How to conquer an entire planet at Level 1

[Olo Demonsbane]

Ok, you are a level 1....Truenamer. Wizard. Barbarian. IT DOESNT MATTER. You're race doesnt matter either, but you might want to be Human or Strongheart Halfling for the bonus feat, since you are using one for your amazing tactic

Step 1: Grab the Feat "Wild Cohort". Lets choose eagle.
Step 2: Since your Wild Cohort functions almost identically to an animal companion, you can choose its feats.
Step 3: Give it the Wild Cohort feat. It gets an eagle.
Step 4: Since it is played by you, you can choose its feats. Go to Step 3.
Step 5: Repeat NI times.
Step 6: You now have NI eagles, which you can use to utterly kill anything without DR.
Step 7: Since you just killed (as the eagles count as you for XP purposes) an entire planet's worth of creatures, you gain a lot of levels.
Step 8: Hunt down the creatures with DR.
Step 9: Rule the world.

EDIT: If you play by the rule allowing double criticals (natural 20, 20 on the conformation, hit on the conformation of that) to instant death (Variant rule in the DMG), you can even kill DRed creatures with your eagles.

How does it look?

[Kylarra]

First you have to train your NI eagles to attack.

So NI weeks of skill training assuming you never fail your handle animal checks.

[Raewyn]

... Assuming the experience trickles up to you (wouldn't the XP just go up to a previous eagle, like a pyramid scheme?), any DM you suggested this to would probably take you out back and shoot you.

EDIT: Kylarra wins. There are probably faster ways to take over the world than training infinite eagles.

[SurlySeraph]

This relies on there being an arbitrarily high number of eagles in the world. The DM may declare that the world is out of eagles before you have a sufficiently powerful fighting force.

[Flickerdart]

A New Challenger Appears! The Chicken-Infested Commoner wants to battle. Chicken-Infested Commoner sent out NI CHICKENS! NI CHICKENS used USE UP ALL AIR ON PLANE! It's super-effective! EVERYTHING fainted! NI CHICKENS fainted!

[Kylarra]

This relies on there being an arbitrarily high number of eagles in the world. The DM may declare that the world is out of eagles before you have a sufficiently powerful fighting force.

Well... he could go down all the other animal trees too.

[Zeta Kai]

Also, the feat says "Provided the DM gives her approval". It should be quite obvious that no DM would approve such a mad scheme. But, from a strict RAW perspective, I'd say your biggest hurdle is the time-sink for training.

[Zedd]

I choose not to dwell too much on this subject but I'll just hint that probability dictates that given infinite critters (which could be easily generated in a duo Chicken-infested Commoner / Wild Cohort Freak - the commoner pulls a chicken out, the freak takes it as its Wild Cohort's (^n) Wild Cohort...) and IF it is possible (even at a 0.0000(...)01% chance) that a chicken is born "trained", eventually will you pull out infinite chickens that require no training.

This is the power of infinity. Pulled 100(...)00 chickens and a got a "born trained" one? Just pull 100(...)00 more and you'll have two. Hence, infinite chickens guarantee that there will be infinite chickens automatically born with a desire to follow combat commands from any given master.

If your DM is letting you do this, hell, you could even pull infinite chickens who just happen to have eaten the necessary material components, move as gestual components require and make the exact sound of the verbal components of any given spell - even those who were not even created! Infinite chickens = infinite Wishes. As long as it is at all possible for a chicken to make said sounds. But then again not all spells require all kinds of components...

And of course any of this tactics would deplete the matter existent in the universe many, many times before being accomplished. So you better pray for a chicken naturally gifted with plane shift before that happens. And, oh, hope for infinite planes also.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

You only get to choose your animal companion's additional feats for increased HD, not replace any feats it would already have with feats of your choosing. "A 1st-level druid’s companion is completely typical for its kind except as noted below." At 1st level, an Eagle wild cohort would have Alertness.

[Forbiddenwar]

You only get to choose your animal companion's additional feats for increased HD, not replace any feats it would already have with feats of your choosing. "A 1st-level druid’s companion is completely typical for its kind except as noted below." At 1st level, an Eagle wild cohort would have Alertness.

Thus a beautiful dream of munchkinism is ended by a cold hard fact.

[Olo Demonsbane]

Ah well, just something interesting I thought up while working on my Wolf Pack Druid. Thanks for telling me how it doesnt work.

[Saph]

You only get to choose your animal companion's additional feats for increased HD.

