Speedrunning GITM

With the new fountain water in spelljammer giving us 7th level and lower spells off the cleric and wizard list, we can now use “Ghost in the Machine” as low as level 2. But it requires a sacrifice. Are you prepared?

A druid can wild shape into a mighty servant. As long as a mighty servant nystul’d into a beast has existed at some point.

great, druids are now super powerful, right? WRONG

mighty servant has the ‘immutable form’ property, as well as specifying that it becomes an inert object when not piloted. This means that the druid can’t turn back and can no longer act. They’re just gone, they have no agency left. They don’t even technically die, they become an inert unkillable and immutable object. No resurrection spell, no wish, no magic can ever bring back this druid. They are not dead, they are beyond death. there is nothing that can bring them back.

From here we use fountain water to get a simulacrum, work together to get our dybbuk (Or Draconic Shard later) and then bind them, double jar, and inhabit the machine with our chwinga pilots in the seats.

A small price to pay for godhood

(we could also just use the druids simulacrum)

Better than Dybbuk?: Draconic Shard

Draconic Shard is a huge undead that can inhabit objects of medium or smaller. Mighty servant is large in item form, so this seems like a bust, but, it does not have the ‘immutable form’ trait while un-activated, meaning we can reduce it and inhabit it. We can jar a Draconic shard using nystuls.

While dybbuk has temps, this has real HP, meaning we can use death wards and get full use of our regen, while also having a ridiculous amount of total hp (our hp with the mighty servants and the shard’s, so ours with 20 con, plus 167, plus 310. with an ice troll heart with regen 25 hp per round). We also get to add our int to our AC. giving us a base of 27 AC without anything else. Finally we gain an 80ft flying [hover] speed. this is almost as fast as a phantom steed and it’s a hover speed, and we can move 3x a round without an action cost. making us faster than any enemy in the game. This also makes reaching 40AC much easier

We maintain the benefits of the mighty servant, and don’t risk becoming innert, but effects that end possession can kick us out. This is a weird trade-off, we can usually prevent being targeted by such spells as they are exceedingly rare on enemies, but it’s something to be wary of. Thankfully a draconic shard is much more survivable than a dybbuk is when not in the machine.

Huge Blades

Magic weapons re-size themselves (under most interpretations), shadow blade is a magic weapon, we make a shadow blade while medium sized and planar bind it and silver it, then use it on our GITM, it now deals 15d8. if we have a source of extra attack, we can multiattack 3 times a round, and get over 500 damage at-will. [full exploration on oversized shadow blade here]

The End…?

Ghost in the machine is the tech that keeps on giving. I’m almost sure there’s even more to discover using it, and it continues to be incredible. It’s so good it’s actually hard to find a build that can out-perform it in offense or defense. This is not the end of ghost in the machine.