Iron Chef Optimization Challenge in the Playground XXXIV

[Amphetryon]

I believe that is the last of them, unless I missed something in my inbox. Please shoot me an email if I did, given the large number of entries this round.

[Thurbane]

1. Orvalo - Mineral Warrior Azurin Wu Jen 6/Incarnate 2/Dragon Disciple 10/Earth Dreamer 1
2. Jenny - Daelkyr Half-Blood Battle Sorcerer 5/Dragon Disciple 10/Soul Eater 5
3. Salomon - Human Sorcerer 5/Dragon Disciple10/Abjurant Champion 5
4. Tael Yerenor - Silverbrow Human Wizard 5/Frost Mage 5/Dragon Disciple 10
5. Wodan Silverblood - Silverblooded Human Stalwart Battle Sorcerer 10 /Dragon Disciple 10
6. Avi - Illumian Warmage 5/Dragon Disciple 10/Talon of Tiamat 5
7. Asheel - Human Duskblade 5/Ur-Priest 10/Dragon Disciple 5
8. Iujaku - Human Duskblade 3/Fighter 2/Dragon Disciple 10/Kensai 5
9. Balaur - Human Marshal 7/Dragon Disciple 10/Dragon Samurai 3
10. Zordon Blue - Azurin Battle Sorcerer 6/Dragon Disciple 10/Totemist 4
11. Xiroth Stirving - Illumian Dread Necromancer 8/Dragon Disciple 10/Fighter 2
12. Yul'uth-ca - Amphibious Antropomorphic Giant Octopus Stalwart Battle Sorcerer 3/Lion Totem Barbarian 2/Dragon Disciple 10/Half-Dragon Paragon 3
13. Katria - Elf Battle Dancer 5/Dragon Devotee 3/Sword of Righteousness 2/Dragon Disciple 10
14. Son of Edi - Draconic Neanderthal Stalwart Sorcerer 6/Dragon Disciple 10/Wonderworker 3
15. Leofriadinesal - Orc Duskblade 2/Warblade 8/Dragon Disciple 10
16. Bowser - Lizard Folk Fighter//Stalwart Sorcerer 9/Dragon Disciple 10
17. Sam - Warforged Bard 5/Dragon Disciple 10/War Chanter 5
18. Tyrus Blackscale - Human Sorcerer 1/Generic Warrior 6/Dragon Disciple 10/Half-Dragon Paragon 3
19. Samantha - Female Human Spirit Shaman 6/Swanmay 4/Gold Dragon Disciple 10
20. Phaen bol Andras - Anthropomorphic Tiger – Stalwart Battle Sorcerer 4/Dragon Samurai 4/Dragon Disciple 10
21. Dracotaur - Centaur Barbarian 1/Dragon Devotee 3/Dragon Disciple 10
22. Draco Drago - Daelkyr Half-Blood Battle dancer 5/Assassin 1/Soul Eater 1/Dragon Disciple 10/Thayan Gladiator 3
23. Assassin - Human Rogue 5/Monk 2/Assassin 3/Dragon Disciple 10

(If i have missed or misrepresented anything, please let me know).

[Thurbane]

The entry I laboured on, and never got around to submitting through stupid, annoying IRL interruptions, was a Goliath Duskblade 5/Dragon Disciple 10/Soul Eater 4. His main tactics were to smash things with Power Attack, UMD through the Apprentice (spellcaster) feat, steal spells using the Spell Drain feat, and hit and run tactics with Flyby Attack. Not a particularly amazing build, and I just couldn't get it to really synergize properly...

[Venger]

entry 22 is referred to in his writeup as "Draco Drago", not draco dragon, probably the fault of spellcheck.

[OMG PONIES]

23 entries this time around? We may have finally outpaced our judges--I just hope there are a few brave souls up to the challenge.

[Dumbledore lives]

I wish great luck to the judges, the amount of entries is truly terrifying.

[zlefin]

hmm, quite a sizeable selection, though i get the feeling at least one of them is gonna have done something illegal.
hmmm, i should look through these to figure out what I should have done with the rest of the build I didn't write up.
I was gonna do pal 2/monk 2/sorc 1 /DD 10/ warblade 2 (taken at levels 8 and 16-ish for tiger claw). not sure what the last few levels woulda been.
He was gnona be a total bahamtu junkie, seeking to emulate bahamut, including not hoarding gold, so vow of poverty multiattacker; tiger claw maneuvers.
The bloodclaw prc sadly doens't work well with natural claw attacks, and vassal of bahamut doesn't work with vop, so i'm not sure what to fill out with, probably just take some more levels in the base classes.
I never found any divine feats that woulda been worth getting turn undead for. woulda gone straight 14's for stats, a totally MAD hero :P

[Soranar]

I expected more Illumians and abjurant champions.

And not 1 dungeoncrasher? Should I made an effort and submitted my build.

[Narsis]

agh and now i'm kinda mad i didn't do the build i was thinking of. something along the lines of Spellthief 7/DD10/Something else 3. i just couldn't find a good reason for the build to actually take and fully use the DD abilities.

[kestrel404]

@Thurbane - #17, Sam, is no more a 1/2 dragon than any other entry that makes level 10 of DD. It confused me because 1/2 dragons can't enter the PrC.

Also, I stared at Balaur's entry for like 10 minutes until I figured out how he met the pre-reqs for the secret ingredient. This is probably at least partially because of the typo in the most important feat in the build - he's got Magic Touched (not a feat) instead of Magic Training (a Forgotten Realms specific feat). Fortunately, he's got the name right in the Sources section or I wouldn't have figured it out.

