Apple Corer Optimization Challenge I

[Twurps]

I don't think we'll get a judge.
So we can either revert to the alternative judging system introduced in this thread, or we can just reveal. I'm perfectly happy with the latter as well.

By now it's rather obvious which people submitted builds, but I still like to know which build belongs to which 'chef'.

[H_H_F_F]

Huh, this wasn't really on my radar. I can judge. Give me a few days.

[loky1109]

Huh, this wasn't really on my radar. I can judge. Give me a few days.

You are the best!

[H_H_F_F]

Update: already made some progress, should have plenty of free time tomorrow to keep working. Shouldn't take too long.

For anyone that hasn't seen my judgements before: I tend to be very analytical and critical. That never means I don't appreciate your build, I do! It's just the way I approach judgement.

[H_H_F_F]

Elegance is taking a lot longer than I thought it would.

I should still be able to finish this weekend. Best case scenario is Wednesday, though tha'll be a surprise.

[Inevitability]

Elegance is taking a lot longer than I thought it would.

I should still be able to finish this weekend. Best case scenario is Wednesday, though tha'll be a surprise.

Thank you so much for judging here! It's appreciated.

[H_H_F_F]

Update: I'm nearly done (just have to finish evaluating one entry, with which I'm over half done) but I'm busier than I thought prepping for some work stuff and attending holiday functions. Might take just a bit more time. Sorry for the delay!

[loky1109]

Update: I'm nearly done (just have to finish evaluating one entry, with which I'm over half done) but I'm busier than I thought prepping for some work stuff and attending holiday functions. Might take just a bit more time. Sorry for the delay!

Thank you for update!

[Twurps]

Update: I'm nearly done (just have to finish evaluating one entry, with which I'm over half done) but I'm busier than I thought prepping for some work stuff and attending holiday functions. Might take just a bit more time. Sorry for the delay!

No worries, with this very unusual rule-set you're actually on the fast side of what I would have expected.
Also: We're just happy to have a judge at all, so thank you!

[H_H_F_F]

Judgement coming tomorrow.

[H_H_F_F]

Judgement coming tomorrow.

Ugh. Sorry guys, got distracted, and am a bit tired. Coming soon!

[H_H_F_F]

Yo, judgement's here.

Spoiler: Ermak

Show

Originality:

Xeph? Sure, a little weird, but it's just "+dex and a power point" here. We'll talk about it in power, be sure of it.

Soulknife/soulborn? Now THAT's actually weird. And unlike Xeph, Soulknife is at the very heart of this build. Tribal protector (where the heck did you pull that from) is also weird, and here for a reason.

The strange chassis is complemented by strange tactics. Your offensive tactics aren't very novel ("hit them a lot") save for some exotic feats to serve that goal. Your defensive tactics are fun and unique, and not something you'd see outside this competition. Nice! We'll talk more both about your defense and about your offense in the following categories. Prepare for gloom.

Overall, nothing you do blew my mind to smithereens, but more than enough of it is very strange and out of the ordinary; well done!

Score: 4 points.


Elegance:

Baseline is fine. No multiclass penalties, skills look right. Your tactical section is a bit lacking, but not too bad. As always, everything you use is meticulously sourced and accessible. I appreciate that.

I don't think you ever tell me who your tribal enemy is. I can infer it’s "a tribe of orcs", but it would've been nice to be told directly.

Does the mind blade not require us to go to the PHB to figure out what it is, and is therefore illegal for this comp? I don't think it goes quite that far, but it does have a couple of issues. It doesn't say it's a melee weapon – but it does it's light, which means it's melee. If reach isn't mentioned, we can assume it doesn't have any. We're given damage and the crit multiplier. We don't know if it's thrown, but we can infer it's not from the "throw mind blade" ability. We don't know if it has weight, and if so how much. That's an issue. We're not given Crit multiplier for the longsword form. We could claim that we can infer it doesn't change unless it says so, but that's a bit of a copout. To me, that and the weight questions are the biggest issues.

If it was a piece of equipment, I'd probably consider calling it illegal material. Given that it's not a weapon, but a class feature, I'd say I can safely let the weight issue go, and say a modest penalty is enough for the Crit Range problem. Again, this is a problem because we can't open the PHB, it's not something I'd ever penalize outside this comp.

You don't qualify for claw at the moon when you take it. Your ML is 1, and it's a second level maneuver. You either have to argue that RAW, you can take a 9th level maneuver if you want, since ML is not a "prerequisite" (a sound reading, but far from rock-solid IMO, which is what you want when you pull cheese) or swap places with truespeak training (better, methinks.) I'll assume the latter here, and smack you with a penalty.

You also have a calculation error on your saves (you made soulknife 4 advance the weak save instead of the good ones). You should end at 14/12/12.

