Help me break a game.

[Kizara]

Background:

Spoiler

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My good friend has started DMing a group he has been playing with for a very long time.

This group has largely older players (30+) and has a hack and slash playstyle. They are a bunch of powergamers but generally are not actually very good at powergaming, according to my friend.

Me and my friend believe in limiting the metagame (that is, restricting what material we use) is the best way to avoid powercreep and unbalancing new material. We generally just use the first few complete books and core, with new MMs for inspiration.

This new group however, is allowing any 3.5 book (but not Dragon material) and my friend has asked me to come and powergame my best and make a point of what can be done if everything is allowed without consideration.

SO, what I need is the most overpowered build I can manage that showcases what one can do if they really put their mind to abusing new material.

The parameters:
-anything published by wotc for 3.5 is allowed EXCEPT maganize stuff (dragon). Tread lightly on stuff only availible online on their site as well. However, it is PREFERRED if you make use of newer material like ToB or complete crusader.
-character will start level 4-5 and I´m looking for a build that is powerful ASAP and I expect the campaign to end by level 10-12.
-character needs to be somewhat sensical and RPable, so the toothpick of doom (infinate damage crusader tweak) is out, cause its totally silly
-95 stat points, use as you like. so 18=18 points
-its not gestalt, and is generally RAW but anything goes

I´m currently leaning towards the frenzied beseker/lancer build, and I would appreciate it if someone gave me the link to the TO build.

So, stretch your muscles and help me showcase how much cheese one can really have when you put your mind to it.

[Zincorium]

Hm, a good starting point would be:

Druid, anthropomorphic bat from savage species (no LA, no HD, +6 wisdom), add in vow of poverty (so you get bonuses in wildshape as well). Natural spell is vital. I'm sure someone can add some stuff to it, but you get full spellcasting (with massive amounts of bonus spells) and great melee combat skills.

There's a feat in Frostburn which allows you to turn into any magical beast with the cold subtype, there are a few decent ones but the only really broken part is when you make 15th and you can assume the form of a 12-headed cryohydra. There's also a vermin-based one in eberron, not sure if it's worth it.

As always, go go CoDzilla! (with apologies to the blue oyster cult)

[Kurald Galain]

This thread should have all the info you seek.

[TK-Squared]

Buy a Candle of Invocation. Use the Gate ability to gate in an Efeerti. Make it cast you 3 wishes. One of them should be a wish for Candle of Invocation. Wish for anything.

[AKA_Bait]

Background:

Spoiler

Show

My good friend has started DMing a group he has been playing with for a very long time.

This group has largely older players (30+) and has a hack and slash playstyle. They are a bunch of powergamers but generally are not actually very good at powergaming, according to my friend.

Me and my friend believe in limiting the metagame (that is, restricting what material we use) is the best way to avoid powercreep and unbalancing new material. We generally just use the first few complete books and core, with new MMs for inspiration.

This new group however, is allowing any 3.5 book (but not Dragon material) and my friend has asked me to come and powergame my best and make a point of what can be done if everything is allowed without consideration.

Are you sure doing this won't make you the jerk of the group?

Also, yeah, see the link above for the CharOp boards over at wizards if you want something really broken.

[Keymort]

Seriously?

Just create PunPun the kobald.
You cannot lose.

[Afraidofsharpie]

Cleric + DMM [Persistant] + Rightious Might and Divine Power = One Man Team

[Kizara]

Are you sure doing this won't make you the jerk of the group?

Also, yeah, see the link above for the CharOp boards over at wizards if you want something really broken.

No, because everyone basically plays like this, just they aren´t good at it. Its not like they are a bunch of heavy-RPers.

"Seriously?

Just create PunPun the kobald.
You cannot lose."

Like I said, it has to not use dragon material and actually be a playable character.


" Hm, a good starting point would be:

Druid, anthropomorphic bat from savage species (no LA, no HD, +6 wisdom), add in vow of poverty (so you get bonuses in wildshape as well). Natural spell is vital. I'm sure someone can add some stuff to it, but you get full spellcasting (with massive amounts of bonus spells) and great melee combat skills.

