Silly/crazy character concepts?

[SangoProduction]

I want a distraction. And I decided the distraction will be making characters in Spheres of Power.
The problem is just what characters to make.

And so I bring the question to you guys. I'd love some really quite difficult or silly characters concepts.

[zlefin]

The dreaded landwhale?

Sharknado!

[Vizzerdrix]

Hmm... Well I am working on a gnome DFI bard that uses the animal friend feat to get a bunch of weasels for their ability to latch on and deal damage automatically. I haven't tinkered with the idea much though.

[Bonzai]

Some of my fun/crazy builds include;

1. The crazy cat lady: maximizes the number of animal companions she has (all cats), and abuses the share soulmeld feat.

2. Jump good: abuses the jump skill to insane levels. Fights like a dragoon from final fantasy. Except that he can also run fast enough to break the sound barrier.

3. Fowl Souls: fun with the chicken infested feat and Necrocarnum for huge essentia pools.

4. Clappy: A handless, one legged shadow pouncer build.

5. Effective Hexblade?: my attempt at making an effective hexblade build.

6. Judo Gnome: A dex monkey gnome that throws people... a lot.

7. You have 5 seconds to comply: warforged artificer that abuses mass magic missiles getting gun style.

8. Master of disguise: changeling factotum that can pretend to be any thing or any one.

9. Brains... it's what's for dinner: half illithid psy Warrior illithid Savaant that is a grapple specialist.

10. Effective spell thief?: like the hexblade build, my attempt at an effective spell thief.

Bonus: my Truenamer build that mostly worked.

[Crake]

See what absurd things you can achieve at level 1 with a mix of feats, casting traditions, and other means of gaining bonus caster levels to your abilities. I remember there was a build we made that allowed someone to make hurricane winds or something like that at level 1

[Tzardok]

I once had an idea for a spellcaster who specialized in spells that hurt people when they hit him, like Death Shield, Fire Shield and so on. He was supposed to be a barbarian/sorcerer class combination with con as the highest attribute for added survivability who casts his spells and then charges unarmored into battle.

[Vizzerdrix]

Ooh! A tibbit Goliath barbarian. Doable by level 6 for those e6 games.

[SangoProduction]

Adapting to Pathfinder. (Let's also assume an exceptionally permissive DM, for whom you bought the double decker pizza.)

1. The crazy cat lady: maximizes the number of animal companions she has (all cats), and abuses the share soulmeld feat.

1. Female Catfolk with 3 Wisdom and Adopted trait. Beastmastery sphere to "tame" 1 common cat per HD. Greater Trainer x3 to make that 4x HD. Pet talent for a cat familiar. Animal Companion talent for a (lion) companion, since regular cats aren't valid animal companions. (Does not stack with Druid.)
83 cats at level 20.

Well, Faithful Friend talent lets each of them Aid Another for total bonus of 3 + 1/5 HD, with 4 cats per the 9 squares around/on you, if you don't size up, for a max of 36 cat allies, granting (a max of) +108 to any before scaling is involved. (Although they only average +77 to AC or Attack due to their attack bonus. +103 for stealth at 95% success.)
You'll have enough "tamed" cats by level 9.
The issue is actually getting them all to actually aid you.
But Rapid Handle reduces that action to swift... and then Hands-On-Handler reduces this an additional step (explicitly stacking), if done in the same turn after doing "an action similar to a Handle Animal trick" like... Aid Another.
So you've now got free action Handle Animal.
And now you need to use one of the various methods of reducing Aid Another action, if you want to use it on yourself (and why wouldn't you, as a crazy cat lady.)
Accomplice lets any threatening animal ally make an immediate action aid another if you perform a combat maneuver. Pretty difficult since it requires 4 of them in the space, plus your lion, but that's still a...

