Monster Mash III: Keep your monsters close...

[loky1109]

You'll post your stub after the reveal, more entries are always interesting, even unfinished ones

Well, I don't need do it. I'll'lick longpod is sounds like my idea, but better. My first thought was ilitid flayerspawn psychic. But next I realized it doesn't work good.

[ciopo]

I had this terrible idea of doing a topiary guardian of one of the octopus/squid , with the symbiotic template, putting a (small race humanoid) inside the topiary guardian

The hackeyed story was that the humanoid was a thief caught by the topiary guardian of the ruins of a wizard tower, and it learned to live with it somehow.

That was the setup for getting normal mental stats on a large octopus chassis, but from there it was standard fare grapple optimization

[Thurbane]

Congrats to the entrants! I might be able to handle judging 4 entries, but I'm gonna need to check my work schedule first.

---

My entry that I stopped working on was a Choker Aberration 3/Bard 7/Sublime Chord 6/Wyrm Wizard 2.

The whole point of the build was to get Persisted Giant Size (as per the Wu Jen spell); the build didn't achieve that until level 20, and even then probably would have been ruled not to work due to the wording of Metamagic Song. Also, it took literally every last skill point of the first 12 levels to meet the reqs for Sublime Chord (Chokers get -6 Int), which felt just plain bad.

Of course the upside of the build was a Choker getting an extra action per round, and throwing around 8th level spells.

Since he was a singing Choker, I was going to make him Elvis themed with a few related puns.

Elvis the Choker

Level	Class	Feats	Class Features
5th	Aberration 1	Extended Reach, Improved InitiativeB	Darkvision 60 ft., improved grab, constrict, quickness
5th	Aberration 2	-	-
5th	Aberration 3	3 (?)	-
6th	Bard 1	-	Bardic music, bardic knowledge, countersong, fascinate, inspire courage +1
7th	Bard 2	-	-
8th	Bard 3	Extend Spell	Inspire competence
9th	Bard 4	-	-
10th	Bard 5	-	-
11th	Bard 6	Arcane Preparation	Suggestion
12th	Bard 7	-	-
13th	Sublime Chord 1	-	Bardic lore, bardic music
14th	Sublime Chord 2	Practiced Spellcaster	Song of arcane power
15th	Sublime Chord 3	-	-
16th	Sublime Chord 4	-	-
17th	Sublime Chord 5	Metamagic Song	-
18th	Sublime Chord 6		Song of timelessness
19th	Wyrm Wizard 1		Knowledge of the wyrm
20th	Wyrm Wizard 2	Persist Spell	Spell research

[loky1109]

I had chocker with some size increasers in my mind, but I couldn't make it work.

[Thurbane]

Just an update from me, with the new financial year kicking in here in Australia, my work is pretty time consuming right now. If I were able to judge, it wouldn't be for at least 2 weeks or so, unless anything changes.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Just an update from me, with the new financial year kicking in here in Australia, my work is pretty time consuming right now. If I were able to judge, it wouldn't be for at least 2 weeks or so, unless anything changes.

Okay, thank you for the update. If anybody could step up as a judge, that would be greatly appreciated. Even if Thurbane ends up judging anyway, having another judge would be great.


In the mean time, you can choose the theme of the next competition. As it was requested, this round should be a little more open than the previous ones:

Monsters, Magic & Mayhem: The character must end up with the spellcasting ability of a sorcerer of at least 10th level. The initial race may or may not have any spellcasting ability of its own.

Monsters in the Darkness: The character must end up with sneak attack +5d6 or death attack, regardless of whether the initial race has any of these abilities.

Frenzied Monsters: The character must end up with a way to go into a rage, fury or similar at least 3/day, regardless of whether the initial race can rage on its own.


What do you think of those? Which one would you prefer?

[ciopo]

If I can make a dorkness pun, I will, and thetefore dorkness shall be forme!

[Tohron]

I'll put it a vote for the Magic option. To be clear, that would rule out monsters with psionic, wizard, cleric, etc. casting?

[Tzardok]

I think Monster in the Dark sounds fun.

[Beni-Kujaku]

I'll put it a vote for the Magic option. To be clear, that would rule out monsters with psionic, wizard, cleric, etc. casting?

