epic shadowbane stalker

[unosarta]

now, imagine this: you are a shadowbane stalker [complete adventurer] 10/ cleric 20/ rogue 1. as a tenth level shadowbane stalker, you can "throw away" spells and gain sneak attack damage equal to the spell level. a twentieth level cleric has access to 262 spell levels [ 50 spells, not including orisons[what does that mean?] including domain spells]. now it takes one round to lose one spell, so thats 5*50 or 250 seconds [check my math there] or roughly four minutes[and ten seconds]. so in the morning after you prepare all your spells you can through them away, and gain 262d6 damage on your next sneak attack[or you could do it later]. but just imagine that. thats 265 damage [with rogue and shadowbane stalker sneak attack] minimum. 1590 damage maximum. on average 927.5 damage [of course this is only 1/day].

so what do you think?

[Eldariel]

You're a level 31 character with full casting. Why aren't you just casting Epic spells and winning instead of dealing Less Than Standard Hecatoncheires's HP in damage?

[unosarta]

yeah, thats true but quite honestly can any other sneak attack class even think about doing this? and if you dont want to, just revert back to spellcasting [its not like anyone said you had to lose the spells]. and if the monster has SR? or even SI? then what?

[Eldariel]

Then you still keep casting Epic Spells and Winning D&D.

[unosarta]

i mean without any supercheese [although thats kinda limited to wizard.]

[Temp.]

i mean without any supercheese [although thats kinda limited to wizard.]

I don't understand. That label is entirely arbitrary; of course your 1/day sneak attack is incredible if you ban anything better than it due to "supercheese"-ery.

And Epic Spellcasting works just as well for Clerics as it does for Wizards.

[unosarta]

sorry if it was too confusing. i just meant it would be really cool to have a super sneak attack.

[Chronos]

And Epic Spellcasting works just as well for Clerics as it does for Wizards.

Better, in fact, since there are a couple of seeds that wizards don't have access to but clerics do. The only advantage wizards have over clerics is that Spellcraft is Int-based, but even at that, your ability score modifier is going to be negligible compared to all the other skill-boosters and DC-mitigators you can use.

[mostlyharmful]

Better, in fact, since there are a couple of seeds that wizards don't have access to but clerics do.

There are? I'm only aware of Life and Heal seeds needing 24 ranks in either Knowlede (Religion) or Knowledge (Nature), not anything that limits classes for any seed, or any deliniation of the Arcane/Divine split. The Sorcs seem to me to be the only ones shafted (and only then if they don't get one of those skills as in class for a few levels)

[Illiterate Scribe]

I'm fairly sure that font of inspiration could beat this.

By taking font of inspiration 23 times, we get

1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17+18+19+20 +21+22+23 = 276 inspiration points. We can use these to gain +276d6 sneak attack damage, every single encounter; alternatively, 92 standard actions in one turn, which is arguably much better. The issue lies with having to get a +23 int bonus; we can say +10 from black ethergaunt, +2.5 from levelling, +2.5 from tomes, for +15 total; I'm sure we can raise it higher, with templates and such.

We start, however, as an elf - we PaO, at low level (get some beneficent master to do this? Is he making a weapon?) into a Black Ethergaunt, which, while denying us its delicious 17th level spellcasting, is more than made up for by having however many class levels in whatever (preferably something that benefits from ridiculous numbers of standard actions/sneak attack (- -more the first, actually, and, importantly, something that is granted a lot of bonus feats (fighter?)), but because, as a result of the Chaos shuffle trick, we get 4 free feats. We then gain its 30 int. Read tomes for +5; gain +5 from levelling; +3 from aging - we're at 43 int, and happy as anything with our +16 bonus. Not entirely happy though - we snag Vow of Poverty, getting a permanent +8 enhancement bonus to a stat, giving us 51 int, and +20 bonus. I'm sure there's some way I can fulfil the last bit - templates, probably.

As such, we have a character capable of doing just a bit less sneak attack damage (or a lot, lot, more, if we go for standard actions), every encounter.

[Chronos]

Hm, you may be right... Heal and Life require one of those knowledges, and if a character is capable of casting both arcane and divine spells creates a spell with one of those seeds, it's always divine, but I can't actually find a rule that says that a straight wizard with a bunch of Knowledge (Religion) can't create an arcane life-seed spell. I have to wonder if that's an oversight: It seems odd that gaining the ability to cast divine epic spells would suddenly make it impossible to cast arcane life spells, if it was possible before.

[unosarta]

illiterate scribe... you can be a very scary person when you want to.

Thanks for posting!

[Tsotha-lanti]

So how does this compare to the established super-damage-builds? Most of them don't rely on sneak attack either, do they?

[Temp.]

A Level 16 Frenzied Berserker with Leap Attack, Headlong Rush, Shock Trooper and the Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian variant is going to be doing 1000 damage on a charge from power attack alone...

Also, this isn't legal unless you find a way to generate a heap of extra Swift Actions in a round (Shadowbane Stalkers must sacrifice their spells for Sacred Strike on the turn they make their attacks--a rather shoddy ability in all respects).

[unosarta]

yes but there is no rule that says that you cant hold in the extra sneak attack damage indefinitly. in fact you could even hold them in until the next day, gaining even more damage. if your sessions are a month apart [ingame] and your dm asks what you were doing, just say you were losing spells to gain an arbitrarily large amount of damage. lets see, 31 days in a month times 262[sneak attack damage] equals: 8122d6. thats 8122 damage minimum, 48,732 maximum, 28,427 damage on average, and completely legal.

cheers!

[Temp.]

yes but there is no rule that says that you cant hold in the extra sneak attack damage indefinitly.

...This ability affects the next attack she makes in the same round that she uses this ability.

I think this is pretty straightforward.