[Build Help] Thrall of Juiblex with only Core + BoVD

[Condé]

I am going to participate to a game in some weeks/months where you only have access to the Core Rulebooks + One book of your choice. In my case, I have chosen BoVD. Why? Because Thrall of Juiblex. It's one of the only class allowing you to have access to Alter Self AND Polymorph as a noncasting class. They both are at-will and no cost whatsoever, giving a lot of versatility and power.
Sure it comes online WAY WAY later than a wizard for example... But you can spam it and it will last all day and you can even sleep in your polymorphed form etc etc...

The campaign is going to go level 15 max. (12 or 13 if I remember correctly, something like that) so... I am not aiming for a level 20 build.

ENTERING THE PRC EARLY


Requirements
Alignment: Any Evil

Skills: Escape Artist 5 ranks

Feats: Thrall to Demon , Willing Deformity

Special: Must have been polymorphed or experience some sort of shape changing experience.

Special: The thrall of Juiblex is initiated in a horrific rite that involves the sacrifice of an intelligent being. At least three oozes, slimes or puddings must be present for the ritual. The victim of the ritual must be dissolved in acid.

Base Save Bonus: Fort +6

Alignment is a non-issue if your DM allows it. He does.
Escape Artist 5... Is annoying. Because not many classes have access to this skill and it is rarely useful. (In a 3 years long campaign I think one of the player used it once...)
Feats are both kind of bad (Thrall to Demon is just... Mostly useless and even worse past level 1)
Both Special conditions aren't really an issue. Just pay someone or ask your spellcaster to cast alter self on you or something. The second one might be a little bit harder but I think you can always talk about it with your DM.
Fortitude+6? Sure.

So we can enter this PrC at level 4. We just have to take 3 classes with strong For save and we are good to go.

I have two different entry in mind.

BUILD #1
Ranger 1/Monk 1/Fighter 1
OR
BUILD #2
Ranger 1/Cleric 1/Monk 1

I cannot get 3 full-bab classes. The only full-bab class with escape artist is Swashbuckler. This class is from Complete Warrior so, out of reach for me. So I will have to lose a point of Bab at some point. It is not dramatic since once I get Alter Self, I will mostly be using Natural Attacks anyway.

BUILD#1 is trying to keep as many bab as possible. Starting Ranger for D8 hp + a lot of skill points. Could be swapped for fighter and get 2 Fighter feat but since there isn't many interesting options I think I prefer Ranger.

BUILD#2 is getting a cleric dip.

Sadly Juiblex domains are... Kinda meh at best. You get: Chaos, Corruption, Evil, Ooze. Corruption can be interesting for... Breaking something. And Ooze, definitly, just for Grease as a first level spell which can be good early on. Plus, you have all the other good level 1 Cleric spells... And you get access to Seething Eyebane... If you want to kill yourself trying to blind someone early one. (By taking 1d6 acid damage, since you are in the 5ft range, since you know, this is a touch spell, and you take 1d6 CON damage by casting the spell...)

Sadly#2, I cannot swap those domains for Devotion Feats since they are in... Complete Champion. Too bad!

But you'll get access to some useful spell, some healing to... Not die early on and so on. And it is flavorful since you know... You will become a Thrall of Juiblex.

Monk is taken for Escape Artist, obviously. Having Improved Unarmed Strike + making your unarmed attack count as a natural attack is good too.
Could be swapped for the other class with Escape Artist: Rogue, mostly for... More Skill points. 1d6 SA isn't going to make a big difference after some levels.

FEATS

A big part of most builds... A bit less when you know... You are stuck with Core + BoVD.
Most Vile feats aren't known for being outstanding. And we already have to take both not so good feats already. But we can probably make something out of Willing Deformity.
- Deformity (Clawed Hans) could be interesting... Early on. Sadly, past level 7 we are going to be alter self'd and at level 11 Polymorph'd all day long so it is going to be irrelevant. Not a great investment.
- Deformity (Eyes)... Situationnal but seeing invisible can be hard as a mundane so... There is that. Only 1 minute tho and once per day.
- Deformity (Face)... You cannot make a fear/control build with only two books so... Not a good idea I guess.
- Deformity (Gaunt) CON penalty is a big no-no for me.
- Deformity (Obese) DEX penalty is kinda bad... But a boost in CON is always good. And after level 11, DEX isn't going to matter anymore. But going through 10 levels is long so... We have to think about that too.