Supposedly yes. The point is sorcerer is vastly less used than the other ones in optimization contests‚ and I wanted some variety.

If several people ask for it‚ I may change the class‚ this is just a proposition after all.

[ciopo]

First MM was "have at least one of : fighter, cleric, rogue, wizard"
could be nice have a round of "barbarian, sorcerer, (another 2 "core but not original core" classes)

[loky1109]

Table. Better late than never.

Name	Alignment / Race	Class Levels	Total	Place
Necahualeztli	NE Psionic Yuan-Ti Abomination	Soul Eater 2/War Mind 5/Hoardstealer 3
Exfoliant squidre	LN Gargantuan Octopus tree	Warblade 1/Kensai 4
I'll'lick longpod	NE Half-Illithid Flotsam Ooze	Cleric 3/Ardent 3/Psychic Theurge 10
Manifest , part 2	NE Gelatinous Cube	Artificer 16

[Beni-Kujaku]

First MM was "have at least one of : fighter, cleric, rogue, wizard"
could be nice have a round of "barbarian, sorcerer, (another 2 "core but not original core" classes)

I don't think the builds would be very meaningfully different going from barbarian to fighter, from wizard to sorcerer... Maybe something like classes from different magic systems instead? At least one level of Binder/Incarnate/Warlock/Psion may be interesting in my opinion.

Or you could make it with a bit more obscure base class that technically still use regular magic but in a weirder way, like one level of Artificer/Spellthief/Healer/Factotum.

Or, if you want to remain in core, why not use some classes with some originality in how they work, namely the "sub-classes" from previous editions? Bard/paladin/Druid/Ranger might be good. I will probably propose these three for round VI, if I don't have other ideas or somebody doesn't suggest better ones before.

[loky1109]

Maybe here isn't Dead Magic Zone?

I'm casting "Summon Judge"!

[pabelfly]

Maybe here isn't Dead Magic Zone?

I'm casting "Summon Judge"!

Thurbane expressed interest before, you might want to ask how he is going.

[loky1109]

Thurbane expressed interest before, you might want to ask how he is going.

You're right! Somehow I blink it. Good health for you and your wife Thurbane.

[Thurbane]

For anyone who doesn't know, my wife and I currently have COVID. Neither of us are all that well.

I have to withdraw my offer of judging, I simply don't feel up to it mentally, sorry...

[Paragon]

I'm halfway through judging :)

[Beni-Kujaku]

Thank you paragon for your efforts!

[loky1109]

I'm halfway through judging :)

Sounds cool! Thank you!

[Paragon]

Here comes.

Spoiler: Necahualeztli rated : 14/20

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Originality
I've seen the main combo "Body Pouch/Hoardstealer" done before in the IRC XCIII so unlucky for you but it's less original to me - but you're the sole scaly one in the comp so 3/5

Power
"Practiced Manifester" which class ? Punching through PR isn't really valuable according to the powers listed and duration isn't really a problem.
Body Pouch doesn't like changing sizes but choosing low con form and augmented expansion can help killing it before changing back
Baleful Polymorph comes online at level 9 which makes you on par with the tier 1 classes. The fact that it MAKES any creature NEED to breath (undead, plants, contructs) is a massive bonus for your combo +
Sweeping Strike plus Hustle justify the War Mind pick and Soul Eater is a nice touch (lol)

Expansion doesn't work for your combo since your Improved Grab ability specifically calls for "Large or smaller" and not "one size smaller"
Hoardstealer 3 means you can only fit 300lbs in your deep pocket meaning your Body Pouch (when you expand) is actually bigger without the trick. If you manage to baleful polymorph beforehand it works but then anything works if that goes through so it's pointless.

Not familiar with Yuan-Ti but an extra limb in the form of a tail is another Energy Drain and limb to grab with no ?

The "all content disappear" is a bit cheesy to me but if it flies, I can't deny it's effective. On the other hand, Freedom of Movement destroys your build (if they escape baleful polymorph that is) 3/5"

Elegance
Skill point problem ? 3 Knowledge skills when Abomination says "any two". you picked arcana and history. Easily fixable but still -
"Craft or Knowledge (any two)" can mean different things. The most permissive reading would be "any two craft + any two knowledge" but even like this, you're a knowledge skill short. My reading would tend to be ""either 2 craft, 2 knowledge or 1 each and it can be anyone you want"" which would put you in default for craft alchemy as well (but I'm not enforcing this since I'm not a native speaker)
Brute forcing most of the skill prereqs with your +10 Int isn't particularly elegant to me

Pretty sure you need Craft (Poisonmaking) and not just Craft (Alchemy) to use with your Minor Creation power.

