Psionic Dominate
Epic LevelI would need to write a seperate handbook for this in order to reach any depth so I'll keep this section short.
There's no official epic level version of the Thrallherd released so work with your GM to have a non-official version approved or request that epic leadership feat applies to thralls.
Even if that is impossible for some strange reason you can make it work by keeping your Thralls alive.
Know that Charisma, Psicraft and Knowledge (psionics) will become a higher focus than before epic level and while Epic Psionic Powers are generally like Epic Spells but much less flexible they can still become powerful.
Either way you can always get one or two epic level caster thralls by the time you reach level 22-23 so you have nothing to worry about.
AbuseInfinite gold:
Leadership feats states that the cohort should be equipped with gear appropiate for level and that followers functions as a low level cohort in this regard. Using the Table for NPC gear value per level this gives us just shy of 400000 gold in gear for the followers of a level 19 thrallherd, this is without using Mercantile or similar background. 400000 gold every 24 hours by simply ordering your followers to kill themselves? I'm sure you see why this can be a problem.
Solution: The easiest way to deal with this is simply not letting anyone other than the followers themselves touch their gear and have it disappear when the minion dies. It is also feasible to force the player to pay for all gear used by his minions.
Infinite XP:
Since Believers don't use an XP system and Thralls have a cap on how much XP they can benefit from they don't have much to lose from spending XP. A Thrall can spam spells "balanced" by XP-cost and crafting feats until he drops a level and then be replaced.
Solution: At least a significant portion of the XP cost should transfer to the Thrallherd.
Infinite followers:
A level 6 follower can reach a leadership score to achieve a level 6 follower which can reach a leadership to achieve a level 6 follower, and so on.
Solution: Dont let followers take leadership style feats unless it is part of a campaign with massive regional battles, even then you should give each follower a scaling penantly to his leadership score.
Infinite PP:
Courtesy of
this thread.
Have a follower be a Metamind and use Font of Power, use Fusion to merge with the metamind and then use Temporal Reiteration
CPsi to have the duration last for as long as you want
Solution: Don't let Temporal Reiteration work on things that are this easily abusable. Don't let Metamind's Font of Power work with Fusion since it does not work with metaconcert
Infinite Thralls:
Get the Thralls you want, release them and then use extended dominate on them that lasts 2 days / manifester level, get new thralls within 24 hours, repeat. Using Infinite PP from above you can dominate twice per round one normal and one from schism (second one not extended), each affecting multiple targets. This means that you can maintain control over around half a million high level thralls. If that's not enough just have your thralls control more, they should have no problem controlling quite a few at equal or higher than their level.
Solution: Restrict the amount of creatures that can be dominated at once. Don't let dominated creatures dominate other creatures.
Religious SacrificeBoVD:
Easy access to buffs and Gold/XP for crafting.
Solution: This should be restricted in what kind of sacrifices the god accept and how often he rewards for them. The DC modifiers should reflect the difficulty in obtaining said sacrifice better. If thralls are considered valid sacrifices there should at least be an heavy penalty for using them.
Building ThrallsLeadership states that you are allowed to choose of your cohort race/class/aligment. Generally the GM will allow you to build the cohort yourself, even if your GM decides to make all your human wizards illiterate with only useless spells, toughness feat taken multiple times and skills in basketweaving you can always use Psychic Reformation to make your minions useful.
I prefer building support characters such as buffers and controllers since they can be made very powerful without making any party member feel left out, then again there's nothing wrong with using your primary character as support and using your thralls for other things.
There are more options available than I can possibly list here, don't be afraid to experiment, a complete revamp is only 24 hours away.
- Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Archivist - Standard Tier 1 casters, only 1-2 levels behind you. Very versatile.
- Artificer - Is a seperated from the casters due to its excellent crafting. Favorite cohort by many.
- Sorcerer - Not a bad replacement for wizard since you can simply replace him when you need different spells.
- Twice-Betrayer of Shar - Is able to persist most spells, use in moderation since certain spells can break the game.
- Psion - While you should have most of the useful powers already more never hurts, certain powers have good synergy with multiple psionics.
- Hood (Dragoon) - High damage melee build.
- Fighter/Tripmonkey - Tripper for giving battlefield control to the physical characters. If you feel safer knowing that there's a BSF with a sole purpose in life of protecting you. Good for control inside anti-magic fields.
- Archer - For when the front line is getting crowded and you don't want to compete with the other casters.
- Duskblade, Hexblade - Melee classes with good debuffing ability.
- Bard - Considered the fifth party member of choice by some and considered terribly underpowered by others. Then again, you can afford weak thralls and his songs can become quite powerful buffs.
- Trixie - Well rounded extra party member.
If you find the actual size a problem when fitting Thralls into dungeon crawls there are some options for that:
- Cleric with persist spells and Greater Status
- Wildshape caster using tiny and/or flying.
- Fiend of Possession.
- Polymorph Any Object a Thrall into something tiny.
Building an armyIf you are able to build your followers then you can optimize them for whatever level you obtain them on and whatever environment you are in at the moment or just fool around since they are easy to replace.
When looking for inspiration for low level characters
go here.
Nukers[spoiler]
Race: Whisper Gnome
RoSClass: Warlock 1
CAFeats: Mortalbane
BoVDInvocations: Choose one: Eldritch Spear, Summon Swarm, Darkness, Devil's Sight, Spiderwalk, See the Unseen.
Skills: Hide, Move Silently, Spot or Listen. Grab other skills as appropiate (Profession (any), Handle Animal, Use Magic Device)
Equipment: MW tools to aid your skill checks, you can use armor but don't expect much from it.
