The Songbird of Doom: A Guide to a most unlikely tank and Mechanism of Mass Destruction (Warning: GMs will hate you)

[Woodoodoo]

I am not using the ring. I am using Fox Shape. The original build was never legal in the first place.

[Oli Ironbar]

I think what you are wanting in the 5’ step situation is Step Up. Also fun would be Following Step for another 5’ later and then Step Up and Strike.

You can also use alchemist extracts for Long Arm if you have a polymorph pouch.

[Woodoodoo]

Yeah, but do I have arms as a fox? And is a creature adjacent to me if he is inside my square?

[Ryze Kuja]

As wild as the OP build is, as a GM I would consider this to be a serious abuse of the rules (regardless of it's legality/illegality). Remember that any munchkin-level tweaking you can create can also appear in the world. If this was happening in my campaign, I would create 12 of these Songbirds of Doom to come chase your party down :P

[Scott Wilhelm]

Ryze Kuja wrote:

As wild as the OP build is, as a GM I would consider this to be a serious abuse of the rules (regardless of it's legality/illegality). Remember that any munchkin-level tweaking you can create can also appear in the world. If this was happening in my campaign, I would create 12 of these Songbirds of Doom to come chase your party down :P

A good GM should adapt his adventures to make them challenging to his players. And he should interpret the power levels of the characters the players build as an indicator of the challenge levels they want from their GMs. But one should hesitate to dismiss creative and powerful character builds as being abusive to the rules. Character building is an art. People put a lot of creative energy into their characters, and a good GM should not just stomp on their players' artistic visions.

[Ryze Kuja]

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

Ryze Kuja wrote:

As wild as the OP build is, as a GM I would consider this to be a serious abuse of the rules (regardless of it's legality/illegality). Remember that any munchkin-level tweaking you can create can also appear in the world. If this was happening in my campaign, I would create 12 of these Songbirds of Doom to come chase your party down :P

A good GM should adapt his adventures to make them challenging to his players. And he should interpret the power levels of the characters the players build as an indicator of the challenge levels they want from their GMs. But one should hesitate to dismiss creative and powerful character builds as being abusive to the rules. Character building is an art. People put a lot of creative energy into their characters, and a good GM should not just stomp on their players' artistic visions.

Obviously. If I were a BBEG and there was a Songbird of Doom running around destroying my plans and threatening my operation, I would react accordingly. I would hire a small team of munchkin-level mercenaries to guard my interests.

I'm not out to TPK my players just for funsies. But I will challenge them appropriately.

I'm actually dealing with this right now in my current campaign. One of my players is playing a Soulthief Vitalist and is absolutely crushing my campaign. I've had to come up with encounters that are between 4-6CR above APL, but no, I haven't TPK'ed them, nor am I going to try to.

So instead of using a bestiary to create encounters, I'm currently building optimized characters to deal with them.

My group is level 7 right now, and they just took on a lvl 11 Necromancer Lich and three level 9 Cultists, and a host of mummies (CR5) and squashed it. They limped away from the battle though, so this was almost a perfect CR for this group.

They're about to face a munchkin-level Mind Flayer Telepath though... muahaha 'n stuff :)

[Scott Wilhelm]

Woodoodoo wrote:

I am not using the ring. I am using Fox Shape. The original build was never legal in the first place.

There are a lot of good ideas there, though: using a Polymorph effect to go small instead of big, getting Dex-to-Damage, The Mouser has a neat way to achieve Flanking. Good stuff

[Yomabo]

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

Ryze Kuja wrote:

As wild as the OP build is, as a GM I would consider this to be a serious abuse of the rules (regardless of it's legality/illegality). Remember that any munchkin-level tweaking you can create can also appear in the world. If this was happening in my campaign, I would create 12 of these Songbirds of Doom to come chase your party down :P

A good GM should adapt his adventures to make them challenging to his players. And he should interpret the power levels of the characters the players build as an indicator of the challenge levels they want from their GMs. But one should hesitate to dismiss creative and powerful character builds as being abusive to the rules. Character building is an art. People put a lot of creative energy into their characters, and a good GM should not just stomp on their players' artistic visions.

I agree with you for the most parts. As kind of the permanent GM of our group I can tell you that yes, theory crafting and building characters can take a long time. But filling a world with new and interesting things to explore, with a logical storyline, something interesting for all the players and also keeping everything balanced is a real time-consuming. I honestly hate it when one of my players jumps onto google: "Pathfinder insane killer build OP" and just takes that build and tells me that he spent a lot of time in designing it, and I should respect his ideas (argument came up more than once, one time even with 3 of the 5 players at once).

