Iron Chef E6 Appetizer Edition, Round XXXVIII

[Zaq]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/647393639886094337/853704182153871380/rsz_transparent_version.png

Welcome back to the Iron Chef Optimization Challenge E6 Appetizer Edition! It's time for another conceptual ingredient, so I hope you're ready for this!

The form of this challenge is to take a particular D&D 3.5 game element (our "secret ingredient," or SI) and turn it into a functional E6 (https://esix.pbworks.com/f/E6v041.pdf) build, which must feature the SI as heavily as possible. (The only hard rule about this is that you must take at least one level—where applicable—in the SI, though judges are encouraged to look favorably on builds that take as many levels as possible in said SI or that otherwise use it as heavily as possible.) Your final build submission should consist of your 6 regular levels and your first 10 epic bonus feats, though providing a snapshot at earlier points through the progression is heartily encouraged. Entries are to be PM'd to the Chair (that would be me!), and they will be posted anonymously; our volunteer judges will then grade each build on a 1-5 point scale in four categories: Originality, Power, Elegance, and Use of the Secret Ingredient. The builds with the highest three scores will be awarded medals, with the Honorable Mention award going to the non-medaling build that the Chair likes best and/or that receives the most votes for HM in this thread. (HM may not always be awarded, particularly if the number of builds is very small.) And then we all have cake!*

*Note: You must provide your own cake.

This is basically like the regular Iron Chef, and let's be brutally honest with ourselves here: this isn't a gargantuan community, and we basically all know what we're talking about at this point. Make the builds, send 'em in, post some scores, and have fun. If you've got questions, lemme know. Still, let's lay out a few rules!

Cooking Time: Builds must be submitted via PM to the Chair by 4:59 PM GMT - 9 on Monday, May 16, 2022 (1:59 AM GMT on Tuesday, May 17). The reveal shall be on the first evening the Chair has free following the cooking deadline, which is hoped to be that evening or the immediately subsequent one—I'll do my best, anyway. Judging is then encouraged to go as quickly as possible; if multiple judges volunteer, we'll set about a two-week window, but if we only get one judge, we'll try to wrap up as soon as possible after that judge presents scores. (I will admit that the deadline time may not be an exact science, but don't hide from me and we'll probably be cool.)
Kitchen: Let's break this one down a bit.



ALLOWED: Almost all D&D 3.5 material published by WotC: Core, Completes, monster books, Races Of books, alternate power source books (Expanded Psionics Handbook, Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, etc.), Spell Compendium, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, Eberron material, Forgotten Realms material, and other WotC-published 3.5 material. (This list is NOT exhaustive and there are many other legal books that I did not mention by name!)
ALLOWED: Material from the 3.5 archives of the Wizards of the Coast website (including, but not limited to, the Mind's Eye articles). If you use it, link it.
ALLOWED: Official errata from WotC. If you're relying on this in a material fashion, it's a good idea to link it and to discuss it.
NOT ALLOWED: Unofficial errata, including "class fixes" (regardless of the source, including from the original author if not published in a WotC book) or fan-created content.
ALLOWED: Unupdated WotC-published 3.0 material (e.g., Sword and Fist, Masters of the Wild, etc.) except for 3.0 psionics. No 3.0 psionics allowed. If you are using 3.0 material, use the general-purpose skill updates (Wilderness Lore becomes Survival, Innuendo becomes Bluff, etc.) and the general-purpose rules updates (spells with a casting time of "1 action" become "1 standard action," etc.) when appropriate.
NOT ALLOWED: 3.0 material for which a direct 3.5 update exists. Use the updated material instead.
ALLOWED: Dragon Compendium and its errata (http://paizo.com/download/dragon/compendium/DragonCompendiumVolumeIErrata.pdf).
NOT ALLOWED: Content from Dragon Magazine and/or Dungeon Magazine unless said content appears in an otherwise allowed source.
ALLOWED: Oriental Adventures, including the 3.5 update to Oriental Adventures from Dragon Magazine #318. This is a specific exception to the "no Dragon" rule!
NOT ALLOWED: Pathfinder content, regardless of whether it is "D&D 3.5 OGL" or not. If it didn't come from WotC, we don't want it.
ALLOWED: From Unearthed Arcana: racial paragon classes, alternate class features/variant classes, spelltouched feats, and variant races. (Traits and flaws are technically legal, but traits warrant a -0.5 point penalty in Elegance, and flaws warrant a -1 penalty in Elegance.)
NOT ALLOWED: Other Unearthed Arcana content, including (but not limited to) bloodlines, LA buyoff, fractional BAB/saves, alternate casting systems, alternate skill systems, item familiars, prestigious character classes, generic classes, gestalt, etc. When you're wondering if UA content is allowed, err on the side of caution and don't mess around with it.
NOT ALLOWED: Leadership, regardless of source. Game elements functionally equivalent to Leadership (including, but not limited to, Dragon Cohort, Undead Leadership, and Thrallherd) are similarly banned. (Familiars, Improved Familiar, animal companions, Wild Cohort, psicrystals, elemental envoys, and similar game elements are allowed, and they are not considered to be "Leadership." If the difference isn't obvious, feel free to contact the Chair with specific questions.)
NOT ALLOWED: Third-party content, homebrew, or other non-WotC content.
NOT ALLOWED: Epic feats from the Epic Level Handbook. Just because you're "epic" in E6 after 6th level doesn't mean that you're that kind of epic.
NOT ALLOWED: Any race or template with a level adjustment other than +0. (Or any other source of LA other than a race or template, if any such things exist.) However, as a specific exception for round 26, see below.
NOT ALLOWED: For our judges: penalizing solely based on legal sources used, regardless of whether those sources are plentiful, sparse, common, obscure, or something in between. If the material is legal, then it doesn't matter how many or how few books it came out of.
ALLOWED: Also for our judges: penalizing for using a source (other than material in Core; don't be vindictive about genuinely obvious stuff) that isn't listed in the build writeup. The chef may choose to present the sources in-line with the text, in a consolidated source list, or somewhere else, but if the source is listed (and is otherwise legal), it counts. If the source is not listed, you may choose to penalize for that.

If you have questions about anything in this section (or hell, in this ruleset), feel free to ask the Chair.

Character Creation: 32 point buy is assumed. For the purposes of this contest, Level Adjustment greater than +0 is banned. (This may be revised at a later point, but I don't feel that the E6 LA rules are conducive to fun in the context of this contest.) No more than two entries per chef per contest, please; if you submit two builds and somehow are so overcome with inspiration for a third that you can't help yourself, PM me and tell me which two you care about the most.
Highlighted because of past issues: It is not enough for your build to end with a level adjustment of +0. You must be +0 from start to finish. No using ANY build elements with a level adjustment above +0, even if they then get mitigated or reduced somehow. However, note that a special exception is in place for round 26...
Speculation: Please do not post any form of speculation before the reveal. Just don't do it, guys. It's not cool. This means NOT posting any of the following or anything substantially similar: what you think is going to be common, significant elements of your planned build or of other potential builds, or anything else that could directly influence someone else's build choices for good or for ill. (It's acceptable to ask for rules clarifications as appropriate, but try to avoid tipping your hand too much.) Speculation is bad because it can discourage people from posting builds and can also "taint the judging pool" when it comes to Originality, so please just try to be aware of how other people might react to your speculation.
E6: Here's how E6 works for the purposes of this contest. Build your character normally for the first six levels. After you reach level 6, you stop gaining levels and start gaining bonus feats every time you would gain 5,000 XP. Since we aren't actually tracking XP, you'll basically list your first ten epic bonus feats in the order that you take them, and we think of them as being kind of like levels. We will not use the LA-equals-reduced-point-buy rules, instead preferring to just ban races with LA, at least for now. We will not use the "capstone feats"; all feats that you take must be normal legal 3.5 feats, not homebrew E6 ones. You may not use the Epic feats from the Epic Level Handbook, though if for some reason there are non-Epic feats from the ELH that you qualify for, you may take those. (I don't think there are any, but I'm sure someone will prove me wrong.) It is up to the discretion of each judge whether this is a "hard E6" (magic above 3rd level spells is simply beyond mortal reach, items that have a listed CL above 6th are just plain not available, etc.) or a "soft E6" (if you can somehow get the magic on your character, it's yours, regardless of level), though I honestly don't expect it to come up. Don't go crazy with making assumptions about items and we probably won't have to find out.
Presentation: Please use the table found below in the spoiler. List your epic bonus feats (in clear order) after the table. If you find a clever way of formatting that that isn't annoying and that doesn't break anything, have fun; if it's portable, I may steal it for the next round. When sending your build or any disputes to the Chair, clearly include your build's name in the subject of the PM, and please present your build exactly as you want the Chair to copy and paste it into the thread.
If you're using a picture, cite the source and follow any relevant citation rules. Because we have had issues with this in the past, when listing your skills, please make it very clear how many ranks you have at each level. There are multiple ways to do this and we do not wish to cramp anyone's individual style by dictating exactly how this must look, but make sure that somewhere in your entry there's an explanation of how many actual skill ranks you have. It's still fine to list total skill bonuses, if that's your style, but don't only list bonuses; make sure that there is a clear listing somewhere of your ranks alone. You are allowed, but not required, to use this extremely spiffy tool (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BG0-5sq4dL9Ooh7-QfXuyHzO4rXSz-CRcj29t6BeUVE/edit#gid=401538143) that mattie_p cooked up (thanks, mattie_p!).

Level
Class
Base Attack Bonus
Fort Save
Ref Save
Will Save
Skills
Feats
Class Features


1st
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


2nd
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


3rd
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


4th
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


5th
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


6th
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


Code for the table:

Level
Class
Base Attack Bonus
Fort Save
Ref Save
Will Save
Skills
Feats
Class Features


1st
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


2nd
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


3rd
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


4th
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


5th
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


6th
New Class Level
+x
+x
+x
+x
Skills
Feats
New Class Abilities


Contest houserules: Nearly the same as the main contest's rules here: all creatures are proficient with natural weapons they have or may acquire, bonus feats that are explicitly granted without meeting prereqs are usable even without those prereqs, and feats that affect which skills are class skills for you and/or how you spend your skill points (Able Learner, Martial Study, Truename Training, Apprentice, etc.) apply immediately at the level at which you take them (even though you normally spend skill points before taking a feat). When taking Open Minded as an epic feat, any skill that has ever been a class skill for you (including through your class, your race, your feats, or similar game elements, though please don't muck around with retroactively making something stop being a class skill for some stupid reason) is a class skill when determining how the 5 granted skill points may be spent. All usual rules about HD-related skill caps apply. When taking Open Minded as a non-epic feat, treat it as normal; the class skills of the class you took at the level you gained Open Minded (plus race, feats, etc.) are your class skills for those skill points, similar to if Open Minded's skill points came straight from your class.
Judging guidelines: The minimum score in a category is 1, and the maximum is 5 (except in high-Originality rounds, wherein the maximum in Originality is 10). Judges are expected to be fair, consistent, and open-minded, and they are expected to make a good-faith effort to engage with any reasonable disputes that arise, especially when RAW is in question. That said, contestants are asked to not dispute more than necessary; let's do everything in good faith and really only dispute when a judge is being inconsistent, being unfair, or is otherwise grossly misinterpreting a build.
Judges may not penalize Originality solely because a build is a tribute or homage to an existing creative work (in or out of D&D canon; note that this is not the same thing as penalizing Originality for using well-known optimization tactics), nor may judges penalize based solely on sources used (whether those sources are plentiful, sparse, common, obscure, or something in between, you should judge the build elements and how they work together rather than what book or what books they came out of, as long as those books are legal for this contest and are cited in the entry).
As with the main contest, we will follow the "One Mistake, One Penalty" guideline, and it is very important that the judges adhere to it. I'm going to directly copy and paste this from the main thread, and hopefully the original author won't mind too much:
Judges are only allowed to penalise once for a given mistake. If someone messes up their skills and doesn't qualify for a PrC, ding them as hard as you like. Once. In one category. You don't then get to declare that because they didn't qualify for that PrC, they don't get those levels, and thus don't qualify for anything else. If Ranger is a common ingredient, ding them for Originality. Once. Don't also take off points for Two-Weapon-Fighting being a common ingredient.

Non-exhaustive list of examples:

Skills
Allowed:

Giving a penalty for miscalculating the number of skill points gained
Giving a penalty for not having enough ranks to meet a prerequisite
Increasing the harshness of a skill miscalculation penalty if it affects critical skills including prereqs


Not allowed:

Giving separate penalties for miscalculating skill points and for non-qualification where the non-qualification is solely caused by the miscalculation



Prereqs
Allowed:

Giving a penalty for not meeting prereqs
Scaling the penalty depending on how important the item that the build failed to qualify for is
Giving minimum score in UotSI for not qualifying for the SI
Not giving credit for (note: not the same as penalising for) tactics using feats or classes other than the SI that were not qualified for (but see below)


Not Allowed:

"Cascading" failures to qualify - declaring that because a build doesn't qualify for a feat, for example, it also doesn't qualify for anything using that feat as a prereq
Treating a build as having fewer levels than it does because of FtQ for classes



Other general things that are no longer allowed:

Penalising because someone has chosen to build a tribute to an existing creative work
Deciding that a backstory has not met a fluff prerequisite well enough, or because its method of meeting it is "unrealistic". You may penalise if a fluff prereq is not addressed at all, but not for how well it is addressed.


Note that these are protections, not licenses. Deliberately taking a feat that you know you don't qualify for hoping to just suck up the judging penalty for a feat that you couldn't normally take is not okay, and may lead to your build being disqualified.
Dispute guidelines (NEW, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION): Disputing is long, annoying, and emotional. It's also sometimes necessary, but it's often not actually something that makes everyone have more fun. Let's go into a little more detail here.
Do NOT dispute to make an argument that goes fundamentally beyond what's in your write-up. It is the responsibility of the chef to make sure that the write-up is complete and contains their best arguments for what the build does and why it's awesome. If you didn't explain your tactics well or didn't spell out something that a judge misses, just do better next time. Don't drag it out after the fact.
Do NOT dispute just to be clever or witty or cheeky. Please. We're all adults here and so I assume you know what that means. Don't treat the build as a setup and your oh-so-clever dispute as the punchline. It's not as funny as it is in your head. Trust me. I've been down that road.
Do NOT dispute just to say "oh yeah, my bad, I missed that" or some equivalent. If you're not directly challenging the judge, save the commentary until after the reveal. I 100% get that the urge to respond to commentary is very strong, but type it out and sit on it for a while if you've gotta.
Do NOT dispute just to try to wheedle more points out of the judge. Note that this is different from saying that the judge is being truly unfair or is being truly wrong by black-and-white RAW. A dispute is NOT the place to try to scrape together a few last quarter-points. If you didn't put it in your write-up, that's on you. This also means that a dispute is really not the place to have long back-and-forth tit-for-tat arguments. That's a surefire way to get people grumpy. It's a contest on a D&D board, guys, not the results of a federal election.
Do NOT dispute to tear down another build. That's just plain not cool. If you entered the contest, it's not on you to judge the other builds.
DO dispute if the judge is being blatantly biased by giving you a substantially different ruling on a build element compared to another chef who used the same build element in nearly the same way. (Note that position in a build may affect if you're using that element in "nearly the same way" or not.) Please reserve this for the truly blatant examples. I mean it. Remember, it's the contestant's responsibility to make their best argument in the original write-up.
DO dispute if the judge is actively going against the contest rules. Note that there are relatively few ways in which a judge can go against contest rules (we intentionally give very wide discretion to our judges), but examples include truly breaking One Mistake One Penalty, penalizing just because of number of sources of (legal) material, and so on.
DO dispute if the judge is clearly ignoring unambiguous RAW. Note that this is for unambiguous RAW; if the RAW is shady and you're making an argument that isn't completely clear and that it wouldn't be strange for a GM to frown on, the judge has every right to frown on it as well. (You generally know when you're indulging in shady RAW. Be mature about this.) But if the judge is saying you didn't hit a prereq that you clearly did hit (and included in your write-up!), saying you can't do something that the plain text of the ability says you can do, or anything like that, by all means, call 'em out.
Do NOT dispute if the judge doesn't agree with your interpretation of ambiguous RAW. Yes, this is a retread of the previous bullet point; this is that important. If you're relying on ambiguous RAW, it's on you to lay out clearly why it should work the way you want it to work. Again, be mature and act in good faith: you really know when you're pushing things like this. If they don't like it, they don't like it. Move on.


Disputing is a privilege, not a right. In the Chair's sole discretion, disputes that do not meet these guidelines and/or that do not seem to be offered in good faith may be suppressed. The Chair reserves the right to choose to post all, some, or none of a dispute if appropriate.


Other bits and bobs: If there's something major and relevant I haven't mentioned, assume that the way I handle it will probably be the same as the main contest unless stated otherwise or unless doing so would be an obviously absurd result. If you've got questions, I'll give you answers.




This round's secret ingredient:
FIRE!

Your build must revolve around the use of fire and fire damage.
This can be magical, mundane, something in between, whatever!
Things that have "fire" in the name (spellfire, rimefire, etc.) count as fire, but you will still want a way of dealing fire damage if your preferred fire-like thing doesn't necessarily do it.



Allez Optimizer!




The Builds:
Name Alignment / Race Class Levels Chef MinimanMidget H_H_F_F Total Place
Blaise deForrest (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467045&postcount=21) ?? Jermlaine Planar Spiritual Connection Wildshape Ranger 6 Macabaret 12.25 10.10 22.35 7th
Carsus Tall (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467046&postcount=22) LG Lesser Aasimar Paladin 6 loky1109 12.50 12.10 24.60 5th
Charles M. Ander (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467047&postcount=23) CG Lesser Aasimar Paladin of Freedom 4/Hit and Run Tactics Fighter 1/Master Thrower 1 RaiKirah 11.50 6.00 17.50 9th, Hon. Mention
Firefist (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467049&postcount=24) CG Human Ardent 2/Shaman 4 daremetoidareyo 11.50 13.05 24.55 6th
Simon the Fire Lance (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467050&postcount=25) LN Human Psychic Warrior 6 loky1109 13.50 14.90 28.40 1st
Spirit of Fire (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467052&postcount=26) LE Lesser Fire Gensai Shugenja 6 thorr-kan 12.00 10.00 22.00 8th
Steamy Romancer (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467053&postcount=27) NG Shalarin Druid 1/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 3/Beastmaster 1 ciopo 16.50 10.00 26.50 2nd
Uanafaira Worldfire (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467055&postcount=28) CE Illumian Cleric 5/Wizard 1 ciopo 15.75 9.80 25.55 3rd
Aara (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467056&postcount=29) TN Human Evoker 3/Master Specialist 3 Venger 12.75 12.70 25.45 4th




Round 4: Knight (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?542333-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(IV))
Round 5: Ninja (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?548763-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-V))
Round 6: Racial Paragon Classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?551174-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-VI))
Round 7: Hexblade (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?553767-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-VII))
Round 8: Shugenja (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?555626-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-VIII))
Round 9: Swashbuckler (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?559135-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-IX)")
Round 10: Crusader (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?562183-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-X))
Round 11: Soulknife (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?565669-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XI))
Round 12: Factotum (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569723-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XII))
Round 13: Prestige Classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?572441-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XIII))
Round 14: Mountebank (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?576318-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XIV))
Round 15: Sorcerer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?582751-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XV))
Round 16: Dragon Shaman (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?585121-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XVI))
Round 17: Lurk (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?588149-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XVII))
Round 18: Paladin (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?591516-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XVIII))
Round 19: Scout (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?595369-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XIX))
Round 20: Incarnate (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?599279-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XX))
Round 21: Shadowcaster (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?602325-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XXI))
Round 22: Dragonmarks (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?606051-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XXII))
Round 23: Fighter (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611114-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XXIII))
Round 24: Pets (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?615226-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XXIV))
Round 25: Warlock (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?617510-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XXV)&p=24666502)
Round 26: Monsters (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?619170-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Edition-(Round-XXVI))
Round 27: Ardent (exhibition round) (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?622593-Iron-Chef-E6-Appetizer-Edition-Round-XXVII)
Round 28: Rogue (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?623937-Iron-Chef-E6-Appetizer-Edition-Round-XXVIII)
Round 29: Signature Spells (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?627038-Iron-Chef-E6-Appetizer-Edition-Round-XXIX)
Round 30: Any Prior Ingredient (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?628860-Iron-Chef-E6-Appetizer-Edition-Round-XXX)
Round 31: Ranger (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?631229-Iron-Chef-E6-Appetizer-Edition-Round-XXXI)
Round 32: Tanking (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?632897-Iron-Chef-E6-Appetizer-Edition-Round-XXXII)
Round 33: Psychic Warrior (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?634208-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Round-XXXIII)
Round 34: Flight (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?635332-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-E6-Appetizer-Round-XXXIV)
Round 35: Binder (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?637382-Iron-Chef-E6-Appetizer-Edition-Round-XXXV)
Round 36: Skill tricks (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?639486-Iron-Chef-E6-Appetizer-Edition-Round-XXXVI)
Round 37: Barbarian (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?643149-Iron-Chef-E6-Appetizer-Edition-Round-XXXVII)


Round 1: Divine Mind (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?197000-Iron-Chef-Appetizer-Edition!-(e6))
Round 2: Monk (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?201548-Iron-Chef-Appetizer-Edition!-(e6)-II)
Round 3: Marshal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?235221-Iron-Chef-Appetizer-Edition-(E6)-III)

[Zaq]

Here's a few gentle recommendations that are intended to improve scores and make things easier for the judges. As always, THE RECOMMENDATIONS IN THIS POST ARE NOT RULES. Judges and contestants are free to honor them or ignore them; my intent here is only to help, and NONE of what I'm saying here is required. (That said, did you see the new dispute guidelines? Those ARE rules, so please go read them. And I'm even going to be better about enforcing them this time.)

Recommendations:
Double-check ALL of your prereqs. Every. Single. One. Feats, PrCs, whatever. You might even go so far as to spell out when you meet each one, but again, that's not a requirement. But one of the single biggest causes of point loss is failure to meet prereqs.
Tell the judges what's cool about your build! You spent hours or days on this (y'know, probably) and know it inside and out, but the judges are getting a whole bunch of these dishes all at once and don't know the build history of each one. You're significantly more likely to score well if you spell out exactly what makes you awesome than if you try to just let it stand on its own.
Make it easy to read! Skill tables are awful, though they're an incredibly necessary evil. Full Monster Manual-style statblocks are occasionally useful but are also insanely dense if not formatted well. Judges are very likely to miss something if you aren't careful with how you present your info. Remember that judging takes a lot of time, energy, and focus, so don't rely on the judge being willing/able to decode something in order to see what makes you interesting!
Be memorable. Remember that we've all seen these ingredients used at least once before. What makes you different?

Since this is a conceptual ingredient, you aren't required to have a certain number of levels of anything in particular in your build, so the field is wide open. Maybe you deal a lot of fire damage. Maybe you light things on fire in a wide area. Maybe you use fire for something that isn't directly related to attacking and causing harm! Maybe you simply embody the concept of fire in a way that no one else does. Light it up and let's get it hot!

[H_H_F_F]

Hmm. A bit too broad for my taste, but if inspiration strikes I might submit something.

[loky1109]

I have one idea...

[thorr-kan]

Huh.

We've been dealing with the Flamedeath Fellowship and the Brotherhood of the True Flame in the Friday Night Gaming Group recently. I've been dreaming of pyromancers. It appears to be portentous.

[MinimanMidget]

I don't have any particular ideas, but I'm definitely going to try and come up with something.

[MornShine]

I was very enthused for this!

... Aaand the (fairly weak) combo I found can't come online until level 14.

We'll see if I can finalize one of the other ideas.

[ciopo]

anyone would like to collaborate?

[loky1109]

I maybe need an extension. Day-to-three. I have unfinished entry's decoration, an have no time right now.

[loky1109]

No need extension for me anymore. I have had time.

[NinjaGuy]

I had a really busy week/end, but can likely get it all finalized tonight or tomorrow if that's alright. It's all the minutia that's left, build's been done. Wish I had more time for fluffery, but it'll be fluffy enough.

[Zaq]

Hahahaha! I totally forgot that the deadline was nominally this past Monday. In my head it's always been this coming Monday, 2022-05-16. Keep those builds coming!

[MinimanMidget]

How are we looking in terms of number of builds? I could probably get one done over the weekend, but I'm not super motivated.

[loky1109]

Are we waiting for somebody still work on?

[Zaq]

I've been asked for another extension! I'll probably post in a few days. If anyone is actively still working, please continue to do so and please also let me know!

[AsuraKyoko]

In that case, I'll try and bang out my build idea tonight.

[daremetoidareyo]

As a non judge, the more the merrier

[loky1109]

Agree with daremetoidareyo!

[AsuraKyoko]

Ah, unfortunately, things didn't really come together, and so I won't be submitting anything. Sorry for holding things up.

[Zaq]

I live!

I could make excuses, but they don't matter. I'm just bad at budgeting time and focus. But I have a whole bunch of builds all ready to crank up the heat! Here we go!

[Zaq]

All we are is dust in the wind, and by "wind" I mean a searing hot blast of flame and by "we" I mean you.


Blaise deForrest
Jermlaine (Planar/Spiritual Connection/Wildshape) Ranger 6
Chaotic Neutral


Str....13.....-8.....05
Con...10....-2.....08
Dex...17...+6.....23
Int....14.....-2.....12
Wis...14....+6.....20
Cha...08....-6......04 (as per the SRD chart)

4th: +1 Dex





Level
Class
Base Attack Bonus
Fort Save
Ref Save
Will Save
Skills
Feats
Class Features
1st lvl Spells


1st
Ranger 1
+1
+2
+2
+0

C:alchemy 4
Jump 4
K:theplanes 4
Listen 4
Spot 4
Survival 4
Tumble 4

1st: Martial Study (Blistering Flourish); B:Track
Fast Movement; Favored Enemy: Elementals+2; Speak With Animals/Plants 3/day
--


2nd
Ranger 2
+2
+3
+3
+0

C:alchemy 5
Jump 5
K:theplanes 5
Listen 5
Spot 5
Survival 5
Tumble 5

--
--
--


3rd
Ranger 3
+3
+3
+3
+1

C:alchemy 6
Jump 5
K:theplanes 6
Listen 6
Search 1
Spot 6
Survival 6
Tumble 6

3rd: Desert Wind Dodge; B: Endurance
--
--


4th
Ranger 4
+4
+4
+4
+1

C:alchemy 7
Jump 5
K:theplanes 7
Listen 7
Search 2
Spot 7
Survival 7
Tumble 7

--
Urban Companion
0(+2)


5th
Ranger 5
+5
+4
+4
+1

C:alchemy 8
Jump 5
K:theplanes 8
Listen 8
Search 3
Spot 8
Survival 8
Tumble 8

--
Favored Enemy: Outsider (fire)+4; Wildshape 1/day
0(+2)


6th
Ranger 6
+6/1
+5
+5
+2

C:alchemy 9
Jump 5
K:theplanes 8
Listen 9
Search 5
Spot 9
Survival 9
Tumble 9

6th: Martial Stance (Flame's Blessing)
Wildshape 2/day
1(+2)



Epic Feats:

Scorching Sirracco
Planar Touchstone (CoE: Celerity domain)
Quick Reconnoiter
Keen-eared Scout
Grenadier
Mad Alchemist
Swift Tumbler
Skill Focus: Tumble
Mobility
Elusive Target





Ranger with high dex and low strength. Ranged weapons are prefered. Darts aren't heavy; neither is a sling. The hand crossbow is your friend. Spears will be useful at later levels, so perhaps get used to them now?
Light armor (or no armor) is best to keep your load light and your dex bonus useful.

Fast Movement makes your already speedy movement speedier. Use move actions to stay out of melee, standard actions to make a ranged attack.

Favored Enemy of Elementals because, well, why not? Some of them are immune (or resistent) to fire, so the damage bonus may be helpful at later levels when fire is the main damage source. But this choice can (and should) be changed depending on the campaign.

Speak with Animals and Speak with Plants aren't gamebreaking, but they can be useful in the right situation(s).

Track is a thing Rangers do. Feel free to let your DM utilise it to advance the plot.

Now, for the elephant in the room. Yes, a non-initiator can take Martial Study at first level, even with an initiator level of 0. There are no pre-reqs to taking the feat, and the only requirement is that you must meet the prerequisites of the maneuver chosen. Blistering Flourish doesn't have a prerequisite. Blaise can't use the maneuver until his initiator level is 1 (which will happen at 2nd level), but he can still take the feat.

Likewise, Blaise can't use Craft: alchemy until he becomes a spellcaster (at level 4). He is, never-the-less, capable of spending skill points on it.



