Pun-Pun

This article or section covers stupidly cheesy and/or broken crunch that gives powergamers and munchkins a serious hard-on at the expense of everyone else. It is extremely likely to cause Rage in whoever goes against it. So don’t use it, you dick.

Pun-Pun is the god of munchkinry. The ultimate example of "breaking the system" in 3.5, Pun-Pun was an ECL 6, now an ECL 1, kobold character build that can cast every spell and psionic power at will, has infinite stats (and therefore infinite HP), and has a divine rank of 30. While the original version of Pun-Pun was a 12th level psion, the most recent shattering of the system uses only standard divine/arcane magic and setting-specific splatbook feats.

How It's Done

Behold Pun-Pun, the mighty kobold.

(Pun-Pun was originally a Kobold Egoist 12. Khan wishes to thank Jedrious, Turok124, and Hobojimathome for the quicker build.)

Pun-Pun can ascend at level one. Wizard 1. Feats: Endurance, Alertness (through viper familiar.) Here's how: Dragon Wrought kobold with near infinite age (they don't take penalties or die of old age) +6 to Wisdom and INT 18 base intelligence four ranks in Knowledge (The Planes) and a corresponding masterwork item will get you more than the necessary skill check (25) while taking ten to know that you can summon Pazuzu like Beetlejuice (saying his name three times).

Summon Pazuzu, make a deal that ends up with you Lawful Neutral with a LE Candle of Invocation. Summon an Efreeti with the candle. Use the 3 wishes. Wish 1: plane shift to the astral plane. Wish 2: Another candle of invocation and wish 3: another candle. Use one to summon a Sarrukh and have it manipulate your form to have manipulate form. Ascend. (Khan explains better in his thread.)

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Pun-Pun. Kobold. Divine Minion 1/Wizard 1/Master of Many Forms 3

Level progression:

• Divine Minion 1.
• Wizard 1. Feats: Endurance, Alertness (through viper familiar)
• Master of Many Forms 1.
• Master of Many Forms 2. Feats: Assume Supernatural Ability
• Master of Many Forms 3.

The Fast Wildshape ability of the Divine Minion allows Pun-Pun to wildshape as an 11th level druid. The 3 levels in Master of Many forms stack with the Fast Wildshape ability of the Divine Minion to allow Pun-Pun to assume the form of a Monstrous Humanoid with up to 14 HD, like the Sarrukh.

Pun-Pun wildshapes into a Sarrukh and uses Assume Supernatural Ability (Savage Species) to use the Manipulate Form ability. He uses Manipulate Form to bestow that very same ability (Manipulate Form) to his viper familiar.

Pun-Pun dismisses his Sarrukh form, and orders the familiar to grant him the Manipulate Form ability, using Manipulate Form of course. Since Pun-Pun is a pathetic Kobold, he qualifies as a Scaled One (though a human or other creature could simply Wild Shape into a form that qualifies as a Scaled One). Pun-Pun now has the strongest ability in the game.

Manipulate Form

At will, a sarrukh can modify the form of any Scaled One native to Toril, except for aquatic and undead creatures. With a successful touch attack, it can cause one alteration of its choice in the target creature's body. The target falls unconscious for 2d4 rounds due to the shock of changing form. A successful DC 22 Fortitude save negates both the change and the unconsciousness. Sarrukh are immune to this effect.

A sarrukh may use this ability to change a minor aspect of the target creature, such as the shape of its head or the color of its scales. It may also choose to make a much more significant alteration, such as converting limbs into tentacles, changing the overall body shape (snake to humanoid, for example), or adding or removing an appendage. Any ability score may be decreased to a minimum of 1 or increased to a maximum equal to the sarrukh's corresponding score. A sarrukh may also grant the target an extraordinary, supernatural, or spell-like ability or remove one from it.

The change bestowed takes effect immediately and is permanent. Furthermore, the alterations are automatically passed on to all the creature's offspring when it breeds with another of its unmodified kind.

Ability Scores

Pun-Pun grants himself the Wu-Jen spell Giant Size as a spell-like ability at-will. He casts it on his familiar through the Share Spells ability. This increases the viper to colossal size, granting the viper a +32 size bonus to strength. For the average tiny viper, that means his strength score went from 4 to 36. Using the Manipulate Form ability, the viper then increases Pun-Pun's strength score permanently, up to a maximum of 36 (the viper's own strength score). This is not a size bonus to strength. The viper is using the ability of Manipulate Form to increase and decrease a creature's ability score. No bonus is being given.

Pun-Pun's base strength score, with no bonuses of any sort, is now 36. Pun-Pun dismisses the spell effect on the familiar and it goes back down to tiny size. The familiar's strength score goes back to 4. Pun-Pun uses Giant Size on himself, growing to colossal size and gaining a +32 size bonus to strength. His strength score is now 68. Pun-Pun uses the Manipulate Form ability to directly increase his familiar's strength score up to 68. Again, this isn't a size bonus that he is giving the familiar, he is actually increasing the base score to match his own. Pun-Pun dismisses his Giant Size effect, and he goes back to a small size with strength 36. The viper is still tiny size, with strength 68 now.