Other interesting feats from BoVD:
Only two of them kept my attention...
- Dark Speech. Looks fun but a bit impractical.
- Vile Natural Attack. Since we are getting a lot of Natural Attacks, why not deal 1 more damage per attack? It's bad but when you have 6 or more attacks per turn it is... Something. And Vile damage cannot be healed so...

OTHER OPTIONS
My goal is to be able to poly/wildshape/whatever all day long. Already played a Druid last game and want to be mostly mundane. So... No spellcasting.

OPTION(S)#1: Items
In BoVD you have an armor giving you Alter Self at will.
In AaEG you have a phylactery giving you polymorph for 24hrs once a day.
You could make a character out of it, but the armor from BoVD is only Alter Self and the phylactery is only once per day. So you are not very versatile. You are just going to play a monster all day, probably unable to speak/interact with anything and if you want to go back to your original shape you will not be able to be polymorphed until the next day. Which sucks a little bit.
Plus... I don't know if those items are going to be available or if we are going to have enough money to get them at the level we should. And building a character on something you are not sure about is a bad idea.

OPTION#2: Far-fetched solution... Elder Evil

In Elder Evil you have:
- Dark Speech feat support (Dark Whispers)
- Better Willing Deformity feats (Madness)
- Insane Defiance feat
- ELDER EVIL FEATS (If you chose to follow an Elder Evil, you get free evil feats) AND if you follow SEGHULERAK you have access to ALL domains like if you were following an ideal... Which is, let say it, absolutely IDEAL . Sorry.

"But mr.Condé, if you chose this book, you will no longer have access to the Thrall of Juiblex PrC" And you'd be right... Unless...

In Elder Evil you have Thrall of Juiblex NPC... And with this NPC you learn that you can be a follower of juiblex AND of an Elder God at the same time. Let's look at Dorn, the NPC in question.


Born in the subterranean city of Cynidicea, Dorn did everything in his power to escape his homeland, but his past dogged his steps. He swore his life to Juiblex, only to find that his demonic master sold him to Zargon. Now, with loyalties divided and madness fi lling his head, he has returned to the place of his birth, where he grimly awaits his destiny.

Yes. There is a typo in his name. His name is Dorn, not Born. Don't worry. What do we learn here? Juiblex can sold you to other Elder Evils! Isn't that nice? So they both are compatible.

Sadly enough, you do not have access to the PrC... It is just mentioned. And I think it is a bit far-stretched to ask if you can access the class if it is only mentioned in the book. Don't you think?

Nontheless I wanted to talk about this because I think it is funny.

WHERE YOU CAN HELP ME
- Feat selection (After Thrall to Demon / Willing Deformity)
- Class selection
- What to do early on. After you get Summon Ooze at 6 you can become a summoner. (And not a bad one at that... Basically you can spam Ooze all day long and a CR5 monster at character level 6 is nothing to sneeze at) But what to do level 1-5? And is it possible to build the character around some creatures, waiting level 8 or 11 to come online? Or maybe focus the character around Dark Speech and be the party face until you get polymorph at will? And use mostly Alter Self as a defensive spell (Natural armor + fly speed etc...)?

So. Am I missing something? What would you do? See anything wrong? Any idea, tips, something? Let me know.

[Inevitability]

If you go the cleric/monk entry route, you should get a decent base will save, and with your focus on polymorphing you can probably afford to boost mental stats over physical ones. With that in mind, have you considered Dark Speech as a feat? It's got some pretty cool applications, but it does require 15 int/cha and +5 base Will.

Being middle-aged might help if your table allows that.


edit: Also, the sacrifice rules are busted, but if your DM is willing to work with you to get them to something approximating balance, Sacrifical Mastery + Skill Focus Religion + ranks from cleric can boost your modifier pretty high.

