Iron Chef E6 Appetizer Edition, Round XLIII

[Venger]

Animal, vegetable, or mineral?

Ukko, the One Grown Upon

NG Neanderthal^Frost Cleric of Mielikki 5 / Oozemaster^MotW 1

Spoiler: Backstory

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Imagine the world, destroyed.

The ground is covered in ashen gray silt, washed away by the slightest rain; no plants are left to take root in it. A few cities remain as empty, weathered ruins, their denizens long dead. The sky looks wrong: bright red at dusk and dawn, green and grey at noon. The sun is bloated, brightened; a stinging sensation accompanies all daylight excursions. Even magic itself has been maimed, lessened: the great spells of old are now consigned to the realm of legend.

Imagine living in that world, far in the north, in a place where little changed while all else collapsed.

You live in a small band; perhaps twenty or thirty in number, and know of several more bands that size. All of you are strong and tough; you have to be. You're clad in little more than animal hides, your weapons and tools are made of bone and rock. You survive by scavenging, by hunting the few remaining beasts, by your shaman's magic. None of you can read or write; only a few know script ever existed. Sometimes you find those magic materials the ancients possessed: iron, copper, wood; those are good days. Your band must travel ever-further to hunt ever-leaner prey, must fight off ever-more of the old world's horrors; you tell yourself it doesn't matter, you'll be able to get by; you're not sure you believe that.

Now imagine that one day, you are chosen. The method matters little; perhaps it was a prophetic dream, perhaps a booming voice from above, perhaps a small beast turned to look at you with too-human eyes and spoke in your dead mother's voice.

The one who chose you is a goddess; her power faded, her worshippers dead, her sacred forests blighted. She is acting out of desperation; if nothing changes, she will fade, and the last bits of nature she protects shall perish. She tells you of seeds buried beneath glaciers, frozen yet not dead; retrieve them, carry them south, and pray they take root in the lifeless soil there.

With the last of her power, she grants a boon; a cloak of frost and fungus. It will protect you, she says, and preserve the seeds until they reach their new home. But it itself is life too, to be spread and nourished, a cornerstone of a future food web.

You know it will be dangerous, that it will be a lonely task, that it might not work at all. You have never seen a forest, and hardly believe they could truly be as great as you're told, that they could truly save the world. Perhaps it's best to stay with the tribe, and help out the shaman, and hope that something, somehow, will get better.

But you know well enough that it won't, that this is truly the world's last hope, and so you set out into the wastes, armed only with memories of beasts long gone, and promises of life resurgent.

(also a longspear, but we're trying to be poetic here!)

Spoiler: Ability scores

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array: 16 str/10 dex/14 con/14 int/12 wis/12 cha
modifiers applied: 18 str/8 dex/16 con/12 int/12 wis/12 cha
Increase wisdom at level 4.

Languages: Common, Celestial

Spoiler: Build Table

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Level	Class	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Skills	Feats	Class Features
1st	Cleric 1	+0	+2	+0	+2	Concentration 2, Craft (Alchemy) 2, Knowledge (Nature) 1, Knowledge (Religion) 1, Survival 2, Swim 2cc	Animal DevotionCChamp	Turn Undead, Spontaneous Domain Casting (Plant)PHB2, Plant Domain, Travel Domain
2nd	Cleric 2	+1	+3	+0	+3	Concentration 2, Craft (Alchemy) +1 (3), Knowledge (Nature) +1 (2), Knowledge (Religion) +1 (2), Survival 2, Swim 2	-	Undead Intuitition +2dead levels web enhancement
3rd	Cleric 3	+2	+3	+1	+3	Concentration 2, Craft (Alchemy) +1 (4), Knowledge (Nature) 2, Knowledge (Religion) 2, Survival 2, Swim +1cc (3)	Great Fortitude	Undead Intuition +3
4th	Cleric 4	+3	+4	+1	+4	Concentration 2, Craft (Alchemy) 4, Knowledge (Nature) 2, Knowledge (Religion) +3 (5), Survival 2, Swim 3	-	Undead Intuition +4
5th	Cleric 5	+3	+4	+1	+4	Concentration 2, Craft (Alchemy) 4, Knowledge (Nature) +1 (3), Knowledge (Religion) 5, Survival 2, Swim +1cc (4)	-	Undead Intuition +5
6th	Oozemaster 1	+3	+6	+1	+4	Concentration +2 (4), Craft (Alchemy) 4, Knowledge (Nature) 3, Knowledge (Religion) 5, Survival +3 (5), Swim 4	Initiate of NaturePGtF	Minor Oozy Touch (Brown Mold)

