level powers, as you have the capacity to hit the caster level requirements? Probably not, right?
What powers can you get on your mantles with the substitute mantle handwaive of an Alternative class feature? Anyway, I put some thought into it.
The wishlist for substitute powers for the mantles are:
Forced share pain (pain mantle 3 in place of mental turmoil)?
Empathic transfer (guardian 2 or 3)
Psionic contingency (guardian 6 or 7)
Psychofeedback (guardian 6 or 7)
Psionic revivify (guardian or pain 5,6, or 7)