I have new players coming and going in my group and I tell them every time: "Don't worry about not having the most insane character build ever. Just build something you like to play and something with a lot of backgrounds." If people arrive at session 0 and join the table and they start talking about how his character has this amazing story behind him, but he doesn't even know what class he is; that brings tears to my eyes. We are telling a story. We all add to it. No one likes a story where 1 guy is fighting for his life to survive and his friend who is the same level, flies in like he is Superman and 1 hit kills 6 bad guys per round.

Of course, I also have players who don't like the insane background stories. They like to crunch the numbers, building the best there ever was. But if the players squeeze every rule to get the tiniest bonuses, then I will do the same. If you just build out of story perspective and you spend a lot of rounds doing fluff stuff, I will be more slacking on the rules.
And the group likes it. Everyone gets his satisfaction. Story guys get a story, the "artists" get the Michael Bay dynamic combat and lots of detail to work with, and the number crunchers get their satisfaction of getting stuff done.

TL;DR Give the players what they want from a game, but respect it that when you might be having fun with your op character, you might take the fun away from other players or the GM

[Scott Wilhelm]

Yomabo wrote:

I honestly hate it when one of my players jumps onto google: "Pathfinder insane killer build OP" and just takes that build and tells me that he spent a lot of time in designing it, and I should respect his ideas (argument came up more than once, one time even with 3 of the 5 players at once).

Well, plagerism is always bad. Now I find myself wondering if any of those people ripping off character builds as their own in your campaign took their ideas from me!

I've been the player who had no idea how to use the rules to minmax outrageously powerful characters, and didn't particularly think my ideas were being supported. I studied the rules and got good at using them aggressively and creatively to create powerful effects, and got to see other players frustrated that her Samurai was not as good in melee as my Cleric (actually a 3.5 Sacred Fist, but still). She didn't like any advice until we convince her and the DM to let her take things from the Book of 9 Swords and play a Warblade instead of a Samurai, since it was her first game. Interestingly enough, she turned out to be really good at GMing.

[Heather 540]

That kitsune build looks kinda fun. I tried to make a kitsune wizard and my brain fried. Because wizards are difficult, not because kitsunes are. I might remake him into a melee type.

Personally, I enjoy both writing backstories and making my character strong enough to do real damage. My current GM jokingly said I was trying to break the game after I took Evolved Companion to give my boar a Slam attack. In a way, he wasn't wrong. It's hilarious to see my 27 pound halfling and her boar absolutely destroy a big Dire Wolf after just a couple of rounds.

I didn't multiclass until later on and the stats were rolled, but here is the build. It goes up to level 9. I'm trying to rework it from level one, mixing the Unchained Rogue levels in earlier.
Halfling
14 Str, 20 Dex, 18 Con, 13 Int, 18 Wis, 14 Cha
(Level bonuses into Dex, items boosting Int, Str, and Con.)

Trait:
Dirty Fighter: +1 damage when flanking
Flame of the Dawnflower: +2 fire damage on a crit with a scimitar.

Class: Hunter, Unchained Rogue. 6 level of Hunter, 1 Rogue, 1 Hunter, 1 Rogue.

Feats:
1: Weapon Finesse
2: Outflank (Class feature)
3: Combat Expertise
3: Pack Flanking (Bonus feat)
5: Dervish Dance
6: Broken Wing Gambit
7: Precise Strike (Retrained original Weapon Finesse into this upon taking first level of Unchained Rogue)
7: Paired Opportunist
9: Combat Reflexes (Rogue Talent Combat Trick)
9: Evolved Companion
9: Boon Companion (Story bonus feat, otherwise would have been taken at level 11)

The boar took the feats Power Attack, Light Armor Proficiency, Medium Armor Proficiency, Combat Reflexes, and Improved Natural Attack. (The last one is also a story bonus feat.) Also shares all of the hunter's teamwork feats.

[Yomabo]

Heather 540 wrote:

Personally, I enjoy both writing backstories and making my character strong enough to do real damage. My current GM jokingly said I was trying to break the game after I took Evolved Companion to give my boar a Slam attack. In a way, he wasn't wrong. It's hilarious to see my 27 pound halfling and her boar absolutely destroy a big Dire Wolf after just a couple of rounds.

Of course, I like it as well. Most of the times I first build the most cheesy character build I can think of (almost always do I start with a rogue, that never sticks long). And when I have a goal in my mind, or atleast a general direction, then I start building him up from level 1 with background and sometimes less potent gear and feats. But I don't care. My eldritch scion/scaled fist monk build loves his merciful spells and non-lethal claws. A strict"no weapon" policy so enemies that can fly are getting the best of him. But that is what allies are for right?

[Heather 540]

Well, there's always the Wings of Flying item. I bought it so I can point at my boar in case someone says 'When pigs fly.' No one has said it though. But it's come in handy.

