Iron Chef Optimization Challenge in the Playground XLI

[OMG PONIES]

In the interest of time, I prefer leaving the tie or Chairman tiebreaker.

[Piggy Knowles]

In the interest of time, I prefer leaving the tie or Chairman tiebreaker.

Same here.

[Venger]

Sorry to hear it, IdleMuse.

I'll put it to a vote: What is the preferred method of handling the tie for Bronze, if another judge doesn't come forward? Leave it as a tie, secret ballot, Chairman tie-breaker, something else?

I personally think we should just leave it as a tie. That way, everyone wins. Plus it circumvents hurt feelings and a possible IC VII type incident resulting from hurt feelings on the behalf of the other bronzes.

[The Gilded Duke]

Tie sounds like the best idea all around.

[The Viscount]

I also vote for leaving the tie.

[8wGremlin]

vote for tie...

[Kuulvheysoon]

Don't much matter to me - I'll go with the majority this time and vote tie.

[Amphetryon]

As you wish.

Here's the final tally, with apologies for having selected a Secret Ingredient with (apparently) way more grey area for rules interpretation than intended. Good show, all. Sweet Brown, please feel free to self-identify, since I apparently made a mistake and cleaned out your entry. Apologies, again.

{table=head]Entry|Place|Total
Bjorn Ioreksen by The Viscount|Gold|18.5
Geto the Hermit by Gotterdammerung|Silver|18.25
Lo-Kag Rootwatcher by OMG Ponies|Bronze|17.75
Adishesha by Piggy Knowles|Bronze|17.75
Me'un!tii by Kuulvheysoon|Bronze|17.75
Lou Greene by Macabaret|Sixth|17.5
Erwin Schroedinger by Venger|Seventh|16.25
Verdant by GreenSerpent (HM)|Eighth|16
Abelard Lindsay by Piggy Knowles|Ninth|15.75
Stone Temple Pilot by Kazyan|Ninth|15.75
Sweet Brown|Ninth|15.75
Neewa by 8wGremlin|Twelfth|15.5
Fuji-San by A_S|Thirteenth|15
Dread Roberts by dspeyer|Fourteenth|14.75
Xien Ha Feng by Vaz|Fifteenth|14.5
Borrower of Magic by Seer_of_Heart|Sixteenth|13
Meepo by Muggins|Seventeenth|12.5[/table]

Iron Chef Optimization Challenge In the Playground XLII will be posted shortly.

[GreenSerpent]

I... was definitely not expecting Honourable Mention. Or indeed eighth (possibly seventh as the judge never posted another response) place.

I guess the image of the flying cactus may have rubbed off on people more than I thought...

[Kuulvheysoon]

Nicely done all, with special mention to all medalists!

Huh. I called Ponies's and Venger's entries. Probably not a good sign, on my part.

[The Viscount]

Hooray! Well done everyone. Now that builds have been revealed, I can mention something I wanted to pull off with Bjorn, but couldn't make come together without VoP or flaws. It's actually a pretty neat trick.

Snowcasting adds the [cold] descriptor to any spell. Born of Three Thunders is applicable to any hp damaging [elec] descriptor spell. Using Snowcasting and energy sub elec, that's any hp damaging spell that now has 2 additional saves for effects, and elec and sonic damage. Tack on Mark of the Dauntless (which requires a dragonmark), which I didn't know about before Piggy Knowles' great Parsifal the Fool, and you are immune to the daze that comes with it. One downside to this is that due to Snowcasting taking a move action, you'll need rapid metamagic if you are a spontaneous caster.

That's 5 feats (6 if you include rapid metamagic), but all that for +0 is nice. Just thought it an interesting trick. Also, if you use the right spell, your foe is forced to make all 3 types of saves.

[Piggy Knowles]

Nicely done all, with special mention to all medalists!

Huh. I called Ponies's and Venger's entries. Probably not a good sign, on my part.

