Villainous Competition L: L-O-V-E!

[Inevitability]

Spoiler: Derieth and Efeade (10.00)

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Originality (2.25):
So Derieth is a human (I assume: you never spell it out anywhere but the Sentinel mark does narrow things down), which is not something I like to see in any build competition. Efeade is a bit more original, but in a format where monsters are the norm, a succubus is still pretty tame. Throwing in symbionts does help some, though. 0.5/1

Fighter 2/warblade 2/devoted defender 3 really does not surprise me in a round based around teamwork. Perhaps I should've seen artificer coming, but I didn't, so that's saving Derieth from a minimum score. Efeade, however, takes the standard totemist 2 dip, the standard marshal 1 dip, and 8 levels in the moderately popular justiciar, dropping out at the expected point. When your characters have seven classes between them, five of which are incredibly standard dips and two of which are decently popular PrCs, I don't think we're being all too original. 0.25/1.5

Mindsight, prerequisites, multiattack, darkstalker... when the least expected feat that Efeade brings to the table is Bonus Essentia, that's not a good sign. Fortunately, Derieth jumps to the rescue with investment in an uncommon dragonmark and feats enhancing an unusual weapon choice, even though Stormguard Warrior and Robilar's Gambit aren't quite cutting edge. 0.5/1

A fighter who tanks... but that's not all! We also have a totemist... who grapples! If the sarcasm isn't coming through, I'm anything but impressed by the originality of those tactics. 0/0.5

Power (3):
Efeade is respectable: totemists/justiciars make for great grapplers and getting energy drain on top isn't half bad. That's one scary grapple modifier when all goes according to plan, and hogtie is as nasty as always; her main flaw is a lack of versatility in tactics. Derieth, though... He's a tank, but I'm sceptical on whether his partner needs him to tank. Until you get the breastplate, Derieth has worse HP and I'm fairly sure worse AC than Efeade, and if things go south he cannot escape as easily. Artificer items are useful, but artificer is one of the best classes in the game and using it does not automatically guarantee free points in power. I'm also unsure why you took Devoted Defender 3 with such a low Reflex score, especially because you seem perfectly willing to just dip good melee classes. Warblade 3 would've boosted your weak reflex save by two points, boosted critical confirmation, and given you a new maneuver, crusader 1 would've given you a stance that meshes well with the tanking concept, and surely some easily-entered PrC could have enhanced the build? 1/2

Freedom of Movement is online at the first benchmark you give and throws a huge wrench into grapple-based strategies (Derieth can theoretically try to brew up a countermeasure with spell storing, but really doesn't have the CL for dispels). Derieth's strategy requires him to stick close to Efeade, so any BFC or threatened areas he cannot pass through will either cripple her survivability or negate her excellent mobility. This leaves Efeade unable to comfortably pick her targets. 0.5/1

Magic item / spell storing shenanigans can even the action economy some, I suppose, as does the element of surprise, but outside of that you're just as vulnerable to save-or-dies or action denial as any two-monster encounter. 0.5/1

Elegance (2):
Where to begin... well, maybe with the fact that Justiciar is Lawful-only, and Efeade wants to enter as a [Chaotic] outsider? Sure, demons can, in time, in extremely rare cases, shift alignment to a staunchly opposed one, but I'd like you to at least acknowledge how big of a deal that is. Even if this was a honest mistake, and you really meant for Efeade to be LE from the get-go, I'd still like to see it addressed in the text.

You suggest Efeade gets EWP (Manacles) at Justiciar 1, but she gets them at Justiciar 3 instead.

Dereith's least dragonmark presumably grants him Shield Other, and his Lesser mark grants... what exactly? You don't seem to list it anywhere, which is kind of an odd oversight.

I'm not sure how Efeade is taking in-class ranks in diplomacy during her Justiciar stint, but it seems to me that those should be double-cost cross-class ranks.

Your skill presentation makes it hard for me to determine how many ranks you have at a given level, especially when listed ranks are non-alphabetical. I'd have liked to see a table where every level lists all your skill points, even the ones that weren't updated that level.

Stormguard Warrior requires 'two Iron Heart maneuvers' but as far as I can tell Dereith only knows one.

