Iron Chef Optimization Challenge in the Playground CXIV

[AvatarVecna]

So, 8 for Don't and 5 for Friend In Me. Seems like the Don'ts have it.

How are our judges doing? AvatarVecna, I hope you're still intending to judge?

Intending to, but a WW/Mafia game has been eating a lot of my attention. I might be dying in that game 15 hours from now, though, so if that happens I'll get right on this, otherwise I'll be working on it over the weekend when I've got attention for it. I'm not particularly looking forward to it, but hopefully my bad judging style can get through things without being too painful. >.<

[H_H_F_F]

Good luck with your game! Hopefully you'll make it.

[Beni-Kujaku]

And I'm halfway through‚ but I had a pretty rough week. Hopefully I'll be done by the end of next week

[Beni-Kujaku]

Tell your friends and family, the long wait is over, for the judgement is done! Your builds were extremely well done, covering almost the whole spectrum of fighting styles in d&d. That was an impressive lot, congratulations to all! And yet, another wait starts today. The one for disputes. I'm waiting for those, may my judgement be torn to shreds!

Here is the part ½ !

Spoiler: Unga Bunga : 11 -> 11.5

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Reject primateness, return to lion.

Originality: 2
Honestly, I see nothing here that made me say "Oh, that's nice thinking!". There doesn't seem to be any cheese, or innovative usage of your classes. Nature's Warrior in itself is quite original, and qualifying for Thayan Gladiator with one natural weapon but using its abilities for another is quite interesting, but there's nothing really flashy here.

Elegance: 3
I really like your fluff and how you chose Anthropomorphic Ape to be a "monster" that could be picked as a gladiator, but having a class with so many physical boosts while fighting exclusively in the form of a lion does not flow that well. Apart from that, the Practiced Spellcaster seems really out of place. The rest of the build is based on the wild shape and intimidation, and you start investing in spellcasting, without even having Natural Spell in the first place. That just seems weird to me.

Power: 2 -> 2.5
Yes, you are a lion who can attack lots of time, but... That's all. You can't use spells in combat, you have no way to hit flying opponents without items without losing all your Thayan Gladiator features by detransforming, and I'm pretty sure Intimidating Rage doesn't work with Never Outnumbered, due to both the wording of IR ("you can only use this feat against a single foe") and NO ("rather than only a single enemy you threaten", IR doesn't target a single enemy you threaten). That means you really can't terrify somebody except for one round by a standard action, which really isn't good. And without Power Attack, or precision damage, you have no real way to take advantage of those many attacks with high to-hit. (+0.25 for the versatility of wild shape, +0.25 for the potential multi-raking with their bite)

UoSI: 4
That's some good gladiatoring here. You use 10 levels of gladiator. Most of the build is based on having natural weapons, and dealing damage with them. You even sort of use Study Opponent thanks to your speed (though staying within 30ft while evading them isn't going to be easy without some sort of defense. Any gladiator can move 30ft and attack, except if they're studying you too).

Total: 11
That's a... standard build. Enjoyable to read, in line with the competition, but nothing that makes you rethink your life. Pretty good.

Spoiler: Auntyrvaloss'elwen T'elient : 8 -> 9

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You automatically lose 3 points in elegance because no judge would ever announce a name like that in an arena, .

Originality: 4
DRAGON! Too few people use true dragons, and even if Steel is the most standard color, that's still nice to see. And Ardent, on a secret ingredient based on natural weapons? My, that's something I wasn't expecting. Even though... There are four of them in the comp. The Originality section will be tough for everybody. And Totemist on top of that. Much more standard. However, how you used all of this for your build is extremely unique. Probably because it doesn't work, but that's very nice to see some attempted cheese like that.

Elegance: 0 (no, not because of the name)
Paraphrasing Fiend Folio II: "From the judge’s point of view, such a pact is still an exercise in damnation—it is merely sneakier than taking Flaws to get bonus feats. A Pact Insidious allows a gullible mortal to believe he can gain the benefits of a flirtation with free feats without suffering its consequences. Thus, it exploits the eternal self-delusion of the lazy and greedy." That's -2. I don't want to hear anything about it, getting two feats without paying them is worse than taking flaws.

Your build is very heavily based on having the DM go your way. Substitute Power requires DM intervention. Getting an orange ioun stone while you're trapped in an arena and spend all your days fighting requires heavy DM intervention. Getting a feat from the Otyugh Hole while Otyugh Holes and Thay aren't even in the same universe is downright impossible. That is the opposite of elegance. And having your totemist and ardent levels sprinkled here and there doesn't help anything.

Power: 1.5-> 2 because of disputes
That's nice and all, but even if we allow everything above, your build just doesn't work. Not only do you confuse caster level and manifester level (neither the orange ioun stone nor suffer the flesh can increase your manifester level), you absolutely can't take Metamorphosis as a 2nd level ardent. Practiced Manifester explicitly states that it doesn't apply to spells known, so learning Metamorphosis, even if you could theoretically manifest (which you can't anyway, since the ioun stone doesn't increase your manifester level, so you're stuck at lv 6), is completely out of question. And without metamorphosis, you're... very weak. Your strength is pretty low compared to your ECL, and even with expansion, you're not going to kill many people. At least you can indeed cast expansion for 7 PP, if you can make your DM agree that you're able to learn it. Almost none of what you can do really works, since Suffer the Flesh can only improve six low-level spells, none of which really care about caster level. And, no, you can't use either Reserves of Strength or Overchannel on Alternate Form. Overchannel improves manifester level, which doesn't help you, and RoS improves CL when casting a spell. Using an SLA is not casting a spell, even if the effect is the same. At least Girallon's arms to get 4 claws on which to put Thayan Gladiator's ability, so that's not that bad.

UoSI: 2.5-> 3 because of disputes
Did you really need Thayan Gladiator? When a build would be much better and would probably not change at all the fight it fights by removing almost all the levels in the secret ingredient and replacing them with things like more manifester level, or some more soulmelds that improve all your natural weapons, I feel like you haven't really used the ingredient. Just built around the ingredient, despite it instead of with it. I don't even know what is the first thing you imbued your claws with.

Total: 8
Interesting idea, doesn't work.

Spoiler: Django, Devourer of Brains : 13

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That picture is so nice. And, let's be honest, a fight between two illithids would be excellent to sell tickets.

Originality: 4.5
You know what, you're an illithid. With adamantine thundering tentacles. That jumps to land on enemies tentacles first to eat their brain, draining their blood and their brain alike. It doesn't get much better than that. And everything else is fairly original too. Combat Focus? When was the last time you saw this?

Elegance: 2.5
"I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it..." Oh well, rules are rules. -2 to elegance for flaws. Apart from that, it's an extremely clean and focused build. Your dedication to the tentacleness is admirable, and having your psionics aid you in this task with expansion while also adding to the mind flayer flavor is very welcome. Only Combat Focus and Combat Vigor strike me as fairly out of place, along with the Jump support. Why not having taken things like improved grapple, and something to improve your damage on a full attack instead? Anyway, that's minor compared to the feat flaw tax.

Power: 2
Welp, you knew it was coming. Illithid Grappling is an extremely unoptimized way to spend your feats, and Illithid extraction is even worse. Why couldn't it just kill the opponent outright? It's not like you were gonna get it before level 15 anyway. Anyway, that makes the rest of the build a bit lacking. You have pretty low strength, pretty low BAB, and no way to deal significant damage before... well, before level 20, where wounding is admittedly pretty good. Also, no way to hit flying opponents. However, your saves are pretty good (nothing stellar, but good), with Illithid heritage.

UoSI: 4
More than most, your natural weapon is integral to your build, and increasing its damage helps you a lot. No critical support for that stunning, though. Not much else to say here, it's a pretty straightforward class.

Total: 13
Congratulations and thank you for this build. You knew where you were going, and knowingly lost point in both Elegance and Power to make the build you wanted. That's commendable, and sometimes, when I go to IC to look for a character idea, I like to see some things like that.

Spoiler: Venomfang : 13 -> 13.5

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Comparing to other landwyrms, it seems likely that it really only has 15 Str, and that the +5 bonus on everything else was the typo. Which baffles me, since that means they got it wrong on 5 occurences. And there's no errata.

Originality: 3
... What's this thing? Where does it come from? Why is it playable? Isn't it the only monster with a LA and Frightful Presence? How did they think 15 Str amounted to a +5 bonus?? I have so many questions!!! (More seriously, points for the race, but everything else is just the standard package)

Elegance: 4
Well, I'm surprised I'm giving these kinds of scores, but really, there's nothing to hate here, except that there's too little. Only one "class" with no useable class feature isn't really interesting. Everything is perfectly clean, you're finishing each and every one of your prestige classes, every feat goes somewhere. Perfectly elegant, except for the fact that it's a little too bland and without this "Oooh, that's why they took that" factor. What could possibly go wrong?

Power: 1-> 1.5
Aand there we go. Yeah, being a CR 16 dinosaur at level 20 without any real combo and with only one underwhelming natural attack and low strength on which to put your Thayan bonuses isn't exactly ideal. (Clarification: mostly nothing to do if poison doesn't work, and poison rarely works.) That said, +0.5 because your mobility is quite excellent on the ground.

UoSI: 5
You do use the ingredient, that's for sure. Are you using it well, impressively so. Pounce is a really good way to use your three attacks, having one big bite is definitely what was intended to optimize the "+2 attacks on your favored weapon" from the Gladiator, and you're using a 19-20 Natural Weapon to optimize the critfishing parts of the class. You're even able to Study Opponent better than any other build here, with your burrow speed. That's a great Thayan Gladiator.

Total: 13
That was bold. I was really looking for errors, because let's be honest, this doesn't really belong in an optimization contest. And yet, there really was nothing wrong in this build that I could see that would justify losing points. That was surprising and refreshing.

Spoiler: Maximus Bloodrender : 10

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Man, that name is metal. As are your "claws".

Originality: 2: "I get lots of attacks and I try to get crits on as much of them as possible" isn't really a new strategy, and using a Thri-kreen for it either. Bloodclaw master is a tiny bit better, but still nothing really stood to me as a unique choice or use of your classes.