Epic feats:
1: Fiery Burst^CM
2: Spell Focus (Conjuration)
3: Augment Summoning
4: Beckon the Frozen^Frost
5: Extra Turning
6: Snowcasting^Frost
7: Icy Calling^Frost
8: Cloudy Conjuration^CM
9: Rapid Spell^CD
10: Quicken Turning^CD

Spoiler: Spells

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Level 1: 3//2+1
Level 2: 4//3+1
Level 3: 4//3+1//1+1
Level 4: 5//4+1//2+1
Level 5+: 5//4+1//2+1//1+1

Typical prepared spells at epic levels:
0: Create Water, Cure Minor Wounds (2), Detect Magic (2)
1: Resurgence, Conjure Ice Beast I (2), Summon Monster I
2: Lava Missile, Rapid Conjure Ice Beast I
3: Rapid Conjure Ice Beast II

Domain spells:
1st: Longstrider
2nd: Locate Object
3rd: Fly

Can spontaneously cast Entangle, Barkskin, and Plant Growth.

Spoiler: Build Spotlights

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ECL 1
You're a cleric, sure, but you're also an 18 strength neanderthal with 2/day Animal Devotion and a +1 racial bonus on longspear attacks. Stand behind the fighter and spear goblins with +5 to hit and 1d8+6 damage, and you should get through Low Level Caster Hell without any problems. Out of combat, you can offer some minor item crafting, the occasional helpful knowledge check, and neanderthal-boosted survival skills. You can't read, but what are you, a wizard?

On the casting side of things, Spontaneous Entangle gives us a plant theme from the get-go and combos with our Travel Domain power to let us move unimpeded in our own vegetation. Freedom of Movement is generally really hard to obtain in E6, so getting access to it from first level is amazing (it also has minor synergy with our swim ranks, in case that ever comes up).

ECL 3
Second-level spells, more rounds of travel domain power, better turning. We grab the cleric dead level feature to get slightly better at identifying undead, which are common mid-level foes. You can now cast spontaneous barkskin, in case you need to repurpose some utility spells for combat right this instant, but outside of that there isn't much worth noting here.

ECL 6
We grab Initiate of Nature as our final pre-epic feat. This grants us a pretty considerable command animals/plants pool, so if you want you can now run around with a couple wolves or phantom fungi under your control. There's a bit of a convoluted trick where you first cast Substitute Domain to temporarily grab the Animal domain instead of the Travel one, and then use Speak with Animals to better coordinate your commanded creatures, but that's ideally saved for focused missions with lots of advance planning, or for the scouting phase of more direct operations.

More importantly, we unlock Mold Touch, which is a spell that creates patches of the heat-draining brown mold. Oozemaster grants us full immunity to brown mold damage, meaning we can carry it on our own body without ill effect. Your DM might argue that you have immunity to the direct damage but not the ambient cold... at which point you refer them to the neanderthal's Climate Tolerant trait, granting them the ability to exist comfortably in 'cold' temperatures, like that created by the mold.

The spell is instantaneous, so normally I'd suggest spamming it during downtime, but you don't even have to do that: simply create a single patch, apply a torch, and watch it grow all by itself, then harvest some of the mold and spread it further. Ideally, you'd be leaving a trail of mold patches behind as you go, doubling back to grow and harvest them if an encounter results in the destruction of your current one. In most situations, actually preparing the spell shouldn't be necessary, though you can still do so if you really want to be safe.

In combat, we move adjacent to one or more foes, dealing 3d6 no-save no-dr no-attack damage for free, and then we get to hit someone with our two-handed weapon of choice (a quarterstaff is probably best by now and still gets your +1 racial bonus). Against particularly high-AC foes, or enemies who must be taken alive, on subsequent rounds we might prefer to use our oozy touch, which deals only 1d6+1 damage but ignores armor.