You can't take the Absolute Steel stance at your first warblade level. The rules explicitly say that 'you begin play with knowledge of one 1st-level stance from any discipline open to warblades'.

Your suggestion to shrink Dereith down "to allow Efeade to teleport while carrying him" seems straight-up illegal by the rules, as Efeade can teleport only herself and 50 pounds of objects. Using a bag of holding is somewhat less problematic, but you make it sound like a character could easily crawl in within a round or so, while engaged in combat: that's far from obvious to me, and with how often the issue comes up a lot of tables might already have ruled against such an interpretation. Not to mention the awkward issue of pulling out the bag in combat at all; cloth isn't the sturdiest material.

All in all, there's enough here for me to be very disappointed with the formatting and legality here. 0/1.5

I'm not really seeing structural efficiency in the builds: both have mostly-dead qualification feats that are clearly relevant only to get you into PrCs, skills are used for one thing and one thing only, no real use is made of their specific unique heritages... Using Concentration for warblade maneuvers and artificer infusions both would be neat, but to what degree do you actually use infusions in combat? 0/1

Dereith is really torn between his martial and artificer halves, and his justification for this is little better than 'anyone likes magic items, so if I can make magic items that synergizes with whatever my other levels are, right?'. Reach + Devoted Defender + Robilar's Gambit + Stormguard Warrior is cute (even if getting only 2 AoOs for most of your career leaves it less potent than you'd have liked). Efeade is focused, but synergistic? I guess her many attacks play kind of nice with justiciar, and totemist+justiciar has obvious synergy, but not all that much to impress me here, to be honest. 0.5/1

No real conflicts of fluff and crunch, aside from the Lawfulness thing I already mentioned. 0.5/0.5

Memorable Villainy (2.75):
I hate to be annoying like this, but in a round where 'at least one villain has to be evil' is one of four clearly outlined requirements, the least you can do is actually tell me what your character's alignments are. I'm willing to believe both are LE or something, but tell me. 0.75/1

So Derieth can make magic items for the pair and provides support with buffs and Shield Other, while Efeade... gives an initiative bonus from CR 18 on? Bit of a one-sided relationship! It doesn't help that the bonuses are pretty generic: why does a succubus totemist specifically want to get protected by a Devoted Defender? Sure, grappling takes away a few points of AC, but is that everything? There's no real unique combos, nothing that makes me think these two are meant to be together. Worse, the pair seems vulnerable to area attacks: they love to cluster together, have only so-so hit points, and have mediocre Reflex saves (Efeade is resistant to energy, but not by enough to invalidate blasting strategies). I'm just not convinced that these two builds specifically want to be working together. 0.5/1.5

The pair has okayish out-of-combat skills (mostly Efeade) and might certainly return to fight another day, but their scope is quite heavily constrained to specific jobs against specific targets, and they struggle to affect large-scale change. I don't know; I wouldn't be surprised if it takes PCs two or three encounters to figure out that these are supposed to be recurring villains, not quirky minibosses. Solid out-of-combat utility does help some, though. 0.5/1

I already touched on this, but Derieth's longevity seems... less than assured. His escape route has a number of flaws, his mobility is bad, and his role in combat involves actively redirecting attacks to what is, ultimately, a very so-so humanoid frame, hampered by multiple weak saves. Efeade's outsider nature also makes it tricky to bring her back if the PCs get off a lucky save-or-die, which is troublesome as well. 0/0.5

Final Verdict:
The core of this build's problems are really just that Derieth gets pushed in a tanking niche that Efeade doesn't need him to be in. He doesn't have social skills, his martial prowess is lacking, and his infusions are clunky to use in-combat, which leaves his ability to contribute to the pair largely limited to out-of-combat crafting support... which is, of course, something that a large portion of his build got redirected away from. Even simply making him a full artificer would've cut down on the cookie-cutter dips, helped define his niche in combat, made his build a more coherent whole, and helped to give the pair more of a greater villainous scope.

