Iron Chef Optimization Challenge in the Playground LX

[Troacctid]

Quicken Breath isn't really there to quicken Cadence of the Thunder Drake to a free action. It's there to quicken all the cadences that ride the coattails of Cadence of the Thunder Drake through Cadence Mastery. And since the feat's increased time before he can use the breath weapon again doesn't kick in until he's actually used the breath weapon, he can keep trying as a free action until he succeeds unless the DM sets a limit on free actions, effectively allowing him to take 20 on the truespeak check. So the Slender Shadow can actually reliably beat Sabine's average truespeak checks and with items will have no problem activating all his morphic cadences at once if such is his desire.

Yes, I got that it quickens all the cadences linked to it. That's the part you got the credit for; if it just quickened the breath weapon alone, it would not have been worth points.

I'm not giving you extra credit for that silly rules loophole because it is silly. And also, it does not work. You either "used" the breath weapon or you didn't. If you did, you can't "use" it again for 4 rounds. If you didn't, you couldn't have quickened it, because Quicken Breath quite clearly says it only applies to "using" your breath weapon, so it's either downgraded back to a standard action if you fail the check (bad) or simply doesn't work with Cadence of the Thunder Drake at all, because it can't be applied until after you've already spoken the cadence as a standard action (worse).

Luckily, Quicken Breath is still quite good for your build even without the silly trick, and it managed to help your score regardless.

There's also potentially the +5 from Universal Aptitude that could potentially apply.

See, Sabine? This is another reason why I'm not doing the bean-counting thing, it's way too easy to miss stuff.

Also, while I understand getting a breath weapon with a recharge in rounds to qualify for metabreath feats for a different breath weapon being seen as inelegant, it's standard procedure in Dragonfire Adept optimization and usually seen as a workaround for stupid rules concerning metabreath feats moreso than cheesing entry into feats you shouldn't have access to.

I'm aware. I consider it inelegant on Dragonfire Adepts as well. I don't consider it cheesy in either case.

For future reference, the way to avoid the penalty here would have been to:
a. Have the rest of the build be elegant enough that it by itself is not enough to make me lower your score (something like this happened with Benjamin Nutt), or
b. Work the Dragonborn breath weapon into the build as well, so that both of them are important and useful--perhaps by taking Entangling Exhalation early on in the build to use it as early battlefield control before Cadence of the Thunder Drake comes online, or by stacking metabreath feats and using your multiple breath weapons to get around recharge timers, or something like that.