Lightning fists is broken as ****. And I don't mean broken in the sense of OP, it's just… broken. It's obvious what they intended it to be: you make two more unarmed/monk weapon strikes at your highest BAB. But they didn't say that. No limitation on the kind of attack is good for you. Not specifying "at your highest attack bonus"… less so. You're in a rules limbo, and ruling it as your highest attack bonus makes just as much linguistic-and-rules sense as your lowest – and of course, you could make a weaker argument for literally anything else. This feat is dysfunctional. I'm going to go with the "highest attack bonus" logic here, but you're still using completely dysfunctional material, which is always a significant hit for me here.

Midnight dodge: nope. You can't go "RAW is RAW" on lightning fists weapon limitation, and "RAI seems to favor me when I squint" on midnight dodge. Live by the RAW, die by the RAW. 2/3 options in elusive target are dead weight. Word given form was clever, but it's dead. Melee evasion is dead. I thought deceptive dodge might have a chance to get a penalty here but still work, with "dodge target", but when I opened the book, it did say "as per the dodge feat". Sorry, I know this sucks. You've invested a lot of resources here, and RAI is clearly on your side – but you can't attempt cheese like lightning fists and then go for this argument. You ]know this. If you're ever trying to do something that unquestionably isn't RAW, and get away with a mere penalty, you just have to avoid anything that might raise a DM's eyebrow. Can't dance in two weddings.

Overall, this build is a mess.

Score: 1.6 points.


Power:

Once we get rid of the unquestionably illegal defensive elements (sorry again) what does this build do?

Well: it still has very decent AC, and it attacks. A lot. You can make 3 attacks per turn, every turn, at level 1. At the end of your career, you can make 7 per turn, every turn. But this all comes with a price: you're extremely susceptible to the "flurry of misses" issue.

At level 1, for example, your to-hit is +1. That's worse than most wizards. Taking a -5 to that means attacking 3 times, sure – but it means attacking 3 times with a -4 to hit. You don't want to do that. Not that a +1 to-hit for 1d6+1 damage is such a good alternative. All this to say, you kind of suck early on. Xeph is honestly a pretty baffling racial choice for you. You get dex, but you spend levels 4 and 8 getting back the lost strength instead of improving said dex, which means at level 8 you're right were you started. Generally, Strength is just too important to sacrifice so willy-nilly! It's your to-hit stat! You let that go to ****, and for what? A power point? Standard-action activated burst that you never mention? What's the point? Not getting multiclass penalty? Go anything with (any), or go for the unimaginably superior Azurin! Sure, it's less "original" – but if your only justification for your race choice is "it gets me points in originality", you're in the wrong race. That's the way I personally see it, at the very least.

Couple of levels later, and things don't really change. You get claw at the moon (well, you know), but you don't have the jump check to do anything with it. I know it's just a prereq, but still – you could've put some ranks into jump for the extra damage which would be huge for you at these early levels, instead of fixating on getting autohypnosis as a class skill. Think of it this way: at level 6, you can hit 3 times with a +1 to hit, for a chance of 1d6+1 damage per hit; or you can hit just once, with a +6 and, for 3d6+1. It's a better use for your smite, too. You want this jump check early on, even if it does stagnate later. It does stagnate later, but that's when you decide to get it – when you're also committed to an armor with -7 Armor check penalty. What the heck is going on?

Slow and steady, you try to pull yourself out of the muck – but you're stuck with your primary attribute at the gutter, and with a mindblade that stops at +1, never to improve again. Weapon mastery is a decent feat, and it's a godsend for you with your to-hit so far behind optimal. It's also a level before you get wild fighting, which I think you'll find yourself using a lot more than lightning fist. Sure, you can go all-out and do both, but that only works against enemies with low AC. Some of those will have DR/adamantine and the like, which completely screws you.

You have crit-fishing, and you have Blood in the Water, which is one of my favorite things in 3.5. But you still only crit on 17-20, which isn't that great, even with as many attacks as you might be making. Resounding blow is no more than nice, which is why I was so disappointed you didn't take quell the profane. You're a crit-fisher, but your damage is very unimpressive. Quell the profane could've been a game changer. Oh well.

Overall, what do you have at level 20 (before items, and you can't access weapon enhancements)? 7 attacks, at +16/16/16*/16*/11/6/1 to-hit, doing 1d6+9 each. You have smite, and you have BitW, and you have supremacy, and you have corellon's wrath 5/day. You've got decent AC (not crazy by any means) enhanced by mighty are fallen against many enemies. You can tumble, you have decent diplomacy at the end game. You have full ranks in truespeak, but you don't mention those, so maybe you're just as clueless as I am as to what the **** Ermak does with them.

I'm looking at a 20th level character, and I'm struggling, man. It's not the worst I've ever seen, but it's not impressive, and it's a very far cry from optimized. Even if you had all of your dodge shenanigans, you'd still be deep in "not doing much" land. Corellon's wrath is your one redeeming quality, and with your to-hit being what it is, I'm not sure lightning fist is worth it even then. And this is not like your build stagnates: it starts out way worse.

Overall, a very weak category for you. I've seen more useless builds, for sure, but this isn't a powerful entry by any stretch of the imagination.

