Test of Spite [D&D 3.5]

[Doc Roc]

Hello, I am an angry man.
Perhaps you too, are angry? Bitter? Seeking some sort of vindication in a large world spiraling oddly away from you?

Crack open that tube full of dice.
Like the similarly named Test of Might run by the altogether-better-person Akuma, this is a thread about explorations of the further edges of game performance. We will be running a slightly altered rules set, for which I have reserved a post below this one. The crux of the challenge is that you are presented with a dungeon and must navigate through its preliminary challenges to kill each other. I hear this is a popular past-time.

Let me repeat.
This is a PvP dungeoneering game.

First, players must survive a 1v1 or 2v2 match against a willing opponent.
Hence the name, test of spite. Your punishment for seeking satisfaction through violence will become apparent thereafter.

Surviving players will be released into the PvP dungeon section which exists as a subset of Ravenloft. There, they must make the necessary allegiances, preparations, or other decisions regarding who they will work with in an effort to reach the center of the arena where they will be tested against each other in mortal combat. The Dark Powers that run this arena are not amused by attempts to throw the game, however, so be prepared for serious OOC bargaining to get your ingame toon eaten by the hounds of tindalos. Naturally, warnings will be provided.

Upon navigation of the dungeon, you will reach the final arena, where matches may be 1v1 or 2v2 as negotiated in game. Victory will register you as the current incumbents, and you may rest before facing the onslaught of other people who complete the dungeon. Three victories allows you to escape Ravenloft, and with it, the arena.

• Sign-ups can be done here, but primarily this is a thread for the comments and questions.
• Starting level is 13th, with full EWL as per 135 in the DMG.
• All WotC books allowed barring contraindication in the rules provided below.
• Infinite loops are permitted to trigger precisely once, after which your character will be killed by the hounds of tindalos.
  Make sure it was worth it.
• Those who get an infinite loop past me during character creation will receive special mention in the halls of honor.
• Attempts to use the infinite loop in either the final arena or the starting arena will result in summary consumption by hungry hungry hound dogs, but you will receive a commendation in the halls of honor, though your opponent will be counted as victorious if it is a 1v1.

Submit Your Sheet For Approval
Sign Up && Match-Making
Dungeon Waiting List
Map Making

[Doc Roc]

Arena Format
There are three major choices involved in the opening arena segment. These are on a match-by-match basis.
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First:

You may opt to use the swapping terrain placement schema used by most war-games to generate an arena.
You may opt to have me randomly generate an arena.
You may opt to have a standard and known arena used.

Second:

You may opt to have no buffs active.
You may opt to have all-day buffs active.
You may opt to have prepared for the encounter in general terms.
You may opt to ask three questions, specific, as per Contact Other Plane, about the opposition, and prepare all-day buffs accordingly. This option is not recommended. It is provided for the sake of completeness.

Third:

You may opt to disallow summons and called or bought creatures.
You may opt to disallow the above during the buff rounds.
You may opt to allow the above during buff rounds and declare the allowance thereof.

Finally:

Each set of opposition may come to a consensus about these options.
You may yield one set of choices at random to the opposition.
You may place your fate in my terrible clutches.

3.51 Rules Updates
The following are the character generation rules for the Test of Spite.
Help with optimization is available. Please do not be intimidated by the list of changes
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You begin with 78k XP, sufficient to place your level at 13th.
HP is Max for first level, then average HP.
No Fractional BAB or Saves
Up to 1 Trait and 2 flaws
No Action Points.
No LA above +1.
28 Point buy.

Any XP spent is deducted from your total.
As such, your total class levels will reflect this.
XP will be gained during your stay
LA Buy-off allowed.

3.51 Fix and Ban List

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General :

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• Aasimar and similarly all native outsiders do not grant weapon proficiencies for the purposes of class qualification.
• Dragonlance's dragonspawn templates are banned.
• Feats, abilities, and other benefits granted by spells or items may not be used to fulfill any qualification requirement. This excludes Psychic Reformation and similar instantaneous effects.
• All forms of awaken are banned.
• Splitting and similar effects copy only the item, not positive effects currently on it.
• Due to the ongoing interference of the Dark Powers, divinely granted templates are not permitted in ravenloft, and all who have them are stripped of them, with the exclusion of saint which they rightly find hilarious.
• Undead are not immune to mind-affecting spells.
• Kobolds may not qualify for lore-drake or epic feats.
• Dusk Giants do not exist.
• Mention of the sarrukh should be followed by your home address ;)
• Shambling mounds do not exist.
• You may not order a creature or player to fail a save in any fashion.
• Initiate of Mystra is banned. Really. Really. Banned.
• Pazuzu does not exist.
• You may have one clone, and it must be on Ravenloft. Clones are 14k.
• The Far Realms do not exist.
• Time Travel is soft-banned, in that where-ever you travel to, the hounds will be there. Temporal regression is permitted, but long chains ( x>2 ) are not. Time hop and similar are permitted.

