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(A bit of background: I find duplication in D&D to be one of the more amusing sorts of bugs. Astral Projection was a famous one in 3ed, and I posted a thread on the 3ed boards about how a Mirror of Opposition could be used to create an infinite supply of magic items, with the possible side effect of blanketing the world with paraplegic 6 year old boys in full plate.)

So, as a guy discovered in the "Optimizing FRPG" thread, there's a new ability called Glamor Blade (Swordmage Daily 9) which is highly, highly exploitable.

In a nutshell: it creates a duplicate of you that lasts until the end of the encounter. You share a hit point pool and an action pool (so you only get a minor, move and standard between the two) but otherwise functions as a duplicate of you. It doesn't say explicitly that it duplicates your magic items, but it's implied, since the duplicate draws a weapon in the example.

Other people have pointed out that this means that your duplicate can do things like spend a second action point in a round (possibly without consuming your pool of action points), is subject to his own limit on daily powers on magic items. The example one guy gave was to have him spend his duplicate action point on activating his duplicate Veteran's armor to recharge a spent daily power (like, oh, say, the Glamor Blade, so you can do this each encounter).

While the Armor of Exploits would be perfect to, well, exploit, just for the name... I think the Veteran's Armor is the right choice. Infinite Glamor Blades is very sexy, though of course stored Rain of Blows has a lot to be said for it as well. Hitting a guy 8 times in a round is, well, pretty good.

I personally like the idea of duplicating consumables. Just get one really expensive healing potion and duplicate it outside of combat every time you need healing. Then have your duplicate copy recharge Glamor Blade with his duplicate action point. Good times; infinite consumables as needed, starting at level 9.

I think the most important point though, is that you are now your own ally. Just like how an enemy's fireball will hit you twice, you can now squeeze double the healing out of a mass cure light wounds or a bacon of hope.

I did a quick skim of the PHB and made a short list of things I think are good by being your own ally:
1) Cleric/Swordmages can do rolling Righteous Brands. They can hit an enemy with RB and then grant themself (well, their duplicate) a bonus to hit equal to their strength bonus. That attack, of course, could be another Righteous Brand, so it's like the cleric would be able to add double his strength bonus to attacks as long as he continued to hit, which, well, he probably would do so with such a huge bonus.
2) Warlord/Swordmages inspire themselves with Commander Strike, by ordering their duplicate to attack the target. Slap on some Bracers of Mighty Striking (+2 to +6 to damage) and add on your Intelligence to damage, and you're doing a lot more damage by ordering yourself to attack.
3) Justicars (who grant allies immunity to charm and fear, but not themselves... why? Who knows?) can duplicate themselves and stand side by side to grant the immunity to charm and fear to themselves, as well as the ability to roll twice on saving throws, which is pretty neat.
4) Swordmages themselves can play games with Aegis of Assault or Shielding, by switching off marks with their duplicate. A swordmage is fighting two guys in a 10' wide corridor. The rear duplicate marks a monster. The monster can either provoke an OA by walking past, or attack the swordmage, which triggers the Aegis and grants an OA. The first copy can then attack, mark the other guy, and back away on his turn (provoking an OA which provokes another attack from the swordmage), and the process repeats itself, with the swordmage getting 2 or 3 attacks per round.

The most exploitable thing I found, though, in the brief time I've looked at this is the following (Pick your favorite Genasi race, and you could feasibly swap out Battle Captain for something else):


Teh Haxxor
Genasi Warlord/Swordmage/Battle Captain/Demigod 30
Str 28
Dex 13
Con 13
Int 28
Wis 10
Cha 14

Items:
+6 Veteran's Armor (though I'd really like to duplicate the Exploit Armor, just because of the name)
+6 Luckblade Fullblade - free reroll
Couters of Second Chances - free reroll
Potions of Clarity - free reroll
Other stuff (Frost Gauntlets, why not?)

Feats:
Don't really matter. I suppose I'd take Tactical Assault, Improved Init, Danger Sense, Combat Commander and anything which goes with whatever weapon I use. I guess we'll use a fullblade or whatever, and so we should probably take Power Attack as well since we'll be at a pretty high to-hit number. Weapon Focus, Blood Thirst, Lasting Frost, whatever else we feel like. None of it is especially crucial to the build.

The situation:
Bad guy starts combat next to you. We'll say we win init since we're pretty good at it. If he doesn't start combat next to you, you do this combo after you start combat starting next to him, and reduce the attack bonus by -2 (as if it matters).

The Combo:
Standard action: Glamor Blade. 1W+Int. Hit or miss, a duplicate of you appears behind the target in flanking formation.
Minor Action: Inspiring Word - Duplicate gets a +14 power bonus to hit for this round.
Minor Action (from Duplicate): Inspiring Word. Original gets a +14 power bonus to hit for this round.

It's neat being your own ally.

We should pause here to discuss our bonus to hit. Battle Captain grants a +2 untyped bonus on the first round (Cry Havoc), a +1 untyped bonus when action pointing (Battle Action), Veteran's Armor gives a +1 item bonus to hit when action pointing, and Tactical Assault and Tactical Presence give a total of +7 untyped to hit and +14 untyped to damage when action pointing. A human would do a lil' better I guess, but a Genasi is better suited to this class overall.