There's a feat in Frostburn which allows you to turn into any magical beast with the cold subtype, there are a few decent ones but the only really broken part is when you make 15th and you can assume the form of a 12-headed cryohydra. There's also a vermin-based one in eberron, not sure if it's worth it.

As always, go go CoDzilla! (with apologies to the blue oyster cult"

Some good ideas here, although I´m not sure if savage species (technically a 3.0 book) is allowed. I was already considering getting a druid for the fleshraker dinosaur (MM3, easily the most OP animal companion I´ve ever seen). Turning into cyrohydra´s sounds like a good trick, I´ll check out that feat. Thanks for the referance. Maybe a barbarian dip for speed and rage. Anyone got a good Dzilla build to add to this? I generally do Czilla if I´m playing divine melee.

[Kizara]

Buy a Candle of Invocation. Use the Gate ability to gate in an Efeerti. Make it cast you 3 wishes. One of them should be a wish for Candle of Invocation. Wish for anything.

I havent seen that tweak before, I´ll look into it. Thanks for the idea, although infinate gate/wish cheese isnt really what I was looking for.

Come on, nobody has some ToB cheese to bring up to help me be uber?

[Zincorium]

Come on, nobody has some ToB cheese to bring up to help me be uber?

After they out-ruled the use of white raven tactics on oneself, ToB is actually one of the least broken ones out there. It's only better than standard melee characters, and even then not all of the possible builds (frenzied berserker still wins for power attack cheese).


An important point is that if you're not doing an arena combat, you should be a spellcaster, the out of combat versatility more than outweighs a minor advantage in combat.

Edit:

One of the most amazing cases of broken-ness is the Kazillion-attacking Cleric/Crusader/Ruby Knight Vindicator (PrC from Tome of Battle), which takes advantage of the RKV's Divine Recovery and Divine Impetus abilities to take several of swift actions to recover maneuvers immediately.

Like I said, the ability to use white raven tactics to grant those actions to yourself has been errata'd, you can still give them to your allies but the build you mention specifically requires that to work.

[OverdrivePrime]

Hold your horses there, it's been under an hour since your first post.

There are plenty of threads existing for how to make a completey uber Martial Adept, and as mentioned before, visit the CharOp boards at Wizards for truly disturbing stuff.

One of the most amazing cases of broken-ness is the Kazillion-attacking Cleric/Crusader/Ruby Knight Vindicator (PrC from Tome of Battle), which takes advantage of the RKV's Divine Recovery and Divine Impetus abilities to take several of swift actions to recover maneuvers immediately.

Besides, if you really want to break the game, just play a wizard.

[Kizara]

Hold your horses there, it's been under an hour since your first post.

There are plenty of threads existing for how to make a completey uber Martial Adept, and as mentioned before, visit the CharOp boards at Wizards for truly disturbing stuff.

One of the most amazing cases of broken-ness is the Kazillion-attacking Cleric/Crusader/Ruby Knight Vindicator (PrC from Tome of Battle), which takes advantage of the RKV's Divine Recovery and Divine Impetus abilities to take several of swift actions to recover maneuvers immediately.

Besides, if you really want to break the game, just play a wizard.

To be honest, I have been browsing the charop boards and I´m not really that impressed for some of the builds, and for others they don´t referance classes or other stats that I´ve never heard of.

Thank you for the idea, I´ll look into it. Do you have any recommended maneuvers/feats/level build? I dont have any ToB experience.

Zincorium, this group will not be up to speed on errata, they will be almost certinally using the book as-printed. So they will likely allow the white raven thing you mentioned. This campaign is almost entirely hacknslash, so any skill monkey or other OOC build is mildy pointless. That said, I´m currently looking at that druid build.