I don't know, I don't like this build, and I think the score reflects that. The factory-standard optimizations rammed through are painfully obvious, and the fact that the build clearly doesn't pay prerequisites enough heed (Stormguard Warrior's prerequisites, the alignment issue) does not make matters better. Villainous competition allows more material to be used than any other build competition on this site: do something with that! Don't just give me two human-shaped minibosses whose stubs wouldn't be misplaced in a handbook. You don't have to go completely crazy, but try to push the envelope at least a little, I promise you the build will be the better for it.

To stick with the cooking theme these competitions tend to have: you tried to serve me a standard surf-and-turf, but went and spoiled half the dish.

Spoiler: Tessai and Spangle (11.00)

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Originality (3.25):
Skindancer and Glimmerskin? Not just two very original and rarely-seen monsters, but thematically resonant ones to boot! Full marks. 1/1

Warblade isn't exactly revolutionary to slap on a big melee brute, and 4 levels is a typical place to hop off. Marshal 1 is one of the most obvious dips for a high-charisma character, especially in this round, and swordsage 2 is hardly groundbreaking, but six levels in fighter are more investment than I'd expect to see. 0.75/1.5

Having your incorporeal buffer take all sorts of ubercharger feats doesn't change the fact that they're just ubercharger feats. A few things, like Stand Still or Reckless Offensive are slightly unexpected, but if I googled a list of Best Melee Feats I'd see most of your lists on there. 0.25/1

Buffer + Damage Dealer isn't the most innovative combo, but the glimmerskin's unique mechanics put a bit of a mechanical twist on the whole concept. 0.25/0.5

Power (2):
So obviously, Tessai is a monstrously powerful charger, dealing incredible damage and forcing ridiculous saves vs instant death. He's got his pick of floating feat, which gives him a bit of customizability that martials usually lack (though I'd have liked to see a few examples). Reach and Stand Still make him non-trivial to approach, DR 15/- is significant (though the mental image of Tessai having to chomp down on his wrist every sixty seconds is quite amusing) and 32 Constitution with 31 HD give him a hit point total in the high 400s.

Spangle is a source of incredibly useful feats... and little else. I could imagine a number of ways for an incorporeal pseudopossessor to still make some kind of active contribution to combat, but you don't really seem interested in such a thing. Even Imperious Command, played-out as it is, would at least have made it clear what she's doing. She does massively help out outside of combat, which is something, but that has its own issues (more on that later).

Did you leave obvious power on the table? I think so. You suggest using Energy Touch's explosion effect as an AoE: but then why not take Endurance and Steadfast Determination? Combined with a slightly higher Fortitude save, it'd have allowed you to rack up arbitrary amounts of excess HP and discharge it all in one enormous burst. I'm also not sure why Spangle is a fighter 6 instead of a fighter 2 / psychic warrior slash bonus feat rogue 2 / something 2, because she doesn't seem to actually need the BAB.

I feel weird about this section: Tessai is a beast, but Spangle is forced down to a power level I don't think suits a CR 17 monster, and both builds could probably be improved with a critical eye and a bit of restructuring. Still, half points. 1/2

Tessai definitely has some mobility issues going on: no flight, no teleportation, nothing but charges and the odd Sudden Leap (which can be refreshed, but not without cutting down on your damage that round). You've got a monstrous amount of RHD: surely some cross-class ranks in Balance and Tumble would've been worth more than Spot, given that they let you pick up Twisting Charge and Nimble Charge? Given that both of your villains rely on Tessai beating face, it's a tad concerning that low-level spells like Web or even Mount can completely eat your turn. 0/1

Remember that bit where I said both of your villains rely on Tessai getting attacks off? Yeah, that's not a great thing from an action economy perspective either. If the party figures out a way to neutralize Tessai, the fight might as well be over. 0/1

Elegance (2.25):
The idea of using temporary feats in order to get class skills during levelup only is... somewhat inelegant, as it relies on exploiting the rules-level abstraction of discrete levels in order to gain narrative-level benefits. And that's with me pointedly ignoring your suggestion to get infinite feats, which you should probably be happy about.

Tessai cannot take Tactics of the Wolf, as he lacks the prerequisite White Raven maneuver.

Tessai has 9 intelligence for his first 15 HD, and should thus have (2 - 1) x 14 + (2 - 1) x 4 = 18 skill points from those levels, not 30 (15 x 2?).