The viper repeats the process of growing to colossal size and increasing Pun-Pun's strength score. Pun-Pun does the same. This process is repeated until Pun-Pun decides he is satisfied with his current strength score.

1. Cast Giant Size on familiar. Familiar becomes colossal and gains +32 size bonus to strength, giving the viper a total strength score of 36.
2. The viper uses Manipulate Form to increase Pun-Pun's strength score up to a maximum equal to the viper's strength score. In this case, 36. (This is not a bonus of any kind, he is augmenting Pun-Pun's original strength score.)
3. Pun-Pun dismisses the Giant Size effect on the viper. The viper goes back down to tiny size and 4 strength.
4. Pun-Pun casts Giant Size on himself. His strength score is 36 from step 2, now he goes colossal and gains a +32 size bonus to strength. His strength is 68.
5. Pun-Pun uses Manipulate Form to increase the strength of his tiny viper familiar. To match Pun-Pun's strength score, the viper's strength score is permanently increased from 4 to 68.
6. Pun-Pun dismisses the Giant Size effect on himself. He goes back to small size and 36 strength.
7. Pun-Pun casts Giant Size on his familiar. The viper becomes colossal and goes from 68 strength to 100 strength.
8. The viper uses Manipulate Form to permanently increase Pun-Pun's strength to 100.
9. Repeat process.

Of course, all of the above is kind of overcomplicated, since Pun-Pun can just grant himself Dragon Disciple's Ability Boost (STR +2) an arbitrary number of times.

We'll just assume Pun-Pun decides to have a strength score of 20,010 (for a modifier of 10,000). Now, Pun-Pun gets his other scores to the same ridiculous height.

(Note that Pun-Pun's scores are assumed to be arbitrarily high. Yes, 20,010 is high, but it is even larger than that. A lot larger.)

To increase his other scores, Pun-Pun needs two abilities. The first one is the Bellflower Tattoo of the Tattooed Monk (Complete Warrior). This ability allows Pun-Pun to add his charisma modifier as an enhancement bonus to any one of his ability scores. The second ability is the Void Release ability of the Void Disciple (Complete Divine). This will allow Pun-Pun to use his highest ability score modifier in place of a lower one.

Pun-Pun uses his Bellflower Tattoo to add his charisma score as an enhancement bonus to dexterity. But instead of adding his charisma bonus, he uses Void Release to add his strength bonus. His strength bonus is +10,000. So, Pun-Pun's dexterity score is now 10,000. He then uses Manipulate Form to increase his familiar's dexterity up to 10,000 as well (remember, he isn't giving his familiar a bonus to dexterity, he is literally changing his familiar's base dexterity score to match his own). Pun-Pun then dismisses the Bellflower effect, and his dexterity goes back down to normal. The viper then uses Manipulate Form to increase Pun-Pun's dexterity score up to 10,000. This time, it isn't an enhancement bonus, the familiar is using Manipulate Form to permanently change Pun-Pun's dexterity score to 10,000.

This process is repeated for each ability score. As Pun-Pun increases his strength score with the size-changing trick, he can continue to use this method to increase his other stats as well. For this reason, all of Pun-Pun's ability scores are assumed to be arbitrarily high.

Special Abilities

According to the Monster Manual, all Special Attacks and Qualities are either Extraordinary, Spell-like, or Supernatural abilities. Manipulate Form can grant any of these. As such, Pun-Pun is assumed to have any ability that is beneficial to him or makes him more threatening as an opponent. Here is a list of abilities that he has (the list is nowhere near exhaustive):

• All spells and powers as spell-like and psi-like abilities respectively, at-will. These are at an arbitrarily high caster/manifester level. This is because the caster/manifester level defaults to HD with spell-like and psi-like abilities, which Pun-Pun has a limitless amount of.
• Multiple actions in each round. This is due to the Quickness ability of the Choker (Monster Manual), as well as the Dual Actions ability of the Chronotyryn (Fiend Folio) and the Schism psi-like ability (Expanded Psionics Handbook).
• All beneficial feats. This is gained from the Chameleon prestige class (Races of Destiny). It has an extraordinary ability to gain a feat, and those feats can qualify for other feats.
• An arbitrary amount of Fast Healing by gaining the Epic feat Fast Healing (Epic Level Handbook) a large number of times.
• Immunity to weapon damage from the combined abilities of the Zodar (Fiend Folio) and Snowflake Ooze (Monster Manual 3). The abilities are Invulnerability and Split respectively.
• Natural Invisibility from the Invisible Stalker (Monster Manual).
• Regeneration of at least 40 (the amount of regeneration the Tarrasque has). This means all damage taken by Pun-Pun (if any) is non-lethal, and then his Fast Healing makes it go away.
• All Energy Immunities.
• Immunity to Polymorph, Petrification, or any other form-altering attack, Energy Drain, Ability Damage/Drain, Mind-Affecting Effects, All Energy Damage, Disease, Poison, Stunning, Sleep, Paralysis, Death Effects, Disintegration, Imprisoning/Banishing effects, Divine Damage, Aging Effects.
• Immunity to all arcane spells of 6th level and lower and any spell that allows for Spell Resistance.