[Zincorium]

Hm. In that case, cleric 3/crusader 2 (in any order, possibly reverse the numbers) then Ruby Knight vindicator. The character isn't all that good until you hit 12th and the brokenness begins.

You then use white raven tactics to grant an additional turn on your initiative -1 (the errata is that an 'ally' could not include yourself, and that may be a tough sell anyway)

You then take your turn, and spend two turn attempts and use Divine Impetus to gain two new swift actions, as you can normally only take one. Spend one swift action and another turn attempt to recover white raven tactics. Use the new white raven tactics use to do it all again.

Also, nightsticks, from libris mortis. LOTS of turn attempts. And you will need them. The benefit is you only need to possess the rods to get the additional turn attempts, no need to spend any actions to use them.

Edit:
And since we're on the subject of nightsticks, look up divine metamagic and persistent spell. Use them to give yourself day-long buffs so that you won't ever be unprepared for combat and won't have to waste spells every time.

[Dausuul]

I havent seen that tweak before, I´ll look into it. Thanks for the idea, although infinate gate/wish cheese isnt really what I was looking for.

You can tone it down some if you like. The candle of invocation is just broken no matter how you work it.

For example, buy a bunch of candles of invocation with your starting gold, and summon solars. Solars get wish as a spell-like ability once a day, and SLAs explicitly do not have XP or material component costs. So have each one of them wish you up a magic item in the 150-200K range. It's broken as hell, but it's not infinite-loop cheese unless you sell the items to buy more candles; and it rests on a slightly firmer foundation than the djinni (not efreeti) trick, since the DM could argue that you don't get to pick whether the djinni you summon with the candle is a noble. Only 1% of djinnis can grant wishes, but every solar can do it.

For a concept that fits with this, play a Lawful Good cleric (CoDzilla-style, of course) and make yourself out to be a holy warrior who has been armed and armored by the champions of heaven. I'm pretty sure you can afford one, maybe two candles with your starting cash at that level. Use the first to get a +5 holy greatsword of speed or something similar. If you can afford a second, use it to get +5 adamantine full plate of heavy fortification and greater acid/cold/fire/electricity/sonic resistance.

(Actually, I'm pretty sure I could find much better weapon and armor mods in the Magic Item Compendium, but I'm at work now and all I've got is the online SRD.)

If you're going with the druid build, that also can work. Just ditch the greatsword and make the armor wild and light fortification instead of heavy fortification. You still get +13 AC, DR 3/-, and resistance 30 to all energy damage, plus a 25% chance to ignore critical hits.

[Kizara]

Hm. In that case, cleric 3/crusader 2 (in any order, possibly reverse the numbers) then Ruby Knight vindicator. The character isn't all that good until you hit 12th and the brokenness begins.

You then use white raven tactics to grant an additional turn on your initiative -1 (the errata is that an 'ally' could not include yourself, and that may be a tough sell anyway)

You then take your turn, and spend two turn attempts and use Divine Impetus to gain two new swift actions, as you can normally only take one. Spend one swift action and another turn attempt to recover white raven tactics. Use the new white raven tactics use to do it all again.

Also, nightsticks, from libris mortis. LOTS of turn attempts. And you will need them. The benefit is you only need to possess the rods to get the additional turn attempts, no need to spend any actions to use them.

Edit:
And since we're on the subject of nightsticks, look up divine metamagic and persistent spell. Use them to give yourself day-long buffs so that you won't ever be unprepared for combat and won't have to waste spells every time.

Nice, I will definately use those nightsticks.

Dausuul:

Thank you for the tweak, although as I remember the maximum amount of value of an item you could wish for was 15,000. So that kinda kills the build.

[Dausuul]

Nice, I will definately use those nightsticks.

Dausuul:

Thank you for the tweak, although as I remember the maximum amount of value of an item you could wish for was 15,000. So that kinda kills the build.

That limit (actually 25,000) only applies to nonmagical items. For magic items, the limiting factor is that the XP component of the wish increases by 1 for every 5 gp value of the item. Since SLAs don't have XP components (and even if they did, it would be the solar who'd have to pay it rather than you), you're all good.

