Famous optimized character builds?

[rockdeworld]

For those of you wondering "What are the most famous overpowered TO or PO builds? Where can I find them?"

Notes:

Spoiler

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* I've asked for specific builds only, rather than general ideas or archetypes like "DMM cleric" or "Ubercharger."
* If anyone has a link to a better/more recent build for the Hulking Hurler (still looking for the one that throws planets), the Nasty Gentleman, or the Terminator, please post a link, and I'll update it.
* In case you're interested, here is the old list.
* Due to the number of popular Practical Optimization builds, I've separated the links into TO builds and PO builds. I could use some help distinguishing them, so if you see a link in the wrong list, please let me know. My working definition for PO is "has been or probably can be played in a normal game," and it's not a hard-and-fast definition.
* The Still-Unanswered Question: if all these characters were all put in a room together (except Pun-Pun), who would come out on top? turned into this thread.

If you'd like to contribute to this list, please PM me rather than perform thread necromancy, and I'll credit you for the help.

Theoretical Builds:
Pun-Pun, by Khan the Destroyer
* on a side note, Pun Pun's stats, thanks to Bastian
The Omniscificer, by LordofProcrastination
The Terminator, by Tleilaxu_Ghola
The Wish & The Word, by Frank & K
Chicken Infested Commoner, source unknown, this build by gorfnad
The Jumplomancer, by Caedrus
The (Tauric) Hulking Hurler, discovered by Incubus, this version by zook1shoe666
Bubs, by sonofzeal
The Twice-Betrayer of Shar, by LordofProcrastination
Nanobots, by LordofProcrastination (World Record build near the bottom of the first post)
Chuck E. Cheese, by skydragonknight
The Emerald Legion, by JeminiZero
d2 Crusader, by BassetKing
The H.I.V.E. by Sigmajargon.
The Shepherd, The Saint, and the Sinner, by DisposableHero_ and Urnsk
The Morphling, by Urnsk
The Beast, by Squirrelloid
Bringer of Fated Justice by PhaedrusXY
Squibb, Goblin King, by cvazi
The Silly Literalist, by Lusden Veharo
Mr. roboto, by deathwishjoe
Theyla Eserial, by thorian
Cheater of Mystra by Neonsamurai and Funny Slaughter
The Lightning Thief, by Darrin
The Basketweaver, by Zemyla
The Dream of Metal, by Fishy
True Dilettante, by true_shinken
Festering Anger Lad, source unknown
Monty, by psly4mne
Triple Cheesebuger with Onions (3*9th_Caster), by Winternacht
Triple 9's, by PlzBreakMyCampaign
New World Record Mount Familiar Companion by HD, by PlzBreakMyCmpAn
Jovocian Bomb, by Lyinginbedmon
Supermount, by Caelic, and allenchan 3 posts down
Supermount 2.0, by Dyllan
Sleeping Raven Infinite Blood Frenzy, by JeminiZero
Tauric Ubercharger by swanyusd
The UberERcharger by Tempest Stormwind
The Way-More-Than-Uber Centaur Charger, by PlzBreakMyCampaign
The Psionic Sandwich by Tleilaxu Ghola
Clone Army, by Mango Eldar
World Record (Rebuke and Command undead by HD), by PlzBreakMyCampaign
Maximum SA possible (per hit), brute force method, by PlzBreakMyCampaign
Maximum Eldritch Blast Damage per hit, by PlzBreakMyCampaign
The Maximum Hit Point Tank, by PlzBreakMyCampaign
Maximum Skirmish, by PlzBreakMyCampaign
A Full CoDzilla including a maximum turning pools option, by PlzBreakMyCampaign
The MAXED +1sorc casting non-ascended, Non-epic Demilich kobold, by PlzBreakMyCampaign
The Ultimate Bear Build, by PlzBreakMyCampaign