We're still a caster, but those are more of a long-range option to fall back on if our close-range melee doesn't work out. Concentration isn't maxed, but we have better-than-average constitution and anyone who runs up to threaten us in melee takes 3d6 damage, so getting hit while casting isn't as big of an issue as it might be for others.

Though speaking of spells... we can cast Entangle on our mold patches (yes, this is rules-legal, see the discussion section below) to create ensnaring fields of fungus that constantly drain the body heat of everyone inside them, while being immune to every single effect of them (even the difficult terrain, thanks to Travel's granted power) ourselves.

Now, brown mold deals subdual cold damage, meaning undead are immune (though even undead do not like Entangle), but Turn Undead backed up by 5 cleric levels and a religion synergy bonus takes care of them fine. Constructs are a bit trickier, but there aren't all that many E6-level constructs for the simple reason that most require higher-level spells to create.

Epic
Against cold-immune enemies, which tend to be vulnerable to fire, we grab Fiery Burst. In addition to being a solid combat option that can increase the size of our mold patches, it simplifies the process of spreading our mold and could even be used in combat for that. Cold subtyped foes that somehow don't fear your melee attacks will take (2d6)x1.5 damage, which I won't pretend is great but is pretty respectable as far as worst matchups go.

More centrally, we grab a bunch of summoning feats, which happen to have great synergy with everything we want to be doing already.

A brief overview: Snowcasting lets us improve our spells by including snow or ice as a component, which we can ensure by freezing Create Water in the region of cold around our mold and preserve continuously. Beckon the Frozen turns our summons into [Cold] creatures that deal extra cold damage, and Icy Calling then boosts those creatures because we're calling them into the low-temperature area created by our mold. A badger is hardly impressive at these levels: a Conjure Ice Beast badger with +8 strength, 15 HP, +4 dexterity, and +2d6 cold damage on all its hits is significantly more so, especially when it's also immune to all the cold damage you're throwing around (and can even serve as a mobile mold platform).

(By the way, note that Conjure Ice Beast lets us access the Summon Nature's Ally list as well; Ice Beast Lions or Ice Beast Black Bears are all absolutely terrifying with all the buffs we grant them).

Rapid Spell can be used to downgrade round-long summoning spells into standard actions, letting us cast a summon and then get our moldy self in position to deal even more damage. Cloudy Conjuration is a very versatile feat that can serve as debuff or cover, and even works with Mold Touch if you ever end up casting that in combat!

To cover our noted weakness against undead, we grab some turning-related feats: Quicken Turning lets us wreck havoc with the action economy (which we were already doing against every other creature type, so the situational nature is mitigated), and Extra Turning makes sure we're optimally using all those available free actions (it also helps with our devotion feats).

Spoiler: Discussion

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First of all, let's get the big one out of the way: real-world taxonomy be damned, brown mold is a plant in D&D terms. I could make a number of suggestive arguments: that 'fungus' is not a category D&D really acknowledges, that all the fungal monsters have the plant type, that our ability to create brown mold is explicitly derived from worship of a deity with the plant domain... but I don't have to do any of that, because the DMG tells us:

In a dungeon’s damp, dark recesses, molds and fungi thrive. While some plants and fungi are monsters and other slime, mold, and fungus is just normal, innocuous stuff, a few varieties are dangerous dungeon encounters. For purposes of spells and other special effects, all slimes, molds, and fungi are treated as plants.

It then goes on to list the brown mold explicitly, so let it be clear: we're just as involved with plants as your average treehugger druid.

Anyway, with this expanded definition of 'plant' in mind, how involved are we with them? Quite! We're walking around covered in plants, we can spontaneously cast one of the best plant-related spells in the game from first level on, we then develop a strategy for generating arbitrarily large patches of brown mold, which both enables our Entangles and makes us an offensive threat all by itself. It is thanks to this plant that we can boost our already-amazing summons even further (because it generates an area of cold), and those can in turn serve to further carry the mold around. Oh, and we can have 10 HD of plant creatures following us around, in case you ever come across those.