When all you have is godhood

[Beni-Kujaku]

How would you go about optimizing a level 1 demigod?

Consider a regular ECL 6 character‚ then give them a divine rank of 1‚ full with all the abilities and the salient divine ability. They gain the divine array of ability scores (35, 29, 25, 24, 24, 24 before racial adjustments) to allow them to qualify for SDA. The character is supposed to fight high-level foes (at least in the CR15-20 range) including some DivR 0 enemies along with a similarly-leveled mortal party. What would be the best class levels‚ and the best salient ability?


Restrictions :
- Alter Reality is banned. Way too unbalanced with other DSA.
- You can't grant spells that you can't cast by yourself. If you can cast a divine spell‚ you can grant it to anybody who prays you for one hour. You can cast all the divine spells you know spontaneously and recover all your divine spell slots by meditating (praying to yourself) for an hour.
- When something calls for creature of a specific kind‚ such as the Familiar ability or the Control Creature SDA‚ you can only choose Humanoids‚ Monstrous Humanoids‚ Animals‚ Giants‚ Vermin‚ Plants‚ Oozes‚ Elementals‚ Dragons‚ Undead or Constructs with a CR and a number of HD 10 or lower.


I think I would personnally go with a Strongheart Halfling Wizard 1 Warblade 5‚ with a Brass Wyrmling as my familiar‚ abusing both the fact that dragons gain new attacks when they increase in size and the fact that Alter Size grants size modifiers‚ making me and it Colossal creatures by a free action with respectively 69 and 50 Str‚ using a spiked chain for me and 6 natural attacks for the wyrmling. White Raven Tactics allows the Wyrmling to attack twice per round.


Do your best!

[Jervis]

How would you go about optimizing a level 1 demigod?

Consider a regular ECL 6 character‚ then give them a divine rank of 1‚ full with all the abilities and the salient divine ability. They gain the divine array of ability scores (35, 29, 25, 24, 24, 24 before racial adjustments) to allow them to qualify for SDA. The character is supposed to fight high-level foes (at least in the CR15-20 range) including some DivR 0 enemies along with a similarly-leveled mortal party. What would be the best class levels‚ and the best salient ability?


Restrictions :
- Alter Reality is banned. Way too unbalanced with other DSA.
- You can't grant spells that you can't cast by yourself. If you can cast a divine spell‚ you can grant it to anybody who prays you for one hour. You can cast all the divine spells you know spontaneously and recover all your divine spell slots by meditating (praying to yourself) for an hour.
- When something calls for creature of a specific kind‚ such as the Familiar ability or the Control Creature SDA‚ you can only choose Humanoids‚ Monstrous Humanoids‚ Animals‚ Giants‚ Vermin‚ Plants‚ Oozes‚ Elementals‚ Dragons‚ Undead or Constructs with a CR and a number of HD 10 or lower.


I think I would personnally go with a Strongheart Halfling Wizard 1 Warblade 5‚ with a Brass Wyrmling as my familiar‚ abusing both the fact that dragons gain new attacks when they increase in size and the fact that Alter Size grants size modifiers‚ making me and it Colossal creatures by a free action with respectively 69 and 50 Str‚ using a spiked chain for me and 6 natural attacks for the wyrmling. White Raven Tactics allows the Wyrmling to attack twice per round.


Do your best!

I don’t mean to be rude but removing the two main things that a divine rank gives you kinda makes discussing divine rank pointless. Cleric spells and alter reality are kind of their main thing. The creature type thing seems kind of arbitrary.

But with the rules presented I’d go Archivist. Arcane mastery for a SDA. Doesn’t really take much optimization when you have spontaneous casting of all wizard spells without a spell book and all divine spells as well.

[Beni-Kujaku]

I don’t mean to be rude but removing the two main things that a divine rank gives you kinda makes discussing divine rank pointless. Cleric spells and alter reality are kind of their main thing. The creature type thing seems kind of arbitrary.