Score: 1.4 points.


UoSI:

If I understand correctly, this category is where "using the benefits of the format" points go. To me, that'd be in elegance, but them's the rules and I am nothing if not obedient.

You get valiant attempt credit for the dodge shenanigans, 100%. Word Given Form? *chef's kiss*. Brilliant. You wouldn't have gotten full credit here anyway with illegal material, but it's awesome. Lightning Fists is dysfunctional, but isn't normally easy to access, and you get it here. Elf Soulborn didn't impress me as much – it has some nice thematic synergy with the SI, but you don't really do anything interesting with it. You can smite while throwing your soul blade, I guess. Still, it's a nice catch. Tribal defender is excellent. 3 feats you don't need to have, which aren't the same as the other feats you didn't have to take, makes sense for your build. Good stuff.

As for the SI itself: I trashed your power score, but here, you certainly get credit for using elegant strike very well. You have pretty high dex, and you can put it on a weapon you're proficient with, and you make a lot of attacks. Making a lot of weak attacks is also a good way (the only way?) to feature Wrath. You gain the full expected use of the armor benefit, too – going above and beyond with commitment to hanging around in armor. If you manage to get your hands on mithral battle plate, than you only fill out the max dex with items – but "item reliance generates item reliance" isn't a bad thing, and normal battle plate does you well. You can tumble in heavy armor, which is nice, but you won't be great at it with a -7 check penalty. Still, not too shabby.

Overall, even if you don't break anything wide open, I'd say you put almost everything the SI gives to good use, and you get credit for utilizing the competition's ruleset. Good category!

Score: 4 points.


Total Score: 11 points. You had a cute thought of a unique way to use elegant strike with a weapon you're proficient with. You had a really, really cool thought of "let's get a bunch of dodge benefits which are usually a huge hassle, and stack them on midnight dodge." Unfortunately, that didn't have much to do with the SI, and when you tried to put some oomph into Champion with lightning fists, it didn't really work – and made everything else fall apart. This comp is weird. Better luck next time!

Spoiler: The Outcast

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Originality:

Changeling warshaper with racial emulation? I no-joke just yawned IRL while writing this, lol. Probably a coincidence, but gets the point across. OA samurai is cute, Ronin is certainly a surprise (more on that in elegance). The rest is meh.

When I look at your tactics… Not gonna lie, chief, it's not great. Intimidating rage / imperious command / never outnumbered is a classic. The only interesting thing you're doing with that is having native access to fearsome, which is nice even if it is one that still requires WBL. Martial Study (MoPM) feels a lot like a "good feat^TM" pick, especially when your will save is fine, and your concentration check isn't more than alright for a lot of your career. I'm not a 100% that it's actually better taken at level 1 as 1/encounter than joining the rest at level 3 as a granted maneuver. You're probably right, I guess.

But… What's this? Craven? On a build with 1d6 sneak attack? One of the only feats that just gets "**** you, specifically" here from me. I used to penalize it in elegance too when I was a very fresh judge, before coming to the conclusion that it's not inelegant – it's just a cheesy, extremely well known pick. **** craven, all my homies hate craven.

The picture is completed with a half-hearted attempt at Iaijutsu that doesn't get any external support, ancestral relic (eh) and headlong rush (nice, one of my favorite feats). As for the bonus feats – the only one really worth mentioning is roof jumper, which you at least have a chance of activating through your sizing, flying shield – though we'll talk in power.

You're getting a shout-out here for a couple of interesting equipment finds.

Overall, this is close to being as bog-standard martial as you can be, with the most original elements mostly still being well known, and not doing anything too interesting. Oof.

Score: 1.6 points.

Elegance:

Your sources are trash. You don't source roofwalker/jumper (cityscape). You don't source imperious command (DotU). You don't source Ancestral Relic (BoED). You don't source headlong rush (RoF, which is in your sources – all it took was another line). You don't source intimidating rage (CW, same issue). You don't source never outnumbered (Complete Scoundrel). You say you take (unspecified) feats from PHBII, but AFAICT, you don't. You also say you get weapon and armor enhancement from there, and I wasted 15 minutes making as sure as I could that the book doesn't have any.

You send me over to DMGII for more (not telling me which, out of the many enhancements you mention across your entry). And… it's sudden stunning. One weapon enhancement, which you might as well have named – and is an excellent weapon property, which just happens to be illegal for Ancestral Daisho, which only lets you enhance it in accordance with table 2-2, with numerical-worth enhancements, not set-price enhancements.

You don't source Valorous (Unapproachable East), morphing (underdark, in your sources but not mentioning weapon enhancements), and wrathful healing (which is in a random sidebar in enemies-and-freaking-allies, some **** you [i]really[i] need to source.) You don't source fearsome (MIC), Flying (MoF) or sizing (CAdv).