Practical Builds:
Team Solars, by douglas
The Mailman, by DeAnno
Cindy*, by Emperor Tippy (*If this shows up as a broken link, alternate here)
Gatling Chain Gun Tripper, by Snow_Savant
Jack B. Quick, by Caelic
Fistbeard Beardfist, by Pharaoh's Fist
Takahashi no Onisan, by ShneekeyTheLost
Ted the heiney-kicking enabler, source Yekoj, this build by prototype00
The Original "Ted the Enabler", by Yekoj
Resurrecting Ted the Enabler, by Endarire
Bardic Badass, by Janus Jones
Trixie, the Pixie Party Booster, by Carnivore
Feral Dreadlord, by Tleilaxu_Ghola
Trouserfang Dwarf, by ChrisAsmadi
The Nasty Gentleman, by LordofProcrastination
The Killer Gnome, by Snow_Savant
I May Be Tiny, But You're Dead (the Other Killer Gnome), by TheLogicNinja
King of Smack by Lord Shade
PRESIDENT of Smack, by RadicalTaoist
Tashalatora God of Smack, by WyvernSlayer
'Trip Monk-ey' of DOOM, by catharz
Flaming Homer, by Person_Man
Frozen Dwarf Hulk Smash!!!, by Person_Man
Haberdash the Masked, by Person_Man
The Cube, by sofawall (with as close to a build as we may ever see)
Algernon of the White Lilies, by Doc Roc (the second build in that post)
The Big Guy Is With Me, by PhaedrusXY
Eddie, by PhaedrusXY
The Boogeyman, by Caelic
Tiny Von BigMcLargeHuge, by Lycanthromancer
Hi Welcome, by Sunic_Flames
A Vampire PC that Doesn't Suck, by PlzBreakMyCampaign
Matrix Monk, by Soro_Lost
The Mindslayer, by Prime32
Death from Above, by Maat Mons
Grapplemancer (low-level build), by sirpercival
Idiot Crusader, by Garryl


Thanks to: everyone who posted in this thread, and especially Darrin, for quite a lot of these, including: The Original Ted, Resurrecting Ted, the President/God of SMACK, the Boogeyman, and the Trip Monk-ey of Doom

[Feytalist]

Dunno what exactly you mean by overpowered, but there's the more-real-than-reality shadowcraft mage, the mailman, the ubercharger, the jumplomancer (which is like a silly diplomancer), and then all those silly things you can do with DMM or Earth Magic or whatever.

And then a whole bunch of others that I can't be bothered to remember at the moment.

[Endarire]

That depends who goes first. (Let's exclude Pun Pun since he's assumed infinite or nearly so at this point.)

[Sith_Happens]

Chuck E. Cheese, a build capable of running at ~3.5 times the speed the light. No longer works due to errata.

[TroubleBrewing]

Builds I've heard of:
The Cheater of Mystra by Funny Slaughter
The totally overpowered Basketweaver
Ted the enabler by Yekoj
The King of Smack by Lord Shade
The President, Prime Minister and maybe even the parliament of Smack: CO politics
The H.I.V.E. by SigmaJargon
The Hulking Hurler, discovered by Incubus
The Morphling, Urnsk
The Beast, Squirrelloid
The Bringer of Fated Justice, PhaedrusXY
Squibb the Goblin King, cvazi
The Silly Literalist, Lusden Veharo
Mr. Roboto, deathwishjoe
Theyla Eseriel, thorian

The Cheater of Mystra uses a cleric feat to cast an anti-magic field around yourself, then uses Dweomerkeeper to get around that pesky field. You can cast out, enemies can't cast in.

The King of Smack is a psychic warrior/totemist/other things build that deals truly massive damage with unarmed damage and natural attacks. The other 'Of Smack' characters are variations on a theme.

The Hulking Hurler is a war hulk/hulking hurler build that throws planets. No, seriously.

Other builds to add would include The Nasty Gentleman and The Omniscificer. The former abuses symbiotes and familiars, while the latter knows everything after chucking himself off a cliff.

[rockdeworld]

That depends who goes first. (Let's exclude Pun Pun since he's assumed infinite or nearly so at this point.)

How do we pick who goes first? I assume there's at least one contingent celerity going off, if Initiative even gets rolled at all.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Are we including excersizes like the emerald legion in this?

I don't think bubs the commoner is the same as the chicken infested commoner. Is he?

[TuggyNE]

I don't think bubs the commoner is the same as the chicken infested commoner. Is he?

No. Bubs is a Venerable Commoner 3/Marshal 1 with maxed Handle Animal and a trio of trained Battletitans for pets.

That's ... basically it.

Edit 2: sudden overpowering sense of deja vu o.o

[Killer Angel]

Are we including excersizes like the emerald legion in this?

Then, why not the Solar Team?

[Kelb_Panthera]

No. Bubs is a Venerable Commoner 3/Marshal 1 with maxed Handle Animal and a trio of trained Battletitans for pets.

That's ... basically it.

Edit 2: sudden overpowering sense of deja vu o.o

Meh, he's a famous build and with his reptilian buddies he's an EL 18-ish encounter. I think that should count for something.

