Planar Touchstone

It can be agonizing selecting the right feats. Never mind the fact that the average character gets a mere seven of them over the course of a full adventuring career - you also have to worry about when their payoff is. What's better: the feat that's useful now but negligible at high level? Or the feat that's useless because it's just a prerequisite for something really juicy down the line? Neither sounds particularly attractive, and while you might recall that a casting of heroics or mirror move can score you bonus feats at a moment's notice, not all of us can cast wizard spells, thank you very much. Is there some feat that can not only be tooled to virtually any build, spellcaster or not, but also can be swapped out or updated so there's no point in the campaign in which it loses its luster?

You might be expecting you'll have to look pretty far afield to find such a lofty feat. You'd be right - in fact, you're going to have to look on whole other planes of existence. Today we're discussing Planar Touchstone, the feat that asks of you more than most, but may well be worth it in return.

Fling Ally

Convinced that the Book of Nine Swords is the only place where you might find obscene, cartoonish maneuvers that prioritize Rule of Cool over practicality? Races of Stone gives us the feat "Fling Ally" for the fans of the Fastball Special, which lets you hurl an ally smaller than you as though that ally was a ranged weapon with an incredibly terrible range. Funny imagery, but not very practical. Where do we go from here?

Well, the Epic Level Handbook contains Distant Shot, an epic level feat that lets you perform the epic level task of throwing or firing a ranged weapon against any target within line of sight. See where I'm going with this now?

The One-Man Party

Dungeons & Dragons is a social game built around the core concept of the adventuring party. To that end, the various threats and obstacles throughout an adventuring day necessitate a variety of skill sets. One party member can bash down doors and cross swords with burly foes, another can pick locks and disable traps, a third can cast spells and, uh... do everything the first two do as well as much more. Nonetheless, the point stands: if you want to get far in this world, you'll need some friends with different class features before long.

Such is the conventional wisdom, anyway. But we here are all about bucking trends. Wouldn't it be exciting to try and have a single character be as versatile as possible to try and fill every party role? I'm not saying he or she has to be just as good at doing everything a complete party is, merely well enough to have a fair shot at any demand the adventuring world may throw at him. There's a certain tidiness (and thrill) to running a one-man party: how different does the D&D game feel when it's just one player and the DM? Imagine not having to share any loot from a treasure horde or XP from a fight. Imagine never having to argue about where to go or what needs to be done. Plus, it's the only way to experience one of my favourite adventure modules from a conceptual viewpoint: Jacob's Well.

So what sort of class is suited to take on such a demanding role? Perhaps it's tempting to take one or two levels of several different classes, hoping to score the most fundamental aspects of their class features and thus being able to do a little of everything. Your base attack bonus, spell progressions and general effectiveness at any one thing are going to suffer mightily for it, though. Surely it would be more elegant (and no doubt effective) to try and tick all the boxes while still staying in one base class!

Battle Jump

If it hasn't already been made abundantly clear, you can do some pretty silly things thanks to the Book of Nine Swords. Really it has no shortage of silliness within its very pages, but sometimes you can get a really spiffy effect by combining the new offerings for marshal adepts with an abusable piece of minutae from a previous splatbook.

Firepower

Not all things are created equal, a tacit fact that is again and again reinforced by the mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons. The fighter can never hope to keep up with the wizard as levels ramp up, and everything a monk can do a swordsage can do better. Even in less fundamental aspects of the game, this can creep in: just ask any melee character who has tried to use a sword and shield versus a two-handed weapon. Indeed, even something as seemingly flavourful as energy types suffer from this. Don't believe me? Compare how many monsters resist sonic damage versus those that resist fire.

At the top of this pyramid of supremacy, force damage is the way and the path. Essentially nothing resists or is immune to force damage, asides from the (very epic-level) force dragon. A few spells and items make a particular call-out for magic missile spells. Next there is the second-tier of energy types: unusual call-outs like holy damage (a la flame strike,) and desiccation damage (a la desiccate.) Very rarely are these going to be resisted or affected in any way: they're virtually "typeless" the way force damage often is. That said, they're also very uncommon. Third tier belongs to sonic damage, which is the most effective of the "core" energy types. Fourth tier holds acid and electricity, in that order, and the bottom tier holds cold damage and lastly fire.

