Stigmata: Viable mid-level burst healing at the low cost of 20 CON

[Barna13]

What is Stigmata:
Stigmata is an exalted feat from book of exalted deeds with a prerequisite feat of Nimbus of light. Notably, exalted characters of any class can take this feat. Ask your GM nicely to be chill about the exalted requirements.

"You can heal the wounds and ailments of others using your own life energy. When you activate this ability, as a free action, you immediately take at least 2 points of temporary Constitution damage. You can take as many points of Constitution damage as you wish, as long as you remain alive and conscious. Once you have activated your stigmata, you can touch your allies to heal them of 1 point of damage per level they possess for every 2 points of Constitution damage you take. In addition, any character you touch who is suffering from a disease can immediately make a new saving throw against that disease with a sacred bonus equal to the number of points of Constitution damage you took. If the character succeeds on that saving throw, she is freed from the disease. You can use this touch on one ally per point of Constitution damage you take. As with delivering a touch spell, you can touch up to six allies as a full-round action. A single person can only benefit once from each activation of your stigmata, but each activation lasts for 1 hour. For example, if you sacrifice 4 points of Constitution, you can grant four allies a number of hit points of healing equal to twice their level. Each ally who was suffering from a disease would make a new saving throw with a +4 sacred bonus. If only two of your allies were wounded at the time you activated the stigmata, you could "save" the other two uses for up to 1 hour, in case other characters become wounded within that time. Even if the characters you originally healed were injured again, however, they could not benefit from the same activation of your stigmata. When you use this ability, the wounds on your body bleed in proportion to the Constitution damage you take. The bleeding persists for 1 hour, and the Constitution damage cannot be restored by any means until the bleeding has stopped. Once the bleeding has stopped, you can freely activate the stigmata again, whether or not you have recovered your lost Constitution, as long as you have enough Constitution left to use the ability and survive."

What does this mean? If you take 20 CON damage, you can heal each member of your party for 10X their level. 50 burst healing is absolutely bonkers at level 5, it's likely going to be a full heal or nearly a full heal in a standard action. Thus it provides the coveted burst healing between the levels of 2-10(between cure light wounds being good and clerics getting heal). But 20 CON damage is a big if! How do we make a character that can tank it?

Race:
CON is king. So the 3 big options are
1. Dragonborn Mongrelfolk(all-rounder with a +6 CON and dragonborn stuff)
2. Dragonborn Water Orc(only a +4 CON, but also a +4 STR if you're crazy enough to do this with a melee class)
3. Whisper Gnome(Only a +2 Con, but all the whisper gnome goodies that help you not get hit and be sneaky)

Special shoutout to mineral warrior, which gives another +4 CON, +2 STR DR 8/Adamantine, and 3 natural armor.

Class:
Psion: The d4 is very bad. But remember that CON damage can never reduce your max to lower than 1/level. So if you're going all-out on the CON damage and don't have max hp, a d4 and a d6 are likely to leave you with similar help. And psions have the best generation of temp HP in the game with vigor(5/level). They also have access to the share pain+psicrystal combo which halves attack damage against them. On top of that, you're a fully functional spellcaster with a lot of backline support you can give when you're not bleeding.

Erudite: Spell to power is broken and erudite also gets an extra feat over psion. A matter of preference.

Ardent: Psion, but with a d6 and more restrictive powers. You might not have the feats to take lots of expanded knowledge. But with custom mantles and max hp/level, ardents probably edge out psions.

Barbarian:D12 HP, and rage giving an extra 4 untyped CON. Also a damage sponge that can't often afford to lose 10*level hit points. Stigmata on a barbarian is a crazy ability you whip out at a dramatic moment, rather than an integral ability to the class.

Warblade: If you're crazy enough to want to enter melee range with this, Warblade gives you d12 hp and its general excellence.

Cleric: A d8 hp won't save you and neither will cure serious wounds. But as an awesome last resort for a cleric, you could do worse.

Wizard/Sorcerer: If you prestige into a high-HD class, it might be okay. See cleric

Commoner: This is the best way to play commoner and also the best way to use this feat. I will take no questions.