[Wings of Peace]

Monty is a good build to know but he's from the ooooold days of the 339 boards. I forget the build but the general premise was that you had a helper who would check on you from a plane where time was random every second. If he ever popped in and things were going badly for you he had an item that let your next roll be a 20 so you always had perfect rolls.

[Amphetryon]

The Twice-Betrayer of Shar

[laeZ1]

I'd like to read up on the crazy overpowered builds. I heard about the wish and the word yesterday, and found it on D&Dwiki, can the rest of the ones listed in the original post be found there too?

[TuggyNE]

Meh, he's a famous build and with his reptilian buddies he's an EL 18-ish encounter. I think that should count for something.

Oh, definitely. I wasn't trying to undermine the impressive accomplishment Bubs is, just note how amazingly simple it comes out to be.

[toapat]

The Mystic Darkfire Knight (ok, It technically was developed yesterday)

basically, exploit earthglide to hide underground. its no DPS cheese, its simply the most elegant way to build an Anti-caster in the game.

[Piggy Knowles]

The King of Smack is a psychic warrior/totemist/other things build that deals truly massive damage with unarmed damage and natural attacks. The other 'Of Smack' characters are variations on a theme.

Minor nitpick - the original King of Smack was actually a straight Psychic Warrior (or a Psion/Slayer as an alternative). The basic deal was that it combined Claws of the Beast, which allows you to augment it to increase the size of the claws, with Expansion, letting you grow in size. This left you with claw attacks doing truly ridiculous amounts of damage with each hit. Then it tossed in Rapidstrike and Improved Rapidstrike to make a whole lot of claw attacks.

The other versions, including the totemist version (which is my favorite of them), all came later. But the real meat and potatoes of the build was the combination of Claws of the Beast and Expansion.

EDIT: Also, because it was pretty much the first really optimized fighter build, Snow Savant's Gatling Chain Gun Tripper. And even though it's not nearly the game-changer that the Chain Gun Tripper was, I've always been a fan of Caelic's Jack B. Quick fighter 20 build.

[Eurus]

The Save Game trick isn't a build, per se, but it's rather lovely.

[rockdeworld]

Are we including excersizes like the emerald legion in this?

Absolutely. If you (or I) can provide a link to it, I'll add it.

However, I have to ask for specific builds only, rather than general ideas or archetypes like "DMM cleric" or "Shadowcraft Mage Gnome." (The Hulking Hurler can be an exception for now, since I've discovered a link to a Tauric version dealing exponential damage, but I'd really like to get a specific build for that too). Which reminds me, I have seen The Killer Gnome. I'll have to find a link for it. Ideally, I'll eventually have links for every build on the list.

The Mystic Darkfire Knight (ok, It technically was developed yesterday)

Unfortunately, I'll have to veto that for the first part (at least until it gains widespread approval). It's still a contender for my question at the bottom of the post though.

[toapat]

Unfortunately, I'll have to veto that for the first part (at least until it gains widespread approval). It's still a contender for my question at the bottom of the post though.

fair enough. i just havent heard of anyone exploiting Earthglide in that way before.

[Piggy Knowles]

fair enough. i just havent heard of anyone exploiting Earthglide in that way before.

I've seen a few builds using Earth Glide that way, mostly involving Earth Dreamer. (For example, see JaronK's Spellthief/Shadowcraft Mage/Earth Dreamer). PhaedrusXY also won a level 10 arena contest on the old 339 boards in the very early days of 3.5 with a cleric/MoS that used Meld Into Stone in a similar fashion, although that build would be pretty outdated by today's standards. Still, it was a pretty cool concept - he managed to set it up so that, while melded, he was pretty much immune to most combatants, and then he used Clairvoyance to direct his summoned shadows and undead to take out the rest.

There was also a handbook on the old 339 boards called the Mole Handbook or some such. It was originally about using burrow to spring out and kill people, but it ended up having a good bit about using either Earth Glide or the incorporeal trait defensively.

In any case, I would say that the original Killer Gnome shadowcraft mage is enough to be an iconic CO build, even if it has since turned into more of a build archetype than one particular build. I'll try to scrape up a link to the original thread.

EDIT: Here it is, Snow Savant's original Killer Gnome. Man, I forgot how many of the original CO builds that still have huge influence today were by Snow!

DOUBLE EDIT: Gah, saw you already added it well before I posted. Serves me right for not re-checking the OP.