Elegance: 1.5: Your build in itself is pretty elegant, I appreciate the focus of it, but it has a few problems. First, there are some dips and unfinished classes that should be avoided (BCM 1, WS 3...), then, you're relying a lot on your ability to put your hands on 4 keen kukris, and probably even more if you want to add some crit-related features on your kukris. That's far from a given in a campaign, even less if you're cloistered in the arena fighting day in day out. And finally, there are things that are illegal in your build. Like Staggering Strike. Did you mistake it for another feat? It requires Sneak Attack, and you have none. That seems like a vestige from an earlier version of the build where you would use your multiple attacks to abuse Sneak Attack instead of crits, but right now it doesn't make sense. And since it's not even in the Source paragraph, I can't even check if I'm looking at the right feat (the one I'm looking at is from CAdv). Same thing with all your Weapon Aptitude shenanigans. Thayan Gladiator gives you "the benefit of the feat", not the feat itself. You can't use Weapon Aptitude on it. That doesn't affect too much, since you eventually keep your feats on the bite, but that still adds up to a lot of penalties.

Power: 4.5
First, I'm not considering that you can get an 8th level maneuver. Prestige classes that add fully to your IL explicitly say so. And I'm considering that Warshaper can give you one natural weapon. No more. That's pretty clearly the RAI, and in case of bad editing, that's where I'm looking at. So you can improve your bite, but not your claws at the same time.
Yeah, that's a lot of attacks at the end of a charge. With full strength bonus on each of them, and lots of crit possibility. I'm sure you'll be fine most of the time. And with that jump modifier, you might even be able to catch foes flying a bit low, so that's good. I would have liked something a bit more immediate to take advantage of that many crits, since in the end, getting +3 per round with Blood in the Water is good, but pretty slow, and you don't have much else to take advantage of your many, many crits with kukris.

UoSI: 2
You don't need the SI. Getting any initiator prestige class instead would give you Girallon Windmill and could really improve your kukris instead of just improving your bite, which is clearly not the focus of your build. There is next to no synergy between Thayan Gladiator and the rest of your build, except Battle Ardor, but since the criticals with your bite are pretty rare, it's a bad investment... In the end, it's a good multiweapon fighting build, but a pretty bad Thayan Gladiator. At least you got up to 10 levels, but it seems like it's more of a detriment for you than anything.

Total: 10
It's an interesting build, but it is either not based at all on Thayan Gladiator, and just included for the comp, or based on it, but it has drifted so far apart that the SI is not an integral part of the build anymore. You even replaced your natural weapons, when Thayan Gladiator is all about optimizing them. I'm a bit disappointed here, I must say.

Spoiler: Five-Punch Man : 15

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The secret of my strength? 100 sit-ups, 100 push-ups, and 100 punches up your throat, you crappy ****!

Originality: 4
Battle Fist is fun. Using it to stack Natural Weapon and Manufactured Weapon enhancements on the same attack is very interesting, and using artificer on a round centered around natural weapons is definitely worth some attention. Same with using a Wild Cohort to get some poison and an artificial fist to get the poison on a natural weapon. Then again, beyond that, your feats are all fairly standard in the scope of your goal, and Disciple of Dispater was an obvious choice considering the premices.

Elegance: 4
Very focused build. You know what you want, and how to get it. Everything goes somewhere. No double qualifications and no completed prestige classes prevent me from giving full mark.

Power: 3
You can bypass the vast majority of damage reduction and hit them with 5 multi-enhanced punches. Nothing will stand in your way. However, if they aren't in your way, then there isn't much you can do. You don't have pounce, you are slow, and you don't have any mobility options. And you haven't written what kind of other magic items you'd like to craft, so I don't really know anything about how you solve problems. Your dinosaur could maybe grapple your opponents but it doesn't seem like Scaly is really the fighting type, or somebody that you're willing to lose in combat. Also, I'm not sure if you're allowed to choose the feats of your cohort. If you have to use Handle Animal to even instruct her to attack, I don't see you being able to instruct her to train her poison in order to get Virulent.

UoSI: 4
Your whole build is centered around your natural weapon, and that's good. You could even say that the whole build is just one big Thayan Gladiator, trying to improve the natural weapon even higher. You do use almost everything the levels you took gave you. It's just that you don't take the 10 level, and even if they don't give you that much, the capstone could have been interesting, to complete your "immunities? I barely know her" package, or just to improve your damage output.

Total: 15
That's a really solid build here, with some original interpretation of the class and good use of its ability. Ironically, it probably would have benefitted you to unfocus a tiny bit and get some utility, some way to move around, or to fly, or just to ride your dinosaur.

Spoiler: 'Ole Cooter : 12.5

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The name's Cooter. 'Ole Cooter.

Originality: 5
First full mark in originality here (and probably not the last), just because of the sheer absurdity of the build. It is based on some out-of-nowhere reading of an ability and combines so many classes that have next to nothing to do with each other... I love it. Also, what even is a mindspy? Thank you for digging out this thing. And I love the early entry into Monk of the Long Death. It's weird that it exists in an official content. WotC is usually very tight about allowing skill ranks above the regular maximum.

Elegance: 0
I had to penalize you somewhere, and it was either here or in Power. Yeah, no sane DM would even remotely allow this reading of the class feature. This is just too big to pass. I'm still going to continue judging as if it somehow worked like that, but the most permissive reading that I think could be allowed would be "You can observe somebody in the usual time, but you only have to use your standard action on the first round, so you can act normally, on the others, but you only get the benefit at the end of the regular duration". Also, that's really too many dips to my taste, and above all, you don't qualify for either Assassin or Thayan Gladiator. In Assassin, because Hide isn't a class skill for Monk of the Long Death and you hence don't have enough ranks in it, and in Thayan Gladiator because you don't have a natural weapon. A monk's fists are considered natural weapons only in the context of effects which improve natural weapons, which prerequisites are not. (Also, it's just "Favored", "Favored in guild" is another feat altogether) And I'm pretty sure being a Gladiator and an assassin can get you kicked out of a mercantile guild, even one specialized in poison. If it wasn't for illegality and questionable reading, though, your score would have been pretty high, just for the really nice double qualifications and creative use of some feats like Illithid Bloodline.

Power: 4
Death attack after a standard action with a DC 24+Int, what isn't there to love? With some Belt of Battle, that could be incredible. I like the fact that you put some thought into Hiding, even though you neglected the fact that it wasn't a class skill for MotLD. Good usage of the swordsage dip. If I had a complaint, it's that you're probably not going to use anything except your death attack in combat (I know that it's kind of of the point, but still). Even if it's only a standard action, Mindspy's ability isn't really worth it. You don't have a high enough charisma to make suggestion really effective, and if they somehow succeed at their saving throw, or just are undead or a construct, you don't have much to do except attacking dumbly with just a few bonuses and hoping for the better. You also have some difficulty against flying enemies, though your Hiding abilities make it easier.

UoSI: 3.5
I want to give you more than that, but it just wouldn't be fair. The majority of the build is indeed based on one Thayan Gladiator ability, and you do make good use of this first level. But you only take the first level. There are so many things left untouched... But I understand it was the best way for this build to work.

Total: 12.5
Let's be honest, this is an incredible build, but it's based on some nonsense. As always, when there is an ambiguity and RAI is obvious, you should try to keep to it. But it really gives some of the most unique builds around, so I'm not complaining ^^ (except if putting 0 in elegance counts as complaining)

Spoiler: Takkan : 14

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- Soooo... How many skill ranks did you say you had?
- Twenty! As much as my number of fingers!
- In what skills? Probably Intimidate, Tumble and maybe Jump?
- No, no! Twenty in total!

Originality: 1
Let's face it, everybody knows the Feral template, everybody knows Warshaper, almost everybody knows about shifters and Lion totem barbarians. And you don't get anything surprising out of this build. It's clean and easy to read, but definitely not original.

Elegance: 4.5
It's a pretty build. Neatly folded, like a present. +1 LA, 4 levels of base class, a 5-level prestige class, and a 10-level prestige class. It doesn't get much cleaner than that. And on top of it, everything is very focused on your objective. You want big natural weapons, and to kick people's a** with them. There are good synergies everywhere, and I really liked the love given to the fluff at the beginning, to the point of giving Thayan-sounding names to everybody. An Eberron race in Faerun is sure to raise a few eyebrows, but if it is explicitly useable elsewhere... Really an elegant and thematic build. I appreciate the fact that you're using Feral to get permanent natural weapons instead of just using the shifter ones. Just a tiny point reduction because of several very minor nitpicks: Cross-class skills are not really elegant to see, the build is pretty unclear from place to place, for example you could have clarified that you took the Wolf Totem ACF on Barbarian. Which leads to the fact that being of the Lion Totem and the Wolf Totem at the same time is a bit weird. Not only does it make you get redundant pounce from Feral, I feel like you tried to hide the fact that you have two different totems in the build. It's minor and mostly fluff, but that just prevents you from getting full mark.

Power: 4
Feral is broken, we all know that, but you succeeded in using it pretty well. Combining the strong claws of the feral template with the increases from Savagery and Thayan Gladiator make for some truly terrifying strikes. And with your doubly-boosted movement speed and pounce, not much can escape you. And with the plethora of bonuses Feral gives to your attacks, you're gonna rip through the opposition pretty fast. That said, you're pretty one-dimensional as a character, and a Will-based attack will disable you pretty easily, as will flying opponents. You're also going through your resources pretty fast. Your strategy is based on combining shifting and ferocity (I'll consider here that Ferocity counts as Rage for the purpose of prerequisites, but that's not really a given) to get truly astounding claw strikes, but you can only do so twice per day, and a clever opponent might even just burrow or stall you until you can't do it anymore. You're far from helpless without it, but not nearly as much of a powerhouse as you are when raging.

UoSI: 4.5
Why do you have Great Bite? Why have a feat that improves your bite (not even that much) when the rest of your abilities is centered on your claws? Anyway, that's some impressive use of the Secret Ingredient. Your build longs for a way to bypass DR, and Thayan Gladiator gives you just that. Thayan Gladiator is based on natural weapons, and your build is centered around getting the biggest claws possible to improve with the prestige class's features. Really nice. I'm not sure why you chose frost instead of ghost touch, though. 1d6 damage is negligible compared to your damage output, it doesn't synergize with any of your feats, and without ghost touch, you can't touch incorporeal creatures at all (since it isn't damage reduction, so your claws won't count as magic and have 50% to touch them).

