Help me solve an optimization "puzzle"

[jokeaccount]

Hello optimizers. I'm looking for help to solve an "optimization puzzle". We've been running a campaign for some time now and have reached level 18. I personally play the following character:

NE Human Rogue 3/Fighter 9/Shadow Walker TPL (+1 LA)/Shadow Lord 4/<empty>1

My feats are: Blind Fight, Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, TWF, ImpTWF, GrTWF, Wep Finesse, Craven, Staggering Strike, Imp. Crit (Kukri), <empty>

Ability Scores: 18, 26, 16, 16, 15, 11
I know that my ability scores don't track well with the character but it's due to the nature of the campaign (we have some bonuses)

Additionally, again due to the campaign, I have the following permanent abilities:

Dimension Door SLA (at will)
Freedom of movement (Su permanent)
Penetrating Strike (Rogue ACF)
Psionics (apart from whatever is in core)


DM Fiat bans: Tome of Battle, Unearthed Arcana, Augment Crystals, Disciple of Dispater

DM customizations: Shadowlord class uses Tome of Magic mystery-like abilities instead of arcane spells (i.e. I don't have spell casting class). Currently available:

See Invisibility
Bolster
Dancing Shadows


My main strategy is in battle is to use my swift action to cast Wraithstrike from wand, use a move action to activate Boots of swift passage to shadow pounce and use my standard action for another DDoor shadow pounce.
This DM however, likes to take away our toys so most serious battles take place inside areas imbued with Anticipate Teleportation or planes where teleportation is unstable, blocking me from pouncing. Additionally, story wise we are being chased by a Paladin order that is constantly scrying on us, forcing us to run around with Mind Blank. Mind Blank makes you immune to fear which in turn disables the Craven feat, dropping my damage to ~0.

The puzzle:
We have reached a story milestone and were given some very strong boons. Mine was the option to change my base class levels (Rogue and Ftr) to Factotum levels (Font of Inspiration is available). No Shadow Lord levels may be changed due to the story. Additionally, I can retrain any feat apart the SL prerequisites.

The question I have is, what the hell am I to do with Factotum? None of the features help me do non SA damage. I thought of running Elven Courtblade and Power Attack but I just don't have enough feat slots for Font of Inspiration. Divine Metamagic doesn't work on Factotum spells. The only useful thing is the extra standard actions but I don't see how doing an extra pounce (via boots of swift passage since DDoor ends your turn) helps me when my damage is 1d4 + 5 and most enemies have DR at this point.

The DM is adamant the build is viable, what am I missing?

[pabelfly]

Not sure what to do with Factotum. The problem is you can't use spells in combat, so getting more spells doesn't seem that helpful. You get various bonuses you can apply to combat with Factotum, but you still haven't solved the main issue of not getting your Pounce equivalent in combat. You're missing a stat score, so maybe there's a monster stat you have besides DEX?

My suggestion, from what I can see: forget Factotum. New level, get Barbarian, get Pounce and Whirling Frenzy for full attacks and an extra attack each turn. If you get Shadowlord pounce effects, all well and good, but you have a backup option if you don't.

Drop craven, Greater TWF and Staggering Strike feats. Sneak attack isn't working and you need the extra feat over Greater TWF. Add Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization and Melee Weapon Master. This takes you up to 1d4 + 9 damage. Drop Weapon Finesse for Extra Rage. You slightly lose attack roll accuracy, but you have some feats to boost your attack rolls and you'd appreciate going up to 1d4 + 11 damage more and you'd get this x3 combats per day.

Last feat: If your DM will let you go with ribbon weapons for exotic weapons, get EWP: Ribbon Kukris, to take your crit rolls up to 15-20 x4. If not, go with Slashing Flurry instead to get another attack.

That's what I can come up with using the limited options I can see here. I'd like to see how other people solve this optimization issue.

[Inevitability]

Your DM might be hinting at an iaijutsu focus/gnomish quickrazor build, which is another main source of bonus damage? It'd be awkward from an action economy perspective, though perhaps the factotum's extra actions can help there?

[pabelfly]

Your DM might be hinting at an iaijutsu focus/gnomish quickrazor build, which is another main source of bonus damage? It'd be awkward from an action economy perspective, though perhaps the factotum's extra actions can help there?