But with the rules presented I’d go Archivist. Arcane mastery for a SDA. Doesn’t really take much optimization when you have spontaneous casting of all wizard spells without a spell book and all divine spells as well.

Well, I didn't want it to just be "well, take Alter Reality and you can do anything", or "well, you can cast every cleric spell spontaneously, so you can do anything", or "well, you can have an Elder Titan as your familiar, so you can do anything". Restrictions in an optimization challenge are meant to make more things viable, not less.

Also, Arcane Mastery states:
"Benefit
The deity can prepare any wizard spell that it can cast without using a spellbook."

An Archivist 6 cannot cast any spell above 3rd level, so they may only cast 3rd level or lower spells, even if they can indeed (probably, the "provided they have enough wizard levels to cast them" may mean that an archivist gains nothing out of it) cast any 3rd level or lower cleric and wizard spell.

[ShurikVch]

Even with the all listed restrictions - what's prevent us from selecting the Luck domain, and spamming components-free Miracle (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/miracle.htm) every round?

[Beni-Kujaku]

Even with the all listed restrictions - what's prevent us from selecting the Luck domain, and spamming components-free Miracle (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/miracle.htm) every round?

"Any domain spell it can grant". Since it can only grant spells it can cast‚ it can't use high level spells.

[Particle_Man]

With those stats a normally MAD class might be fun. Monk and Paladin, this is your moment to shine! :smallbiggrin:

So for the divine goodness, i will go Monk2/Paladin 4 and take Ascetic Knight and Leadership. Bless Weapon for you and your 4th+ paladin follower/worshippers! (Or can you grant Bless Weapon to anyone that worships you regardless of whether they are 4th+ paladins? I am not up on Divine rules).

[tyckspoon]

..looking for decent options for this reminds me of just how inconsistent the Salient Divine Abilities are. Half of them are things you wouldn't even take as a feat, half of them are pretty ok but not, like, especially -godly-.. and then you get Alter Reality and Arcane Mastery.

Speaking of Arcane Mastery even limited to 6 levels worth of spellcasting that's probably a decent pick, because of the other main clause for what it does for you: "The deity also can invent new sorcerer/wizard spells without researching them." So.. you can prepare any spell of 3rd level or less, and if one doesn't already exist that does what you need, you just create it. Even trying to give a fuzzy ruling that you can only invent spells of equivalent power to the ones that already exist (IE, you can't instantly research 'Miracle, but it's 1st level') there's a huge amount of flexibility and problems you can solve when you can just make a very narrowly tailored spell to deal with it.

Automatic Metamagic could be a good route - Auto Metamagic: Persist could let you use your available spells to make up for your shortage of actual class levels, at least as far as trying to hike your numbers up where they need to be. You'd be very vulnerable to dispelling, tho.

Suppose Hand of Death is too obvious a pick? If you take 'works like Destruction' at face value it won't work on everything you might have to deal with (being a [Death] effect and all, it's fairly easy to find an immunity to it) but there should be a reasonable number of fights you can solve by just making them test against it until they fail.

Don't want anything that scales by Divine Rank, obviously, and a lot of those abilities are pretty sad anyways. Scaling by stat isn't bad, Divine Blast could be usable?

[ShurikVch]

"Any domain spell it can grant". Since it can only grant spells it can cast‚ it can't use high level spells.
Pact Insidious for 9th-level spell slot?

[pabelfly]

There's a lot of overpowered stuff available for divine abilities. I think I would make a build based around Divine Blast though. 14d12 damage, and you can use the attack 16 times per day, if you had 36 CHA.

Build Stub would be Paladin 2/Battledancer 2/Fighter 2. CHA to AC, CHA to saves, and some fighter bonus feats.

Feats:
Weapon Focus (Ray)
Evil Blessing - normally weak but flavourful, but with these stats you can spend a standard action to get another +13 to all your saves for 5 turns.

Not sure what else I'd get for the build.