Total: 14
The concept of your build is really simple, maybe too simple, but you made it work very well. This is really the kind of character that could be very enjoyable to play in a real campaign (if the DM allows Feral, which is almost a guaranteed "no" without nerfing it, but the build functions really well even without Feral. You already have Pounce. Just take razorclaw as your shifting, or put all your Thayan abilities on the bite and use your +17 BAB to wield a weapon.)

Spoiler: NoBody : 13-> 13.25

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I always hate when a nonphysical entity punches me in the face.

Originality: 5
I... Uh... What? How do... That can't work... That shouldn't work... How does that even work? No sane DM will ever let that work! There's no way that makes sense if that works... ...That might work.
Having an incorporeal character in a competition about natural weapons is definitely something I wasn't expecting. Combining it with some psionic abilities was something that surprised me. Using poor wording to enter the SI and somehow getting access to Power Attack on an incorporeal weapon is something I wasn't even considering. That's an easy full Originality mark right here.

Elegance: 4
That's impressively clean for such a wild concept. Just one goal, and everything to accomplish it. There's even a tiny bit of double qualification with Azure Toughness. It's not that well organized, with feats that seem like they come from nowhere (why Law Devotion, exactly?), and I can still complain about the fact that the incarnum seems to not really contribute much to anything or, you know, that Power Attacking with an incorporeal touch attack is a thing that makes almost as much sense as getting healed by drowning, or that I'm pretty sure the rituals that grant Thayan Gladiators their powers don't work on incorporeal creatures, but your build is so much of a legal vacuum that I can't penalize much for anything.

Power: 1.5-> 1.75
Okay, that's impressive, but in the end, that's only three attacks per round with a low Power Attack bonus, and that's only starting at level 14. Before that, you only have one attack per round. And that's only after taking a round to buff yourself by absorbing your Astral Construct (+0.25 since you can do that quite safely in the ground). Incorporeality will probably carry you up to level 10 or so, but after that, you're going to see a lot of magical and ghosttouch weapons. Psionics do help a bit, but they are pretty late, even with Practiced Manifester, and touch powers will only work 50% of the time.

UoSI: 2.5
You do use the ten levels of the SI, and having more attacks is integral to the build, but you're not making really good use of any of the other abilities, like all the critical-related ones, you can't use natural armor, and touch attacks natively bypass damage reduction, so there is no use for most of the class. A shame, since it takes up 80% of your class levels.

Total: 13
I love this character concept. It's just so absurd that it makes you question what it means for a character to be believable. And yeah, this character, I can believe could work. And it's (probably) legal! But that's still weird.

Spoiler: Knife Wielding Tentacle : 10.5

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Please refrain from posting such builds in the future. It is hard for judges.

Originality: 3
Anthropomorphic animal to get lots of natural weapons is quite a well-known trick, as are most of your classes (except knight, which really isn't often seen). The goal of grafting a weapon to your arms, however, is pretty unique, and allows for a lot of shenanigans. And even the weapon you chose if pretty original. Worshipping Elder Evils to get bonus feats is really unoriginal, and has been seen in a lot of builds during the years.

Elegance: 0
What were you thinking? It seems like you're making fun of the judges by making a build combining everything considered inelegant in one. And I really don't like that. So, the list: two Pacts Insidious, see Elwen for what I think about it. Then, the build relies havily on getting access to exotic weapons from another universe (Thay is not in Eberron, Dispater neither), and the ability to get them grafted to you, and the ability to get a NoNA. Then you take two flaws, because of course you do, and top it all off with some Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle, which is probably the single most inelegant way to get feats without having to pay them. This build is horrendous.

Power: 3.5
An anthropomorphic animal has humanoid arms and hands. But it also keeps the natural weapons of the animal. Like tentacle attacks. A tentacle is not an arm. This implies that an anthropomorphic octopus has separated tentacles and hands, not a hand at the end of each tentacle. Which means, since weapons can only be grafted on a hand, that you should only be able to get two Talenta Sharrash, even if you somehow brought them to the forgotten realms. Of course, octopi have arms and not tentacles, even though the giant octopus is always referred to as having tentacles and not arms. And Savage Species does say you have humanoid hands without mentioning if you get them on each limb. Putting that aside, because discussing the editing of Savage Species is probably not the best idea, you're very strong. Blood in the Water with this kind of setup and range can be devastating, and even on the "slapping" round, you will have a good chance of dazing the opponent, which is obviously very good, if you'd like to prepare for the next round with 40 bonus damage on each attack. Slapping the public will probably still get you disqualified, though. Even if you don't deal damage, you'll daze them, and the referee would probably rule it out. The fight is in the arena, not outside of it. In the end, you're truly unapproachable, but pretty easy to escape with your 20 ft land speed and no increase to it. The rest of the arena will just kite you with bow and arrow until you die without having really attacked anything. Sudden Leap helps a bit, but if the arena is large enough, you'll still be unable to catch up to your preys.

UoSI: 4
That's really nice, and the build definitely has something to do with natural weapons and the improvement of them, but not taking the last three levels, and generally not really using some of the features (additional attack is not really useful when you already have 6 of them, and you never study opponents since you don't want them to come closer than 50ft of you) makes giving you more difficult.

Total: 10.5
This is PO, not TO.

Spoiler: Zuzela Csarkos : 13.5-> 14

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I can chew the world! Killing, maddening, servile! Tell me master, now when did you last let my heart decide?

Originality: 3.5-> 3.75
Welp, you're a wendigo. That's three points by itself. Who even plays a wendigo? The level of Thayan Knight is also interesting, even though it doesn't integrate very well in your build. Unfortunately, everything else is so standard and expected it hurts. (+0.25 for having taken Human Heritage as a Human. That's an interesting take.)

Elegance: 4-> 4.25
I really like how you added the level of Thayan Knight, and how you placed the wendigo template (even though it's an ill decision power-wise). Good job also on justifying the LA of the template. That said, having a class dip that doesn't give you anything apart from fluff justifications and for which you don't qualify most of the time is not ideal. And taking human heritage as a human doesn't really make sense, your character wouldn't know that he was going to be turned into a wendigo. Also, you messed up your first level skills. (4+1 (Int)+1 (Human))*4=24, and you have 28. (+0.25 because if Human Heritage can stack with the human bonus skills, then the last problem is moot)

Power: 2
Your bite crits often, and deals a lot of damage on a crit. That means you want 1) Lots of attacks and 2) Rider effects on your crits. And you have neither. Wounding as your capstone is much worse than speed, that allows you a third attack, since it doesn't multiply on a crit, and (Greater) Flyby Attack specifically doesn't allow you to full attack, which means every enemy you attack will only get hit once, and have a pretty high chance of not being stunned. And with only Stunning criticl and Blood in the Water as your riders on crits, you won't scale very fast. Also, changing 5d12 HD into 5d6 is... unoptimal, to say the least, as is having a useless class dip and a semi-useless feat for fluff reasons. I still appreciate your very high mobility. No one will be able to attack you in melee unless you attack them first. A shame that you're forced to do so to deal damage.

UoSI: 4
How do you force a build to be based on natural weapons? Just take a template that doesn't allow you to attack with regular weapons. And having 18-20/x3 is an almost perfect natural weapon on which to put your abilities. A small problem is that your last level ability is not ideal, and that Flyby can't make use of Natural Weapon Focus, but otherwise a pretty good fit.

Total: 13.5
The build is simple, but the find of the wendigo is an extremely good fit for Thayan Gladiator, and all the fluff justifications were really enjoyable.

[Beni-Kujaku]

And here is the second and last part !

Spoiler: Gulog : 10.5

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He cuts his enemies down to the bone.

Originality: 2.5
I had to look up osteomancer. That's a good point, and a very nice way to get weapons that count as both manufactured and natural. And Improved Dragon Wings is a nice feat chain that isn't often used. That said, not much else is of any originality. The dragonblood versions of every base race are well-known, and your ACF are some of the most common ones.

Elegance: 2
Lots of cross-class skills, ranger levels sprinkled all around the build, Extra Rage 13 levels after you first get rage... Those don't make for a particularly elegant build. And there is no real focus or theme as far as I can tell. Your build is stronger with bones, but it could function almost the same way with another natural weapon (with no TWF).

Power: 2.5
Osteomancer and ranger don't bring much to the table, and it shows. You have a few attacks, but they don't deal a lot of damage by themselves, and your other abilities are mostly defensive. There's really nothing especially wrong here, it's just... underwhelming.

UoSI: 3.5
Once again, nothing especially over-the-top here. You're using natural/manufactured weapons, which synergize well with the class, but have no crit optimization, and do not have enough damage to really take advantage of Natural Weapon Focus and Imbue Speed.

Total: 10.5
It pains me to say that about a character with such a cool concept as "fighting with its own bones as weapons", but... This character is a bit boring to me. There's nothing especially wrong, and nothing that particularly stands out. Nice journal entry, though.

Spoiler: Baby : 11.5

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-You know that's supposed to be a headbutt, ri...*Oomph!*
-And one butt to the head, one! Just as you asked!

Originality: 4.5
The flavor is funny, Sohei is indeed a forgotten class, and Kensaï is inexplicably absent from this competition. What, did everybody Vizzini themselves? Your feats are original, your form of choice is original... Really, there's only your base race which is a well-known cheese-enabler, and the fact that once you get past the bottom fluff (flavor text? Bottom text.), this is a pretty standard concept of a character who turns into a guardinal to get a strong natural weapon.

Elegance: 3
Using Extra Rage on ki frenzy makes me happy. The rest of the build isn't inelegant, but there is a monk dip (which also adds multiclassing penalties), a quasi-kensaï dip, and lots of cross-class skills. Getting WF(Butt) before having a butt attack is bold, but that means you have a useless feat for three levels. Also, the fact that you don't keep your natural weapon through the day is a problem. Not really in terms of power (even though you might get fights in the arena more than twice a day and more than 6 hours apart), but more in terms of how the ritual works. It's not explicitly stated, but I doubt the Thayan ritual is over in a standard action, which means you may lose your butt attack before it is completed. Finally, there's the kensai reading that you can add Sizing to your weapon. If the class doesn't say it can add a property with a fixed cost, then it probably can't. I'm not sure about that, so I'll still count it in power, but that deserves an elegance penalty. These are mostly details, but these are a lot of details.