Overall our plus to hit on the upcoming action point attacks are:
+15 (BAB) + 3 (proficiency) + 6 (weapon enhancement) + 2 (Battle Cry) + 7 (Tactical Assault and Presence) + 1 item bonus (Veteran's Armor) + 2 (combat advantage from flanking) + 14 (Str) + 14 power bonus (Inspiring Word) = +66 to hit. We won't be missing except on 1s. With a +6 potion of clarity, this gets up to +72 to hit for a single roll.

Action Point: Victory Surge. 2W+Str damage, but hit or miss our duplicate gets a free basic attack when he spends a standard action. We'll probably hit though.
Action Point (from Duplicate): Sudden Assault. 1W+Str and the original takes a standard action with +14 power bonus to hit (which doesn't stack with Inspiring Word). We also get a basic attack as a free action for 2W+Str, since we spent a standard action.
Sudden Assault Recharges (Demigod)
Standard Action: Sudden Assault. 1W+Str and duplicate takes a standard action.
Sudden Assault Recharges (Demigod)
Standard Action (Duplicate): Sudden Assault. 1W+Str and a free basic attack...
(Continue until four natural 1s have been rolled on the Sudden Assaults)

Expected Damage per iteration:
1.3 * d12 (average 1.3W attack) + 14 (str) + 6 (weapon) + 1 (blood thirst) +14 (Tactical Assault) + 9 (Power Attack) + 2 Cold (Cold Gauntlets) + 5 (Lasting Frost) + 5% of 19.5 (high crit) + 5% of (7.8 + 6d8) (crit) = 8.45 + 51 + .975 + 1.74 = 62.165.

Since we expect to get ~147 hits with our four rerolls (we don't care if the basic attacks miss, but we get a free 2W+Str basic attack every other iteration), this will deal 9138.255 damage on average in one round.

After the combat is over, we expend a duplicated action point and a real action point to recover Glamor Blade and Victory Surge (Victory Surge is optional, if we want to conserve action points, but it is nice for all the free attacks we get.) Spare suits of +1 veterans armor can be used to recharge after additional combats. This works for up to 5 combats in a row at the start of a day.

Before level 30, we can do the combo starting at level 23 but it tapers out a bit earlier (though still good - the bad guy will feel like he's in a batting cage):
Glamor Blade: 1W+Int
Inspiring Word
Inspiring Word
Victory Surge: 3W+Str
Pillor to Post: 3W+Str, Duplicate: 2W+Str Original: 1W+Str Original: 2W+Str
Which deals a total of 12W + 6 x (Str + All the other damage bonuses)
Should be around 200-300 damage, if I eyeball it correctly. Not bad, though obviously not as high as a infinite loop combo.

And even earlier than that, after you gain Glamor Blade at 9th, you can make use of all the Warlord abilities which allow allies to get a free attack after you attack. So even back then, you're getting free actions every round. This build should be playable across the entire level spread.

Nice ideas. But sure: we do not know, if the duplicate has it owns actions points/powers/whatever. Personally I think you share this with the duplicate.

ShakaUVM wrote:

4) Swordmages themselves can play games with Aegis of Assault or Shielding, by switching off marks with their duplicate. A swordmage is fighting two guys in a 10' wide corridor. The rear duplicate marks a monster. The monster can either provoke an OA by walking past, or attack the swordmage, which triggers the Aegis and grants an OA. The first copy can then attack, mark the other guy, and back away on his turn (provoking an OA which provokes another attack from the swordmage), and the process repeats itself, with the swordmage getting 2 or 3 attacks per round.

That's not right. Aegis of Assault triggers when a friend IS HIT by the attack. That's much weaker. (btw: I housruled it that it works if a friend is attacked)

ShakaUVM wrote:

The example one guy gave was to have him spend his duplicate action point on activating his duplicate Veteran's armor to recharge a spent daily power (like, oh, say, the Glamor Blade, so you can do this each encounter).

I think it is clear cut RAI that anything your duplicate does with his magic items uses up your magic items. In the absence of specific RAW, that's the way people should go.

In any case, that doesn't actually work. If you don't share magic items(at which point it doesn't work), then the duplicate activating the duplicate veteran's armor won't actually affect you.

Riktikticheck wrote:

also how certain are you that you count as being your selfs ally? this is not said anywhere, you are your selves duplicate, so all effects that affect you affect the both of you etc.

It explicitly says you can gain flanking from the duplicate, and flanking can only be granted by allies.

"To flank an enemy, you and an ally must be adjacent to the enemy and on opposite sides or corners of the enemy’s space." (PHB p285)

ShakaUVM wrote:

It explicitly says you can gain flanking from the duplicate, and flanking can only be granted by allies.

"To flank an enemy, you and an ally must be adjacent to the enemy and on opposite sides or corners of the enemy’s space." (PHB p285)

If you wanna play the RAW exploiting game, abide by the rules ; )
It doesn't explicitly say you can gain flanking from the duplicate.
All it says is that "you could shift into a flanking
position (a move action) while the duplicate draws a
weapon (minor) and uses a standard action to attack with
one of your powers". Nowhere does it say in the example that the duplicate is flanking with you and attacking your target, it could just as well be attacking some distant monster while you on the other hand provide flanking to one of your nearby allies.
It does not say "your duplicate allows you to flank with it".

Everything else in the text indicates that the thing is basically you.
Shared HP, shared actions and by RAI extension, shared everything.
A potion one drinks is used up for both, a used item power is expended for both and so on.
Just think of it as being in two places at once.