How much cheese can you get from 8 character levels?

[d-_-b]

I need to make an NPC character for my campaign who can stand up to some pretty cheesy characters so I thought I'd post it as a fun challenge here: Given that you have 8 character levels how cheesy a character can you make? Your character must be of the standard player races (human, elf, dwarf, halfling, half-orc, half-elf and gnome) and you may use any 3.5 book available. your starting stats are 18, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with

[Lord.Sorasen]

Wayne the Indecisive Frat gnome. He's a young gnome who in order to find direction in life constantly attempts different paths in life. As such he's a a barbarian 1/fighter 1/cleric 1/druid 1/bard 1/Sorcerer 1/monk 1/warlock 1. His major ability is being inadequate in more or less everything.

[HaeshkaManju]

Let's see.
Take the Knockdown Feat.. (you get a free trip attack when you deal 10 or more points of damage in a melee blow). Attach this to a monk 7/sorc1. Sorc sides casts two touch attack spells (you can store touch attack spells on a "hand"). Then you attack with them. This combined with improved trip (monk attacks are considered armed, even when unarmed) -- gives you lots of tripping and damage madness. Keep tripping the whole party for pure silly fun.

[DMMike]

Bards are good for cheese. Here you go - a bard whose instrument is the bullhorn. All of his songs are done at full volume...

And you can also get some cheesiness from the Binder class. Such as when a pact goes poorly, and the character has to express the vestige's influence...

[Soft Serve]

Let's see.
Take the Knockdown Feat.. (you get a free trip attack when you deal 10 or more points of damage in a melee blow). Attach this to a monk 7/sorc1. Sorc sides casts two touch attack spells (you can store touch attack spells on a "hand"). Then you attack with them. This combined with improved trip (monk attacks are considered armed, even when unarmed) -- gives you lots of tripping and damage madness. Keep tripping the whole party for pure silly fun.

I want to wear a helmet next time you speak so my brain doesn't explode all over the walls again...

[nijineko]

if cheese is what you want then go for the half minotaur and half ogre and half giant templates from dragon magazine, then apply them to a goliath or something else with powerful build. depending on the order in which they are applied, you can wind up with a +20 str +8 con, and only +1 to +3 la. take a few levels of fighter and/or barbarian. or for fun, apply to an orc, take the orcish racial paladin level granting them rage, and then go monk or something else fun.

[tesral]

One has to ask, what is you definition of cheezy?

[Sascha]

Let's see, 8 character levels, starting prime stat of 18, at least a feat spent on it: that's +19 or so to Kraft (Cheese) checks.

"Cheese, hunk of" is a 1sp item, and we'll go conservative on the DC for a 10; convert the check to a daily instead of weekly and assume an average roll (10), for a total of 29. 29 x 10 = 290, compared to the cp cost (10), and you get a rate of cheese production of one hunk in 1/29th of a day (29 hunks per day). That's a lot of cheese.

... Am I doing this right?

[tesral]

But are you aging it?

[nijineko]

=D good point, tesral.

the most cheese i've seen in 8 levels or less involved the following: artificer and one feat from a dragon mag. which might nix it for you, but i'll share anyway. the feat in question allows you to craft magic items by allowing you to add your caster level from all your casting classes for purposes of crafting items. preqs are caster level 3 or 4 in both an arcane and divine class.

you take one level of an arcane class. one level of a divine class. take practiced caster for both of those classes at earliest opportunity. take at least 5 levels of artificer. artificers have a caster level, as spelled out in their class features. practiced caster boosts your caster level +4 in each class - arcane and divine. you now have an effective caster level of 5 in arcane, 5 in divine, and 5 via artificer. presto, you can now craft items with caster level requirements of up to 15 as a 7th level character. oh, and since artificers get a +2 caster level boost regarding scrolls, those are at 17.

might be a bit of a chore getting the gp cost covered though. the xp can be circumvented if you can get ahold of a lot of minor items which you can then deconstruct for craft reserve.

[muffinstien]

depends how you're defining cheese.
cheese as in hilarious: gnome illusionist with ADD, some gear granting bonus metamagic feats and spell slots, and give him a nice busy area to drive them insane.
i ran a gnome in a campaign not too long ago, basically acted like an insane child with illusions while secretly advancing the plot when the other characters weren't looking.

cheese as in "i am the face of annihilation": the Monk Knockdown build mentioned earlier seems like it would work really well. I personally used three rogues L.6 against a lv5 party of 4, and beat them mercilessly via flanking and scrolls of invisibility. they killed one of the three before they were all unconscious.

[Lord.Sorasen]

Cheese? In the powerful cheese sense...

Have you seen the lolth-touched? It's in Monster manual 4, and it gives you +6 to Strength and +6 to constitution, as well as a +4 to hide and move silently, with an LA adjustment of +1.

The orc (not half-orc) is a race represented in the first Monster Manual, with a +4 to Strength. Combine them and you have an ECL +1 race with +10 Strength and +6 Constitution. naturally for added cheese one would use the two 18 ability scores for this. So, so far you have:

28 Strength (+9)
24 Constitution (+7)

Anyway, take the psychic Warrior class for 2 levels. If your wisdom score is at least 14 (unfortunately you take a -2 penalty to wisdom, but it's not too big a deal. Use the 16.) you will have 3 power points at level 2. Take the chosen power "expansion" which, if you are to spend all your power points on it, lasts for 20 minutes. Expansion will take you from medium to large size, and give you a +2 bonus to strength and a -2 to dexterity. From this point on I'll calculate stats as if you were using this power. You have 2 bonus feats from the two psychic warrior levels. Make one of them exotic weapon proficiency, Spiked Chain. You now have...

Psychic Warrior 2 (level 3 equivalent)
30 strength (+10)
24 constitution (+7)
14 wisdom (+2)

Now, taking 2 levels of monk will give you the improved trip feat needing to worry about the int requirement. Your wisdom score does not justify not wearing armor, so you'll lose most of the other class features. It's not too big a deal. Either way you can dump int now.

Psychic Warrior 2/Monk 2 (level 5 equivalent)
30 strength (+10)
24 constitution (+7)
14 wisdom (+2)
8 intelligence (-2)

Now you can make trip attempts, and with your unearthly strength, reach weapon, and increased size, your threat range is unearthly. I'm not too concerned with the last two levels so long as they have full BaB: There are plenty of fine choices. Fighter can give you some extra feats should you need them, while barbarian offers you the absolute most in hit dice (and a rage to bring your strength even higher and your AC even lower). Since your party is most likely good, paladin of slaughter can be an interesting concept, though your char may suffer too much to make it worthwhile.

Anyway that's my two cents. Class now g2g

[nijineko]

i suppose that i could mention starting with a kobold, use the dragonwrought feat at 1st level. due to the quirkiness of a kobold being now counted as a true dragon complete with age categories, they don't take the penalties for aging. now advance them in age til they start drawing down the mental boosts due to age. having a plus something to all mental stats with no physical penalties can be worthwhile to certain builds.

of course, you could instead start with a gelatinous cube, apply the celestial or fiendish template to it... this raises the int score to 3. it can now take character levels. for laughs, i suggest monk or barbarian. the increase movement rate is sure to startle a whole lot of people. the mental picture of a cube using a flurry makes me chuckle. "fists of jello!" or specialize in grappling for obvious synergies.

[Asterik]

I have to agree with tesral. What, exactly, do you mean by, "cheesy?"

[Baurdale]

A warrior that casts magic missile?