[Gorthawar]

If I understand correctly you wouldn't be able to get dark speech before level 6 either due to the will save requirement. At that point you have your summons already. However you'd lack the flexibility that a caster summoner would have at this point. I believe the ToJ is more of a beatstick with super useful additional abilities. As such I'd probably start as follows:
Lvl 1 Monk with improved grapple
Lvl 2 Barbarian (you lose some ranger skills but you wouldn't really be able to keep them up anyways)
Lvl 3 Fighter and take power attack

You can use a quarterstaff if you want fluffy of blows but later it's probably better to take another 2h weapon and wear armor instead unless you have very good rolls / lots of point buy to push wisdom along the physical attributes. Alter self doesn't change those so you'd only be able to dump them from lvl 11 on.

[Akal Saris]

I think Monk is probably a good idea, if you expect to be playing from levels 11-15 much (when at-will polymorph finally kicks in). Maybe even 2 levels to get the most out of it?

Sample character:
Dwarf Monk 2/Ftr 2/Thrall 10
1: Willing Deformity
1: IUS [monk]
1: Improved Grapple [monk]
2: Combat reflexes [monk]
3: Thrall to Demon
3: Power Attack [Ftr]
4: Cleave [Ftr]
6: Improved Natural Attack
9: Improved Critical
12: Improved Initiative

You'll have alter self from character level 8 with this build. I'm not sure if there are many good core-only alter self targets for combat (troglodyte may be the best for AC, but only a str 10?), so your best use might be for utility and disguises.

For an alternative build I would suggest Rogue 1/Barbarian 1/Ftr 1. That gets the Escape artist crud out of the way immediately, and you will have some trap-finding and UMD for more flexibility, plus you can put some ranks into bluff and disguise to make the most out of alter self. Barb for a 1/day rage is probably better than any specific feat in core-only.

EDIT: You could also take SF: conj and Augment summoning to boost your summoned jellies, oozes, and demons.

[Gorthawar]

That's a neat build there.



You'll have alter self from character level 8 with this build. I'm not sure if there are many good core-only alter self targets for combat (troglodyte may be the best for AC, but only a str 10?), so your best use might be for utility and disguises.

For an alternative build I would suggest Rogue 1/Barbarian 1/Ftr 1.

Alter self doesn't change the attributes so whichever strength they have they will have in troglodyte form as well.

Rogue 1/ Barb 1/ Fight 1 doesn't qualify for ToJ as it only has a fort save of +4

[Condé]

If you go the cleric/monk entry route, you should get a decent base will save, and with your focus on polymorphing you can probably afford to boost mental stats over physical ones. With that in mind, have you considered Dark Speech as a feat? It's got some pretty cool applications, but it does require 15 int/cha and +5 base Will.

Being middle-aged might help if your table allows that.


edit: Also, the sacrifice rules are busted, but if your DM is willing to work with you to get them to something approximating balance, Sacrifical Mastery + Skill Focus Religion + ranks from cleric can boost your modifier pretty high.

I do. But in BoVD you only have access to Dark Speech and nothing else. Sadly the rest of it is in Elder Evils.

I didn't know about the sacrifice rules. You really need to have some skill boost tho. But that is interesting indeed. Thanks for pointing that out.


If I understand correctly you wouldn't be able to get dark speech before level 6 either due to the will save requirement. At that point you have your summons already. However you'd lack the flexibility that a caster summoner would have at this point. I believe the ToJ is more of a beatstick with super useful additional abilities. As such I'd probably start as follows:
Lvl 1 Monk with improved grapple
Lvl 2 Barbarian (you lose some ranger skills but you wouldn't really be able to keep them up anyways)
Lvl 3 Fighter and take power attack

You can use a quarterstaff if you want fluffy of blows but later it's probably better to take another 2h weapon and wear armor instead unless you have very good rolls / lots of point buy to push wisdom along the physical attributes. Alter self doesn't change those so you'd only be able to dump them from lvl 11 on.

Yeah that is a bit of a concern. You don't really want to pump your physical attributes because of poly. But if you have to play from level 1, you better be since you have full bab, no spellcasting and basically not really anything... You can be a summoner but not the best since, sure, you have powerful oozes but if you encounter a flying enemy you are screwed. Ranged build would be a waste. You are just struggling, waiting for that sweet, sweet polymorph.
Dark speech is interesting but you cannot really build around with BoVD only since 1d6 damage in CON or CHA is going to be an issue pretty quickly.


I think Monk is probably a good idea, if you expect to be playing from levels 11-15 much (when at-will polymorph finally kicks in). Maybe even 2 levels to get the most out of it?