You did include the "stealing from a dragon" & "found some tomes" prereqs but it feels very halfassed (probably lack of time I guess). - 3/5

Monster
Your Improved Grab entry superceeds the "at least one size smaller" and that's good since it reads : "To use this ability, an abomination must hit a Large or smaller creature with its bite attack." and you are Large to begin with BUUUUUT, it also means, Expansion does nothing for you.
Cheesing bites attacks that benefit from the Improved Grab ability even though I imagine they're smaller serpent heads by using a Yuan-ti only graft convinced me this race is KEY for you build. Too bad the Improved Grab wording is a double edged sword (but already penalized in Power so not here) 5/5

Spoiler: Exfoliant squidre rated : 12/20

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Originality
An underwater tree, Kensai PrC what is up ??
I am keeping that build idea of using kensai to enhance multiple attacks cheaply.
Philosopher hugging plant is really fun to picture. I got this image of a creature that's passionate yet boring and grabs people to force them to listen to it. 4/5

Power
Huge creature (and eventually Gargantuan), plant immunities, regeneration (the fire vulnerability isn't much of a problem underwater), massive STR keep your relevant.
Grapple is a good strategy for you (8 attempts per turn) and you somehow mitigated FoM which IS a big deal in this round

That being said, dispel at CL14 +4 Inquisition means you get 50% chance to dispel spells cast by a level 17th CL. The Steady Concentration feat plus a Dispelling Chord (MIC, 1k gp) would get you 100% dispel on CL19 spells (barring CL enhancement)
If your enemy is FoMless AND in your reach AND doesn't have some miss chance/invisibility/defensive buffs THEN your schtick is really doing what it needs to be doing. But to be fair, it's kind of the point of this round.

As for the choice of maneuvers, I didn't find anything worth to do with Douse the Flame and you should remember that most Mountain Hammer advanced maneuvers don't have prereqs (other that the required IL). Overwhelming Mountain Strike is nice for instance. 4/5

Elegance
Ok your idea of backfitting the fluff to the crunch can work, it screams Monster Academy to me but I guess a monstrous type of Hedwige at Hogwart works as well. What problematic though is that it's not my job to write the story. You leave bits and pieces and expect me to do ... what exactly ?

Second thing I find inelegant is the discussion about technicality over knowledge skills as class skills for some time but not after you switch your touchstone. It's sketchy at best. What I mean is that no DM is going to let that slide without an in-depth questionning

Lastly your forcing skills that aren't supposed to be there : Ride for instance. I get that you have to and it does fit legally in the end but it just feels like your stomping it in.

No mistakes per say but you bent the rules as much as possible to make your build happen and while it works in the end, it's not what I call elegant BUT you did take the time to walk me through your decision making and that is really nice of you +1 2/5

Monster
You're a monster all right. In between the Kraken and a Ent you used Improved Grab with the good ol' "the more the merrier" and improving your chances to make hits matter and you didn't try to make the chain grab/maw/swallow amount to much.
A monster you can simply run away from is a lot less scary though, not to mention flight and i'm not buying that 3/d Obscuring Mist will save your ass vs ranged attacks. 2/5

Spoiler: I'll'lick longpod rated : 13/20

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Originality
Well this feels so illegal I can't say I've even thought about something so horrifying. I guess that's one way to score in originality but it's not the best way imho. 3/5

Power
Well obvious power grabs give you exactly that ; power. You're the only entry that can fly at 70ft.
You have automatic grapple attacks which can be made from a distance (although I wouldn't feel like the grapplees are automatically brought back to your square but I wouldn't know how to handle this as a DM so...)
You even get a selective spell AMF which takes care of your own worst enemies : FoM and teleporting spells
Adding to this mix are some well thought powers and theurging is always stonks at higher levels so I agree this build is powerful. 5/5

