A Simple Question [Archive] - Wizards Community

A Simple Question [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Chaos_Kitten
05-23-05, 11:32 AM I may soon be participating in a level 30 one shot. Has anyone written up a guide to epic builds? It's not exactly my forte and I want to impress all the boys. :D
Hranitel
05-23-05, 01:53 PM Go for Illithid Savant
Illithid - 8 HD
Level adjustment 6
Illithid Savant - 10
Epic Illithid Savant - 6
Iaimeki
05-23-05, 05:43 PM What books do you have access to? Any other information about the campaign?

This is partly excerpted from advice I gave a player who wanted to play a non-caster at high levels. To you, I will say: the first principle of epic levels is that casters win, and in particular, wizards more than the others. If you're new to epic-level play (or play in general), a druid is harder to make mistakes with and easier to recover your mistakes, but definitely far past its prime at level 30.

How generous is your DM at permitting magic items? For saves, you want to buy as many +5 save items for various different bonuses as it takes to make you fail saves only on a 1. A typical mage at 20th level has a save DC at best of 10 + 9 + 2 (Spell Focus, Greater Spell Focus, or other random bonuses) + 13 = 35 with their 9th level spells, so usually it takes around 3 items (something of resistance plus two others), with appropriate multiclassing, feats, and bonuses from abilities to cap your saves.

You need to pick as many immunities as possible. The big ones on my list are mind-affecting effects (dominate, but also crippling effects like panic, hold, and instakills like power word kill), fortification (immunity to sneak attackers and lots of class abilities, less chance of taking huge damage from a critical and failing your Fort save against massive damage), energy drain/death effects (duh), and transmutation effects (disintegrate, polymorph any object, stoning). More minor but still useful immunities include poison (cloudkil, lots of monster abilities), stunning, and negating the need to breathe (drowning, breathable toxins). These cover most of the things that kill you instantly (or turn you against the party) and work 100% of the time, as opposed to 95%. You can find three of these as armor properties (soulfire from BoED, fortification in the core, and proof against transmutation from MoF). With some effort, you can pick up some as class abilities (occult slayer, or some of the divine PrCs, for mind-affecting effects, for instance). For the rest, you may have to get custom-crafted items. If your DM complains about this, feel free to point how casters can easily get all of these abilities and more using spells like death ward, polymorph or shapechange, mindblank, and so on, while also remaining capable of all the other things that make casters so powerful.

You need to be able to fly. You need to be able to dimension door. You need freedom of movement both to escape being grappled by things that you can't fight and to avoid certain nasty spells. A reliable source of true seeing is very helpful; so are arcane sight (or its greater version) and analyze dweomer.

You must max out your initiative check. High-level combat, even between opponents prepared as I noted above, is extremely lethal: combat characters will force Fort saves against massive damage with every attack, clever casters can bypass all the immunities I outlined above to find ways to instakill or disable you, and so forth. More often that not, the victor of a high level combat is determined by the initative check.
Chaos_Kitten
05-23-05, 06:30 PM It's just a one shot deal. We'll roll for scores. The standard 4d6 drop the lowest six times. We have access to any book as long as it's 3.5 ready and a WOTC product. Oh I almost forgot Dragon Magazines are okay too as long as it's 3.5 content. We won't know what the adventure is about until we get there. The DM wants to keep the element of surpise.

I had been thinking of playing a cold themed druid (Wineter Warden from Dragon Magazine) that only wildshapes into animals from artic climates. Culminating into the ability to wildshape into a white dragon. I know it's not the most powerful sounding base for a character, but the concept fascinates me and I like to have fun above everything else.
Hranitel
05-23-05, 07:38 PM For an epic level druid, try using the Arcane Heirophant PrC from races of the wild.