But we can take this further with Purring feats introduced in the Catgirl Handbook. Cooperating lets you share a teamwork feat you meat the prerequisites for while you're purring.
Coordinated Reposition lets everyone take immediate action 5ft steps when everyone does. That is horrifying.
Ensemble (explicitly) lets them Aid you on perform checks as an immediate action... Though only 4 can grant the bonus, but even with a +0 to it, there's a 50% chance to hit the Aid Another DC, and with 36 cats, you're guaranteed to cap it out for an additional +16 in addition to the +54 that they can give normally. Which alone is twice the DC to attract extraplanar beings for your performance, and almost 3 times more than is required to develop a national reputation. Even with 0 ranks in perform, and -5 charisma.
Exceptional Aid increases the baseline Aid Another bonus from 2 to 4. Adding another +36 to your perform checks (by level 9) or +54 to AC/Attack. (+68 to stealth checks... which, at this point, might warrant sharing between your swarm.)

Back to purring feats. Improving lets you spread an Enhance sphere effect to your allies for 1 round (each round that you purr).
With Enhance Equipment, Natural Enhancement, and Greater Enhance Equipment, by CL 9, you can grant a +4 to their attack rolls, raising their chance of success on Aid Another from 75% to 95%.
Jokingly: Lighten also allows your cats to float, giving you potentially another 9 squares right above you, plus more use out of the square you already have, although moving them would be somewhat annoying. (Might actually have a use for Telekinesis sphere)

Stalking (purring) grants all your cats partial cover while adjacent to another creature (you, or your cats), and may move at full speed while stealthed at no penalty.

Taking the Light sphere, and Encompassing Light talent gives +1 or +2 size. Which obviously multiplies how many cats we can have around us. Also, just imagine this Large of light being orbited by a swarm of cats - the shadows dancing across the walls as she beats your face in.

The Energy Resistance talent from Protection sphere would be pretty essential since ... well ... fireball. It kinda ruins your day. Probably still will with the 3 hp on normal cats. If you sacrifice half your cats, you can raise that to 7-8 hp, plus the other benefits of HD, but you sacrificed half your cats which isn't part of the build.

On to War sphere. Totemic Aura, gained by drawback, because of course. Intercept lets you swap places with an adjacent ally, changing the target of an attack. Invigorating Totem grants your cats up to your CL in temporary HP, without sacrificing any cats.
Totem Of The Dragonslayer...provides +1 to reflex vs AoE, and negates all damage on successful save, which is the important bit. Some of your cats will survive, and the +1 is a +5% survival rate increase.

.

Wow. Now for the actual class itself.
Bard. Yup. Bard.
With Champion Bard, Purrsician, and Beast Piper archetypes.

Purrsician grants bonus purring feats every odd level, and a buff to allies in their purring area, and a wider purring area.
Champion bard simply lets you select any talent with the talents you gain, and enables Beast Piper.

Beast Piper grants you beast mastery sphere talent every odd level. And grants the wildfriend pastorale bardic masterpiece, which lets you summon cats, which can be explicitly convinced to stay past the duration... well, a cat... once per day... But summoning really big cats when your true swarm gets low, while you rebuild is valid.
Oh, and it makes the cats more loyal.

So, by level 9, you've got 5 purring feats, 5 beastmastery talents, and 6 generic talents to be spent as you wish. Not counting drawbacks.
Plus 5 feats from regular progression.

That gets you all the desired purring feats, + Rumbling, + 1 more of your choice. 35 ft radius, and can have 3 purrs active
Using all 5 beastmastery talents, you get the base sphere + 3x Greater Trainer + Faithful Friend. Rapid Handler and Hands-on-Handler will use up 2 generic talents.
3 more talents on the Enhancement talents.
2 feats on War sphere. (Not taking Invigorating Totem or Intercept)
1 feat on one of the Aid Another action reducers.
And 2 feats on Pet and Animal Companion talents.

Protection sphere would be possible if you took drawbacks.

Light sphere won't be needed until later levels, because level 9 was chosen for the cats you can have near you anyway.

WOW! That was all actually possible. I was pretty sure I would have to cut almost everything in order to do half the stuff I saw as a good use for the build.

EDIT: At later levels, you could invest into the Death sphere, and also reanimate up to 5x your CL in HD of cats. Which is technically more cats than the base build grants, if you went for a full caster, but... Eh. Just do both at a bard. No one will mind.