You do source razored shield (a miracle!). When I go to underdark, it shows up as a weapon, doesn't have any shield stats, doesn't have a description line… RAW, it's just a weapon. You could infer that it's a shield with shield razors on, just like a spiked shield is a shield with shield spikes on. The issue is, there's no such thing as shield razors. Just armor razors, that have a very clear description that doesn't allow to shields. We can keep relying on presumed RAI, and say that they're just the slashing analogue to shield spikes. That'd be bad for us, since it'd send us to the PHB to figure out what those are, but whatever. Sure, let's do that. At that point, we run into the issue of the shield and the spikes/razors being two separate items, and you can't have both as your ancestral relic – and you sure as hell can't enchant them both separately, like you intend to. Everything sort of falls apart at the seams at that point.

Of course, you didn't source the rest of your description. Dwarvencraft is from RoS, but I can't find a riding shield anywhere, and I've looked. There's a rider's shield (also in RoS), but that has a lot of problems we'll talk about in a minute, so before diving into it I had to do my due diligence and make as sure as I could that there wasn't a "riding shield" that I was missing anywhere. This is why sourcing matters. It's over 10 minutes of my time I spent browsing through books and searching google that you could've saved with 2 seconds of yours.

I think that's it? I think that's it. So, most of your build isn't sourced, one illegal choice, one extremely problematic one that has probably illegal aspects too, and we haven't even started looking at the build. Damn.

So, Dwarvencraft adamantine Rider's shield. First thing first, it's an exotic shield. Which means you're not proficient, which means you take its armor check penalty to all attack rolls and on all Strength-based and Dexterity-based ability and skill checks. As for it being dwarvencraft – only items composed primarily of metal or stone can be dwarvencraft. Lucky it's adamantine, right? Except, only weapons, armor, and shields normally made of metal can be fashioned from adamantine. And a rider's shield is explicitly wooden. Add that to the aforementioned issue with the razors, and this feat and everything it entails just falls apart. Penalties, penalties galore.

Cross setting material is also something I penalize here. That shouldn't make you shy away from it when It's necessary, but watch out when it's not. Same as multiclass penalties, basically, which you don't suffer from.

You don't qualify for roofwalker, straight up. You're missing a rank in jump. For roofjumper, you're two skill points short in balance, and 3 short in jump. Fixable, sure, but not super easily so. This is not at odds with "one mistake, one penalty", mind you. I'm not saying the roofwalker punishment cascades to roofjumper. The issue isn't that not qualifying for roofwalker disqualifies you from roof jumper, it's more like taking EWP, Weapon focus, and weapon finesse, while ignoring that all of them require +1 Bab.

Speaking of skills, this qualification issue is aggravated by the fact that you illegally take 2 points of Balance at level 2. Balance is cross-class for you, like Iaijutsu. You only have enough for a single rank. Level 4, you spend 3 ranks on balance, one of concentration, 2 on intimidate, and then 2 more for another cross-class rank in Iaijutsu. That's 8 points, when you're supposed to be getting 5. I would think you don't know what cross class skills are, but you clearly do at first level when you take 2 points in K. religion, and you have your **** together when it comes to Iaijutsu. Besides, even ignoring cross-class, it would've been 2 too many.

Level 5, intimidate is cross class so you can't increase it to 8 and take the skill trick at the same level. You're spending a point too many. Same issue at levels 6 and 7. Ronin and SI levels are all correct, huzzah! You do mess up the final level though, with 2 points out of five expended. Is this meant as an apology? Payback? If so, it doesn't work, you would still have 5 ranks too many.

Also, you mention tumble in your breakdown but can't actually do it. Leave aside DCs, it's trained only.

Took me a long time to reach the first thing I noticed when glancing your build. What the **** is up with your alignment, man? You don't mention it, which is a slap on the wrist – but maybe you don't do so for a good reason. You're good, I know that much, because you take ancestral relic. You're also lawful, I know that much, because you take samurai. Except, you become an ex-samurai at level 8, because you go non-lawful for Ronin. And it's not like "oopsie, I missed an alignment shift". It's RONIN. It's literally the "I'm an ex-samurai" class.

So, at some point around level 7, you disgrace yourself, become NG, and your ancestral daisho becomes a regular-ass weapon, until (presumably) you go LG again at some point in level 9 and atone, to get your enhancements back, and enjoy the benefits of ronin despite no longer qualifying for the class, which is something I really dislike but at least isn't RAW illegal. This is MAJOR alignment shenanigans, which actually negatively impacts your character for quite a while mechanically, and you don't even bother mentioning it, let alone trying to make any sense of it in your story.

Maneuvers and stances: what? I repeat, what?

You have martial study. Aside from that, you get 5 1st level maneuvers and one 1st level stance at level 4. At level 20, you learn another stance, up to 6th level. That's how the rules work. You don't tell me what your first stance is, and you only provide 4 of your five known maneuvers – and those are 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th level maneuvers. Your tactical section describes them as being there from level 20. That's not how the rules work. If you don't know what ToB does, that's fine – don't use it. You want to use it? Read the book. Hell, just read the class.

