[3.5] King of Smack?

[olelia]

This is a spin off of a previous thread...which thank you to all the responses they did answer most of the questions I had wanted answered. But....the thread including something called the King of Smack which from the jists of it seems to be something involving claws of the beast or something. So my question is what is the King of Smack build or if it's not a build what is it in general.

[Chibiqueso]

I'd find the link to it, but right now gleemax seems to...not exist.

Basically, the king of smack is an Elan (or anything that qualifies for rapid strike) psychic warrior/illithid slayer (there's actually several class builds for it) that uses the fact elans are abberations to get the rapidstrike feats from draconomicon, giving them iterative attacks with their claws. Karmic strike is also (ab)used. Warshaper is usually squeezed in for morphic weapons.

Gleemax is suddenly up, link to full thread here.

[olelia]

Curious random point...could Claws of the beast be empowered/maximized since the claw damage is a variable effect of the power?

[KillianHawkeye]

I would say probably so.

[olelia]

That seems possilbly busted...espcially if you maximize the power.

[Moriato]

I would say probably so.

I would say not, actually. The spell doesn't have any variable effects, it gives you (natural) weapons, which you can use to attack. The attacks do variable damage, of course, but the spell doesn't do the damage, the claws do. It would be like trying to empower or maximize one of the various creation spells, creating a sword with it, and saying the sword should do 1.5x or max damage with every hit.

[Draz74]

I would say not, actually. The spell doesn't have any variable effects, it gives you (natural) weapons, which you can use to attack. The attacks do variable damage, of course, but the spell doesn't do the damage, the claws do. It would be like trying to empower or maximize one of the various creation spells, creating a sword with it, and saying the sword should do 1.5x or max damage with every hit.

Agreed.

While the original (and very powerful!) King of Smack is focused largely on Rapidstrike, and somewhat on Warshaper, the core idea of the build is really just to:

• Use Psychic Warrior (or Psion with Expanded Knowledge)
• Adventure with highly-augmented, high damage Claws of the Beast ready
• Get as many attacks as possible
• Use Claws of the Vampire to heal yourself a lot when you attack.

It's a relatively viable build even in Core-Only.

[Person_Man]

A very old build, the King of Smack is a pretty easy combo.

1) Use Claws of the Beast.

2) Pump Claws of the Beast. This can be done many ways. The easiest is to just take more levels of a psionic class and do anything that increases your size, such as Expansion, 1 level of Warshaper, Improved Natural Attack, Polymorph, Metamorphosis, etc.

3) Use Claws of the Vampire.

4) Set up some sort of attack combo, such as Headlong Rush + Karmic Strike + Robilar's Gambit + Combat Reflexes.

FYI, the King of Smack is a powerful melee build, but the real power of the combo doesn't really kick in until mid-high levels. And although he's still much weaker then a Batman Wizard, most DMs will consider him way overpowered.

Enjoy.

[monty]

FYI, the King of Smack is a powerful melee build, but the real power of the combo doesn't really kick in until mid-high levels. And although he's still much weaker then a Batman Wizard, most DMs will consider him way overpowered.

If you didn't consider anything weaker than a Batman Wizard overpowered, then there isn't very much overpowered stuff. Like, nothing?

[Chronicled]

If you didn't consider anything weaker than a Batman Wizard overpowered, then there isn't very much overpowered stuff. Like, nothing?

Contenders include the Druid, Planar Shepherd, DMM (Persist) Cleric... and every cheese (not overpowered, but real cheese) build out there, for starters. Heck, depending on whether you consider Cindy to be a Batman style wizard, there's even an easily found wizard contender.

[monty]

Shouldn't Batman be prepared to beat any of them before the fight even starts? I mean, unless you're dealing with Pun-Pun or similar levels of true cheese, there's a spell to deal with everything, and Batman knows to have it ready.


On an unrelated note:

The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later.

Is it just me, or is this happening a lot?

[Frost]

Contenders include the Druid, Planar Shepherd, DMM (Persist) Cleric... and every cheese (not overpowered, but real cheese) build out there, for starters. Heck, depending on whether you consider Cindy to be a Batman style wizard, there's even an easily found wizard contender.

Cindy isn't a Batman Wizard. And that's the thing, Batman is played a certain awesome way. Druids, DMM Persist Clerics, and Incant who's are all more powerful.