Power: 1.5
Let's be honest here, a butt attack is cool (or hot, or whatever temperature-based adjective you'd like), but it's not effective. Even if you somehow get to Colossal size (which is far from trivial, if we consider the reasonable (in my opinion) reading that you can't wield a weapon larger than two size category larger than you, and that Sizing shouldn't allow you to go to Huge), your damage is still only 2d6. That's as much as a greatsword, and you don't even get to add 1.5 times your strength bonus. Between cervidal and frenzy, your mobility is really good, but I would have liked to see a way to hit airborne opponents. And finally, you don't really have that many attacks per round, do you? That's really just the same number of (usable) attacks as a full attacking fighter. Or probably even less than that. Natural Weapons are not a monk's weapon, so I doubt you get a butt attack from your frenzy. And finally, you lose all your powers 15 hours a day. Far from ideal.

UoSI: 2.5
You took all ten levels in the class, and your build is kind of focused on your natural weapon, but there is next to no synergy between your builds' elements and the class features of the SI. You don't have many attacks or a high chance of critical to take advantage of Stunning critical; you never stay long at the same time to study your opponent...

Total: 11.5
I appreciate the pun, I really do, and the build was fun to read. It's just that you seem to have focused on the "haha butt" idea while neglecting a bit to make your character stronger.

Spoiler: The Blender : 15.5

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Like KWT, only actually good.

Originality: 3
Anthropomorphic animal to get lots of natural weapons is quite a well-known trick, as are most of your classes (even though combining manifesting, spellcasting and Disciple of Dispater like that can raise enough eyebrows to be noticed). The goal of grafting a weapon to your arms, however, is pretty unique, and allows for a lot of shenanigans, even though you're not the only one here who has thought about that. And upping Dispater up to level 8 is really something that is not seen enough. Pretty standard feats and ACF, however.

Elegance: 4
First, a bit of cross-classing and keeping half a rank for 3 levels is a small penalty, as are the wizard and warblade dips. Apart from that, solid build with a lot of focus on the theme, and nice stub at the beginning. I approve of the graft weapon power and not using Substitute Power.

Power: 5
As with Knife-Wielding Tentacle, I'm really not sure you have 6 hands to which you can graft kukris, but since I'm not certain either way, let's skip that. Anyway, you are incredibly strong. You have mobility, some defense, decent saves, and an ungodly amount of 20ft reach attacks who will force around half as many saving throws for stun. Even against things immune to crits, you can still score threats and use blood in the water to get something like +10 to your rolls in one round. That's almost ridiculous. The only thing that you have difficulty with is incorporeal creatures, since you didn't take ghosttouch, but that's very easily fixable with a Necklace of Natural Weapons or just enchanting your kukris. Disciple of Dispater also fixes your very slight damage problem on the first round of combat with Iron Hews. Truly a finely honed build.

UoSI: 3.5
If any ability that can be replicated with loads of money was useless in D&D, there wouldn't be many decent classes. I agree that Stunning Critical is the best feature by a good margin, but that doesn't mean you should dump the rest, especially in a competition based around the class. I agree however that you made good use of these first three levels, and that the build is very much based around Thayan Gladiator, but I just can't give you more than that for three levels.

Total: 15.5
That was a nice analysis on the class and an incredibly good optimization of it. Impressive work, sir.

Spoiler: Vame Pomier : 17

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Your grafted club-bow-thingy reminded me of this guy from Hunter x Hunter. Just hope that the same fate won't befall you.

Originality: 5
You know, at this point, between a wendigo and a half-elf, I'm not sure which one I expect more to show up in an optimization contest. But the gist of the build is grafting a bow to use as a natural weapon. Ranged natural weapon is one of the rarest things in the game, and using one with Thayan Gladiator makes me very happy. Even if you don't use the bow as a ranged attack, using Stunning Critical with the ranger forced crit spell is extremely unique, and simply... What the hell is an eternal blade? I love everything about this, and wasn't expecting half of it.

Elegance: 3.5
Practiced Manifester doesn't work on known powers! That's litterally written in the feat text! Why are there two people out of the three ardents who tried to use it this way? Fortunately, in your case it's not that bad, since it can be replaced with a dorje or a 1/day item of graft weapon, both of which are affordable by level 6. That makes you a bit item dependant, but very much less so than Elwen, since graft weapon is only a 3rd level power, and since you only cast it once a day. Still, that's no good for something so integral to the build. Also, Supernatural Abilities caster level very probably don't work for prerequisites, as implied in the FAQ. I know the FAQ is not something to go by, but that's still a penalty for me. Small penalty, though, since it easily fixable by replacing Practiced Manifester with Practiced Spellcaster, since the former isn't of any use to you. There are also a few quasi-dips in the build which are not ideal, but all in all, a decent readable build (thank you for the skill column, that's very clear). I especially like the Eternal Blade. This is a great example of double qualification which also doubles as a fluff improver. Nice.

Power: 4
I assume the Forbidden Technique is used. I see no reason why it shouldn't, and it really improves your character a lot. Having a ranged natural weapon solves a lot of Thayan Gladiator's problems, allowing you to Stunning Critical from a distance, which is absolutely genius, and to get more time to cast hunter's mercy. All that while being able to do something against both flying opponents and casters. On casters especially, you even confirm automatically your crits. I would have liked a 5th level of ranger for something like FE(Monstrous Humanoid). Especially in the arena, that would be a Hextorsend. You have a pretty low damage output without sneak attack, but with craven and your high chance of stunning with your first attack, leaving the other attacks of the turn as sneak attack, that should not be too much of a problem. And at level 20, Guided Strike can help with stunning things with an exotic damage resistance. All in all, a more than acceptable build in terms of power.

UoSI: 4.5
What can I say? That's some very good SI usage. 10 levels, an extremely creative use of Stunning Critical and Silver/Adamantine strike on a weapon that normally has a hard time bypassing damage resistance. And a build definitely centered around your usage of your weapon. Not the most optimized weapon for critfishing and you have no time for Study, but apart from that, you're a Thayan Gladiator, and it shows.

Total: 17
This. This is a character with almost everything I was looking for in this comp. Some delicious cheese and not too much questionable choices, with a surprisingly high power level. That's a yes for me.

Spoiler: Dasyatidae Leoidea : 10

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Yep, that stingray's first name is "stingray". What you gonna do?

Originality: 3
Anthropomorphic animal is quite expected at this point, but a stingray? That would not be my first guess. This choice entails (get it?) Scaled Horror, which is equally unseen. However, apart from that, the rest is fairly standard stuff. Totemist on a natural weapon build is nothing new, and the rest is just incarnum and poison support. Oh, and Lolth-touched, which is a very well-known template for its strength.

Elegance: 2.5
What the heck is wrong with your skill column? Please do make it a bit more readable, like bolding the skills on which you put points. Also, showing the racial bonuses is really not necessary, and harms readability. Also, you can breath both air and water three times over (Anthropomorphic, Amphibious, and Focalor), and I find that hilarious, but not really elegant. But the big thing here is item dependancy. Necklace of Natural Weapons, chronocharms (which, incidentally is from Eberron, and doesn't exist in Thay), that's not very good. That's not essential to the build, so it's not a big penalty, but a penalty nonetheless. You also get next to only cross-class skills for most of your career, which I don't really appreciate.

Power: 2.5
You hit things with your tail and your claws, do respectable damage, and have an extremely strong poison on top of it. That's nice, don't get me wrong, it's just that you're really one-dimensional. You can't do anything against anything that has more than 30 ft of movement speed, and you rely a bit too much on your poison, which means that if you're up against a construct or an undead, or a spellcaster, you'll be pretty helpless. I appreciate the fact that you have pounce, but your Girallon claws aren't extremely useful, considering they're both secondary and unboosted by Thayan Gladiator. And Scaled Horror is original, but it doesn't give you that much in the end. You're probably not going to grapple much with no racial bonus and Medium size, and 1 ranger spell per day will not turn the tables (even though entangle can be pretty useful once in a while).

UoSI: 2
You do have 10 levels of Thayan Gladiator, but you're not really using it for anything except getting two more sting attacks. You have no crit optimization, your weapon is not that adapted for Thayan Gladiator, and you even have other natural weapons that are not affected by Thayan Gladiator. The build could work almost the same without Thayan Gladiator.

Total: 10
That's a pretty simple build that would make for a good enemy in the arena, but as a character, it leaves a bit to be desired, both in terms of power and thayan gladiatorness.

Spoiler: Hopp Delgado : 10

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Us punny humans don't deserve such a rabbit.

Originality: 3
Another weapon grafter. I really didn't think there would be that many. But that weapon, however, I haven't really seen anywhere. Kaorti resin, on the other hand (or, you know, on the same), I have seen everywhere. Hengeyokai into Warshaper is also disappointingly standard, and you don't have much in terms of original feats. I like your choice of maneuvers, but since the original ones (law bearer and crus. strike) don't integrate that well into the build, they won't give you that many points. Using the graft of a flexible weapon to qualify for extended reach was very funny, and the whole "I take Weapon Focus for my bite, but then I apply Thayan Gladiator's abilities to my grafted blade" is some well-appreciated and probably not intended cheese, nice find.

Elegance: 2.5
I'm not sure how to rule the Dragon Magazine update of Hengeyokai. Is that counted as official? When in doubt, don't penalize. The extended reach thing is a bit questionable, since it's not really a part of your body, but that's no penalty either. On the other hand, the item dependancy is strong with this one. A spinning sword from Eberron while you're in the FR, and you want it made in a resin only crafted by an extrapalanar race that want the death of all Material denizens. I'm not sure christmas is that early. Also, using warshaper to create natural weapons that are not in the table 5-1 explicitly referenced in the class is, as always, dubious at best. Also, the high number of martial studies is not ideal. If you want crusader maneuvers, you can just take a level of crusader, that would flow better. And finally, more than half your skill points are invested in cross-class skills. There's nothing outright awful, but lots of things that make me tick.