[Jack_Simth]

Alternate route for the crazy cat lady:
Fey Adept with the Permanent Image advanced talent, applying it to create reality minions.

[SangoProduction]

Alright, a tibbit with the Goliath barbarian racial substitution level. Adapted to PF...

Ooh! A tibbit Goliath barbarian. Doable by level 6 for those e6 games.

Kitsune with Superior Shapeshifter racial trait, gives it Fox Shape, which lets it take on the appearance of a fox. Technically this fox can be of any size from Tiny to Large, but a common sense reading says it must be tiny. And to replicate what the tibbit can do, we'll do that as well. Fluff the fox to be a cat. Now you've got the perpetual tiny, non-threatening kitty form

For class, I'm going with the Spheres' Shifter, with the Apex Shifter archetype, since it upgrades to swift action shapeshift at level 5. Also it's pretty objectively better than the base "tongues" Shifter.

For talents, in the Alteration sphere, take Size Change (to grow, obviously) and Animalistic Transformation (to be a cat).
You obviously lose the effects of transforming into the kitty form (which had a -4 penalty to strength), and gain a +2 to strength from the size growth. So that's a +6 net change of strength, which is basically Rage.

Object Transformation has the Construct Plating Trait to get that DR / Adamantine

You can only have 1 polymorph effect on you at once, but you can explicitly choose to simply let the new form override the old form, so it is strictly a 1 move or swift action to start your "mountain rage".

The... uh... duration is slightly different. Here, you can last for 10 min / level up to 1 hour / level, while barbarians might last a couple seconds per level. I don't think that's a bad change, and she doesn't either, but you can always dismiss it early if you prefer.

I once had an idea for a spellcaster who specialized in spells that hurt people when they hit him, like Death Shield, Fire Shield and so on. He was supposed to be a barbarian/sorcerer class combination with con as the highest attribute for added survivability who casts his spells and then charges unarmored into battle.

One route to go: Armorist with Blaster template, with Boxing sphere to trigger your entire salvo on attacks. But that's not quite the same, since you are giving up you're giving up your attack to make the reaction attack.

So, Destruction sphere, Retributive Blast. Lets you spend a spell point to immediate action blast the enemy for 1d6 damage / 2 CL, plus blast type's effects, including potentially admixtured effects.
On being missed with an attack, admittedly. But really, it's not hard to ask the DM to change that so that it's only on being hit.

I'd probably go Elementalist, since... reasons. It's got decent BAB and HD without sacrificing your gimmick's effectiveness. (Certainly more than going half sorcerer / barbarian)

Or, if we are maintaining the more "reactive tank" aspect go with Sage, and get all those benefits, plus getting to select the Berserker sphere as a talent, which lets you have 3x BAB temporary hit points as a free action every round. (Even gets unarmored AC bonus, and massive boosts to Constiution)

Then take the Guardian sphere, which gives enemies incentives to attack you over your allies, plus a delayed damage pool.

For your magic tradition, you need at least 2 general drawbacks, including Draining Casting (take 1 nonlethal hp drain each time you use at least 1 spell point).
This lets you take the Fortified Casting boon to use Con as your casting stat.

[Endless Rain]

Go with a classic, the aggressively hegemonizing ursine swarm. (AKA a character who has a pet bear, can turn into a bear, and can summon even more bears, preferably with as many bear-related abilities as possible.)

[SangoProduction]

Go with a classic, the aggressively hegemonizing ursine swarm. (AKA a character who has a pet bear, can turn into a bear, and can summon even more bears, preferably with as many bear-related abilities as possible.)

Not going to lie, that's a real easy one, if we just go for the straight forward answer. (Apex Shifter with Swarm Shape and Animalistic Transformation, and Conjuration sphere, with maybe some Beastmastery sphere. And perhaps the Mind sphere would be useful too, depending on if you want them fighting for you.)

The dreaded landwhale?

Sharknado!

Human, Con 3, and an item from the Stronghold book... The Ever Full Larder? Just grab a couple dozen meals a day, and you'll get a landwhale eventually.
Then again... D&D really has no mechanical means of gaining weight. I'm not sure this is possible without polymorph. Or Disguise kit.