This hierarchy is in no way official or rigid: it's just a vague guideline I've determined from observation. It simply means that putting aside the setting, environment or pre-established foes, if you prepare an acid spell instead of an otherwise-identical fire spell, you're less likely to run across a foe who will be resistant or immune to it. 3d6 acid damage isn't "better" than 3d6 fire damage, there have just been more creatures with fire resistance that have been printed. Demons, devils, dragons, celestials: all the major players shrug off the effects of fire.

So why the imbalance? Is this just another matter of "X is better than Y, get over it"? Well... sort of. The thing is, the greater reliability of the higher-tier energy types often comes with an arbitrary balancing factor. This is perhaps best demonstrated in the orb of X line of spells. Orb of fire deals 1d6 fire damage per level (maximum 15d6) and makes the target save against dazing. Each orb has a different riding effect, though, so the orbs with a slightly better damage have slightly worse effects. For instance, orb of cold forces a save against blinding (not as impressive) and orb of acid a save against being sickened (a comparatively minor hindrance indeed.) Then you get to orb of sound, which can deafen the target (ho-hum) and deals only 1d4 damage per level. The fact it's dealing sonic damage is reason enough to lower the damage dice. Then lastly, there's orb of force, which has no secondary effect and tops out at a maximum of 10d6 damage, rather than 15.

So there isn't really an inherent pros-and-cons debate introduced by using force damage over fire damage, say, it's just that in many cases spells and effects will likely be balanced to somewhat favour the "worse" energy types in case-by-case bases. In addition, there are far more feats, class features and items to improve your cold and fire spells (take even a casual glance at Frostburn) than for, say, sonic or desiccation damage. This is an imperfect science, of course, but at least the effort is there.

If we know what energy types are "best" and which are "worst" (yet have the best spells,) what do we do with this knowledge? Well, fire damage may be much-maligned in general for its generally underperforming against a variety of enemies, but its humble status as the lowliest energy type has earned it the most published support. If all of this support material exists mostly to balance it out against the other types, though, why bother? Well, it would suddenly get a lot more impressive (and hey, interesting for roleplaying) if those shortcomings could be easily undone, wouldn't it?

Enter Searing Spell.

This little gem from Sandstorm does something very unusual - it makes your fire spells so supernaturally hot that they ignore all fire resistance and even still do half damage to creatures with fire immunity. What do you want to bet that a fire elemental has never felt what it's like to be burned before? As a nice bonus, a searing spell also does double damage to creatures with the cold subtype - which is on top of the double damage they were already taking from a fire spell. This peace of mind comes at the acceptable cost of a spell slot one level higher.

So now you can fling fire spells around with little worry for targeting restrictions. Sure, Energy Substitution already existed and doesn't even raise the spell's level, but what if you want to stick to fire spells thematically? A pyromaniac shouldn't have to shoot "coldballs" just because he's facing an efreet. More importantly, it's generally the case that if a monster has resistance to one energy type, it does to most of them, especially with Outsiders and at higher levels. It's also the case that changing the energy types of your spells won't let you reliably capitalize on its original energy type - something that can be very handy, as we're about to see.

So removing the biggest downside of fire damage is a real coup, but pumping the cost of all of your spells by one level is a pretty hefty cost. Is there enough support for fire damage that can make it worthwhile? Unshockingly, the answer is... perhaps!

On the Proper Care and Maintenance of Undead

We can all take solace in the common struggle that we as human all face: we just want someone to boss around. That's probably a big draw for the fantasy escapism of D&D, but astonishingly even therein it's easier said than done. Pelor knows your party's an ornery bunch, and they'd rather shake down commoners for copper pieces than do anything you suggest. The Leadership feat is banned in some campaigns, and you have to be careful with your followers lest they become disenfranchised. Most campaigns don't run psionics (for you wannabe thrallherds out there) and planar binding can be a real hassle with all of the costs, exacting rules and opposed charisma checks. What's a power-hungry lunatic to do?