Nothing to see here, really. Just skill improvement. Craft (alchemy) for making vials of alchemist's fire and frostfire (Savage Species p.47-8) (albeit at later levels). Jump for the synergy bonus to Tumble (which will be appreciated much more later on). Knowledge: theplanes is a prereq later. Listen and Spot for the scouting aspect of Rangerhood. Survival for more Rangerness.



Endurance comes as a freebie. Keep running around enough, and it'll be useful eventually? (Or... probably not, really.)

Desert Wind Dodge brings fire damage. Okay, so nobody's lighting the world on fire with this feat, but still.... This is why throwing spears is a good plan. Hit someone with a vial of oil in one round, throw a spear at 'em in the next. And in between, take your bonus to AC for running around the battlefield.



Urban Companion (instead of Animal Companion) grants the Alertness feat when the companion is within arm's reach. Talk to your DM about alternative Companions for Tiny characters. Perhaps a worm, or a grub, or a ladybug. Tuck the Companion away in a pocket to keep it safe during combat, and bring it out to play with it in non-combat situations. Instant de-stresser after a hard day and fun for all the party (assuming, of course, that the party sorcerer doesn't have a hungry toad as a familiar.)

1st level Ranger spells. Remember, too, that wands are now available as well. Accelerated Movement, Longstrider, Ice Skate, Surefoot, Surefooted Stride, Waste Strider, Webfoot are all spells that should be of interest in various situations, though that certainly isn't an exhaustive list.



Favored Enemy: Outsider (fire)... see FE above (at 1st level)

Wildshape can make Blaise Small or Medium. Various 'shapes can be useful for faster speeds or movement modes, not to mention disguise and infiltration. Be creative!



The Desert Wind Stance will be needed later.




This is why we're here. It's [fire] time.
Scorching Sirracco offers three combat options (one of which is useless to Blaise). The set-up happens thusly:
Round 1:
swift action to initiate Desert Wind stance: Flame's Blessing
move action to move at least 10 feet
standard action to... whatever. Cast a buff spell, perhaps. Or throw a vial of oil, or alchemist's fire, or frostfire, or a spear. Or initiate Blistering Flourish, if that seems fun.

This meets the Dance of Flames ability for next round. If the standard action dealt fire damage to an opponent, Fan the Flames is also set-up as an option for next round.

Round 2:
swift action to initiate Desert Wind Stance: Flame's Blessing
move action to move through the battlefield, Tumbling to avoid AoOs along the way to use Dance of Flames. (Remember that Blaise is a Tiny creature, so he can move through occupied spaces without penalty.) Blaise has a Tumble check of: 9 (ranks) + 7 (dex) + 2 (Jump synergy) + 2 (Dance of Flames bonus) + 1 (min. roll on d20) = 21. He can auto-succeed avoiding attacks of opportunity from 4 opponents, with a fair bet of risking a few more.
If Fan the Flames was set-up with the standard action of the previous round, a move action here will auto-succeed on the Tumble check. Otherwise, use a standard action to... whatever (as before). Or use another move action to Dance of Flames through more enemies.


Round 3:
Repeat


1d6 fire damage to each of multiple enemies in a move action without damage to friends. No attack role vs AC. No saving throws. No SR. No miss chance.



Planar Touchstone: Catalogues of Enlightenment (Planar Handbook p.166) (Celerity Domain) gives another +10 feet movement. Untyped, so it stacks with Fast Movement. This brings Blaise's land speed to 60', plenty to get across the battlefield and dance through threatened squares.



It can't be all about setting enemies on fire. Free Spot and Listen checks each round is what you want on your most perceptive party member.



Combos beautifully with Quick Reconnoiter. Enemies are hiding? Invisible? There's a good chance Blaise can hear them and find the square(s) their in. He doesn't need to see them, just needs to know where to Tumble. And this feat tells him all he needs to know.



Blaise should be no stranger to splash weapons. Alchemist's fire works well with the theme of this round; so too does Acidic Fire (Eberron Campaign Setting p.120).
But if Blaise is facing fire resistant or immune creatures, a bit of Frostfire (Savage Species p.47-8) can get the job done. (And it fits the contest's theme nicely, too.)



Remember earlier when I said "standard action...whatever"? Well, here are a few more 'whatever's. Using Distracting Blast to mess with enemy actions isn't the worst thing to do. (It can, actually, be a life saver.)
Fiery Blaze is more on theme. Flasks of oil and alchemist's fire should be in supply, and Desert Wind Dodge will deal fire damage with a spear attack. So now Blaise can set folks on fire from range.



This feat is poorly written. Someone apparently didn't realise how tumbling through combat works. I'd suggest talking to the DM to rework the feat to mesh better with how the math works. But the concept is easily understood here: make Tumbling less taxing on movement speed. And that's something Blaise will happily get behind!



+3 to Tumble, simple as that. Which makes for one (and a half) more enemies Blaise can auto-succeed at Tumbling past during a move action.



When Blaise tests the limits of his Tumbling, eventually he'll miss the roll. When he does, a little added AC just might be appreciated.



Thematic and useful. If Blaise is going to be in the thick of things in combat, the abilities granted by this feat will come in handy eventually.






Everything is found in the SRD except:
Jermlaine -- Monster Manual II p.131 (see also the 3.5 update)
Planar Ranger ACF-- Unearthed Arcana p.55
Spiritual Connection ACF-- Complete Champion p.50
Wildshape Ranger ACF-- Unearthed Arcana p.58
Martial Study feat -- Tome of Battle p.31
Desert Wind Dodge feat -- Tome of Battle p.29
Urban Companion ACF -- Cityscape Web Enhancement
Martial Stance feat -- Tome of Battle p.31
Scorching Sirracco feat -- Tome of Battle p.35
Planar Touchstone feat -- Planar Handbook p.41-2
Catalogues of Enlightenment -- Planar Handbook p.166-7
Celerity Domain -- Spell Compendium p.271
Quick Reconnoiter feat -- Dungeonscape p.46
Keen Eared Scout feat -- PHBII p.80
Grenadier feat -- PHBII p.79
Mad Alchemist feat -- PHBII p.94
Swift Tumbler feat -- Cityscape p.64
Elusive Target feat -- Complete Warrior p.110

[Zaq]

No, not that kind of paladin.


https://c.tenor.com/lSaYYG4sp3gAAAAd/imperius-imperius-vs-diablo.gif

Some people think paladins have no fear. Well, maybe it's true about some other paladins, but Carsus Tall, one of the Westmarch Knights wasn't one of them. He knows fear very well. There were frightening signs. Something's coming, something very very bad. Great evil raising his head upon all Sanctuary. Carsus sees it sharp and clear. Somebody needs to do something before it's too late. His younger brother went to the Khanduras. It was rumored that something happened in the city of Tristram. Demons, undead, rogues. Rumors often are exaggerated, but it shall be checked.
Meanwhile, Carsus is searching. Any helpful information. He knows about Great evils. Long years ago powerful demons were defeated and trapped. But... Why trapped? Why not destroy it? Did even ancestors can't do it? Then what hope do we have? Carsus looking for some help or advice. He looked in the tomes and from the sages. And he found something. One word. Name of warrior or maybe order. This word is Nephalem. He was somebody so powerful as all demons themselves afraid of it. Carsus needs to find him. Or at least something more in-depth. He continued his research. More books, more wise men. He found it. Answer was unexpected. Nephalem... The offspring of Lilith and Uldyssian, demoness and angel. First humans. All Sanctuary's humanity's forebears. Why are you looking for the Nephalem outside, then he abideth inside you? Carsus realized this and was reborn as Nephalem himself. With angelic powers and wings. With bright nimbus above head emanating from circlet belongings of one of Nephalem, maybe Carsus’s direct ancestor - he found it with the book and with fury fire emanating from his weapon.

LG Lesser Aasimar Paladin 6
Abilities Initial Race/Template 4th Total
STR 13 13
DEX 12 12
CON 14 14
INT 12 12
WIS 8 2 10
CHA 17 2 1 20
Level Class Base Attack Bonus Fort Save Reflex Save Will Save Skills Feats Class Features
1st Paladin-1 1 2 0 0 16: {+4} Diplomacy: 4; {+4} Heal: 4; {+4} Knowledge (religion): 4; {+4} Tumble: 4; Nymph's Kiss Might
2nd Paladin-2 2 3 0 0 4: {+1} Diplomacy: 5; {+1} Heal: 5; {+1} Knowledge (religion): 5; {+1} Tumble: 5; Prayer
3rd Paladin-3 3 3 1 1 4: {+1} Diplomacy: 6; {+1} Heal: 6; {+1} Knowledge (religion): 6; {+1} Tumble: 6; Shape Soulmeld (Lucky Dice) Sacrifice
4th Paladin-4 4 4 1 1 4: {+1} Diplomacy: 7; {+1} Heal: 7; {+1} Knowledge (religion): 7; {+1} Tumble: 7;
5th Paladin-5 5 4 1 1 4: Diplomacy: 7; {+1} Heal: 8; {+1} Knowledge (religion): 8; {+1} Tumble: 8; {+1 CC} Use Magic Device: 0.5; Holy Fire
6th Paladin-6 6 5 2 2 4: Diplomacy: 7; {+1} Heal: 9; {+1} Knowledge (religion): 9; {+1} Tumble: 9; {+1 CC} Use Magic Device: 1; Ancestral Relic (Circlet of Persuasion) Thorns
Epic Feats
Open Least Chacra (Crown)
Celestial Bloodline
Outsider Wings
Nimbus of Light
Holy Radiance
Light to Daylight
Eyes of Light
Improved Flight
Air Heritage
Hover
The first and foremost. This isn't the paladin from PHB. This is paladin from Diablo 2: Diablerie. It's a completely different class. And this handbook was published by WotC, so it's legal.

All humans in the Sanctuary are descendants of demons and angels, so I think aasimar matches the theme very well. Lesser version... Well, I don't like lesser planetouched, but for E6 they work.

D2 Paladin doesn't look like a very powerful class. His abilities don't scale (if we talk about Holy Fire it's only 2d6 in 15 ft), but with some optimization he can spam with it all day. And being aasimar, Carsus has access to some exclusive feats. Fly in E6? It's cool! Some anti-undead abilities? Useful, either.

Well. To be able to spam with Holy Fire, Carsus needs to have at least +13 Cha check. I did it. +5 from Cha 20. +1 from Lucky Dice. +3 from Circlet of Persuasion. +2 from Nymph's Kiss. +2 from binding Circlet of Persuasion to Crown Chakra (Suggested Effects table, MoI, p. 111). Precisely +13.

Carsus has Prayer, Might and Thorns auras in addition to Holy Fire. It are useful more or less. Prayer means free full hp healing after every fight. Might and Thorns for deal with enemies who have protection from fire.

Plus to never-end fire and 60-ft good fly, Carsus's +13 Cha checks means high social skill checks. Even without skill points investing.

Type Name Book Page
Race Lesser Aasimar MM, PGtF 209, 191
Class Paladin D2D 15
Feat Nymph's Kiss BoED 44
Feat Shape Soulmeld MoI 40
Feat Ancestral Relic BoED 39
Feat Open Least Chacra (Crown) MoI 39
Feat Celestial Bloodline Races of Faerun 162
Feat Outsider Wings Races of Faerun 167
Feat Nimbus of Light BoED 44
Feat Holy Radiance BoED 44
Feat Light to Daylight Races of Faerun 166
Feat Eyes of Light Races of Faerun 163
Feat Improved Flight RotW 151
Feat Air Heritage PlH 37
Feat Hover MMV 204
Soulmeld Lucky Dice MoI 77
Item Circlet of Persuasion DMG 252

[Zaq]

I appreciate the level of commitment.


Charles M. Ander
Race: Aasimar (RoD p92), Lesser (PGtF p191) --> Dragonborn (Heart) of Bahamut (RotD p5)
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Stub: Paladin of Freedom (UA p53) 4/Hit and Run Tactics (DotU p58) Fighter 1/Master Thrower (CW p58) 1

Charles M. Ander had always known that he was different from the rest of his family and friends, and indeed everyone in his village knew that he had been born with a touch of Other, that his unsettlingly jade eyes and slightly amber-cast skin pebbled with small scales signaled some Outsider heritage that meant he would never quite fit in with those who should have been his. And if that had been that it is quite possibly that Charles’ life would have been much like anyone else’s, for who isn’t a little Other in some way? However, not only was Charles indelibly marked as different from his peers to all with eyes, but deep inside, before he even had words to describe what the feeling might be, Charles knew that something was missing and his life would be spent in the search of the parts of himself he had yet to find, until he could be the very best version of himself.

When a wandering magician had taught Charles to call a small flame into his hand something settled into place in the aching void within. The fire, dancing warm at the tip of his finger felt right in a way nothing had before, lessening the hollow ache of whatever fundamental essence he had been born without. Thinking that perhaps this, the fire and the magic, were what would fuse the broken and missing pieces of his self together sought instruction from the only local organization that might be able to teach him how to harness these forces; the Mystic Fire Knights, Chivalric Order of Mystra, Goddess of Magic. Seeing the young man’s fervor and small facility with the Arcane Arts, the Order took him on as a squire and began his training.

However, despite Charles’ dedication and hard work in pursuit of joining the Mystic Fire Knights over the years he found that he was missing not just the ineffable portion of himself he sought, but he also fundamentally lacked any true facility with the Arcane Arts. And thus, though he was eventually anointed as a Sword of the Arcane Order upon his majority, Charles was denied a place as a Chevalier of the Order of the Mystic Fire Knights. Though a disappointment, the young man sought consolation through further study of the fires that were such a balm to the aching hole within, though this time through the lens of the Divine and backed with the resources of the ecclesiastic side of the Order. Through long years of effort, delayed by his martial responsibilities to the Order, Charles managed to master fire, able to keep a flame alive continuously with no fuel save for his faith and body. Seeing experiencing the flames dancing upon his hand continuously felt right in a way that soothed the missing pieces of his self in a way Charles had not dreamed of as a youngling, and for a time he was content.

And yet a certainty grew that still not all was right with him, and Charles spent much time contemplating his being. While his contemplation and communion with the flames had stilled his internal dissidence, Charles soon discovered that his external self no longer satisfied, and perhaps never had though the discontent had been masked by the aching void that the flame had soothed. The bright green eyes and deep amber skin met with his approval. The scattered scales felt right strewn across his face and body, though he wished perhaps that they were more all-encompassing. The hands were fine, though the fingers and nails perhaps a bit lacking in substance. The body entire seemed largely agreeable, though Charles felt nonetheless that in some particular he was lacking, though he had no words with which to define it.

It wasn’t until Charlies accompanied a contingent from the Order to a conclave of the Knightly Sects and he saw amongst the members of the Platinum Cadre the Dragonborn that he knew what was missing, what he was meant to be. Through long discussion with the Paladins of the Platinum Cadre Charles learned of Bahamut and his Rites of Rebirth through which any deemed worthy might be reborn in His image. Charles wished desperately to be amongst that number. The God of Dragons looked upon Charles and understanding his plight gladly granted his blessing. Charles passed through the Rite of Rebirth and emerged transformed, fire held within his heart. Lighting upon his newly formed tail the eternal flames that had been such a comfort through all the long years of striving Charles lifted his head and roared fiery joy to the sky as the disparate pieces of his self, found and coaxed over a lifetime of striving, settled within and around him, wholly himself and complete for the first time.




Ability
Score
Racial
Lvl 4 Increase
Final Aasimar
Final Dragonborn


Strength
13


13
13


Dexterity
15


15
13


Constitution
10


10
12


Intelligence
12


12
12


Wisdom
17
+2
+1
20
20


Charisma
8
+2

10
10







Level
Class
Base Attack Bonus
Fort Save
Ref Save
Will Save
Skills
Feats
Class Features


1st
Paladin of Freedom 1
+1
+2
+0
+0
Knowledge (Religion) 4, Sleight of Hand 2(4cc), Spellcraft 2(4cc)
Human Heritage (F) (RoD p152), Point Blank Shot (F), Magical Training (Wizard) (PGtF p41)
Aura of Good, Detect Evil, Smite Evil 1/day, Dragonscale Husk (DrM p12)


2nd
Paladin of Freedom 2
+2
+3
+0
+0
Sense Motive 3, Knowledge (Religion) 4, Sleight of Hand 2, Spellcraft 2

Divine Grace, Lay on Hands


3rd
Paladin of Freedom 3
+3
+3
+1
+1
Sense Motive 4(1), Sleight of Hand 3(2cc) , Knowledge (Religion) 4, Spellcraft 2
Precise Shot
Aura of Resolve, Divine Health


4th
Paladin of Freedom 4
+4
+4
+1
+1
Sense Motive 5(1), Spellcraft 3(2cc) , Knowledge (Religion) 4, Sleight of Hand 3

Turn Undead (3+Cha/day)


5th
Fighter, Hit and Run Tactics 1
+5
+6
+1
+1
Ride 1, Sleight of Hand 4(2cc) , Knowledge (Religion) 4, Sense Motive 5, Spellcraft 3
Weapon Focus (Ranged Spells) (CAr p72)
Bonus Feat, Hit and Run Tactics (Lose Tower Shield and Heavy Armor Proficiency, get +2 Initiative and Dex to Damage vs Flat Footed)


6th
Master Thrower 1
+6
+6
+3
+1
Sleight of Hand 7(3), Spellcraft 4(2cc) , Knowledge (Religion) 4, Ride 1, Sense Motive 5
Quick Draw (B), Rapid Shot
Quick Draw (Gain Quick Draw as a Bonus Feat), Thrown Weapon Trick (Palm Throw)


Spells Per Day

Wizard Spells: ECL1+: 3/day Cantrips
Paladin Spells: ECL4+: 2/day 1st Level

Spells Known:

lvl0: Dancing Lights, Flare, Prestidigitation
lvl1: Burning Hands
lvl2: Produce Flame
lvl3-9: Resist Energy (cold or fire only), Wall of Fire, Fireshield, Fire Seeds, Fire Storm, Incendiary Cloud, Elemental Swarm (cast as fire only)

Epic Feats:

1: Sword of the Arcane Order (CoV p34)

2: Arcane Disciple (Fire) (CD p79)

3: Spontaneous Healer (CD p84)

4: Versatile Spellcaster (RotD p101)

5: Extend Spell

6: Persistent Spell (CAr p81)

7: Divine Metamagic (Persistent Spell) CD p80)

8: Extra Turning

9: Practiced Spellcaster (Paladin) (CAr p82)

10: Two Weapon Fighting

Dragonborn Rite of Rebirth (RotD p10):

Human Heritage --> Dragon Tail (RotD p98)
Magical Training --> Prehensile Tail (SK p147)
Arcane Disciple --> Shape Soulmeld (MoI p40) (Claws of the Wyrm (DrM p83)
Two Weapon Fighting --> Multiweapon Fighting (MM p304)


Look, Charles is a Charmander and I have no excuse. It takes literally the entire build to get there, and the build is inconsistent and takes a long time to bring fire in at all, but this amused me enough to submit it anyways. Hopefully you’ll forgive me. Now, on to the build!

Levels 1-4: Paladin

In these levels Charles is beginning to try – and failing rather spectacularly – to get in touch with his inner fire. This takes a couple of forms: mechanically we’ve got access to wizard cantrips 3/day from Magical Training (qualified for with Human Heritage, since according to Races of Destiny p150 the default without DM adjustment is that Aasimar are outsiders and not humanoids despite being described as “humans”) which are only fire-adjacent. Prestidigitation should let him light his finger on fire I think, but that's about it. Not terribly impressive. Narratively we’ve picked up the first hints of fire missing from his being and are attempting to join the ranks of the Mystic Fire Knights, though we won’t actually as we need the Turn Undead charges later on. We’ve taken the Dragonscale Husk ACF here because it’s not terrible in E6, and it starts Charles down the road of eventual Dragonness. In these levels we’re working as a ranged combatant with Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot, and that’s about it. From Class features we have the standard Paladin things providing a little utility, but our skills are almost entirely wound up in prereqs. At level 4 we get access to Paladin spellcasting and have two level 1 slots from a high Wisdom modifier. Paladin spells are quite good, and are excellent in wands if you can get them. Through these levels we’re a pretty normal combat dude, and that’s about it.

Level 5: Fighter

This level is mostly taken to get a bonus feat, which we use to pick up Weapon Focus (Ranged Spells). Complete Arcane specifically notes this category including such spells as Fire Shuriken which means that it should count as Weapon Focus for Thrown Weapons, which becomes important next level. We’re taking the Hit and Run Tactics ACF for additional Initiative and Dex to Damage vs Flat Footed because there’s no reason not to, and moving on.


Level 6: Master Thrower

Master Thrower is setting us up for having fire in about 8 Epic feats, so in the near term it’s only ok. Full BAB, Quick Draw, and Rapid Shot give us some more options with our ranged combat style (bow and/or daggers now), but since our Weapon Focus is in Ranged Spells we don’t benefit from our Thrown Weapon Trick yet. Once we can though, Palm Throw will double our attacks with small thrown weapons for which we have Weapon Focus. A variant build would have WF (Dagger) taken here, and later swap out Practiced Spellcaster for WF Ranged Spells, or take Spell Thematics (Daggers) and get to arguing with your DM.

Epic Feats:

E1:Sword of the Arcane Order lets us use Paladin spell slots to cast from a wizard spell book, which we conveniently have from Magical Training.

E2:Arcane Disciple allows us to add the Fire Domain spells to our spell book, which we can then cast due to Sword of the Arcane Order, which makes us finally somewhat fiery with 2/day usage of Burning Hands. Note that the feat doesn’t actually require you to worship the deity associated with the domain you’re grabbing, which lets us do this while still qualifying for Sword of the Arcane Order (neither Mystra nor Azuth have the Fire domain). If this squicks you out it is possible to pick up Heretic of the Faith here to make it unambiguous and not take Practiced Spellcaster later. The next few feats are dedicated to making fire actually central to our combat style.

E3: We qualify for Spontaneous Healer due to having Cure Light Wounds on the Paladin spell list. This is taken solely to qualify for:

E4: Versatile Spellcaster allows us to use two spell slots to cast a spell of a higher level we know. This allows us to burn our two level 1 Paladin spells to cast Produce Flame from our Wizard spell book. This will become our go-to fire in a couple more feats.

E5: Now that we can cast Produce Flame, we need to make it last for more than a couple minutes once per day. Extend Spell is the first step in a well-trod persistomancy chain

E6: Step two of the cheese is getting Persistent Spell, and

E7: Step three is picking up Divine Metamagic (Persistent Spell). Since Sword of the Arcane Order never explicitly states whether the wizard spells you cast with your Paladin spell slots are arcane or not, we’re going to choose to have them be Divine so we can apply Divine Metamagic. Sadly 32 point buy was not enough to get a 16 Charisma score, so we need one more feat.

E8: Now that we have 7 Turn Undead uses per day we can Persist Produce Flame to use as our weapon of choice. The damage isn’t all that high (1d6+2), but we can full attack with rapid shot for three attacks a round (+8/+3/+8; +6 BAB +2 Dex +1 PBS +1 WF -2 RS) vs touch AC, and each time we can Palm Throw to double the number of projectiles for a total of 6d6+12 damage. Now, Produce Flame reduces the remaining duration by 1 minute each time you attack, which when persisted to 24 hours means we have a maximum of 24*60=1440 attacks. Now, we are obligated to sleep for 8 hours a day to get spells back, which is 480 attacks we can make without cutting into our 16 hour uptime, or 80 full attacks, which should be plenty. We should never run out of Produce Flame at this rate (unless it’s dispelled, but that’s what Rings of Counterspelling are for, as well as Persisting the night before you dungeon dive so you can re-apply fire once if needed. This is a weakness however, and I didn’t want to gloss over it.).

E9: Practiced Spellcaster caps out Produce Flame’s damage at 1d6+5 each for a total damage potential of 6d6+30

E10: Two Weapon Fighting should give us another attack (not entirely clear if we can use Produce Flame for these attacks, though I sure hope so) and sets us up for our next trick

Dragonborn Rite of Rebirth:

Charles is feeling pretty good at this point; having a continuous flame on him at all times is filling a lot of the void inside, but he’s still missing something. It turns out that this is an issue of form rather than function, and Bahamut has his back here. Undergoing The Dragonborn Rite of Rebirth allows Charles to become his truest self, coming out the other side as draconic as he can be.

The Rite of Rebirth has some weirdness in how it lets you do feat shuffling. There are three clauses that address feats, the first of which is not relevant as Lesser Aasimar doesn’t provide any bonus feats. The second is:

If you no longer qualify for a feat due to the transformation you lose the feat and immediately select a new feat for which you qualify in it’s place. You must also replace any feat for which the lost feat was a prerequisite.
This will become relevant after the third and final clause which states that:

Ordinarily, only a 1st-level character can select certain feats requiring the dragonblood subtype. However, upon becoming a dragonborn, you can elect to replace one (and only one) of your existing feats with one of these feats…The feat to be replaced cannot be a prerequisite for any prestige class, ability, or other feat.
This lets us, upon becoming a dragonborn, choose to replace Human Heritage with Dragon Tail. While Human Heritage is not itself a prereq, now that we no longer count as human (baseline assumption of Lesser Planetouched is not human descended, hence the need to take Human Heritage in the first place) we don’t qualify for Magical Training, and the second clause kicks in, allowing us to replace Magical Training with Prehensile Tail. Since we no longer are an arcane caster we don’t qualify for Arcane Disciple, which we replace with Shape Soulmeld (Claws of the Wyrm). We still have our Wizard Spellbook which we can access with Paladin spell slots due to Sword of the Arcane Order so our persisted Produce Flame combo is still online. Similarly, our Dex is now only 13 so we no longer qualify for Two Weapon Fighting which is replaced with Multiweapon Fighting. And now we are a dragonborn with a breath weapon at 3d8 fire damage in a 30’ line every 1d4 rounds (we took the Heart Aspect) and a tail that we can light on fire with persistent Produce Flame and throw fire off of. We have achieved our final form of a Charmander able to use Flamethrower and Ember all day long!


NOTE THAT ALL SOURCES NOT EXPLICITLY CALLED OUT ARE IN THE PLAYERS HANDBOOK

If we have access to items unreservedly then we don’t need to take Extra Turning or Practiced Spellcaster, which opens up a couple feat slots. There aren’t really bad options here, though Entangling Exhalation and Manyshot are probably what I would go for, or another Weapon Focus to make you a little more versatile with Master Thrower’s Palm Throw. If you’re running into Fire resistance, Arcane Thesis and Searing Spell could be good to mitigate that as well. Craft Wand to make sure you have access to everything you need is also a good idea.

[Zaq]

Devotion, more like dev-OCEANS! Of fire! That's how we talk about large quantities of fire, right? Oceans? Pretty sure that's how it's done.



Firefist


Human
Ardent 2/Shaman 4
CG

I had fluff, and I used it as kindling.



Abilities

Initial

Level 4



Str
13
13


Dex
15
16


Con
11
11


Int
8
8


Wis
16
16


Cha
14
14





Level
Class
Base Attack Bonus
Fort Save
Reflex Save
Will Save
Skills
Feats
Class Features
PP


1st
Ardent (comp Psi p.6)
0
0
0
2
Psicraft (+4) 4; k. architecture (+4) 4;
Pyro (song and silence p.40), Practiced Manifester (Comp psi p.57), Improved sunder (When focused)
Assume Psionic Mantle (Fire Mantle) (minds eye) (https://web.archive.org/web/20120217110510/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp%3Fx%3Ddnd/psm/20070629a), Destruction Mantle (comp psi p.68)
2


2nd
Shaman (OA p.23)
0
0
0
4
Psicraft 4; Concentration (+3) 3; Profession (arsonist) (+1) 1; k. architecture 4;
Fire Devotion (Comp Champ p.53&58), Improved unarmed strike
Spells, Domains (flame + nature (p.88) domain), improved unarmed strike, animal companion
2


3rd
Shaman
1
0
0
5
Psicraft 4; Concentration (+3) 6; Profession (arsonist) (+1) 2; k. architecture 4;
Mortalbane (BOVD p.49)
Spirit sight
2


4th
Shaman
2
1
1
5
Psicraft 4; Concentration (+1) 7; Profession (arsonist) (+1) 3; k. architecture (+2 CC) 5;

Turn undead
2


5th
Shaman
3
1
1
6
Psicraft 4; Concentration (+1) 8; Profession (arsonist) (+1) 4; k. architecture (+2 CC) 6;
Combat Reflexes
Bonus Feat (Combat Reflexes)
2


6th
Ardent
4
1
1
7
Psicraft 4; Concentration (+1) 9; Profession (arsonist) 4; k. architecture (+1) 7;
Weapon Focus: Unarmed Strike (conflict mantle), Circle Kick (Sword and fist p.5)
Assume psionic Mantle (Conflict Mantle)
6





Feat#
Epic Feats
Source


1
expanded knowledge (energy missile),
(Xph p.46 & comp psi p.88)


2
privileged energy (fire)
(comp psi p. 57)


3
paraelemental power (fire)
(Comp psi p. 63)


4
strength devotion
(Comp champ p.62)


5
improved natural attack (strength devotion slam)
(MMV p.204)


6
clever opportunist
(DotU p.47)


7
stand still
(XPH p.51)


8
Extra turning



9
animal devotion
(Comp adv p.111)


10
Close Quarter fighting
(Comp warrior p.97)



Powers:
1st: Control flame, elemental steward
3rd: Dispel Psionics.