[ocato]

You could play the Goliath Chain Fighter. Get Power Attack, EWP: Spiked Chain, Combat Expertise, Imp Trick, Imp Bull rush, knockback, leap attack, shock trooper, etc etc... You could even take the wild talent feat and try to sneak into War Mind without being really all that psionic. You'd be pretter broken hitting two people and throwing them into each other and then tripping them and then hitting them both-- and you still have leap attack/shock trooper for basic chargemonkey fun.

[Darrin]

After they out-ruled the use of white raven tactics on oneself, ToB is actually one of the least broken ones out there. It's only better than standard melee characters, and even then not all of the possible builds (frenzied berserker still wins for power attack cheese).

BassetKing's Infinite Damage trick still works at ECL 13 (actually, you could probably drop that down significantly using a Major Bloodline). Check out the Campaign Smashers thread for viable game-breaking builds in the 1-10 and 11-20 range:

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread...06019&t=897351

Pun-Pun is still the gold standard for breaking the game. The most common Pun-Pun build is ECL 5 and doesn't rely on Dragon magazine material. Master of Many Forms is Comp. Adv. and the Divine Minion template... I'm not sure, but it looks like a Web Enhancement for Magic of Faerun? Sarrukh is from Races of the Dragon and Assume Natural Ability is from Savage Species. The ECL 1 Pun-Pun uses something similar to the Candle of Invocation thing, but uses a DC 25 Knowledge (Religion) check to summon Pazuzu, a CE deity that grants a wish as an attempt to corrupt people. But I'm not sure which tricks they use to max out the Knowledge check. If you wanted to "sneak" a Pun-Pun build by a suspicious DM, you could just play some other scalykind race as a Druidzilla/Master of Many Forms and build your way up to it gradually.

An important point is that if you're not doing an arena combat, you should be a spellcaster, the out of combat versatility more than outweighs a minor advantage in combat.

Yes, spellcasters generally make the best game-breakers, but the problem with most of the spellcasting-Campaign Smashers is they require a lot of research, effort, and prep work, in addition to all the time needed to level up a spellcaster high enough. Some of the builds (in particular Tleilaxu_Ghola's) may require a degree in higher mathematics. If all you want to do is prove you can break the game, then there are simpler combos available at lower ECLs.

Like I said, the ability to use white raven tactics to grant those actions to yourself has been errata'd, you can still give them to your allies but the build you mention specifically requires that to work.

Technically it hasn't been errata'd, it's been Sage Advice'd. WotC hasn't issued any errata on 3.5 material since MM3 (6/29/2006). And while you apparently can't use WRT on yourself (the Sage might want to take a closer look at how the PHB defines "ally"), you can still use it on your allies... and as any game-breaker can tell you, allowing full spellcasters to act more than once per round will break things before you can say Pazuzu three times.

[Eldritch_Ent]

The thing about allowing any and all material is that, generally speaking, *every* book comes out with new spells for you to use. Even books you might not consider- Like complete warrior to the Deities and Demigods book.

All you'll need for this is Frostburn and the Spell Compendium, which has gathered spells from every source.

Pick yourself up some levels of Archmage for aracane reach, learn Shivering Touch, and pick up a Greater rod of "Maximize Spell". One shot dragons, and any party members that get up in your grill.

And yeah. Good luck finding brokens tuff in ToB. It's actually very well balanced, and helps bring Martial classes up in line with spellcasters.

Also, use quote with brackets ][ and a / to end it to quote people. Like-

Quoting is fun!

[Indon]

and as any game-breaker can tell you, allowing full spellcasters to act more than once per round will break things before you can say Pazazu three times.

I'm pretty sure that regardless of how many actions you have, you can still only cast one spell (and one quickened spell) per round, max.

[mostlyharmful]

I'm pretty sure that regardless of how many actions you have, you can still only cast one spell (and one quickened spell) per round, max.