[Heather 540]

I plan to take Butterfly's Sting at level 11. That way whenever my hunter gets a crit, she can skip the extra damage to give it to the boar, who does more damage on average. And my GM already agreed when I asked that Outflank triggers for both attacks (since the hunter does in fact crit), so that's 3 attacks for each of them. And that's not including full-attacks with high BAB and multiple natural attacks.

[Woodoodoo]

I do agree after playing the build that it is very strong but there are definite weaknesses. Mainly my will save(I have been dominated and almost killed one of my co PCs).
I don't have pounce so I cant just charge in and kill someone in the first round, it always takes a couple rounds or more if the enemy is well prepared or a very strong boss.
A lot of the time if I don't get to prepare before a fight the first couple turns are spent drinking potion of fly/shifting in to fox form then moving into position(Although the action economy could be made better with swift kitsune shapechanger).

I did decide to go fighter because I really wanted as many feats as I could because they are what makes the build fun to play(along with Mauser).

So maybe if we can find out a not as strong version of the build(But still fun), it would be more approachable.

[Kindred Toast]

I love fun and derpy stuff like this and I'd love to do something like this with a particular DM who I think would actually enjoy DMing for it.
The only thing I see that I want to point out is that you wouldn't get the +4 to armor class for being in your opponent's square while moving into your opponent's square. I couldn't tell for sure, but you made it sound like you were applying it. Attacks of opportunity are reactive actions. That means they happen before whatever triggered them. In this case, the attack of opportunity would happen before you are actually in the opponent's square. It's the same reason you can't trip someone (with an attack of opportunity) who is standing up from prone. Because they're already prone when you try to trip them, so they just stay prone for your trip attempt and then stand up anyways.
Is it hair splitting? Kind of. But some DMs will call you out on it.

[Kindred Toast]

I couldn't figure out how to edit a post so I'm making a new one.
I noticed two other things worth mentioning. Tiny creatures can't flank normally, so the only way this build can flank is with the mouser ability. Most of the time this shouldn't change much, but if your ally had a reach weapon, for example, he might have a hard time being adjacent to both you and the enemy you're trying to flank. Unless of course he has short haft.
The other thing is you have levels of paladin and slayer. If a paladin sneak attacks, he breaks his code of honor and loses all his paladin abilities until he atones. Unless the iroran paladin can sneak attack (I can't find it on the srd) or can also be a gray paladin, or there's a slayer archetype that doesn't sneak attack.

[Firebug]

Kindred Toast wrote:

...

The other thing is you have levels of paladin and slayer. If a paladin sneak attacks, he breaks his code of honor and loses all his paladin abilities until he atones. Unless the iroran paladin can sneak attack (I can't find it on the srd) or can also be a gray paladin, or there's a slayer archetype that doesn't sneak attack.

So if a paladin without sneak attack, attacks someone with flank, they would also fall? Better not allow that paladin to use their BAB either, that's unsportsmanlike!

Nevermind all of the different codes of conduct in Inner Sea Gods, some of which would even allow poison (if the other party is also using poison).

[Syries]

Not only is this a dead thread, the original build is also no longer possible by RAW, as the abilities of the ring has changed to cease working if you make attacks in songbird form.

As for paladins not being able to sneak attack, nah. Take a look at Ragathiels prestige class that is geared towards paladins. And Ragathiels is lawful good.

[Jodokai]

Woodoodoo wrote:

I am not using the ring. I am using Fox Shape. The original build was never legal in the first place.

What exactly was illegal about the original build?

[Jodokai]

So playing with the build a bit, I took out Slayer, losing Sneak Attack stings a little, I replaced it with Bloodrager with the shapeshifter bloodline and Urban Bloodrager Archetype.

This gets around a couple of problems. It gives you Uncanny Dodge, so never flat footed. It gives you Aspect of the Beast while ranging so no polymorph issues, and when you rage, you can cast Long Arm as a swift action so even tiny you get your AoO.

[noral]

What about taking a level of Primal Companion Hunter where you take the Eidolon evolution REACH for your companion.

Primal Transformation (Su): At first level, a primal companion hunter can awaken a primal creature from within his animal companion as a swift action. The animal companion gains a pool of 2 evolution points (Advanced Player’s Guide 60) that can be used to temporarily give the companion evolutions as if it were an eidolon. A primal companion hunter uses her hunter level to determine her effective summoner level for the purpose of qualifying for evolutions and determining their effects.

And when your Animal Companion dies then ...

If a primal companion hunter’s animal companion is dead, she can apply these evolutions to herself instead of to her animal companion.

Would that partially solve the reach issue?