Combat Combos, packing more punch in less time.

Let's start a topic about neat combat combos, shall we?

I think I speak for everypony, when I say that we'd love to see what kind of ridiculous combos you come up with.

If your combo takes more than two rounds I'd like to suggest using a spoiler for the step by step explanation, and summarize the combo above the spoiler like I have here:

Meditate(+1d12) and Where it hurts!(+1d12) combined with Knife in the Dark, deals 2d12+4 to two targets or 2d12+6 to one.

Step By Step:

Spoiler:

Turn 1: Gather energy +1 pip and two standard actions turn 2.
Turn 2: Psychic Surge and Conjure Fire Giant.
You have a conjuration that deals massive damage turn two If an ally does Save Ends skills, you're back up after turn 3. ^u^

Here's one:

Turn 1: Gather Energy - On your next turn, you may take 2 standard actions. You cannot use this talent two turns in a row. 5 PiPs

Turn 2: Perfect Focus - You gain resist 3 until the end of your next turn. At the start of your next turn, if you have not taken damage since you last used this ability, you gain 2 more pips. 7 PiPs

Open Options - (For Frostfall or Lightning Bolt) Choose one of your talents you didn’t bring into battle this encounter. Substitute that power for this power for the rest of the encounter. 9 PiPs

Turn 3: Frostfall - Deal 2d12 to target creature and 1d12 to creatures adjacent to the target. The primary target is stunned until the end of your next turn. 2/4 PiPs

Turn 4: Lightning Bolt - Deal 1d10+X damage to target creature where X equals the number of PiPs you spent last turn. 1/3 PiPs

All very cool ideas. One that I like right now, enough that I'm building with it, is Psychic Anomaly and Draw Blood, along with Savage Dreadnought to ditch the vulnerability. That's a lot of pips and a lot of damage for just about 6 life.

Turn 1: Draw Blood (7 PiPs)
Turn 2: Draw Blood (10 PiPs)
Turn 3: Draw Blood (13 PiPs)
Turn 4: Gather Energy (14 PiPs)
Turn 5: Draw Blood, IT'S OVER!

Prep set Derpy's lightning as the special.
turn 1 Daredevil’s Rush 10 Deal Xd8 damage to yourself. If you roll an 8 on one or more of the dice, you take only half damage from this power. X cannot be more than 10. 14 PiPs use Derpy's( 8 ) about two to three times and have someone else heal you.
turn 2 Thunderstorm 13 You unleash 13 bolts of lightning. Each bolt of lightning targets a random creature and deals half of 2d10 damage. 1 PiP use Derpy's(10) about 2 more times
turn 3 Lightning Bolt
Deal 1d10+X damage to target creature where X equals the number of PiPs you spent last turn.0 pips

This combo works best when you are out numbered.

tygerburningbright wrote:Prep set Derpy's lightning as the special.
turn 1 Daredevil’s Rush 10 Deal Xd8 damage to yourself. If you roll an 8 on one or more of the dice, you take only half damage from this power. X cannot be more than 10. 14 PiPs use Derpy's( 8 ) about two to three times and have someone else heal you.
turn 2 Thunderstorm 13 You unleash 13 bolts of lightning. Each bolt of lightning targets a random creature and deals half of 2d10 damage. 1 PiP use Derpy's(10) about 2 more times
turn 3 Lightning Bolt
Deal 1d10+X damage to target creature where X equals the number of PiPs you spent last turn.0 pips

This combo works best when you are out numbered.

...That's crazy dangerous. Let's assume that you get 10 PiPs from Daredevil's Rush. That's 10d8/2 (I'm assuming at least ONE of those is an 8, though it's very possible that it's not). With the average on a 1d8 being 4.5, you'd take approximately 22.5 damage. Roll above average, or don't roll an 8, and you've knocked yourself unconscious, possibly knocking yourself out for the duration of the fight, or if you're REALLY unlucky and roll virtually all 7's, kill yourself on your first turn.

