My DM is crazy, and I'm enjoying the madness. He's challenged us to an Level 50 Gestalt Campaign, and told us to optimize for it. UA level buyoffs are allowed, and he's allowing all WotC material and Dragon magazines. He gave each of us 40,000,000 gp for equipment and setup. Custom feats and classes are allowed as long as he checks them out (he's pretty lenient). He also said that prestige classes were fine on both side of a progression. Now, I'm not worried about building my character. The problem is with my wife's character. She talked to the DM and worked it out with him to change the Epic Leadership feat to obtain extra 'sub' cohorts instead of gaining followers. She has the idea that her character formed a sort of epic guild with some of the best of all sorts in it. She's going for flavor as much as optimization.
Her own character is a Strongheart Halfling with levels in Feat Rogue and Swashbuckler on one side (for Daring Outlaw shenanigans) and Sorcerer on the other (I told her that Wizard would be stronger, but she's not comfortable playing prepared casters).
Here's a sort of general outline of what the guild is supposed to be like.
1. Main cohort - level 47 - Cleric/Fighter or Knight - a Dwarf of some flavor, primarily a defensive fighter and protector
2. 'Sub'cohort - level 33 - Cleric/something else - a healer and defensive magic expert
3. 'Sub'cohort - level 41 - Force Dragon/something else - serves as a mount
4. 'Sub'cohort - level 37 - Bard/Marshal - an expert in 'buffing' magic and effects
5. 'Sub'cohort - level 33 - Ranger/Fighter - a master of archery
6. 'Sub'cohort - level 41 - Archivist/Wizard - a general 'know-it-all'
7. 'Sub'cohort - level 41 - Artificer/Wizard - the Crafter of the bunch, perhaps being a Midgard Dwarf
8. 'Sub'cohort - level 33 - Rogue/Factotum - a 'Ghost': master of stealth and trickery
9. 'Sub'cohort - level 37 - War Hulk/Barbarian - a Troll of some sort, with as much raw strength as possible
10. 'Sub'cohort - level 33 - Druid/Cleric or Conjurer - a master summoner
11. 'Sub'cohort - level 41 - Wizard/Sorcerer - advancing toward Ultimate Magus and Incantatrix, a master of magic who considers it a high art, so a high Spellcraft skill would be good
12. 'Sub'cohort - level 37 - Cleric/Wizard - a master of Water and Ice Magic, perhaps a Merfolk
13. 'Sub'cohort - level 37 - Cleric/Druid - a Raptoran master of the Air
Any help offered is greatly appreciated.
LA buy-off should get you an LA+8 with no problem, just doing quick and dirty math.
Thrallherds are assumed to work just like Epic Leadership.
Psi-class 1 with Practiced Manifester feat / Thrallherd 10
grafted on to whatever side, would get:
1 level 48 Thrall and 1 level 47 2nd Thrall
then have each Thrall have to same 11 level tag on them.
That would get the full Thrallherd army going.
Still have the other side of each build to do whatever.
Shouldn't you be your Wife's Thrall ...
Just for the record. What the hell is your party fighting at that level?
No idea. The DM is known for busting out some rather kooky creations, but he's stated that he's going to be scaling the encounters as we go along, with most of the emphasis being on the interaction between these extremely high level players. I know that one of them wants to make an Artificer/Wizard with the ability to essentially create Macross, from Robotech, and whose goal is to create a TARDIS. Based on previous experience, it could be anything from the God of Tarrasques to a rogue creation that our characters once made.
A Learnean Lumi Wizard/Ardent/Cerebremancer/Wyrm Wizard/Cosmic Theurge with a recharge Wilder cohort // 20 levels of FoI Factotum, with Warblade/Swordsage?
Get enough psi power to get Fusion, Timeless Body, Anticipatory Strike...
Oh dear. I mean, at-will miracles come online mid-30th level, an optimized 50th character sheet should be a small novel without any fluff. An optimized GESTALT at that level....
A Learnean Lumi Wizard/Ardent/Cerebremancer/Wyrm Wizard/Cosmic Theurge with a recharge Wilder cohort // 20 levels of FoI Factotum, with Warblade/Swordsage?
Get enough psi power to get Fusion, Timeless Body, Anticipatory Strike...
My head hurts just reading that. There's a reason I stayed far, far away from Iron Siege.
My head hurts just reading that. There's a reason I stayed far, far away from Iron Siege.
Fact. I messed around with Iron Siege until I realized I couldn't figure out a way to beat myself as Dispater, much less whatever Tshern had up his sleeve, then decided at that level, you basically screw optimizing and have fun.
What I discovered when I ran higher level epic campaigns was that basically all you need is to throw together whatever kind of stuff seems cool for classes, then make sure you have one or two good game-breaking tricks up your sleeve - almost hard to avoid, at that level - and screw around with the rest of the build. Frankly, it's the only way to make a high level epic character in less than 3 months. This particular thread looks like months of ongoing pain... it's annoying enough to make one of this level of character, and you should wind up with a small book of the build and a medium book of the money spent. Gets worse if you're putting together a serious caster because you have to add spells known and epic spells, and there are several casters in that list.
Epic Crusader lockdown//abjuration wizard/Initiate of the Seven Veils? Maybe combine with epic knight's challenge? Enemy can't move, penalized for attacking you, can't get to you... can also shield others with veils. At epic, everything has enough buffs that kaleidoscopic doom is insta-win.
Radiant Servant of Pelor for super-healing, something arcane for arcane buffs/dispelling... maybe another abjuration specialist. Then Mystic Theurge for extra spells, Hierophant for reach healing, double epic casting... Maybe throw some Abjurant Champion in there.
No idea. Maybe check into the various supermounts for some stuff, and I'd look at Draconomicon prestige classes.
I gotta be honest... I hate running this type of character, so I have no idea.
Ranger, yeah. Thinking ToB instead of fighter... warblade? Probably cleric for epic casting. Psychic Warrior?
Archivist with epic loremaster? Divination super-specialist?
Artificer duh. I honestly have no idea how to break a crafter more than artificer.
Rogue/swordsage? Epic Hide in Plain Sight would be cool. Epic Lurk with epic lurk augments would be really cool... Synaptic Disconnect would be awesome. Need to slip some extra BAB in somewhere.
Dungeoncrasher, obviously. Maybe draw some inspiration on STR builds from the Hulking Hurler, if that thread is still around. Cleric of Kord.
Druid/Focused Specialist Conjurer with the usual summoning cheese. Maybe Incantrix for quickened Summons? This will be steadily weaker, as once you're around level 40, the only allies more powerful than you that you could summon would be deities, so think about summoning swarms, then buffing them? Twin Spell + Repeat Spell...
Wizard Psion. DO IT. Epic spells and epic powers. Just don't forget to get Epic Circle Magic. Makes your epic spells so much more broken. Then craft a +37000 INT artifact... Spend six hours in the morning casting defensive epic spells, go find enemy, vaporize with a billion power point epic destruction power... profit.
I dunno, Wu Jen for elemental flavoring? You have cleric...
Druid//Ardent into Storm Disciple. Elements + Freedom mantles. Wild shape into something flying or use psionic fly, epic spell to summon a storm, call some lightning, summon some wind elementals, be awesome.
BTW, epic casting of some sort is required to be awesome at epic games. As you may have noticed, I tried to come up with something for epic casting for each of them. Cleric is usually good. Then have a couple "I win" epic spells in your back pocket, and you can basically play with the build, because it doesn't matter. Only downside: waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time to come up with epic spells for all those guys.
Sorry, not well organized, really not even particularly optimal, but lots of stuff I think would be cool and still have power.