Most difficult character to play

[molten_dragon]

Time to get creative playground. Show me your ideas of what the most difficult to play character you can think of is. I'm not talking about a bad character necessarily, simply one that's hard to play because of the massive amounts of bookkeeping involved, or some other factor.

My first idea is a druid with wild cohort and leadership, and chooses another druid as their cohort for leadership. Assuming you ignored the followers, you'd be controlling bare minimum 5 creatures every combat (2 druids + 2 animal companions + 1 wild cohort). If you started summoning, it could get out of hand ridiculously fast.

[Mystic Muse]

Illusion mastery wizard with the collegiate wizard feat. There are probably a few other feats to get extra spells too. Then there are PRCs that add spells to your spellbook.

Say hello to a minimum of 132 spells. That's before adding in spells from other spellbooks and cantrips (And you know every cantrip ever made from any source)

It's possible I'm reading the class slightly wrong though.

[Amphetryon]

Focused Conjurer 3/Master Specialist (Conjuration) 4/Magus of the Arcane Order 10/Geometer 3//Psion (Telepath) 10/Thrallherd 10.

EDIT: Clarity.

[Mystic Muse]

Oh yeah, Gestalt could be a bookkeeping nightmare.

[Sliver]

My first idea is a druid with wild cohort and leadership, and chooses another druid as their cohort for leadership. Assuming you ignored the followers, you'd be controlling bare minimum 5 creatures every combat (2 druids + 2 animal companions + 1 wild cohort). If you started summoning, it could get out of hand ridiculously fast.

Dread necromancer with Undead Leadership gets you much more bookkeeping than a druid.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I made a level 24 Illithid Savant for a game a while back. I had 20th level wizard, 20th level psion, a few Chokers' extra standard actions, Shadow Pounce, a few Blink Dogs' free-action teleports, a Goristro's two-handed fists, Leap Attack, Pounce, and a Frenzied Berserker's Supreme Power Attack, with Improved Rapidstrike, and 10th level Kensai enchantments on my fists. There was quite a bit more, but I'm pretty sure the only thing the DM didn't let me have was the Tarrasque's only-a-wish-can-kill-it Regeneration. I would get about eight full attacks every round, power attacking with leap attack and Valorous Speed fists on the first full attack, and teleporting around to every opponent within sight for the rest of the round. Even though I got ten attacks/round, nothing survived past the fourth 600+ damage hit.

Then I had to level up to 25, which gave me another +1 BAB. Time to recalculate all those Power Attack numbers, regular charge starting out, flying so no Leap Attack, no power attack bonus if they have Elusive Target, etc. I must have spent over an hour just recalculating my attack and damage chart. The next few times I leveled up, I didn't even bother updating any of it, it wouldn't have even mattered.

[Mystic Muse]

Dread necromancer with Undead Leadership gets you much more bookkeeping than a druid.

Can somebody remind me if it's this class or True necromancer that's the bad one?

And if the good one is dread necromancer, can somebody inform me of which book it's in?

[Octopus Jack]

Can somebody remind me if it's this class or True necromancer that's the bad one?

And if the good one is dread necromancer, can somebody inform me of which book it's in?

I believe the Dread Necromancer is the good one, its from heroes of horror

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Dread Necromancer is in Heroes of Horror, and I've played one of those too.

I had a Half-Golem Curst under my control. Curst are immune to turn and rebuke attempts from clerics and paladins, so my Dread Necromancer controlled it just fine. A Curst will always keep coming back unless you use a Remove Curse spell on its remains, and Half-Golem made it outright immune to that, so it was the perma-pet. I also had an Arrow Demon and Cave Troll Skeletons with Awaken Undead, some sort of mount I don't remember what, a Spellstitched Slaymate that was the character's own daughter, and the character's Tainted Minion brother was his undead cohort. When my turn came everyone would get up to go make a snack.

[Yuki Akuma]

The True Necromancer is the crap one, as it's a Mystic Theurge, but worse.

Dread Necromancer is like the Warmage or Beguiler.

[Ernir]

Eh, some form of a triple-9 summoner would be on the top of the bookkeeping nightmare list, I guess...

The one I have found most mechanically difficult to play is my VoP character, though. Being flat-out disallowed to use magic items is difficult at the mid levels.

