Breaking off from the Wish for a solo project.

Quote Originally Posted by The Word
Spoiler: In the beginning, there was the Word
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And The Word Became Flesh



"From the lowest of insects to the proudest of gods, each being owes its life to a single source."

LE Vivacious Body Hellbred ex-cloistered cleric Defiant 10 / Paladin of Tyranny 3 / Righteous Zealot 2

Spoiler: Backstory
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The Word was mortal once. Whether human, inhuman, male, female, it cannot say. Friends, family, allies, enemies: none of these does it remember. It knows only that it was, by the pretender gods' standards, wicked, and was condemned to hell for this wickedness. It often hopes that its original sin was the worship of one of Hell's deities: a fitting pre-existence, total in its opposition to the Word's current aims.

But then, as it descended through the Astral, its sinful spirit chanced upon the creator of the universe.

The damned soul found a refuge, a place of healing and transformation, and a place of learning. It learned how its savior was called by many names: Gaia, Pleroma, Monad, Sophia, Ragnorra, no name sufficing as a description of this Great Unknown. It learned how, eons ago, the Great Unknown arose from clashing positive and negative energies, how it shaped the world as a place dominated by the former, possessed of both living flesh and immortal spirit. It learned how the Great Unknown sacrificed of itself to birth its first creations: beings now called gods, meant as stewards of creation.

But while the Great Unknown was weakened, the stewards struck. Their creator was bound and, being truly immortal and thus impossible to kill, was cast between the planes to drift there forevermore. Over time, the pretender gods deluded themselves with the belief that it had been them who created the world, and that their true creator was but a mindless beast, effortlessly dispatched at the world's beginning.

But the Word knew now. And, though it was pained to abandon the Divine-Beyond-Words, it understood its new purpose. It returned to the world, a shining, insubstantial thing, a hole in space for life's radiance to emanate through. Where its feet touched the ground, it left bloody marks, drawn from the Unknown's holy body. Where its hands reached out, the Great Unknown reached through them. Where it lingered, germs and fungi bloomed, bloated, and burst, their little souls finding their way through the Word to rejoin their true creator. Its new nature, a passage between worlds, inspired it, allowed it to reach even further beyond, to those dark and shapeless places, to cast-away beings that so desperately sought to experience their creator's works.

Where it could, it showed the powerlessness of priests, healed the sick, and invited all to join its cause and spread its message further. And those who rejected it? Those, it retained compassion for. Had the Word itself not been blind once? Had it not failed to see? Thus, to those few doubters, it extended the greatest blessing of all.

It would send them to meet their maker.


Spoiler: Discussion
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For this contest, I decided to focus on a template I'd been meaning to use for years.

Vivacious is one of those beautiful build elements where relatively little level investment gets you basically a complete character: not only does the template make you incorporeal and flying, it gives you fast healing, gives your party unlimited out-of-combat healing, and lets you passively (!) force undamaged living creatures to make DC 20 fortitude saves or instadie, with very few plausible means of survival.

Why is this a good fit for Defiant? Well, most of Defiant is about surviving divine casters, and turns out we desperately need to do that. We're incorporeal, so martials aren't a huge problem, and we target the weak saving throw of every arcane caster (yes yes except the two 'blades) out there. That leaves divine casters as high-fortitude high-magic roadblocks... so why not take the prestige class devoted to surviving them?

From there, I needed a charisma-boosting race to really exploit the Vivacious/Defiant charisma synergy, and found Spirit Hellbred as an unconventional option that gives us access to some neat Devil-Touched feats. At some point during building, I realized the feats were outweighing the charisma boost (plus, Telepathy was awkwardly redundant with Tongues), so I switched to Body Hellbred for a total of three free feats.

Other feats and classes are mostly dedicated to improving bulk and improving our positive energy (surprisingly tricky: we can't even use Ability Focus so we have to focus on lowering saves), with a bit of a noncombat face focus on the side.


Spoiler: Build Table
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Ability scores:
Array: 8/10/12/12/14/18
Hellbred modifiers: 8/10/14/10/14/18
Vivacious modifiers: -/10/16/10/14/20
Ability boosts: -/10/16/10/15/22 (cha wis cha)

Languages: So apparently hellbred speak Infernal, plus whatever they spoke before their transformation. Common seems like an obvious assumption, and 12 intelligence would've qualified us for at least one bonus language, plus whatever racial ones we previously knew, plus whatever we sank skill points into. Obviously, the more languages the better, but the rules around this are shaky enough that I don't feel comfortable declaring our every pre-transformation skill point was spent on Speak Language.