Power: 2.5
That's some nice battlefield control, with your pretty colossal reach (I believe 50ft when expanded and with your sword) and your acceptable speed and mobility. However, you have nothing really impressive in terms of damage, since the spinning sword isn't the most brutal kind of weapon in the game, even a colossal one. Most opponents will just take the opportunity attack and charge through your threatened area. Plus, 6 attacks (7 with your secondary bite) isn't that much in a natural weapon build. Also, I don't think you read crusader's strike well. It explicitly needs your target to be an enemy with a different alignment from yourself, so can't be used to self-heal, even more since I don't know where you took the "warshapers are immune to nonlethal damage" from.

UoSI: 2
Welp, that's the basic usage of Thayan Gladiator. You don't especially like to be able to hit multiple times with your sword, except for damage. You can fish crits a bit, but aren't especially optimized in that sense (I, however, like the fact that you get to x5 when you crit). And your concept of "high reach grafted weapon with some crits in it" could mostly be made without Thayan Gladiator. Also I have no idea why Law bearer is here. It's not even that good, and since you don't have pounce, you're mostly trying to stay in melee anyway, so you won't charge often.

Total: 10
That character is badass. There's no denying it. A giant rabbit that wields a 50ft long sword? That's terrifying! However, it has a few issues everywhere and just doesn't flow that well.

Spoiler: Lopoda Nautilo, The Shadow : 8

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Big, menacing, deadly, and absolutely delicious!

Originality: 4.5
That's not an anthropomorphic giant octopus, that's an anthropomorphic giant squid! Still, anthropomorphising an animal with many natural weapons is hardly original. Your templates are individually quite common, but the way you use them, to get an aquatic creature a burrowing speed, is very nice and not seen often. And you'd think a competition with as many monstrous humanoids and LA'd races would have a few grappling builds, but apparently not, so props to you for it. Using mindsight and expansion to be an on-land kraken is bonkers, and I love it (if only it worked). This is a really cool idea for a boss fight.

Elegance: 0
Let's get the big thing out of the way: you absolutely don't qualify for Mindbender. I see nothing that gives you Charm Person, even less so at a caster level 5 (you don't even have a caster level). But the worst is that you don't qualify for the skill prerequisites either. You have 8 intelligence. That means that 2+int classes give you only 1 skill point per level. But you added 3 points at every level. That makes your skill column unacceptable from start to finish. You don't qualify for Mindbender, or for Practiced Manifester. That, plus the fact that you messed up your table (the last two levels are the same), that I don't understand why you took False Sensory Input in the middle of the build, tand that you seem to rely a bit too much on Eberronian chronocharms, I can't give you any other score here.

Power: 1
How late did you decide to take the Necropolitan template? I feel like it was pretty late, since not only does it not bring much to your build (you could have just taken Amphibious if you needed to breathe out of the water, and burrowing creatures have no problem breathing either), but you forgot to take into account many of its effects, which makes it so that it actively harms your build in a number of ways. You forgot that you lose a level during crucimigration, so you could have one less RHD. Above all, you forgot that you have no Con score as an undead. Investing 18 points in constitution becomes useless (you could have used these points for Intelligence, for example ;) ), and a melee build with no constitution will have a hard time surviving very long. Next, there are the tentacles. Either they don't depend on your natural reach, or they do, but you don't get to pick when they do. If they don't, then you have a 30ft reach whatever your size. If they do, then your tentacles double your natural reach (I believe that's the most acceptable ruling), and, as an expanded Gargantuan creature with extended reach, you have a reach of 20ft (Gargantuan)+5 ft (extended reach) times 2 for the tentacles, so 50ft. The "my size doubles" is a standard text when going up a size category and doesn't apply to reach. And about attacking from underground, that's a nice idea, but it doesn't really work. Burrowing is a movement speed, not a state. You are just below earth, and you can't attack somebody above earth, since there is some dirt between you two. That's the same way even a creature with reach can't attack through a wall. You can only attack if your head is peeking through the floor. And about brilliant energy weapon, that could work to attack, but using it for Improved Grab is extremely questionable, since the opponent isn't affected by the brilliant energy weapon, and could not pass through the ground. It might work by strict RAW, but since you don't qualify for Mindbender, you can't know where you attack anyway when underground. You still have a lot of attacks and can grapple a lot of things when above ground, but that's far from optimized, and your low HP will eventually get you.

UoSI: 2.5
You have 8 tentacle attacks! That's a lot! And your character concept is definitely centered around natural weapons. However, you don't make a particularly good use of any of the SI's features, and you don't even finish it. A grappling build will not attack the same opponent more than once if they can grab them, so Stunning Critical will not be of much use, and the low natural multiplier makes it so that improved critical is of little use. Same for Natural Weapon Focus. You already have 8 tentacles, having one more will not change anything. I appreciate the concept of studying people from below the ground, that's something that not many characters here use (only one other, if I'm not mistaken).

Total: 8
The character concept is incredible, and if I ever run an arena-based game, this goes as the final boss. But the failure to qualify for a lot of things and the main concept relying on a very lenient DM make it not suitable here.

Spoiler: Mitra Yuuz : 11.25

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A cactus that can pin people to the walls? There's a pun waiting to be had here.

Originality: 2.75
Yep, you're a cactus. And you have a ranged natural attack for Thayan Gladiator. That's some good stuff here. The rest is extremely standard fighter feats, and you don't have any special class, but only your race and concept are enough to carry you. Also, a barbarian without lion totem? Is that even possible?

Elegance: 3.5
If you're looking for some focus, there's your build. That's litterally "I have a ranged natural weapon, and I want moar to-hit, moar attacks per round, and moar damage". Your class levels aren't very well organised, and you alternate between fighter, barbarian and gladiator seemingly at random. No cross-class skills, either. Nothing spectacular, but pretty elegant all in all.

Power: 2
Thayan Gladiator really likes having a ranged natural attack. That alone, along with your various power enhancers, and your decent number of attacks, make up some acceptable battle prowess. It's just all a bit lackluster. Your feats just don't help you this much (+1 vile damage, seriously? Staggering Critical is also not really useful, since you want your enemies stunned when you crit them, slowing them doesn't change anything.). And pinning, not only does it probably not work (the wording implies that the surface to which you pin people has to be vertical), but you really don't have a good bonus to grappling, since you're only medium. Also, Brutal Throw doesn't work, since your needles aren't throwing weapons.

UoSI: 3
You really like the power boost from Thayan Gladiator, but you don't optimize it so much, except by having a ranged natural weapon. The needles almost need Thayan Gladiator to be effective, but the abilities from Thayan Gladiator would rather work with something with more innate attacks per round, or with a better critical threat. And, once again, Staggering critical and stunning critical don't really work together at all.

Total: 11.25
There's a lot of wasted potential here. I would have liked to see something else than just pure numerical bonuses, that aren't even that impressive. Ranged Pin is interesting, but there's not much support for it.

Spoiler: Daniel, the spilled blood of Ragnorra : 12

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Pffff, wrestling's fake! I don't care if you are really going to kill your opponent!

Originality: 3
Yay for intimidation! Also, avenging executioner is one of the most underrated prestige class, and synergizes really well with the rest of your build. And most of your feats are pretty original too, so that's good. Nothing transcendant in terms of intimidation and natural attack support, though.

Elegance: 3.5
Elder Evils feats, seriously? Apart from that, that's some extremely clean build, with base class 5/5 level PC/10 level PC. Nothing wrong here. You are pretty unfocused, with some of your feats aimed at your kukris, and others for your bite, and others for intimidation, and the three don't have that much synergy.

Power: 3
I feel like this character would really be pretty strong. Lots of attacks and some crits can be interesting. However, there's nothing you can do really efficiently, especially early on. Your kukris crit often, but your crits don't do anything except mediocre damage. Your bite is strong, but you don't have that big of a threat range and not many attacks. And you can intimidate a lot of people, but you're better at it if you can drop people, and you don't really have the damage output for that. Everything becomes better at higher levels and with Avenging Executioner, but you're still far from the best damage dealer here.

UoSI: 2.5
This is an intimidation-based character. Not really a natural weapon-based character. Even without having your bite or Thayan Gladiator, you could act basically the same (but with a lot less cool factor, granted). You do use the whole 10 levels and most of the class features, but since you're putting resources in improving your kukris, that isn't ideal.

Total: 12
I adore this character concept, and the fluff is on point. Mechanically, however, it seems a bit lacking, both in power and in usage of the SI. A bit more focus on your natural weapon might have helped here.

And that's all for me! Enjoy your read!

[Yan Korlat]

Thank you very much for dealing with all these builds!

[H_H_F_F]

Thanks so much for your hard work, Beni! I've read my judgement, and skimmed over a few others. I'm looking forward to reading the rest more in depth.

This hurts to say this round with my current standing, but no disputes from me! Thank you for your work.

[loky1109]

Thank you, Beni! Great work! It is hard round for judging!

[The Viscount]

Thank you for judging, Beni-Kujaku.

I have a message from a chef.

No disputes for elegance or originality—you're not wrong on either.

On Power:

On a reread, I clearly did not adequately explain why my tricks might work. Specifically, I'm using the magic mantle, which states that "you always treat magic and psionics as identical". This clearly includes caster/manifester level duality, hence why I'm able to use suffer the flesh to improve caster/manifester level interchangeably. With that said, I apparently forgot to explain that in my entry, so I'm not expecting a huge points bump here.

Practiced manifester actually does (probably) work for this, because I'm not using it to directly affect my spells known. Instead, the ardent learns powers based on how many power points she can spend on a power. Practiced manifester unambiguously allows me to manifest higher-level powers, and thus allows me to learn them as an ardent.

Overchannel works on spells by the same magic mantle ability I mentioned above.

Reserves of strength is admittedly ambiguous on my racial polymorph ability. According to the SRD, "Usually, a spell-like ability works just like the spell of that name," which seems like it includes "interaction with feats."

On UoTSI: I don't feel this is quite fair, because literally every build that uses Thayan Gladiator and any spellcasting system would probably do better being a full-caster. For the combat style I'm using, Thayan gladiator is pretty darn effective, as otherwise, it would be quite challenging to enchant a full attack routine in a metamorphosed form, and the Thayan gladiator abilities give more of pretty much everything that this build wants: damage, attacks, CC, etc.