Morphic reach + spiked helmet: cute idea, would probably allow it as a DM ("stretching your neck" is the literal description), doesn't work RAW. Morphic reach doesn't give you an extra 5 ft of reach on your attacks, or increases the reach of any weapons you use by 5 ft. It gives you 5 ft more reach than the creature you're emulating. Half Orcs have a reach of 5 feat, you have 10 when emulating one. If you were emulating a titan, you'd have 20 instead of 15 – but the helmet overrides your reach, and makes it 0.

As a side note with no impact on your score: I found your presentation a little bit disorienting. Most of us put the table before the tactical section for a good reason. I always assume presentation is intentional, so I read everything before reading the table, and that was unhelpful. Also, please put bonus feats in the feats row. It's very confusing otherwise.

Overall, terrible category for you. You're lucky the minimum score is one – this build is an absolute mess on so many fronts. Sorry, bud.

Score: 1 point.


Power:

Good Feats^TM are considered Good^TM for a reason. However, they're not always timed right. The percentage of enemies that are immune to fear tends to rise with CR, so imperious command works better early than late. You also "waste" a point on your Cha at 4 that only takes effect at 14 – should've taken the increase at 12, for sure. Still – when it works, it works. It's a free action once per day with intimidating rage, you have a +4 from a class feature to help with your meh Cha… Good stuff. Infamy will sometimes mess with your diplomacy and (more significantly) your intimidation, but the fear combo should usually be pretty potent.

As for death from above, you can't jump for ****. You don't have any way to mitigate fall damage. Having semi-native access to a shield to fall from is nice and all, but if you're going to fall you're going to have issues. You have 4 ranks in jump, and ACP from both shield and armor. Even trivial stuff like taking advantage of Roofwalker's graceful drop isn’t a reliable option for you. Most likely, you're falling prone, too. This isn't usually a strong option for you, by any means. Nice to have, but even a little investment in what you're actually doing instead of the middling Iaijutsu would've been a game changer.

Charging… sure. In the context of no PA, you manage to pull off a decent charger by combining headlong rush and banzai charge. Valorous/helmet through your daisho obviously pushes things further.

Overall, you're playing a decently powerful martial, with a strong early career through the power of warshaper. Could've been better, could've been worse for sure.

Score: 3.75 points.


UoSI:

This is the category for "utilizing the toolset of the competition", apparently. You're not doing more than okay on that front. Aside from the SI, you're saving 1 feat on Ronin… and that's it. Even headlong rush, a feat you'd almost take for free here, you could've taken anyway since you're already racially emulating a half-orc 24/7. In the SI, you take the roofjumper line (nice, but as mentioned above, not very supported), sidestep charge and chink in armor. Cute, but no more than that, as far as utilizing the comp rules goes.

As for the SI itself: I'm not too impressed, afraid to say. You have to rely on equipment to get expected utility from superior defense. You're very much below what I expected to see when it comes to elegant strike; You manage to use it on a weapon you're proficient with, which is good – but with Dex 14 and tactics not based around full attacks, it's not very impressive. It does get doubled/tripled when you charge, but the fact that you established a preference to actually morph it when you charge tells me about how much you care about this ability. This is all even more problematic for Wrath – its bonus damage doesn't double, it's really all about attacking as many times as possible in one turn, and you're a single-hit character.

But I'm spilling words for no reason here. The only thing your tactical section has anything to say about that has anything to do with the class is death from above. 10 levels of Champion, and that's all you have to say – but you go on and on about your shield, which anybody can get with the same monetary investment as you, except you're not punished here for excessive item reliance since you have better reliability. Sure, you have your little SI section – but if you mention roofjumper there, it means you're not worried about redundancies here. You just know that this build swallowed 10 levels of the SI because it had to. You're trying to sell me on chink in armor as setting it up – but you don't have any more reason to expect time to study your opponent than any other character, it doesn't get an//y investment.

Overall, I think this build is a charger wblmancer that had to take 10 levels of Champion because that happened to be what the competition is.

Score: 1.25 points.


Total Score: 7.6 points. This reads a lot like an entry built with google more so than with an independent cohesive idea. Lots of commonly discussed "best of", and sometimes without familiarity with the base material. You did mesh it together reasonably well (warshaper changeling leads to racial emulation which feeds imperious command, tried to feed charger concept with morphic reach) but nothing too cohesieve. In the future, I'd recommend far more attention to detail, and to make sure you approach building from the perspective of the SI first and foremost. Seeing something powerful discussed online and saying "ooh, I want to do that, that's powerful" as the source of your build is going to mess you up in originality and UoSI. More importantly, it's just not as fun or as interesting – for the reader, but on the long term, for you as well.

Better luck next time!

Spoiler: Ayla

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Originality:

Star elf isn't really surprising with this ingredient, once you account for EWP being out. To me, that is the least creative out of the three approaches presented to make elegant strike work – even if it is way more fun and interesting than "this martial weapon counts as a longsword." And I guess it's still not an obvious choice for a lot of chefs, that could have struggled to find an elf race that doesn't refer back to core. So, good.

