Lucky B*stard-Optimization Help - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 _flint_ Sep 17, 2012 19:37:28	Hey all, i've had an idea for a character! You get to build it! So, here's the scoop: He's the luckiest man in the world. Traps fail, fireballs veer off course, piles of treasure fall at his feet. He's rich, influeantial, and deadly. Beneath his succesful exterior, however, lies a man constantly afraid that he dosen't really deserve this situation, and he is always trying to prove to himself that he is, in fact worthy. My idea is that the character would be, for the most part, indestructable. Luck bonuses to AC/saves, powers that force rerolls, etc. Also, that none of this would be a conscious effort. He'd be relatively unskilled at combat, yet he'd still hit the opponent every time(and probably crit, too) because he's so lucky. Likewise, enemies would be unable to hit him for the same reasons. I haven't seen any combos out there that really allow this as I envision it, so i'm asking you guys to help me out. Any 3.0/3.5 scources are fair game, but let's try to keep the dragon magazine stuff to the dragon compendium. Also, It's been suggested to me to just give the character a bunch of metamagic feats (like invisible, silent, still spell on everything) to make it appear as if he is really lucky to have stumbled upon a friendly dire bear, or that all the orcs simultaneously lose their balance. While this would work in a sense, it really wouldn't be luck as he would be castin a whole bunch of spells, not just a random chance anomaly. Thanks for your help, guys I appreciate it!
#2 Maat_Mons Sep 17, 2012 20:30:17	There are luck feats in Complete Scoundrel. There's the luckstealer prestige class in Races of the Wild. There's the luck domain. There's the destiny domain (Races of Destiny). One way to think of luck is that some inscrutable force is looking out for you. A necropolitan (Libris Mortis, p114) haunting presence (Libris Mortis, p6) psion bound to a rabbit's foot your character carries could be the source of your “luck.” You could get one via the leadership feat or something. Personally, I'd do it in reverse. Have the “lucky” guy be some sort cohort, while you're actually playing the rabbit's foot.
#3 Tempest_Stormwind Sep 17, 2012 21:01:17	Combine anything with rerolls with good description. Maat's suggestions (Luckstealer and the Luck feats) can be supplemented with the Fortune's Friend PrC in Complete Scoundrel. Likewise, effects that give you situational modifiers on demand can easily be described this way - the easiest to get is probably Precognition, which is manifest out of combat and could easily reflect just giving yourself a moment to center yourself instead of its default fluff. The problem with this? You're so specialized in rerolling (honestly, the whole "unintentional" bit is pure description on your part) that you won't really excel in any area, including the one your base class is supposed to work with. The cohort trick is actually kind of cool. The haunting presence trick is by far the easiest method of doing this (previous methods, such as the infamous "you could seriously play a sandwich" trick, were much more convoluted), and it'd allow you to experiment with different approaches to the character.
#4 Krusk Sep 18, 2012 15:03:31	I'd start as something like a factotum. Then whenever you use one of your "I get another classes abilities" abilities, describe it as just sort of stumbling into it. "I fall to the ground sobbing and pray to my diety for protection. Turn undead". The next encounter you are about to fight some zombie rats, when a hawk somes out of nowhere and eats them. (You used summon natures ally). I'd focus on luck feats, and probably fortunes friend as well.
#5 Tempest_Stormwind Sep 18, 2012 16:07:09	I'd start as something like a factotum. Then whenever you use one of your "I get another classes abilities" abilities, describe it as just sort of stumbling into it. "I fall to the ground sobbing and pray to my diety for protection. Turn undead". The next encounter you are about to fight some zombie rats, when a hawk somes out of nowhere and eats them. (You used summon natures ally). I'd focus on luck feats, and probably fortunes friend as well. ...This. I never realized it, but yeah, the factotum is a perfect example of this. By the book, they get flashes of inspiration and improvise from that. In your case, you improvise, and your luck carries you through it. "HOW IN PELOR'S NAME ARE YOU SURVIVING WITH ME ON THE FRONT LINE?" screams the paladin. "I'm just guessing! How hard can it be? Pointy end goes into other guy, right?" replies the factotum. The paladin and the factotum, by the way, probably have equal melee kill counts. An alternative to the luck feats mentioned repeatedly here, if you do Factotum, look up Font of Inspiration. With a high enough Intelligence (...by "high enough" I mean 18 base + 2 racial + 3 old age + 1 at every 4th level or so - it's a LOT), you can take Font for just about every single feat you have. And oddly, this is not a bad way to play a factotum, and it works well with your character. Cram in as many Fonts as you can, and use the rest (if your int isn't high enough) on reroll feats or similar.
#6 _flint_ Sep 19, 2012 14:09:47	Here's some backstory i wrote. Show Born into royalty, Krince Edmund has never had to do anything to get ahead in life. As a child, his father, a wealthy king, was killed by a rare breed of cockatrice that turned all of it’s victims into colossal piles of money, leaving him to inherit the throne. While ruling over his people, he has suffered many assasination attempts from various rulers of other kingdoms, but all have failed miserably (and usually quite embarassingly). His people have never been more prosperous-a recent worldwide combination water, iron, coal, and livestock shortage has left his kingdom untouched, making King Edmund the wealthiest, most influential man alive. Yet, King Edmund grows weary of such good fortune. The fact that he hasn’t worked for any of his wealth causes him to doubt wheather or not he is a fit ruler. His days are spent composing melancholy elegies, moping about the castle, and generally being in a dreadful depression. Among the glorious halls of his palace, he watches his subjects go about their daily lives, lamenting his good fortune, and wishing he could, for once in his life, be unlucky
#7 Tempest_Stormwind Sep 19, 2012 14:25:42	I like how simple the factotum build is. I was thinking of a build that rerols EVERYTHING You won't be able to do this, but you can adjust just about anything. The factotum 20 approach is just fine, no problems there, but if you diversify into Luckstealer or Fatespinner or Fortune's Friend or something, be sure to get at least Cunning Surge (the extra actions are killer). Remember that you do not have to have the name to describe what you are (i.e. just because you're not a Fatespinner, you can still describe what you're doing with inspiration points as if you were spinning fate). Do you know about any combos that give you infinite uses of "per day" effects? Like luck feats, "spin" uses (from fatespinner), etc? Nothing does this. There are a rare few ways to recharge a few specific 1/day effects, and none that apply generally to things like this. There's a loose reading of action points that might work (The EBCS implies they can be used to recharge per-day abilities, but goes on to provide a list of very specific things that count - and some common per-days are not on that list). Personally I'd suggest deciding first whether to go with full Factotum (viewing inspiration as your uncanny, and unwitting, ability to adjust your own luck) and grabbing tons of Fonts of Inspiration, or going partial Factotum and prestiging into something that directly alters probability or grants bonus luck feats.

