So, rather than going the high rout and telling them my general concerns right off the bat. i have decided to hold a character building contest to create the strongest build i can get useing only the PHB + One source book. now some say that this is a rather childish manner of going about this, i assure you there is a method to my madness. the whole point of showing up with said overpowered character is to demonstrate that this "kyle rule" is very stupid and wont stop me from making powerful characters, thus reinstating the open book policy and allowing me to return to my mid power character preference.
Rules:
lvl 10
PHB + any one book
no magic item dependency
also i would like to mention that the DM loves mass combat.
The prize shall be $10 USD , YES 10 WHOLE DOLLARS! to the build i like the most.
Or, if you prefer, go with Races of Stone. Gnome Illusionist 5/Shadowcraft Mage 5, using Earth Spell to qualify early. Destroy Tokyo and all that. Don't forget to use Shadow Major Creation... a 6 second cast time spell that drops a giant puddle of Black Lotus Poison on a wide area is always fun, and virtually guarenteed to kill if they are vulnerable to poison.
Or maybe go with Tome of Magic. Binder 1/Wizard 3/Anima Mage 6 ought to be worth a laugh, using Improved Binding for the early qualification.
I mean come on, the PHB has the most unbalanced stuff out there. Gate, Explosive Runes, Shrink Item, most of the Polymorph line... you're not exactly being powered down here.
JaronK
Next game, announce that you'll be the party skill-monkey. Take Dungeonscape.
Go Elven Rogue 3/Ranger 2/Beast Heart Adept 5. Focus on a high dex and take Combat Reflexes and the two-weapon fighting chain, or go for a spiked chain for reach if that's more your style. A moderately high int will let you do trip attacks, which will help your skills and AOO-building considerably.
1: Combat Reflexes
3: Weapon Finesse: -Choice of Light weapon- or Exotic Weapon: Spiked Chain
6: Animal Affinity (Prereq)
9: Imp TWF or Imp Initiative (Because if your creatures go on your round, you'll probably finish most fights before they really start)
Now you're the party's tracker, trap-finder, monster/dungeon loremaster, and (probably) primary damage dealer. You'll need to spend CC ranks to improve your trap-finding skills, but you're 10th level with 3 owlbears (or 2 owlbears and a wyvern, or an owlbear, a girallon, and a chimera, or whatever floats your boat - owlbears rock though), and deal extra damage whenever you flank with them (as well as sneak attack).
In 2 levels, you'll get 3 "free" AOO's/round from your pet's attacks, and in 5 levels, your whole party will get them. If you're in danger, just tumble back and start shooting stuff - you've got 3 giant monsters blocking the path after all. If your monstrous companion dies, just call a new one in 24 hours.
Alternatively, from the same book, go Rogue 5/Trapmaster 5, and never fail a search/disarm/open lock check again, while gaining a truly nifty spell list that includes haste, wall of stone, and greater dispel magic, which you can craft into super-cheap wands if you so desire. Take the Trap Engineer feat from Dungeonscape and check out the items in the book for bonus style points.
Enjoy!
Druid 10 with a Monk's Belt. For your other book, take the one that has Ashbound Summoning in it. Flavor to taste.
Or, if you prefer, go with Races of Stone. Gnome Illusionist 5/Shadowcraft Mage 5, using Earth Spell to qualify early. Destroy Tokyo and all that. Don't forget to use Shadow Major Creation... a 6 second cast time spell that drops a giant puddle of Black Lotus Poison on a wide area is always fun, and virtually guarenteed to kill if they are vulnerable to poison.
Or maybe go with Tome of Magic. Binder 1/Wizard 3/Anima Mage 6 ought to be worth a laugh, using Improved Binding for the early qualification.
I mean come on, the PHB has the most unbalanced stuff out there. Gate, Explosive Runes, Shrink Item, most of the Polymorph line... you're not exactly being powered down here.
JaronK
you need signiture spell to be truly effective as a shadowcraft mage, But yea- Druid is the single most broken class in the PHB.
so - do druid 10 and get a monk's belt - for the other book - simple - spell compendium - the druid melee and animal buffs far outstrip anything in the PHB. and i assume the DM will use only MM1 for monsters?
for feats - level 6 is natural spell, levels 1/3 can be the standart spell focus/augmant summoning if you want to summon or it can be improved unarmed strike & improved grapple (for grappling form for extra oomph) level 9 is free.
watch the DM cry as you become a polar bear with 6 natural attacks, ridiculesly high AC (wis to AC, natural armor in the double digits) (girralion's blessing, charge of the tricerotpos, bite of the weretiger are staple buffs) - you get, powerfull charge (sort off), rend, improved grab, multi attack/blind fight/power attack for free, and +12 str, +6 con, +5 NA, +4 dex on top of the polar bear stats (and the wisdom to AC).