Spells:
0: Guidance, Mending, Virtue
1: Endure elements, Attraction
2: Hold Person, Ghoul Touch, invisibility to spirits

Level 1: Firefist is an ardent with two mantles: the elemental mantle and the destruction mantle. When psionically focused, Firefist deals 1 extra fire damage with melee attacks and can use the improved sunder feat. An ardent begins play knowing two of the first powers available to her based on her choice of mantles. We choose both powers from the elemental mantle. Control flame and pyro make for a fantastic combo. Just carry a firesource around and use control flame to solve your problems. We throw practiced manifester up in here early so that we don’t have to worry about psicraft crossclass ranks. For levels 1 and 2, elemental stewards are going to be the way you survive combat encounters. Just for the energy rays or psionic dazes.

Level 2: Firefist spent all that time psionically studying fire and destruction and managed to get into contact with some fire spirits. Next thing you know, you’re a shaman with the flame domain traded out for fire devotion and the nature domain. Nature domain is providing 5 rebukes to power more fire devotions. Of the weird things that shaman grants you, including an animal companion and improved unarmed strike, the fire devotion trade out made available by complete champ (Page 53) is a nice discovery, compounded by and turn/rebukes to power it.


If you are a cleric (or any other character class who gains access to a domain), you
can choose any domain feat corresponding to the list of domains offered by your deity, even if you do not have access to those particular domains.

The sidebar on the same page lists domain equivalencies, and seeing as how the shaman’s flame domain is almost identical to the clerics fire domain, it is reasonable to assume they are equivalent.

So with fire devotion, we gain this ability:


Any foe injured by this fire ignites and burns for an additional ld4 points of fire damage per round unless it succeeds on a Reflex save (DC 10 + 1/2 your character level + your Cha modifier). A burning creature can take a move action to automatically douse the flames.

Paired with the pyro feat, that’s a DC 18 reflex save vs catching on fire. We now deal a total of 2 additional points of fire damage with melee attacks. If your opponent is on fire, they take an additional 2 points of damage (1d4+1d6 +1 per die.)

Level 3: Time to add some mortalbane to that thar fire devotion. Your punches deal
1d6 +str +3 (arguably mortalbane’s +2d6) fire damage and force a DC 19 Ref save vs fire or suffer the following:

The damage dealt after setting an opponent aflame is
1d4 (fire devotion)
+2d6 (mortalbane)
+1d6 (catching fire)
+4 (pyro’s 1 per die rolled)
With a move action necessary to extinguish the flames.

Did we mention that, arguably, you may be able to use the sunder rules and that improved sunder feat to not only set your opponent on fire, but set their equipment on fire. And that is just worth its weight in debuffs. Here is why:

Under the rules for catching fire, there is this little diddy
“If a character’s clothes or hair catch fire, he takes 1d6 points of damage immediately. “

And under the rules for sunder, there is this little diddy


Sundering a Carried or Worn Object: You don't use an opposed attack roll to damage a carried or worn object. Instead, just make an attack roll against the object's AC. A carried or worn object's AC is equal to 10 + its size modifier + the Dexterity modifier of the carrying or wearing character. Attacking a carried or worn object provokes an attack of opportunity just as attacking a held object does. To attempt to snatch away an item worn by a defender (such as a cloak or a pair of goggles) rather than damage it, see Disarm, page 155. You can't sunder armor worn by another character.

So if you sunder the opponents clothing with your fiery fist, they immediately take 1d6 damage and now have to contend with this.


In each subsequent round, the burning character must make another DC 15 (+5 for pyro) Reflex saving throw. Failure means he takes another 1d6 points of damage that round. Success means that the fire has gone out. (That is, once he succeeds on his saving throw, he’s no longer on fire.) A character on fire may automatically extinguish the flames by jumping into enough water to douse himself. If no body of water is at hand, rolling on the ground or smothering the fire with cloaks or the like permits the character another save with a +4 bonus. Those unlucky enough to have their clothes or equipment catch fire must make DC 15(+5) Reflex saves for each item. Flammable items that fail take the same amount of damage as the character.

So if you light their clothing on fire, they have to make saves for each item, or each item targetted? Probably the latter. Flammable items that fail take the same damage as the character …would?

So if you get them and their gear on fire, they need at least two move actions to extinguish the fires on their turn.

In case you are worrying on how we are applying mortalbane on fire devotion? Here is a little text from complete champion’s description of devotion feats:


Unless otherwise noted, the benefit granted by any domain feat is a spell-like ability with a caster level equal to your character level. All such effects are subject to spell resistance, and you can dismiss any continuing effect as a free action.

Level 4: Now you can fire devotion 6 times a day. That should be adequate. Plus you can both rebuke animals and turn undead. So that’s a cool little bonus in case it ever becomes relevant. Plus, you unlock an entire new level of shaman spells. We are choosing a fort save and will save opponent control spells, so that way we can just use the control flame power on them while they’re stunned.

Level 5: Bonus feat! Combat reflexes. We need to hit people more because we set them on fire when we hit them. And if we already set them on fire, maybe we can set their clothes on fire with a sundering AOO. This level you can trade your animal companion for something helpful. My choice is brixashulty, a Races of the wild goat with knockback, which is helpful if you’re creeping up on people with your control (privileged paraelemental) flames power. An ape is also a great animal companion because they can throw lantern oil at opponents and then you can use the control flames power.

Level 6: A new mantle delivers weapon focus. Further, we take the circle kick feat, which allows us to spread more fire around by adding an additional attack. Maybe circle kick and sunder someone’s armor, if that counts as a different opponent. With the additional level in ardent, we now have Manifester level 6, which is plenty enough to consider taking a 3rd level power. Add a 4th point of extra fire damage onto your fire devotion powered unarmed strikes. I’m gonna be honest, all of the 3rd level powers available are lunkers. I reckon dispel psionics is the strongest and most utilitarian (transparency applying). But, i would contend that the first level power of the conflict mantle, offensive prescience, grants +2 insight bonus to damage rolls, and that doesn’t specify which damage rolls. If you’re setting stuff on fire, does that count?
__________________________________________________ __________________
Epic 1-3
We spend these feats buffing control flame with privileged energy and paraelemental power. Additional lingering fire damage after you use psionics to move a flame into and out of your opponents squares multiple times with the 30’ movement the power provides should get that hot lava all over your opponents. Plus, now you have ranged energy missiles of the fire type, which is way on theme. 3d6+3 damage to 5 targets for 3 pp isn’t bad. Plus the lava effect.

Epic 4-5
Next, we buff our unarmed strike with strength devotion and improved natural attack. This helps a few things.
1: you can sunder with fire lots of stuff now because you can ignore hardness. Melt their weapons or set something ridiculous on fire.

2: you now deal 2d6+2 with your unarmed strikes before you add strength and fire damage effects. And you may, arguably, be able to add mortalbane to strength devotion, Adding 2d6 to your 2d6+2 for a total of 4d6+2.

3: You have the rebukes to do this.

This brings your damage per punch to
4d6+2 +str +4 fire damage +2d6 mortalbane fire damage
DC 20 Ref save (10+3 CL +2 cha mod +5 pyro) or take 3d6+1d4+4 damage on the next turn.

Epic 6-8
These levels leverage 8 more turn attempts with the extra turning feat. Also, we continue to build off of the combat reflexes part of the build, getting our flame inducing fists into the flammable faces of the enemy. Stand still gives you an AOO to keep an opponent from moving out of their shared space with your controlled flames.

Clever opportunist allows you to switch spots with people you hit with AOOs. If you’re standing in a big old fire (thanks to your shaman spell endure elements), Then maybe this has tactical advantage. Getting into place for other attacks of opportunity is smart. Plus, if you used circle attack as your full attack action, you might, arguably be able to move yourself into position to attack someone else who didn’t cause the attack of opportunity.


A successful unarmed attack roll allows you to make a second attack roll against a different opponent that is within the area that you threaten. This feat requires the full attack action.

If you full attacked on your turn, but then you had a successful unarmed attack roll not on your turn…can you make a second one against another opponent you threaten.

Epic 9-10
Now we add animal devotion. This feat has an extra bite attack, which deals no hp damage, but deals 1d3 con damage. With mortalbane strength devotion on there and mortalbane on itself, that’s 1d3+4d6 con damage, +2d6+4 fire (con?) damage.

And it’s a secondary natural attack form, so that’s another chance to set someone on fire.

Close quarter fighting adds to the number of things we can opportunity attack for.

[Zaq]

Maybe we'd better listen to what this guy says.


https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/024/890/716/small/ricardo-quintero-thunder-knight-comp.jpg
Ricardo Quintero (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nQmqGK)

Young Simon liked to listen to his grandfather's stories. Grandpa was an adventurer and had a lot of stories. But one was Simon's favorite. Story about the Explosion in the Frog City. All other stories are good, too, but... They were too ordinary. Magics, assassins, orcs and elves. Everybody can go and find something like, but in the Frog Temple... There was something extraordinary! Living humans with metallic parts inside. Fire wand without magic! Strange force changing bodies! Wow! Grandpa even had one this... Blaster! But it didn’t work. Grandpa said it's out of ammo, and nobody can't make new ones, all who could have perished in that great Explosion.
He wasn't totally honest actually. Orc bandits happened once. There were five of them. They almost kill Frank the smith. Toyed with him. It was a matter of a couple of minutes when he became absolutely exhausted and the orcs killed him. Grandpa came. Raised this blaster and pushed the button. One of the orcs fell with a steaming hole in his armor. Grandpa fired six times more - one orc was too dodgy, another too diehard, both needed two shots - and all bandits were dead. "These were the last shots," - he said. Simon saw punishment and he realized - when he grows up, he will have such a weapon. He didn't know how, but it was already decided.

LN Human Psychic Warrior 6

Abilities Initial 4th Total
STR 12 12
DEX 13 13
CON 14 14
INT 12 12
WIS 17 1 18
CHA 8 8

Level Class Base Attack Bonus Fort Save Reflex Save Will Save Skills Feats Class Features
1st Psychic Warrior-1 0 2 0 0 16: {+4} Autohypnosis: 4; {+4} Concentration: 4; {+4} Jump: 4; {+4} Knowledge (psionics): 4; Psionic Prodigy, Hidden Talent (Extend Range), Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Heavy Blaster)*, Weapon Focus (Heavy Blaster) Soulbound Weapon
2nd Psychic Warrior-2 1 3 0 0 4: {+1} Autohypnosis: 5; {+1} Concentration: 5; {+1} Jump: 5; {+1} Knowledge (psionics): 5; Soulbound Weapon
3rd Psychic Warrior-3 2 3 1 1 4: {+1} Autohypnosis: 6; {+1} Concentration: 6; Jump: 5; Knowledge (psionics): 5; {+2} Extreme Leap; Zen Archery
4th Psychic Warrior-4 3 4 1 1 4: {+1} Autohypnosis: 7; {+1} Concentration: 7; {+2} Jump: 7; Knowledge (psionics): 5; Extreme Leap;
5th Psychic Warrior-5 3 4 1 1 4: {+1} Autohypnosis: 8; {+1} Concentration: 8; {+1} Jump: 8; {+1} Knowledge (psionics): 6; Extreme Leap; Point Blank Shot Bonus feat
6th Psychic Warrior-6 4 5 2 2 4: {+1} Autohypnosis: 9; {+1} Concentration: 9; {+1} Jump: 9; {+1} Knowledge (psionics): 7; Extreme Leap; Psionic Shot
* - there are no mentions in the Return to the Temple of the Frog what type of weapon Heavy Blaster is. Saint Stephen uses lighter version without proficiency feats and penalties being fighter, but he has alien human subtype. If you think Blaster and Heavy Blaster are martial or even simple, just change EWP with Up the Walls and Wall Walker power with Detect Hostile Intent or Animal Affinity.
Level Epic Feats
E1 Rapid Shot
E2 Psionic Meditation
E3 Bind Vestige
E4 Bind Vestige, Improved
E5 Narrow Mind
E6 Skill Focus (Concentration)
E7 Precise Shot
E8 Heavy Armor Optimization
E9 Deflective Armor
E10 Psionic Body

Level Class 1st 2nd PP
1st Psychic Warrior-1 Call Weaponry, Extend Range (feat) 0+2+2
2nd Psychic Warrior-2 Vigor 1+4+2
3rd Psychic Warrior-3 Force Screen 3+6+2
4th Psychic Warrior-4 Hustle 5+10+2
5th Psychic Warrior-5 Darkvision, Psionic 7+12+2
6th Psychic Warrior-6 Wall Walker 11+15+2

Here we begin. I have the most powerful ranged weapon ever. On the first level. Yes, it isn't always with me - my PP too low, but at least ammo isn't problem:

If you call a projectile weapon, it comes with 3d6 nonmagical bolts, arrows, or sling bullets, as appropriate.
Vigor give me some durability. Benefit of Extend Range for shooter is obvious. It doesn't need every fight, but when it needs it works.

Two words about Psionic Prodigy. Yeah, it's cursed 3.0 psionics! But... There is nothing 3.0 in this feat. It clearly works. If you still think it's prohibited... Well, let's count I took Wild Talent.
Zen Archery and rising BAB give me at least +9 AB. With touch attack. Yeah!
I think it's obvious what to do with Force Screen and Hustle.
Extreme Leap for somebody in full plate is +50% of speed!
Two more valuable feats. PBS mostly prec, but it's prec for so many needed feats... and +1 to attack and damage are never excessive. Psionic Shot, in turn, gives me extra 2d6 damage. 10d6 fire damage with a single shot. Wow!
Darkvision is good if darkness is around. Wall Walker is nice mobility option. Walk on the tree and shot from branch.
What did I do here? Three things.
1) Improve my shots and shot options. Rapid Shot and Precise Shot, yes. It's a shame I can't take Greater Psionic Shot - +5 BAB prerequisite. Sadness.

2) I improve my psi focus skills. I work with Psionic Shot and Deflective Armor simultaneously, of course I need to regain psi focus quickly and reliably. With final numbers I fail Concentration only on natural 1.

3) And I take some defense. I’m talking about Savnok’s Armor. Free +1 full plate! +10 regular and touch AC. If armor disappears when Savnok is over, well, I’ll bind Savnok every day. But if armor is with me forever... I guess I'll bind Dahlver-Nar instead. My Wisdom is very important to me.

And the icing on the cake - Psionic Body. +10 hp. For my average 42 hp it's a significant boost.

Type Name Book Page
Race Human PHB 12
Class Psychic Warrior XPH 24
Class variant Soulbound Weapon Expanded Classes, Part One link (https://web.archive.org/web/20190911172050/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070214a)
Feat Psionic Prodigy Psionic Potpourri link (https://web.archive.org/web/20190915142704/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20030829a)
Feat Exotic Weapon Proficiency PHB 94
Feat Weapon Focus PHB 102
Feat Zen Archery CW 106
Feat Point Blank Shot PHB 98
Feat Psionic Shot XPH 50
Feat Greater Psionic Shot XPH 47
Feat Psionic Meditation XPH 50
Feat Bind Vestige ToM 72
Feat Bind Vestige, Improved ToM 73
Feat Narrow Mind XPH 48
Feat Skill Focus PHB 100
Feat Precise Shot PHB 98
Feat Heavy Armor Optimization RoS 141
Feat Deflective Armor RoS 137
Feat Psionic Body XPH 49
Skill Trick Extreme Leap CS 86
Weapon Heavy Blaster Return to the Temple of the Frog 30
Power Call Weaponry XPH 82
Power Vigor XPH 108
Power Force Screen XPH 140
Power Hustle XPH 90
Power Darkvision, Psionic XPH 111
Power Wall Walker XPH 140

[Zaq]

"Three wishes? No no no, I said you get three ashes. Hold still."


A fire gensai from Calimshan, Spirit was trained by the church of Kossoth to wield fire in pursuit of the church's aims. He has embraced his fiery nature and used it to master the divine magic he channels.



Level
Class
Base Attack Bonus
Fort Save
Ref Save
Will Save
Skills
Feats
Class Features


1st
Shugenja 1
+1
+1
+1
+2
(Skill points, ability bonues, and racial bonuses, 4/level/shugenja)
Concentration (Con) +5, Iaijutsu Focus (Cha) +5, Knowledge (arcana) (Int) +4, Spellcraft (Int) +4
Simple Weapon Proficiency, Martial Weapon Proficiency (short sword), Bloodline of File
Element Focus, Sense Elements (3/day)


2nd
Shugenja 2
+2
+1
+1
+3
(Skill points, ability bonues, and racial bonuses, 4/level/shugenja)
Concentration (Con) +6, Iaijutsu Focus (Cha) +5.5, Knowledge (arcana) (Int) +5, Spellcraft (Int) +5
Simple Weapon Proficiency, Martial Weapon Proficiency (short sword), Bloodline of File
Element Focus, Sense Elements (3/day), Elemental Recognition


3rd
Shugenja 3
+2
+1
+1
+3
(Skill points, ability bonues, and racial bonuses, 4/level/shugenja)
Concentration (Con) +7, Iaijutsu Focus (Cha) +6, Knowledge (arcana) (Int) +6, Spellcraft (Int) +6
Simple Weapon Proficiency, Martial Weapon Proficiency (short sword), Bloodline of File, Armor Proficiency (light)
Element Focus, Sense Elements (3/day), Elemental Recognition


4th
Shugenja 4
+3
+2
+2
+4
(Skill points, ability bonues, and racial bonuses, 4/level/shugenja)
Concentration (Con) +8, Iaijutsu Focus (Cha) +6.5, Knowledge (arcana) (Int) +7, Spellcraft (Int) +7
Simple Weapon Proficiency, Martial Weapon Proficiency (short sword), Bloodline of File, Armor Proficiency (light)
Element Focus, Sense Elements (3/day), Elemental Recognition


5th
Shugenja 5
+3
+2
+2
+4
(Skill points, ability bonues, and racial bonuses, 4/level/shugenja)
Concentration (Con) +9, Iaijutsu Focus (Cha) +7, Knowledge (arcana) (Int) +8, Spellcraft (Int) +8
Simple Weapon Proficiency, Martial Weapon Proficiency (short sword), Bloodline of File, Armor Proficiency (light)
Element Focus, Sense Elements (4/day), Elemental Recognition


6th
Shugenja 6
+4
+3
+3
+5
(Skill points, ability bonues, and racial bonuses, 4/level/shugenja)
Concentration (Con) +10, Iaijutsu Focus (Cha) +7.5, Knowledge (arcana) (Int) +9, Spellcraft (Int) +9
Simple Weapon Proficiency, Martial Weapon Proficiency (short sword), Bloodline of File, Armor Proficiency (light), Fiery Burst
Element Focus, Sense Elements (4/day), Elemental Recognition


LE Lesser Planetouched (dragonblooded, fire gensai, FR Campaign Setting & Races of Faerun) Shugenja 6 (Order of the Consuming Flame)
S-12
D-12
C-12
I-10
W-12
Ch-17 (+1 at 4th level)

HP: 30 (6 +6(Con bonus) +(5*3.5) +1 (Dragontouched))
AC: 11, flat-footed 10, touch 11
Init: +1

(Skill points, ability bonues, and racial bonuses, 4/level/shugenja)
Concentration (Con) +10, Iaijutsu Focus (Cha) +7.5, Knowledge (arcana) (Int) +9, Spellcraft (Int) +9, Listen (Wis) +2, Search (Int) +1, Spot (Wis) +2




Level
0th
1st
2nd
3rd


1
Order - Flare (fire)
Element - Detect Magic (all), Disrupt Undead (fire)
Other - Guidance, Resistance

Order - Burning Hands (fire)
Element - Hypnotism (fire))
Other - Shield of Faiths



2
Order - Flare (fire)
Element - Detect Magic (all), Disrupt Undead (fire), Light (fire)
Other - Guidance, Resistance

Order - Burning Hands (fire)
Element - Hypnotism (fire)
Other - Shield of Faith



3
Order - Flare (fire)
Element - Detect Magic (all), Disrupt Undead (fire), Light (fire)
Other - Guidance, Resistance

Order - Burning Hands (fire)
Element - Cause Fear (fire), Hypnotism (fire)
Other - Shield of Faith



4
Order - Flare (fire)
Element - Detect Magic (all), Disrupt Undead (fire), Light (fire)
Other - Ghost Sound, Guidance, Resistance

Order - Burning Hands (fire)
Element - Cause Fear (fire), Hypnotism (fire)
Other - Shield of Faith

Order - Produce Flame (fire)
Element - Flaming Sphere (fire)
Other - N/A



5
Order - Flare (fire)
Element - Detect Magic (all), Disrupt Undead (fire), Light (fire), Read Magic (all)
Other - Ghost Sound, Guidance, Resistance

Order - Burning Hands (fire)
Element - Cause Fear (fire), Hypnotism (fire)
Other - Shield of Faith, Silent Image

Order - Produce Flame (fire)
Element - Flaming Sphere (fire)
Other - Resist Energy (all)



6
Order - Flare (fire)
Element - Detect Magic (all), Disrupt Undead (fire), Light (fire), Read Magic (all)
Other - Ghost Sound, Guidance, Resistance

Order - Burning Hands (fire)
Element - Cause Fear (fire), Hypnotism (fire)
Other - Shield of Faith, Silent Image

Order - Produce Flame (fire)
Element - Flaming Sphere (fire)
Other - Resist Energy (all)

Order - Searing Light (fire)
Element - Fire Wings (fire)
Other - N/A





Simple Weapon Proficiency (Player's Handbook)
[General]
You understand how to use all types of simple weapons in combat (see Table 7–5: Weapons, page 116, for a list of simple weapons).
Benefit: You make attack rolls with simple weapons normally.
Normal: When using a weapon with which you are not proficient, you take a –4 penalty on attack rolls.

Martial Weapon Proficiency (short sword)(Player's Handbook)
[General]
Choose a type of martial weapon, such as a longbow (see Table 7–5: Weapons, page 116, for a list of martial weapons). You understand how to use that type of mar*tial weapon in combat.
Use this feat to ex*pand the list of weapons with which you are proficient beyond the basic list in your class description.
Benefit: You make attack rolls with the selected weapon normally.
Normal: When using a weapon with which you are not proficient, you take a –4 penalty on attack rolls.

Bloodline of fire (PGtF)
[Regional]
You are descended from the efreet who ruled Calimshan long ago. The blood of these fire spirits runs thick in your veins.
Prerequisite: Human (Calimshan) or planetouched (Calimshan),
Benefit: You receive a +4 bonus on saving throws against fire effects. In addition, you cast spells with the fire descriptor at +2 caster level.
Special: You may select this feat only as a 1st-level character. You may have only one regional feat.

Armor Proficiency (light) (Player's Handbook)
[General]
You are proficient with light armor (see Table 7–6: Armor and Shields, page 123).
Benefit: When you wear a type of armor with which you are proficient, the armor check penalty for that armor applies only to Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, Hide, Jump, MoveSilently, Pick Pocket, and Tumble checks.
Normal: A character who is wearing armor with which she is not proficient applies its armor check penalty to attack rolls and to all skill checks that involve moving, including Ride.

Fiery Burst (CM)
[Reserve]
You channel your magical talent into a blast of fire.
Prerequisite: Ability to cast 2nd-level spells,
Benefit: As long as you have a fire spell of 2nd level or higher available to cast, you can spend a standard action to create a 5-foot-radius burst of fire at a range of 30 feet. This burst deals 1d6 points of fire damage per level of the highest level fire spell you have available to cast. A successful Reflex save halves the damage. As a secondary benefit, you gain a +1 competence bonus to your caster level when casting fire spells.


Blistering Spell (PH2)
[Metamagic]
Your fire spells sear the flesh from your enemies' bones, leaving them wracked with pain.
Benefit: This metamagic feat can be applied only to a spell that has the fire descriptor. A blistering spell deals an extra 2 points of fire damage per level of the spell. In addition to the spell's normal effect, any creature that fails its save against a blistering spell takes a -2 penalty on attack rolls and checks until the beginning of your next turn. A blistering spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.

Fiery Spell (Sandstorm)
[Metamagic]
Your fire magic is bolstered, further scorching your enemies.
Benefit: A fiery spell deals an extra 1 point of fire damage for each die of damage the spell deals. This feat can be applied only to spells with the fire descriptor. For example, if a 9th-level wizard with this feat casts a fiery fireball, the fireball deals 9d6+9 points of damage. A fiery spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.

Healing Flames (RoF)
[Genera]
You can draw energy from open flames to heal yourself.
Prerequisite: Base Will save +3, fire genasi or tanarukk
Benefit: When you use your control flame spell-like ability, you instead may touch the flame and heal yourself a number, of hit points of damage depending upon the size of the fire. This counts as a use of your control flame ability for the day. Touching the flame causes you no harm when you use this ability, but if you enter the flame, touch more than just its edge, or remain in contact with it for more than 1 round, you take damage from the fire.

Nonlethal Substitution (fire) (CA)
[Metamagic]
You can modify an energy spell to deal nonlethal damage.
Prerequisites: Knowledge (arcana) 5 ranks, any metamagic feat.
Benefit: Choose one type of energy (acid, cold, electricity, or fire). You can then modify any spell with the chosen descriptor to deal nonlethal damage instead of normal energy damage. The nonlethal spell works normally in all respects except the type of damage dealt—for example, a nonlethal fireball has the same range and area, but since it deals nonlethal damage instead of energy damage, it will not damage objects or set fire to combustibles in the area.
A nonlethal spell uses a spell slot one level higher than the spell’s normal level.

Searing Spell (Sandstorm)
[Metamagic]
Your fire spells are so hot that they can damage creatures that normally have resistance or immunity to fire.
Benefit: A searing spell is so hot that it ignores the resistance to fire of creatures affected by the spell, and affected creatures with immunity to fire still take half damage. This feat can be applied only to spells with the fire descriptor. Creatures with the cold subtype take double damage from a searing spell. Creatures affected by a searing spell are still entitled to whatever saving throw the spell normally allows. A searing spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.

Transdimensional Spell (CA)
[Metamagic]
You can cast spells that affect targets lurking in coexistent planes and extradimension al spaces whose entrances fall within the spell’s area.
Benefit: A transdimensional spell has its full normal effect on incorporeal creatures, creatures on the Ethereal Plane or the Plane of Shadow, and creatures within an extradimension al space in the spell’s area. Such creatures include ethereal creatures, creatures that are blinking or shadow walking, manifested ghosts, and creatures within the extradimension al space of a rope trick, portable hole, or familiar pocket (see page 106).
You must be able to perceive a creature to target it with a transdimension al spell, but you do not need to perceive a creature to catch it in the area of a burst, cone, emanation, or spread.
A transdimensional spell uses up a spell slot one level higher than the spell’s actual level.
Normal: Only force spells and effects can affect ethereal creatures, and no Material Plane attack affects creatures on the Plane of Shadow or in an enclosed extradimension al space. There is a 50% chance that any spell other than a force effect fails against an incorporeal creature.

Versatile Spellcaster (RofD)
[General]
You can use two lower-level spell slots to cast a spell one level higher.
Prerequisite: Ability to spontaneously cast spells,
Benefit: You can use two spell slots of the same level to cast a spell you know that is one level higher. For example, a sorcerer with this feat can expend two 2nd-level spell slots to cast any 3rd-level spell he knows.

Dragontouched (Dragon Magic)
[General]
You have a trace of draconic power, a result of dragons in your ancestry or a spiritual connection between you and the forces of dragon kind.
Prerequisite: Cha 11.
Benefit: You gain the dragonblood subtype. You gain 1 hit point, a +1 bonus on Listen, Search, and Spot checks, and a +1 bonus on saving throws against paralysis and sleep effects. In addition, you can select draconic feats as if you were a sorcerer of your character level.