Notes: Decent Stealth, decent damage. Both useful in battles against high level opponents and large scale battles.
You can get some good use from novas/chargers with true strike at mid levels but expect to hit a point where even with truestrike they will miss more often than not and you'll be forced to upgrade to wraithstrike.
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Support[spoiler]
Divine MindCPsi with Time Aura, +2 Init to anyone within 5ft.
Dragon ShamanPHB2Get one for each ability you want, 30 feet range. Double effect for 5th level Dragon Shamans:
- Energy shield: Deals 2 energy damage against most melee attacks
- Power: +1 melee damage rolls
- Presence: +1 Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate
- Resistance: 5 Resistance against acid, electricity, fire or cold
- Senses: +1 Listen, Spot, Initiative
- Toughness: DR 1/magic
- Vigor: Fast healing 1 up to half health
Human Clerics with High charisma, Planning domain, Persistent Spell and Divine Metamagic (Persist). Good spells to persist:
- Bless: Allies gains +1 morale to attack +1 to fear saves
- Blessed AimSC: Allies gain +2 morale to ranged attack rolls
Kobold Bards with Dragonfire Inspiration and a Masterwork War Drum, +2d6 damage to all allies for each of the elements (acid, cold, electricity, fire, sonic).
It is worth noting that with Tomb-Tainted Soul and Black Sand you can give your followers constant healing.
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Scouts[spoiler]
Race: Whisper Gnome
RoSClass: Focused Specialist Wizard or Sorc 1
Prohbibited Schools: Evocation, Necromancy and one of: Abjuration(Hold Portal), Illusion (Disguise Self, Silent Image), Conjuration (Benign Transposition), Enchantment (Shock and Awe).
Feats: Skill Focus (Spot) or Precocious Apprentice (Invisibility)
Spells: 0-Silent Portal, Ghost Sound, Detect Magic, Open/Close, Message. 1-Benign Transposition, Nerveskitter, Shock and Awe, Swift Expeditious Retreat, Reduce Person, Disguise Self, Hold Portal, Silent Image (Choose 4)
Familiar: Owl or Cat
Skills: Hide, Move Silently, Spot. Grab other skills as appropiate (Listen, Profession (any), Handle Animal)
Equipment: MW tools that aid with your skill checks. Scrolls. Signed Last Will and Testament.
Notes: The fastest way of disarming traps without automatic reset is triggering them. Cast mindlink and let this guy scout ahead while reporting everything back to you. Just have a couple of replacement scouts ready.
Use Shock and Awe if you happen to catch enemies off-guard. Reduce Person, Silent Portal or Disguise Self to get past areas you would not normally. Hold Portal or Swift Expeditious Retreat to get away from opponents and in combat use Nerveskitter and Benign Transposition to aid higher level allies. Detect Magic means you won't have to search most rooms.
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Necromancers[spoiler]
Race: Human
Class: Wizard or Sorc 1
Feats: Precocious Apprentice (Command Undead), Spell Thematics(Command Undead)
Traits: Spellgifted (Necromancy)
Notes: Can cast command undead once per day with 3 day duration, no save for nonintellegent undead.
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Skillmonkeys[spoiler]
Unlike normal skillmonkeys here you can afford to have a single character focus completely on a single skill.
Most of the time you'll want to create a first level
Human Marshal, max the primary attribute for the skill, put the rest in charisma and use motivate aura of primary attribute for your skill. Grab masterwork tools and feats that boost the skill (i.e. Skill Focus, Alertness etc). Spare skillpoints can be used for bonus languages (or synergies if level 2+).
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Dungeon crawling with Believers.Know that as CR advances but your Believers don't some parts of your followers will become useless, keep this in mind when designing followers and focus on the parts that scale well with level. Here are some general guidelines for level 1 followers fighting against high level enemies:
Things that work well are:- Touch attack
- Guaranteed hits (Coup de grace)
- Concealment (Tower shield)
Things that work poorly are:- Melee (unless they are wielding a lit barrel of gunpowder)
- Normal attacks
- Abilities with save (can still be decent, expect them to make save 95% of the time unless you have insane modifiers)
- AC / Saves
When fighting in a dungeon space will be an issue, so the usefulness of a damage dealing follower is how much damage he can do on average per round round times the amount of followers you can fit in a combat situation while allowing all to deal damage.
Say we use 100 Warforged Level 1 Warlocks. Warforged means they don't have to eat and warlocks can use ranged touch attack every round. Polymorph any object on them into Homunculus which is a Tiny Construct with flying. Now you should be able to fit 4 per square ground, more if there's a wall nearby that they can spider climb on. And then you fill the air with as many as your DM will allow without collisions. Now we give them all the Moralbane
BoVD feat allowing them to deal 3d6 damage each on eldrich blast touch attack against mortals five times per day and 1d6 unlimited times per day.
Now we still have 100 Least Invocations to choose, which one depends on the situation, they can:- Grant 20% concealment to anything within 20ft radius with Darkness.
- Shoot into magical darkness with no extra miss chance with Devil's Sight.
- Attack from 250 ft range with Eldritch Spear.
- Climb on any surface and ignore Webs with Spiderwalk.
- See invisible with See the Unseen.
- Summon Swarm is great with clashing armies.
Even with only +4 to hit (+2 dex, +2 size, +0 BAB) they can still hit regularly since touch AC even for high CR mobs is around 11. Both the amount of creatures you can fit per square and their hit rate can be increased by polymorphing them into something even smaller. But then again 100 +4 ranged touch attacks for 3d6 each every round should be more than enough for most situations, remember to stay near the power of the rest of your party.