Thanks again for judging!

[Beni-Kujaku]

Spoiler: To Elwen's chef

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About Practiced Manifester: No. I understand how the ardent gains new powers, but PM "doesn't affect your powers known". If it was "doesn't affect your number of powers known", or "you don't know more powers as if you had a higher level in that class" or something, I may have agreed with you. But as it is, what this means is "when determining your powers known, consider that you don't have this feat". Score stands.

About the Magic Mantle and using it to consider CL and ML are the same: I do not agree with your interpretation, but I understand it. The Magic Mantle mentions "Most campaigns already treat [magic and psionics] in this manner, so this mantle is most useful in campaigns where they are considered different systems." and uses dispel psionics as an example, which is the exact example used in the "Magic-Psionics transparency" paragraph and the "Psionics are different" variant. As I see it, the magic mantle only allows you to apply transparency if your DM doesn't allow it, and the transparency doesn't allow to consider caster levels and manifester levels to be merged.
That said, if it worked, you are very much better in combat, since you can manifest augmented Expansion without having to take too much Con damage, and you might even be able to learn metamorphosis by using items that increase your caster level without mentioning "when you cast spells". +0.5

About Thayan Gladiator: My point wasn't that psionics>mundane (and I don't think it's always the case when your concept is a melee fighter.). It's that Thayan Gladiator's class features are kind of obsolete on you. Claws are not really adapted for Thayan Gladiator, since they do not do that much damage and have a low critical threat. The two additional attacks do not amount to much when you already have 8, and you even have most of your low-level strategies based around having 4 kinds of natural weapons, and not focusing on one. I agree that I have maybe judged harshly, since you become more focused on your claws to make them more effective later on, but that still doesn't warrant more than +0.5.

(Also, what is CC? Is it something like "coup critique" for a mistranslated "critical hit", or is it a wording that I don't know for something else?)

Edit: thanks H_H_F_F! That's changed!

[H_H_F_F]

Hey Beni, you can't use formatting within the text of a spoiler tag. I found this out trying to do the exact same thing (Crossing something within the title) for the fluff on the ghost next door, my last year Halloween entry for the villain competition. Frustrating, but that's how it is.

[Amidus Drexel]

Not the chef, but I'd assume "CC" is short for "Crowd Control" in context.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Not the chef, but I'd assume "CC" is short for "Crowd Control" in context.

Oh! Why not. Gladiator doesn't really provide that‚ though‚ except maybe with stunning crit. Thank you for the clarification !

[The Viscount]

Here's a few more for you.

Hello Beni, I like to read how you judge.
But I have some disputes.

The level of Thayan Knight is also interesting, even though it doesn't integrate very well in your build.

Hm... As I see integration isn't so bad. First, I double qualify in Knight and Gladiator with Weapon Focus. Second, Iron Will is very useful for my build. I didn't lose much with precs.

That said, having a class dip that doesn't give you anything apart from fluff justifications and for which you don't qualify most of the time is not ideal.

Thayan Knight gives me +1BAB, +2 Fort, some skills. Its Class Features, let's be fair, isn't impressive. I don’t feel sorry for them. But! Without them, even used not all time, Zuzela isn't so playable. I need this PrC. If I come with, for example, Warblade-6 instead of Warblade-5/ex-Thayan Knight-1, you would have shamed me first.

Plus... Thayan Knight and Thayan Gladiator as I think is one of most incompatible by fluff pair of PrCes despite fact that they are from the same region, and successful combining them in one character should be very surprising.

And taking human heritage as a human doesn't really make sense, your character wouldn't know that he was going to be turned into a wendigo.

If we talk about a character, not a build, he didn't made choices,

Spoiler: he simply born with it.

Show

This feat may only be taken at 1st level.

In Thay, strongly racist country, this maybe effect of natural selection. )))

Also, you messed up your first level skills. (4+1 (Int)+1 (Human))*4=24, and you have 28.

Two words: Human Heritage.

Wounding as your capstone is much worse than speed

I know. I choose Wounding because Speed is overly obvious choice.

Flyby Attack specifically doesn't allow you to full attack, which means every enemy you attack will only get hit once, and have a pretty high chance of not being stunned.

If they are stunned they are stunned all (if they'll not win save). If they aren't... well, let them chasing me. )))

And with only Stunning criticl and Blood in the Water as your riders on crits, you won't scale very fast.

Not only. Anybody without some heal starting slowly die, dye Ravenous Bite bleeding.

Also, changing 5d12 HD into 5d6 is... unoptimal, to say the least

Ок, this really looks unoptimal, but let math. Before transformation Zuzela has 58 hp. After he has 50 hp. Only 8 hp difference. And that doesn’t count others ten levels which give +20 hp surplus.

as is having a useless class dip and a semi-useless feat for fluff reasons.

If game will be not only on the gladiator stadium, this feat in conjunction with Red Wizard master will allow Zuzela to have profit from any buff spell with word "person" in title.

I still appreciate your very high mobility. No one will be able to attack you in melee unless you attack them first. A shame that you're forced to do so to deal damage.

As I said before, I can do Great Flyby Attack and not everyone can chase me.

Firstly, thank you so much for judging. I genuinely appreciate it. I only have some commentary about the elegance score.

I had to penalize you somewhere, and it was either here or in Power. Yeah, no sane DM would even remotely allow this reading of the class feature. This is just too big to pass. I'm still going to continue judging as if it somehow worked like that, but the most permissive reading that I think could be allowed would be "You can observe somebody in the usual time, but you only have to use your standard action on the first round, so you can act normally, on the others, but you only get the benefit at the end of the regular duration".

I mean, i expected to lose points here, and that's a fair interpolation that you've suggested. It could be built around if the DM and player are capable of negotiating that.

Also, that's really too many dips to my taste, and above all, you don't qualify for either Assassin or Thayan Gladiator. In Assassin, because Hide isn't a class skill for Monk of the Long Death and you hence don't have enough ranks in it

I don't begrudge the dipping thing.

And you absolutely caught a skill rank mistake that I should have avoided. If in the spirit of treating the main gimmick of this build as if it worked, I would like you to re-assess your evaluation of assassin qualification. The build doesn't enter assassin until HD 9, even if the skill ranks on my table are wrong, with the same investment of skill ranks, Ole cooter does qualify for assassin by level 9 with the skill rank expenditure at the cross class skill rank rate. And look, If that's a line in the sand you can't cross because the build was inaccurate, that's a line in the sand, and i get it. But if you're amenable to considering that the mistake is relatively minor, the build does qualify for assassin.

and in Thayan Gladiator because you don't have a natural weapon. A monk's fists are considered natural weapons only in the context of effects which improve natural weapons, which prerequisites are not.

I'm gonna firehose argue with you on this point, putting forth a number of arguments that might individually sway your opinion on this point.

1. Weapon focus (unarmed strike) is to be assumed as Weapon focus (unarmed strike (as a natural weapon) thereby triggering the pre-requisite of thayan slaver because the unarmed strikes are always being treated as a natural weapon by the effect of the feat. I forgot to specify that the discipline focus class feature i chose for this build was tiger claw, which has the distinction to have not one, but two natural attacks that you count as having weapon focus in: unarmed strike and claw. This qualifies ole cooter to take the class, although claw is not what we choose for the effect of the improved natural attack class feature from the class.

2. Narratively, it makes little sense to me that a gorilla using a slam attack by balling up its fists gets to count as having a natural attack for thayan gladiator, but a monk doing the same thing, balling up the fist to slam it into someone, somehow falls into a RAW trap of not being covered, therefor the elegance is zero due to failure to qualify for the SI.

3.

Unlike the basic classes found in the Player’s Handbook, characters must meet requirements before they can take their first level of a prestige class. The rules for level advancement (see page 58 of the Player’s Handbook)apply to this system, meaning the first step of advancement is always choosing a class. If a character does not meet the requirements for a prestige class before that first step, that character cannot take the first level of that prestige class.

The monk qualifies so long as the monk is under the effect of treating his unarmed strike as a natural weapon. There's all sorts of spells and gear typically taken by monks that can facilitate this, if you're not buying the discipline focus argument

4. The first level thayan gladiator ability treats the monks unarmed strike as an improved natural attack, so the monk self qualifies for thayan gladiator after getting in at the first level.

Also, it's just "Favored", "Favored in guild" is another feat altogether) And I'm pretty sure being a Gladiator and an assassin can get you kicked out of a mercantile guild, even one specialized in poison.

I think that they're functionally the same feat unless the DM is ruling that favored only allows for benefits from the guilds in the cityscape supplement. And not any of the other guild fringe benefits found in city of waterdeep or other supplements. Getting kicked out of the guild doesn't matter by the time youre an assassayan gladiator.


Again, thank you again for judging. I was happy with your judgment prowess despite the elegance score i wound up receiving.

[Zaq]

I know there's some disputes outstanding so of course I'm not trying to rush or anything, but are we expecting any more judges?

[AvatarVecna]

I know there's some disputes outstanding so of course I'm not trying to rush or anything, but are we expecting any more judges?

Expecting might be a strong word but I'm planning to? >.<

[Beni-Kujaku]

I know there's some disputes outstanding so of course I'm not trying to rush or anything, but are we expecting any more judges?

Yes, AvatarVecna said they should be judging.

Spoiler: To Zuzela's chef

Show

Thayan Knight integrates well: My point wasn't the prereqs but the advantages it gives you. And as I see it, it doesn't give you any real advantage. And no, the equivalent of a warrior level and tower shield proficiency that you won't ever use don't count. And as much as I like the fluff around it, your character is far from "not so playable" without it. Killing one human per day is bad, but far from unsurmountable for an evil adventurer (if you're doing your job well, you'll probably do at least that). And in the arena, this will almost never be a problem. Score stands. And for the "combining gladiator and knight", I would agree if you effectively combined them. Here, you have levels of both but never at the same time, and you don't use the knight's features.