[Project_Mayhem]

Anything from FATAL

[Vangor]

Single character without purposefully making matters more difficult for yourself would probably be the Fochlucan Lyrist or Arcane Hierophant. The Lyrist requires 2 Rogue/1 Rogue/1 Druid and 6 more class levels to meet minimum requirements, progresses Bardic Music, progresses Arcane and Divine casting, and has a mass of skills alongside the animal companion of the Druid if you care. The Hierophant progresses both Arcane and Divine casting as well as the familiar and animal companion lines of its now one companion, which to me is more effort than the skills and music or the lackluster companion of the Lyrist.

[The Shadowmind]

How about this Factotum 11/Chameleon 7/Binder 1(improved binding feat)/Totemist 1//Wizard 13/ Mage of the arcane order 7/ Taking MotAO whenever not taking Chameleon levels.
Could get more complicated with more PrCs.
So with this you have to keep up with 2 soulmelds(unless using feats to get more), a vestige of level one to two, inspiration points, Chameleon spells for likely both arcane and divine spell when you spell list is pretty much Yes for spells up to fifth level(Bonus feat -extra spell changing the spell each day), normal wizard spells, and the MotAO spell pool.

[Amphetryon]

Single character without purposefully making matters more difficult for yourself would probably be the Fochlucan Lyrist or Arcane Hierophant. The Lyrist requires 2 Rogue/1 Rogue/1 Druid and 6 more class levels to meet minimum requirements, progresses Bardic Music, progresses Arcane and Divine casting, and has a mass of skills alongside the animal companion of the Druid if you care. The Hierophant progresses both Arcane and Divine casting as well as the familiar and animal companion lines of its now one companion, which to me is more effort than the skills and music or the lackluster companion of the Lyrist.

[Quibble] There are ways to get into Fochlucan Lyrist with practically no multiclassing. Certain ACFs for Rangers could allow a Rilkan Ranger 10 entry, if I remember correctly. It's not the optimal way, but it's less 'difficult'. [/Quibble]

[Lhurgyof]

Then I had to level up to 25, which gave me another +1 BAB. Time to recalculate all those Power Attack numbers, regular charge starting out, flying so no Leap Attack, no power attack bonus if they have Elusive Target, etc. I must have spent over an hour just recalculating my attack and damage chart. The next few times I leveled up, I didn't even bother updating any of it, it wouldn't have even mattered.

You get epic bonuses on attack rolls, not extra BAB.

[Choco]

lvl 20 Psion/Thrallherd with 2 thralls, a lvl 19 Thrallherd and a lvl 18 Thrallherd. Each of them has 2 thralls, repeat until the character levels get below 15, in which case only 1 thrall each until levels drop below 5. Also, every last one of them that is lvl 6 or higher also has leadership, with each cohort of high enough level being a Thrallherd with leadership. All that plus the thousands of believers. Have fun keeping track of all that

[DragoonWraith]

Artificer. Far and away, Artificer. No class has a larger disparity between floor (a terribad Tier 5) and ceiling (a Tier 1 to give any Wizard a run for his money), and no class requires more game knowledge to get up to high levels of power.

Also, just for the purposes of getting a obscene number of things to sort out every morning, Binders, Factotums, Meldshapers, and prepared casters are all problematic. Gestalt? Binder/Wizard/Anima Mage//Factotum/Totemist. Congratulations, you have ~50 spells, ~3 Vestiges, ~2 Pact Augmentations, ~2 Arcane Dilletante spells, and ~5 soulmelds with ~3 chakra binds to decide. Every morning.

[Sliver]

I don't think most people prepare all their spells every morning from scratch... I think most have a default set with most of the spell slots empty, so it shouldn't be too hard to handle in a few minutes...

[balistafreak]

I don't think most people prepare all their spells every morning from scratch... I think most have a default set with most of the spell slots empty, so it shouldn't be too hard to handle in a few minutes...

It is usually a better idea to not prepare all of one's spells at the same time, if possible. (Divine spellcasters have to, because they can only pray once a day, but arcane casters just have to sit down for a bit.)

However, just like how the majority of (bad) wizards out there take Fireball even when the campaign doesn't call for it, the majority of (bad) wizards out there prepare Fireball even in a highly tense diplomatic mission.