Ha, I did the same. Both of them have a particular style that is pretty easy to spot, if you spend a lot of time obsessively reading Iron Chef entries. This IC was fun for me, though, because a lot of people other than the usual suspects entered builds, which kept me guessing on most of the other entries. The last few contests have only had one or two new faces submit, so it was nice to see so many different submissions this time around.

Congrats to all, especially Viscount, Gotterdammerung, Ponies, Khuulveysoon and GreenSerpent! And is this the first time there's been a three-way tie for a medal?

I've got to say, even though Abelard Lindsay didn't place that well, it is one of my favorite builds I've done for this contest. I realize in retrospect that I got so carried away describing some of the domain and artificer tricks it could do, I kind of overshadowed the SI a bit. But I don't actually mind, because I'm super proud of how the build came out.

Adishesha was a lot of fun as well... I knew I wanted to do an Elder Evil build that used Geomancer to remove the downside from the otherwise amazing Deformity (Madness) feat, and when I was flipping through my Lovecraft books for inspiration I re-read Dagon, and knew I had to make an aquatic character that took advantage of drift to operate outside of the water. The whole thing just fell together smoothly, although I took a risk with Divine Spell Power. By RAW I think it doesn't actually work with Spell Versatility, but by a generous reading it might, and it seemed like a good fit. I contemplated just leaving it in as an alternate option and using Arcane Thesis instead, but in the end I decided to risk it in the main build.

Anyhow, there were a lot of great builds this time around. I loved Lo-Kag Rootwatcher (especially as Earth Dreamer is one of my favorite PrCs), and I thought Neewa was a lot of fun. I also really enjoyed how cheeky and over the top Sweet Brown was - I'm a sucker for anyone with the chutzpah to submit something that borders so closely on TO territory.

And a million thanks to Darkcouch, for braving such a huge number of entries, especially as a first time judge!

[Venger]

Nicely done all, with special mention to all medalists!

Huh. I called Ponies's and Venger's entries. Probably not a good sign, on my part.

no shame in that. I can always recognize piggy's and ponies' entires due to the formatting. that's probably how you recognized mine this time around.

congrats, viscount.

[OMG PONIES]

Man, I tried to switch up my formatting a little this time to throw off voracious readers! Nicely done everyone--judges and entries alike. There were a lot of different directions taken in this one, and each brought something different to the table which is what I love about these contests. Out of curiosity, did Abelard's cook draw from my use of Substitute Domain back in the round we did on Divine Crusader, or did they stumble upon it separately? It's a fun way to crack open that little PrC.

[Gotterdammerung]

Congratulations everyone.

I am still a little confused by scoring over the max score in 2 categories, but I'm super happy to get my first judges score with no negative marks. Geto was fun to build. The name came from Amph saying you might typo Getomancer, earlier in the thread.

I also built Sweet Brown. I wasn't surprised I missed a prerequisite. I started on her around 4 hours b4 the deadline. She was largely a silly joke based on the internet meme Sweet Brown. And i am surprised I even got her submitted at all.

[Piggy Knowles]

Out of curiosity, did Abelard's cook draw from my use of Substitute Domain back in the round we did on Divine Crusader, or did they stumble upon it separately? It's a fun way to crack open that little PrC.

Yes, I definitely was inspired by Sortes! I was actually working on a slightly different build for Abelard originally that also involved worshiping the Sovereign Host and using Geomancer to advance artificer infusions, and when I was scrolling through Faiths of Eberron looking at all of the domains worshipers of the Sovereign Host gets access to, I thought man, I absolutely need to pick up Substitute Domain. Sortes had made a pretty strong impression on me (that was actually my first IC), and prior to him I'd never really considered Substitute Domain alongside Divine Crusader.

[The Viscount]

I don't want to be greedy, but any word on medals?

[Amphetryon]

I don't want to be greedy, but any word on medals?

None yet, but I've sent another missive to Savannah in the hopes that she's still interested in producing them.

EDIT: Give her about a week, is the word.