[KoboldCleric]

Fewer entries than I expected; still, I certainly wouldn't expect to see scores from me until the second week :)

[Thurbane]

entry 22 is referred to in his writeup as "Draco Drago", not draco dragon, probably the fault of spellcheck.

@Thurbane - #17, Sam, is no more a 1/2 dragon than any other entry that makes level 10 of DD. It confused me because 1/2 dragons can't enter the PrC.

Both updated. Thanks.

[dantiesilva]

Wow that is why i do not judge...have fun judges and thank you for having the patience i never could. To everyone wow your builds surprised me, to others you only made me happy I listened to my instinct and did not go with certain classes. The most surprising to me though is feat selections. I don't think there are many people who have the same thing going and that in and of itself shocked me. Good job everyone.

[rot42]

I pray to the great Cthulhu dragon in the sky to watch over the judges in their anointed task.

[gbprime]

Wow. Seven Battle Sorcerers. That's another record, and one only Iron Chef could be proud of.

[ThiagoMartell]

I'm a step away from giving up on judging. That's a lot of builds.

[Devmaar]

The entry I didn't quite get written up was a Ninja5/Trapsmith2/DD3/Trapsmith1/DD7/Trapsmith2. I called him Quentin Tucker and wrote a kobold army into his backstory.

[123456789blaaa]

Isn't bowser illegal? He's using gestalt.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I was toying with a Suel Arcanamach, Sand caster build; but RL can be such a B**** sometimes.

[DemonRoach]

Isn't bowser illegal? He's using gestalt.

It's a use of alternate UA rules, I believe its not illegal but liable to end up with a heavy elegance penalty.

[Tim Proctor]

Yeah its illegal (banned by competition rules). In that case you grab Stalwart Sorcerer for 2 and Fighter for the rest and get the same build minus some will.

However that would actually open up room for some prestige classes that would have kicked butt, but the point seems to be having him breathe fire, enlarge himself, Jump up and land on people with spikes.

However, its technically illegal so just exclude it from the judging.

[mattie_p]

Please edit your post so as to not reveal your entry. Thanks

[Menteith]

A preemptive thank you for all of the judges. I know that this is a good deal of work, and I wish you the best!

Looks like an awesome and really varied amount of entries. Good luck to everyone.

[Aeryr]

I am impressed that no one took the route that I considered taking for the competition.

A white dragonspawn human into dragon shaman 4 / dragon fire adept 5 / dragon disciple 10

Having breath weapons of every chromatic dragon and strafing breath, both the cold and fire subtype and several metabreath, breath invocations / spells.

The problem was that going dragon shaman 9 / dragon fire adept 10 was ending being better

I might give a shoot to judging sorry for not having judging criteria on, since RL was a bitch last weeks and I was busy as hell.

[dantiesilva]

One problem with your idea. It is illegal you can not be a dragon and go into dragon disciple so it would lose massive amounts of points if not out right disqualified.

[Piggy Knowles]

Some nice ones here!

I'm still without power (39 hours and counting), and that plus a car accident earlier in the week killed any chance of submission.

My idea was a dragonborn warforged DD, making a mecha-themed build. Its fluff was that it was built to scour the five nations for Syberis shards, using a self-constructed Drake Helm that allowed it to use them (ordinarily a warforged wouldn't be able to benefit from dragon shards, since they can't be dragonmarked).

The working build was Warforged Artificer 4/Duskblade 5/Dragon Disciple 10/Spellcarved Soldier 1, although I considered dropping the Spellcarved Soldier and two levels of Duskblade for Uncanny Trickster, since there are some cool skill tricks that work with the build. (Plus, it might keep me from getting dinged in Elegance for dipping Spellcarved Soldier).

Warforged Artificer would give me Tools of War, infusions (hello Bane!), and the ability to create my Drake Helm (Explorers Handbook) and scrolls to cast spells into Syberis dragonshards. That would in turn let me cast spells not on my spell list. DD would give me natural attacks, wings, much needed extra spell slots, and eventually turn me into a dragon for Alter Self shenanigans. Dragonborn was partially for the cool factor, but also improved my stats considerably, saved me a feat on Unarmores Body, and gave me a decent breath weapon to use Entangling Exhalation with. (The 1/day breath weapon DD gives you just doesn't cut it...)

I'm sad I couldn't get it through, as I spent a lot of time on this one and I was pretty happy with it. Oh well... Just goes to show, I shouldn't wait until the last minute!

[Aeryr]

One problem with your idea. It is illegal you can not be a dragon and go into dragon disciple so it would lose massive amounts of points if not out right disqualified.

Dragonspawn are monstrous humanoid, and neither dragon shaman nor dragon fire adept grant the dragon type.

[mattie_p]

Aeryr, I thought about stacking draconic classes as well, never worked out for similar reasons. I didn't end up entering, and would love to judge despite the potential workload, but with an out-of town trip coming up in a few days until after judging closes, I'd have no time nor materials to work. Best of luck, though, to all who entered, and my sincere thanks to the judges, who have their work cut out for them, and probably deserve medals for doing so!

[dantiesilva]

Sorry my mistake was thinking about a different race.

[WhamBamSam]

I considered entering as a Cleric, using Southern Magician and the spontaneous cure/inflict spells to qualify, using DMM Heighten to be technically able to cast spells up to 9th level, then using the bonus slots from Dragon Disciple to cast 9th level spells for real. I didn't write it up because I wasn't sure about the legality (I've heard conflicting things about how DMM Heighten works) and didn't feel confident in my ability to polish it up properly.