The list goes on and on. Further, any ability with the Ex, Su, or Sp descriptor found in a base class or prestige class is fair game with Manipulate Form.

If you can think of any combination of abilities possible within the rules, Pun-Pun can do it.

Splatbooks Required

• Serpent Kingdoms (Sarrukh/Manipulate Form),
• Complete Book Series (Void Disciple, Tattooed Monk, Master of Many Forms),
• Divine Minion template,
• Savage Species (Assume Supernatural Ability feat)

The sources needed to simply get Manipulate Form are Serpent Kingdoms and the Core Rulebooks. The other books are used to reference abilities for Pun-Pun to obtain.

Further Reading

The original article includes how Pun-Pun can get infinite reach, divine levels, infinite attacks per round, and how to pull this off if you don't have the Savage Species book.

• Pun-Pun (3.5e Optimized Character Build) rated 6 9001 out of 5 for optimizing efficiency.
• More munchkin building from the same wiki.

No Fun Allowed

Divine Minion is a template for NPCs. They were never intended to be used by players, and as such, a DM will spot you miles away attempting this, not to mention that this is the "Mulhorandi Divine Minion" that carries the Fast Wildshape power. Good luck explaining where that came from to the DM and getting them to allow it. Even if they do, you can bet the in-game gods will need to be convinced by Pun-Pun why they should let him become a Demi-God of Loopholes. Assuming they can read and pay attention to Pun Pun's mind, you will want to invest heavily in wards that stop anything not from the Material Plane from smiting you more ways than dead.

Sarrukh are Forgotten Realms exclusive creatures, a custom setting might have them, but good luck summoning something from another setting that your character doesn't know of. Additionally, the ability specifically states that it only works on scaled ones native to Toril, which any sane DM will interpret as "you must have been born in Forgotten Realms", since native is with respect to being born on a plane according to RAW. So if you aren't in the Forgotten Realms setting already, Manipulate Form can't affect you by RAW, and if you are there, Mystra (goddess of magic, who can remove anyone's ability to use magic) will protect the Realm by cutting you off from the Weave before you can gate in the Sarrukh, denying your game breaking tricks. Mystra is generally hands off, except when the realm is endangered, such as by godly munchkinry. Shar might be more willing to cooperate, being an alternate source of magic in the setting, but she has the same ability for the Shadow Weave that Mystra has for the normal one (to cut off someone from it completely if needed). If a DM is silly enough to rule that Sarrukh exist in your setting AND they affect scaled ones native to it AND there is no God that will interfere, well have fun.

On top of that, the Manipulate Form feature requires its user to currently be a Sarrukh to be able to use it which creates many points where any part of the loop can either break or become more complex in level and/or creature requirement. Only way around this restriction is to assume the template exception by substituting the "Sarrukh" tag with "you". However that also substitutes the "Sarrukh are immune to this effect." part of the feature to "You are immune to this effect." making a loop of more than 2 ability score buffs and the addition of any features thereafter impossible unless the DM is silly enough to also allow you to ignore the clause.

Additionally, the build makes the assumption that Pazuzu, when summoned, will cooperate with the puny kobold who just summoned him, and not say "Fuck you, I'm Pazuzu," before killing Pun-Pun and going on a rampage. Or, worse yet, since summoning Pazuzu gives him the ability to read your thoughts and teleport right next to you at will, he will immediately know about your crazy scheme. He might even let you proceed with your plan, until you are holding those two candles of summoning, at which point he pops out of nowhere, kills Pun-Pun's level 1 Kobold ass and takes off with two new candles to give the next foolish kobolds who attempts this scheme, one soul richer.

And of course, by the rules, familiar-granted feats cannot count towards the requirements of a class. If they did the viper must be in arms reach at all times or you would lose the Alertness feat and lose access all levels of Master of Many Forms as you no longer qualify for them.

Claims that interpreting Manipulate Form to work off of the natural stats close the exploit are ambiguous, since by the example list, Manipulate form can increase size category, which does change natural strength. Although it's a "size bonus" when changed by a spell, if it's permanent, it's a true change. The new loop is. Familiar increases Pun-Pun's size. Pun pun raises familiars strength to his own new natural strength. Familiar decreases pun-pun's size. Familiar raises Pun-Pun's strength. Repeat to gain infinite strength. This also works for Con. The other stats are trickier.

Then again, if you try to build Pun-Pun in an actual game, your DM is permitted to actually pee in your Mountain Dew. Look it up, it's in the book.

See Also

• Tucker's Kobolds: A story about kobolds that terrify players run by a Killer DM.