Actually, is there anything in the rules that specifically says this? I thought they left the question of who picks the feats unanswered.

[Stegyre]

Actually, is there anything in the rules that specifically says this? I thought they left the question of who picks the feats unanswered.

It's ambiguous who gets to choose an animal's feats, but by RAW, they are not limited to the listed feats, except for "bonus" feats (indicated by a superscript "B" in the animal description):

Feats
The line gives the creature’s feats. A monster gains feats just as a character does. Sometimes a creature has one or more bonus feats, marked with a superscript B (B). Creatures often do not have the prerequisites for a bonus feat. If this is so, the creature can still use the feat. If you wish to customize the creature with new feats, you can reassign its other feats, but not its bonus feats. A creature cannot have a feat that is not a bonus feat unless it has the feat’s prerequisites.

In the bolded language, it's ambiguous whether "you" refers to a GM or a player. Considering that Animal Cohort already expressly requires GM approval (and considering Rule 0), it seems a given that a player cannot freel assign feats without GM approval.

[Darrin]

You only get to choose your animal companion's additional feats for increased HD, not replace any feats it would already have with feats of your choosing. "A 1st-level druid’s companion is completely typical for its kind except as noted below." At 1st level, an Eagle wild cohort would have Alertness.

Well, there's the Warbeast template in MM2, this adds a HD. You'd have to pick an animal companion that has 2HD, such as a wolf or riding dog. The +1 HD would give it another feat, and then you could pick Wild Cohort. Some training time would be required. For a wild animal such as a wolf, it takes a year to train them as a warbeast. For a domestic animal such as a riding dog, 2 months. Even at 2 months per riding dog, it would take a long time to build up a suitable number of wild cohorts (although the Doomsday Pack from KoDT does spring to mind). There's another problem in that each dog would have to use handle animal checks to tell their cohorts what to do (and possibly a language problem if they can't communicate in a language the cohort can understand). There is also no trick for "tell your cohort to do <x>". Your cohort's cohort doesn't have to treat you as his boss/master/etc.

You're actually much better off to buy a bunch of dogs and train them to attack as a pack (again, Doomsday Pack from KoDT). Riding dogs are at least trained to be used in combat from the get-go, this works out to about 75GP per HD. You can get this down to about 2.66 GP per HD with mules, but that doesn't include training costs to get them to attack in combat.

If you want an infinite Wild Cohort combo, it may be better to wait until 3rd level, and pick a 2 HD cohort: riding dog, pony, medium viper snake, or wolf. This gives them +1 HD and a new feat. As a 3 HD creature, they have 3 "character levels", so they can pick up a Wild Cohort that gets +1 HD, rinse and repeat. You still have the problem of how do you tell your cohort's cohort what to do, and possibly the speech problem. Pearl of Speech is a bit of a bargain at 900 GP, but that's quite a bit of money per cohort, and I have no idea if it would work on animals.

So, similar to the Infinite Dragon Cohort trick, but 6 levels earlier. Interesting.

[Bayar]

Wasnt this idea just stolen from the druid thread ? In which you give your animal companion Leadership and wild cohort ?

[Darrin]

Wasnt this idea just stolen from the druid thread ? In which you give your animal companion Leadership and wild cohort ?

Recursive Leadership won't work because each cohort must be 2 HD below its master, so the loop stops as soon as you have a cohort drop below 6 HD. Dragon Cohort gets around this because it allows you to treat the cohort as 3 ECLs lower than it normally would. You have to be at least ECL 9 to get the loop started, though.

Recursive Wild Cohort is a new trick... I'm not familiar with the druid threat you mention, but I don't see how being a druid would be significantly better. However, in the Wild Cohort feat description, it explicitly says it's subject to DM approval. So I expect the loop would shut down after the first iteration.

[Random832]

If your DM is letting you do this, hell, you could even pull infinite chickens who just happen to have eaten the necessary material components,

I just had a flash of inspiration!

Chickens... with levels in Commoner... who are themselves chicken-infested!

[Kylarra]

Recursive Leadership won't work because each cohort must be 2 HD below its master, so the loop stops as soon as you have a cohort drop below 6 HD. Dragon Cohort gets around this because it allows you to treat the cohort as 3 ECLs lower than it normally would. You have to be at least ECL 9 to get the loop started, though.

Recursive Wild Cohort is a new trick... I'm not familiar with the druid threat you mention, but I don't see how being a druid would be significantly better. However, in the Wild Cohort feat description, it explicitly says it's subject to DM approval. So I expect the loop would shut down after the first iteration.