Accelerate Metamagic (Transdimensional Spell) (RotD)
[General]
You can apply a selected metamagic feat to your spells more quickly than normal.
Prerequisite: Dragonblood subtype, Spellcraft 4 ranks, any metamagic feat, ability to spontaneously cast 1st-level spells.
Benefit: Choose a metamagic feat you know. You can apply the selected metamagic feat to any spontaneously cast spell without increasing the casting time.
Special: You can gain Accelerate Metamagic multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new metamagic feat.
Normal: Without this feat, metamagic spells with a normal casting time of 1 standard action take a full-round action for spontaneous casters. Metamagic spells with a casting time of longer than 1 standard action take spontaneous casters an extra full-round action to cast.

Accelerate Metamagic (Searing Spell) (RotD)
[General]
You can apply a selected metamagic feat to your spells more quickly than normal.
Prerequisite: Dragonblood subtype, Spellcraft 4 ranks, any metamagic feat, ability to spontaneously cast 1st-level spells.
Benefit: Choose a metamagic feat you know. You can apply the selected metamagic feat to any spontaneously cast spell without increasing the casting time.
Special: You can gain Accelerate Metamagic multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new metamagic feat.
Normal: Without this feat, metamagic spells with a normal casting time of 1 standard action take a full-round action for spontaneous casters. Metamagic spells with a casting time of longer than 1 standard action take spontaneous casters an extra full-round action to cast.

Element Focus: See Complete Divine.


Sense Elements (Sp): See Complete Divine.


From http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cwc/20070227x
Elemental Recognition (Su): Starting at 2nd level, a shugenja can identify creatures with an elemental subtype during an encounter from any distance. The shugenja gains a +2 bonus on Knowledge (the planes) checks to identify such creature types, but gains no insight about their special powers or vulnerabilities. See Knowledge on pg. 78 of the Player's Handbook. Moreover, the shugenja can make these Knowledge (the planes) checks untrained. This bonus increases by +1 for each shugenja level the character takes after 2nd level.

From FR Campaign Setting and PGtF:
Fire genasi are hot-blooded and quick to anger, proud and unafraid to take action. They are most often neutral. They appear mostly human, with one or two unusual traits reflecting their quasi-elemental nature, such as skin the color of burnt coal, red hair that waves like flames, or eyes that glow when the genasi is angry. They prefer to dress simply and elegantly, although their fashions can be more flamboyant than the most outrageous trend.
Regions: Fire genasi are most common in Calimshan, for much of that land was long ago ruled by efreet. They are also found in Chult, the Lake of Steam, and Unther, which are all lands near volcanoes.
Racial Abilities: Fire genasi have the following racial traits:
+2 Intelligence, -2 Charisma: Fire genasi have bright minds, but are impatient and quick to anger.
+1 racial bonus on saving throws against fire spells and effects. This bonus increases by +1 for every five class levels the genasi attains.
Size: Medium.
Base Speed: 30.
Darkvision up to 60 feet.
Control Flame (Sp): Fire genasi can cause a nonmagical fire within 10 feet of them to diminish to the level of coals or flare to the brightness of daylight and double the normal radius of its illumination. This ability does not change the heat output or fuel consumption of the fire source, lasts 5 minutes, and may be done once per day. They use this ability as 5th-level sorcerers.
Humanoid (planetouched): They are susceptible to spells that specifically target both humanoids or outsiders.
Automatic Languages: Common, home region. Bonus Languages: Any (except secret languages, such as Druidic).

[Zaq]

They've got a regular engine going.



Fire, fire you say!? What is fire, what is this fascinating brightness? Here in this wet place, you bring fire!?


The original idea was to sing you the refrain "bears on fire! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htKY2oD85rs)", but from there it became seas of fire, and so we are here.

Anyway, entry theme : I like the spell Balor nimbus a lot, there's something viscerally satisfying with the concept to set yourself on fire as a way to deliver pain to your enemies, so here I am turning that up to eleven

"But what about bears? and what's with the aquatic!?" Well, If I'm making a grappler, I want that little octopus, so here we are playing around in water.

Plus, it makes fire all that more "impactful", storywise! The contrast!

I need to work smoke on the water in somewhere, or even heaven's on fire

NG ShalarinMoF p. 76 , 3.5update (https://web.archive.org/web/20170412153137/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20040313a), druid 1 / Sorcerer 1 / Cleric of Eadro 3 / Beastmaster 1
Str 20 (15+ 4 racial +1 level), Dex 18 (14 +4 racial), Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 12
HP 8 + 1d10 +3d8 + 1d4 + 12 (41)
naked AC 14, or 18+ with the aquatic equivalent of chainshirt which is conveniently made of pearl/coral/notmetal. plus relevant other bonuses from spells or equipment
naked saves for 11 refl 9 will 11 with only conviction, add resistance to taste

Grapple bonuses, assuming enlarged for the occasion : BAB 3 + STR 6 +size 4 + octopus 3 + soulmeld 6 = +20
Gargantuan Dinograpple : BAB 7 + STR 9 + size 12 + soulmeld 6 = +34
Lil octopus grapple : BAB 3 + STR 2 + size 0 + soulmeld 6 = +11
Clearly we'll dino>us>octopus, easy peasy staying within 5 feet of the gargantuan dino for sharing the soulmeld bonuses

LevelClassBase Attack BonusFort SaveRef SaveWill SaveSkillsFeatsClass Features1stSpontaneous Druid 1+0+2+0+2Handle animal +4, Spellcraft +4, Spot +4, Survival +4Skill focus(handle animal)Animal companion, Nature sense, Wild empathy2stDruid 1 / Sorcerer 1+0+2+0+4Handle animal 4+1(2CC), Spellcraft 4, Spot 4, Survival 4DrakkenDM p. 12 familiar3rdDruid 1 / Sorcerer 1 / Cleric of Eadro 1+0+4+0+6Handle animal 5+1(2CC), Spellcraft 4, Spot 4, Survival 4Natural bondCAdv p. 111, Rapid swimmingsto p. 93, bonusTurn undead, Turn fire/Rebuke water, Water Domain, SeafolkSto p. 110 Domain4thDruid 1 / Sorcerer 1 / Cleric 2+1+5+0+7Handle animal 6+1(2CC), Spellcraft 4, Spot 4, Survival 45thDruid 1 / Sorcerer 1 / Cleric 3+2+5+1+7Handle animal 7+1(2CC), Spellcraft 4, Spot 4, Survival 46thDruid 1 / Sorcerer 1 / Cleric 3 / Beastmaster 1CAdv p. 26+3+7+3+7Handle animal 8, Spellcraft 4, Spot 4+4, Survival 4Extend SpellAnimal companion, Wild empathy
Epic feats in order of acquisition:

Persistent SpellCA p. 81
Divine Metamagic(persistent spell)CD p. 80
Extra turning
Sudden MaximizeCA p. 83
Sudden EmpowerCA p. 83
Companion SpellbondPHBII p. 77
Enspell FamiliarDrC p. 97
Shape soulmeld(Girallon's arms)MoI p. 40, 68
Share soulmeldMoI p. 41
Bonus EssentiaMoI p. 35



I'm skipping orisons and cantrips because other than the usual suspects of detect magic, know direction and so on, they're not much cared about
We are a first level druid withenough wisdom for one bonus slot, so
Prepared : Produce flame, Speak with animals

We are a first level sorcerer, this means, with our charisma
4 1st level slots
2 1st level spells known: Enlarge person, Fist of StoneSC

We are a third level cleric, this mean, eventually, with our wisdom
3+1 1st level slots
2+1 2nd level slot

prepared
2nd level: 1x balor nimbusSC, 1x veil of shadowSC, domain Fins to feetSto
1st level: 1x convictionSC, 1x divine favor, 1x entropic shield, domain quickswimSto

Animal companion:
at ECL 1-2 Squid (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/squid.htm) , if you subscribe to the school of thought that we're allowed to change the default feat, he'll have improved unarmed strike and improved grapple
at ECL 3-5 : that same squid but so advanced : 5HD, DEX 18 CON 12, BAB 3
at ECL 6 and epic : enter the arena (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efA2TV6-1KA) Elasmosaurus (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dinosaur.htm), again if we can change the default feats, he'll pick: Snatch, Improved snatchDrc p. 71, MultisnatchDrc p. 72, Combat reflexes.

Familiar:
dragonblooded Octopus (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/octopus.htm) with 20 HP and a 1/hour breath weapon that does 15ft fire cone for 1d6+2 damage

Shalarin: this is an acquatic (they have gills, and also a nose) humanoid race with no land speed, 40ft swim speed, 60ft darkvision, racial ability modifiers of +4 STR, +4 DEX and, of course, LA 0 :)
Drakken familiar ACF from dragon magic gives our little octopus the dragonblood subtype, and exchange the deliver touch spell feature for a breath weapon usable once per hour (yes, it's fire!)
Natural bond: +3 to our "equivalent druid level / EDL" to adjudicate what kind / how strong our animal companion is
water domain granted power: turn fire/rebuke water pool of alternative turning
seafolk domain granted power : rapid swimming as a bonus feat
rapid swimming : + 20ft to the innate swim speed
beastmaster : grants 4 EDL that are specifically allowed to go above our HD, thus we're allowed an animal companion from the EDL-6 list, joy!
Persistent spell: a metamagic costing +6 for making any personal or fixed range spell last 24 hours
Divine metamagic(select): you can spend turn attempt to apply the chosen metamagic without actually increasing the spell slot, 1+metamagic increase turn, so 7 for persisting
Sudden maximize and sudden empower : can apply maximize and empower for free , 1/day each
Companion spellbond: the share spell feature of your companion works up to 30ft. touch spells become close range when the target is your companion. can "deliver touch" up to 30 ft.
Enspell familiar: the share spell feature of your familiar works up to 1 mile.
Shape soulmeld(select): you can shape the selected soulmeld
Girallon arms: +2 bonus to climb/grapple checks, plus another 2 per essentia invested
share soulmeld: you can share the effect of your soulmelds with your animal companion and familiar so long that they are within 5ft.
Bonus essentia: +2 essentia


There's.. not really much to say about build decisions, I think. The fire theme made me think of balor nimbus, the build simply flowed from there with this simple train of thought:
I'll have to persist it to properly be on theme of FIRE, FIRE ALL DAY LONG!, so cleric is mandatory.
It is known that bears are the grapplers, so let's go druid+beastmaster, it's not like beastmaster NEVER EVER sees use in this E6 IC laughs self deprecatingly
Oh frell balor nimbus is 2nd level cleric, druid 1/cleric 4/beastmaster 1 it is
massive facial tick at taking 4 level of a prepared spellcaster
Oh hey! if I tack on sorcerer, I could get an extra 3 to grappling with the octopus, and that's even a third creature I can set on FRIENDLY FIRE!
But octopus is aquatic, what am I to do with bears in water, I guess I'll go aquatic
flips out about that damn dinosaur
Ok, we got the persist, now let's pump those fire numbers up!
Freedom of movement! (of a sort)
let's be better at grappling, 3 feat for +6 to me and my critters sounds fair



Level 1: with those stats, we can happily melee, and we got a little grappler to boot.
given the aquatic enviroment, I feel that animals will be 80% of our encounters, so speak with animal is a solid "problem solving" spell that will probably never stops being relevant

level 2: we're lucky we got the strength to pick up the slack from our bab staying at 0 until level 4. And hey, triple effectiveness with fist of stone since we'll be sharing it with our companions. It'll be a bit tricky staying within 5ft all the time, but doable since we all act "in the same turn"

level 3: more spells! the juicy thing is our lovable squid jumping up 2HD

level 5 : our first little taste of balor nymbus. FIRE! FIRE IN THE WATER, WHAT IS FIRE? I would give it a big circumstance bonus to intimidate here, because fire is scary and it's extra scary when it's not where it belongs

level 6 : dinoshenanigans, who woulnd't love a huge and occasionally gargantuan animal companion!?

E3 : finally on fire all day long! and with the pool of water turning we can persist a second spell, too. Maybe that produce flame? for practically infinite amount of ranged spell attacks for you and your critters? Or maybe veil of shadow for all day long 20% miss chance? juicy.

E4-5 : "sudden X" are usually deemed bad feats because doing the metamagic 1/day is not that great, since you can do the same with rods. But gods forbid we use magic items in these competitions wink wink, and the spell we persist is 1/day anyway, so these are great here, making our ( triple!) balor nimbus do 54 damage instead of 6d6, and x3!

E6-7 : fire! fire from 30ft or 1 mile away!

E8-10 : we end our tale with making grappling better, and ironically locking us on staying within 5 feet of our animal companion for that first grapple... Which is easy, he's frigging gargantuan when it counts, this means if we are riding our dino , we can be up to 35ft away from enemies and they will still be grappled by the Dino

Let's talk about divine metamagic. the two big controversies I'm aware on the topic are :

"You can't DMM something you wouldn't have the higher slot for"
"You can't use turn attempts from alternate pools of turning to fuel divine metamagic".


I don't have much to say about the first, it's a somewhat reasonable limitation, but nothing on the wording of the feat suggests that this is the case. In the context of E6, we're persisting spells that *would* be persistible the normal way, eventually, if the game was not E6. it's not like we are persisting divine power that would not be persistible in a normal game/normal way. I feel it's reasonable to allow DMM:persist

The second is a valid, if restrictive, read of the feat. One I don't subscribe to, obviously, but the topic is much contested/discussed on this forum now and then, it's as simple as picking a different domain instead of water. Staying with Eadro I see three possible picks : animal domain, because the 1/day speak with animal SLA would free us up to prepare a different druid spell, or using the Complete Champion ACF that let us pick devotions in place of the domain. Animal devotion or protection devotion feels like interesting choices here.
Of course we don't "need" the seafolk domain if the campaign is 100% aquatic without a "need" to occasionally venture on land, 3hours at a time


Another thing that might be contested is "can we share an enlarge person we are casting on ourselves". This would be contested because the line "At the druid’s option, she may have any spell (but not any spell-like ability) she casts upon herself also affect her animal companion" and the line "A druid and her animal companion can share spells even if the spells normally do not affect creatures of the companion’s type (animal)" are in different paragraphs. I am of the school of thought that it works.
If not, then enlarge person loses much of it's appeal within the context of making your animal companion a bigger grappler. Perhabs you'd like to have a different spell known then? Personally I'm a sucker for light of lunia/mercuria/venya when doing manypets shenanigans, 6d6 ( or 12d6 against undeads) ranged touch damage is solid ofr a 1st level slot. for this contest I'd pick shield honestly.

Fire and water : Stormwrack codifies that spells with the fire descriptor can work underwater if you make a spellcraft check, and they do "steam" instead of the usual fiery effect.
luckily for us, balor nimbus doesn't actually have the fire descriptor, so we can coast on it and have "real" fire underwater, ha!

CA: Complete Arcane
CAdv: Complete Adventurer
CD: Complete Divine
Drc: Draconomicon
DrC: Dragon Compendium
DM: Dragon Magic
MoI: Magic of Incarnum
MoF: Monsters of Faerun
PHBII: Player's Handbook 2
SC: Spell Compendium
Sto: Stormwrack

[Zaq]

Every now and then I flirt with Perm. Emanation
Something something total eclipse of the bard


Every now and then I flirt with permanent emanation feat.

Fire theme made me think of that, but it's kind of very very hard to get an epic feat on E6 :D

So I'll simply try to go "close enough" to that in some other means.

Lore blurb.... something something fire is beautiful, meditate on the beauty of fire, make plans to have a world on fire, as our cabal demands! I'm here to optimize, not to creative writing!

CE Naenhoon IllumianRoD p. 53 Cleric 5 / Wizard 1
Str 8, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 16 (15 +1 level), Cha 12
HP 8 + 4d8 + 1d4 + 12 (40)
AC 13, plus whatever equipment/spells
Saves fort 6 reflex 4 Will 9, plus equipment/spells

Fire:Persisted "Corona of fire" dealing 42-45 fire damage per round in a 20ft emanation, DC 21-22 to negate, rider effects are -2 to STR, +2 to dex, half movement and -2 to attack rolls and "checks", that ignore resistance and still deal half damage to immune creatures. "invisible" fire so we're not immediately focus fired, and it's doubled up because we share it with our familiar ( which we keep well away from ourself!)

LevelClassBase Attack BonusFort SaveRef SaveWill SaveSkillsFeatsClass Features1stCleric 1+0+2+0+2Concentration +4, Knowledge(Arcana) +4, Spellcraft +4Extra turning, Extend spellbonusHoon Power Sigil, Rebuke undead, Domains: PlanningSC p. 278, MeditationDCS p. 1032ndCleric 2+1+3+0+3Concentration 4+1, Knowledge(Arcana) 4+1, Spellcraft 4+1Naen Power Sigil, Naenhoon Power Word3rdCleric 3+2+3+1+3Concentration 5+1, Knowledge(Arcana) 5+1, Spellcraft 5+1Persistent SpellCA p. 814thCleric 4+3+4+1+4Concentration 6+1, Knowledge(Arcana) 6+1, Spellcraft 6+1Ability Score Increase WIS +15thCleric 5+3+4+1+4Concentration 7+1, Knowledge(Arcana) 7+1, Spellcraft 7+16thCleric 5 / EvokerUA p. 62 specialist Wizard 1+3+4+1+6Concentration 8+1, Knowledge(Arcana) 8+1, Spellcraft 8+1Energy Substitution(fire)CA p. 79, Scribe ScrollbonusSummon familiar(bat), Overcome Resistance
Epic feats in order of acquisition

Enspell FamiliarDrC pg. 97
Invisible SpellCs pg. 61
Sudden MaximizeCA pg. 83
Sudden WidenCA pg. 83
Metamagic School Focus(Evocation)CM p. 45
Searing SpellSnd pg. 53
Blistering SpellPHBII pg. 91
Extra Turning
Heighten Spell
Divine Metamagic(Heighten)CD p. 80

Illumian : Very cool race with a customizable suit of bonuses and from 2nd level, a special daily power depending on the combination of sigils we picked, in our case :
Hoon Sigil : +2 to wisdom checks, constitution checks and skill checks based on either of these two ability score. Some says this apply to fort and will saves too, I disagree with that but you do you. this bonus is +1 at 1st level and increases to +2 at second level.
Naen Sigil : +2 to intelligence check and INT based skill checks
Naenhoon power word : 2/day swift action can spend turn/rebuke attempts equal to a metamagic cost to apply that metamagic when casting a spell, without increasing the slot
Planning Domain power : extend spell as bonus feat
Meditation Domain power : 1/day apply the effect of empower metamagic when casting a spell, "no action"
Persistent Spell : +6 metamagic power that make a personal or fixed range spell last 24 hours
Energy substitution : +0 metamagic spell that change the energy damage type and spell descriptor to the chosen element
Evoker variant : count as specialist and chose among features, we chose overcome resistance, which substitutes the specialist bonus slot
overcome resistance : 3/day free action when casting a spell, that spell ignores 10 point of energy resistance
Enspell familiar : while it's within 1 mile of you, familiar is considered to be touchign you for hte purpose of share spell
Invisible spell : +0 metamagic that removes all visual effects of a spell
Sudden maximize : 1/day apply the effect of maximize metamagic when casting a spell, "no action"
Sudden widen : 1/day apply the effect of widen metamagic when casting a spell, "no action"
Metamagic school focus : 3/day reduce by 1 the metamagic cost of a metamagic you're putting on a spell of the chosen school
Searing spell : +1 metamagic, spells with fire descriptor only, spell ignores fire resistance and deals half damage to creatures immune to fire. double damage to creatures with the cold subtype
blistering spell : +1 metamagic, spells with fire descriptor only. spell deals 2 more damage per spell level. affected creatures has -2 malus to attacks and checks for 1 minute
Divine Metamagic : free action can spend 1+metamagic adjustment to apply the chosen metamagic when casting a spell

Spell slots Table
C is a cleric slot, D is a domain slot, W is a wizard slot. Cantrips and orisons are omitted. bonus slot from high WIS/INT are included
Wizard banned schools are Necromancy and Enchantment
Character Level1st level slots2nd level slots3rd level slots12C+1D--23C+1D--33C+1D2C+1D-44C+1D3C+1D-54C+1D3C+1D2C+1D64C+1D+2W3C+1D2C+1D

Once I settled on the core idea of "permanent" emanation, the build kind of wrote itself, here's the evolution anyway:

start as a cleric 6 for consistency
mandatory grumbling about energy substitution and "why isn't this a default property of energy-descriptor magic"
"let's persist it!" for all day long being banned from cities
add "all the suddens" because we only really need to cast it once a day anyway
add metamagic school focus to apply those juicy fire-specific metamagic
convert yourself to illuminianism for the "racial" DMM , misreading the swift action and so using it for both persist and heighten
add a wizard level to avoid the school focus tax
rejoice the foresight of the wizard level : you can spellshare that emanation! you can go back to cities and still do your gimmick! you can even do your gimmick remotely!
re-get divine metamagic because you can't naenhoon two metamagics in the same round

Level 1: We do what all clerics dumping STR do : hang back and occasionally crossbow!
Prepared spell : 2x lesser vigorSC, Domain comprehend language

Level 2: Naenhoon comes online, which for now means we can freely extend two spells per day, it could be the lesser vigor themself, but some reads the duration as being hard capped to 15 rounds, alternatively ConvictionSC is a staple and 40 minutes duration is solid

Level 3: 2nd level slot and we can even persist one thing, yummy
Prepared spell :

1x lesser vigor, 1x convition(estended), 1x divine favor(persisted), domain Comprehend language
1x divine insightSC, 1x resist energy, domain Augury


Level 4: it's just more spells prepared, a cleric ogtta do what a cleric gotta do
+1 lesser vigor, +1 divine insight

Level 5: we don't have energy substitution yet, so we don't go nova yet!
but we do have the option of extending or persisting some other kind of third level cleric spells, some examples :
extended mass convictionSC

Prepared spells :

2x lesser vigor, 1x shield of faith, 1x divine favor(persisted), domain Comprehend language
2x divine insightSC, 1x lesser restoration, domain Augury
1x mass convictionSC(extended), 1x mass resist energySC, domain Clairaudience/Clairvoyance


Level 6: Wizard level brings us good old staples like Shield and mage armor, and the bat familiar to deliver pain, we could tecnically go "corona of fire" now, but I would wait for

E1: Enspell familiar makes the build work, because it allows us to do the combo and merrily send the familiar onward, while we stay within the protection of our party, we don't want to set our own party on fire, right? Some way to deliver fire away from us is therefore mandatory.
Prepared spells :

1x Shield, 1x Mage armor, 2x lesser vigor, 1x shield of faith, 1x divine favor, domain Comprehend language
2x divine insightSC, 1x lesser restoration, domain Augury
1x mass convictionSC(extended), 1x Energy substitution(fire) Corona of coldFireSC(persisted), domain Clairaudience/Clairvoyance


the whole plan is using the Naenhoon power to persist Corona of fire, have it shared with our bat familiar, dismiss it from ourself, and happily send the familiar on his merry way.
still, at E1 this makes the familiar quite the target, because of course it's going to be focus fired when creatures within 10 ft of it start taking fire damage and there's this conspicious bat with some kind of magical effect around it, making it obvious what the cause is.

Therefore, E2 is preparing our signature spell not only as energy substituted, but also as invisible, so now the bat is "just a bat" :) . You haven't forgotten to empower it with the meditation domain power, right? and of making it bypassing 10 point of resistance, right? good thing that ACF is applied/declared when you cast the spell, not when the spell does damage, so one application covers the whole duration!

E3-E4 are self explanatory, 18 damage are better than 1d12*1.5, and double the area is double the area.

E5-E6-E7 are likewise self explanatory. Amusingly school focus would technically let us extend the corona, for 48hours of fire! But perhabs you'd rather do some sillier shenanigans? what happens if you extend+invisible a darkness or deeper darkness spell you cast on "the necklace" your bat wears? It's invisble, so it's not evident that there is this "blob of darkness" moving about, but anyone clipping inside the area if they don't have darkvision are nominally "in total darkness", I personally find it hilarious, but I caution you from doing this kind of bork at an actual table.

So, since two out of three free evocation metamagic reduction are, obviously, to prepare a energy substitution(fire), blistering, searing, corona of coldfire (persisted, widened, empowered, maximized), what other evocation 3rd or less cleric spell or 1st level wizard spell could we extend or searing or blistering for free? Putting aside making invisible spells that depend on visual to have their effects.

Corona of fire currently doing (12+6)*1.5 = 27 damage per round in a 20ft emanation centered on our bat, or both us and our bat if we're traveling solo, careful not to clip your bat in your aura! it's yikes!

E8 Getting another extra turning before the closing act means that for a while, we have enough turns to persist a second spell! Maybe it will be shield, maybe it will be divine favor, but probably shield, since unlike divine metamagic we aren't limited to divine spells

E9-E10 heightening our corona doesn't only mean an higher DC, it also mean more damage from blistering metamagic.
Sadly, naenhooning it is a swift action, so we can't naenhoon two different metamagics on the same round. thus divine metamagic.
if we don't have any charisma boosting item, we have 12 total turn undeads, 6 are gone for persistinc, so we can heighten corona by 5, that's 5 more DC and 10 more damage before empower! On the other hand, even the most basic cloak of charisma would allow us to bring corona up all the way to 9th slot! that's (12+18)*1.5 = 45 damage! per round in a 20ft radius! around the bat AND us, AND it's not evident that such an effect is in effect! THE WORLD SHALL BURN!

Little noncore spells recap:
lesser vigor : 10+caster level (max 15) rounds of fast healing 1, single target
conviction : 10min/level of +2 morale bonus to all saves, single target
divine insight : 5+caster level insight bonus to one skill check, useful for spellcraft to copy spells into our wizard book
corona of cold : 10ft radius emanation dealing 1d12 cold damage for round/level with rider -2 to STR, -2 to DEX and half movement. fortitude negates. damage is "all other creatures in the area" . it's cleric and druid only

Big one I can think about is how the metamagic order of application is adjudicated. This is simply not codified anywhere other than that one FAQ answer that was a suggestion to "generally, use the worst possible combination for the caster". Which is kind of not what get done anyway whenever empower is involved, because applying empower before dice get rolled is disfunctional.
Anyway, I had been a long time player of magic:the gathering, and "the user controls the order of the effect he generates" is most intuitive to me.
Under that reading, we are of course applying the heighten first, because that comboes nicely with blistering, since blistering wording is "+2 damage per spell level" and heighten changes the actual spell level.
"worst possible combination for the caster" is otherwise disfunctional for a different reason : it makes energy substitution not comboable with any of those metamagic that says "apply only to spells with the Y descriptor", because taking the FAQ at face value is a catch-22 :"we can't apply blistering/flash frost before energy substitution, because the spell stops being fire/frost/X, thus being invalid for blistering/flash frost" , and for the same reason "we can't apply blistering/flash frost after energy substitution, because the spell wasn't fire/frost/X". a reading of "apply metamagic in whatever order is worst" means energy substitution simply stops working despite specifically changing the energy descriptor of the metamagicked spell. I mantain the caster can damn well control how he chooses to twirl his fingers, and so we are heightening before energy substituting before etctera etcetera, with empower being the last.

cleric domains : I generally dislike being "godless", and nominally following a specific deity is one of the few area where I actually care about RP. I was considering not taking invisible spell metamagic, just suck it up and take sudden empower, and be a follower of one of these : Vecna (planning+magic), Chronepsis ( plkanning+time), Gond (planning + fire). Problem is, none of these really lend themself to the concept of "I want ot see the world burn", so I'm biting the bullet and going for a "ideal" cleric. "Fire is beautyful, fire is eternal" would be the ideal and if we were to go contemplative the other domains I would tack to our cabal would be : fire, glory, destruction, time. Nothing wrong with us going meditation+planning, I just don't like it much, but optimization is optimization and it's legal outside of faerun to not have a deity, which we nominally are since meditation is a dragonlance domain, and also appears in eberron (City of Stormreach supplement). Going for planning+fire domains would mean having a second pool, for possibly persisting a second spell, maybe shield?
Cs: Cityscape
CA: Complete Arcane
CD: Complete Divine
CM: Complete Mage
DrC: Dragon Compendium
DCS: Dragonlance Campaign Setting
PHBII: Player's Handbook 2
RoD: races of Destiny
Snd: Sandstorm
SC: Spell Compendium
UA: Unearthed Arcana

[Zaq]

I never said eight builds. There have always been nine builds. You're seeing things.


https://imgs.search.brave.com/I3sJRvy5M5C1mD8h7E_UbR_kELyXInRSBETTQflSisc/rs:fit:1200:720:1/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly9zaGlm/dXdhbGxwYXBlcnMu/c2ZvMy5kaWdpdGFs/b2NlYW5zcGFjZXMu/Y29tL3ByZXZpZXcv/NzdiZmIzMTIyZDA0/NmY5OGY5NTUxMzEy/YTg1ZWI0NGIuanBn

Aara yr Rashila el Katraz yi Keltar: Luminary of Seminarcane


Aara entered the lecture hall. She was the first one there and wasted no time picking a seat on the flat, sandstone benches that made up the amphitheater. When she’d received her acceptance sending from the Seminarcane, she’d tracked down a blueprint of the buildings where she’d have her lessons and pinpointed the optimal point to hear the lecturer geometrically. You never knew which professors had banned evocation, after all, and would be speaking unassisted by magical amplification.