If he ditches Fighter he loses four bonus feats he needs for Shadowlord though. And he still has the problem of not getting Pounce against antimagic countermeasures.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Purchase feats (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?400840-List-of-Feat-Granting-Items-Locations-Grafts) and then some spellcasting services to DCFS them out into...whatever you want, really. That should ease your feat issues significantly.

If allowed, of course.

And you could always just take the feats as they are, instead of using DCFS to swap them around.

Also, how about purchasing some castings of polymorph any object to give yourself a much higher Int score (as well as Str and Con)? That would help take care of your damage issues.

If you've got enough cash on hand, how about purchasing a psychoactive skin of proteus? ML 7 metamorphosis at will is an INSANE upgrade for almost anyone -- offense, defense, mobility, utility; you name it, it can do it.

[FauxKnee]

You have some equipment options that can help you. Feycrafted weapons (DMG2) can largely replace weapon finesse (they do cost you 1 point of damage per hit, but that's a bargain to replace a feat.) There's the Sword of Graceful Strikes (Arms and Equipment Guide) that lets you use dex for damage instead of str. You could probably pay 5k more to tack on the sizing property (MIC) and replace one of the +1s (it's naturally +3) with the morphing property (MIC) to reshape it into kukri. Also note the fierce weapon property (Arms and Equip Guide) can let you trade dex bonus from your AC to your damage--I don't see why you couldn't graft it on to the sword of graceful strikes (though I'd note that the "dex replaces str" property seems to be a +3 weapon ability.)

That 9th level of fighter doesn't do you much good IMO. As Pabelfly pointed out, weapon specialization and melee weapon mastery are great, so there are arguments to keep at least 4 levels of fighter. I think his advice about taking barbarian for your new level is pretty reasonable. Personally I'd be tempted to trade out 3 levels of fighter for 3 levels of factotum. That loses you one feat and bab, but you gain a bunch of skill points and some useful class features (though since you only shared 5 ability scores, I'm not sure what your int is and how much mileage you'd get out of the int focus.) You could go the iaijutsu focus route as well, if you wanted (stagger out your factotum levels to buy several ranks without spending points cross-class.) In that case, you'd probably want to focus your feats on the gnomish quickrazor instead (and again, possibly use that specific sword reshaped into a quickrazor.) The usual IF optimization tricks apply (unseen servant with sack of marbles, skill tricks, mercurial strike, etc) and you might as well make sure you took the hit-and-run fighter variant (Drow of the Underdark) since you'll be flat-footing enemies anyway.

On the far end, if you do decide to trade out a bunch of fighter and rogue levels, factotum 11 does have a class feature that lets you straight-up ignore spell resistance and damage resistance.

[ciopo]

A little point of order, mind blank protects from mind affecting, not all fear effects are mind affecting. Frightful presence of dragons isn't, for example, you may want to ask/talk about this, and see if you can have craven not be shut down by mind blank?

I'll now assume craven remains kinda softbanned

Are you only allowed changing straight to factotum, as in factotum 12 / shadowlord 4 / X 1, or can you mix some other prestige class in there.

The stupid idea that comes to mind is change some feats around to get selective metamagic and metamagic spell trigger... then wand yourself with selective antimagic field so that you can shadowpounce while ignoring the anticipate teleportation

See if you can get feycrafted kukris, that would let you drop weapon finesse at the insignificant cost of your weapon damage going down form 1d4 to 1d3
"samey" drop improved critical for putting the keen property on the kukris, or wand of keen edge
You can get blind fight with a demonic ear graft

What would a 5th level of shadow lord give you with misteries?

Ask How cunning strike works for him,specifically how long the extra sneak attack from it would last. there is a world of difference if it's "+1d6 sneak attack for 1 round" and "+1d6 sneak attack for 1 attack".

I would tentatively go for rogue 3 / factotum 8/ fighter 2/ shadowlord 4 , and assuming you can't "spend gold" to recoup weapon finesse/blind fight/ improved crit, we'd be down 3 fighter feat, from your list I would drop improved weapon fightning, greater two weapon fightning, improved crit(kukri), but I guess one of these you'd regain at 18th.