Dervish is in the comp description as the "this is usually a hassle, look how easy it is now!" example. With an SI "capstone" (level 8, but sure) that really wants full attacks, I'm not exactly shocked to see it show up – even if for you specifically it's not the best fit. More on that later. Fist of the forest, however, was a welcome surprise, and you don't take it for the obvious reasons. Wildrunner less of a surprise, but still nice.

Tactics aren't super interesting by themselves, and are supported by travel devotion, which isn't exactly groundbreaking on a skirmish build. Slashing flurry is fun and fitting.

Overall, this is a pretty standard skirmish build with a couple of surprising element, and a fun-yet-expected approach to the SI.

Score: 2.25 points.


Elegance:

I like improved weapon familiarity as a way to overcome the equipment issues, but militia... I know why you did it – you needed 5 levels of scout for improved skirmish. Now, that was a huge mistake, and one that was completely avoidable. Because, you know what you didn't need? That fourth dervish level, which is a big old nothing burger. And if you have a free level, militia immediately becomes much sillier. Free up one of your feats, and hop into any prc that grants martial weapon proficiency. They're not that hard to come by. There's probably at least one that'd get you a fighter bonus feat, too. So, even from a purely character-optimization lens, militia should've seemed like a bad choice to you.

Why am I so stuck on this point? Because militia is an illegal choice for you. It's a regional feat. To take it, you'd have to be a Half-Elf from Aglarond, a halfling from Luiren, or a human (many choices). You're not any of those things. You could be from Aglarond, certainly – it's called out as one of the two star elf regions – but you're not a half-elf, you don't count as a half elf, and you couldn't fix the issue by going half-elf, because that'd mess up your weapon familiarity (don't think elven blood helps you here, given the feat's language.) That's… sort of catastrophic for you.

You also don't qualify for slashing flurry, which is a shame. It requires melee weapon mastery (slashing), which you didn't take. That's not a core feat. Silly mistake. Could've taken it at 12. Well, you couldn't have, since they both require proficiency, but that'd be protected under one mistake, one penalty. This isn't. Shame.

Presentation: this is a terrible way to do your skills, my dude/tte. If you're going to do it that way, you need to give me a summary of everything with your snapshots – but you know, just don't do it this way. I don't want to have to go through 20 slates of your table and do math whenever I'm trying to figure out what's your skill bonus on anything. Ideally, I want to see running totals, with the specific increases you've made that level noted out.

This one isn't a penalty, but same goes for your saves and bab – it's just a messy way to do things. Give me the totals and be done with it, just like a class table does.

Speaking of skills, though: what's up with this round and cross-class skills? I really looked hard to try and figure out if I missed something here. You take 4 ranks of cross class skills (diplomacy & Perform) at levels 3, 4 and 5. Should've cost you 24 skill points in total, not 12. Worse, at levels 4 and 5, you're above your max skill ranks in cross-class skills with both of these. Same issue for diplomacy and K. religion in your second Wildrunner level – though K. religion at least doesn't go above the maximum allowed. Fist of the forest doesn't get K. religion as a class skill. From that point on, you're fine – but all of that was definitely not fine. Your presentation is even more messy than I thought it was, but this isn't the issue I made it up to be.

It bears saying that your build is inherently broken if you don't get a feycraft weapon. We both know it, and I assume you knew it'd mean a penalty here – as excessive equipment reliance always does.

Overall, you complete the trifecta of terrible elegance this round, and I'm really not seeing enough clever synergy in this build to even start making up for it.

Score: 1.25 1.65 points.


Power:

Your full attack routine is fine, at least against enemies without immunity to precision damage. Swift-action movement and improved skirmish on a build that gets to 18 Bab is a good melee chassis, certainly more potent than a lot of what we've seen here, especially when we consider elegant strike and the different buffs. Good.

Why is your wisdom 10? That is to say, why isn't your cha higher? You could easily have it at 14 (16 post racial.) The SI cares about it, it powers your primal scream… I guess your will save starts out terrible enough without dropping it, but still, I feel like you could've finagled a way to deal with the issue.

A lot of this build… doesn't do much. Your level 12 feat is tactile trapsmith – with 0 ranks in either search or disable device. Is being the equivalent of a first level rogue really worth your feat at this level? This doesn't feel like "leveraging high dex", this feels like "I don't know what to do." When you add that to two feats just to fight with the weapon you want, and unsupported trash like Shadowborn Warrior, it's really hard to justify some of your choices here.

I guess you're a semi-decent knowledge monkey, too. I do think K. Devotion would've been good on this build, and you clearly believe you have the feats to spare, with travel devotion taken twice and (sorry to mention it again) tactile trapsmith. Whatever though, the point is you can reliably recognize some (not really level-appropriate) creatures.

Overall, you're screwed against plants, undead, constructs, etc – but even against those you get to leverage an excellent Dex modifier into damage, and have access to Wrath. Nicely done.

Score: 3.25 points.