Source Material

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• Iron Kingdoms material is allowed on a case by case basis.
• Dragon and Dungeon Magazine are banned.
• Serpent Kingdoms is approval-only material.
• Savage Species is approval-only material.

Unearthed Arcana :

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The following takes the form of an allow list, rather than a ban list.

• Flaws and traits.
• Variant classes.
• Additional Favored Class feat.
• Prestige paladin and bard.
• Racial paragons.
  I may have forgotten things previously allowed. Please ask if you are curious.

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Base Classes :

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• Fighter is banned, excluding dungeoncrasher.
• Erudite is banned.
• Domain wizards are banned.
• Monk is full-bab.
• Unarmed swordsage is legal.
• All druids are aspect druids as per UA. In addition, all sources of wild shape are banned.
• Swordsages gain adaptive style as a bonus feat at level 4. Swordsages also get 6x skill points at first level, despite it being a clear error. Just too cool to take away.
• Clerics are not alignment locked.
• All clerics are cloistered clerics.
• Artificers may only shuffle bonuses between enhancement, insight, and competence.
• 1d2 crusaders do not exist.
• Archivists are limited to the following sources for spells known at start:
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  Domain lists, Cleric, Druid, Shugenja, Ranger, Paladin, Healer, Adept.
  Other divine casters by permission
  
  Banned:
  Runescarred Berserker list, arcane spells turned into divine scrolls by means not covered or permitted by the above.
  
• Focused specialists do not exist.
• All prepared casters start with at minimum one spell scribed per level.
• Prepared casters should buy every spell they expect to need. Getting more will be ludicrously difficult.

Prestige Classes :

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• Subverted Psion is banned.
• Arcane Archers may use crossbows.
• Rainbow Servants are a 8/10 casting class that loses a caster level at first and second.
• Planar Shepherd is banned.
• Master of Many Forms is impossible to qualify for, or ought to be, and is banned.
• Master Transmogrist is impossible to qualify for, or ought to be, and is banned.
• Ruby Knight Vindicators may gain only one additional swift action per turn.
• Tainted scholar and tainted sorcerer are both banned until a suitable fix is suggested.
• Dweomerkeeper is banned.
• Cancer mage is banned.
• Incantatrix is banned.
• Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil's veils duplicate the effect of layers, rather than the effects of the whole spell, and are thus subject to dispelling and AMF. Beyond this, the class is unchanged.

Feats :

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• Retraining is not permitted except in extraordinary cases where a feat becomes useless.
• Sanctum Spell does not apply for determining if you can affect a spell with items or spells.
• Adaptive style refreshes your maneuvers.
• Mortalbane does not allow stacking uses. Arcane strike does not allow stacking uses. This should be considered precedent.
• Item familiars are banned.
• Greenbound Summoning is banned.
• Mercantile background is banned.
• Uncanny forethought is banned.
• Arcane thesis affects only the first applied metamagic.
• Leadership, Undead Leadership, Thrallherd, and Dragon Cohort are banned. Similar or derivative effects are also banned.
• Legendary locations that grant feats are unilaterally excluded from serving as pre-requisites. You may only use one per character.
• Extra spell is not list specific, but may be taken precisely once and with DM approval.
• Reserves of Strength is banned.
• Craft Contingent Spell has double XP costs, these cannot be reduced, and may produce only three contingent spells at a time. The conditions must be as or more exact than contingency normally requires, but no proofing assistance will be offered.