A perfectly preserved human corpse sat propped in a chair at the front of the hall.

A member of Aara’s cohort appeared in the place next to hers.

“What do you think that’s for?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Something for demonstrations. You know, instead of using a member of the professor’s staff. I’m Aara.”

“Lastar.” He tipped his hat at her. It was wide and had a brim. A foreigner, probably here on exchange.

“I thought the halls were warded against teleportation for safety,” Aara said.

Lastar unpacked his bag and laid out a pen and book.

“I mean, I figure that’s the first test, right? See if you’re clever enough to punch through the wards. Plus I’ll do anything I can to avoid walking over. A few extra minutes of sleep a day adds up, you know?” He vanished from the bench and reappeared at the front by the corpse.

“What’re you doing?” Aara asked.

“Figure it can’t hurt. Nose around and see what’s going on to lay a little groundwork before the stragglers drift in. I hear some bonediggers send corpses in to do their lectures for them.” Lastar held up a stone with a smooth hole worn through it and peered at the corpse.

“Is that possible?” Aara asked.

“Guess you banned necromancy.” He picked up the corpse’s arm at the wrist and let it drop onto the desk with a quiet thud. “They use mindless ones and just jam their spirit in while they stay in bed. That’s the dream, huh?”

“Had to ban something,” Aara murmured. A few more students walked or teleported in. A hippogriff pecked at the window and someone inside unlatched it so the passenger could disembark. The beast screeched.

“Does anyone have any corn? My ride doesn’t like what I packed for lunch.”

Lastar teleported back by Aara’s side and leaned in to whisper to her.

“Looks like someone banned conjuration.”

“Amazing,” she said. Someone had to fill the bottom of the curve. A pinprick of white flame in her palm blossomed into a bag of corn. She hucked it over.

“You’ve got a soft heart, huh?” Lastar sat down and made some notes in his book in a language Aara didn’t understand.

“I just like animals,” she said lamely as the rider nodded thanks to her and fed the beast. The hall was about full now.

“Nothing wrong with that. I’m putting together a study group. I figure we can carry water for each other, so to speak. I know you’re stuck in necro even though you banned it but you’re still responsible for the theory stuff. I know I find it helpful to have someone who can actually do the stuff walk me through it. I’m useless with invocation otherwise,” he said.

“Evocation, you mean?” she asked.

“Ha, you see what I mean? If you stick around for a minute after lecture, I’ll give you the details.”

The clock in the room chimed and the window shut itself.

“Wonder where the professor is,” Aara said.

The corpse in the chair at the front of the hall rose to its feet.

“Damnit,” Lastar said and tried to shrink nonmagically into his seat as low as he could.

“Good morning, everyone. Welcome to ‘the language of wishing.’ I know many of you come from fine families and have been trained in Calishíte etiquette from birth, but you can dispense with the annuv here.” The corpse made the motion with its wrist.

“Your lives are short enough; I’d rather spend that time on the material. Since this institution has banned magical amanuensis, I’m sure your joints will thank you by the end of the term.” A few polite laughs.

“What should we call you?” the hippogriff rider asked.

“You may address me as Professor el Azuth. I can tell from the looks on some of your faces that you’re curious about my situation,” the corpse said, its eyes rheumy and unblinking, their surfaces white and opaque.

A few students cleared their throats.

Professor el Azuth stood utterly immobile. With no breath, his chest didn’t need to rise or fall. With no sensation, his muscles could never get sore from being in one position too long. He could quite literally wait forever.

“You have no breath. How are you speaking? I don’t smell any sonic spells on you,” someone in the back said, tastefully amplified with a gorget that glowed with quiet power as she spoke.

“Excellent question. At this stage, I don’t have a perfectly concrete answer for you. One of the leading theories is that it’s an illusion-like extraordinary ability I am performing unconsciously at all times. If you are to do well in this class, never be afraid to ask questions. Regardless of what school you have chosen to specialize in, each and every one of you will be able to make wishes eventually.” The professor didn’t pace the room or gesture as he spoke. His mouth moved, but nothing else Aara regarded as being native to speech occurred.

“Mr. el Oqul, you’ve had rather a thorough examination of the party in question. What do you think?”

Lastar swallowed dryly and stood up so he could be heard. He couldn’t amplify his voice since he’d banned evocation. He did nothing to hide the redness in his cheeks or the cold, waxy sweat gathering at the crown of his head. Perhaps he’d banned illusion as well.

“Well, if I encountered a circumstance like this out in the world and I wasn’t able to observe any magical effect on the party in question directly with my own expertise or through the use of my tools, and I wasn’t able to perform a dissection—“

“Are you unable to perform a dissection? I believe that at this stage in your studies, you have achieved a satisfactory mark in humanoid anatomy in order to be present in this class, Mr. el Oqul?”

A few laughs.

“First in my class, actually,” Lastar muttered.

“I can’t hear you, Mr. el Oqul.”

Lastar spoke up. “Then I can conclude you’re probably not a lich.”

“Very good; that happens to be true. If you are in fact capable of performing a dissection, why would you assume it is not a technique in your repertoire you could use you advance your knowledge?”

“Well, I imagine taking a knife to one of my professors is discouraged here by the Guild Arcane.”

One or two students laughed but stifled it with their sleeves or quickly cast spells.

“If you care to attend my office hours and don’t mind cleaning up afterwards, you’re welcome to dig around.” The professor made a tasteful section of his robe invisible and revealed staples and stitch marks of stout twine marring the dead flesh of his chest, presumably from prior explorations.

More students laughed.

“My point, Mr. el Oqul, is that when it comes to craft, one should never make assumptions. You may sit down.” He did.

“I’ll spare the rest of you the suspense,” the professor continued.

“I speak from painful experience. When I was around your age, I made one of the classic wishes you should never make. What did I try to wish for? Shout it out.”

“Infinite riches.”

“Unlimited power.”

“That no one could hurt you.”

“To live forever,” Aara guessed.

Professor el Azuth raised his open palm and silenced the others.

“Miss el Katraz. Very good. That is what I meant to wish for. Would you care to hazard a guess as to what I actually wished for?”

Aara thought it over and looked but tried not to stare at the corpse in front of her. It wasn’t a zombie, lich, or mummy. It wasn’t anything she recognized. Perhaps that itself was an answer.

“Never to die,” she said.

Professor el Azuth laughed, though the muscles in his cheeks didn’t move.

“Never let it be said I won’t admit my own mistakes. I’ll give this class the same proposition as the ones who’ve come before. Some of you may have already heard about it and gotten a head start. For the rest of you, anyone who is able to free me from this condition will receive full marks. This one time, I will say please don’t take class time to ask questions about what’s been tried: I’ve kept records in my office you are welcome to go through. Now we can get to today’s lesson. Let’s say the wisher is an artist who wishes to improve their ability. I would like three potential pitfalls of a wish they may make. Whenever you’re ready, class.”

Aara sat down and touched her fingertip to her book, burning a path of script into the page.

***

She spoke the pass phrase and entered the Leomund’s tiny hut where Lastar’s study group was meeting. She was the last one there. The hippogriff rider from earlier was here as well, as were a few others who hadn’t given Aara a reason to remember them.

“Ah, good, you’re here. We’re just splitting up the classes. We were about to discuss the advantages of breaking it up further by unit if anyone wanted to trade around inside a class,” Lastar said. A small clockwork on his lap dipped its neck to his book. Its motions were echoed by a pattern of light projected on the wall. It had Aara listed under evocation.

“I lost the draw, huh?” she joked with a nod at the chart.

“Oh, it’s not like that,” said the hippogriff rider. He introduced himself as Taman.

“We just all banned it,” Lastar said. “If you know anyone who hasn’t banned enchantment, please invite them.”

“I will if I find anyone,” Aara said. She traced a circle on the floor with her toe and heatless flame followed her tread. A small pouffe rose from it and she sat down.

“Hey! Careful with that!” Taman scooted his chair back.

“Oh, it’s just a facsimile. It’ll go away on its own by the time we’re done here,” Aara said.

“I meant to ask about that. Are all your spells fire?” Lastar asked.

“Yeah,” Aara said.

“Why?”

“They just… are, I guess. I’m planning on doing my arcane thesis on it down the line. How all magic is energy, so it might go the other way. Like all magic can be made by fire,” she said.

“Neat. You really kicked my ass in wishing today. I don’t figure you can handle it all and evocation too, but you think you might take a unit or two from that? I feel like we’d all benefit from your expertise,” Lastar said.

Aara thought it over and scanned his chart. He was down as providing notes for necromancy.

“I’ll take sentence diagramming from wishing if you take monster anatomy from transmutation. That’s big, I feel like we’ll need at least two people splitting that up, right?” Aara asked.

“Oh, thank Azuth,” said Lastar. The chart updated itself.

“I’ll do the ecology unit,” Taman said.

“Nice,” said Lastar. “Did you tame that thing you rode in on today, or was it a first year you’re experimenting on?”

“I just saw it heading in the right direction,” Taman said. He sat on his knapsack and set a toad on his lap.

“You got a familiar?” Lastar asked.

“Hm? Nah. I’ve got a knack for curse reaving.” Taman kissed the toad and ate a mint. It remained a toad, perched stonily in his lap. It blinked and turned toward the chart, like it was reading.

“Guess it’s not a sure thing, huh?” Aara joked.

“It takes a while sometimes. I think he stays like this the longer he’s been a toad.” Taman patted the toad.

“Never heard that before,” Aara said.

“Yeah. It’s my thesis safety if I can’t break the old man’s curse,” Taman said.

“Good luck,” Lastar said. “I think I’d have been better off if I’d crapped my pants today. Azuth, I can’t believe I went over and poked around at the professor just because I didn’t see any spellwork on him.”

“So you’re not going to his office later with a sharp knife, huh?” Taman asked.

“I’m pretty sure he was joking,” Lastar said.

“Didn’t he tell you not to assume?” Taman asked.

“Huh. I guess he did. I think that’s enough for today. We can fill in the holes in the schedule in a tenday.” Lastar shut his book. Aara did the same. Taman picked up his toad and turned to leave.

“Aren’t you going to write anything down?” Lastar asked.

“Oh, I don’t need to. I was cursed by a witch to ‘never forget what I saw’ when I stumbled on her diabolical sacrament.”

“Didn’t define her terms. Rookie mistake. What kind of witch doesn’t know how to curse?” Aara said.

“Have you ever tried to break it? Sounds like it might be a better thesis than kissing toads.” The toad had climbed onto Taman’s shoulder.

“Uh, no offense,” Aara added.

“Nah. I’ve learned to work with it. It’s kind of helped me like, conceptualize what is and isn’t a curse, you know?”

“Sure. See you later.” Aara unzipped the wall of the hut with a streak of flame and went home to study.

***

At the end of term, Aara approached the arena. The remaining members of her cohort cheered her on from the stands.

Professor el Azuth sat at a long table at the head of the arena with a handful of others.

“Miss el Katraz, are you ready?” Professor el Azuth hefted a pair of sandstone dice in the dead flesh of his hand.

“Yes, sir. Through my study, I have discovered that all things can be made, unmade, and changed alike by the correct application of the subtle flame that burns throughout the universe. The existence of all of us, the planes themselves, carries on through the motion of the essence that makes us up.” Professor el Azuth sat immobile. “Even if it’s not perceptible to the eye,” Aara added. Professor el Azuth made a note.

“This is what I will be showcasing.” She waited to see the form her challenge would take. She had opted for combat since it seemed the most straightforward means of demonstrating her ideas.

Professor el Azuth nodded and rolled the dice. Their faces were projected out above the table in blue light for all to see.

“Looks like you’re fighting the snake,” Professor el Azuth said.

“Snake! Snake! Snake!” Aara’s friends chanted.

Aara took a fighting stance as the creature was conjured. Once the bell rang, she looked over the snake’s skin.

“It doesn’t have any spells on it,” she said and tossed a conjured stone to one side to see if it tracked heat or motion.

It uncoiled and spat venom at her. A shield that cocooned itself around her boiled the venom and shot a gout of flame at the snake. It didn’t seem affected, but she couldn’t see any indication of whether it was the energy itself or merely the meager quantity.

The snake lunged at her and she created a burst of flame in the space between them. The flicker reflected itself in the snake’s eyes and it pulled away.

Aara circled the arena. Taman cheered, as did the nearly-human princeling next to him. His skin was only slightly damp by now. One of his eyes followed the action. The other followed a stray fly, largely out of habit. His tongue had shrunk enough it couldn’t catch them anymore, but not quite enough to speak. He would be himself again by graduation. Probably.

Aara conjured a bolt of lightning formed by white fire and launched it at the snake’s back. It lunged forward by instinct and butted up against the wall of the arena and the timer went off. The snake disappeared and Professor el Azuth stood up.

“Thank you, Miss el Katraz. Will the next student please approach?”

Taman stood up. The princeling patted him on the back and only took a second to peel his finger pads off his robe.

“That’s me.” Taman clutched his papers to his chest and dragged a sailor’s bag over his back.

He walked down into the arena, reached into his bag, and unfurled a tarp.

Aara climbed up into the stands and took his seat. Professor el Azuth walked down into the arena by Taman’s side. Had he changed his mind? Was he going to fight him?

“Stand on the X if you please, sir,” Taman said. The professor complied.

“Walk me through your approach,” the professor said.

“From my research, the tie between the self and the spirit is much stronger than the one between the self and the body. It’s my hypothesis that the wish that keeps you from dying is functioning more like a curse.”

“Very interesting. And this is the topic of your thesis?”

“Not solely, no. If that’s the case, you aren’t actually an undead. That’s why no one’s been able to successfully identify you. I believe that if you consent to a temporary spirit swap, what the curse considers ‘you’ will be in my body. Once I’m in your body, it should be able to die. While you’re animating me, you can evaluate the rest of my notes my body is holding. When the spell wears off, you should be off to your reward,” Taman explained breathlessly.

“I see. And you’re willing to do this?” Professor el Azuth said.

“Yes, sir.”

“And the tarp is to contain the magic? I don’t see any runic markings on it.”

“No, it’s just to, ah, make cleanup easier.”

Professor el Azuth laughed. “All right, go ahead.”

Taman set his notes under his arm and opened his mouth wide, emitting a low drone far deeper than any words he normally spoke. The arena darkened and Taman shot black light out of his eyes and fingertips. He aimed it at the professor’s chest and it suffused him, spilling out through the cracks and seams of his dead flesh, in the deep fissures in his skin.

The light died away and the clouds within the room disappeared. The professor’s body staggered, but stayed on the tarp. It collapsed inward on itself in a pile of dust and bones.

Taman’s body changed its bearing, its posture becoming far more regal.

“Esteemed colleagues, please open the sealed envelope in my valise by your side. Inside are the necessary forms to file with the bursar to amend Mr. al Ratak’s marks with the registrar. You will find all the documents regarding my bequeathments in my old office. Once the spell elapses, it is his to use as he sees fit.” Taman’s body conjured a disc to lift itself out of he arena and sat by the other students. With a flick of its fingers, it conjured a magnificent feast on the empty row of seats before them. Something from Taman’s banned school, in case there was any doubt about his identity from the professor’s colleagues.

“I’m not sure precisely how long I will linger.” The professor leafed through the notes in his hand, scarcely seeming to read them since the effect had gone off so well. He picked up a bottle of wine and poured a stream of it directly into his mouth. Some of it spilled out onto his robe and into his lap.

“Please ask Mr. al Ratak for his forgiveness when he returns.” He picked up a pastry and took a bite. “If there are no objections, I would request a brief recess before the next presentation. Please help yourselves.” He passed around glasses and raised one.

“To your health,” said Lastar.

The professor, relishing the opportunity to move the muscles in Taman’s face smiled and let out a laugh.


TN human evoker 3/master specialist 3



str 8
dex 14
con 14
int 18 (increase at 4 here)
cha 8




Level
Class
Base Attack Bonus
Fort Save
Ref Save
Will Save
Skills
Feats
Class Features


1st
Evoker 1
+0
+0
+0
+2
concentration 4, k (arcana) 4, k (dungeoneering) 4, k (nature) 4, k (religion) 4, k (planes) 4, spellcraft 4
bloodline of fire, spell focus (evocation), scribe scroll
immediate magic (counterfire), specialization (ban enchantment and necromancy)


2nd
Evoker 2
+1
+0
+0
+3
concentration 1 (5), k (arcana) 1 (5), k (dungeoneering) 1 (5), k (nature) 1 (5), k (religion) 1 (5), k (planes) 1 (5), spellcraft 1 (5)




3rd
Evoker 3
+1
+1
+1
+3
concentration 1 (6), k (arcana) 1 (6), k (dungeoneering) 1 (6), k (nature) 1 (6), k (religion) 1 (6), k (planes) 1 (6), spellcraft 1 (6)
enlarge spell



4th
Master Specialist 1
+1
+1
+1
+5
concentration 1 (7), k (arcana) 1 (7), k (dungeoneering) 1 (7), k (nature) 1 (7), k (religion) 1 (7), k (planes) 1 (7), spellcraft 1 (7)

skill focus (spellcraft)


5th
Master Specialist 2
+2
+1
+1
+6
concentration 1 (8), k (arcana) 1 (8), k (dungeoneering) 1 (8), k (nature) 1 (8), k (religion) 1 (8), k (planes) 1 (8), spellcraft 1 (8)

Expanded spellbook (fireball)


6th
Master Specialist 3
+2
+2
+2
+6
concentration 1 (9), k (arcana) 1 (9), k (dungeoneering) 1 (9), k (nature) 1 (9), k (religion) 1 (9), k (planes) 1 (9), spellcraft 1 (9)
greater spell focus (evocation)
minor school esoterica




1 spell thematics (fire)
1st lesser orb of fire
2nd scorching ray
3rd fireball
2 snowcasting
3 primitive caster
4 fiery burst
5 energy substitution (fire)
6 energy substitution (cold)
7 lord of the uttercold
8 mastery of ice and fire
9 calishíte elementalist (fire)
10 genie lore


The mission was to inflict fire damage. Fire damage is what I inflict, among other things. Evoker comes in hot and provides access to the wizard list. Bloodline of fire boosts your cl by 2 for [fire] spells and gives you +4 to your saves against fire as well. Spell focus and greater spell focus bolster your DCs for evocation spells by 2. Enlarge spell doubles the range of all spells with ranges of short, medium, or long. Mastery of ice and fire means you don’t have to pay the surcharge and allows you to do the same for [cold] spells.

You have energy substitution available to turn any energy spell into either a [cold] or [fire] damage inflicting spell. On that front, snowcasting allows you to add the [cold] descriptor to any spell. Once the [cold] descriptor is on there, you can change it to [fire] with energy substitution, which lets any spell benefit from all the stuff you have that boosts [fire] spells. Primitive caster allows you to boost the caster level of spells by +1 for every component you add to it which isn’t normally present.

Fiery burst, a reserve feat, allows you to dole out bottomless fire damage as long as you keep a [fire] spell level 2 or higher uncast. It also boosts your caster level for [fire] spells by 1.

For additional versatility, such as when fighting enemies who are immune to fire, energy substitution (cold) unlocks lord of the uttercold, which allows you to do half of the damage as negative energy damage, adding this to your repertoire despite banning necromancy.

Energy substitution (cold) also synergizes with snowcasting since if you snowcast a spell which already has the [cold] descriptor, it boosts the effective spell level by 1.

Calishíte elementalist boosts your caster level with [fire] spells by 1 again and adds a couple of spells to your book for free, namely flare, burning hands, pyrotechnics, and the ever popular fireball.

Speaking of fireball, it’s one of the spells I’ve selected as one of my thematic spells, alongside lesser orb of fire and scorching ray. Calishíte elementalist also lets you break damage caps for spells it grants you.

Genie lore grants a further +1 to the dcs of your [fire] spells. By the end of your epic feats, you have a total of +4 to the caster level of your [fire] spells, +2 to the dcs of your evocation spells ( +3 to ones which are [fire]).

Defensively, when you are targeted with ranged attacks, you can bring your immediate magic to bear with the counterfire ability and deal 1d6 fire damage to visible foes in 60 feet with no limitation on uses per day.




srd: evoker, human, scribe scroll, enlarge spell, spell focus, greater spell focus, skill focus

complete mage: master specialist, fiery burst

player’s handbook 2: immediate magic (counterfire)

complete arcane: energy substitution, lord of the uttercold

races of faerun: genie lore (fire), calishíte elementalist (fire)

player’s guide to eberron: mastery of ice and fire

player’s guide to faerun: bloodline of fire, spell thematics

frostburn: snowcasting, primitive caster

[Zaq]

That's all of them! Judges, do your thing!

[loky1109]

Table here!

Name Alignment / Race Class Levels Chef Total Place
Blaise deForrest (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467045&postcount=21) ?? Jermlaine Planar Spiritual Connection Wildshape Ranger 6
Carsus Tall (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467046&postcount=22) LG Lesser Aasimar Paladin 6
Charles M. Ander (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467047&postcount=23) CG Lesser Aasimar Paladin of Freedom 4/Hit and Run Tactics Fighter 1/Master Thrower 1
Firefist (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467049&postcount=24) CG Human Ardent 2/Shaman 4
Simon the Fire Lance (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467050&postcount=25) LN Human Psychic Warrior 6
Spirit of Fire (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467052&postcount=26) LE Lesser Fire Gensai Shugenja 6
Steamy Romancer (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467053&postcount=27) NG Shalarin Druid 1/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 3/Beastmaster 1
Uanafaira Worldfire (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467055&postcount=28) CE Illumian Cleric 5/Wizard 1
Aara (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467056&postcount=29) TN Human Evoker 3/Master Specialist 3

[loky1109]

Cool entries folks! I like open themes. All so different, unexpected!
I have two favorite for HM, but shall wait till judges will say their words.

Some builds are straightforward, some have interesting finds.
Should to say some participants gave too short fluff for their crunch. Aara's chef gave too long. ))) I didn't read and understand it completely yet. )

By the way, it looks like less than half competitors used mattie_p's build template (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BG0-5sq4dL9Ooh7-QfXuyHzO4rXSz-CRcj29t6BeUVE/edit#gid=401538143). It's cool and entries done with it are easily to read. Use it.

[Zaq]

Is anyone interested in judging?

[loky1109]

Judges? Anybody? We need you!

[H_H_F_F]

I've been far too busy. I have an exam in my occupational training on Sunday, if I pass it I can probably find the time to start looking at these entries some time next week. If I don't... probably won't be able to help with this round.

[loky1109]

I've been far too busy. I have an exam in my occupational training on Sunday, if I pass it I can probably find the time to start looking at these entries some time next week. If I don't... probably won't be able to help with this round.
Good luck on the exam!

[AsuraKyoko]

I can try my hand at judging, though I'm pretty busy, so I don't have a specific timeline of when I'd be done. I'm also not very confident in my capability of judging, so I don't think I would do a very good job of it. Is it alright to get some friends to help me with the judging process?

[Zarvistic]

I check these entries out from time to time but never judged in any of the contests before. If that's no issue, I can give it a try.

[loky1109]

I check these entries out from time to time but never judged in any of the contests before. If that's no issue, I can give it a try.
Everybody did it first time once. )

I see we have three potential judges! Cool.

[H_H_F_F]

If judgement was limited only to those who have previously judged, we'd have a hard time with the first competition, I'd assume :smalltongue:

[Zarvistic]

Alright, I will start working on them!

Edit: I'm sorry, but I'll have to withdraw from judging. I ended up being busier than expected.

[loky1109]

H_H_F_F, how did your exam go?
AsuraKyoko, I think we need Zaq's word, but if you'd ask me... Advice about rules is ok. Advice about subjective moments where we want your judge opinion (e.g. almost full UoSI or Originality) is not.
Zarvistic, it's ok, live goes first. Take care of yourself.

[H_H_F_F]

H_H_F_F, how did your exam go?


Think I passed. I'll attempt to start judging tomorrow, if life lets me.

[loky1109]

Think I passed. I'll attempt to start judging tomorrow, if life lets me.
It's great! Congratulations!

[AsuraKyoko]

H_H_F_F, how did your exam go?
AsuraKyoko, I think we need Zaq's word, but if you'd ask me... Advice about rules is ok. Advice about subjective moments where we want your judge opinion (e.g. almost full UoSI or Originality) is not.
Zarvistic, it's ok, live goes first. Take care of yourself.

As it turns out, I'm definitely not going to have time to judge for at least another month; work is crazy busy right now, and it's going to keep draining me until he hit our deadline. I am still curious about the answer, though.

[H_H_F_F]

Okay, I've read through your entries. Liked a lot of what I've seen!

Hoping to be able to start work on judgement this weekend. I'll be in touch.

[H_H_F_F]

The Late JudgeTM is on the case. It's going to take a little while, sorry guys.

[MinimanMidget]

Surprise! A wild judge appeared! I've been keeping the contest in my head this whole time, and now I finally have time to do some judging, so here we go!

Global judging note: There's a lot of information missing from some of these entries.

Tell the judges what's cool about your build! You spent hours or days on this (y'know, probably) and know it inside and out, but the judges are getting a whole bunch of these dishes all at once and don't know the build history of each one. You're significantly more likely to score well if you spell out exactly what makes you awesome than if you try to just let it stand on its own.
I can't fill in the gaps and give you points for things you didn't write down in your entry.

Global judging note: I haven't judged a theme round before, and I've had to refit my criteria for Originality and especially UotSI quite a bit. I've done my best, but they're much more based on gut feeling and even less concrete than usual.