All leadership tricks are subject to DM approval (of course by extension we could rule 0 anything, but that's neither here nor there).

[Johel]

Rules silliness aside, I just got the mental image of an "Lord of the Eagles", a lone neutral evil druid who lives somewhere in a tall, dark hollow tree, with thousands of such birds hanging around.

Peasants and lords, all comes to pay tribute. And for those who don't, the deadly dire eagles fall on them, ripping them appart in a matter of minutes. The idea sounds cool and can make for a good BBEG.

[Drakyn]

Rules silliness aside, I just got the mental image of an "Lord of the Eagles", a lone neutral evil druid who lives somewhere in a tall, dark hollow tree, with thousands of such birds hanging around.

Peasants and lords, all comes to pay tribute. And for those who don't, the deadly dire eagles fall on them, ripping them appart in a matter of minutes. The idea sounds cool and can make for a good BBEG.

That is awesome, and synergizes beautifully with your Tzeentch avatar there. Bonus points if he's high level enough to shapechange into a roc.

[Krrth]

Rules silliness aside, I just got the mental image of an "Lord of the Eagles", a lone neutral evil druid who lives somewhere in a tall, dark hollow tree, with thousands of such birds hanging around.

Peasants and lords, all comes to pay tribute. And for those who don't, the deadly dire eagles fall on them, ripping them appart in a matter of minutes. The idea sounds cool and can make for a good BBEG.

....

Ahem.

While he's not a druid, he does eat druids for lunch.

[Thrawn183]

A New Challenger Appears! The Chicken-Infested Commoner wants to battle. Chicken-Infested Commoner sent out NI CHICKENS! NI CHICKENS used USE UP ALL AIR ON PLANE! It's super-effective! EVERYTHING fainted! NI CHICKENS fainted!

Hmmmm, I wonder how many chickens it would take to form a new star and then a black hole?

[PersonMan]

Hmmmm, I wonder how many chickens it would take to form a new star and then a black hole?

I'm pretty sure there won't be the right amount of gasses to form a star, but a black hole...Well, you'd need some way to make the chickens incredibly dense. I'm not sure the slowly increasing gravity caused by the surging number of chickens could do that.

[Bayar]

Cover chicken in quintencence, stick it halfway into a ring gate, put the other ring gate in front of the first one, cast a spell to fuse both ends of the chicken together, create singularity.

Or make it so that the chickens have a +80 to their escape artist and have them crawl up the ass of the next chicken until they become so dense they form a black hole.

[Oslecamo]

A New Challenger Appears! The Chicken-Infested Commoner wants to battle. Chicken-Infested Commoner sent out NI CHICKENS! NI CHICKENS used USE UP ALL AIR ON PLANE! It's super-effective! EVERYTHING fainted! NI CHICKENS fainted!

Altough this has been posted for some time, I only saw it now. Thanks for giving me a very good laugh.:D

[Optimystik]

Well... he could go down all the other animal trees too.

Like squirrels.



Aren't they adorable?

[Kylarra]

Like squirrels.

http://magiccards.info/scans/en/od/273.jpg

Aren't they adorable?

Good old squirrel mob. I gave it

[FMArthur]

Well... he could go down all the other animal trees too.

So what you effectively accomplish: all the wildlife on the planet is trying to kill the sentient races. I don't see how this is at all different from normal procedure. There is a continual stream of animals, aberrations, magical beasts, outsiders, elementals, and humanoids waging war on civilized society in D&D at all times, and a corresponding stream of adventurers eagerly throwing themselves into harm's way for XP. This is business as usual, not a global threat.

[Kylarra]

So what you effectively accomplish: all the wildlife on the planet is trying to kill the sentient races. I don't see how this is at all different from normal procedure. There is a continual stream of animals, aberrations, magical beasts, outsiders, elementals, and humanoids waging war on civilized society in D&D at all times, and a corresponding stream of adventurers eagerly throwing themselves into harm's way for XP. This is business as usual, not a global threat.

Well, in this particular case, all of the exp from the dead adventurers is being funneled towards one central point, rather than being divided up among the many races.

[Tyndmyr]

I like any level 1 spell that lets you create undead. Since you can only control so many, any extras go free. Make lots and lots of undead.

This isn't so much control a planet as it is "release an undead plague to ravage the planet", but hey...who *wouldn't* want that?