btw - does he play with the wildshape errate - since if he's only using the players handbook.... add animal growth and nature's favor for extra brokeness.
i'd recommend a Bard Build of mine:
Human
Bard 1st (ACF Healing Hymn)
Marshall 1st (determined Caster)
Bard 2nd to 9th
Sublime chord (make sure to skill the appropiate skills) rest
feats:
Melodic Casting, Nymphs Kiss (1st); Extra Music(3rd); (Improved Toughness (6th); Point Blank Shot (9th))
the last two feats are flavor - id play him as a archer but depending on your Pointbuy System you might need some HP - throug CON or in this Case impr. Toughness
Melodic casting saves you from spending skill points (you'll need plenty, even inkl. the extra ones from Nymph's Kiss) on concentration cause you do perform checks instead
you deal dmg by buffing yourself and of course others - id say Focusing chant, wave of grief (good debuff), haste and sonic shield are must-haves
1) Are you the only one limited in the books you can use or is the whole party?
2) Have you ever considered playing with a group of people more into optimising like you are?
3) Have you ever considered optimising your character to be good but not to be so much better than the other characters that the other players feel overshadowed?
Sounds like the real problem is what you and the others want from the game style is very different.
And im not just looking for a mcbuild, sure you can go "druid 10" all you guys want but whoever has not just the most powerful stereotypical build, but the build that does something extra, unexpected, cool.
also please list the one extra source book you are using.
PH and CoWarr
Human:
Fighter4/Rogue3/Master Thrower 3 ( daggers )
F4 wpn spec will open up access to Ranged Wpn Mastery
OR
If you had a high Int, it's tempting to go F2/Swash3/R2/MT3
I like having the 2 Throw tricks more then the SA at this point
MT Tricks; Ranged Trip and Deadly Precision
Feats, go TWF tree because it's good for melee and ranged
Kaorti 2 HD/2 LA/ Bard 1/5 Fiend of Possession
afterwards
1 Fiend of possession/6 Fiend of corruption/ Open
Feats are all open, but leadership is recomended.
Basically the fiend of possession PrC lets you ride people or objects. Nothing can hurt you while in those objects except for a few spells. There is also no duration to how long you can stay in the objects and you can still see the area around the object you possess. You can also animate objects you are in and eventually by level 6 take over people. One very useful ability is enchant weapon. If you jump into a weapon, you can add magical enchancement bonuses up to a total number of class levels you have in FoP. Jump into a +5 weapon, add in +6 of weapon abilities or make any stick a +6 epic weapon. You can also give stat bonuses to people you ride. You can also mix in the leadership feat for a "mount" of choice, maybe the for mentioned druid build. This class requires planer knowledge 6 and hide of 6, +5 will save, and being an outsider with the evil subtype. The 2 outsider HD and 1 level of bard nets all the requirements. The Kaorti race is also in the fiend folio. Note, having an evil subtype does not require you to be evil in alignment. The monster manual just states you come from an evil realm, but any alignment is possible. The Kaorti are actually a made race taking over a host body (sort of like aliens without the whole chest poping part). Sometimes they are not fully converted and retain their former minds, perfect led in if you want to be good or neutral.
After you finish the fiend of possession level 6, fiend of corruption is also a good class giving you the ability to turn into any type of humaniod, summoning mansions and finery from no where, giving even more stat bonuses to targets, and the ability to apply 1 free fiendish graft per month (which are also detailed in the Feind Folio). The other option is more bard from diplomancy skills. You could also jump into black guard or some other PrC from the DMG if that is also free game with the players handbook for source material.
For strategy, just ride around in a weapon of choice of one of your party memebers. This will allow you to contribute to their combat abilities and not make them feel like you are taking over the show. If you decide to get flashy, give the weapon the Dancing property and fly about attacking, animate an object and attack, or take over one of the enemy combatants. You can also take the leadership feat if you want a more stable ride, just select a second fiend of possession. Nothing like adding 12 points of weapon abilities to an already existing weapon. Best of all the build requires no feats so you are not lossing out on tasty bits found in other books. The race also has some fairly nice stat gains with the only downside of being you are allergic to the material plane, not a problem since you will always be possessing an object.
This build is not for everyone, but if you like subterfuge it is perfect and pretty much makes you unkillable at the same time.
Human or Dwarf
Druid 10 (Simple and clean)
Feats:
Human: Natural Bond
1: Skill Focus Conjuration
3: Augment Summoning
6:Greenbound summoning (Lost Empires of Faerun)
9:Natural Spell
Point buy should focus on mental stats, as you can and should be in animal form all day.