Jermalaine comes up a lot more often in contests than it does in normal play, but it's still a pretty unusual choice. (+0.25)

Wildshape Ranger, alchemical weapons, manuevers...there are some interesting ingredients here. Nothing really out there, but interesting. (+0.25)

What's really missing, though, is cohesion. There's nothing tying these things together. I'm pretty sure Dance of Flames is supposed to be the core concept here, but there's a lot in the build that just doesn't connect to it. And there's not even any fluff, which could potentially have fixed this issue. (-1)

Overall: 2.5


Dance of Flames is stylish, but it's not exactly impressive in terms of damage. Alchemical weapons are in the same boat, although they diversify your damage types, and give you some non-damaging options, at least. You're right that your damage is difficult to prevent, but there's just not enough of it for it to be a meaningful contribution. (-0.75)

In terms of staying alive, your best defence is probably going to be your sheer speed. Your AC (including touch AC) is impressive, but your hp pool is pathetic. Your Fort save is bad, your Ref save is great, and your Will save is average. You shouldn't get targeted much, since you're more annoying than dangerous, but you'll probably go down the moment someone points a Fort save at you. Elusive Target gives you some situational defensive options, too. (-0.25)

Outside of combat, things start looking a lot better. You're a fantastic party radar, you're superfluously good at tracking, you've got Wild Shape, you've got your familiar, you're okay at stealth even with no skill investment, Knowledge (the planes) is handy, you've got Ranger spells, you've got Speak with Animals/Plants, Speak with Rats, whatever you can find to do with alchemical weapons... On the whole, you should have no problem making yourself useful whenever you aren't fighting or in a social situation. (+0.75)

Overall: 2.75


I have no idea what SRD chart you're talking about that made your Cha 4 instead of 2, but according to the PHB: "If these changes put your score above 18 or below 3, that’s okay, except in the case of Intelligence, which does not go below 3 for characters." (-0.5)

Rangers don't have Tumble as a class skill. I'm assuming you meant to write the words "Skilled City Dweller" somewhere in your entry. (-0.5)

You're right about both Martial Study and Craft (alchemy) being legal to take before you can actually use them. Being legal doesn't prevent it from being a little inelegant, though. (-0.25)

I'm not totally convinced you can initiate the stance you're already in. "You initiate a stance as a swift action. A stance remains in effect indefinitely and is not expended. You enjoy the benefit your stance confers until you change to another stance you know as a swift action." I can see arguments for both sides, but you didn't make any of them. (-0.25)

Overall: 3.5


Most of your feats are contributing towards fire in one form or another, and you even got some fire out of your skill points. Your class levels, on the other hand... Actually, why are you a ranger at all? Let's see...it gets you full BAB to qualify for Scorching Sirocco, a bunch of skill points, (eventually) counting as a spellcaster for alchemy, and Wild Shape. So essentially, all your non-combat utility comes from being a ranger, but it doesn't really contribute much to fire at all. That said, I'm probably being a bit unfair, since there's not that many ways to hit BAB +6 while getting spellcasting. (+0.25)

Thematically speaking...I don't know. This would be a lot easier for me if you'd gone all in on one thing. As it is, you have a bunch of different ways to do small amounts of fire damage. Dance of Flames is cool, at least. (+0.25)

Overall: 3.5

Total: 12.25




Lesser aasimar on a paladin? How original! That said, I've not seen anyone go heavily into aasimar feats before. You're not just grabbing the stat boosts and leaving, and that's pretty nifty. (-0.25)

Wait, Diablo 2 Paladin? Diablerie? Okay, this is new. (+1)

My dislike of Diablo 3's...alterations to Diablo lore aside, I'd argue lesser aasimar isn't a good representation of a nephalem. The nephalem are humans, that's the whole point. You also can't just decide to become a nephalem, or become one via research. The return of the nephalem was only possible because Tyrael destroyed the Worldstone, removing the limits Inarius placed on humanity. Anyway, I'm not here to judge you on your knowledge of Diablo lore. In the context of this contest, to the best of my knowledge, this is a completely unique build. Thanks for showing me something new! (+1)

Overall: 4.75


2d6 fire damage to one enemy within 15 ft, once per round? Heck, you don't even get to pick which enemy! This is just not good, and it's insulting to the Holy Fire Paladin in the game, especially since they buffed it. In theory, you have other options, but you don't have the stats to make any real use of Might or Sacrifice. Hmmm, Thorns is actually pretty great against melee brutes. 3/day Searing Light is something, I guess. Holy Radiance is nice against undead. (-0.75)

Defensively, your hp pool is good, your AC should be good, assuming you wear heavy armour and accept the slower flight speed. Your Fort save is average, but your Ref and Will are pathetic. Speaking of flight speed, that should help you stay alive, too, although your need to stay within 15 ft of enemies makes that less useful than it normally would be. (-0.25)

When it comes to utility, you're absurdly good at Diplomacy, which is famously useful. You shouldn't have any problems making untrained Bluff and Intimidate checks, either. Unlimited out of combat healing is certainly handy, and flight is often useful. (+0.75)

Overall: 2.75


Lesser planetouched is a campaign variant. (-0.25)

You've used a bunch of Forgotten Realms-specific options on a decidedly non-FR character, which is always a minor Elegance penalty. I do also want to point out that, by default, humans are the only playable race in Diablo. If you'd used anything except aasimar (or tiefling), I would absolutely penalise you separately for it, since races like dwarves or elves straight up don't exist in the world of Diablo, but aasimar (and tiefling) at least could exist, and are about the only non-human races that could. By the same token, where in the world of Diablo are you going to find a good-aligned fey (for Nymph's Kiss)? (-0.5)

The D2 Paladin doesn't have Tumble as a class skill. I'm assuming you meant to write the words "Skilled City Dweller" somewhere in your entry. (-0.5)

Magic item dependency bad. You took Ancestral Relic, and it's well within WBL, so it's relatively minor. On the other hand, you are dependent on it to make your core ability work, and on top of that you're relying on the DM agreeing with you on the chakra bind (although you're pretty obviously correct). (-0.5)

Technically, Celestial Bloodline was updated to 3.5e in Dragon. It's pretty clearly a different feat, but it has the same name, so RAW, you can't take the old version, and you don't qualify for the new version. (-0.25)

Overall: 3


Holy Fire, all day, every day. It took some work to get there, but you got there. On the other hand, Holy Fire is really all the fire you've got. I mean, you didn't even take the Resist Fire aura. (-0.5)

Thematically speaking...well. This is a build with an incredibly strong concept, but it's not the right concept for this round, I think. If the theme was light, holy, divine, angelic, celestial, or really anything along those lines, you would have knocked it out of the park here. In fairness, though, those themes are at least related to fire. (-0.5)

Overall: 2

Total: 12.5




Another lesser aasimar paladin? And what angelic heritage gave you jade eyes and scales? No, wait, you're just trying to justify dragonborn. (-0.5)

Ok, it's Charmander. That's pretty cute. Persistent Produce Flame is a neat idea, and you've done some pretty weird things to try and makes this concept work. (+1)

Overall: 3.5


Assuming everything works the way you want it to (more on this in Elegance), you can pump out a pretty good amount of fire damage every round. You don't have any real backup options against fire-resistant or -immune enemies - you could throw a bunch of darts or something, but it wouldn't do much to speak of. You have your Paladin abilities, but your poor Cha makes them even less useful than usual. (+0.25)

When it comes to not dying, your hp pool and your AC are both okay. Your Fort and Will are both average, and your Ref is poor. You've got some resistances, which is nice. Overall, it's not great, even considering that you're not planning to be in melee. (-0.25)

Outside of combat, you're okay at Sense Motive and Sleight of Hand, both of which are less useful without supporting skills, and you have access to the wizard and paladin spell lists. (-0.5)

Overall: 2.5


Lesser planetouched is a campaign variant. (-0.25)

Two flaws? Ouch. That's a preset penalty, it's in the contest rules. (-2)

Planetouched have regions, you know. I'm not sure why you're talking about the outsider type, especially since, as a lesser planetouched, you aren't even an outsider. You could have gotten around this with a mere 2 ranks of Knowledge (local), rather than taking Human Heritage, which...okay, I can see an argument that it can affect your region, but why didn't you make that argument, instead of the frankly incoherent one you did? (-0.5)

Ok, turns out the point of that was to have a three-feat chain to swap all at once. That's a cool idea, and I'd probably give you a bonus for it if all the feats you were swapping qualified as straightforwardly as Two-Weapon Fighting does.

There's a weird order of operations problem with that swap, because Prehensile Tail requires either Two-Weapon Fighting, which you don't qualify for and arguably don't have when you take Prehensile Tail, or Multi-Weapon Fighting, which you can't have when you take Prehensile Tail, since it requires Prehensile Tail. (-0.5)

You can't take Dragonscale Husk. Not dodgy, not questionable, just straight up wrong. You weren't dragonblooded at level 1, and there's no provision in dragonborn for retroactively applying ACFs. It's also pretty dodgy to then take Hit-and-Run Tactics. "If you would later gain some form of armor proficiency (such as by multiclassing or taking a feat), you can choose at that time to gain that proficiency, but you then lose this class feature." I would argue that you had to choose to gain heavy armour proficiency, thereby losing Dragonscale Husk, in order to then trade it away. (-0.75)

So to qualify for Master Thrower, you need Weapon Focus (Any Thrown Weapon). Given that you're taking Weapon Focus (ranged spells) specifically in order to have Weapon Focus with Produce Flame, which is a thrown weapon, I'm inclined to say it works. (-0)

"Since Sword of the Arcane Order never explicitly states whether the wizard spells you cast with your Paladin spell slots are arcane or not, we’re going to choose to have them be Divine so we can apply Divine Metamagic." That definitely doesn't mean you get to choose, just means it's ambiguous and up to the DM. Not a penalty since it is ambiguous, and if anything, it makes more sense for it to be divine anyway, I just wanted to explicitly reject that argument.

While I'm mentioning things, SotAO lists an Int 13 pre-req in the table, but doesn't mention it in the text. I'm curious if you knew and figured text trumps table, or just didn't notice, but no penalty, anyway.

On that note, SotAO qualifying you for Arcane Disciple is questionable, especially when slready said you're calling those spells divine. And continuing to cast the spells from Arcade Disciple after you traded the feat away is very questionable. (-0.25)

Palm Throw lets you throw two projectiles with each attack...with darts, shuriken, and daggers. "The DM might allow other weapons", so, ok, you're going to have to argue for Produce Flame to get allowed. I could penalise you for that alone, but there's a deeper issue here - where are you getting the second projectile? "No sooner do you hurl the flames than a new set appears in your hand." They get replaced after you throw them, but Palm Throw requires you to have two when you throw them. (-0.5)

Spontaneous Healer qualifying you for Versatile Spellcaster, and using Versatile Spellcaster as a prepared spellcaster, is a little iffy. At least Divine Metamagic gets around the question of how metamagic works when you're spontaneously casting as a prepared spellcaster. (-0.25)

Not that it matters, but it's also pretty questionable whether Prehensile Tail lets you make Produce Flame's flames appear on your tail. For Charmandering purposes, you can just fix this with Continual Flame, anyway.

Overall: 1


Persistent Produce Flame, and a fire breath weapon. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it took almost every level and feat you had to get there, and the leftovers are going towards boosting your Produce Flame. In the end, there are almost no extraneous elements in your build. (+0.75)

As far as the theme goes, you're Charmander. The few elements in your build that didn't go towards Produce Flame went towards being Charmander. (+0.75)

Overall: 4.5

Total: 11.5




Human, bleh. (-0.5)

Ardent and Shaman? Now we're getting somewhere. There's some weird feats in there, too. (+0.75)

Setting people on fire is, weirdly, kind of an unusual concept. At least, when you do it this way. (+0.25)

Overall: 3.5


Assuming everything works the way you want it to (more on that in Elegance), you can do a decent amount of fire damage. You have a bunch of per day limits to deal with on both Mortalbane and your domain feats, even with your turn attempts (remember that Animal Devotion eats 3 per use and Fire Devotion eats 2). You have a side gig as an AoO Stand Still build, and sundering is sometimes useful in and of itself, as well as some powers and spells to play with. (+0.25)

Defensively, your hp pool is pathetic, and your AC is only okay. Your Fort save is pathetic, your Ref is bad, but your Will is good, at least. I have serious concerns about your ability to survive in melee. (-1)

In terms of non-combat utility, you have Shaman spells, and that's it. (-0.75)

Overall: 1.5


You only spent 31 points out of 32 - no penalty, but something to watch out for.

Trading the Flame domain for Fire Devotion is...eh, I guess it's okay, but it doesn't sit well. "Each domain represents an individual spirit with which you have a special relationship". Given that Shamans get their powers from their relationships with spirits, trading away a Shaman domain seems like a big deal. (-0.25)

"You can't sunder armor worn by another character." So sundering people's clothes to set them on fire is a no-go. (-0.25)

Fire Devotion says that it sets people on fire for 1d4 damage a round, not 1d4 damage a round in addition to the normal 1d6. (-0.5)

It's pretty questionable whether Mortalbane applies to Fire Devotion (or Animal Devotion, or Strength Devotion), since the effect is to give you a 1 minute buff, not to damage enemies. (-0.25)

Taking Improved Natural Attack for Strength Devotion arguably requires you to level up during the 1 minute duration of Strength Devotion. (-0.25)

Overall: 3.5


A lot of your feats are just generic unarmed fighting feats. That said, your unarmed attacks set things on fire, so that counts. Your powers are nicely fire themed, although your spells aren't - you might have done better to keep the Flame domain and take the feat normally. Profession (arsonist) and Knowledge (architecture) is a nice touch. (+0.5)

In terms of theme, it's a little understated. Fire Devotion is really doing all the heavy lifting here, and the only thing backing it up is the powers, which aren't emphasised much. (-0.5)

Overall: 3

Total: 11.5




Human, still bleh. (-0.5)

Heavy blaster, oooh. And you even justified it in your backstory! (+1)

If we ignore the heavy blaster, this is a fairly standard Psionic Shot build. (-0.25)

Overall: 3.25


Blaster goes pew. Accuracy is great, damage is great. I was all ready to complain about running out of PP, but you're doing fine there. The 1 round manifesting time is a bigger drawback, since it's going to cost you the first round of most combats. Assuming you get 3d6 power packs (more on this in Elegance), you're not going to run out of shots, although you'll occasionally have to waste a round reloading. You actually have enough PP that you could have easily fit some weapon enhancements in there, so I'm a little sad you didn't even mention the possibility. It's probably not even worth mentioning fire resistance, but fire immunity is a problem for you, at least. (+0.75)

As far as staying alive goes, you've got a great hp pool, let alone Vigor, and your AC (and touch AC) is good, even before you use Force Screen. Your Fort and Will are okay, although your Ref is low. Overall, you're pretty tanky for someone who isn't even planning on being in melee. (+0.5)

Outside of combat...you might find a use for Jump checks or Wall Walker occasionally. Autohypnosis and Knowledge (psionics) are something, I guess. (-0.75)

Overall: 3.5


I'm inclined to agree that the heavy blaster requires Exotic Weapon Proficiency, but EWP in turn requires BAB +1. (-0.5)

Surprisingly, there's nothing in Call Weapon that prevents you from getting a heavy blaster. That said, you highlighted one issue yourself. "If you call a projectile weapon, it comes with 3d6 nonmagical bolts, arrows, or sling bullets, as appropriate." Alien blaster power packs are definitely not arrows, bolts, or sling bullets. Not to mention, is a blaster technically a projectile weapon in the first place? (-0.5)

Psionic Prodigy is explicitly the psionic equivalent of Spellcasting Prodigy, which survived a 3.5 update unchanged. It definitely works.

Overall: 4


Most of your feats, and Soulbound Weapon, go towards your blaster, but that does fire damage, so it counts. Outside of that, you have generic defensive feats and powers. (+0.25)

The theme for this build is "I have a blaster". Yes, the blaster does fire damage, but it's a laser, not a flamethrower. (-0.5)

Overall: 2.75

Total: 13.5




Hmmm, fire genasi. On the one hand, you don't see it often, but on the other hand, it's just so completely on theme. (+0)

Shugenja is walking the same line - it's a very unusual choice, but it goes perfectly with the theme. (+0)

With extremely minimal fluff, and no build writeup or tactics section whatsoever, this isn't so much a build as it is just a list of spells and feats. (-1)

Overall: 2


Wait, iaijutsu? Seriously, you need a build writeup. You can't just throw something like that in there and expect me to know what you're planning to do with it. Anyway, you have a bunch of fire spells, and feats to enhance them. Looking at your options, Fire Wings isn't great with your stats, so your best choices will usually be Produce Flame, Flaming Sphere, or Searing Light. At least Fiery Burst means you'll never run out of fire, and Searing Spell lets you deal with fire resistance and immunity. The Shugenja spell list really works against you here - you're hitting the damage cap on all of your spells even without your caster level boosts. Overall, for a full caster, you're looking kind of underwhelming. (-0.25)

Defensively, your hp pool is pretty small, and your AC is low even with Shield of Faith. Your Fort and Ref are both low, and your Will is still pretty mediocre. I definitely don't recommend going into melee, whether it's with Fire Wings or iaijutsu. (-0.5)

In terms of utility, Silent Image is nice. Knowledge (arcana) and Spellcraft will sometimes be useful, and I guess in theory you might get some mileage out of Sense Elements. (-0.5)

Overall: 1.75


Lesser planetouched is a campaign variant. (-0.25)

I eventually unravelled your stats, but I almost just declared your point buy illegal. Please make it clearer in future that you're listing the totals including racial modifiers and the level 4 increase. (-0.25)

Quoting from the contest rules: "It's still fine to list total skill bonuses, if that's your style, but don't only list bonuses; make sure that there is a clear listing somewhere of your ranks alone." Zaq put it in bold and everything. (-1)

Shugenja has a bunch of notes about where it fits in a campaign setting, and in Faerun, it would be Kara-Tur, not Calimshan. You could work around it with your backstory, of course, but you didn't. (-0.25)

You don't need to explicitly list weapon (or armor) proficiencies that you get from your class - it took me a moment to work out that you hadn't taken 3 feats at first level. Similarly, it's a lot easier to read if you just list what you got at each level, not the cumulative total of everything up to that point. No penalty, just some formatting notes.

Overall: 3.25


Fire genasi, fire shugenja, fire spells, fire feats...it's pretty much all fire, all the time. (+1)

Thematically, visually...as much as I dislike the lack of a build writeup, I can't justify less than a pefect score here. (+1)

It'd be pretty funny if I gave you a penalty for spelling "fire" wrong a bunch of times, but not quite funny enough for me to actually do it.

Overall: 5

Total: 12




Shalarin? Yeah, you don't see that too often. (+0.5)

So...this is a little weird for me. This build is eerily similar to one I submitted to round 29, Signature Spells. Of course, imitation is the highest form of flattery, and besides, you probably came to the same idea on your own. On top of that, you're doing everything underwater, which is fun. (+0.5)

Overall: 4


Maximised Empowered Balor Nimbus does a lot of damage (36 + 0.5*6d6 = average 46.5). Potentially dealing that damage three times per round if you all grapple the same enemy will kill most things in E6 very, very quickly. If you run into fire immune enemies, well, you're still riding around on an Enlarged Elasmosaurus, and grappling is still useful. If you run into something that can't be grappled...you're going to feel a little foolish. I guess Freedom of Movement notionally isn't available in E6, at least. The elephant in the room is that the build mostly only functions in an underwater campaign. We can assume that it'd only see play in an underwater campaign, of course, but it still limits its usefulness. (+0.75)

Defensively, your hp pool and your AC are both decent (although your AC goes down when you're enlarged), your Fort and Will are both good, and your Ref is average (and you can add Conviction to all of those). And, of course, your giant dinosaur is bound to tank some hits for you with its massive hit points. Grappling puts you in harm's way, but overall staying alive should not be an issue for you. (+0.75)

Outside of combat, between you, your dinosaur, and your octopus, there's a good chance one of you will succeed on a Spot check. Beyond that, you can potentially prepare different spells to suit your needs, your octopus is useful in all the ways a familiar is generally useful, and that's about it. (-0.5)

Overall: 4


Shalarin? I can't argue with its legality, but there's no way I can let an LA 0 with +4 Str, +4 Dex just slide by. There's an argument to be made that the drawback is the lack of a walking speed, but you've assumed that you're in an aquatic campaign. (-0.25)

Multiclass experience penalties, minor penalty. (-0.25)

Overall: 4.5


Persistent Balor Nimbus is all the fire you have, but all of your feats go towards it, one way or another. Oops, forgot your familiar's breath weapon. Turning fire creatures is nice too, although it'd be better if it was rebuking them. (+0.5)

Thematically, you're always on fire, you have a dinosaur who is always on fire, and you have a draconic octopus who is always on fire. Even though you're underwater, it's somehow still fire. (+0.5)

Overall: 4

Total: 16.5




Illumian, nice. (+0.25)

Persisted Corona of Fire on your familiar is a pretty great concept. (+0.5)

Overall: 3.75


Assuming everything works the way you want it to (more on that in Elegance), you (and your familiar, too) have a permanent aura that does a heap of fire damage with some nasty rider effects. Invisible Spell makes it a nasty surprise to your enemies, and Searing Spell means it's still effective against fire resistance or immunity (making Overcome Resistance redundant, by the way). (+0.75)

Your hp pool is decent, and your AC should be good (although it's difficult to know which equipment/buffs you'll have on at any given time). Your Fort is mediocre and your Ref is low, but your Will is good and you have extended Mass Conviction. Speaking of, you've got a nice array of defensive buffs in your prepared spells, which both you and your theoretical party members will appreciate. (+0.25)

In terms of utility, Knowledge (arcana) and Spellcraft are sometimes useful. Familiars are useful, although you may find that a permanent damage aura prevents you from using your bat in some situations where you normally could. Your spells are set up to let you fill the role of party medic, as well as providing some handy divinations. And, of course, you can potentially prepare different spells to suit your needs. (+0.25)

Overall: 4.25


Maximise Spell explicitly states that that's not how it combines with Empower Spell. Similarly, Empower Spell would not apply to the bonus damage from Blistering Spell, since while it is numeric, it's not variable. It's not a question of order. (-1)

"The heightened spell is as difficult to prepare and cast as a spell of its effective level." It's generally accepted that you can't reduce the cost of Heighten Spell. Or, technically, you can, but if you heighten a 3rd level spell to 9th level, then reduce the cost until it's a 3rd level spell again, its effective level is 3rd, making it a rather pointless exercise. (-0.25)

Overall: 3.75


Persistent Corona of Fire is all the fire you have, but all of your feats go towards it, one way or another. (+0.5)

A permanent 20 ft aura of fire is pretty great thematically, although Invisible Spell could be argued to count against you here, and the fact that it's only fire because of Energy Substitution is a negative. (+0.5)

Overall: 4

Total: 15.75




Human, bleh. (-0.5)

The concept here is essentially just "fire themed spellcaster". That said, you've got some unusual feats, and overall I like your take on it. (+0.25)

I don't know whether to give you a bonus or a penalty for that name, good grief. Your backstory is great, although it does have the same minor flaw as (weirdly) many of the better backstories in build contests seem to - the better part of it is the backstory for a different character than the one you wrote your entry about. (+0.5)

Overall: 3.25


You're pretty good with fire spells, huh? Not just reaching, but actually exceeding the damage cap of Fireball is pretty impressive in an E6 environment, not to mention getting 2 rays out of Scorching Ray. Fiery Burst means you're never going to run out of fire, and Counterfire will give you some extra damage sometimes. You've diversified your damage types, although it's less useful for you as a prepared caster than it would be if you could change on the fly. And, of course, there's whatever other spells you know/prepare. (+0.5)

Defensively, you don't have a lot of hp, and your AC is terrible (presumably you're using Mage Armor, but you didn't say). Your Fort and Ref are both low, and your Will is average. Classic squishy wizard. (-0.75)

Outside of combat, you're the party encyclopedia. And, of course, there's the untapped potential utility of 6 levels of wizard casting. I guess, based on your backstory, you know Lesser Creation? Except that's not possible, it's 4th-level. I know I'm harping on about this, but I like this entry, and it saddens me to see you leaving points on the table. (-0.25)

Overall: 2.5


You forgot to write down your Wisdom score? I also don't know if the stats you've given include racial modifiers and the level 4 increase or not (based on skill points, I'm guessing not). (-1)

Lesser planetouched is a campaign variant. (-0.25)

Where in Calimshan are you getting snow for all this Snowcasting from? Not to mention the rare frostfell herbs for Primitive Caster that you also don't have the ranks in Profession (herbalist) to find? Did Aara move to the Great Glacier or something? That seems like the sort of thing you should have mentioned in her backstory. (-0.25)

Genie Lore arguably only works for sorcerers. (-0.25)

You seem to be missing a spell list. Even ignoring the possibility of scribing scrolls, I only know 2 of the 15 spells you learned from levelling up. Considering how much work you put into your backstory, this is a disappointing omission. Even a snapshot of what you'd usually have prepared would go a long way. (-0.5)

Mastery of Ice and Fire is very much an Eberron-specific feat, on an otherwise entirely Forgotten Realms-based character. (-0.25)

Overall: 2.5


Fire genasi, fire feats that give you fire spells...there's a lot here that's on point. Diversifying your damage types, while obviously a good idea, does count against you here. I would really have preferred to see a full spell list. Technically, all the spells I know you have are fire themed, but you could easily have given me another 13 fiery spells for me to give you fire points for. (+0.5)

On the bright side, Spell Thematics means every spell you cast will be on theme (it's in the name). I almost feel bad awarding points for it, since it's such a gimme, but hey. You well and truly justified it in your backstory, too. (+1)

Overall: 4.5

Total: 12.75

[H_H_F_F]

Woah! Surprise judgement!

I'm always in favor of having more than one judge, but no hard feelings on my part if you decide to move on instead, Zaq. Just let me know.

[ciopo]

Thank you for judging, MinimanMidget!

@H_H_F_F : my personal preference would be to wait for your judging, always nice to get multiple impressions

[loky1109]

@H_H_F_F : my personal preference would be to wait for your judging, always nice to get multiple impressions
Totally agree!

MinimanMidget, thank you for judging!

Name Alignment / Race Class Levels Chef MinimanMidget Total Place
Blaise deForrest (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467045&postcount=21) ?? Jermlaine Planar Spiritual Connection Wildshape Ranger 6 12.25 12.25 6th
Carsus Tall (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467046&postcount=22) LG Lesser Aasimar Paladin 6 12.50 12.50 5th
Charles M. Ander (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467047&postcount=23) CG Lesser Aasimar Paladin of Freedom 4/Hit and Run Tactics Fighter 1/Master Thrower 1 11.50 11.50 8th
Firefist (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467049&postcount=24) CG Human Ardent 2/Shaman 4 11.50 11.50 8th
Simon the Fire Lance (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467050&postcount=25) LN Human Psychic Warrior 6 13.50 13.50 3rd
Spirit of Fire (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467052&postcount=26) LE Lesser Fire Gensai Shugenja 6 12.00 12.00 7th
Steamy Romancer (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467053&postcount=27) NG Shalarin Druid 1/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 3/Beastmaster 1 16.50 16.50 1st
Uanafaira Worldfire (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467055&postcount=28) CE Illumian Cleric 5/Wizard 1 15.75 15.75 2nd
Aara (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467056&postcount=29) TN Human Evoker 3/Master Specialist 3 12.75 12.75 4th

[MinimanMidget]

Is it alright to get some friends to help me with the judging process?

FWIW, I can't see any problem with collaborative judging, as long as it's consistent. If anything, having multiple people cross checking will probably yield better quality judgement.


Woah! Surprise judgement!

I'm always in favor of having more than one judge, but no hard feelings on my part if you decide to move on instead, Zaq. Just let me know.

I'd prefer to wait, personally - I judged because I finally had time, not because I wanted to move things along. If you've already started, it'd be a shame to waste the work.

[H_H_F_F]

Update: I'm making good progress. Slowly and surely getting there. Looking forward to reading your judgements when I'm done, Minimanmidget!

[H_H_F_F]

Update 2 (EB): Fully done with 6 of the entries. Half done with 2 that are giving me a real headache. haven't started on one.

[loky1109]

Thank you for update!

[Zaq]

I love that we're actually getting judges! I know this sounds terrible but I'd kiiiiind of almost given up? So I'm really glad to have some movement!

Feel free to speculate or make suggestions for the next ingredient, btw!

[MinimanMidget]

I love that we're actually getting judges! I know this sounds terrible but I'd kiiiiind of almost given up?

Sorry about that. I was planning to judge from the moment I didn't submit an entry, but I knew it would be a while before I had time, and I didn't want to (once again) be posting "I'm getting to it" messages for weeks on end.


Looking forward to reading your judgements when I'm done, Minimanmidget!

Same here! It's always great reading about all the things I missed.

Speaking of, are there really no disputes? This eerie silence is freaking me out a bit.

[H_H_F_F]

I love that we're actually getting judges! I know this sounds terrible but I'd kiiiiind of almost given up? So I'm really glad to have some movement!

Feel free to speculate or make suggestions for the next ingredient, btw!

I'd like to see something a bit more concrete next round, though those are obviously getting harder to come by. Signature weapon, perhaps?


Speaking of, are there really no disputes? This eerie silence is freaking me out a bit.

Haven't seen your judgement yet, but it's probably just THAT GOOD.

[H_H_F_F]

Judgement is here. Please, no posting before I post the second part.

I had a lot of fun reading your builds. I know I can sometime sound harsh, but I'm genuienly always proud of this community for all the effort we put in to our projects. Cheers!
Originality:

Desert wind was very expected here. Not using the actual maneuvers and stances, but the tactical feat… Hadn't thought of that. Nice touch, which also allowed you to approach it with a less expected class structure. You also picked a unique race, with good reasoning behind that pick – it's not just an originality trap.

A complete lack of fluff is something I penalize. I don't penalize fluff for being bad or short, but I do see fluff (whether that be a story or a snapshot) as part of a complete entry. Cool name though.

Grenadier and mad alchemist are very cool here, and your build has the action economy to use them. Is it strong? No, but it's certainly creative and well thought out. The rest… eh.

Overall though, a surprisingly creative take on the expected desert wind build.

Score: 3.5 points.


Power:

Let's start with the elephant in the room: Blaise is hot trash for his entire pre-epic career. Can't say that's not fitting for a fire round, but still. You throw a tiny sized spear, doing one point of damage if you hit. 2, potentially, once you get desert wind dodge. And that takes a lot of maneuvering to achieve, which might get you some AoOs. That's legitimately all you can do in combat for 3 entire levels. That's garbage, and having 1 ranger spell per day really isn't enough to fix it. You recommend a hand crossbow, but you're not proficient with that – and a light or heavy crossbow will fully kill your maneuverability.

Things get better for you with wildshape, but still. You're utter trash in combat, and offer shockingly little utility for your chassis. Hide and move silently + darkstalker would let you at least pass as a scout. Right now, at 3rd level, you're less useful than the sorcerer's owl familiar. The fact that medium size wild shape has helped you so much is less of a praise to wild shape and more of a condemnation of Blaise.