This will give you full casting (0-9) in both wizard and druid lists. I keeps all the core druid abilities, plus it adds the benefits of a wizards familiar to your companion making it much more playable (I dislike dumb companions).
Iaimeki
05-24-05, 02:22 PM Well, if you want to play a cold-themed druid, you should check out Frostburn, which contains a lot of feats and spells useful for such characters: in particular, Piercing Cold, Snow Casting and the other feats based on it, Beckon the Frozen, and the Cold Focus feats. (Don't bother with Frozen Wild Shape: it's surpassed by the epic feat Magical Beast Wild Shape.) For general epic PrCs for druids, look into nature's warrior (CW) (use Practiced Spellcaster (CA) to make up the caster levels you lose) and hierophant (get at least one level of divine reach, then either go for spellpower or metamagic, depending on what you want to do). Druid 20/Nature's Warrior 5/Hierophant 5 is a perfectly reasonable build. Alternatively, Druid 25/Hierophant 5 or so gets you a few more epic feats to play with.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Chaos_Kitten 05-23-05, 11:32 AM	I may soon be participating in a level 30 one shot. Has anyone written up a guide to epic builds? It's not exactly my forte and I want to impress all the boys. :D
Hranitel 05-23-05, 01:53 PM	Go for Illithid Savant Illithid - 8 HD Level adjustment 6 Illithid Savant - 10 Epic Illithid Savant - 6
Iaimeki 05-23-05, 05:43 PM	What books do you have access to? Any other information about the campaign? This is partly excerpted from advice I gave a player who wanted to play a non-caster at high levels. To you, I will say: the first principle of epic levels is that casters win, and in particular, wizards more than the others. If you're new to epic-level play (or play in general), a druid is harder to make mistakes with and easier to recover your mistakes, but definitely far past its prime at level 30. How generous is your DM at permitting magic items? For saves, you want to buy as many +5 save items for various different bonuses as it takes to make you fail saves only on a 1. A typical mage at 20th level has a save DC at best of 10 + 9 + 2 (Spell Focus, Greater Spell Focus, or other random bonuses) + 13 = 35 with their 9th level spells, so usually it takes around 3 items (something of resistance plus two others), with appropriate multiclassing, feats, and bonuses from abilities to cap your saves. You need to pick as many immunities as possible. The big ones on my list are mind-affecting effects (dominate, but also crippling effects like panic, hold, and instakills like power word kill), fortification (immunity to sneak attackers and lots of class abilities, less chance of taking huge damage from a critical and failing your Fort save against massive damage), energy drain/death effects (duh), and transmutation effects (disintegrate, polymorph any object, stoning). More minor but still useful immunities include poison (cloudkil, lots of monster abilities), stunning, and negating the need to breathe (drowning, breathable toxins). These cover most of the things that kill you instantly (or turn you against the party) and work 100% of the time, as opposed to 95%. You can find three of these as armor properties (soulfire from BoED, fortification in the core, and proof against transmutation from MoF). With some effort, you can pick up some as class abilities (occult slayer, or some of the divine PrCs, for mind-affecting effects, for instance). For the rest, you may have to get custom-crafted items. If your DM complains about this, feel free to point how casters can easily get all of these abilities and more using spells like death ward, polymorph or shapechange, mindblank, and so on, while also remaining capable of all the other things that make casters so powerful. You need to be able to fly. You need to be able to dimension door. You need freedom of movement both to escape being grappled by things that you can't fight and to avoid certain nasty spells. A reliable source of true seeing is very helpful; so are arcane sight (or its greater version) and analyze dweomer. You must max out your initiative check. High-level combat, even between opponents prepared as I noted above, is extremely lethal: combat characters will force Fort saves against massive damage with every attack, clever casters can bypass all the immunities I outlined above to find ways to instakill or disable you, and so forth. More often that not, the victor of a high level combat is determined by the initative check.
Chaos_Kitten 05-23-05, 06:30 PM	It's just a one shot deal. We'll roll for scores. The standard 4d6 drop the lowest six times. We have access to any book as long as it's 3.5 ready and a WOTC product. Oh I almost forgot Dragon Magazines are okay too as long as it's 3.5 content. We won't know what the adventure is about until we get there. The DM wants to keep the element of surpise. I had been thinking of playing a cold themed druid (Wineter Warden from Dragon Magazine) that only wildshapes into animals from artic climates. Culminating into the ability to wildshape into a white dragon. I know it's not the most powerful sounding base for a character, but the concept fascinates me and I like to have fun above everything else.
Hranitel 05-23-05, 07:38 PM	For an epic level druid, try using the Arcane Heirophant PrC from races of the wild. This will give you full casting (0-9) in both wizard and druid lists. I keeps all the core druid abilities, plus it adds the benefits of a wizards familiar to your companion making it much more playable (I dislike dumb companions).
Iaimeki 05-24-05, 02:22 PM	Well, if you want to play a cold-themed druid, you should check out Frostburn, which contains a lot of feats and spells useful for such characters: in particular, Piercing Cold, Snow Casting and the other feats based on it, Beckon the Frozen, and the Cold Focus feats. (Don't bother with Frozen Wild Shape: it's surpassed by the epic feat Magical Beast Wild Shape.) For general epic PrCs for druids, look into nature's warrior (CW) (use Practiced Spellcaster (CA) to make up the caster levels you lose) and hierophant (get at least one level of divine reach, then either go for spellpower or metamagic, depending on what you want to do). Druid 20/Nature's Warrior 5/Hierophant 5 is a perfectly reasonable build. Alternatively, Druid 25/Hierophant 5 or so gets you a few more epic feats to play with.