[Darrin]

I see you've already got a link to a Chicken-Infested build, but gorfnab's got a couple Chicken-Infested builds that might be worth mentioning... the Flaming Chicken Bardblade is actually the first thing I think of whenever anyone mentions Chicken-Infested and... well, lighting them on fire.

I'd like to nominate Person_Man's Flaming Homer, Frozen Dwarf Hulk Smash!!!, and Haberdash the Masked. They aren't Campaign-Smashers, more like "practical optimization" you can actually play, but they get mentioned often enough.

And... how could we possibly not mention Fistbeard Beardfist by Pharaoh's Fist?

Some others:

I May Be Tiny, But You're Dead (the Other Killer Gnome) by LogicNinja.

Takahashi no Onisan by ShneekeyTheLost. One of the gold standards for Fear/Demoralize optimization.

Cindy by Emperor Tippy. Might need a little more of a write-up, since it's not obvious from the character sheet how she's overpowered.

I'm having trouble locating the original BardBlade, which has been somewhat popular recently.

[Psyren]

Absolutely. If you (or I) can provide a link to it, I'll add it.

If you're allowing "named tricks," there's a whole slew of psionic ones in my signature (with thanks to KA for compiling them.) You can just link to that whole thread.

The tricks themselves are very basic (e.g. Psionic Dreadnought or Erudite Concerto can be put on a variety of frameworks) so they aren't fleshed out much beyond the interactions themselves.

[Snowbluff]

I'm having trouble locating the original BardBlade, which has been somewhat popular recently.

Is there an original Bardblade/Bladesader? It's literally Song of the White Raven combined with good Inspire Courage OP (Song of the Heart, Words of Creation, and then DFI with a Dualsongs PrC).

[Darrin]

BassetKing's original d2 Crusader was "Cleric 1/Crusader 13" (although he mentions an earlier build, probably from one of the older wizards/gleemax TO boards, that didn't actually work). Here's an update he posted to the d2 Crusader that adds a level of PsyWar.

(You can actually get it working around ECL 9-10 if you use Bloodline levels, assuming you can figure out how Bloodline levels work.)

[rockdeworld]

I'm having trouble locating the original BardBlade, which has been somewhat popular recently.

Could this be what you're referring to?
Bladesinger

If you're allowing "named tricks," there's a whole slew of psionic ones in my signature (with thanks to KA for compiling them.) You can just link to that whole thread.

Not tricks, but rather builds, ready to be put into play (or critiqued, from an optimization standpoint).

Also, the Cindy link seems to not work.

[eggs]

As far as specific named builds, if you follow this link, you'll see most of the fairly-frequently-references old builds, TO and not, in the build section.

It's a bit of a crapshoot whether you'll still be able to find all of those (most of the links are dead, but google and the wayback machine turn up a fair number), but it should at least give some search terms.

[rockdeworld]

As far as specific named builds, if you follow this link, you'll see most of the fairly-frequently-references old builds, TO and not, in the build section.

It's a bit of a crapshoot whether you'll still be able to find all of those (most of the links are dead, but google and the wayback machine turn up a fair number), but it should at least give some search terms.

Yeah, my problem with that thread has been that since the wotc forum update, all the old links are broken. As far as names go, it seems to be a good list though.

[Radar]

Absolutely. If you (or I) can provide a link to it, I'll add it.

Your wish has been granted.

There was also The Cube by Sofawall - a Commoner with the Landlord feat abusing his WBL and Spellclocks to build an indestructible tank. The exact build was never revealed, but it was one of the two unbeatable builds in Test of Spite (the other was one of Doc Roc's creations, which name I forgot).

I also recall a build made to destroy a fully powered Pun-Pun. I only know, it was called The Neo-Terminator and I guess it was either Doc Roc's or Tleilaxu Ghola's (WoTC boards) creation. I never found the exact build, but it revolved around swimming up the time stream thanks to some psionic powers. If anyone has any exact information, I'd be happy to see them.

[eggs]

Ooo. Looks like one of those links hasn't been pared: TG's Terminator

[Darrin]

Could this be what you're referring to?
Bladesinger

No. Found it. OneWinged4ngel referred to it in several threads, and then says the page got devoured by the wizards/gleemax board migration when someone asked for the link. He may have been referring to another TWF build, but I think this is the original BardBlade:

Song of Death: Bardic Badass by JanusJones.

(Odd. I could have sworn it was Bard 4/Warblade 16, but he has Bard 3/Warblade 17.)

Also, the Cindy link seems to not work.

I was afraid of that... fortunately, I saved a copy. I'll see if I can repost it later... however, I should probably check with Tippy first.