Human heritage: I considered that this feat means that even though you're not a human, the part of your blood that is human is stronger, which means you count as human, and that you get the skill points of a human for your 1st level, which is why I didn't count the extra skill points at first level and thought you had too many points. I didn't consider the fact that "human-descended races" may include humans, and hence could be stacked to get +8 skill points at first level. That's an interesting reading, but one that may not pass for all tables. +0.25 on Originality and +0.25 on Elegance. However, the "benefit from humanoid spells" is a stretch. What beneficial spells is that? Enlarge Person only? I still consider it a semi-useless feat.

(Greater) Flyby and the fact that you seem to believe you're completely safe if your opponent can't chase you: By using Flyby, you are moving inside a controlled space. People will attack of opportunity you and probably deal more damage to you with a two-handed weapon than you can with your bite. They can even try to grapple you, and with your LA, you have a worse grapple modifier than a fighter with 16 Str. And when you're grappled, all your Flybies will not go. Also, even if they're bleeding, it will take a really long time for them to die with 3 damages per turn. If they have a way to attack from a distance or a mobility option (and anyone will by level 10), this will not be a viable strategy. Score stands.

"I only lose 8 HP by going wendigo at level 5": No, you still lose 12 or 15 HP. I compare this choice to having taken wendigo at level 1, not to your number of HP before taking wendigo, because then I'd have to compare it to you taking 4 class levels instead of the LA, and you'd lose far more HP.

Spoiler: To Cooter's chef

Show

"I could qualify for assassin by just swapping my skills around": You could, and that's why I judged by considering you could enter it, notably that your death attack has a high DC (compare to Nautilo, who can't enter Mindbender without changing a lot of things in the build, and that I penalized in power because they can't do their main thing). But you don't qualify right now, and that's a penalty to Elegance. Score stands.

"Unarmed counts as Natural Weapons for prerequisites": First, I'll say that I understand the reading "qualifying for this class is something that improves my unarmed strike, so that counts for IUS". That's a stretch, but that might work. Which is why I didn't just nope the whole build and said "you don't qualify for Study Opponent anyway". But since it's a stretch, that's an elegance penalty. 1) and 4) are specifically effects that improve natural weapons, so Improved Unarmed Strike counts as natural for their purpose (and their purpose only). But that still says nothing about prerequisites. 2) Yeah, that makes little sense. But prerequisites are something that must be based on RAW as much as possible, and only on RAI if RAW is ambiguous. And if you want to go this way, Zulkirs won't try to enchant a regular human's fists if they want some monsters with claws and bite in their arena. 3) Yes. You obviously can do that. But not only you didn't, and I can only judge what you wrote, that would only change the penalty from "slight failure to qualify" to "item dependancy" (since I believe no maneuver or assassin spell can do that). Anyway, score stands.

"Favored=Favored in guild": Yes, they are functionally the same, it's just that your sources and table were in disagreement.

[The Viscount]

Thank you for your speedy responses. I have a few more for you.

First one last clarification from Zuzela Csarkos

(Greater) Flyby and the fact that you seem to believe you're completely safe if your opponent can't chase you: By using Flyby, you are moving inside a controlled space. People will attack of opportunity you and probably deal more damage to you with a two-handed weapon than you can with your bite

With Great Flyby they will not.

Targets of your attack do not get attacks of opportunity against you, but other opponents that would be entitled to attacks of opportunity may take them

.
Scenario in which one wendigo will fight against more than five opponents on gladiator arena isn't expected. Yes, if opponents are at least three and they all have reach more than 5 ft, they can theoretically can line up so way that allows AoO Zuzela, but if enemies are only two, or they have no reach - no AoO.

All other are fair.

Three others.

Hello, Beni-Kujaku! I very glad to see your judgement!

Originality: 5

Thank you for great rating, I'm very flattered. Glad you enjoyed it.


And disputes

And that's only after taking a round to buff yourself by absorbing your Astral Construct.

NoBody is incorporeal. He can dive under ground to buff himself in peace and quiet.

Incorporeality will probably carry you up to level 10 or so, but after that, you're going to see a lot of magical and ghosttouch weapons.

Even after ten level NoBody can attack enemy being inside an object (ground, for example).

An incorporeal creature inside an object has total cover, but when it attacks a creature outside the object it only has cover, so a creature outside with a readied action could strike at it as it attacks.

So enemy has only one single attack to NoBody in round, if he ready action. Magical or ghost touch weapons, it doesn't matter.
Yes, this tactics isn't so spectacular, but it works.

You do use the ten levels of the SI, and having more attacks is integral to the build, but you're not making really good use of any of the other abilities

I didn't write it - shame for me - but NoBody can effectively use Study Opponent if these opponent can't strike NoBody in the air above his head. Or NoBody can try to hide in the ground (he can look out and has cover instead of total cover) and Study Opponent in this position. Yes, it only +5 check, but it is more then nothing.
I don't expect any points for Study Opponent. I must write this in entry as I said, but I want to explain this point for you.

It's not that well organized, with feats that seem like they come from nowhere (why Law Devotion, exactly?)

+7 THAC0 is not a thing I can ignore in PA build.

Hello Beni-kujaju, thank you for judging!

On no natural spell : spellcasting is either prebuffing and/or post combat healing, since raging is not sinergetic with casting at all :)

On intimidating rage + never outnumbered : the purpose of intimidating rage is doing the demoralize action (as described in the PH/srd) as a free action instead of standard action.
So the sequence of event is: I rage and designate one foe. The demoralize action is now a free aciton rather than a standard action for me against that designated foe. Once he's on a square I threaten, I start to demoralize (free action, after all) it until he becomes shaken. For each such demoralize action, never outnumbered let me affect any other foe that may or may not be within 10 ft. Also, regardless of the never outnumbered, IR + imperious command = complete lockdown on that single target unless it's immune to fear

I don't understand where you think this doesn't work? My read of the IR feat is that it enables me to make demoralize attempts as a free action. what it says on the tin :D

On flying enemies, and thayan "designated weapon" please note that my reading of the class may or may not be more limiting than intended. I.e. it could be "all bites" rather than "this specific bite" , if it's "bite" , then when there's a flying boogey, it's as simple as going dire hawk (or your favourite flying shape of the month) instead of dire lion, we're among the better equipped for dealing with flying foes, I feel. Hurts to not be pouncing for sure, but to be honest at that point I'd just "cheat" with call lightning and a burrowing wild shape, to the booing crowd :D (and also very much not a demonstration of the SI)

Yeah I dislike that late practiced spellcaster too, but as stated it's a "bracket increase" on quite a bunch of the staple druid buffs

I've seen you haven't commented on the "trick" of doing the rakes for each bite, does that sway any in the power?

Hello Beni-kujaju, thank you for judging!

Well, not much to say, the only category that I can call out on is power (d'uh!). Not that I was expecting any high score, but not a 1 either.

Like, I have a physical statline that's stronger/faster/chonkier than most other contestant, I'm basically trading class features for the statline and the dragon HDs, a flat 1 seems... too low? Just because my pony is a lousy poison doesn't mean that I'm doing *that much significantly worse* than the other contestants.. am I? I would have an easier time disputing this if I had a bit more details, but fair's fair, it's a simple entry. Are you perhabs dismissing the poison as irrelevant? forcing 3 saves each round felt passably okay to me, more so if we're all naked but if we do get items I do get better all around the block, too! Would it help visualize it if I hyped it as "3d6 str damage per round!!!" (except not, cause the save is what it is at 18 plus CON :( , it's ironically much deadlier early in our career)

the comment about being a CR16 monster makes me feel like you aren't giving me PC wealth for those generic items everybody is assumed to have but we mostly politely handwave away. Which is 100% fair for slave gladiators, but it's unfair in relation to the other entries, either we're all naked, or none of us are, right

[loky1109]

Name	Alignment / Race	Class Levels	Chef	Beni-Kujaku	Judge 2	Judge 3	Total	HM	Place
Unga Bunga	NG->TN->NE Antropomorphic ape	Druid 5 Nature's Warrior 3/Thayan Gladiator 10		11.50					11th
Auntyrvaloss'elwen T'elient	NE Wyrm of War Steel Dragon Wyrmling	Ardent 2/Thayan Gladiator 10/Totemist 2		9.00					19th
Django	LE Kalashtar	Psychic Warrior 5/Warblade 1/Flayerspawn Psychic 4/Thayan Gladiator 10		13.00					8th
Venomfang	CE Plains Landwyrm	Thayan Gladiator 10		13.50					6th
Maximus Bloodrender	?? Thri-kreen	Warblade 3/Thayan Gladiator 10/Bloodclaw Master 1/Warshaper 3		10.00					16th
Five-Punch Man	LE Wild Dwarf	Artificer 5/Renegade Mastermaker 3/Thayan Gladiator 8/Disciple of Dispater 4		15.00				1	3rd
'Ole Cooter	LE Silverbrow Human	Monk 2/ Swordsage 1/ Monk of the Long Death 6/ Thayan Gladiator 1/Assassin 8/ Mindspy 1		12.50				2	9th
Takkan	CE Feral Longtooth Shifter	Wolf Totem Barbarian 4/Warshaper 5/Thayan Gladiator 10		14.00					4th
NoBody	LE Unbodied	Telepath-2/Thayan Gladiator-10		13.25					7th
Knife wielding tentacle	LE Amphibious Anthropomorphic Giant Octopus	Knight 3/Warblade 1/Crusader 1/Thayan Gladiator 7/Disciple of Dispater 8		10.50					14th
Zuzela Csarkos	CE Human Wendigo	Warblade-5/ex-Thayan Knight-1/Thayan Gladiator-10		14.00					4th
Gulog	CE Frostblood Half-Orc	Ranger 6/Barbarian 1/Osteomancer 3/Thayan Gladiator 10		10.50					14th
Baby	LE neraph	Monk 2/Sohei 3/Tattooed Monk 3/Kensai 2/Thayan Gladiator 10		11.50				1	11th
The Blender	LE Amphibious Anthropomorphic Giant Octopus	Ardent 5/Thayan Gladiator 3/Wizard 1/Disciple of Dispater 8/Warblade 1		15.50					2nd
Vame Pomier	NE forestlord half-elf	Ranger 4/Ardent 2/Thayan Gladiator 10/Swordsage 2/Eternal Blade 2		17.00				1	1st
Buddy	CE Lolth-Touched Amphibious Anthropomorphic Stingray	Totemist 6 / Scaled Horror 1 / Thayan Gladiator 10		10.00					16th
Hopp Delgado	LE Hare Hengeyokai	Psychic Warrior 7/Warshaper 3/Thayan Gladiator 10		10.00					16th
Lopoda Nautilo	NE Necropolitian Mineral Warrior Anthropomorphic Giant Squid	Ardent 5 / Psychic Warrior 2 / Mindbender 1 / Thayan Gladiator 7		8.00					20th
Mitra Yuuz	CE Needlefolk	Fighter 4/Barbarian 2/Thayan Gladiator 10		11.25					12th
Daniel	NE Human	Ranger 5/Thayan Gladiator 10/Avenging Executioner 5		12.00					10th

[H_H_F_F]

Thanks for the table, Loky.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Spoiler: To Zuzela's chef

Show

The fact that great Flyby doesn't provoke doesn't change that much, since they can still attack you from a distance, or spread so that they can charge you at the end of your movement (remember that you can only move your speed, not twice your speed). Or just prepare an attack for when you attack them. And above all, you don't have Great Flyby for the vast majority of your career, level 19 is super late for something that seems so integral to your fighting style. Score stands.