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

_flint_

Sep 17, 2012 19:37:28

Hey all, i've had an idea for a character! You get to build it!

So, here's the scoop: He's the luckiest man in the world. Traps fail, fireballs veer off course, piles of treasure fall at his feet. He's rich, influeantial, and deadly. Beneath his succesful exterior, however, lies a man constantly afraid that he dosen't really deserve this situation, and he is always trying to prove to himself that he is, in fact worthy.

My idea is that the character would be, for the most part, indestructable. Luck bonuses to AC/saves, powers that force rerolls, etc. Also, that none of this would be a conscious effort. He'd be relatively unskilled at combat, yet he'd still hit the opponent every time(and probably crit, too) because he's so lucky. Likewise, enemies would be unable to hit him for the same reasons.

I haven't seen any combos out there that really allow this as I envision it, so i'm asking you guys to help me out.

Any 3.0/3.5 scources are fair game, but let's try to keep the dragon magazine stuff to the dragon compendium.

Also, It's been suggested to me to just give the character a bunch of metamagic feats (like invisible, silent, still spell on everything) to make it appear as if he is really lucky to have stumbled upon a friendly dire bear, or that all the orcs simultaneously lose their balance. While this would work in a sense, it really wouldn't be luck as he would be castin a whole bunch of spells, not just a random chance anomaly.

Thanks for your help, guys I appreciate it!

Maat_Mons

Sep 17, 2012 20:30:17

There are luck feats in Complete Scoundrel. There's the luckstealer prestige class in Races of the Wild. There's the luck domain. There's the destiny domain (Races of Destiny).

One way to think of luck is that some inscrutable force is looking out for you. A necropolitan (Libris Mortis, p114) haunting presence (Libris Mortis, p6) psion bound to a rabbit's foot your character carries could be the source of your “luck.”

You could get one via the leadership feat or something. Personally, I'd do it in reverse. Have the “lucky” guy be some sort cohort, while you're actually playing the rabbit's foot.

Tempest_Stormwind

Sep 17, 2012 21:01:17

Combine anything with rerolls with good description. Maat's suggestions (Luckstealer and the Luck feats) can be supplemented with the Fortune's Friend PrC in Complete Scoundrel. Likewise, effects that give you situational modifiers on demand can easily be described this way - the easiest to get is probably Precognition, which is manifest out of combat and could easily reflect just giving yourself a moment to center yourself instead of its default fluff.