How long does the average combat last? 3 rounds? 4?

the only payout I see is from actually dealing significant amount of sneak attack damage, if you're sticking to two weapon fightning, if cunning strike lasts 1 round (or more, it actually has no duration listed, you could make ana rgumetn it lasts for hte whole encounter, since it's a resource with per encounter uses) ,

If I had a bit more freedom, I'd probably go for rogue 3 fighter 2 swashbuckler 8 shadowlord 4, with daring outlaw, rather than factotum

[MaxiDuRaritry]

According to the SRD:


Fear
Spells, magic items, and certain monsters can affect characters with fear. If a fear effect allows a saving throw, it is a Will save (DC 10 + ½ fearsome creature’s racial HD + creature’s Cha modifier; the exact DC is given in the creature’s descriptive text). All fear attacks are mind-affecting fear effects. A failed roll usually means that the character is shaken, frightened, or panicked.

Take that as you will.

[Anthrowhale]

Factotum seems reasonably compelling with manyshot. The basic strategy uses damage increase enchantments on the bow which apply to many arrows which you can fire in the first round. Factotum 8 gives cunning surge allowing you to manyshot. Factotum 1 gives Cunning Insight which helps you hit. Font of Inspiration repeatedly gives sufficient inspiration points to alpha-strike fairly hard in the first round.

There are two approaches here. The most straightforward is acquiring Hank's energy bow (https://web.archive.org/web/20140211005101/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20061227a) and then adding enchantments (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?333717-Best-enchantments-for-Hank-s-Energy-Bow) like splitting and damage increasers. Since Hank's bow strikes as a force effect it bypasses DR.

It's also possible to simply collect a rainbow of arrows for the purpose of penetrating any DR. I worked out the strategy for a core fighter 20 (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=22350680&postcount=1481) with the details for effective use of wealth.

A couple other tricks:
(1) a ring of blinking allows you to strike as if invisible (i.e. deny target a dex bonus) while the seeking enchantment removes the downside.
(2) Fell Shot (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#fellShot) allows you to hit with a ranged touch attack. Acquiring a psionic focus can be a move action (which could be a converted standard action) using Psionic Meditation (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#psionicMeditation). A couple levels of Psychic Warrior gives easy access to these.

[Crake]

Mind Blank makes you immune to fear which in turn disables the Craven feat, dropping my damage to ~0.

Okay, so we went over this in a thread years ago. Mind blank and immunity to mind-affecting in general does NOT make you immune to fear. Only fear-attacks are specified as mind-affecting, and while, for the longest time, the forum couldn't find any reasonable distinguishing difference between fear effects and fear attacks, it was discovered that there DOES actually exist a non fear-attack fear effect, which is thus NOT subject to the clause of being a mind-affecting effect, and that is phobias from heros of horror.

Thus, while mind-blank does render you immune to MOST forms of fear, it is NOT in fact, a blanket immunity to fear, and thusly should not prevent craven from functioning.

For the reference thread: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?409094-Craven-and-Mind-Blank

[Soranar]

You kind of need to keep the 3 levels of rogue for the 2d6 sneak attack to qualify for shadowlord unless your GM lets that fly
+ the 4 feat tax

so over 16 levels you have 3 whole feats to work with unless you keep some levels in fighter

for pounce, I'd invest into a skin of proteus for 84 000 gp you get to use metamorphosis 24/7 with a caster level of 7 which lets you use the bladerager troll form (which grants pounce) and can use weapons since it's humanoid, it also has a very decent STR score

craven is not bad and works in any form
knowledge devotion is pretty good for a factotum too if you can swing the skillpoints
finally power attack

personally I play factotum mounted and I use a lance + spirited charge to multiply their INT bonus but you'd need 4 feats (wild cohort, mounted combat, ride by attack, spirited charge) but your ability scores are not geared towards that at all

If you go ranged, you can still do well with manyshot + knowledge devotion but that's a lot of feats, the ability to ignore DR is pretty nice though and it bypasses ranged combat's biggest drawback

[jokeaccount]

Wow so many ideas and insights here. I couldn't have discovered them even if I searched for months!

I have updated the first post with my INT score (base 16) as well as some more DM bans (anything from psionics). Our ability scores are on the high end because we used the "roll 4 keep 3 highest" system and in general all had favorable results.

For anyone else who intends to throw ideas, keep in mind that the only class I'm allowed to switch to is Factotum and I can't lose the +2d6 SA from Rogue so Rogue 3 must remain (I'll confirm with DM).