Binder: Not a great choice overall, but by dipping 1 level and binding Naberius you get "Faster Ability Healing: You heal 1 point in each damaged ability score every round, and 1 point in all drained ability scores every hour." This still doesn't let you heal the damage you take until 1 hour has past, but definitely has appeal for attritional campaigns where you regularly have 5+ encounters a day, or for lower level campaigns where you can't afford several rods of bodily restoration. Naberius' trait of talking about how smart you are also has lots of flavor potential with psion/erudite in particular.

Feats:
Improved toughness/toughness: It's HP that losing CON can't take away from you.

Tempting fate: You're going to be reduced to -10, this lets you survive that. Basically needed on non-psionics and a great even on them. It's another 2 feats though, which is a bummer

Practiced mannifester: If you're dipping binder as a psion, it's a must.

Overchannel+talented: An extra 5 or 10 hp per casting of vigor for 2 feats. If you're going all-in, it's not a bad choice.

Items:

CON boosters(don't pick amulet, you'll want that to be disposable): Needed, you're taking 20 CON damage.

Amulet of tears: Must have for non-psions. Basically 36 temporary hp for 2300gp. Buy many of these, and spam them in combat before switching them out.

Healing belt: Best magic item in the game. When you heal your stigmata damage off(which most non-psions will probably want to do), you'll need a pile of healing belts.

Rod of Bodilly restoration: If you want to pull this trick more than 1day and not get put out of commission for a week afterwards, you'll need these. At 12 CON healing/day for 3100, it's a steal.

Examples(both level 5 assuming max hp):
Jim the Dragonborn Mongrelfolk ardent4/binder 1. level 5 you'd have 32 class hp, from 26(18 base+2 item+6 racial) CON jim gets an extra 40, and from vigor he gets an extra 25 for a total of 85. After eating 20 CON damage to activate stigmata, jim is left with a respectable 37 hp. With his trusty psicrystal, he can tank up to 70 points of weapon damage, even if he doesn't cast vigor again. Naberius lets him use stigmata many times a day before he gets a rod of bodily restoration(and practiced spellcaster means his vigor/astral construct are still at level 5).

Dave the mineral warrior dragonborn water orc warblade3/fighter 1. Dave gets 58 class hp, from 28((18 base+2 item+10 racial) CON dave gets another 36 hp, and another 4 from improved toughness, for a total of 98 hp. After taking 20 con damage, he's left with 52 hp. With his full-plate, natural armor, and damage reduction, it will still take many blows to drop Dave. And with his greatsword, he's no slouch in a fight. With -4 to INT, WIS, and CHA, he's a little confused about the religious implications of his actions, but he's got the spirit.

[Maat Mons]

No mention of a Binder level? Naberius' Faster Ability Healing seems like a natural pairing with this.

[Barna13]

No mention of a Binder level? Naberius' Faster Ability Healing seems like a natural pairing with this.

Tome of Magic scares me and I've fully repressed knowledge of its existence. But yes this is a great dip.

[Crake]

Surprised you didn't bring up initiate of the faerie mysteries for disconnecting your hp from con entirely.

[Barna13]

Surprised you didn't bring up initiate of the faerie mysteries for disconnecting your hp from con entirely.

I don't think it actually does. It says "The ritual leaves both partners invigorated, allowing you to use your Intelligence modifier instead of your Constitution modifier to determine bonus hit points." But the relevant text is under ability damage is "If a character’s Constitution score drops, then he loses 1 hit point per Hit Die for every point by which his Constitution modifier drops. A hit point score can’t be reduced by Constitution damage or drain to less than 1 hit point per Hit Die." This has nothing to do with the hit points gained on level up(although it's obviously meant to). So I think you'd need to convince your GM to let you use RAI on a cheesy feat from dragon mag.

[pabelfly]

Tome of Magic scares me and I've fully repressed knowledge of its existence. But yes this is a great dip.

Binder is a fun and interesting class and decently balanced, IMO. I think it's worth checking out if the mechanics interest you.

[Biggus]

I don't think it actually does. It says "The ritual leaves both partners invigorated, allowing you to use your Intelligence modifier instead of your Constitution modifier to determine bonus hit points." But the relevant text is under ability damage is "If a character’s Constitution score drops, then he loses 1 hit point per Hit Die for every point by which his Constitution modifier drops. A hit point score can’t be reduced by Constitution damage or drain to less than 1 hit point per Hit Die." This has nothing to do with the hit points gained on level up(although it's obviously meant to). So I think you'd need to convince your GM to let you use RAI on a cheesy feat from dragon mag.