The simplest solution to Sharknado is... bleach applied directly to the brain.
But, slightly more seriously, the Tornado Companion feat for Weather sphere. Which requires effective druid level of 7. This gives us our base. We could now just refluff it, and that'd be that.

But no, we can't leave it at that! Conjuration sphere gets us a companion with a "serpentine" base form (which is also "fish-like"). However, that base form has not only good Reflex, but the highest dexterity. Which is bad for us. Whirlwind is a reflex save to free themselves.
So we need to justify the Ooze base form. And I mean, have you seen when any of the sharks impact at 200+ miles per hour? I'm pretty sure that justifies it.
Aquatic, Beast, and Unwilling templates. They are going to be very pieced off. Let them be.
I mean it's not as though you can bite literal wind... what in the heck are D&D rules again?

Back on topic...
The sharks gets a free (form) talent. We can pick Draconic, to give them all breath weapons. That makes them much more terrifying and dangerous... But also much more likely to hurt you (and your precious tornado). It also doesn't fit the lore.
Raging and/or Ravenous would both be very fitting.
Explosive Companion...makes a lot of sense, considering...you know... sharks flying at very high speeds before impact...tend to explode.

But that is just one. We need more for a true sharknado! So, we are going pre-USOP with our casting traditions to pick up the Consistent Companions drawback, which forces them all to be the same, but grants you an Extra Companion.
And Material Weakness to let them be unsummoned by silver weapons to pick up an Extra Companion.
And then Object Bound, which requires us to have a dedicated item for each shark (I vote for pairs of underwear). But we get an Extra Companion.

I think the sharks are fine for now, back to the tornado companion. Right now it's Large, which is...Large, but it's definitely not multiple stories high, and a real force of destruction.

Alteration sphere: Lingering Transformation (70+ minute transformation should be enough), Giant Traits (for Rock Throwing, which a GM could allow for use of shark blobs), Size Change (obviously, since it helps in literally every way possible), Undead Body (DR 5/Slashing to protect against the sharks, just in case).
If you've got traits left over give it like...tentacles with grab. Just in case you really definitely do not want to let an enemy go.

And then, after you've applied the transformation, it could be as large as Huge. Still not incredible. But it's not until level 15 that we can pick up Size Mastery.

So instead, we'll look to Light sphere's Encompassing Light. Black Light so that it's not shedding actual light, but does still have the effect. Lingering Glow for 70+ minute "light."
And finally Encompassing Light, which grants... reach and damage as if it were 1 category larger... well sod, that's not actually useful. I mean, a very, very generous reading includes the reach of the whirlwind itself.

But anyway, any extra resources can be spent on Extra Companions for more Sharks to toss into the whirlwind. Greater Summoning may be taken if you want to recast the shark blobs less often.

And that should be... wow that was a lot... But that should be it.
These do just kind of run away on their own. This was supposed to be a brief joke response before bed.

[Curbludgeon]

I don't know anything about Spheres of Power, but have begun getting back into 3.5/P and have a couple of goofy ideas I've been wanting to stat for which I barely know where to start.

The nested theurge: A Hibkha Vizier/(Kobold Press')Theurge/Amplifier who's working on their Thoth impression, with their attack dog cohort: an Aberrant Moonlight Meditant (or maybe Deadly Fist) Metaforge

The hive mind: a party with examples of every class with the Collective class feature: Tactician, Zealot, Vitalist, Strategos, Highlord. Are there others?

[Bonzai]

1. Female Catfolk with 3 Wisdom and Adopted trait. Beastmastery sphere to "tame" 1 common cat per HD. Greater Trainer x3 to make that 4x HD. Pet talent for a cat familiar. Animal Companion talent for a (lion) companion, since regular cats aren't valid animal companions. (Does not stack with Druid.)
83 cats at level 20.