Elegance
Half-Illithid over oozes shenanigan, you knew it was coming and sure enough, it's there -1
Casting with no hand, voice, components or Divine Focus, that's another ding. I was not convinced by your demonstrations sorry.
Extract Gift abuse to have the casting stats you need, another penalty.
Celerity Domain isn't offered in any of the Dark Sixes (certainly not in the Shadow's which is the only one that has the Magic one) 1/5

Monster
An sticky ooze with 4 tentacles yeah you got your monster card alright. You have the best grapple ability possible since it's an automatic win as soon as you touch anyone so aces here.
I can't shake off that you are a monster because you pile up monsters on top of each others that have nothing to do with one another 4/5

Spoiler: Manifest rated : 8/20

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Originality
Optimizing the craft skills of an Artificer to have the best possible equipment at the level you're at in order to do all the things you can't usually do ? Nothing mindblowing here.
I guess the fact that you engulfed people into traps is a bit of a novelty. 2/5

Power
Well having optimized to the brim of insanity your capacity to get the best possible stuff WBL can get you, you are powerful. Shameless power grabs usually work well in this section and we'll assume here everything you want to do is legal.
You can scout, hide, teleport, protect yourself from energies, heal etc. Basically, you're a Gelatinous Batman.
But unlike Bruce Wayne you forgot to address the Kryptonite problem ; what about freedom of movement and teleport abilities that can just kite you ? 4/5

Elegance
Oozes have neither hands nor vocal chords so it can be using all those items you painstakingly described in your entry.
"To imbue an item with an infusion, an artificer must have an Intelligence score equal to at least 10 + the infusion level (Int 11 for 1st-level infusions, Int 12 for 2nd-level infusions, and so forth)" So you can't use infusions most of the time.

You have 4 Ooze HD meaning your entry's first 4 level description are wrong. It is written as if your first levels are LA (meaning they don't get you anything) when they are, in fact, Racial Hit DIce levels getting you what the Ooze type provides per HD. More explanations here
This means you have BaB, saves and skill points at first level and increases of those parameters as you gain HD. For instance you should be getting 4x (2+Int) skills points at your first level then 1 point per level since you had 18-8=10 Int at level 1 (had to reverse engineer your point buy btw which I guess was Str 14, Dex 8, Con 8, Int 18, Wis 8, Cha 16 before racial adjustments). So that's 8 skill points at level 1 and another 2/level afterwards totaling 14 skills points for your 4 HDs.

Early spell cheese from Telflammar and Trapsmith is a plain trade flavor for power.
Quick Trait is inelegant as per the competition's rules.
"When you place a pearl of speech upon your tongue" you have none

Oh and you didn't source the traps you mentioned. I found some and gave up on others. Do the most work you can for the judges, always. 0/5

Monster
You are a stealthy ingenious Gelatinous Cube that finds way to either dispose of people through carefully engineered traps or simply engulfing them until they dissolve. I feel the monster has been anthropomorphized too much and lost some of its luster
Adding to this the fact that you actually need a butt-load of circumstances to do what you want to do (available material and in large quantities, a dungeon to haunt etc.) 2/5

[loky1109]

Paragon, thank you!

[Beni-Kujaku]

Thank you very much Paragon for your efforts! To celebrate it, here's the first dispute!

Spoiler: Necahualeztli

Show

Skill point problem ? 3 Knowledge skills when Abomination says "any two". you picked arcana and history. Easily fixable but still -
"Craft or Knowledge (any two)" can mean different things. The most permissive reading would be "any two craft + any two knowledge" but even like this, you're a knowledge skill short. My reading would tend to be ""either 2 craft, 2 knowledge or 1 each and it can be anyone you want"" which would put you in default for craft alchemy as well (but I'm not enforcing this since I'm not a native speaker)

Knowledge (any two) means all Knowledge are in-class.
Let's look in the first Monster Manual.

Yuan-Ti Pureblood stat block: Skills: Concentration +7, Disguise +4*, Hide +3, Knowledge (any one) +5, Listen +4, Spot +4
Yuan-Ti Purebloods as Characters: Racial Skills: A yuan-ti pureblood’s monstrous humanoid levels give it skill points equal to 7 × (2 + Int modifier). Its class skills are Concentration, Disguise, Hide, Knowledge (any), Listen and Spot.