UoSI:

Taking advantage of the competition rules: fist of the forest is great. You wouldn't have taken any of these feats, and it really allowed you to shine. Wild runner, less so: you could've qualified with a bonus feat from scout, and you're the right race anyway.

What does the SI have to offer for you? Well, you're wearing light or no armor, so that's half the abilities out the window. The feats are cute, but you get three (limited choice) from the class and "waste" two on using its features (doesn't work, but we've covered that).

Dervish-scout is counter-synergic with the SI for you. You have two separate abilities to pump your dex, and you're proud of it. But primal scream explicitly prohibits you from using dervish dance, and feral trance implicitly does as well. Dervish Dancing and skirmish prohibit you from utilizing the armor.

Still, you're clearly here for offense, and if you don't fall into your own trap and avoid Dervish Dancing, you can utilize travel devotion and the frenzies to pile on some serious damage.

Overall, your build went most of the way there for elegant strike, and got the expected use out of Wrath – but failed to utilize any of the other features.

Score: 3 points.


Total Score: 9.75 10.15 points.I think this build had the best chance out of the three to be a clean and fun (even if slightly obvious) way to really lean into the offensive side of Champion – but you, too, were felled by the complete disregard towards the rules that has plagued this round. By the way, you should be glad that you didn't go the non-proficient-thiefling route: slashing flurry still requires proficiency, so the build would still be flawed to the core.

General thoughts for the competition:

The concept is very nice, even if a bit wonky. Over my time judging this round, though, I have come to a pretty strong belief that it would've been better to ban everything without allowing you to ignore banned prereqs. I get that this would severely limit the contestants, but the results would be "optimized builds built under very harsh constraints" and not "alternate universe builds that aren't applicable in a real game". It's still a nice thought process, but it kills a part of what makes me, personally, enjoy these comps so much: either they make you go "I want to play that!" (PO) or "Wow, that just broke 3.5 wide open!" (TO). The maximum potential of this is to be "Wow, that just broke Inevitability's ruleset (that was made specifically to be broken wide open) wide open!" Which, again, is still nice and can be impressive, but way more niche to me than our already incredibly niche hobby.

Anyway, assuming our chair disagrees with me that moving to full restriction would be better (understandable) I'd definitely move "utilizing the options granted by the ruleset" to either originality or elegance. Don't think UoSI is a good place for that. It distracts from the SI, and it feels very different than UoSI does. Elegance, to me, would be its natural place. Just like it's the place for triple qualifying with the same feat. Makes sense to me, IDK. And again - I'd personally be in charge of removing the entire set of alternate rules, and just banning core material.

Apologies if that all sounded hyper-critical. Thanks for running the show, Inevitability!

[pabelfly]

Not a comp entrant, but I had fun reading the judging material. Thank you, H_H_F_F.

[loky1109]

Thank you for judging, H_H_F_F!

[pabelfly]

I took the time to think about H_H_F_F's suggestion that the builds should be fully playable, even if we exclude the PHB. I think it's an interesting idea, but with how many feats require the PHB as a prerequisite, I'm not sure it would work.

What does everyone else think of that idea?

[ciopo]

to me, it's preferable to the "remove prerequisites" ruling, and makes for a more interesting challenge.

the removing prerequisites is interesting too, but in a different way, but to me it's less interesting because while working around constraint is *fun*, having other constraint (the prerequisites) removed by fiat is less fun, mostly because when a limit is added, I rationalize it as "I self impose to not use anything from the PHB, let's see how it shakes out", meanwhile ignoring prerequisites is more along the lines of "GM said X Y Z" which to me feels much more arbitrary and outside control

[Beni-Kujaku]

I've looked up a (very incomplete) list of PrC, and preventing people from entering PrC with core feats as requirements would mostly impact the martial classes, with most of them requiring weapon focus, point blank shot or other generic feat like that. I'm not sure I'd like having an all-caster competition, even with the added versartility of incarnum, BoED, BoVD and single-class ToB.

[Inevitability]

Firstly, thanks to our judge! I am currently awaiting disputes.

The idea of simply removing PHB feats and not granting any auto-qualifications was raised and rejected during the discussion preceding this competition. At the time, it was rejected for the obvious qualification issues that would plague most characters.

I suggested white-listing some very limited number of feats; the aforementioned suspects of Point Blank Shot, Weapon Focus, Dodge, etc, but that didn't get a ton of traction. A non-arbitrary way might be to waive all requirements for 'PHB-printed fighter bonus feats'?


Anyway, I'm definitely going to allow weapons and armor from the PHB next round: it's just a bit too much of a hassle having to work around those. Any other insights?

[Twurps]

Thank you H_H_F_F for a very thorough judging. Really enjoyed reading it.

[loky1109]

Firstly, thanks to our judge! I am currently awaiting disputes.

I think I have no disputes.

[H_H_F_F]

Had a thought: how impactful would "can't take more than one feat from core" be?

Or "can only take core feats that the SI requires"?