Well, Faithful Friend talent lets each of them Aid Another for total bonus of 3 + 1/5 HD, with 4 cats per the 9 squares around/on you, if you don't size up, for a max of 36 cat allies, granting (a max of) +108 to any before scaling is involved. (Although they only average +77 to AC or Attack due to their attack bonus. +103 for stealth at 95% success.)
You'll have enough "tamed" cats by level 9.
The issue is actually getting them all to actually aid you.
But Rapid Handle reduces that action to swift... and then Hands-On-Handler reduces this an additional step (explicitly stacking), if done in the same turn after doing "an action similar to a Handle Animal trick" like... Aid Another.
So you've now got free action Handle Animal.
And now you need to use one of the various methods of reducing Aid Another action, if you want to use it on yourself (and why wouldn't you, as a crazy cat lady.)
Accomplice lets any threatening animal ally make an immediate action aid another if you perform a combat maneuver. Pretty difficult since it requires 4 of them in the space, plus your lion, but that's still a...

But we can take this further with Purring feats introduced in the Catgirl Handbook. Cooperating lets you share a teamwork feat you meat the prerequisites for while you're purring.
Coordinated Reposition lets everyone take immediate action 5ft steps when everyone does. That is horrifying.
Ensemble (explicitly) lets them Aid you on perform checks as an immediate action... Though only 4 can grant the bonus, but even with a +0 to it, there's a 50% chance to hit the Aid Another DC, and with 36 cats, you're guaranteed to cap it out for an additional +16 in addition to the +54 that they can give normally. Which alone is twice the DC to attract extraplanar beings for your performance, and almost 3 times more than is required to develop a national reputation. Even with 0 ranks in perform, and -5 charisma.
Exceptional Aid increases the baseline Aid Another bonus from 2 to 4. Adding another +36 to your perform checks (by level 9) or +54 to AC/Attack. (+68 to stealth checks... which, at this point, might warrant sharing between your swarm.)

Back to purring feats. Improving lets you spread an Enhance sphere effect to your allies for 1 round (each round that you purr).
With Enhance Equipment, Natural Enhancement, and Greater Enhance Equipment, by CL 9, you can grant a +4 to their attack rolls, raising their chance of success on Aid Another from 75% to 95%.
Jokingly: Lighten also allows your cats to float, giving you potentially another 9 squares right above you, plus more use out of the square you already have, although moving them would be somewhat annoying. (Might actually have a use for Telekinesis sphere)

Stalking (purring) grants all your cats partial cover while adjacent to another creature (you, or your cats), and may move at full speed while stealthed at no penalty.

Taking the Light sphere, and Encompassing Light talent gives +1 or +2 size. Which obviously multiplies how many cats we can have around us. Also, just imagine this Large of light being orbited by a swarm of cats - the shadows dancing across the walls as she beats your face in.

The Energy Resistance talent from Protection sphere would be pretty essential since ... well ... fireball. It kinda ruins your day. Probably still will with the 3 hp on normal cats. If you sacrifice half your cats, you can raise that to 7-8 hp, plus the other benefits of HD, but you sacrificed half your cats which isn't part of the build.

On to War sphere. Totemic Aura, gained by drawback, because of course. Intercept lets you swap places with an adjacent ally, changing the target of an attack. Invigorating Totem grants your cats up to your CL in temporary HP, without sacrificing any cats.
Totem Of The Dragonslayer...provides +1 to reflex vs AoE, and negates all damage on successful save, which is the important bit. Some of your cats will survive, and the +1 is a +5% survival rate increase.

Lol, took me a bit literally when I said cat lady. Here was my take.

Greta The Crazy Cat Lady

Mongrel Folk Druid 1/sorcerer 1/ wizard 1/ totemist 2/ Beast Master 10
(wizard and sorc use the alternative class features that swap out familiars for animal companions).

Feats: Skill Focus (handle animal), share soulmeld, bonus essentia, expanded capacity, and Wild Cohort. Add on Incarnum feats for extra essentia.

This character, being a mongrel folk, is very insecure and more than a little crazy. She will never refer to herself as an individual. Instead she will project her thoughts and emotions through her cats. Each cat will represent a different aspect of her personality. One will represent her aggression, one her fun loving side, and so on... A conversation with her could very well go something like this; "Ooh, Princess Prissy Whiskers loves a fancy party! Yes she does, yes she does. But Mr. Tiggles thinks the prince is up to something. He doesn't trust him, no he does not!"