Level Class Base Attack Bonus Fort Save Ref Save Will Save Skills Feats Class Features
6th Cloistered Cleric 1 Defiant 1 +0 +2 +0 +2 Concentration 4, Diplomacy 4, Intimidate 4, Knowledge (Religion) 4, Knowledge (The Planes) 4, Spellcraft 4 Ghostly Grasp, Devil's FavorB Spellcasting, Rebuke Undead, Pact Domain, Trickery Domain Spell Resistance, Self-Healing
7th CC 2 Defiant 2 +1 +3 +0 +3 Bluff 1, Concentration +1 (5), Diplomacy +1 (5), Intimidate +1 (5), Knowledge (Religion) +1 (5), Spellcraft +1 (5) - Divine Resistance
8th CC 3 Defiant 3 +2 +3 +1 +3 Bluff +1 (2), Concentration +1 (6), Diplomacy +1 (6), Intimidate +1 (6), Knowledge (Religion) +1 (6), Spellcraft +1 (6) Stench of the Grave Divine Damage Immunity, Imbue with Ability Bonus
9th CC 4 Defiant 4 +3 +4 +1 +4 Bluff +1 (3), Concentration +1 (7), Diplomacy +1 (7), Intimidate +1 (7), Knowledge (Religion) +1 (7), Spellcraft +1 (7) Devil's TongueB Divine Cancellation
10th CC 5 Defiant 5 +3 +4 +1 +4 Bluff +1 (4), Concentration +1 (8), Diplomacy +1 (8), Intimidate +1 (8), Knowledge (Religion) +1 (8), Spellcraft +1 (8) - Aligned Strike, Tongues 1/day
11th CC 6 Defiant 6 +4 +5 +2 +5 Concentration +1 (9), Diplomacy +1 (9), Intimidate +1 (9), Perform(Oratory) {CC} +1 (1) Spellcraft +1 (9) Bind Vestige Divine Prevention
12th CC 7 Defiant 7 +5 +5 +2 +5 Concentration +1 (10), Diplomacy +1 (10), Intimidate +1 (10), Perform(Oratory) {CC} +1 (2) Spellcraft +1 (10) - Nondetection, 2/day Dismissal
13th CC 8 Defiant 8 +6 +6 +2 +6 Concentration +1 (11), Diplomacy +1 (11), Intimidate +1 (11), Perform(Oratory) {CC} +1 (3) Spellcraft +1 (11) - Divine Retribution
14th CC 9 Defiant 9 +6 +6 +3 +6 Concentration +1 (12), Diplomacy +1 (12), Intimidate +1 (12), Sense Motive +2 (2), Spellcraft +1 (12) Improved Bind Vestige Divine Interference, 3/day Plane Shift
15th Defiant 10 +7 +7 +3 +7 Intimidate +1 (13), Spellcraft +1 (13) - Divine Disavowal
16th Paladin of Tyranny 1 +8 +9 +3 +7 Sense Motive +2 (4) - Aura of Evil, Detect Good, Smite Good
17th Paladin of Tyranny 2 +9 +10 +3 +7 Diplomacy +2 (14) Dilate Aura Divine Grace, Deadly Touch
18th Paladin of Tyranny 3 +10 +10 +4 +8 Diplomacy +2 (16) - Divine Health, Aura of Despair
19th Righteous Zealot 1 +10 +10 +4 +10 Diplomacy +1 (17), Intimidate +3 (16) Devil's AuraB Enthralling Discourse, Righteous Indignation 1/day
20th Righteous Zealot 2 +11 +10 +4 +11 Intimidate +2 (18), Never Outnumbered Practiced Binder Compelling Argument, +1 save against Enchantment

Timing on this whole thing is a little wonky. In mechanical terms, there is no issue, but the implication of the fluff (non-hellbred cleric dies, returns as vivacious hellbred defiant) does not actually work out. I ask judges to remember the highly subjective nature of the backstory, or if need be ignore it entirely. As stated before, the build works out mechanically.

Also, if you insist on specifying a deity for the prior cleric levels, the Dark Six work.