[ShadowsGrnEyes]

ignoring level because you can always make things more complicated when you just up the level.

Summon focused buffing cleric. . . in simplicity of concept, without going overboard. . . summoning massive amounts of creatures then having to apply various stat adjustments to each one as you buff them all would be a bit heavy on bookeeping. . . you could exagerate this with prestige classes and dips but for the base i think this would be it

[Sliver]

Divine spellcasters have to, because they can only pray once a day

No they don't. They can refresh their spell slots once per day at prayer time, but they can fill them later just as wizards can. Nothing in the rules says they can't leave spell slots open, and it says they prepare just as wizards prepare, except as noted. It is not noted that they can't fill spell slots later, only that they can refresh them at a specific time of day.

[balistafreak]

I am a numbskull. Disregard that, carry on.

[Vangor]

[Quibble] There are ways to get into Fochlucan Lyrist with practically no multiclassing. Certain ACFs for Rangers could allow a Rilkan Ranger 10 entry, if I remember correctly. It's not the optimal way, but it's less 'difficult'. [/Quibble]

Hrmm, no clue what the Rilkan is. However, seems unlikely they would get Divine and Arcane casting as well as Bardic Knowledge and Bardic Music (not a requirement, but seeing as this is the reason for the Lyrist as opposed to Hierophant or even an MT, seems pointless to ignore) plus the ability to speak Druidic. Anyone who can do this with one class should just not bother with Lyrist.

Of course, what seems reasonable enough is for a Bard to actually possess evasion anyway, maybe steal away countersong/fascinate or both to provide evasion at 2 or 4. It is the only high Reflex base class I know of which never gets the ability.

[Amphetryon]

Hrmm, no clue what the Rilkan is. However, seems unlikely they would get Divine and Arcane casting as well as Bardic Knowledge and Bardic Music (not a requirement, but seeing as this is the reason for the Lyrist as opposed to Hierophant or even an MT, seems pointless to ignore) plus the ability to speak Druidic. Anyone who can do this with one class should just not bother with Lyrist.

Of course, what seems reasonable enough is for a Bard to actually possess evasion anyway, maybe steal away countersong/fascinate or both to provide evasion at 2 or 4. It is the only high Reflex base class I know of which never gets the ability.

Rilkan is a Race from Magic of Incarnum; one of the Racial ACFs gives Bardic Knowledge - though on review that's Rogue, so Rogue 2/Ranger 9 might be needed.

Magic in the Blood, Sword of the Arcane Order, and other Feats can be used to qualify for the Arcane Casting requirement, and Mystic Ranger allows for a better casting progression.

[Vangor]

Rilkan is a Race from Magic of Incarnum; one of the Racial ACFs gives Bardic Knowledge - though on review that's Rogue, so Rogue 2/Ranger 9 might be needed.

Magic in the Blood, Sword of the Arcane Order, and other Feats can be used to qualify for the Arcane Casting requirement, and Mystic Ranger allows for a better casting progression.

Seems reasonable, though from all appearances this is merely meeting the requirements (minus Druidic) while actually lacking Arcane casting progression in terms of additional spells as well as having no Bardic Music ability. I suppose if a person was determined not to do a third multiclass they could about halve their total assortment of spells and ignore the Lyrist part of the PrC in order to qualify to make this less difficult, but you could just as well kill your own familiar and never care to ready spells as a really simple Wizard to play.

[SurlySeraph]

The Omnicaster would have some pretty hellish bookkeeping, though Choco's Leadership-stacking Thrallherds would probably be worse.

[Dairun Cates]

Here's what you do. You go into any point buy system, and you take 1 rank in a bunch of cheap powers and as many random addictions and phobias as you can for bonus points. For some systems, buy your stats at weird prime numbers. Add in ALL the optional mechanics rules for GURPS and put yourself at weird height and weight proportions.

After all that, if you can keep up with all the stuff, you're probably pretty dang good at this...

Of course, you could also play Burning Wheel and take something like 50 skills at the lowest you can take them and keep up with all the challenges for each skill.

[Knaight]

It appears that D&D was not specified.

Anyone in FATAL.

[CockroachTeaParty]

I'll second artificer. It's just... so complex. So much to keep track of: money, time, craft points, XP, CL for various spells, CL for items made in the past, infusions, action points, construct minions...