Mechanically the build will revolve around Share Soulmeld. Bind a Manticore belt to the Totem chakra. It throws out a spike for each essentia point invested in the meld. Each one deals 1d6 points of damage. Ultimately the build will have 8 cats. Each will share the meld with her. You can invest up to 4 normally, plus 1 for the expanded capacity class feature, +1 from the feat, +1 from focus item, for a total of 7 essentia. So 7 spikes each, on the character and each of her cats for 63 spikes each dealing a d6.

Also, Totemist will giver her lots of utility and skill boosts. With her Handle animal skill, she can teach her cats amazing tricks.

[SangoProduction]

10. Effective spell thief?: like the hexblade build, my attempt at an effective spell thief..

10. Spell Thief. It is actually possible, and not even difficult, even without adaptation.
It's just campaign reliant. No enemy casters? Nothing to steal. Near useless character. Too many? And you're not draining enough to be impactful.
Dvati would be the race I'd take (because, even after all these years of never getting to play it because SoP is pathfinder, not 3.5, I am still obsessed with it.
But you still get 2 sets of attacks a round, which means twice the drain. They even get a flanking bonus with themselves. And that's worth a single level in a not-primarily-spell-casting class.
Sure, they are restricted in their actual spell-casting, to having the action to cast apply to both of them. But that's no worse than normal casters...aside from half the hit dice.

You could adapt it to be a Mana sphere user. I don't think that's necessary. It works when it works, and any faithful adaptation will remain just as circumstantial.

6. Judo Gnome: A dex monkey gnome that throws people... a lot.

Vanara with Adopted trait (adopted by gnomes). Gets you your desired stats (dexterity and wisdom).

And then with the Sage class, take the Infuser esoteric training, so that you can force reflex saves rather than investing in the horrible Combat Maneuvers. This lets you use a trip DC that will just scale stupidly quickly, because the Sage class is objectively over tuned.
Oh, and you can do it multiple times a round.

The Combat Form Esotery (for an infuser) grants +5 to the DC of the reflex save above. (The equivalent of getting +10 levels, or +10 Wisdom for this purpose.)
And Mental Escalation also grants +10 untyped bonus to Wisdom by level 10, for another +5 DC.
And it's not as though the reflex save DC fell off without these boosts.

The Ki Clone Esotery lets you just duplicate yourself, letting you throw down without ever needing to lift a finger. Or do it twice as much.

For the second Esoteric Training at level 8, pick up Enhancer to gain up to a +10 to Dex. And get more from Combat Form.


Feats: Ki Throw - tripping lets you throw someone to another square you threaten. If you are larger than medium / have extra threatening area, you can throw someone further than they can normally move in a move action.

If both of you have large threatening areas, and Ki Throw, and expanded AoOs, and a way to provoke (preferably a free action), you can create a very fast moving wheel of flesh.

8. Master of disguise: changeling factotum that can pretend to be any thing or any one.

Trivial. Alteration an Illusion spheres. Perfect Imitation + Vocal Mimicry alone grants +15 to disguise checks to appear as someone specific.

Deep Cover feat lets your disguise bonus from illusion sphere stack with shapeshift.
But presumably not with Perfect Imitation which specifies that it doesn't stack with similar effects, including, explicitly Illusionary Disguise grants upwards of +16, if you have all possible senses taken, including the Mind one with Implausible Deniability.
A +1 improvement over Perfect Imitation is probably not worth 7 feats or so.

From there, the typical [skill] check modifiers can be applied. leading to insane numbers, which make even the incredibly efficient Alteration sphere look like an insignificant slice of the pie. But both observer and changeling have the same access to this, so it evens out to you having a +15 over them.

Go with a Charisma build, and now only equally maxed Wisdom builds can beat your check. You can then take Sage, for up to +10 to Charisma. But then that's encouraging the GM to get Sage for +10 to Wisdom, and get more out of it, since it's a Wisdom class.