Regarding the idea with Selective Spell and Antimagic field, it seems to me it doesn't work because Anticipate teleportation must be disabled in the teleport target location, not in the source location.

Going ranged, although an option, is not the goal of this optimization. I created a shadow pouncer because I wanted to play like one (and the DM provided me with DDoor SLA to make it easier to enhance this trait both in combat and fluff).

The weapon ideas (feycrafted and the sword of graceful strikes) seem like a solution to my base damage problem while the part about Mind-blank and phobias might actually be the life saver! I will be bringing that up with the DM ASAP.

[Crake]

For anticipate teleportation, could you not simply have your party mage use (greater?) arcane sight and dispel to simply get rid of the anticipate teleportation spell? Alternatively, sundering or disarming the focus of the anticipate teleportation target will also end the spell. Oh, antimagic ray on the target will also do the trick, though it has a costly material component and offers a will save.

[ciopo]

Wow so many ideas and insights here. I couldn't have discovered them even if I searched for months!

I have updated the first post with my INT score (base 16) as well as some more DM bans (anything from psionics). Our ability scores are on the high end because we used the "roll 4 keep 3 highest" system and in general all had favorable results.

For anyone else who intends to throw ideas, keep in mind that the only class I'm allowed to switch to is Factotum and I can't lose the +2d6 SA from Rogue so Rogue 3 must remain (I'll confirm with DM).

Regarding the idea with Selective Spell and Antimagic field, it seems to me it doesn't work because Anticipate teleportation must be disabled in the teleport target location, not in the source location.

Going ranged, although an option, is not the goal of this optimization. I created a shadow pouncer because I wanted to play like one (and the DM provided me with DDoor SLA to make it easier to enhance this trait both in combat and fluff).

The weapon ideas (feycrafted and the sword of graceful strikes) seem like a solution to my base damage problem while the part about Mind-blank and phobias might actually be the life saver! I will be bringing that up with the DM ASAP.

selective AMF was a "throw things at the wall" thought. I feel it would still work for any shadowpouncing except the first, no? like, move action *walk* to your target, standard action dimension door "10 ft over", presto shadowpounce done, with the bonus that *all* their magic is shut down, not just pesky anticipate teleportation.

does your at will DD have that DD clause of "you can't act after you dimension door" ? if not, the point of factotum 8 would be to dimension door two times per round, with that cunning surge. Rogue 3 Fighter 2 factotum 8 shadowlord 4 seems solid from that point of view IF you can DD more than once per round, and one font of inspiration means you could do that 2 times per encounter.

I think finding a way to re-enable craven is the first priority from a damage potential tho.

[Crake]

does your at will DD have that DD clause of "you can't act after you dimension door" ?

The OP did mention that this was an issue, yes. Also, the clause is baked into the spell itself, the ability doesn't need to state it. The exception would require a rule stated it DIDNT have that limitation.

[jokeaccount]

I didn't want to get into the details but the Anticipate teleportation is usually tied to Hallow/Unhallow spells i.e. it permeates the whole place and can only be suppressed by a Dispel magic effect (there is no source to stop it from generating). Those ideas work when I'm targeted by Dimensional Anchor though, which also happens but we usually counter this with Spell Immunity from my Cleric.

Actually Hallow/Unhallow can be tied with Dimensional Anchor so I guess Anticipate Teleportation is cast on top of that. I have to see how we can dispel it then!

Yes, there was a discussion about DDoor and "your action ends" when I first started building this character and was thinking about Quicken SLA and stuff but we ended up enforcing the turn ends rule so my only "extra pounce" abilities are from Boots of swift passage (Move Action) since I need my swift actions for Wraithstrike or other types of effects (e.g. Deathstrike bracers).

[Telonius]

Additionally, story wise we are being chased by a Paladin order that is constantly scrying on us, forcing us to run around with Mind Blank. Mind Blank makes you immune to fear which in turn disables the Craven feat, dropping my damage to ~0.


Non-rebuild solution to this problem: use False Vision (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/f/false-vision/) instead of Mind Blank. Image: Succubus. "Thank you for tuning in to the Scrying Channel. By continuing to view, you agree to witness events clearly forbidden by your deity or Paladin vows. We are not responsible for any damage to your alignment. The Scrying Channel: It's Only a Fall Away."

Then cut to whatever horrific/lascivious situation your warped minds can come up with.