[Inevitability]

Or "can only take core feats that the SI requires"?

That's an interesting one.

[loky1109]

Or "can only take core feats that the SI requires"?

Sounds cool.

Also, H_H_F_F, I had the great pleasure of reading your judging!

[Inevitability]

At least one other person had that pleasure as well, it seems: here's a dispute!

Hi H_H_F_F,

First of all: Thanks for judging. Fun to read, and very useful feedback.
Two things I'd like to address:

Spoiler: Elegance

Show

Regarding the cross class Skill points: I have listen the amount of points I sink into the skill, instead of the ranks I get. So 8 point in diplomacy and 4 points in Kn(religion) (all cross class) get me the 4 ranks diplomacy and 2 ranks kn(religion) needed for entry into COCL. whilst 6 points of perform(dance) purchased as scout get me to the 3 ranks I need to get into dervish, where it becomes a class skill. Looking back at my entry there's no way I made this clear, and so I fully understand/deserve any penalties. Actually, let me take the time here to apologize for that mess. I don't know what I was thinking. However: The build does factor in these skills as being cross-class, including the accompanying max-ranks limit. And therefore (at least in this regard) IS actually legal.

Spoiler: Power

Show

... and unsupported trash like Shadowborn Warrior, it's really hard to justify some of your choices here.

I know Shadowborn warrior isn't solely what I'm being penalized for, but I do want to point out I was actually a bit proud of this feat. I know it doesn't do much, but it does something, without being illegal. and that's quite an accomplishment, which took me quite some time to find. Let me explain: COCL grants a feat that has either 'combat expertise' 'dodge' or 'mounted combat' as a prereq. So I listen all feats that have either of these a prereq. You'd think that gives me plenty of choices (33 feats have combat expertise as prereq, 41 have dodge as prereq, 12 have mounted combat as prereq). However:
-Quite a few are from the PH, and so I can't take those.
-Quite a few others have additional prereq's, which I either don't have the feat slots for, or at the very least are a waste of a regular featslot in this build.
-Then there's quite a few that have wording along the lines of 'The target of your dodge feat....' 'Combat defense' from PH2 is a good example. So even though these feats are legal to take without dodge in this competition, they literally do nothing at all.
-Finally: there's some that only work whilst mounted, and being mounted doesn't mesh at all with skirmish, so those are out too.

After eliminating all those, what I was left with was... Shadowborn Warrior. So whilst I agree it doesn't do much, and it's unsupported in the rest of the build, it's also 'the best available' or at least 'the best I could find with substantial effort'. And at least it's a defensive buff, which I feel the build needs more than 'more offense'.
Again: not really what I was penalized for. Just wanted to point out the very 'competition specific' challenges here. So I guess the only thing I'm disputing here is the notion that this indicates I had 'feats to spare'.

[Twurps]

Or "can only take core feats that the SI requires"?

That would have my vote as well. Building without prerequisites was fine for once, but might get same-ish very fast as certain PrC's become very easy to enter.

[H_H_F_F]

Response to Ayla's dispute:

As for power, I'm aware of the limitations of the SI in this round. When I called shadowborn warrior "unsupported trash" I meant that it's unsupported, and that it's trash. Not that it was definitively "a mistake". Feats to spare - well, I've mentioned that issue in other places.

As for elegance: OH. Oh. Makes way more sense now. Punishment for "absolute trash-fire of a presentation" remains, but I'll remove the penalty for cross class skills once I get home.

[SirNibbles]

That would have my vote as well. Building without prerequisites was fine for once, but might get same-ish very fast as certain PrC's become very easy to enter.

I would prefer the same ruleset that we already had, but without a restriction on non-magical armor and weapons (like I said earlier, you technically can't wear any medium/heavy armor because of gauntlets or have an unarmed strike because they are PHB weapons).

Also, an SI with actual class features would be nice. When the main ingredient is water, you're just going to get a bunch of soup builds.

[Inevitability]

Also, an SI with actual class features would be nice. When the main ingredient is water, you're just going to get a bunch of soup builds.

If weapons are permitted, what about Disciple of Thrym? Easy but nontrivial to enter under any ruleset that allows/waives weapon focus, lots of class features, and actual spells because most of its list is from Frostburn. The class only tends to be brought up in discussions of Summon Giants abuse, but it's actually kind of a neat option!

[H_H_F_F]

Ayla's score adjusted.

I think Disciple of Thyrm is very cool. I definitely have my eye on it as a future Iron Chef ingredient.

There's plenty of good classes that clearly synergize with a base class, though, and I think focusing on those would be more interesting to start with. A lot of rogue/monk classes could be fun.

[H_H_F_F]

Hey, chair!

Waiting to figure out stuff for next round (and maybe waiting for after the deadlines of a few other comps) makes sense. However, we could be waiting for next round to be announced post-reveal, couldn't we? I think our competitors have waited more than enough, given how much time this remained unjudged - and they all probably have thoughts to share in the meantime.

Unless we're hoping for a second judgement?