Spoiler: Spotlights
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ECL 6
Most heavy lifting at this level is going to be done by the template. You're incorporeal while retaining the ability to interact with physical objects, so you can go ahead and break a lock from the inside, rifle through books after phasing into a room, or walk around wearing the bloated carcasses of your slain opponents (why? you're an insane servant of twisted positive energy made flesh: you need no why!). In a notable moment of poor writing, we are told that Positive Energy Aura can be turned off, but this results in... damage to our nonexistent strength stat.

In combat, just emerging from the floor in a tactical spot should already expose most of any encounter to your aura. Afterwards, snipe priority targets with the positive energy ray to force a second save, and maybe try to demoralize some stuff on your off turns (remember, being shaken lowers saving throws!).

I'm going to mostly gloss over the cleric levels as they aren't part of the final build: just take good spells while you have them.

ECL 10
Charisma to saves against divine spells and immunity to divine damage are very nice when one of those high-fortitude clerics tries to hit you with Flame Strike. Your relatively low reliance on standard actions comes in nice for using Divine Cancellation: explode some mooks as a free action, make their cleric master useless with your standard! It also makes it easier to apply Aligned Strike: if the encounter surprisingly turns out to include an avoral or archon, you can help the melee guy become relevant again without giving up your positive energy for the turn.

Devil's Tongue is another good use of your standard action: Daze+flatfooted is a powerful effect, and your high charisma helps get it off reliably. Note how well it complements positive energy aura, both in forcing an additional round of saves and in targeting the low-Will martials that neither Defiant nor Vivacious handles amazingly. Tongues can be used to get it working on creatures that don't speak your language.

Occasional +4 enchantment bonuses to stats aren't exactly impressive, but equipment is a bit of a question mark for incorporeal creatures and charisma SADness is real with this build, so I like to think we make use of the ability slightly better than most characters.

Also, note that while you're still a cleric, you can cast Guidance of the Avatar and/or Divine Insight in combination with Naberius' skills to solve a bunch of skillful problems with zero investment required.

ECL 15:
3/day Plane Shift gives us plenty to do while waiting for positive energy ray to recharge, and bind vestige + improved bind vestige grants access to Focalor, who makes you emo and lets you impose another saving throw penalty with Aura of Sadness. Dismissal has a neat use case where you're a native of the positive energy plane, where few campaigns go, giving you an emergency escape button to a place where few can follow.

We don't do anything extraordinary with Divine Prevention (which doesn't mean it's useless, of course), but Nondetection serves to block Detect spells while sneaking through walls. Divine Retribution is great for all the reasons that Divine Cancellation was, and Divine Interference and Divine Disavowal both protect you from magical offensives.

ECL 20:
Lots going on in the last few levels: you get your sizeable charisma to saves, you get another no-save saving throw penalty aura. Painful Touch has a weird niche use where it lets you pre-damage your allies by 1 point before combat so they don't blow up after wandering into your aura (sure, wielding a knife with ghostly grasp works also, but this is more stylish). Dilate Aura lets you double the range of any of your auras (typically the positive energy one, but who knows) to make positioning less precise, and Practiced Binder gives you access to a wide range of abilities, most notably Naberius's silver tongue, which goes great with our second class. Detect Good is mostly irrelevant, but note how Good servants of the divine light up much more than usual.

Righteous Zealot gives us another tool for targeting Will saves, letting us duplicate Enthrall and Suggestion. Its abilities are language-dependent, but Tongues neatly solves that little problem. Depending on what your DM considers to be 'obvious threats', healing people might not even count, which gives you a couple free turns to fish for low save results! You can also add another instance of charisma to saves 1/day, which I suppose is mostly useful against tricky Reflex saves.


Spoiler: Conclusion
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Our final build's combat routine looks like this.

-Move: move adjacent to opponent, preferably emerging from the floor.
-Aura of Despair and Aura of Sadness trigger to impose -4 to saving throws and -2 to attack rolls and skill checks against nearby creatures.
-Stench of the Grave activates, forcing a DC 18 fortitude saving throw to avoid being Sickened, which imposes another -2 to attacks, saves, and skill checks.