Spoiler: To NoBody's chef

Show

Buffing under the ground: Good point. Remember that being just underground only gives you full cover, not complete immunity (and that you can't go further down than just underground, since an incorporeal creature has to always be in contact with a free space), and that if you can buff yourself, then so can your opponent. +0.25 to Power.

Attacking from underground: I mean, you can, but that's far from advisable. You can't see your target when you're underground, so you're probably not attacking the right square, and they have full cover from you (as you do from them, but then you don't really get advantage from attacking from below). And if they prepare an action, you only get partial cover against the attack. The rules don't really like incorporeal creatures ambushing people. I don't understand why you think they can't attack you at all if they don't prepare an action. And that's not counting the fact that if you get underground, your halfling disguise is busted. Score stands.

Study opponent: Indeed you can, but you'd probably rather attack them in that case than use your standard action. No point here.

Law Devotion: I understand why you did it power-wise, it's just that it doesn't really go with the theme of your character and seems to only be placed there because you had a free feat to use.

Spoiler: To Venomfang's chef

Show

You're not weak, but you're painfully one-dimensional. You don't deal that much damage per round since you don't have Power Attack and you only really get 3 attacks per round (you do have 2 claws, but let's be honest, that won't do you that much good). You're relying almost solely on your poison, and as strong as it is, you are almost helpless when you're going against something that is immune (and there starts to be a few ways to be immune to poison by level 10, and evermore as you're going into really high levels). Plus, since it's an injury poison, if something has DR 10 that you can't bypass (and until level 19, you can't bypass DR/Magic without objects. I fully understand that you should have at least a Necklace of Natural Weapons at this point, but in the arena, nothing is ever certain. Anyway, DR/Alignment is pretty common starting at level 10-14), you have around 30% chance to just not affect them with your poison. And 95% if they have DR 15/Evil, for example. However, I understand that I may have undersold your speed and mobility, which is pretty admirable and should let you go places (litterally). +0.5 Power

Spoiler: To UngaBunga's chef

Show

On natural spell: The strength of a druid is not only to be able to turn into an animal, it's to be able to remain an animal for the whole day. If you're prebuffing, you always want to do it with a +10 natural armor and without having to spend an extra standard action before being able to fight. If you're healing yourself, you want to be able to do it as a lion, because you only have 3 Wild Shapes per day and you don't want to waste them if you can keep them. And if you are only going to use it for heal and prebuff, that doesn't tell me why you invested a feat on something seemingly so secondary to your character. Plus, most good druid buffs last at least min/level, and increasing the caster level won't help you much. +1 natural armor with barkskin and +1 enhancement with GMF don't seem like the best use of a feat. Score stands.

On Intimidating Rage and Never Outnumbered: It's a matter of target. Never Outnumbered specifies that the new target is "rather than a single foe you threaten" while Intimidating Rage targets "any enemy within 30ft". So since you don't target "a single foe you threaten", you can't replace that target with "every enemy within 10ft". You might be able to affect all enemies within 10ft if the first foe you target with IR is an enemy you threaten. But even then, since Intimidating Rage specifically mentions that it can't affect more than one foe per encounter, the other enemies that would be affected would only be demoralized normally, for 1 round. It "works", but it's not like you're using Intimidating Rage on every foe around you. That's what I mean.

And I don't understand why you think Imperious Command+Intimidating Rage means a complete lockdown? The enemy cowers for 1 round, then is shaken for the rest of the encounter, that's all. Unless you use the reading that you can use Intimidating Rage several times on the same foe, since it's a free action. That... seems to be possible, but would make the feat disgustingly broken (no-save free action panicked for one round) and is absolutely not the spirit of the feat.

Using alternate wild shapes to adapt to adversity: I'm not a fan of this tactic at all. Mostly because changing shape is a standard action, and because you only have 3 Wild Shapes per day, and you'll probably have at least as many fights. You want to be able to stay in one shape. Also, let's be honest, you get much less out of a Dire Eagle than you do a Dire Lion. No pounce, no rake... Still, that's a pretty good point. +0.25 in Power

Rake: A creature with this special attack gains extra natural attacks when it grapples its foe. Normally, a monster can attack with only one of its natural weapons while grappling, but a monster with the rake ability usually gains two additional claw attacks that it can use only against a grappled foe. Rake attacks are not subject to the usual –4 penalty for attacking with a natural weapon in a grapple.
A monster with the rake ability must begin its turn grappling to use its rake—it can’t begin a grapple and rake in the same turn.

Sorry, that doesn't work. But that would be dope.

[loky1109]

Table updated.

Question. What colors should I use for 1-3 places?

[The Viscount]

The colors in the select box are golden rod for first, dim gray for second, and fire brick for third. HM is blue.

one followup

Rake: A creature with this special attack gains extra natural attacks when it grapples its foe. Normally, a monster can attack with only one of its natural weapons while grappling, but a monster with the rake ability usually gains two additional claw attacks that it can use only against a grappled foe. Rake attacks are not subject to the usual –4 penalty for attacking with a natural weapon in a grapple.
A monster with the rake ability must begin its turn grappling to use its rake—it can’t begin a grapple and rake in the same turn.

Sorry, that doesn't work. But that would be dope.

But that is accounted for! :
Pounce
When a creature with this special attack makes a charge, it can follow with a full attack—including rake attacks if the creature also has the rake ability.

adding to the dire lion Improved grab, hence why the garbled musing about "if I bite 3 times thanks to thayan gladiator, do I get to establish then exit grappling three times, thus doing 6 rake attacks?" , it's enabled by pounce! That specifically says we can do the rake attacks in a turn we charged on! (implied : ignoring the normal limitations of rake attacks, that can only be done on opponents that starts the turn grappled)

sidenote : it's funny to think about, the rakes are the scratches done with the hind paws, so basically it's doing the rabbit/cat kicks

[Beni-Kujaku]

I always read the Pounce text as "whenever you charge‚ add your Rake attacks to your full attack"‚ which would be independant from wether you grapple or not (and would of course not be multiplied if you have several grapple attempts). Can somebody more rule-savvy (even a competitor) give me a hand‚ and the proper ruling?

[The Viscount]

Certainly.

Rules Compendium provides some helpful clarifications on using rake and pounce together. This text appears in pounce (emphasis mine).

When a creature that has this extraordinary special attack charges, it can still make a full attack even if it charged while restricted to a single action. All its attacks receive the +2 bonus on attack rolls gained from charging. If it uses its attacks to successfully start a grapple, and it has the rake ability, it can also make rake attacks.

From this we can conclude that a creature with pounce and rake can grapple as part of the pounce, and must grapple to perform rakes.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Then the question becomes "can you release a grapple between your bites to start another and use rake again". And the answer is: absolutely. Usually, you can forego one of your attacks when grappling to release a grapple, so that's that, but more than that, if you don't enter your opponent's square after starting the grapple and attacking, the grapple is immediately released, without mention of any action. So you absolutely can Rake 3 times if you succeed in grappling three times. Now, the problem was never in your number of attacks, and these attacks are pretty moot if the opponent has a DR you can't bypass, but 4 potential claw attacks is never something to sneeze at, even moreso with a dire lion's strength. That's at least +0.25 in my book (and in Power).

[H_H_F_F]

Since it seems like we're done with the main mass of disputes, I want to transfer the data to the ICO spreadsheet. Beni, could I get a clarification on Auntyrvaloss'elwen T'elient's (Jesus Christ) total score? The individual numbers still sum up to 8, which also still shows up as the total, but your updated tagline says the score has been improved to 9. Has elegance jumped to 1, perhaps? Please let me know. By the way, thanks for updating the disputes so clearly to your original judgement, it's very helpful.
AvatarVecna my friend, you're still in to judge, right?

[AvatarVecna]

I don't think I'll manage it, sorry. >.<

[H_H_F_F]

That's a shame, but understandable with such a large field. Thanks for trying.

I believe no one else is judging, then. Chair, do you want to give more time for further disputes, or should we go for the reveal?

[Beni-Kujaku]

Since it seems like we're done with the main mass of disputes, I want to transfer the data to the ICO spreadsheet. Beni, could I get a clarification on Auntyrvaloss'elwen T'elient's (Jesus Christ) total score? The individual numbers still sum up to 8, which also still shows up as the total, but your updated tagline says the score has been improved to 9. Has elegance jumped to 1, perhaps? Please let me know. By the way, thanks for updating the disputes so clearly to your original judgement, it's very helpful.
AvatarVecna my friend, you're still in to judge, right?

No, it's +0.5 to Power (I still think their reading is very questionable, but it it worked, it would bump their power quite a bit, so I gave haf point) and to UoSI (I wrote 2.5-> 2 instead of 2.5->3, which lead to the erroneous (no, not the shining blade) total sum). I'll update it.

Too bad, AvatarVecna... I would have liked another judging, but don't lose sleep over that. Thank you for trying.

By the way‚ could you pm me the builds that you did judge‚ if any? I'd like to compare to see what I could've done better