[Frost]

Shouldn't Batman be prepared to beat any of them before the fight even starts? I mean, unless you're dealing with Pun-Pun or similar levels of true cheese, there's a spell to deal with everything, and Batman knows to have it ready.

Actually, built properly, a Cindy style pretty much can only be beaten by another such style, only better built/executed. We are talking about only creatures with Mindsight and a supernatural True-Seeing ability ever even being able to find her, much less attack. And immunity to every energy type, incorporeality, SR infinity (sometimes) two standard actions and two swift actions a round (sometimes) and immunity to disjunction and other spells, also, the ability to kill anything in an AMF field with under 300 HP in a single standard action, and the ability to put anything within 60ft in an AMF as a free action.

Actually, the theoretical maximum of damager per round, not counting crits, and assuming the enemy is immune to all energy types is 1000 damage in one "round" followed by Celerity and another 200 damage. Of course that barrage also gives 12 negative levels and forces 12 saves against daze.

[Talic]

Some immunities aren't really immunities. Take Piercing Cold, for example, and the frost mage's improved variant.

[Cuddly]

Doesn't Cindy giver herself away as soon as she throws an orb?

[tyckspoon]

Doesn't Cindy giver herself away as soon as she throws an orb?

Nah. First thing, she's using Greater or (preferably and usually) Superior Invisibility, which aren't broken by making attacks, and her other non-detection spells don't care whether or not she attacks. Second, if she's throwing an orb at you, you're already boned regardless of whether or not you can now see her.

[Talic]

The location of origin of the attack is still apparent, provided there's LOS to the square.

[Frost]

All Orbs are invisible, sorry. Not to mention, move actions and swift action teleports and such.

And I am well aware of that fact about immunities, since Piercing Cold is use as part of the build. However that doesn't really come up since AoE attacks:

1) Can't find her
2) Surprising amount of HP and Temporary HP
3) Do much less damage then targeted attacks, which thanks to persistent Ray Deflection, don't matter. And of course, the whole invisible and incorporeal thing, so they mostly don't affect her anyway.

[Chronos]

Even Superior Invisibility isn't absolute. A DC 20 Spot check will still pick up signs of your presence, just like with normal invisibility, and a DC 40 will pinpoint your location. Fear druids and dragons.

[TheDarkOne]

Even Superior Invisibility isn't absolute. A DC 20 Spot check will still pick up signs of your presence, just like with normal invisibility, and a DC 40 will pinpoint your location. Fear druids and dragons.

Unless you also have ranks in hide and are actively hiding, then the DCs would be higher.

[Person_Man]

In my definition, a powerful build is anything that does what it sets out to do very well. Melee damage, ranged damage, control/immobilize enemies, summon monsters, whatever. It can generally be balanced by just adding more enemies, using a mix of different tactics, or by using harder versions of the existing enemies that you had planned for your adventure.

An overpowered build is anything that requires highly specialized and/or "unrealistic" enemies to reasonably challenge. Hide in Plain Site or Greater Invisibility abuse, Polymorph or Wildshape abuse, action advantage builds, DMM, etc. In each case, a DM generally needs to customize enemies in order to reasonably challenge the build. Doing so often requires that you heavily modify your plot ("How come everything in your game world has True Seeing?") and/or it may render other non-overpowered builds useless ("I'm sorry no one else can stand up to Tiamat - but Bob insists on turning into a cryohydra every combat.")

Unless you choose to abuse Metamorphosis, the King of Smack is clearly in the first category. But some DMs will look at 12d6ish (average 42, heal 21) per hit damage and freak out, even though the solution is just to add more enemies of any type to your campaign.

[Cuddly]

Unless you also have ranks in hide and are actively hiding, then the DCs would be higher.

Even then, cross-class ranks in hide isn't going to do much for you against opponents with spot as a class skill, wisdom in the high 20's/low 30s, and nearly 2x as many HD. Though one could argue that, since sup. invis protects against anything short of touch, spot & listen wouldn't work.

The orbs aren't invisible- nothing in any invisibility spell says that it makes your spells invisible.

An overpowered build is anything that requires highly specialized and/or "unrealistic" enemies to reasonably challenge. Hide in Plain Site or Greater Invisibility abuse, Polymorph or Wildshape abuse, action advantage builds, DMM, etc. In each case, a DM generally needs to customize enemies in order to reasonably challenge the build. Doing so often requires that you heavily modify your plot ("How come everything in your game world has True Seeing?") and/or it may render other non-overpowered builds useless ("I'm sorry no one else can stand up to Tiamat - but Bob insists on turning into a cryohydra every combat.")