I think if you're allowing the feat at all, it would make no sense to insist that you still lose HPs when your Con drops, because you never got any HPs from Con in the first place.

Agreed that it's a cheesy feat though, I probably wouldn't let my players take it.

[Elves]

Agreed that it's a cheesy feat though, I probably wouldn't let my players take it.

I feel like "cheese" means something to different to everybody
I would call it a strong feat, cheese to me means something that's of questionable legality or so intricate that it's impractical
I wouldn't call something cheese just because it's strong

[Biggus]

I feel like "cheese" means something to different to everybody
I would call it a strong feat, cheese to me means something that's of questionable legality or so intricate that it's impractical
I wouldn't call something cheese just because it's strong

As you say, cheese means different things to different people. "Overpowered" is a common usage; most people have some power threshold past which they consider things cheesy. For some people, that's just below Pun-Pun, for others it's much lower. My cheese threshold is low by the standards of these boards, but about average among people I've actually played with: the vast majority would allow few if any of the high-op tricks you see discussed on here in an actual game.

This feat allows Wizards, already one of the most powerful classes in the game, to get much higher HPs for very little cost (and as a bonus to not need to put resources into boosting Con), thus removing one of their few major limitations. That's definite cheese in my book; YMMV.

[Crake]

As you say, cheese means different things to different people. "Overpowered" is a common usage

Ive always imagined people call it cheesy because “it smells funky”, like cheese. Never really heard it used to describe something as being overpowered exclusively, only overpowered while simultaneously needing to squint really hard to make it appear rules legal.

[pabelfly]

Cheese, to me, is going outside how rules are intended to work for a game. RAI versus RAW. Let's take Dragonwrought Kobolds qualifying for epic feats as an example. Putting aside any opinions on the RAW of this (and I'm not interested in the debate of the RAW), I don't think anyone would argue that anyone at WOTC intended for Dragonwrought Kobolds to qualify for epic feats. Otherwise, it would be explicitly mentioned in the Dragonwrought feat, or any of the source books or errata.

Separate to this is whether cheese is OP or not, and I suspect that depends on the group you're playing in and what you're trying to do with your cheese. An example of cheese that's not OP might be various shenanigans with the Truenamer class - even if an interpretation of a particular utterance is cheesy, in that the creators for the Truenamer class aren't intending the particular trick you've found and want to ab/use, you're still quite lacking in power compared to even a Tier 3 caster.

So I think that Faerie Mysteries Initiate is OP - Wizards don't need the huge amounts of HP this would give them, and it's too much power compared to what's intended for whatever games I run or play in - but it's not cheesy. Using it to get INT to HP over CON means it's working exactly as intended. It's just an example of how the varied quality of what Dragon Magazine has to offer is.

[Crake]

Cheese, to me, is going outside how rules are intended to work for a game. RAI versus RAW. Let's take Dragonwrought Kobolds qualifying for epic feats as an example. Putting aside any opinions on the RAW of this (and I'm not interested in the debate of the RAW), I don't think anyone would argue that anyone at WOTC intended for Dragonwrought Kobolds to qualify for epic feats. Otherwise, it would be explicitly mentioned in the Dragonwrought feat, or any of the source books or errata.

Separate to this is whether cheese is OP or not, and I suspect that depends on the group you're playing in and what you're trying to do with your cheese. An example of cheese that's not OP might be various shenanigans with the Truenamer class - even if an interpretation of a particular utterance is cheesy, in that the creators for the Truenamer class aren't intending the particular trick you've found and want to ab/use, you're still quite lacking in power compared to even a Tier 3 caster.

So I think that Faerie Mysteries Initiate is OP - Wizards don't need the huge amounts of HP this would give them, and it's too much power compared to what's intended for whatever games I run or play in - but it's not cheesy. Using it to get INT to HP over CON means it's working exactly as intended. It's just an example of how the varied quality of what Dragon Magazine has to offer is.