And

Skills: All dragons have skill points equal to (6 + Int modifier, minimum 1) × (Hit Dice + 3). Most dragons purchase the following skills at the maximum ranks possible: Listen, Search, and Spot. The remaining skill points are generally spent on Concentration, Diplomacy, Escape Artist, Intimidate, Knowledge (any), Sense Motive, and Use Magic Device at a cost of 1 skill point per rank. All these skills are considered class skills for dragons. (Each dragon has other class skills as well, as noted in the variety descriptions.)

Plus

Very Old Red Dragon: ... Skills and Feats: Appraise +31, Bluff +37, Concentration +28, Craft (trapmaking) +18, Hide +2, Intimidate +39, Jump +48, Knowledge (arcana) +31, Knowledge (local) +31, Knowledge (religion) +31, Listen +37, Search +37, Sense Motive +37, Spellcraft +39, Spot +37, Use Magic Device +22;

We can see from dragon's description what Knowledge (any) means "all". And can see from Yuan-Ti description what Knowledge (any one) in monster description means Knowledge (any) for playing race.

Brute forcing most of the skill prereqs with your +10 Int isn't particularly elegant to me

What inelegant is in it???

"Practiced Manifester" which class ?

I have only one psionic class - War Mind.

Expansion doesn't work for your combo since your Improved Grab ability specifically calls for "Large or smaller" and not "one size smaller"

I see. I think RAI is clear, but RAW you are right, but it anyway improves my grapple check.

Hoardstealer 3 means you can only fit 300lbs in your deep pocket meaning your Body Pouch (when you expand) is actually bigger without the trick.

If "all content disappear" works, I don't need big deep pocket. Actually, it's better to have smaller deep pocket.

Edit: and another one, for good measure!

Spoiler: Manifest

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Just had a few responses to the Elegance section in Manifest's score.

First, regarding the Racial HD, I didn't realize there was a specific formatting requirement for those in the table, so that could be an oversight on my part, but regarding skill ranks, all the skills are cross-class (as indicated in the table), so 14 skill points are needed for 7 skill ranks. The rules (as far as I could see) only mentioned that flaws, not traits, are inelegant.

Regarding traps, all the traps were created using the SRD trap rules:
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm
so I didn't see the need to specify a source. The net trap was based on a specific example on that page, the others were using the custom trap rules.

[ciopo]

Thank you for judging!

[Paragon]

Spoiler: Necahualeztli

Show

Hmm your explanation seems fair but something is still bugging me. First off, if (any one) means (any) why bother writing it in the first place and what's more why would you even go to (any two). Let's say I'm not convinced but you do have some backbone behind your claim so +0.5 in Elegance

As for the brute forcing part maybe I should explain. Your monster race has class skills nominally : Concentration Hide Listen Move Silently Spot and those Craft or Knowledge (any two). Those skills are the essence of how this race is built yet you brute force stuff like Appraise, Open Lock, Disable Device, Heal, Escape Artist. and this feels out of place, inelegant.
You left out Listen Spot Concentration which is almost half the creature's identity.

Practiced Manifester is mostly me wanting people to remember they have to specify a class. Since you have an ML for your race, this could have been it for making baleful polymorph relevant vs PR.

As for the "smaller is better", I'm all for it man but I can't figure out why you'd be happy with this. Bigger pouch means bigger opponents that you can "engulf" and the fact that Hoardstealer limits it at 300lbs means you can't use "all content disappear" on creatures that are Large or bigger.

final review +0.5 in Elegance, total grade is 14.5

Spoiler: Manifest

Show

Okay so you tell me that the scores here are the end skill points and not the number of skill points you put in. Fair enough but you still have one too many (which is better than having god knows what). +1 Elegance since it's not AS illegal as I thought
As for Fort, Ref and Will they're the save from the class (here it's race) and do not factor in the Con, Dex and Wis factors usually but I guess this was easy to reconcile so it's more of a convention than anything. If you're unconvinced, imagine having to fill up BaB with every bonuses ; that's weird right ?

If they are indeed SRD, you need not specify it too much but custom traps ? I mean how am I supposed to reverse engineer that ? If that settles you, it's more of an advice for the next competitions you'd want to partake in ; always make the judges' life the easiest way possible.

final review +1 in Elegance, total grade is 9

[Beni-Kujaku]

Thank you Paragon for your quick response. Here's the reveal!