Spells, Spell-Like Abilities, Maneuvers, and Powers

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• Teleportation subschool is now part of the evocation school.
• Enchantment and Abjuration are now one school.
• Polymorph, alter self, metamorphosis, and all derivatives not specifying a single shape are likewise banned.
• Genesis is banned.
• Forced Dream is banned.
• Explosive runes is banned.
• Timestop is explicitly banned.
• Gate can no longer be used to call or summon.
• Leech Ghost Skill is banned.
• SLAs are not free of expensive or somatic components.
• Embrace\Shun The Dark Chaos is permitted, but cannot be done during character creation. If you can pull it off in the dungeon or the arenas, my commendations await.
• Glyph Seals do not accept personal range spells.
• There are no free wishes.
• Starmantle Cloak and evasion do not stack.
• Contingency cannot be cast from a ring of spell storing.
• Ice assassin's material components cannot be obviated in any fashion.
• Anything you bring in via planar binding or ally cannot leave, and will be incredibly angry about this.
• Degenerate-case stacking of consumptive field will result in immediate consumption by the hounds.
• Dweomer of Transference only converts spells cast by its caster.
• Fusion is banned.
• Mindblank and all derivatives are subject to a caster level check at a penalty dependent on available information.
• The Locate Cities trick does not work.
• Planeshift does not work, as you are trapped in ravenloft.
• Contact Other Plane and similar effects that use a consultation with a higher power always reach the Dark Powers instead of the intended target. While ungood, this does not negate the spells.
• Acorn of Far Travel is banned.
• White Raven Tactics may be used precisely once per battle per player.

Metamagic and Metapsionics

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• Persistant Spell's range requirements can not be obfuscated by any means, including but not limited to Ocular Spell, Reach spell, or any variant thereof. In the case of exhibition matches, Earthbound spell may be allowed.
• Metamagic costs have a strict minimum value of one, unless the ability specifically reduces them to zero, such as DMM or an alternate cost payment method.
• Alert me if you plan to use Linked Power, and explain why.

Magic Items and Crafting

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• Dust of sneezing and choking is banned.
• Items may not be bought at a price reduction. This does not apply to crafting but does prohibit writing a friendly crafter into your backstory, the purchase of partially charged items, the use of curses or item flaws, and similar.
• The Ring of the Beast is banned.
• Creation costs are:
  
  (Gold, Exp)= (J*(1/2)*Base_price, K*(1/25)*Base_price)
  Where K and J are cost reductions from feats or class features and may go no lower than .65
• Custom item creation is not permitted except as per the bonus stacking\slot stacking rules in the MiC.
• A few item types, such as scrolls, are unaffected entirely by this.
• Custom runestaves, scepters, and full-charged wands are in exception to this rule. Staffs are not.
• Psionic items may be customized on an approval-only basis, as some of the rules effectively demand it.
• Attempts to get a custom item other than the above exceptions will likely be disapproved, but if you aren't sure, please, ask anyway.
• Amulet of second chances is banned.
• Thoughtbottle is banned.
• Candle of Invocation is not banned, but will get you eaten by the Hounds.
• Nightsticks do not stack.
• Turn attempts or similar from multiples of the same item are considered unnamed bonuses from the same source, and thus do not stack.

Skills :

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• Caster Level from UMD checks caps at 20 for our purposes.
• Diplomancy and its ilk are GM-adjudicated rather than running off the provided tables.
• Intimidate and its results are not mind-affecting.

Good luck!
Oh and bring a shovel in your inventories.

Submitted Sheets are reviewed by:
Sofawall
T.G. Oskar
Claudius Maximus

[Doc Roc]

The Hall Of Honor

Vader fell to the ineffably accurate Sheriff of Moddingham.
Talic surrendered in the face Sallera's persistence, and fled as the fog claimed Sallera.
Aethernox was struck down by Saph's mastery of the Sublime Way
Yahzi defeated Olo, though many of his skeletons were crushed.
In a rematch, a burst of fire from the downed Olo brought Yahzi to a burning fate.
Imperial Specter conceded after Imhotep collapsed the arena by disintegrating load-bearing columns.
Level 1 sharnian and Olo fought it out, but magic was no match for arrows.
After a slight mishap, Olo faced Memalato and Water Penguin 43 and brought them under his control.
9mm cut down Lv1 Sharnian with swings that he couldn't see.
Olo got block-rocked by Talic's hulking hurler.

Kabol, by Lvl 1 Sharnian was the first character to force a run-time ban.
Alita, by Jemini Zero, keeps getting broken and rebuilt. JZ is commended for forcing three separate run-time bans.
9MM forced a pre-match nerf of splitting.

Dungeon Entrance, Instance One

Dungeon Entrance, Instance Two

ToS: The Monkening, a special dungeoncrawl.

Battles:

Munchlord and Eurus

Pharaoh's fist and wykydtron VS ozgun92 + melamoto!