Well said. I personally allow it if its gained through roleplay, meaning its entirely up to my discretion if it comes up

[Elves]

I think the balancing factor is that wizards are virgins

[pabelfly]

Well said. I personally allow it if its gained through roleplay, meaning its entirely up to my discretion if it comes up

I'd personally allow it for a martial character - it takes a lot of resources to make martial characters OP if they key off of INT - and for a Truenamer, but I'd give a hard no if a player wanted to use it with a Wizard, Psion, Factotum or the like. Those are powerful enough without fixing up the issue of their fairly low HP.

[Crake]

I'd personally allow it for a martial character - it takes a lot of resources to make martial characters OP if they key off of INT - and for a Truenamer, but I'd give a hard no if a player wanted to use it with a Wizard, Psion, Factotum or the like. Those are powerful enough without fixing up the issue of their fairly low HP.

I'm not overly concerned with a player being able to take more punishment and I'm more than happy to reward good roleplay with an ability that makes a character less likely to die and have all that roleplay be lost. I also find that having more HP tends to make players more comfortable and less likely to feel they need to powergame to keep their character alive.

[ShurikVch]

How about the Shambling Mound's ability to get Con from electricity attacks?

Also, arguably, - Empower Supernatural Ability: when you really need an extra heal (arguments about what "variable, numeric effect" is and isn't aside)

[Biggus]

Ive always imagined people call it cheesy because “it smells funky”, like cheese. Never really heard it used to describe something as being overpowered exclusively, only overpowered while simultaneously needing to squint really hard to make it appear rules legal.

Really? Logic Ninja's "Being Batman" guide uses it to mean "brokenly good", to cite one famous example.

[Elves]

Really? Logic Ninja's "Being Batman" guide uses it to mean "brokenly good", to cite one famous example.

Interesting, let me see if I agree with his uses

-Sonorous Hum! This spell concentrates on other spells for you. Considering that a duration of "concentration" vs. "X/level" is a mitigating factor for spells that are otherwise too good for their level, in theory, that makes this spell great. Some combinations of spells with this one even qualify as cheese.

Can't say either way without hearing his examples.

You can Persist [wraithstrike] quite normally in an 8th level slot, or by using various kinds of cheese, and that's when it becomes *completely* broken.

Disagree. I don't like the wraithstrike spell or its effect on the game (any martial character can get a wand chamber with a wraithstrike wand and use it every damn round from a low ECL) but it's not cheese nor is DMM. What I would call cheesy is nightstick stacking.

Circle Magic cheese (use Leadership to get spellcasting followers, have them sacrifice spell slots to boots your spells, get RIDICULOUS caster levels and DCs)

Agree this is cheesy because it's an elaborate scheme

Otherworldly (which has the cheesy advantage of letting you Alter Self and Polymorph into outsiders)

Disagree this is cheese, nothing questionable here

Leadership: sure, it's good. Too good. Absolutely and totally ridiculously cheesy if abused, in fact. I don't allow it in my games, and neither should you. If you want someone to be able to play two characters, let them do so; if not, forget the cohort, and have followers be an RP thing. I assign it the [Cheese] descriptor.

I agree, cheesy if abused -- to be fair, it's in the DMG and cautions it should be used with DM oversight. Banned in Iron Chef for a reason

-Extraordinary Spell Aim: like the Archmage's "Master of Shaping" ability, but requires a tough spellcraft check. Take this if you can get a custom spellcraft item--just don't use it on Antimagic Field. That's cheesy. Very cheesy.

Agree this is cheese because it doesn't actually work. You're exempt from the AMF but any spells within the area are still suppressed (including spells you cast and spells affecting your person). It does let you benefit from any passive supernatural abilities you have, but it doesn't do what he implies, so I would agree that it's cheese because it uses sketchy/incorrect rules interpretations to gain power


So I agree with LogicNinja more than I disagree

[Crake]

Really? Logic Ninja's "Being Batman" guide uses it to mean "brokenly good", to cite one famous example.

Mmm, I don't think something has to be good to qualify as being cheesy. Now sure, most of the reasons people would try to be cheesy is to get good things that are normally out of their capabilities, but I'm still sticking with the idea that cheesy requires very vague and/or questionable rules interpretations at best, or outright rules misinterpretations at worst. I think "OP" is the commonly accepted term for "brokenly good", while cheesy describes something else.

[Biggus]

Hey, you guys can use it however you like, I was just pointing out the that the "brokenly good" meaning is neither new nor particularly obscure.