The problem with this? You're so specialized in rerolling (honestly, the whole "unintentional" bit is pure description on your part) that you won't really excel in any area, including the one your base class is supposed to work with.

The cohort trick is actually kind of cool. The haunting presence trick is by far the easiest method of doing this (previous methods, such as the infamous "you could seriously play a sandwich" trick, were much more convoluted), and it'd allow you to experiment with different approaches to the character.

Krusk

Sep 18, 2012 15:03:31

I'd start as something like a factotum. Then whenever you use one of your "I get another classes abilities" abilities, describe it as just sort of stumbling into it. "I fall to the ground sobbing and pray to my diety for protection. Turn undead". The next encounter you are about to fight some zombie rats, when a hawk somes out of nowhere and eats them. (You used summon natures ally).

I'd focus on luck feats, and probably fortunes friend as well.

Tempest_Stormwind

Sep 18, 2012 16:07:09

I'd start as something like a factotum. Then whenever you use one of your "I get another classes abilities" abilities, describe it as just sort of stumbling into it. "I fall to the ground sobbing and pray to my diety for protection. Turn undead". The next encounter you are about to fight some zombie rats, when a hawk somes out of nowhere and eats them. (You used summon natures ally).

I'd focus on luck feats, and probably fortunes friend as well.

...This. I never realized it, but yeah, the factotum is a perfect example of this. By the book, they get flashes of inspiration and improvise from that. In your case, you improvise, and your luck carries you through it.

"HOW IN PELOR'S NAME ARE YOU SURVIVING WITH ME ON THE FRONT LINE?" screams the paladin.
"I'm just guessing! How hard can it be? Pointy end goes into other guy, right?" replies the factotum.
The paladin and the factotum, by the way, probably have equal melee kill counts.

An alternative to the luck feats mentioned repeatedly here, if you do Factotum, look up Font of Inspiration. With a high enough Intelligence (...by "high enough" I mean 18 base + 2 racial + 3 old age + 1 at every 4th level or so - it's a LOT), you can take Font for just about every single feat you have. And oddly, this is not a bad way to play a factotum, and it works well with your character. Cram in as many Fonts as you can, and use the rest (if your int isn't high enough) on reroll feats or similar.

_flint_

Sep 19, 2012 14:09:47

Here's some backstory i wrote.

Show

Born into royalty, Krince Edmund has never had to do anything to get ahead in life. As a child, his father, a wealthy king, was killed by a rare breed of cockatrice that turned all of it’s victims into colossal piles of money, leaving him to inherit the throne. While ruling over his people, he has suffered many assasination attempts from various rulers of other kingdoms, but all have failed miserably (and usually quite embarassingly). His people have never been more prosperous-a recent worldwide combination water, iron, coal, and livestock shortage has left his kingdom untouched, making King Edmund the wealthiest, most influential man alive.

Yet, King Edmund grows weary of such good fortune. The fact that he hasn’t worked for any of his wealth causes him to doubt wheather or not he is a fit ruler. His days are spent composing melancholy elegies, moping about the castle, and generally being in a dreadful depression. Among the glorious halls of his palace, he watches his subjects go about their daily lives, lamenting his good fortune, and wishing he could, for once in his life, be unlucky

Tempest_Stormwind

Sep 19, 2012 14:25:42

I like how simple the factotum build is. I was thinking of a build that rerols EVERYTHING

You won't be able to do this, but you can adjust just about anything. The factotum 20 approach is just fine, no problems there, but if you diversify into Luckstealer or Fatespinner or Fortune's Friend or something, be sure to get at least Cunning Surge (the extra actions are killer). Remember that you do not have to have the name to describe what you are (i.e. just because you're not a Fatespinner, you can still describe what you're doing with inspiration points as if you were spinning fate).

Do you know about any combos that give you infinite uses of "per day" effects? Like luck feats, "spin" uses (from fatespinner), etc?

Nothing does this. There are a rare few ways to recharge a few specific 1/day effects, and none that apply generally to things like this. There's a loose reading of action points that might work (The EBCS implies they can be used to recharge per-day abilities, but goes on to provide a list of very specific things that count - and some common per-days are not on that list).

Personally I'd suggest deciding first whether to go with full Factotum (viewing inspiration as your uncanny, and unwitting, ability to adjust your own luck) and grabbing tons of Fonts of Inspiration, or going partial Factotum and prestiging into something that directly alters probability or grants bonus luck feats.