You start doing something only during your epic career. And that thing is pretty bad. You're pretty good at consistently (not as consistently as you think, though – see elegance) doing low damage to multiply semi-clumped foes. That's better than being pretty good at doing low damage to multiple very clumped foes once per day, but it's still a thoroughly unimpressive tactic for most combats. And during epic E6, even mooks shouldn't worry too much about 1d6 damage, guaranteed or no. The whole "no way to avoid it" would be more impressive if the damage had some rider effect, but as is it's just not that much. The "as a move (+swift) action" part would be far more impressive if you were a warblade or something. As is, your standard actions are trash (even if colder trash once mad alchemist comes along), so having them at your disposal isn't that important.

As for the rest of your epic feats… they feel more than a bit like a grab bag of "I don't know what to do with so many feats". Keen eared scout and Quick Reconnoiter are nice I guess, and though mad alchemist isn't great, it sees investment. Skill focus is fine. Swift tumbler we'll talk about in Elegance. Mobility – come on. You try to justify it, but the odds of you tumbling past a 5th enemy and rolling a 1 are very low. It's there to qualify for Elusive Target.

Elusive Target is one of my favorite feats in the entirety of 3.5. It's fun, it's unique, it has a classic swashbuckling feel. It's also utterly useless on blaze. 2 of its tactical options rely on designating an opponent with dodge, which you cannot do, because you don't have a dodge feat that designates opponent. The third option relies on someone making an AoO against you – the thing your entire build is focused on avoiding. If you do fail a tumble check, and you are attacked and missed, you get to try a trip attempt. A trip attempt. You're tiny and have a Strength score of 5. What are you going to trip? An ant? Two completely dead feats.

Overall, I'm not going to say that having access to wild shape and having good sensory options is bad, and your defenses are mostly pretty good. But this build simply does not do enough to justify even a modest score here.

Score: 1.25 points.


Elegance:

1 class means you can't have really messy level progression or multiclass penalties, so that's good – but I don't belong to the school of thought saying simplicity=elegance. I do like that you've found something to do with a standard action, even if it takes a while to develop, given the swift+move action requirement for your main trick. I like the planar ranger pick for a planar touchstone feat without losing BaB. I think your minimal Cha score should be 2, not 4, but that's unimportant.

However, ranger doesn't have tumble as a class skill. It's solvable with skilled city dweller, so it doesn't fully make your build dysfunctional, but that's certainly a penalty from me. You might want to come back at me with "obviously I used SCD, I just forgot to note it", but that's a can of worms I'm not willing to open. I'm judging Blaise as submitted.

Speaking of tumble, saying "I took a feat that does who knows what because the designer probably intended it to do something" is… bad. You're taking language that does not surely work, gesture vaguely in the air and say "let your DM homebrew something nice here for you". Really Not a fan. You're not even willing to offer an interpretation of what the feat does.

You don't qualify for keen eared scout. It requires skill focus (listen), which you do not have. Penalty, as always. Qualify for you stuff, friends.

As for what you do with Scorching Sirocco… Read ToB p.43 on stances. While in a stance, you can use a swift action to end your current stance and swap to another, or simply to end your current stance without entering another. Nothing here lets you enter the same stance you're already in, and it's a swift action to drop it. You can't do it turn by turn, there's always going to be a dead turn between uses. That'd be solvable with another stance, and you have the feats to spare – but unlike some disciplines, desert wind only has one first level stance, and you don't have the IL to go for Holocaust Cloak (****ing hate that name.) You should've been a warblade. For more than this reason, but for this reason especially.

Overall, a fairly elegant build at the core plagued by rules issues.

Score: 1.75 points.


UoSI:

You approach the theme from a couple of different directions. You can do fire damage throughout the day. You're built around maximizing the efficiency of delivering that damage. Doing fire damage is one of your more efficient options in certain situations, even if only by virtue of sucking otherwise. Most importantly, it's not coincidental to your build – the "move action guaranteed damage to everybody" had to be fire.

However, you kind of lose focus once you get scorching sirocco. More significantly, you don't really USE the SI. You find your way to do fire damage, but it's hard for me to get an answer on why. What did that let you do? Assured damage, sure, but that's hardly ever important. If you ever face extraordinarily high-AC, high-saves, low-hp foe – yeah, having guaranteed damage helps. If you had some standard action that relied on your foes being damaged that round, that would've been a 5 here. As is, it's hard to see what you actually gain from going this route.

You do shine on "other fire stuff" though with mad alchemist, and you do have a fire-related maneuver. That counts for something.

Score: 3.6 points.


Total Score: 10.1 points. You found something neat here, but failed to make an impact, and was unfortunately still in the ballpark of expected approaches. You also were not vigilant enough when it came to rules and errors, and it cost you greatly here. Better luck next time!
Originality:

Okay. So, I knew about Diablo material, but only because you've told me about it, and I've never examined this book. I can hardly say that I saw this coming. Lesser Aasimar shows up often, but here you're looking for far more than cheap ability score improvements, and you apparently have a fluff justification too. I'm going to resist my urges and not do a deep dive on Diablo lore to determine how faithful that is. Let's try to submit this judgement before Christmas.

You've created a strongly evocative concept, and your fluff is nice. The unfamiliar class has also led you to an unfamiliar optimization path, with your focus on Cha checks. The focus on the angel theme through your feats is nice, mechanically works, and isn't expected.

Overall, unique approach with a lot of unfamiliar material. Well done.

Score: 4.75 points.


Power:

Flight is excellent, but it takes long to develop. You have 13 Str and no relevant feats, so even though you can basically function in combat, you're not going to be anything special. Even one more point in Str would've benefited you greatly here, as someone who can afford being on the frontline. Diplomacy, however, starts off strong and keeps being strong throughout your career. It's a real asset.

Up until E1, you're at risk for losing each of your class abilities for an entire day with a bad roll. Not that those class abilities are anything to right home about. The combination of sacrifice and prayer is nice once you hit that +12 to Cha checks, and even before that. Prayer in general is a fine resource to have once you hit that benchmark, and you're getting credit for that. Might, on the other hand, is utterly worthless. Standard action activation, 1 round duration? You won't be using that, it's just a prereq.

Thorns, on the other hand, is situationally pretty awesome. Very situational, but still. Not bad for a standard action, under the right circumstances. Depends on what your DM decides "special damage" is and isn't. Christ, this book.

Holy fire is what you're here for, but it's just not very good. You're able to do it while hovering above your enemies, which is great, but it's 2d6 damage. If you're looking for damage delivery, you'd be better off full attacking with a greatsword and using sacrifice – and that's despite your 13 Str. Again, like with blaze – guaranteed damage would be more impressive if you had something to do with it, or if it allowed you to do something that'd normally trash your ability to hit people.

Searing light is alright to have, but it's very much a nova option and doesn't have that much utility overall. Holy radiance… you took that for thematic reasons (which, respect) but it doesn't really do you much good here. Light to daylight is weird to me – if you thought that'd get you more uses of searing light, I have to disagree. The benefit text clearly states "once per day" separately from "usage of your light or daylight".

Overall, this build can still play pretty functionally as a warrior, and is an excellent diplomancer – but it falls short of becoming an impressive combatant

Score: 2.25 points.


Elegance:

This book is making me take back everything I ever said about WoTC editing being trash. This is trash editing. I won't be penalizing you for using this source, of course, but I am penalizing you for thorns being a mess and for armor proficiencies being a mess. Essentially, I'm penalizing you for taking absolutely unclear rules and gesturing at the DM to make a judgement call. That's not illegal, but it is inelegant.

You're getting a penalty for hefty cross-setting materials. You're also getting a penalty for a lacking build explanation section. You've given me the math behind holy fire, and your fly speed – but that's pretty much it. What does Carsus look like before holy fire comes online? What's happening with E4-E7? I'm not asking because I need you to clarify it in a response, but because it should've been laid out to begin with.

Other than that… I don't see any qualification or rules issues, other than heavy armor which was already discussed. On the other hand, I don't see any clever mechanical synergy either. Simple, yes – but to me, simplicity does not necessarily equal elegance. Overall, this build has few issues, but little to offer in this category.

Score: 2.5 points.


UoSI:

So, guaranteed consistent fire damage is a decent starting point. You gain some use of it by having access to range, which is complmented by your flight. Is it significantly better than archery? I think it could've been far more remarkable with flyby attack, given your speed and the fact that you don't need a full round action, but it's a decent use as is. Searing light gives you another, more impactful, fire option – but it is very much a nova, once a day.

You've spent a lot of effort on all sorts of thematic and utility choices, but you hadn't succeeded in capitalizing on holy fire in any way. I wonder whether there's a feat or class level you could have that'd make that more impactful. You're getting a nod for your fire-adgecent light stuff here.

Overall, you achieved the baseline but failed to develop it into something interesting.


Score: 2.6 points.


Total Score: 12.1 points. My vote for HM
Originality:

Your stub isn't doing you a lot of favors here. Lesser Aasimar DoB Paladin of freedom is making me yawn as I type it down. Heart dragonborn is also pretty boring in this competition. So, the base is pretty expected.

I cannot in good conscience say the same about what you built upon that base though. This is weird as hell, which is excellent for you in this category. Going for Charmander is also nice.

And then, just when I'm ready to like you here… Persistomancy. Most well known and most boring unoriginal cheese in the world. Heavily penalized here.

So, to sum up, you use an extremely conventional base to open up a very unconventional casting progression to support with extremely conventional cheese to achieve an unconventional goal.

Overall: What?

Score: 3 points.


Power:

Spoiler for elegance: unfortunately, most of what this very cool build is trying to do utterly and completely fails to work. This always presents a conundrum in this category. I don't want to double penalize you, naturally. I also never want to recognize illegal tactics as counting for power (the "I have infinite wishes from my commoner level" strategy). That's easier to deal with when a thing the build tries to do doesn't work, and always harder to deal with when the build itself doesn't work at all.

If we recognize everything that's problematic here, but don't let the strictly illegal stuff work… Well, this build stops making sense, but let's try our best to be generous here. We can imagine this as a paladin multithrowing build. Lack of heavy armor hurts real bad here, when conjoined with your lower constitution and lack of martial prowess.

You did offer an alternative that you'd pick here once everything fails with weapon focus dagger. I don't get how you claim to swap practiced spellcaster later, but whatever. Maybe you meant arcane disciple. Point is, we could see this is a nearly ok build throwing lots of daggers at people or fighting up close.

Small note: taking extra turning after persist and DMM was a mistake. They don't work without it, but it can help (extremely situationally, but still) without them.

Score: 1.5 points.


Elegance:

As you know, 2 flaws make for a really rough start here.

Saying the dragonscale husk ACF is not terrible in E6 assumes that this ACF is at all intelligible. Which, it obviously isn't otherwise you wouldn't've (What the hell did I just type, is that an actual valid way to write this?) managed to get it so wrong. First thing first, you can't sacrifice your heavy armor prof from fighter without gaining armor prof, which would disqualify you from husk. Second, and more importantly, you can't take that ACF because you don't have the dragonblood subtype until E10. So, as written, this build just walks around in light armor for no reason. Not awesome.

Qualifying for master thrower with WF on ranged spells does work, and is awesome. Great catch. However, you don't accomplish much with that detail. Palm throw's language explicitly locks you to a "mother may I" situation with the DM, and you don't really have a good case on that front at all. I'm not sure why you went for that one at all – two with one blow is excellent on a touch attack, trip throw is always good – you have plenty of options to go for that don't require DM adjudication.

The feat-swap, however… very hard pill to swallow. You're ordering everything in a way that could work, but this tower of card collapses if I refuse to recognize that it goes loss-replacement-loss-replacement and not losses-replacements. It also collapses if I say ability scores take precedent. It's a big issue here, and your interpretation seems just about the least solid to me – even if I do respect the hassle.

Versatile spellcaster references spells you know, which makes it iffy to use here. You qualify, no question, but can you use it?

You implied all the fire domain spells are automatically inscribed on your spellbook. They aren't – you still need to inscribe them normally, they just get added to your class list of spells, and you can inscribe them as would be normal for you. Speaking of which…

Live by the RAW, die by the RAW. You're being very cute here, but you're not a wizard, and any information on inscribing new spells to your spellbook is wizard specific. You prepare your spells exactly as a wizard does, and you cast your spells as instructed, but nothing gives you the ability to inscribe spells as a wizard does. You also don't have a class spell list you can add those to, save for the paladin list, which isn't clearly arcane even with SaTO in that context – and inscribing spells on a spellbook isn't how you get access to 2nd level paladin spells. Either way, I'd rule SaTO spells being divine, not arcane. I can see a case for them still being divine, even if I disagree. You know what I can't see a case for? Them being both divine (DMMP) and arcane (AD) at the same time. No matter which case I think is stronger, you can't make both cases at the same time. Completely dysfunctional.

Losing magical training and keeping your spellbook. Losing arcane disciple and keeping the spells. I've had one of these arguments before, and was not on the side you're taking. If you lose a feat, you lose its benefits. You can fluff it however you want. "But I already got the spellbook/spells! I'm not using the feat, I'm using the spells I've already inscribed on the spellbook I already got!"
Nope. Same could be said for taking open minded. "I'm not using the 5 skill points, I'm using the ranks I bought with them!" Weapon proficiency "I'm not using my ability to choose an exotic weapon to be proficient with, just the proficiency I already got!" could be used on nearly any feat in the game. Does not work. Even if I did buy it, I could always tell you that the spells are still inscribed, on the spellbook you still have and can use, but they're no longer on your class list so you can't cast them.

Overall, at the end of the day, too much of this build doesn't work – enough so that it absolutely stops making sense at all if we ignore all the illegal stuff. That means I have to put the hammer down and call this build [color=red]ILLEGAL[/red]. Sorry.

Score: 0 points.


UoSI:

All of this… for valiant attempt credit on produce flames?

Yeah, I don't have much to say. If any of this would've come close to working, it'd be nice. You could score a semi-decent score here

Score: 1.5 points.


Total Score: 6 points. Extremely fun attempt, of which I'm a fan. Burning down in a fiery blaze of glory is better than dying in moderate anonymity, and is certainly fitting for this round!
Originality:

Well, as you know there's a little penalty for me when there's no fluff – even if you did use it for kindling. Sorry about that.

I was wondering if someone would try to make fire devotion good. I've also had my eye on that mind's eye article lately for various reasons, so I did see fire mantle as an option – even if that's not really what you ended up using. However, I did imagine a TWFer for the one and a psionic blaster for the other – and you use both, and do neither. Shaman is fun and a more interesting choice here than cleric, and you have justification for it.

Human is never surprising, but other than that I can't say that I see any very obvious choices here at all. Pyro is a very cool feat that provides the core you build around. The way you build around it is full of little surprises. There is no one big unifying concept that blows me away here – just the relentless march of little creative choices to make the already creative Pyro pick more effective. Circle kick, mortalbane, AoO investment. Clever.

Overall, very good stuff.

Score: 4.5 points.


Power:

Split focus between powers and spellcasting makes both not really shine. ~15pp is nice to have, though, and you have good powers and spells on hand – especially once E1 comes in.

Multiturn, limited/day SLAs such as fire devotion are an excellent use of mortalbane. It doesn't work on everyone, of course, and lack of investment in knowledge skills (other than architecture, lol) means you might gimp yourself against enemies that don't really broadcast their type – but overall, this functions as an excellent damage multiplier. It was used very inefficiently last I saw it, so I'm glad to get a glimpse of how it functions when it is used well.

Your main trick mostly work, though its damage is lower than you presented, and you're kind of wasting a lot of resources here on not-quite-dead feats. See elegance. Still, it's pretty decent damage + action economy burden you're doing there. Nice!

Standstill+control-flames is cute. Like a lot of your AoO based tactics, though, I'm somewhat concerned with enemies preferring to just end you, with your low Con and low hit dice. Heavy armor proficiency is very impactful here – my mind initially assumed you were not wearing armor, just because I'm preconditioned to imagine any unarmed character as unarmored, too. Still, you're not as likely to get a lot of enemies provoking as we want you to be, I think.

You're in a somewhat awkward position in relation to your psionic focus: You've jumped through a 3 feat hoop (not terrible feats for you, but still) to get to use lava – but that counteracts your mantle granted powers, both of which you feature quite intensely.

Finally, I feel like your to-hit is too low for what you're doing. Weapon finesse would've helped you.

Overall, this build can pile on an ok amount of damage, annoy enemies, has a couple of ways to deal with multiple enemies and has good access to lower level casting to support it. It is also going to occasionally struggle melee survival, and is going to have a very hard time dealing with high-AC foes.

Score: 3.3 points.


Elegance:

Here's the thing: for you (for most if we're being honest) the elemental mantles are a straight-up nerf to the original Elements mantle. I'm mentioning it here, in elegance, because the fire mantle doesn't have elemental steward, which would make it an illegal choice. However, your breakdown does say "elemental mantle". Which, you know, isn't a mantle. But given context, we're going to assume that you meant the elements mantle, thought about moving to the fire mantle, and that you accidentally forgot to change back the table when you figured out fire removed elemental steward so you're back at the elements mantle. So, penalty for having the wrong info, but other than that you're fine.

I don't really buy the interpretation that fire devotion does 1d4+1d6. I don't think that's RAI, if that's the argument you're trying to make with "additional" – which references the original fire damage from the hit, not the damage from being on fire, in my opinion. If you're trying to make a RAW case – you'd need it to explicitly say the target catches on fire. "Ignite" isn't a keyword, and doesn't make a case for you here. It's just 1d4. The fact that this isn't the "catching on fire" rule taking action is further evidenced by only needing a move action for dousing yourself. Being caught on fire (which you CAN inflict by sundering clothing) has to roll on the ground only to make a second save with a +4. Much better debuff. It also stacks with burning after being ignited.

Unfortunately, you can't sunder armor, so this only works on enemies who have clothing.

As for the domain feats: "Corresponding" is vague enough to make flame=fire work, maybe, but it's still far from being ironclad RAW. As for using your nature turns to fuel devotion feats: nah. I get what you're trying to do here (if you have ability to turn undead, for each turn use you expend… You have turn undead, you expend turn animals) but first of all, you really can't try to sell me on something like that in the same build in which you try and say it's reasonable to assume fire=flame. Second of all, this text is predicated on the general text establishing how domain feats work.
If you have the ability to turn or rebuke undead, you can gain additional daily uses of a domain feat's benefit by expending daily uses of that ability. Pretty clear, in my opinion.

Mortalbane. Oof, that's a hard one. Reminds me of the "mind blade & empower supernatural ability" discussion I had with another chef in the Shining Blade round of IC. I'll say that it doesn’t work on Strength devotion for sure, as that is certainly not a damaging SLA – not moreseo than polymorph or haste. So that's another aspect of strength domain that causes problems here. As for fire devotion… Yeah, it's not very elegant by any means, as it relies on very imprecise language, but I'll say it works. Animal devotion – no, same as Strength devotion. Also, "fire damage" isn't a neutral word like "damage", which can indeed be applied to ability damage. Fire damage is a much more precise term, and it is always HP damage. So, no such thing as con-fire damage. I'm guessing part of the reason this is so late in the build is that you assumed this wouldn't work, though maybe you couldn't put your finger on precisely why.

This, combined with a lower turn pool than you assume, makes Strength devotion much less useful. It's still good when combined with sundering, but it has a higher cost and lower value. I guess it still helps by increasing your unarmed damage (which is stupid, but RAW I guess. Never thought about that. Nice catch. 100% unintended.) Also, just noting that even if I did accept mortalbane working on stuff granting you natural weapons, it could be said very coherently that Strength devotion combined with the bite actually ****s you over by forcing you to replace the excellent con damage with the (higher value damage) hp damage.

A sister discussion to mortalbane is control flame's relationship to privileged energy and paraelemental power. Is control flame a damaging power, or is it more akin to animate objects & elemental steward? No black&white answer here, IMO, but I think your interpretation will usually pass, and I'd let it fly in my games.

Circle kick and AoO. Doesn't work, IMO. If you're going for something like that, you ideally really want more precise language. Something using the word round, at least. Your reading of it is linguistically less valid than saying "I've full-attacked (once), so I get to use this feat (whenever I want)". But that's not a strong case either, because "This feat requires the full attack action" is one of the most imprecise phrasings I've ever seen. So, there's no clear RAW here to help you, and you don't present a real way to back up your reading. You just sort of vaguely wave your hand at the feat and say "imagine how clever you'd find me to be if this feat said it only works on rounds when I full attack! Why don't we just treat it like that's what it says?" And yeah, I would. With language that bad, however, we simply have to either ignore the feat or default to RAI (because there is no RAW), and that's crystal clear, and doesn't help you. This sort of kills a lot of the effort you've put in.

Overall, this build's main weak point here is trying to mix and match RAI, RAW and RDM (Reasonable Dungeon Master) instead of sticking to one of these options and it alone, something I find to be incredibly inelegant. Live by the RAW, die by the RAW. Sorry, pal.

Score: 1 point.


UoSI:

Good category for you. Even when I don't give you anything but valiant attempt credit for the stuff that doesn't work, the stuff that does work alone is good and diverse. You have a reason to want to do fire damage specifically – lighting people on fire for pyro, which is either sustained damage or an action-economy annoyance (or both).

You also have "a bit extra" for every single time you do fire damage, which encourages you to use your various fire options often. Having some of those is great – you've built some synergy between control flame and your aoo (though you'd have a hard time getting it to work, control flame being concentration) and having a multi-enemy option which you can augment when you need to is excellent. I'd like to see more fire-themed options with your spell choices, and I wish you would've devoted the peak of the build to something more sturdy, rules wise – but overall, good stuff with a bonus for valiant attempt for more.

Score: 4.25 points.


Total Score: 13.05 points. Nice one. I know telling you to write fluff is useless, but I will tell you to be less forgiving with your language. I think you could've found feats that would support what you can do if you weren't to rely on those that required an extremely liberal reading of the text.

[H_H_F_F]

Originality:

Not that much to say here, honestly. This is a supremely cool build, going at it from an unexpected route, and using a lot of archery feats I wouldn't have thought would show up in this round. It's not anything I've never seen before – "psionic archer" is not a foreign concept – but in this context, and with this particular twist, it's very cool.

I do question your choice of going human just to take prodigy. Going for most psionic races would've given you around the same amount of pp (Twice as much for kalashtar) and would've given you interesting tools and a less boring racial choice. Human is something I'm not a big fan of in this category, and in your case it really wasn't that hard to avoid.

Extend range is cute.

Score: 4.35 points.


Power:

Having 8d6 damage on a touch attack at your access at level 1 is huge. You're going to be trash at hitting at first, and it's a 1 round prep time, but that blows anything other characters of your level should be able to do out of the water. ~28 damage on a ranged touch attack, repeatable for enough rounds to last a full combat, is bonkers.

This impressive start doesn't really scale, obviously. With minutes per level, you could afford to spend 1 pp to manifest it at its unaugmented form when you suspect combat might ensue, but other than that – leveling doesn't really do that much for you. Maybe I'd be more impressed with it if you found some +1 enhancement that really helped you here, so you could use the augment. Without that… Soulbond isn't doing that much for you. We'll discuss it in Elegance.

Rapid shot is the main gamechanger here, and it comes very late. I do think that with a base damage of 8d6, you sort of got your priorities wrong going for psionic shot before rapid/precise shot. Psionic shot makes for a 25% increase in damage sometimes. That's nice to have, but it doesn't compare to doubling your rate of fire or avoiding a very common penalty.

Ammo will sometimes be an issue, but you'll always get 3 shots at the very least. Any more than 12 and you'd have to reload, but if you hadn't managed to fisnish combat after doing up to 96d6, you're not going to finish it alive.

Your powers are nice, but your action economy makes some of them harder to use. You're already spending the first round of combat by summoning your weapon 90% of the time. Vigor, force screen, wall walker – all good powers, but you'll often have a very hard time bringing them to bear.

I'm heavily questioning your choice of devoting two feats to getting plate armor during E3 and E4. Avoiding item reliance is one thing, but at this point, affording and finding plate is just obvious. Devoting two feats to that cause fees less like you want to make sure you have the armor you need, and more like you just don't know what to do with so many feats.

Overall, this build starts off incredibly strong, but doesn't manage to keep up. The difference in fire power between level 1 and level 6 is nigh-negligible, and many of your powers fail to make an impact in combats when you're not free to buff at your leisure. E1 represents a big boost in power, even if it should've come sooner, and you remain a real and potent threat throughout your career. Could've easily been a 5 with better pacing of feats and a couple different decision points. Still very powerful.

Score: 4.4 points.


Elegance:

So, I have this judging tool I use. I call it "Live by the RAW, die by the RAW." If your build is trying to pull off RAW shenanigans on me, don't expect me to say "well, no reasonable DM would rule like that" if another piece of dumb RAW screws you over. So I was totally ready to tear you apart upon reading the rule which you actually quoted:
If you call a projectile weapon, it comes with 3d6 nonmagical bolts, arrows, or sling bullets, as appropriate.Do you see power packs and their charges mentioned anywhere here? Because I sure don't. It comes with bolts, arrows, or sling bullets.

But the thing is… Upon reflection, you're not actually pulling weird RAW nonsense on me. This is perfectly in line with what the power was meant to do, much more so than a freaking trebuchet. Did the designers of temple of the frog consider the fact that this weapon could be manufactured again? No, but that's not on you, is it? Everything you do is within RAW and RAI, and uses no weird readings of anything involved. You even provided sensible fluff to explain how one could come to know of the heavy blaster.

So you're still getting penalized here for appealing to RAI when RAW clearly doesn't go your way – but given the rest of your build never goes anywhere nonsensical, that’s not enough for me to say "it doesn't work" and kill your build here. We're going to assume that you're getting a power pack (or two, depending on the roll) with 3d6 charges every time you use your power.

Let's keep going with the rest of the build. You don't qualify for EWP at level 1. You'd have to swap it with PBS, as Zen Archery also has a +1 BaB prereq. This is actually a pretty catastrophic DQ, for one that's relatively fixable: not being proficient with your chosen weapon until like, level 5, is terrible.

Another way to solve this issue connects to my complaint earlier in power. You could solve it by just not going for soulbond weapon. Call weaponry does the heavy lifting here. Imagine this build without soulbond: it's -1 to hit from lacking WF, and another -1 from level 4 onwards for losing the free enhancement bonus (less important to you because you don't worry about DR/ magic.) Take PBS as your bonus feat at 1, alongside vigor. Bring EWP at 2, alongside call weaponry, and Zen archery at 3. rapid shot at 5, precise shot at 6. This build is very feat starved (early in its career, not late) and you're wasting a feat on weapon focus, because it's a call weaponry build so you automatically assumed soulbond was the way to go. It's really not.

You didn't source extend range. Took me a couple of minutes to figure out where it was from and what it does. Other than these issues, this build is pretty simple, which is good. I like hustle+psionic meditation on a build that gets value not only from expending focus, but also from maintaining it.

Overall, a decently elegant build with a couple of serious issues.

Score: 2.4 points.


UoSI:

So, this category starts off excellent for you. You've found a way to reliably do fire damage, and you have a real reason to want it – it's insane damage early on, not accessible with any other damage type. So far, great.

However, you simply do not build much upon this concept. You look like you do; you manifest the power by being the psychic warrior specializing in that power, you take 6 levels, feats, you make it all feel necessary. But… at the end of the day, this is only marginally better at doing your trick than a high-Dex synad fighter with hidden talent, and it takes a lot longer to pan out. That synad fighter can summon the gun and be proficient with it at first level, using an 18 in the relevant ability score. They can get rapid shot by level 3. They have better to-hit. They can summon it for up to 5 combats a day, 4 if they do one of them as a swift action. All in all, they have a real case for being overall better than you are at this (when considering the fact that early levels exist too, I mean), while investing 2 feats, a racial choice, and not a single level.

This is not to say that this should've been "this build I came up with". This is simply to say that at the end of the day, all you have to offer is call weaponry and EWP with this weird weapon you've found. That's it. It's a very neat trick, and an excellent use of fire damage, but everything else is peripheral.

That is not to say that you didn't invest in it further. Extend range and psionic shot are both nice picks here, and both enhance your firepower by relying on the fact that you're already a psionic character. Excellent. You could've gone for greater psionic shot if you were to go for Kalashtar Psychic warrior 4/ full BaB 2, but you were very locked in on maxing out PP at any cost. Archery feats are a given in this context, and even most of your defensive feats are ones accessible only to a psionic character, which again – you had to be for your trick to work, so it's better than generic feats.

But still – Most of this character's focus on fire comes from a single 1st level power. Take away 1 power and 1 feat, and this build makes just as much sense as a generic psionic archery build. It'd be perfectly functional, but have nothing to do with fire. That's not what you want.

Overall, one insanely good find that'd get you a 5 here in a heartbeat if you would've found a way to build on it in a way that relied on it being fire. You could also grab a better score here simply by having more fire around the periphery of the build.

Score: 3.75 points.