Name	Alignment / Race	Class Levels	Chef	Judge 1	Judge 2	Judge 3	Total	Place
Necahualeztli	NE Psionic Yuan-Ti Abomination	Soul Eater 2/War Mind 5/Hoardstealer 3	loky1109	14.50				1st
Exfoliant squidre	LN Gargantuan Octopus tree	Warblade 1/Kensai 4	ciopo	12.00				3rd
I'll'lick longpod	NE Half-Illithid Flotsam Ooze	Cleric 3/Ardent 3/Psychic Theurge 10	ciopo	13.00				2nd
Manifest , part 2	NE Gelatinous Cube	Artificer 16	Tohron	9.00

Congratulations to all contestants! I will post the next competition tonight. With 2 votes against one, it will be Monsters in the Darkness!

[ciopo]

I'm on vacation and books are overseas relative to me, so I'm peace out about dispute :) thing I'm curious is about floatsam ooze entry, I wasn't expecting 1 elegance. I took care of going surrogate spellcasting to allow spellcasting, so I'm not sure why you say I can't cast? Doesn't surrogate spellcasting cover it?

Celerity domain might be a failure to source from me, but I can't cross check from where I am, I only got the phone with me, I do not remember if spell compendium says what deities had it, or if I should have referred a "step up"

I don't think I've strayed from rules-legal, other than some wigglyness of divine focus

[Beni-Kujaku]

I'm on vacation and books are overseas relative to me, so I'm peace out about dispute :) thing I'm curious is about floatsam ooze entry, I wasn't expecting 1 elegance. I took care of going surrogate spellcasting to allow spellcasting, so I'm not sure why you say I can't cast? Doesn't surrogate spellcasting cover it?

Celerity domain might be a failure to source from me, but I can't cross check from where I am, I only got the phone with me, I do not remember if spell compendium says what deities had it, or if I should have referred a "step up"

I don't think I've strayed from rules-legal, other than some wigglyness of divine focus

I suspect the "You must still have suitable appendages and vocal organs." clause from Surrogate Spellcasting is the problem here. You could argue that the tentacles can be wiggled for Surrogate Spellcasting, but an ooze definitely has no vocal chords.


Also, Paragon:
"First off, if (any one) means (any) why bother writing it in the first place and what's more why would you even go to (any two). Let's say I'm not convinced but you do have some backbone behind your claim"

The point here is that the skills in a monster's profile are not only a list of class skills but above all the skills the standard monster invested in. Even if a monster has all Knowledges as class skills, it doesn't have enough skill points to put at least one in each of them, and there is no real point to mentioning them all in the profile. The way they chose was to just say that different monsters of the same species invested in different class skills, and for example, a standard Yuan-ti abomination focuses on two of these Knowledge skills to put points in.

[Paragon]

I suspect the "You must still have suitable appendages and vocal organs." clause from Surrogate Spellcasting is the problem here. You could argue that the tentacles can be wiggled for Surrogate Spellcasting, but an ooze definitely has no vocal chords.

Ninja'ed

Also, Paragon:
"First off, if (any one) means (any) why bother writing it in the first place and what's more why would you even go to (any two). Let's say I'm not convinced but you do have some backbone behind your claim"

The point here is that the skills in a monster's profile are not only a list of class skills but above all the skills the standard monster invested in. Even if a monster has all Knowledges as class skills, it doesn't have enough skill points to put at least one in each of them, and there is no real point to mentioning them all in the profile. The way they chose was to just say that different monsters of the same species invested in different class skills, and for example, a standard Yuan-ti abomination focuses on two of these Knowledge skills to put points in.

I know that, I meant why bother writing "any one" instead of "any"

[loky1109]

I know that, I meant why bother writing "any one" instead of "any"

I think it's because number is important. I'm not native speaker, but it sounds like "any two" or "any four" are subcategory of "any". And this is difference between monster statblok format and playable race description format.

And I didn't dispute about this, because Necahualeztli has already 5/5 in Monstrosity, but I wish to draw attention to the fact I used not only Yuan-Ti Abomination LA Assignment, but also Abberant Limbs.