Slaying Orcus was never hard!?

An axe chopping wood? That's like slaying Orcus with a toothpick!


I'd like to get straight to the meat as it were and spend my time beheading hydras and slaying Orcus in the scenario as opposed to beating the crap out of wee mephits and smelly gnolls. I want heroic, spell-jamming, my paladin hurls you into the sun action! Really, what better way is there to sell D&D 4th than by banging a honking big Orcus miniature bestride a Giant Hydra down onto the table?


I've seen a graph for the probability of slaying Orcus with the Orcus Slayer build.


Results are pretty damn good. High probability of taking him down in one turn.


The Orcuslayer, or how Cascade of Blades broke 4.0 even 3 days before it was released!

EDIT: I took into account the additional average damage that you'll be doing with Imperiling Strike, Sneak Attack, Backstabber, and Gauntlets of Destruction. Now it only takes an average of 37.01 hits to bring down Orcus with the attacks from Blade Cascade.

It's all in there. A level 30 rogue/ranger/Shadow Assassin/Deadly Trickster can, in fact, brutally murder Orcus all by himself in just one round. And he can do it flawlessly too, because if he doesn't win initiative naturally, he can use his daily Trickster's Disposition to make Orcus' initiative roll a natural 1. I'll repost the statistics over here for convenience:

Imperiling Strike Attack Bonus
+15 half level
+8 Dexterity bonus
+6 Duelist's dagger
+1 Rogue Proficiency
+1 Nimble Blade
+3 proficiency bonus
+2 combat advantage (First Strike, Duelist's dagger, flanking, etc.)
+4 Shadow Assassin
TOTAL: +40 (against 51 Fortitude defense)

Blade Cascade Attack Bonus
+15 half level
+7 Strength bonus
+6 Duelist's dagger
+1 Rogue Proficiency
+1 Nimble Blade
+3 proficiency bonus
+2 combat advantage (First Strike, Duelist's dagger, flanking, etc.)
+4 Shadow Assassin
+7 Imperiling Strike
TOTAL: +46

Imperiling Strike with Sneak Attack and Backstabber Non-Critical Damage
1d4 with Gauntlets of Destruction: 3 average damage
+5d8 Sneak Attack with Backstabber and Gauntlets of Destruction: 25 average damage
+8 Strength modifier
+6 Duelist's silver dagger
+10 Belt of Titan Strength
+3 Weapon Focus
+2 Light Blade Precision
+1 Two-Weapon Fighting
(+1 Two-Weapon Fighting) for main hand
TOTAL: 59 on main hand dagger

Imperiling Strike with Sneak Attack and Backstabber Critical Damage
1d4 maximized: 4 damage
+6d8 crit with combat advantage and Gauntlets of Destruction: 30 average damage
+1d10 crit with Devastating Critical and Gauntlets of Destruction: 6 average damage
+5d8 Sneak Attack with Backstabber and Gauntlets of Destruction: 25 average damage
+8 Strength modifier
+6 Duelist's silver dagger
+10 Belt of Titan Strength
+3 Weapon Focus
+2 Light Blade Precision
+1 Two-Weapon Fighting
(+1 Two-Weapon Fighting) for main hand
TOTAL: 96 on main hand dagger

Blade Cascade Non-Critical Damage
2d4 with Gauntlets of Destruction: 6 average damage
+8 Strength modifier
+6 Duelist's silver dagger
+10 Belt of Titan Strength
+3 Weapon Focus
+2 Light Blade Precision
(+1 Two-Weapon Fighting) for main hand
TOTAL: 36 on main hand dagger, 35 on off-hand dagger

Blade Cascade Critical Damage
2d4 maximized: 8 damage
+6d8 crit with combat advantage and Gauntlets of Destruction: 30 average damage
+1d10 crit with Devastating Critical and Gauntlets of Destruction: 6 average damage
+8 Strength modifier
+6 Duelist's silver dagger
+10 Belt of Titan Strength
+3 Weapon Focus
+2 Light Blade Precision
(+1 Two-Weapon Fighting) for main hand
TOTAL: 74 on main hand dagger, 73 on off-hand

Final Statistics
Chances of landing crit on hit with Light Blade Mastery: 2/19
Total average damage on Imperiling Strike with main hand including crits: 62.89

Chances of landing crit on hit with Light Blade Mastery: 2/19
Total average damage on Cascade of Blows hit with main hand including crits: 40
Total average damage on Cascade of Blows hit with off-hand including crits: 39
Total average damage on Cascade of Blows hit with both hands: 39.5

Orcus' maximum hp: 1,525
Orcus' bloodied value: 762
Orcus' effective hp once Imperiling Strike hits: 1,462.11

Number of hits required to deal 700.11 damage to bring Orcus to bloodied after Imperiling Strike: 17.72
Number of hits required to deal 1,462 damage to bring Orcus to dead after Imperiling Strike: 37.01
Number of rerolls available: 4

Many thanks to this here CharOp board for pointing out the potential of Blade Cascade, and to the helpful and dedicated posters in the two 4.0 min-maxing threads on /tg/:

Thread 1: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/1874338
Thread 2: http://zip.4chan.org/tg/res/1902297.html

I also have an... I'll call him an "assistant" for now, and he's going to post some more in-depth statistics in this thread, which apparently show that it's very possible to deal enough damage to kill Orcus "twice" by dealing twice his maximum hp in damage.

First of all, Sneak Attack damage is factored in correctly.

THE MATH:

Assuming a maxed +46 attack bonus (after Imperiling Strike), we have a Blade Cascade chain with an average number of hits equal to 19 times the number of rerolls plus one (if somebody bothers to do the math and finds it's wrong, please tell me so and why.) Now, Imperiling Strike, with a +40 attack bonus, has a 50% chance of hitting with a regular attack, so half of the time we will start our Blade Cascade with less than four rerolls. In particular, we should note that our racial reroll has a +2 bonus, so that's the one we'll use first, since any extra bonus on the Cascade are wasted.

Considering all this, we have a 50% chance of having 4 rerolls when starting Blade Cascade, 30% of 3 rerolls, 10% of 2 rerolls, 5% with one, 2.5% with none, and a 2.5% of losing all rerolls and failing to land Imperiling Strike (this, as you already know, means you are already dead). The average damage values of each are 3752.5 (4 rerolls), 3002 (3 rerolls), 2251.5 (2 rerolls), 1501 (1 reroll), 750.5 (no rerolls) and 59.25 with no IS.

With 39.5 average weapon damage, this gives a final average damage of 3097.29 hit points, enough to kill Orcus twice. To that we could add an average 33 damage from Imperiling Strike and a maxed 6d8 from a critical sneak attack done when Orcus is bloodied. If we added Raise the Stakes, these numbers would improve a bit, but the point is already made.

For those of you wonderingabout the calculations, use a negative binomial distribution. The chance to kill Orcus with this build is around 83%. With a Battle Captain friend and some tweaks, you can reach 99% easily, and with some major optimization, 99.9%.