Vader and Archer

Yahzi Vs. Olo_Demonsbane

Talic vs Sallera

Saph vs. Aethernox

Ratflail Vs Aethernox

Olo Vs Lvl 1

9mm Vs Level 1 Sharnian

Talic V. Olo

Saph vs Imperial Spectre

Arena Referees are:
Sofawall
Vicerious
Claudius Maximus

We honor Talic's contributions to the health of the forums. Hail the victorious fallen!

[Pharaoh's Fist]

Hey, can I join?

[Doc Roc]

Yes, find yourself a friend or foe to 1v1 in the opening arena and we'll see how this goes down. :)

[Pharaoh's Fist]

Will anyone be my friend? Enemy? Frenemy? Please?

Edit: And I'll IM or PM you a sheet soon, k?

[Collin152]

I hereby grant this thread acknowledgement of Collin. I have already posted in the thread in the proper forum, but I would like to take this time to acknowledge the worthwhileness of joining this game--assuming you're not trying a monk build, anyways, in which case I advise you not to waste time, but people, I recommend you join in.

[Yahzi]

1. How do you calculate stats?

2. Leadership? Believe it or not, I have a use for 1st level followers.

[Pharaoh's Fist]

28 point buy for stats, or so the DM said.

Oooh, a minionmancer.

[Doc Roc]

Let me go ahead and re-ban leadership. :)

[Yahzi]

Let me go ahead and re-ban leadership. :)

Ack, my bad, sorry. I missed the text that was centered...

[Doc Roc]

I just added it, actually. I'm ten ninjas. :)

[Nohwl]

what about undead leadership?

[ZeroNumerous]

Or thrallherd?

[Adumbration]

Mindraped Solars?

Just kidding, just kidding :p

[Doc Roc]

No thralls for you, I am afraid. Though my judgment lapsed momentarily, those are back on the list where they belong. PhaedrusXY has made me eminently aware of why those are just a little.... Too Much. Even by my standards.

Mind Raping solars... Well, if you're willing to run that as a mini-session with me first, and willing to accept my particular happy-fun-times variant of a celestial fire-team as an opponent... It's still not leadership, but I'm not sure it achieves much that planar binding\ally doesn't. I recommend you use those instead.

[dspeyer]

As long as we're listing leadership loopholes, what about draconic mount and draconic familiar?

[Doc Roc]

Draconic Mount And Familiar relied primarily on dragon cohort.
They're not considered too terrible, as these things go, since you need class features to make them go, and both classes are feat starved.

[wykydtron]

I'll have my character sheets up soon.

[Curmudgeon]

Questions:

• All prepared casters start with at minimum one spell scribed per level.

1) If a (Cloistered) Cleric has Scribe Scroll, can they get those scribed onto scrolls?

No LA above +1.
Buy-off allowed.

2) So how does this work? I.e., what XP total do you start with -- 78,000 (the minimum for level 13), 90,999 (the maximum), or something in between?

3) What about Traits? Flaws?

4) Are you sticking to the favored class and multiclassing XP cost rules?

[Emy]

I've never participated in one of these contests before, but I think I'll throw something together.

Edit: if only the location weren't ravenloft

[Lord_Gareth]

I so want in. Quick questions:

- I've played an awakened skeleton before. Most DMs find it as LA 1; would you be willing to allow that as my PC?

- Is homebrew material (subject to your approval, of course) permitted?

My current idea is an awakened skeleton wizard, though I might also go with a barbarian/rogue, a homebrew race (if you allow any), or my Harrowed (if you allow them).

[Pharaoh's Fist]

Other PCs keep out

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Imhotep

[Eloel]

A few questions before I get creating a char sheet.

Are all sources open?
# All WotC books allowed barring contraindication in the rules provided below.

Got my answer after rereading.


Will we get to 'rest' (thus getting our HP/spells/whatever to reset) before we are released into the dungeon?
Can we buff prior to the battles? (any buffs? only 24h? only 8h+?)
What's the arena size?
Can we use more than 1 character?
What about psionics/magic transparency?

And lastly
Anyone wanna be my enemy?

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Unusual question...

Are character pairings allowed? As in, is a 2v2 battle acceptable, if those characters then fight at as a team throughout the exercise?

[Eurus]

If you play a +1 LA race and buy it off, do you start with 12 or 13 class levels?

[Nohwl]

how much time will there be between fights?

[Melamoto]

I don't own the Ravenloft setting. Is there anything important about it that i'd need to know to enter this?

[wykydtron]

Alright I've almost got my character ready. If anyone's looking for partner/enemy then just PM me.

[Pharaoh's Fist]

Alright I've almost got my character ready. If anyone's looking for partner/enemy then just PM me.

Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!