Does the same apply to spell completion and spell activation items? Or command word items?

[Tekraen]

Egh, I feel so noobish.

Pun Pun?

[Dausuul]

I'm pretty sure that regardless of how many actions you have, you can still only cast one spell (and one quickened spell) per round, max.

I am not aware of any rule to this effect...

Egh, I feel so noobish.

Pun Pun?

Pun Pun is a kobold wizard build that relies on a special ability granted by a certain splatbook, which lets the monster which has it, the Sarrukh, give any ability it wants to a reptilian creature, permanently. I'm sure you can see the brokenness of this. By turning into one of these beasties and trading abilities back and forth with his viper familiar, Pun Pun can become a literal god at level 5 (there is a way to do it at level 1, but it requires the assistance of Pazuzu, and a strong argument can be made that Pazuzu would regard this as a trap and not respond to the summons).

[Keld Denar]

I'm a fan of lion-totem barb1/fighter6. Go goliath for powerful build, and get power attack, imp bullrush, and knockback. Take the alt fighter class feature for dungeon crasher from Dungeonscape. It lets you do 8d6 when you bull rush someone into a wall. Knockback gives you a bull rush at the end of every attack. Now you just line someone up with a wall, and full attack them repeatedly dealing tons of damage. To take the most advantage of it, use a spiked chain and take the next level in exotic weapon master for flurry, and invest 12k in boots of speed. That gives you 4 attacks a round at ECL 8 dealing weapon damage + str x1.5 + PA x2 + 8d6 EACH!. Get combat reflexes too, its gravy.

For even cheesier, get fly cast on you (or an item of fly) and charge downward at someone. You knockback them into the ground (could be seen as a horizontal wall) and with pounce, you dungeon crash the bajebus out of them. Its stupid, but hey, its what you asked for.

[Douglas]

Egh, I feel so noobish.

Pun Pun?

Pun-pun is The Most Powerful Character. EVER.

The Sarruhk is from Serpent Kingdoms as I recall.

If you just want to demonstrate the potential when all material is allowed, the classic pun-pun build is achievable at level 5 without using any material from magazines. It is so obviously broken in such an extreme way that you are guaranteed to need a backup character for when the DM vetoes it, however.

For more examples of extreme abuse, check out the Campaign Smashers thread. These are also likely to be banned once you've explained them to the DM, but if all you want to do is drive home the potential for abuse you can just keep going down the list.

For something actually playable though still overpowered, Divine Metamagic Persistent Spell with Nightsticks is a classic that works especially well with the plethora of buffs in the Spell Compendium in addition to Divine Power, Righteous Might, and Divine Favor. Edit: Oh yeah, get a Necklace of Prayer Beads specifically for the Bead of Karma. +4 caster level for 10 minutes/day, use it when you cast all your persistent buffs.

[Solo]

Speaking of insanely powerful characters, what about the Omniscifier?

[Tekraen]

*whistles* Never thought a kobold would make me feel that small.

Thanks for the information.

[SoD]

Thanks for putting the Punpun stuff there. I knew about him (I knew that Punpun was a God a level five...but had to be a Kobold) but had never seen the statistics or had it explained more than what I detailed above.

[squishycube]

Q239
Is this true?

I'm pretty sure that regardless of how many actions you have, you can still only cast one spell (and one quickened spell) per round, max.

Submitted to Simple Q&A thread. I think no such rule exists.

[Darrin]

Thanks for putting the Punpun stuff there. I knew about him (I knew that Punpun was a God a level five...but had to be a Kobold) but had never seen the statistics or had it explained more than what I detailed above.

The ECL 5 version doesn't need to be a kobold. He just needs to be reptilian or scalykind. He's become infamous as a kobold mostly because an all-powerful kobold is funny.

The ECL 1 version using Pazuzu could use a variety of races/classes, but I can't quite track down which combo is the "official" version. The Omniscificer could pull off the same trick at ECL 4.