Thunderstorm and Derpy's Lightning 10: Hits random targets. Yes, I know you say that it's best if you're outnumbered, but you're going to be damaged from Daredevil's Rush, and you could very easily do more harm than good. Assuming you get Derpy's Lightning once, you're hitting 16 random targets.

4 turns:

Gather Energy (beautiful, isn't it?)
Meditate, Meditate
Fireball, hitting up to three enemies (it only targets one, so it proc's Channel) for 1d8+2d12
Fireball for 1d8+2d12

Against at least three opponents, 4 turns of combat net you an average of 105 damage. You finish with 2 pips, as well.

If your DM rules that Meditate cannot stack (though there's no stacking on it), this can be altered by switching it to:

Meditate, Fireball,
Fireball
Fireball

Which nets 99 damage, on average, by turn 4.

Both of these are nice because the kill condition triggers several times, allowing you to finish the battle even earlier as you lay in the damage, compared to building to Its Over. Adding items into the mix just makes it more broken, using super fireball wands or the Widen ability to hit 3 single-target fireballs blasting in a terrible channel radius.

TL;dr? Meditate goes well with single-target abilities that really target a bunch of folks, and you can cheat an extra turn of it's usage using Gather Energy.

Of course, this is Rules as Written. Rules as Intended always gets in the way, and you may need to pick a cleaner targetting method.

Yeah, it's definitely not supposed to be used on fireball. I think that there should be a more comprehensive way of describing the targeting of combat talents. Maybe each combat talent should have a section that says Target. For example:

Fireball
Target: 3 creatures (adjacent)

It's always kind of irked me...

The talent is specifically meant so that you can't blast it with Wave of Zeal or Flamewave, I think. The definition for "adjacent" even somewhat notes that the other two are not targets!

But as mentioned, RAW versus RAI. Same theory applies if using Knife In The Dark, double up on Meditate or use it to power 3 turns worth instead of 2 through gather energy.

Another fun one I think is Meditate and abilities with effects labelled as "you gain X (whatever) where X is the amount of damage dealt this way", since it means you could up those significantly from their prior amounts. These are pretty rare, though. Just Syphon Life, I think.

Exactly Fury.

"RAW vs RAI" means "Rules As Written" versus "Rules As Intended", and is a shorthand commentary for "you're in the wrong board if you're asking about how things are supposed to be" in the D&D Character Optimization Boards, where they managed to turn a spell that finds the nearest city into one that destroys the nearest city by abusing the poor rules (make it from non-elemental to an ice spell, now that it's elemental, switch it to a fire spell, as its fire you can now make it blistering to deal one damage, a damaging spell can be made explosive, explode the whole city for several hundred thousand damage).

Rules As Intended, every move is exactly the same, no "combos" should exist since the whole thing is in theory balanced. Everyone uses a little bit of RAW over pure RAI, but when you get into pure RAW you get the situations where you can break the game and blatantly abuse its power.

Rules As Written, you can indeed combine the two abilities. Rules As Intended, it is unknown, we'd need StairC to make the terms Target, Adjacent, and Meditate clearer. But the point of the combo was that you can stack Meditate on Meditate, or use Gather Energy to get a 3rd turn out of Meditate.

Here's a very mundane combo that I find works very well against encounters with fewer enemies than players:
Start with:
[+2] Psychic Anomaly
You and target enemy suffer vulnerability 5 (save ends).
Targeting an enemy that doesn't go right after you

Then before the end of your turn use:
[-2] Blind Rage - Free Action [Created by AlicornPriest]
Deal 1d12 damage to target creature. You are blinded (save ends).

Then, if you save against Blind, use Blind Rage again before your target's turn.

A decent chance of doing 2d12 +10 damage at the cost of two pips, and a guaranteed 1d12+5 damage for 0 pips.
Of course you have a 45% chance to become vulnerable because of this, so factor in the number of enemies that will attack you before your next turn.