Spangle cannot put 15 ranks in Concentration during her first 12 HD, because cross-class skills are capped at half the normal skill cap. She'd be restricted to 7 (well, 7.5) ranks. 0.5/1.5

Everything here seems to have a single use. Feats are either part of your straightforward melee strategy, or they're prerequisites for something that is. The closest thing to a feat, skill, or class feature doing multiple independent things would be Spangle's intimidate ranks, which qualify her for Never Outnumbered and Resounding Blow both. 0/1

The skindancer's tripping slams seem abandoned completely in favor of two-handed power attacks, and there's a bit of a struggle for Tessai's swift action between 3 maneuvers that all want it. Hearing the Air on Spangle seems really weird if you've had mindsight from the get-go and grab Clarity of Vision sometime later. You really want Spangle to be attached to Tessai at all times for feat qualification purposes, but you also want her to be the pair's face (something presumably complicated if she's forced to do so attached to a hulking brute). Tessai has some intelligence-based features from warblade, but lacks the modifier to make use of them, and his Skill Focus feat is obviously only here for a single reason (and it's not boosting diplomacy checks). The synergy between the pair is unquestionable, but the builds themselves have ugly fraying ends. 0.5/1

Fluff is mostly in order, with one notable exception: Spangle is listed as TN. I understand that this is the default glimmerskin alignment, and I understand that by default glimmerskin are already empowering arbitrary warriors through somewhat harmful positive energy infusions, but the stuff your little fluff section hints at is on a whole different level, and seems wholly incompatible with any kind of non-evil alignment. I really don't see why you chose to list Spangle as TN; Glimmerskin aren't even particularly beholden to that alignment! 0.25/0.5

Memorable Villainy (3.5):
CR checks out, romantic love checks out, I already had my say about Spangle's alignment but at any rate Tessai is unambiguously evil. 1/1

Tessai obviously benefits from his partner's free feats and buffs, while Spangle is all but harmless without him. In fact, Tessai relies on Spangle to keep most of his feats around, which is anglerfish-levels of romantic entanglement. Little seems able to resist huge piles of damage and fortitude save-or-dies and spangle's plane shifts. Spangle is also unimpeded by most of the BFC that Tessai struggles against, though things like Ectoplasmic Web or Wall of Force remain reasonably low-level ways of dealing with the pair. Still, I can't really argue that both your villains really want to fight by one another's side. 1.5/1.5

While Plane Shift makes for a pretty impressive escape route, and Spangle in particular is really hard to pin down, the scope of the pair leaves something to be desired, and makes it hard to hook the PCs in before the actual battle starts. Your own fluff blurb can hardly come up with something better than 'Spangle initiates peaceful contact using social skills, lures PCs into ambush'. A burly guy harrassing locals is fine adventure material at low levels, but at mid- to high CR I expect a bit more of an overarching threat.

Worse, the mechanics of the pair inherently prevent even such simple banditry-adventure setups! Spangle must return to the Positive Energy Plane every 8 hours, which either separates her from Tessai (very bad) or forces Tessai to self-mutilate a bit, get shifted along, survive 1-2 rounds on the PEP, and shift back... up to 500 miles away from their original location. You literally cannot justify your villains remaining in the same spot for most of a day, which is an incredibly large obstacle if you want them to establish any sort of presence.
0/1

Spangle is a bodiless outsider and thus cannot be resurrected, and if Tessai dies she cannot move his corpse. If half of the pair is slain (or even if one is separated from the other), they will find it near impossible to reunite. 0/0.5

Final Verdict:
We started off so strong! A very cool pairing of two monsters with resonant names and complementary abilities, a squicky yet creative bit of flash fiction, a solid amount of thought put into class levels... and then the build falls flat, a victim of lackluster double-checking and a failure to think things through to their logical consequences.

There's a very 'double or nothing' energy to the build: everything is focused on making Tessai stronger... and unfortunately, when he falls in the same traps that 1st-level orc barbarians fall into, you're left with pitifully little. I'm not looking at a pair of compelling villains, I'm not looking at an innovative new archetype, I'm not even looking at a particularly interesting encounter.