Total Score: 14.9 points. If I ever play in an optimization-friendly level 1 oneshot, I'll ask the DM if call weaponry brings other types of ammunition. If they say yes, I'm bringing in a synad fighter with 2 flaws for rapid shot. You've found something truly cool here.
Originality:

Theme is very strong here, and earns you some credit. I didn't think anyone would go Shugenja. Lesser fire genasi is cute, but I've covered that in theme, and mechanically it offers worse than nothing to the build, so I can't congratulate you too much for a clever find here.

Spell choice is trivial, feats are mostly uninteresting. You're getting a boost for armor proficiency here. Wow.

Score: 3.1 points.


Power:

You know, my body recoiled against you taking light armor proficiency, but… Yeah, it's a fine choice here, even if I feel weird just from saying that. You had no obvious way to reach Shugenja 3rds while getting better armor proficiencies. If there is a prc you can sensibly enter at 5 which'd advance your casting and give you full armor proficiency, I haven't found it on a cursory glance.

Anyway, as for the actual build: I don't follow. Maybe it has to do with the lack of a build breakdown, which we'll talk about in elegance, and maybe it doesn't, and the build is just flawed, but – I don't get these feats at all here. Sure, they're thematic, but – to paraphrase our Chairman – what do they DO? You have a bunch of metamagic feats, most of them having to do with fire, none of them very clearly more useful to you than just casting a higher level spell. You can accelerate a couple of them, which would help if you wanted to move a flaming sphere while casting another spell, I guess. But why these, specifically? Do you do anything interesting I'm missing with a non-lethal transdimensional burning hands?

I'm sad to say that I don't think so. Theme is cool and all, but it's more fun when it actually supports something valid the build does. It doesn't have to be good, necessarily, but you should have at least one more reason to take a feat than "it has fire in it". Same for taking a Cha caster for a Cha penalty race. WHY?

Other than epic feats… Cute blaster. Would've been more impressive to pile all of this metamagic on an arcane thesis or two, I think, or to attempt any means at all of increasing your blasting power outside of Bloodline of Fire and fiery burst. Having metamagic flexibility as your top goal to achieve on such a limited caster was a bad move, in my opinion. Searing light is the only offensive spell you have which really enjoys your increased CL, and you can't use any of your metamagic on it.

Iaijutsu: okay. I mean, what? Sure, why not. I'm not giving you any credit for it because like… what?

Overall, this is a slow-burn blaster that barely improves during its entire epic career. Full casters are pretty much the only thing in the world you can mess up this bad and still get a semi-decent score on – you have access to flight, some decent damage when you need to, and flaming sphere + blasting is an okay move in E6.

Score: 2.25 points.


Elegance:

See, this is why I'm always pushing for people to carefully read through a past competition or two before submitting. I don't need you to reprint the text of every feat you take. I can look them up if you source them. That's a waste of your effort and time, which should've gone towards explaining what the hell you were doing.

Now, you have all your crunch and you've written a bit of fluff, so I'm going to try to be generous here and not give this build an auto-0 for being an incomplete entry. However, it came really close. Please try to do better on this front next time.

I don't see any qualification issues, but I'm seeing anti-synergy out the roof. So much dead space in this build. There's also the issue with using 31 pb (weird) and not noting your racial ability modifiers within your ability lines (slap on the wrist).

Overall, though it is very thematic, this build is very mechanically ugly in my view. It is made mostly of dead space and anti-synergy. Could've been just bad and not this bad if it had a tactical section of any kind.

Score: 1.4 points.


UoSI:

Fire Genasi Shugenja from the fire order using the fire element? That's commitment to a theme if I've ever seen such. Is it a good choice of order, given your element? No, but you're not interested in versatility. You're interested in fire. That's very nice to see here. But how well do you use said fire?

Well… eh. You support it mainly by virtue of having high CL with fire spells, and taking firey burst for tenacity. I don't think that's really necessary, with the amount of spells per day you have – but on the other hand, it's probably superior to produce flames here, so why not.

Quantity has a quality of its own, and you certainly have a lot of fire – even if all you have in the quality department is one feat, pretty much.

Score: 3.25 points.


Total Score: 10 points. This feels like a first-time submission, perhaps? If so: good first try! I really recommend looking over other builds in previous rounds of the competition. Get a feeling on how things are usually submitted. Theme is great, but this is an optimization competition: if the theme doesn't add up to anything in the end, it feels disappointing. Better luck next time!
Originality:

So, you know how each judge is affected by their existing experience? Other options on the field surprised me, but shared Balor Nimbus was very much something I had in mind, as it was heavily featured (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?627038-Iron-Chef-E6-Appetizer-Edition-Round-XXIX&p=24957292&viewfull=1#post24957292) not too long ago on this very competition, in the first round I participated in. It was on my shortlist for "stuff we'll probably see this round", and I didn't feel like I was being creative coming up with it, given the circumstances. The only thing I didn't expect was going at it with a druid 1/ beastmaster 1 – and the only reason I didn't expect that was the fact that this was the exact approach taken by the original Balor Nimbus build, so I assumed you'd at least find a new direction to take it.

That's not to say that "sharing a spell with a familiar and an animal companion" is a bad thought, just that it's unoriginal to do so with this particular spell in this particular round of this particular competition.

Balor nimbus came alongside persistomancy, which is always going to be an enormous eyeroll from me in this category. Yeah, it's good, but it's also deeply unoriginal. The rest of your feats follow in line, either as part of the core concept (which was expected) or as obvious persistomancy feats for E6 (which is always expected).

Shalarin are a very cheesy race, and not in an interesting way; it's just cheap ability scores in exchange for being underwater. On the other hand, I can't say I've seen them discussed too much before, so we'll call it a wash. Same for cheesy animal companion.

Complete lack of fluff is something I always penalize here. Short is fine, bad is fine, but I see it as a part of a complete entry.

Overall, you started with an approach I expected, built it with expected ingredients, and then only built upon it by using the most unoriginal sort of cheese. I saw nothing new here. That was almost enough to bring you all the way down, but you picked a race I didn't penalize, so that’s good. Unfortunately, lack of fluff was just enough to completely kill this build.

Score: 1 point. Sorry, bud.


Power:

Really thought I had you here with spellcraft before I finished reading. Well done. We'll talk in elegance.

This build avoids too much of a rough start by having excellent ability modifiers and using high tier classes as your base. It's still a slow progress, but it's no "I survive with 4 hp, no animal companion and a +0 in my casting stat" druid, like some demented souls here have done recently. Other than your main trick, which only gets fully operational in E3, most of your stuff is usually somewhat under-leveled. It's not a terrible start, but without the main trick, it's a weak build.

Once that gets operational, however… It's pretty okay. It's not great by any means, but it's getting near good.

I'm sure your eyes are widening in disbelief as I say this, as your build is obviously extremely powerful. All day 54 damage *3. Excellent grappling modifiers. What's not to love? Is a 154 damage per round not enough for me?

Well, first thing first, you somewhat overestimate your damage.
An empowered, maximized spell gains the separate benefits of each feat: the maximum result plus one-half the normally rolled result. So, around 46 damage on average, not 54. Not that much of a difference, I agree, just pointing it out. You're also vulnerable to dispelling, of course, especially with your trash CL – but while that is a reduction here, it's niche enough to not be a severe one. You should still be cruising on your way to 4.75 or something, right?

What does make much of a difference is the lack of improved grapple on you. You provoke an attack of opportunity when you attempt to grapple. Since you're explicitly going around casting Sorc spells, your AC can't be that high – and getting hit with the AoO means the grapple fails. Your octopus body has improved grab, but it only gets above +5 to grapple at E9, and even that's only when you manage to pre-buff with enlarge person, and it has to hit an attack first. It's +0 to grapple without that buff, which, come on. I'd say on the majority of rounds you two try this against level appropriate opponents, you both fail, and then you're getting dunked on, hard. When it works it's excellent damage, sure – but it really is far from being reliable enough. Yet another entry flunking due to forgetting something in the grappling rules. Tragic.

But wait! Maybe not *3, fine, but you still have the big guy. That's what we're all about here, right? The cheesy CR 7 animal companion. Huge size, gargantuan when buffed, another +6 by E10 – and it has snatch on a good attack bonus basis, so it isn't impeded by the AoO problem. Problem solved!

Well, it would be, if you could count on your companion being there more than 3% of the time. Who the hell picks an air-breather for their animal companion in an underwater campaign? Where are you trying to claim this campaign is happening, at the freaking beach?

I genuinely cannot fathom (heh) why you went this route. This seems insane to me. It can hold its breath for 4 and a half minutes before it starts making saves. That's not enough to dive to where you live, forget about actually adventuring alongside you. Multisnatch is also extremely stupid on an animal that only has a bite attack, but maybe you're relying on a cheesy reading of Girallon Arms. Besides, I'm too distracted to talk about that dead feat because the entire animal it's on is just… useless.

So, when everything is said and done, when your build is fully developed at E3, You have a pretty risky strategy that can result in around 93 damage per round, or half that in less successful turns, but is significantly more likely to end up in 0 against most level-appropriate oponnents – even if you had the round to prebuff. If you didn't, your chances are even worse. And ending up with 0 damage done means you have none of the normal defenses a mage can expect – chief of which being range, of course. You or your octopus are going to eat a full attack to the face.

Now, this isn't unfixable, but fixing it requires switching the animal companion – which isn't what you submitted, so, you know. However, even the fixes aren't great – I cannot find a huge aquatic animal companion, so not only are your numbers going to be significantly lower – snatch is out, which means we're back at the AoO conundrum. It's still a far higher chance of success than just you and your pus, especially considering the AoO will only be used against the biggest threat – but still, nowhere near as good as you thought it was, and a significantly later bloomer.

So, not terrible at all. High risk high reward, and with 3 rounds to buff or so it becomes somewhat more reliable if you're willing to spend the spell slots and become more of a nova. But it's not nearly as good as you think it is, and about half of the build's resources are utterly wasted as presented. Other than your core tactic you're pretty trash after level 1.

Overall, a very late-bloomer build which fails to make a significant enough impact once it blooms.

Score: 2.25 points.


Elegance:

Well, you're stuck underwater. You can't walk up until level 5, even that's for 3 hours a day, and you still can't breath – so it's a moot point anyway. Meaning, you've limited this character to only make sense in a strictly underwater campaign, which is far from the norm. I wasn't sure whether to penalize it here or in power, but decided that it makes more sense here. It wouldn't be fair to say "you're useless at all out of water situations, full 2 point deduction" for a build that isn't meant for a land campaign, so saying "you've made a build which only functions in 5% of possible campaigns, which is pretty darn inelegant" felt more fair. Besides, your power score has suffered enough, I think.

You don't have the cleanest level structure, which means you're not getting the "easy points for simplicity", and have to actually do clever things here. Multiclass penalties are something I ding here. Consider yourself dinged. You also don't speak common. Shalarin explicitly only speak aquan, and you have no additional languages from Int or skill ranks. Dinged again. You list all your sources (though you are getting a slap on the wrist for failing to mention that the dinosaur on the 7th level list came from Stormwrack; sent me book-diving), and everything else is fine – no DQs, no math errors I caught. I'm a big fan of how elaborate your build explanation is, without it becoming tedious.

Dodging out of taking steam magic with Balor Nimbus lacking the [fire] descriptor… Baller move. Clever, too. I was really trying to bust you there, but I can't. The sources are both in agreement, and I can't find a concrete definition of "nonmagical fire" anywhere – and the commonsense one would rule out Balor Nimbus. Very well done.

Another thing I liked is share soulmeld pulling double duty. It's not surprising, but it is elegant.

Hard disagree on non-undead turning being usable for DMM. "You can take the energy from turning or rebuking undead". This isn't some fluff text, this is the feat explaining how it works. The rest of the text references this paragraph, and assumes that you read "turn attempt" within context. It's like reading "them" somewhere and saying "That could be anyone!" when the first sentence is talking about your animal companion. Not RAW, not RAI, doesn't match the fluff of using negative or positive energy. Illegal. It's very good that you proposed a way out, and that you took extra turning and didn't rely on that reading for your core trick. No penalty due to that diligent book keeping.

Natural bond argument… A problematic reading, even if it is one I'm sympathetic to. "It wasn't the thing that brought my EDL above my HD, the new class did! And besides, my EDL for my Dino is 2!" Well, yeah, but we both have to admit it's hardly an ironclad case, even if I won't call it illegal and deny you the possibility. A penalty.

Overall – many issues, but enough cleverness to keep your head above the water.

Score: 2.65 points.


UoSI:

Strong category for you. The biggest tool in your arsenal is fire, it often makes sense to use, and your entire build is built around supporting and enhancing it. It's not a tool that would be accessible for you other than going for a fire option – there is no non-fire alternative to achieve what you've tried to achieve. You also get a nod for your secondary options, produce flame and drakken breath weapon. Produce flame is eh, and the breath weapon is utter trash – but they're there, and unlike what you probably imagined, you actually have a valid reason to use them, because your main tactic will often be simply out of the picture.

You don't have to many other "fire" things – could probably squeeze a slightly better score here with a different suggested spell list. You also didn't feature any reason to use fire in particular – if Nimbus did cold damage, your tactics would be completely unchanged – but that's a high bar to reach. Actual underwater fire, and not steam, is also very cool.

I'll also give you a tiny boost for fire vulnerability being more common under the sea.

Overall, good stuff.

Score: 4.1 points.


Total Score: 10 points. I liked this build a lot, even though I generally dislike persistomancy. Very cute idea, assuming that you were unaware of the aforementioned Balor Nimbus build. Terrible execution, though. Better luck next time!
Originality:

This seems like a good place to explain my fluff policy. Your "lore blurb" could've been a story if you were willing to invest literally 2 more minutes into it.
My very first memory is of the fireplace in my father's house. Burning brightly, chasing away the shadow and cold, feeling the room with life. Ever moving, ever shifting. Beautiful. Through all hardship, through all doubt, that image was there. Burning away all other thoughts, letting me focus on that which we planned to achieve. We of the Ember Syndicate will have our wish.

Soon, all shall be fire.
Now, maybe that would've taken you an extra 5 minutes, and would've been worse than what I have here. Maybe you could do far better than that with 10 minutes. I don't know. Either way, it would make there be a character here, not just a leveling table. That’s all I'm asking for. I know it's not what you came here to do, but I don't feel like it's a lot – it's just a couple of minutes to do the bare minimum.

Anyway, Naenhoon persistomancy isn't any more original to me than DMM persistomancy. I'm not impressed with an Illumian pick in that context. Cleric/Wizard aren't classes one is ever surprised by. Energy transmutation I saw coming from a mile away, though I was concerned that folks will fail to justify it – but we'll talk about that in UoSI.

Your specific specialty spell choice is nice and interesting, though the rest your recommended spells are of course bog standard, and you don't even try to feature any interesting correlation between them and the rest of your build. Mainly "insert good spell here" stuff, unfortunately. You are getting a tiny boost here from making creature shiver uncontrollably as you burn them. That's pretty funny. Your use of invisible spell is similarly fun here and earns you another boost.

Overall: a nice central spell, but very expected and cheesy approach overall with too little done to make it truly unique. Get some fluff next time to save an easy 0.25 points.

Score: 1.45 points.


Power:

Straight cleric up to 5 is a very good start, even with your lowish Str. Having persist available at 3, and free empower once a day is good. I am genuinely weirded out by your approach to wizard and your high Dex here. Why not 17 Wis? You have heavy armor proficiency, you don't need to win initiative, you only really need high dex to shoot your crossbow. Do you really think that compares to your casting stat?

As is, you've decided to wear no armor and no shield (only from level 6 onward, I would hope?) so that you can cast wizard spells, and the spells you've decided to cast are… mage armor and shield? You can just wear armor and a shield, man. Significantly better AC, can't be dispelled, protects you for the full day instead of 1 hour/ 1 minute. You're in wizard for a familiar, for easy qualification to metamagic school focus, and you squeezed some extra use out of it with overcome resistance on your corona, which means you don't care about the vaccine have some utility up until E6 when you apply searing spell. You're not there for the spells, otherwise you'd pick something better than a CL 1 mage armor + shield. Just say you cast mage armor on your bat before donning your plate, and try to refresh it despite ASF later.

Anyway, aside from this baffling choice, you're doing pretty well for yourself. Half your main trick is completely illegal, of course, so that's sort of a hindrance – but it's hard for me to say that this is really such an unbelievably huge hit on your power. You're still a pretty capable T1 caster with access to third level spells, you still have access to a pretty good persisted spell that manages to provide a fine debuff alongside some damage.

Now, that spell is completely negated by a fortitude save. DMM heighten is a great assist here, for sure, but you're standing 10 from enemies with 13 AC – that's not always going to go great for you. Sudden widen is actually helpful here, but most creatures will still reach you with a charge even if they fail the save. Still, you're simply not tanky enough and have too little to do in melee for you to be able to really squeeze this aura for all it's worth. In plenty of cases, you'll decide that the enemy is too chunky, or has too much hp or movement speed, and will keep your distance.

You're also extremely unfriendly to your party, and widen is making things worse here. I personally think you should've built this character as good-aligned and taken purify spell. That'd mean that a good aligned party could still work with you, which would limit your choice of companions, but pretty reasonably so. As is, especially with invisible spell, you're a huge headache and often a liability.

Overall, obviously strong entry but with some glaring drawbacks that may not have been obvious to you.

Score: 4.25 points.


Elegance:

Clean leveling table, you qualify for everything, no multiclass penalties. Meditation domain is a nice catch, and functions as a free feat that you'd take anyway as a persistomancer. Metamagic spell focus is no news here, but it works well and you've tried to make the wiz dip work for you, which Ima all for. I'm again a big fan of how elaborate your build explanation is, without it becoming tedious. I do get the feeling that you might want some elaboration on half your main trick being illegal.

So, familiars can share spells you've cast on yourself. Corona of cold, however, is not a spell you cast on yourself. Its target is neither you, nor one creature, nor anything else. It has no target. It's a spell you cast that creates an emanation centered on you, but you are not the target of the spell. You haven't cast that spell on yourself more than you've cast burning hands on yourself. The fact that the spell emanates from the caster is completely non-consequential to this point. Spell isn't shared, your wizard level is sort of one giant waste that you've let swindle you out of your armor and Wis.

Ideal cleric to get whatever domains you like. Legal, but inelegant IMO. I think you pretty much agree with me on this. It's not a big penalty or anything, but it is a penalty nonetheless. DMM heighten magic… I've done it myself, and I've allowed it in power, but it's a penalty from me here for sure. It's a weird interaction, and it's not at all clear that it works.

Overall, this build has some serious issues but has just enough going for it to get a semi-decent score here.

Score: 2.35 points.


UoSI:

Well, let's start with the fact that despite renaming corona of cold, you don't actually have anything with fire/flame/heat whatever in its name. Minor point, but it's there. You also do absolutely nothing involving fire, with the exception of your main trick. And that's just a cold spell you've substituted.

You do consistently do fire damage throughout your day, and you did invest in being interested in it being fire specifically, I'll give you that – but even then, I'd say that in your particular case Flash Frost is significantly better than blistering spell, especially when combined with sudden widen. It provides much better protection as it greatly hinders charges, while the slowed movement over 20 ft will be enough to hinder a move action for many enemies. Better enough to make up for Piercing Cold covering less than searing spell.

In other words, I have a distinct feeling that if you were to submit this build as your entry to the signature spell round, for instance, you wouldn't even take energy substitution. Meaning, choosing fire over cold is a bad use of resources in this build. And that's not great for you in this category.

Score: 1.75 points.


Total Score: 9.8 points. I'm sorry to say this was probably my least favorite build this round. Fire felt completely coincidental to what you were doing, and that really turns me off in a submission. The scoring system made it turn out in the same ballpark as builds I liked a lot more, but if it was up to me it wouldn't be this way. However, it was very well presented, and was obviously thought out. Well done. I'm not saying any of this to disparage your work or get you down – just to encourage you to care more about the unique things about the SI in the future, which you've definitely shown you're capable of!
Originality:

Your fluff is excellent as always, though I'd say that it fits a 3.5 game far better than an E6 game. Still, absolutely loved your take on a wizard academy here, even if the titular character wasn't as fleshed out as the setting itself.

Human Evoker isn't what I'd call a strong start here, however. Really wish you and spirit of fire would trade races here. You'd be fine without the bonus feat, and the ability modifiers would work in your favor. Master specialist isn't really interesting here to me – it's pretty much just evoker with slightly different feats before you get the esoterica making it special.

Snowcasting and energy substitution cheese has been discussed and optimized with to hell and back. Spell thematics isn't – you have some mechanical justification for it, I guess, and it makes for very nice flavor.

Overall though, aside from excellent fluff and a couple of obscure feats, this build is deeply expected.

Score: 1.5 points.


Power:

Straight up wizard with feats to do straight up wizardry better. Made it easy to get on your case in originality, but I really can't argue with it too much here without embarrassing myself.

Note: Increasing int to an odd number doesn't make sense in an E6 setting. There's no inherent bonus coming your way.


Calishíte elementalist also lets you break damage caps for spells it grants you Well, you didn't explicitly call out what you mean, but I'd say the example given in text shows that it only increases the cap by 1: After all, an 11th level caster casting an elementalist spell has a CL of 12 for that spell. Just a note.

Anyway, you're a fully-fledged evoker with busted CL & increased range on anything you do as long as you have some snow, and on plenty you do when you don't. Nothing to see here, as far as I'm concerned.

Score: 5 points.


Elegance:

One of us is crazy here, because I swear that anywhere I look, Minor School Esoterica is a 4th level feature. You should be getting Greater school focus as a bonus feat in that level. You don't mention esoterica too much – but on the other hand, you're missing one feat (which you took anyway!) which only strengthens my point in originality that you didn't have to be human.

I find your playtips very lacking. You have something making you unique: your CL. The fact that I'm not getting a "favorite spells" list outside of your feats is outrageous. It's always a headache to do with prepared casters, but it should be done. I'm also not one to say "you need to list every spell". You can say, "normal spells, especially [list], which my build gets exceptional use from because of [X]." You should've shown me spells that really enjoyed being cast with inappropriate CL in E6, and you didn't.

Your ability scores are weird. I assume you have 12 Wis? Just a slap on the wrist here. I penalize cross setting material, so another slap on the wrist here for mastery and ice and fire for a realms character.

Counterfire doesn't do fire damage, and is limited to 4 times a day for you. I don't know what you're talking about.

Genie lore… I get what you're trying to say here, but I disagree. You're not casting sorcerer spells, or duskblade spells, or cleric spells, no matter whether or not they're on any of these lists. You're casting wizard spells. You could make this argument to take battle blessing on a cleric. I'm not buying it.

Overall, this was death by a thousand cuts.

Score: 1.55 points.


UoSI:

So, nothing groundbreaking here – but groundbreakingness was covered in originality. This is UoSI, and I have to say that you're doing very well here.

Lord of the uttercold is a disappointment here – I get why it's useful, but you should be doing fire, not cold.

Even so: everything you do looks like fire, most of it is fire, you can turn anything into fire, and most importantly: you have a mechanically valid reason to do so, because you’re an evocator, with access to plenty of scaling spells, and you manage to use fire to increase your CL. You do so very effectively, and even though some of it doesn't fully work, enough of it does for me to not really have any complaints in this category. This is how it's done.

Score: 4.65 points.


Total Score: 12.7 points. Generic approach, with a masterful execution on the macro scale – but plagued with issues when it comes down to the details.


And... that's that!

Well done again, everyone. I'm awaiting your disputes - though note the competitions rules on those, which are quite harsh!

[AsuraKyoko]

Thank you for judging!

[H_H_F_F]

Just read through your judgement, Minimanmidget. Very well written and fair - not that I expected otherwise. We also seem to share a lot in our way of thinking about these, despite having very different criteria; that creates some interesting similarities and differences, which I think is a good thing.

I've also seen a couple of small things I should've penalized but missed. Well, good for our chefs, I guess.

[loky1109]

Always like to read your feedback, H_H_F_F! Thanks for work!

aaaand updated table coming!

Name Alignment / Race Class Levels Chef MinimanMidget H_H_F_F Total Place
Blaise deForrest (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467045&postcount=21) ?? Jermlaine Planar Spiritual Connection Wildshape Ranger 6 12.25 10.10 22.35 7th
Carsus Tall (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467046&postcount=22) LG Lesser Aasimar Paladin 6 12.50 12.10 24.60 5th
Charles M. Ander (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467047&postcount=23) CG Lesser Aasimar Paladin of Freedom 4/Hit and Run Tactics Fighter 1/Master Thrower 1 11.50 6.00 17.50 9th
Firefist (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467049&postcount=24) CG Human Ardent 2/Shaman 4 11.50 13.05 24.55 6th
Simon the Fire Lance (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467050&postcount=25) LN Human Psychic Warrior 6 13.50 14.90 28.40 1st
Spirit of Fire (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467052&postcount=26) LE Lesser Fire Gensai Shugenja 6 12.00 10.00 22.00 8th
Steamy Romancer (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467053&postcount=27) NG Shalarin Druid 1/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 3/Beastmaster 1 16.50 10.00 26.50 2nd
Uanafaira Worldfire (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467055&postcount=28) CE Illumian Cleric 5/Wizard 1 15.75 9.80 25.55 3rd
Aara (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467056&postcount=29) TN Human Evoker 3/Master Specialist 3 12.75 12.70 25.45 4th

[MinimanMidget]

Just read through your judgement, Minimanmidget. Very well written and fair - not that I expected otherwise. We also seem to share a lot in our way of thinking about these, despite having very different criteria; that creates some interesting similarities and differences, which I think is a good thing.

I've also seen a couple of small things I should've penalized but missed. Well, good for our chefs, I guess.

Having just read yours, I can say with confidence that I've seen a lot more things that I should've penalised but missed than you did. And yeah, it's really interesting looking at where our judgements were similar and where they differed.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your judgements, and thanks for the kind words!

[H_H_F_F]

While we're waiting for the chair, does anyone else have an Honorable Mention vote? I've already put mine in for Carsus Tall.

[ciopo]

Thank you for judging!

[loky1109]

While we're waiting for the chair, does anyone else have an Honorable Mention vote? I've already put mine in for Carsus Tall.

Charles M. Ander is my HM nominee.

[H_H_F_F]

*knock knock*

Anybody home?

[Zaq]

Nope, nobody home! Not in this brain, at least. I'm glad you all put up with my flakiness.

Name Alignment / Race Class Levels Chef MinimanMidget H_H_F_F Total Place
Blaise deForrest (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467045&postcount=21) ?? Jermlaine Planar Spiritual Connection Wildshape Ranger 6 Macabaret 12.25 10.10 22.35 7th
Carsus Tall (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467046&postcount=22) LG Lesser Aasimar Paladin 6 loky1109 12.50 12.10 24.60 5th
Charles M. Ander (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467047&postcount=23) CG Lesser Aasimar Paladin of Freedom 4/Hit and Run Tactics Fighter 1/Master Thrower 1 RaiKirah 11.50 6.00 17.50 9th, Hon. Mention
Firefist (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467049&postcount=24) CG Human Ardent 2/Shaman 4 daremetoidareyo 11.50 13.05 24.55 6th
Simon the Fire Lance (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467050&postcount=25) LN Human Psychic Warrior 6 loky1109 13.50 14.90 28.40 1st
Spirit of Fire (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467052&postcount=26) LE Lesser Fire Gensai Shugenja 6 thorr-kan 12.00 10.00 22.00 8th
Steamy Romancer (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467053&postcount=27) NG Shalarin Druid 1/Sorcerer 1/Cleric 3/Beastmaster 1 ciopo 16.50 10.00 26.50 2nd
Uanafaira Worldfire (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467055&postcount=28) CE Illumian Cleric 5/Wizard 1 ciopo 15.75 9.80 25.55 3rd
Aara (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25467056&postcount=29) TN Human Evoker 3/Master Specialist 3 Venger 12.75 12.70 25.45 4th

Many many thanks to MinimanMidget and H_H_F_F for judging! Congrats to loky1109 for gold and to ciopo for a double podium finish with silver/bronze! HM to RaiKirah for the sheer "hell with it, I'm doing this joke and I don't care how stupid it is" attitude that I love to see.

New round here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?647916-Iron-Chef-E6-Appetizer-Edition-Round-XXXIX)! You're all the best! ❤

[H_H_F_F]

Well done, guys!

[loky1109]

Big thanks for all participants, for our judges and of course for chairman Zaq!

It's my first IC E6 Gold and I should say special thanks for daremetoidareyo for the idea of my entry. It's your Automaton A7 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=21507049&postcount=179) is in the basis. I hope I brought enough of myself into it to not count Simon plagiarism.

[thorr-kan]

Congratulations to our victors! Thank you to our judges.