Fortunately, for any problem, we have undead. Order them around, use them for combat, hard labour, hat racks, you name it. They don't complain or disobey, and best of all, you don't even have to feed them. Ah, the wonders of magic. One casting of animate dead and you've got a contingent of skeletons ready to either kick ass or kiss ass, at your option.

...not that it's without its deficiencies, however. Having no intelligence or self-sufficiency feel like par for the course; I'm referring more to the fact that animate dead can get damned expensive, at 25 gp per hit die. One Turn Undead from an enemy cleric and that's all of your money and hard work wasted. Plus, there is a limit to how many you can command - 4 HD per level may sound like a lot, but the low hit points, saves and BAB of undead mean that most of the worthwhile options need HD as high as possible to make a dent.

So how can you ensure a reanimated legion is worthwhile? A gang of bloodthirsty corpses can pull apart most commoners with ease, but you're going to have to put in a little more effort than that if you hope to pit them against level-appropriate threats. Here, then, I have a short treatise on what corpses to aim for when reanimating, and how to best make use of them once they're active.

Heroics

Feats are a precious resource: most characters get seven over the course of their entire career, with humans getting eight and fighters getting eleven more... but at the dire cost of having to be a fighter. That's not even taking feat taxes into account, with many of the more desirable prestige classes necessitating one or more feats that are otherwise of little to no use.

So how can you ensure your feats are working hard enough for you? In particular, more specific feats might have a strong effect, but they run the risk of being useless in most situations. Well, there is a rather simple way to not only get more feats, but to get them on-demand, picking up whatever suits the situation as you need it.

There's a little gem in the Spell Compendium called heroics - a level 2 sorcerer/wizard spell that lets you grant the subject a single feat off the list of fighter bonus feats for 10 minutes per level. Even at minimum level, that's half an hour to make use of your new feat. Having to be a fighter bonus feat is indeed a big restriction, especially from your viewpoint as a spellcaster - no crafting, no metamagic and nothing along the lines of spell focus, obviously. But if you look, you might be surprised by how extensive the list really is, often with bonus feats appended to it with every book. In particular, versatile feats that grant you choices gives you a 'feats-within-feats' situation that can be tooled to suit any character.

Trickery Devotion

It's a rewarding feeling to make the most of low-level spells. Knowing you're working within a restricted but open-ended set of guidelines makes for the most delightful creativity, and creativity is often what helps you achieve greater power than the game designers ever counted on. A chief example is unseen servant, mentioned in a previous article as an excellent way for a low-level spellcaster to expand on his or her combat actions. Of course, non-spellcasters should be allowed to get in on that fun, too.

Feats, one of those things that every character gets, aren't quite the same. Even if you carefully sidestep the lousy "+1 to something" ones, they're almost always set in what they can or can't do. Power Attack is a great feat, but it's not like there's a wide variety of things you can do with it. Surely you can get a versatile and open-ended feat you could use in a different manner every day? For just any character to pull that off, well, it will take some real... trickery, won't it?

Aptitude Weapon

For the sword-swinging adventurers of the world, you don't have to worry about spell selections. Your big choices in leveling are going to be feats, those precious resources that all-too-often give less than they ought to. Feats that add a bonus to something you can already do - what one might call "number feats," since they only make your numbers go up - are rarely worth it. While it's nice to be able to do something better, it's more important to be able to do something at all. The other option is "ability feats": those that give you more options in what you can do.

Asides from the more general combat maneuvers (tripping, disarming, sundering etc.) most ability feats are going to be hindered by specificity: if you want the option to do something cool with your weapon, chances are it's going to have to be a specific kind of weapon. Want Boomerang Daze? Well, you'd best be using a crapsack boomerang or it's not happening. Think of it as the divine/arcane split, except much more unfair and crippling. We're not here to complain, though, we're here to break the system open a little and make it work for us. This game is about open-ended character creation, and one should be able to fit together options however they please. So wouldn't it be nice to make use of all those neat weapon-specific feats on whatever you like?