This build is a fifty-pound hunk of beef smothered in whiskey sauce: impressive, undercooked, and obviously not meant for actual consumption.

Spoiler: Glomoira and Vhordreth (15.25)

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Originality (4.25):
Glouras are good enough to see play as PCs, so to see someone engage with the even more cheaply usable monster version is hardly surprising. That said, I'd never even heard of drow-dragons before this point, and Xorvintaal rarely gets used, so that cranks up your score again. Bringing in lifemate is enough for the final stretch to a perfect score, in spite of the rocky start here. 1/1

Soul Eater is always an expected dip in VC, Devoted Defender is an expected dip in this round, and Assassin while less conventional is hardly untrodden ground. Glomoira is a bit better here: though Bard dip into Sublime Chord has never surprised me, you bring in rarely seen classes in Void Disciple, Ardent Dilettante, and Shadow Adept. 1/1.5

Penumbra Bloodline is nice to see, the Dreamtelling line of feats is very rarely touched, and Shadow Weave Magic is similarly ill-explored. On Vhordreth's side of things, I'm less impressed; he picks the top feats for rogues and tank fighters and throws on Entangling Exhalation; only Create Spectral Spawn deserves mention here. 0.75/1

While at first glance just another caster + meatshield combo, there's enough unique little tricks for both of those builds that I'm going to be awarding full points. 0.5/0.5

Power (4):
Well, you set out to create a terrifying foe able to subvert all sorts of assumptions, and I think you've succeeded. Between the wizard/sorcerer 8ths with arbitrary spell access, the dream assassins, the actual assassins, and the long-distance social manipulation, there's very little that Glomoira cannot do. At the same time, you haven't gone overboard: the party retains real means to flee or kill her, even if it'll be difficult. I like Vhordreth: while he's obviously not as powerful as Glomoira, his tanking/debuffing/buffing actions all meaningfully increase the difficulty of a mixed encounter, and fought by himself he's still a dragon with near-permanent total concealment and a ton of ways to wear foes down. All in all, I'm looking at a pair of exceedingly well-optimized villains with lots of capabilities, both rewarding careful preparation and pulling out one or two insane tricks anyway. Full marks. 2/2

Glomoira focuses on mind-affecting spells, Vhordreth on stuff that Death Ward blocks; they're by no means useless against such defenses (and Glomoira is a single standard action away from grabbing Greater Dispel Magic) but it leaves me a bit confused why Greater Dispel isn't on your default list to begin with. You could've made it work thematically! At any rate, the nice thing about enchantments is that they get you muscle that doesn't care about wards, and the nice thing about assassins is that you never see them coming, so only a mild penalty. 0.5/1

You're neither particularly vulnerable nor particularly resistant to action economy shenanigans. 0.5/1

Elegance (2.75):
Although you correctly source Drow-Dragons in your build table, your 'obscure sources' table lists Magic of Faerun instead, which threw me for a loop. Worse, you don't list a source for shadow dragons themselves at all.

Yes, you're the DM and can give NPCs whatever gear you want... but at the same time, a DM unwilling to give the players Sudden Stunning weapons or Fearsome armor is hardly free to give them to their NPCs either.

Yes, the DMG2's NPC traits are technically free in this contest. That doesn't mean I want everyone to use all of them, so I will smack down their usage with an elegance penalty.

Your skill table makes it hard for me to see what's going on at every given level. The skill rank totals are appreciated, but I keep having to look back and forth to figure out what you increase and by how much. I know racial dragon skills are a mess, but where are you getting from that shadow dragons get Hide and Move Silently as class skills?

Your spell table includes a lot of shorthand notation and footnotes that are not at all clear. What does it even mean for a spell on your Moment of Clarity Extra Spell shortlist to be 'swapped on level-up'?

I don't think the Exarch + Revive Undead trick works: it requires that 'the body of the undead to be revived must be whole' and forces you to touch the destroyed creature. A spectre doesn't leave anything upon death; there's nothing to touch.