Sample character:
Dwarf Monk 2/Ftr 2/Thrall 10
1: Willing Deformity
1: IUS [monk]
1: Improved Grapple [monk]
2: Combat reflexes [monk]
3: Thrall to Demon
3: Power Attack [Ftr]
4: Cleave [Ftr]
6: Improved Natural Attack
9: Improved Critical
12: Improved Initiative

You'll have alter self from character level 8 with this build. I'm not sure if there are many good core-only alter self targets for combat (troglodyte may be the best for AC, but only a str 10?), so your best use might be for utility and disguises.

For an alternative build I would suggest Rogue 1/Barbarian 1/Ftr 1. That gets the Escape artist crud out of the way immediately, and you will have some trap-finding and UMD for more flexibility, plus you can put some ranks into bluff and disguise to make the most out of alter self. Barb for a 1/day rage is probably better than any specific feat in core-only.

EDIT: You could also take SF: conj and Augment summoning to boost your summoned jellies, oozes, and demons.

Interesting. Not a big fan of delaying your features even further. Not a big barb fan but you are right about disguise and bluff. I considered Rogue. Then I remembered that Rogue does not have good FOR save so it is a big no-no.


That's a neat build there.



Alter self doesn't change the attributes so whichever strength they have they will have in troglodyte form as well.

Rogue 1/ Barb 1/ Fight 1 doesn't qualify for ToJ as it only has a fort save of +4

I think I will not be limited to adopt forms from the book I chose. I have to stay in BoVD for my character's feats, class feature, etc... But if we happen to met something I can alter self into who is not in core or BoVD, I will be able to change into that creature if I can. So not really an issue.

Plus, if custom magic items are allowed (Not sure) a continuous ring of Aberrate could be really good. (Have to find a fiend capable of casting the spell tho. Or if the DM is really kind, a scroll of the spell.)

[Condé]

I'm surprised almost nobody kept the cleric. It is a common dip. The sad part is the domains restrictions. They aren't great, sure. But grease at level 1 or 2 isn't so bad.

Didn't see any other thread about Dark Speech. i'm surprised I haven't found any Dark Speech centred build. That could have helped me. I wonder if there is something like that in a Iron Chef competition...

If anyone have any other ideas, I'm still looking for some.

[Akal Saris]

Ah yes, I forgot about Rogue lacking the base fort save, that makes it a no-go then.

Dark Speech needs a high Int/Cha, so it's taking away from the stats that you'll probably need on a melee fighter, unless you have all-around great ability scores or are starting at polymorph levels.

For a core/BovD/Elder Evils only build, I guess you could use a cleric baseline for healing ability dmg/drain. A bard 1/cleric 2 can start the feat chain at level 3 (or something like monk 2/cleric 2 if you also want an entry to thrall of jubilex). There's not too much else to a build other than worshipping an elder evil and taking all the useful dark speech and vile feats.

[Condé]

Ah yes, I forgot about Rogue lacking the base fort save, that makes it a no-go then.

Dark Speech needs a high Int/Cha, so it's taking away from the stats that you'll probably need on a melee fighter, unless you have all-around great ability scores or are starting at polymorph levels.

For a core/BovD/Elder Evils only build, I guess you could use a cleric baseline for healing ability dmg/drain. A bard 1/cleric 2 can start the feat chain at level 3 (or something like monk 2/cleric 2 if you also want an entry to thrall of jubilex). There's not too much else to a build other than worshipping an elder evil and taking all the useful dark speech and vile feats.

Strangely enough the most "annoying" requirement might be the Escape Artist. Even without the Core + BoVD restriction, there is so few classes/alternative class features or anything giving you this skill as a class skill that you have to get one of the few options.

And as someone said before me, not even a cleric domain give you Escape Artist as a Class Skill.

Why is it there? I mean, you already need some specific ritual and 2 feats, did you really need to have Escape Artist, which is never used by anything in the class anyway? (A really strong 3.0 / early 3.5 design requirement vibe here)
I'm not complaining, just pointing that out.

Have to look for items in BoVD. I know there is an armor giving you alter self at will. But that would be kind of a waste honestly since it is pricy and by the time you got the wealth to buy it you basically can do it with a class feature.

[Akal Saris]

And once you have the skill, odds are pretty good that you will never, ever use those 5 ranks either!