I don't necessarily see that as overpowered. You pretty much have to ban every spell out there or handwave it away, since stuff like invisibility is so powerful, and a relatively low level and obvious spell to be using if you have half a brain. Campaigns SHOULD require DM customization; otherwise you're going to get boned by stuff when the caster character or rogue or whatever decides to stop selling his character short and use something other than fireball on his spell list or start UMDing.

[Chronicled]

The orbs aren't invisible- nothing in any invisibility spell says that it makes your spells invisible.

Invisible Spell, from Cityscape. One of the feats Cindy has to reduce metamagic costs (it's +0, so combined with Arcane Thesis...), and has the nice effect of cloaking the orbs.

[Chronos]

In my definition, a powerful build is anything that does what it sets out to do very well.

Huh, in my definition, a powerful build is anything that lets a character wield weapons one size category larger than normal without penalty .

Though one could argue that, since sup. invis protects against anything short of touch, spot & listen wouldn't work.

The description of Superior Invisibility explicitly says that subtle cues can still give you away, and it doesn't say anything about those subtle cues being harder to notice than for regular invisibility.

[Frost]

The description of Superior Invisibility explicitly says that subtle cues can still give you away, and it doesn't say anything about those subtle cues being harder to notice than for regular invisibility.

Are you reading the Complete Arcane Version or the Spell Compendium one?

Spell Compendium version says nothing about subtle cues, though it does say that leaving footprints might give you away. (Probably a replacement for subtle cues, since the first is so vague.)

Also, as Chon, ninjaed, Invisible Spell metamagic.

[Jack Mann]

Shouldn't Batman be prepared to beat any of them before the fight even starts? I mean, unless you're dealing with Pun-Pun or similar levels of true cheese, there's a spell to deal with everything, and Batman knows to have it ready.

To reinforce what Person Man said, it doesn't matter whether or not Batman can beat all of those builds (and that's debatable). PvP proves nothing in D&D, because D&D is not inherently a PvP game. You could probably make a build that could be a batman wizard, and still have it be relatively weak, if it has difficulty facing ordinary threats. An overpowered build can take on a variety of threats with relative ease. This is what makes the Batman wizard himself so dangerous; not that he can take on other classes, but that he can also take on nearly any monster without any great expenditure of resources. The Batman build does this by having a variety of stratagems at his disposal, while others (like the hulking hurler or ubercharger) have exactly one trick that they do very well.

[Chronos]

The exact wording on Superior Invisibility is "certain mundane conditions (such as leaving footprints) can also render a subject detectable". One presumes that those mundane conditions are also the mechanism by which the Spot check works for normal invisibility. And if it's not the Spot check, then how do you determine if a Superior Invisible creature does leave noticeable footprints?

[Frost]

The exact wording on Superior Invisibility is "certain mundane conditions (such as leaving footprints) can also render a subject detectable". One presumes that those mundane conditions are also the mechanism by which the Spot check works for normal invisibility. And if it's not the Spot check, then how do you determine if a Superior Invisible creature does leave noticeable footprints?

How about, it doesn't leave footprints because it is incorporeal.

How about the line: "Is undetectable by anything except touch."

How about those are the same mechanisms that are used by Blindsight and sense, which are completely negated?

How about, now you are just stretching and making things up because you don't want it to work the way it so obviously does. Undetectable by sight is undetectable by sight, no matter what, not unless you use sight.

[Talic]

Footprints are detectable by the spot skill, and followable by track. However, these would merely reveal the presence of the creature, not its location.

Further, it's not incorporeal. It can be touched. It just can't be spotted directly. Walking through water, muddy floors, etc, can still betray its presence, though, only in extreme cases would the creature be locatable with those means.

[Frost]

Footprints are detectable by the spot skill, and followable by track. However, these would merely reveal the presence of the creature, not its location.

Further, it's not incorporeal. It can be touched. It just can't be spotted directly. Walking through water, muddy floors, etc, can still betray its presence, though, only in extreme cases would the creature be locatable with those means.

Well, I'm am talking about my specific Wizard, since that is the circumstance under which locating a superior invisibilitied creature came up. And he is incorporeal thanks to Persistent Ghostform.