Boons to play:
You can fill the scout roll (Wild shape into something small, summon animals to locate traps *Cough corpses *Cough)
You can heal (Don't get suckered into this situation though, summon natures alley 4 can nab you a Unicorn for on sight healing)
You can tank (Pick an animal form)
You have an alley that you share buffs with (This gets a little fuzzy, and the reason for Human or Dwarf, some DMs rule that natural bond does not increase your effective druid level for alternative animals that lower your effective druid level... if your dm is like this, stick with dwarf)
You have some odd spending habits (Buying special gear that fits your animal companion, or letting some money go into barding for your long term animal form)
You can summon crazy powerful animals that have good spell like abilities like thorn wall (Greenbound is a ridiculously powerful template to apply to summons; the only downfall is now they are plants)
You can destroy armies (You need to cast control winds and have a CL of 15 to create a tornado (srd link) with Control Wind. You get this with a Karma bead, and an orange Ioun stone... if you have a bard in the party you might be able to finagle help from them. Tornadoes are nasty buggers for 10 minutes per level and you can still do other things on top of that, it only takes concentration to change direction)
It is a simple build.
As I can remember it, right now he's playing a pixie (+4 LA, no HD) which gives him small size, fly 60ft, and greater invisibility. That leaves you with 6 lvls of rogue to always sneak atk, especially with augment crystals to allow crits on constructs and undead.
It has interesting flavor and dedicated DM annoyance, & I'm sure someone here can improve on this. (Just don't let my player see this, he doesn't need any more help
)Animefunkmaster: Firstly, gnome>dwarf for a Druid. Secondly, NATURAL SPELL AT LEVEL 9? You must be kidding...
He is starting at level 10... I was writing more of a laundry list than a progression.
Gnome Vs Dwarf:
Gnome:
Ability Scores, take penalty to str in normal form
Small Size
+2 saving throw against illusions
+1 dc of illusions
Minor Spell Like Abilities
Dwarf:
Ability Scores, take the hit to cha
medium size
Darkvision 60
Stability: +4 to resist trip/bullrush (Kept in the alt form)
No movement penalties for heavy armor (Polar Bears and Giant Octopus don't have much dex, full plate barding sounds good to me)
+2 bonus on saves against spells and spell like abilities
Stonecunning (I kind of like stone cunning for that once in a life time, 'did that bear just find a trap?')
Ok, so the toss up is what form you will be in all day, clearly the penalty to cha is hurting you more than str. For a Gnome, being small helps with stealth and AC when out of wildshape form. I feel the important things to consider are the bonuses to saving throws. Stability and movement in heavy armor, is what tips the scale for me. Unless I am mistaken they would keep these in a wildshape, that is more important than bonuses to illusions or spell like abilities.
PHB + Fiendish Codex II-Tyrants of the Nine Hells
Race Hellbred Body Aspect
Fighter 2/Paladin 3/Hellreaver 5
Fighter 1==Weapon Focus
Fighter 2==Improved Initiative
Hellbred==Devil's Favor
4th level Aspect==Devil's Stamina
14th level Aspect==Devil's Tounge
1st==Power Attack
3rd==Devil's Aura
6th==Devil's Flesh
9th==Devil's Sight
Makes for alot of flavor.
;) :DNo one has mentioned planar shepherd?
I sort of did earlier, but very obliquely.
I`m surprised no one has mentioned Serpent Kingdoms or Faiths of Eberron yet.
If I were you, I'd do just the opposite of what you've planned: make a character intentionally designed to contribute the least ammount possible to the group, but play that character as though he's earnestly trying to contribute so you won't get annoying. To top it off, make him act as though he's the most important character in the party, as though what little he contributes is far more important than what anyone else in the party does.
I'd go with a specialist Wizard with Evocation and Necromancy for prohibited schools. At the start of combat, throw out a nondamaging area spell like Pyrotechnics or Stinking Cloud so that it looks like it was in their best interests but ends up screwing your party, then pop Invisibility and duck and cover for the rest of the fight. Maybe throw out a low level Summon Monster spell while you're hiding just so it can look like you're trying to help. Get max ranks in Use Magic Device so you can use things like Cure wands so you won't have to depend on anyone else in the group.
Check the Spell Compendium for more spells to screw your party with, or use the PHB2 for the specialist Conjurer variant and maybe some spells and feats that look nice. They won't have the luxury of your character carrying them around any more, and they may realize just how bad it is to have someone in the group who doesn't really help but acts as though they're super-important.
The way I see it, why would anyone want to go adventuring with someone who's less than competent? A PC's life depends on the other people in his party, so why would a strong, specialized character want to face the darkest depths and nastiest monsters side by side with someone who can neither hold their own in combat nor make a significant contribution in noncombat situations? That's why my advice for this situation is for you to make exactly the type of character who no adventuring party would want with them, make your first prorities to watch out for yourself and make sure you get an equal share of the loot. Let them learn by experience just how unfair it is for them to contribute so little, then try to punish you for wanting to make a character who someone would actually want to go adventuring with.