Most damningly, I really don't like using temporary benefits to qualify for permanent PrCs, and a lot of tables will already have a policy on such cheese. More to the point, how are you pinpointing the moment of assassin entry to within a handful of rounds? Like, do you imagine Vhordreth getting a couple pats on the shoulder before running off to complete his Devoted Defender Entry Exam within the next few seconds? 0/1.5

You're good at milking your levels for maximum effect. Void Disciple isn't just taken for the notorious 4th-level ability, and Bard actually qualifies you for Ardent Dilettante via the proficiencies it grants (Ardent Dilettante, on the other hand, seems to mostly exist as a full-casting way to get a bonus feat). Skills regularly qualify you for multiple things. Heighten Spell also does double-duty as a qualification tool, and I would also give you points for entering Soul Eater and Devoted Defender with the same pair of feats, but you don't actually take them. Grabbing Entangling Exhalation via the dragon type is cute, and using assassin for Death Attack + Sneak Attack + Ebon Eyes gets you points, but Vhordreth still feels a bit less efficiently built than his better half. 0.75/1

You list a ton of interactions between spells, class features, and feats for Glomoira, while supplementing everything she wants to do with free-floating skill boosts. Vhordreth is a bit more split in his focus, torn between defending Glomoira and going on the offense with Energy Drain and his breath weapon, but I won't mistake versatility for a lack of consistency. 0.75/1

You don't have 15 wisdom on Glomoira, so to qualify for Shadow Weave Magic you need to worship Shar, which is... not acknowledged anywhere. I really think the fluff on this would've been a lot cleaner if you just splurged on the extra point of wisdom, and if you don't even make an attempt to resolve the awkward religious component then I'm going to assign a minor penalty. The issue is compounded by Ardent Dilettante, which introduces an incongruous planescape element in its flavor requirements. At the same time, props for entering Jazred Chaussin as one of the most fitting races fluff-wise. 0.25/0.5

Memorable Villainy (4.25):
CRs work out, they're lovers, they're evil. 1/1

Glomoira obviously benefits from having a 270 HP tank around, especially if it can buff her with Shield Other and concealment, or lower enemies' saves. Vhordreth's benefits are more subdued, and I don't see an obvious reason why he'd want to work with Glomoira specifically. Sure, she can cheat him into his prestige classes (you claim), and Darkness helps with keeping his Shadow Blend up, but is that it? When you have all the power of a void disciple / sublime chord at your command, surely you could've listed a few combos that uniquely synergize with Vhordreth's own abilities? 0.75/1.5

Can the dreamwalking fey queen who's one standard action away from grabbing any wizard spell and has 1000-mile ESP, and the minionmancing dragon assassin by her side, make their presence felt? Yeah, I think so. 1/1

I had to look it up, but resurrecting fey is doable. Top of my head, Vhordreth can UMD a scroll and Glomoira can Limited Wish herself a Raise Dead, and that's before getting into the possibilities afforded by dominated minions. Killing one of the two should definitely not spell doom for the couple. 0.5/0.5

Final Verdict:
An insanely well-crafted pair of characters: as far as I'm concerned, you've achieved the feel you were going for. I can imagine an entire campaign built around combating Glomoira's organization, fighting off bigger and bigger threats while getting to slowly glimpse her seeming defiance for all the laws of magic. She's powerful without being overpowering, impressive without being smothering, and most importantly memorable.

Vhordreth, while a great consort power-wise and flavor-wise, is somewhat of an afterthought: I could see Glomoira having a number of equally capable consorts with no real impact on her and her own strategies (and perhaps that's the point). Still, devoted defender is one of the more boring ways to force synergy (we've got two of them in a three-entry round, for crying out loud!) and his tricks seem generally less thought-through than Glomoira's.

This build is an eight-course meal: splendorous, beautifully presented, but a bit messy for all its fine details. While we're sure to have room for the drow-shaped dessert, it's perhaps a bit overshadowed by what came before.

That was an absurdly difficult judging: having to go back and forth across two builds and consider all their modes of interaction took a lot of time. Still, here we go, bring on the disputes: I'd just like to pre-emptively announce that if there's going to be another doubles round, y'all will have to look for some other schmuck to write the judgements.

(in all seriousness, I do love those builds and I had fun exploring them; I'm just glad it's over)