At this point you can use your standard action to fire a positive energy ray (every 1d4 rounds), use Plane Shift (3/day), activate Devil's Aura (3/day), Devil's Tongue (3/day), buff yourself (3/day), attempt to bounce a divine spell, or activate Enthrall (2/day). Even though you don't have a truly at-will attack option (other than demoralization), in general you should make it through an adventuring day without exhausting all that. If you really want to debuff then a Never Outnumbered demoralization is a solid option: shaken reduces saving throws. Or ready an action to move back into the wall after your aura activates, if that barbarian's Ghost Touch axe looks a little scary!

Finally, your aura pings everything within 10 (or 20) feet, forcing everything with full health (like, y'know, any monster at the start of an encounter) to make a DC 20 fortitude saving throw (with, if you're keeping track, between a -4 to -8 penalty by this point) or die.

Defensively, you have saves of +19/+10/+19, which is more than respectable especially when considering your incorporeal resilience to most things that force reflex saves. You get another +6 against divine magic specifically. Boosting your charisma increases the saves to +21/+12/+21 and the divine bonus to +8. You can also add +6/+8 to one roll a day, or three times per day add +2. Your touch AC is 16 or 18, and nearby enemies take at least -2 on attack rolls, so that +10 BAB wizard who dumped strength is taking a real risk when he tries to Shivering Touch you (and even if he does: your aura doesn't care that your body just froze up).

Against divine spells specifically, you have SR 25. Against negative energy spells or SLAs (like Harm, otherwise a great tool for killing living incorporeals), you have SR 30. Your saves are increased by +6 (or, after the buff, +8) against divine spells. Divine casters must succeed on a DC 25+spell level concentration check to cast near you, which is penalized by focalor's aura and possibly the shaken/sickened conditions.

Out of combat, you're a solid face. In addition to the aforementioned Enthrall and the rider Suggestions, with your enchantment bonus to charisma and Naberius bound you can make a rushed diplomacy check and get a result of 35 (17 ranks, +8 charisma, roll of 10), which can turn hostile creatures friendly. If you can't spare the turn of setup, burn one of your Devil's Favor uses to get a +2 from there. Your intimidate modifier is +24 (which I'm pretty sure benefits from your saving throw penalties, because a penalty on saves is a penalty on saves against fear), again with a possible +2 from charisma boosting and +2 from Devil's Favor.


Spoiler: UoSI
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Looking at the secret ingredient's features one by one:
-Spell Resistance sees solid use in protecting us from high-fortitude divine casters. I'd also like to note that charisma-focused incorporeal undead are an obvious route to take this class, but unlike them we actually benefit from the mind-affecting resistance.
-Divine Resistance, Divine Damage Immunity, Divine Cancellation, etc all help against divine casters as well, with the latter also granting us a good use of our standard action on recharge turns.
-Aligned Strike isn't used for a specific purpose, though we can still make use of it.
-Nondetection is useful when moving through walls (at which point we're inaudible and invisible, so mostly have to worry about magical detection anyway).
-Selfheals are mostly useless.
-The ability boost is good, as we're very charisma-dependent and get a lot of return on a single boost. Our incorporeality makes regular item use hard, so the fact that the bonus is enhancement stings less.
-Tongues works great with our social role and many language-dependent abilities.
-Dismissal is both an offensive and defensive tool thanks to our extraplanar subtype. Even if people somehow follow you to your extraplanar hideaway, you can send them right back.
-Plane Shift is a potent save-or-suck that benefits from our saving throw debuffs.

In addition to the specific uses of specific abilities, we successfully work around the immense passivity of Defiant, its tendency to eat up standard actions, and its struggle to heal out of combat. Many Defiant builds will have to awkwardly work around the loss of proficiencies that many builds incur, but we are incorporeal and thus don't really care.

Also, on a fluff level we emphasize the preachiness of the Athar by taking class levels and skill ranks that make us better at interacting with others, and pick a race that knows like no other how unfair the whims of the gods can be.


Spoiler: Sources
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Vivacious - PH
Spirit Hellbred - FCII

Cloistered Cleric, Paladin of Tyranny - UA
Righteous Zealot - DCS

Pact Domain - SC

Ghostly Grasp - LM
Devil's Favor, Devil's Tongue, Devil's Aura, Dilate Aura - FCII
Bind Vestige, Improved Bind Vestige, Practiced Binder - ToM
Stench of the Grave - UA

Never Outnumbered - CS